Permission to play with Jacob Collier

0:09You're listening to The Piano is played by Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and educator Jacob Collier. He's about to do something really special he does with live audiences. And in this case, for podcast audiences, too. You want to sing? You ready to sing? Yeah. La, la, la. La, la, la. La, la, la, la, la. La, la. I invited Jacob to join me on stage for a live recording of Rethinking at TED headquarters in New York. In front of an intimate audience, he got to showcase his favorite way to engage the room. With his call and response, he invited us all to experience the power of making music for ourselves, too.

1:11Connecting Only

1:36woknor everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. So that crowd singing with Jacob at Ted, maybe you could tell we're not exactly pros. But in the moment, Jacob transformed the whole audience into a choir. I've been a fan of Jacob since I first came across his work. He's a true innovator on stage and in studio. And these audience choirs he improvises during big concerts all around the world might be my favorite thing he does.

2:13So I had to ask him about it.

2:35so i have so many questions i guess the first one is how did the audience choir start the audience choir so this is the idea that everyone in the world is a musician in a sense that we all have this internal structure through which we can understand sound and the world and that given permission people want to participate so i think the fascination began when i was a very very small human i was probably about one or two years old and my earliest memories were of sitting in a chair and looking onto a stage and watching my mother conduct orchestras so she's this kind of legendary conductor figure but the lessons I saw at play on stage were were not really foundationally musical lessons they were human lessons it's like a leadership model in a sense of mass permissioning mass inclusivity sort of radical sense of joy and and passion and also contour and shape and visual cues to a sonic language so I watched this unfold I thought oh I see that's what music is for you know and then I grew up and I never thought I'd be a conductor it sort of sounded stuffy to me but then I accidentally sort of became very very inspired by this idea that when I stand on a stage whether there's 50 of you here or 20 ,000 or whatever that actually you can apply a lot the same logic and same principles to giving a feeling to a room in a sense I think the the lesson at the heart of what my mother taught me at that age and she really showed me rather than telling me it was like this is a way the world can be is in line with that quote that you're probably familiar with which is people don't remember what you say and people don't remember what you do but people remember how you make them feel and music has this kind of hard wire straight to the heart of the line for for that and i think that my mother has this cool way of just wiggling into people's like sense of humor that and and frees people from their own personal shackles and brings people together so i think the yeah the audience choir is sort of standing on the shoulders of that but the trick is you don't need qualifications you kind of just need permission.

4:32And that always kind of stuck with me. When you talk about people remembering how you made them feel, how do you want everyone to feel after they participate? I think what I've learned is, however hard I try to design the feeling I want to give, it's basically impossible to say, you must feel this. I don't actually think that music is inherently emotional. I think people are inherently emotional. And I think that music has really significant keys for getting into the heart of the thing. But I think maybe the feeling I would hope people to feel is a it's like it's okay to wiggle you know like it's it's cool you can wiggle i i sort of believe it's like a very young theory it's like a week old or something but the wiggle theory this idea that people are actually born to wiggle and that we live in a straight line world um and music is one of the greatest mechanisms we have of like remembering the feeling oh yeah i remember this feeling of wiggling around i had as a child we all did and these things i think wake up the inherent emotional channels that are everlastingly flowing through us as people and it was like tapping the channel and think, oh yeah, I remember that now.

5:31Okay. I love it. So you want people to feel a sense of wiggle-tude. Wiggle-tude or wiggle-dom is the word I usually use for sure. Yeah. I'm going to let you coin the words. Okay. So one of the other things that I guess I noticed as people were participating in the choir was it looked like what Durkheim called collective effervescence, where you get a group of people who are gathered together around a common purpose with shared energy and you feel like you're part of something larger than yourself. Yeah, I would agree. I think that's something that singing does automatically. Did any of you grow up in a choir?

6:06Did anyone sing in a choir as a child? The feeling of that is so memorable. It's like you're a pixel in a big image. It's not like a main character scenario. It's like, okay, I'm one of many people. For example, in Latvia and Estonia, two places I've recently played and where the audience choirs blew my mind they have these song and dance festivals where you have 40 000 people on stage and 500 000 people in the audience and like all the generations of your family will come and come through this thing and everyone will sing it it's it's like a mass remembrance i think is what i would call it like oh i i remember this this is older than all of us this is foundational to the bone of kind of what humans are built to do like i think that what music does is it reveals what was already there but you need it to sort of get through and i think that the collective of a professing thing is a beautiful expensive term for it are you saying too many syllables yeah maybe so but but yeah there's there's a gorgeousness about a group of people all being there for something that's beyond any one of those people that is just sort of commonly understood without words you said in latvia and estonia the audience choirs blew your mind they did what does that mean were they louder did they wiggle more like what yeah so some audiences are really quiet and really accurate.

7:16Some audiences are really loud and wildly inaccurate. Some audiences are more in tune than others. But I think the wiggling thing is interesting because some audiences are stiff. And I think stiff is a separate axis from volume. You can have a loud, stiff crowd. They're kind of boring. So here's the thing with wiggling is it's being down to kind of follow something that wasn't planned. Audiences respond well to this in general, I think, when there's something that feels spontaneous or is spontaneous. Some of my favorite concerts ever have been quiet audiences that are really supple. And I think supple is a big word for me in opposition to brittle, in lieu of the wiggledom sort of axis, because I think that brittle things and people and ideas and language will strain and snap under pressure, but supple people and language and crafts and sort of mechanisms tend to bend with the weather and the conditions and the pressures and things like that.

8:15So I try and be a supple dude in general. And I appreciate supple audiences where it's sort of like if something happens that's unexpected, rather than people going and sort of tightening up, people sort of go, all right, let's go over there. And my job is just to create the conditions where they feel it's safe to come with me, you know, and that's a good place to start. You must see a lot about personalities and also the norms and culture of a room when you ask them to jump in. Yeah. What do you learn? well music is an equalizer and so you see all the personality types but then it has this way of kind of going you know it's like the most extroverted um main character people will be there and so will the people who are so shy and and and don't want to participate no actually we stayed home right yeah right yeah right that extreme but i think even with shyness there are flavors of being shy there are shy people who see everything and they're just there but they're seeing everything then there are shy people who are anxious so they've closed off but actually it's quite loud inside their minds you know and then there are loud people who don't see anything because they can just see their own voice so big that professional bloviators bloviators love it um and uh and then there are then there are energetic people who are large and see everything i mean those are special audience members i think we need all these people we need we need this kind of diversity in in society in a concert my hope is that there's space for all those people but i I think there are moments where, you know, hecklers will shout or scream something.

9:42And there are a few ways to deal with this. Usually the people around them are just, because they're so tasteful, they'll be like, we just don't do that here. Sorry, would you mind? And then if they persevere or whatever, then there are ways that I can deal with things. One of my favorite ways of dealing with something like that would just be to radically incorporate their idea. So if they're shouting something and then I get everyone to sing it, then it's sort of like, it has a funny power to sort of dissolve the person. and they actually feel really empowered and seen and then pipe down. So it's like this funny job I have of constantly balancing and sort of making space for the different kinds of people who are going to show up.

10:17And then also at times being like, okay, and actually we're not going to, like the whole show, the show is not entirely calling response. There are moments where I go really insular into my own world so that I can earn coming back out of it. But everyone's always invited. I think that's the hope. So interesting. So people often say that culture is what happens when the leader isn't in the room. I have a slightly different take on that, which is I think culture is whether people take ownership over the values and norms when the leader is not in the room. And the fact that you have people saying, hey, we don't do that around here.

10:49It's a sign that you've created a strong culture in a group of people who have never met each other or been in the same room together before. It's a funny thing to be proud of, but I'm proud of them. I think that the audience reflecting itself is interesting because actually I think people bring each other out like when given those kinds of permissions to just go. And that's cool to me. And I'm proud of that. Even the last show I played in Philly last night and the one before that, there were two quite similar venues. And there were people, there was a tunnel between the stage and the parking lot and people walked through the tunnel.

11:19They were all singing. It made me emotional. I thought, wow, that's, it's beautiful because it's not just everyone's singing for themselves. It's like singing has baked within it all these life lessons. Like you can't really sing in that way without listening and without being inclusive and without having empathy and without being curious and without a little bit of courage and a little bit of risk and all these things that I just think are important things to incorporate in life. They all exist there. So it was just like quite a moving occasion to see this colorfully dressed army of people walking through.

11:48It was really sweet. you know it made me think when you go to see stand-up comedy you feel like you're participating because you're laughing out loud yeah yeah and after watching that i kind of feel like having people not sing at a concert is a little bit like telling them not to laugh at comedy maybe so i've actually recognized recently in how many comic things i've incorporated into my sort of artistic vernacular especially when i'm on stage it's almost like physical comedy it's like like for example it would be split the room into two and i go if you go who who and then ha ha

12:36right so thank you thank you for applying me All of that language is, well, it has to be simple and it's physical, but a lot of it comes from humor in a funny way. Like, it's just funny to go, it's funny. When this is scaled up to like many thousands of people, people take all sorts of really wild liberties. like another one of my favorite exercises is just

13:09like even just that I love the sound so much that's that's great everyone well done um that sounds like a forest or something and so something or something it's quite a singular sound so so over over the course of say a minute of doing that people start you know contributing creatures of the wild like their own sort of like their own creatures made up animals and stuff like and that's so fun because every time someone does something there'll be like this little ripple around them of people who laugh and then participate as well so it's like this really interesting social experiment to from my i have the best seat in the house for this stuff yeah so it's a language built out of like the most basic building blocks of music and so everyone for example in the whole world inherently understands big and small because we see it everywhere high and low everyone understands high and low everyone understands thick and thin or rough and smooth um it's a bit like the bobo and kiki thing right um the idea that in every language on earth bobo and kiki if unassigned to a spiky shape or a rounded shape everyone will assume that bobo is the rounded shape and kiki is the spiky one without any prompting i love that you're dropping psychology knowledge yeah well i have to i've tried my best but but there's something there is something universal about some of these axes and i think a lot about it it's like as we learn anything music is a good example are kind of like resolution increases it's like okay 8-bit 16 30 64-bit knowledge of this and it starts with just like really if i demonstrate this like it starts with really just like everyone's heard this sound because when you're a child it's like that's your first thing it's like and and you figure out a lot of the fundamental lessons like loud and quiet you figure it out high and low like okay i'm mapping it out so there are kind of like inherent things that when you start faffing, we would just wait, does anyone know what the word faff means?

14:59That's so interesting. I thought everyone in the world would know. Are we doing it right now? Yeah. So faff is a British word that kind of means like if you faff about, it just sort of means you sort of muck about and, and mess around and sort of like fill space. And it's kind of not distinct. It's, it's not, it's not necessarily very intentional. It's just sort of like oh i'm just you know like i'm just faffing but but i think faffing is like yeah there's something about the the approach of just like or what even is this that we actually really need to remember as people because especially as grown-ups as adults we get into a very rigid set of thinking that learning happens like when you concentrate but if you break them down it's like you can granularize these emotions but they're kind of made out of bigger simpler lumps then you can chisel away and get to the heart of the matter but as a musician it's kind of my job to distill that language sonically and figure out like what are some interesting things to say you know okay i have at least four different directions i want to take this um let's start with the first one which is you're giving people permission to play and this is especially powerful for people who are used to being too serious and taking themselves too seriously i just i'd love to hear you talk a little bit about why are we so eager to play as adults and why does it just take this little invitation?

16:15I think as children, we know how to play. I think as we grow older, there are a number of things that essentially straighten the wiggly line to extend the metaphor. I think the education systems are a huge part of it. The way that we are encouraged to measure ourselves against these very rigid systems, which are suited to a very particular way of being in the world, a very particular type of intelligence and a particular position in culture, which kind of narrows down the wiggledom somewhat and makes the path appear sort of clearer and more distinct and maybe more one directional. I think teachers are so important in this world because they have the power to kind of make or break an imagination.

16:54You know, we all need people at a certain point to come along and say, this thing you're doing, Adam, this thing is a value. You should do more of that, you know? And I think that it feels like part of my job to really understand what is it that stops people from feeling that freedom, or at least how do I unlock it? And I think that, yeah, I'm constantly interested in what are the ways that we can get people out of their own way and also be more awake to each other. It's like, listen to each other. Don't just listen to me. It's another reason I love the choir so much is because it flips the direction of attention from like omni-beam to...

17:27It's like your periphery opens up. And I think that keeps you more likely to be surprised and a little bit softer, a little bit more flexible, supple, whatever. I get the appeal of participating. What I would not have expected is how often your choirs go viral. People just want to watch these audience choirs happen. Why? I think people see a part of themselves in the experience. I also think that right now, examples of groups of people working together are just very prudent. It hits a nerve. It hits a nerve for me. If I see a group of people unified to a cause, it's like, isn't that something?

18:05I'm also intrigued by the way in which you enabled people to communicate with just these sounds that don't even mean anything. And I was thinking about our version of this in psychology. So I'm going to don't worry, you won't have to sing, but I'm going to ask you all to shout out in a second. Imagine you saw a really cute baby. What is the sound that you would make on three? One, two, three. OK, so those are called vocal bursts. They exist in every culture around the world. and they're the same. Oh, that's a vocal burst. Yeah, so you were doing vocal bursts. Oh, what? I didn't know that. What's amazing, though, is that regardless of what language you speak, you make that aw sound when you see something cute.

18:45That's wild. There are others. What if you see a delicious-looking chocolate chip cookie? One, two, three, go. And then if you're me and you hate chocolate, you would say... Yeah, so those bursts are universal. Wow. I think it seems to me like you're unlocking other bursts that people don't know they have access to. That's a very cool exercise. It's the only one I have, so. Yeah. I think that there are other ones that are the offshoots of those that are more compound or combinations of these things. Like I think at a certain point you get to music probably. Yeah, I think you would. Although I'm just watching you do this thinking, has Jacob been reading the research on vocal bursts?

19:25How does he know to do this? Right. Yeah, I don't know. I think when I observe something that hits or lands or works with a group, I'm always like, oh, I'll keep that one for later. I can think of specific concerts where I've done specific things for the first time. Yeah, one of these things. In fact, let's do it now again.

19:46And then someone in the crowd goes. And I was like, that's a good one. Now go, go. Isn't that a cool sound? It's really, really nice. So then it's like you keep going there and then

20:03Yeah, so that in in a big space It's like a kind of psychedelic it's kind of like you got the ocean You got the rain and you got the whistling then animal sounds over here and you got this stuff It's why I love playing it in the round But yeah, I'm always on the lookout for new things and sometimes the audience gives me the best ideas So I want to talk a little bit about harmony. Yeah Yeah. Harmony has always been such a mystery to me in the sense that on the one hand, it's supposed to be all of us coming together. On the other hand, it's not identical sounds. It's supposed to be the pleasing arrangement of different tunes.

20:36Yeah. How do you think about getting people in harmony? so this is a great question um i want to start by making the differentiation between unison and harmony so unison is everyone doing the same thing at once so if everyone goes ah yeah that's that's unison because you're all aligned if i go

21:01right we have two separate notes each with their own thing but they work together so harmony is like the relationship between more than one thing happening at once so so now you know in music education we're taught these concepts of major for example and minor and dominant and diminished or augmented and these have a lot of cultural kind of a connotation like this sound is the fairy right wow you know everyone knows the feeling this is kind of built out of what we call an augmented triad augmented means it's got bigger right so this is a usual triad and if I augment that triad I'm stretching the top note up and it's like so I think it's almost like the eyes widening thing is really happening you've gone right yeah wow right a diminished chord is what happens when you shrink a triad triad is a three note chord one two three diminished chord is this sound so you know it's literally in my mind it's like you know that's kind of what's going on um and then you add onto that all the cultural kind of implications from in nearly a thousand years of recorded music history on paper scores and more recently recorded mediums you have this really really vivid kind of language at play and it's all built out of these basic intervals like if I play this interval right this is what we call a diminished second if you want to give it a name and this is a little bit less friendly it's like you know what I mean

22:47it's like this is what we call dissonance right and so you might say well that just sounds bad and the other one sounds good but the truth is this can be absolutely beautiful to the point of devastating

23:08there it is

23:19right if you control the dissonance you have way more meaningful harmony than if you just play consonant stuff all the time so to go back to the original point i guess like baked into music and the study of it is so many of the things that make us better people but one of them is about not being afraid of dissonance and actually in music if we lean into the distance and learn to control it we have this huge broad palette that's so much more meaningful than if we just take the pretty intervals and whatever a lot of the reason why music moves us is because of all these little tensions and releases that we experience across the kind of path of a musical piece and it's controlled by all these things like dissonance and consonants and rhythm and time and repetition and but all these things exist in speech naturally in a sense and they exist in our culture and they exist observationally in the world.

24:04So again, it's like, no, it's, it's, it's no surprise that music has such an impact on us. I think creative tension makes beautiful music. I, okay, bear with me on this. This is going to be a weird question, but I actually wonder if these skills are useful in everyday life. So let me, let me give you an example. Yeah. Um, do you know the scene in Pitch Perfect, uh, where Rebel Wilson's character is asked, why do you have Bumper's number? and she goes, oh, and just dodges the question by, by singing it. So, um, Alison and I have this little, I guess, routine where whenever like she's upset about something trivial, I'll just go, oh, try to make it go away.

24:44Yeah. And it's actually, it's a different way of resetting the conversation than saying, Hey, this is not a big deal. Yeah. Um, I'm just envisioning you like in an argument with someone and going like, I'm sorry, could you just say who, huh? do you use these skills at all um i can't say i do it as on the nose as that but i love it so much that you do that the thing that came to my mind when you said that is those classrooms where the teacher will go you know until all the kids are clapping at the same time and then everyone's kind of got the attention i i think there are ways of aligning people in with such cues uh but i think i think there is a way that music can can cut through your defenses and just remind you oh yeah wait i have a body remember but yeah that that seems like a one that i'm going to try when like at home.

25:26Tried at your own risk. Yeah, right.

25:31So in the spring, when we met, there was something that that shocked me after you performed, which is, I think it was about midnight, people started gathering and I think there was a band playing. And most of the professional musicians I've seen at events, when that happens, they leave. Like I did my gig, I'm out. And you looked so excited to sit down at the piano and just start jamming yeah and i know you were out past 2 a.m just improvising with amateur musicians and it was it was a life highlight for some of them why is the first question and then the second question is it looks to me like you have you have a calling for music uh and i'd love to hear you talk about that it's so easy to be an island i think and think i'm going to do my thing and i'm going to disappear but especially in events like that when I think it's it's it's cool to muck in and I recognize an opportunity to just have some fun and I didn't even cross my mind to go to sleep to be honest there's no reason beyond that what was the second question you asked again so so it looks and you can see it now too I think you have a calling no it's it's all a ruse yeah so nobody's that that good of an actor yeah I have a deep hatred for um and scorn for music but I think that I was brought up to see the world in a quote-unquote musical way and that's not to say oh i hear the um car horn and i'm like something wiggling in the street yeah yeah music everywhere it's it's sort of more i think it's it's more i was brought up to sort of have uh just to be awake to stuff like i enjoyed observing the world um it's like that lao tzu quote i'm trying to compete with you here really But there's that beautiful quote where Lao Tzu says something about, you know, the rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit.

27:18And once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare, you know. And it's like, well, words exist because of meaning. And once you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. And then he says something like, well, where's the man who's forgotten words so that I may speak with him? And I think music is one of those rare languages where it doesn't end up being rendered as merely the symbols. You can't really mistake the symbols for the thing in the same way you can with a lot of the languages that we perceive. because it just is the thing. It's the verbiest language I know. Before you've thought about it, it's already touched you.

27:50And that's kind of cool. So I think when I think about like a musical upbringing, I think it was brought up to be pretty energetically aware of like how I was feeling and where I was feeling it and how to get the flow going. So that feels like maybe I would even say my primary skill set over and above anything remotely technical. I think skill is overrated in general in music. And I think permission is vastly underrated. But I think that most of my skill set at this point is about creating the right kind of like internal weather conditions as best I can to just see a clear channel and like go in that direction clearly.

28:25It looks like what psychologists like Valorant would call harmonious passion as opposed to obsessive passion. Well, that aligns with my musical interests. Yes, that's why I thought I would reference it. But I think it also then, And it seems to be really conducive to deliberate play as opposed to this very rote, I'm going to force myself to do deliberate practice. Yes. Yeah. It's funny you bring up practice because those of us who are musicians often get plagued by this word when we're starting out. Have you practiced? How long do you practice for? Do you practice? But I think that I was never really told to practice as a child, which is probably the best thing to ever happen to me.

29:01But I was never good at practicing or particularly regimented at all. though if I was interested enough in something I would there would be no hesitation I would spend 10 hours in that day exploring it but there was there just wasn't that pressure that I didn't I didn't have to be good at music to get validation from my family I just had to be good at being Jacob and I I figured pretty early on that music would play some role in that but I never I didn't really know what I wanted to do other than I had a sense it would have to do with music and communication I thought you were good at either of them yeah I ended up doing this hybrid thing of really incorporating so many different kinds of music and, and things.

29:38And the number of people who said, you know, when are you going to pick a lane? You know, what's your genre? It'd be helpful if you just picked one, because then we could put you in this little box. And I was, I was always so conscious about not doing that. And it was such a deliberate kind of swerve that I remember being like, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna narrow my aperture in that way. Well, this goes to something that you've, you've talked about that I found surprising, which is, I understand you're the only artist to have never charted, but also been twice nominated for album of the year.

30:07And you said you were proud that you've never charted. Yeah. Why? That's very ticklish to me, that fact. It was just so thrilling to see that album nominated. I couldn't believe it alongside literally the biggest artists on the planet. You know, it was Taylor and Billy and Sabrina and Chaperone and Charlie XCX. And Jacob. and Beyonce and Jacob and Andre 3000. And I just couldn't believe it. And I was so proud and excited for the community of people that that album represented, which was so broad. I mean, there were musicians from every continent of the world who contributed. You know, there was Anushka Shankar and Vadajashree Voon Rukupal from India and Camillo from South America and Esper, this Korean supergroup, and a bunch of audience choirs from Australia.

30:52They were at heart of the album, opening and closing the album, and the Metropole Orquest from Europe. and a host of amazing gospel musicians, Kirk Franklin and all of his singers and this young student choir called the Aeolians of Oakwood University. And then like Chris Martin and Shawn Mendes and Tori Kelly and John Legend and all those people too. So it was just a, it was such an unmakeable album. It was such an ambitious thing for me to try and do. It was exciting and I'm proud in a sense, like, you know, it's weird to say, I'm proud not to have charted. It's almost pretentious, but I would say that I'm relieved that there's a musical climate in this day and age where an artist doesn't need to chart to be recognized in that way because I think the metrics of success are changing so fast.

31:30And I think to measure yourself up against this super competitive music and to base the quality of your work on the popularity of your work is one of the most base misunderstandings that all of us who make creative work come up against at a certain point. Popularity is such a poor proxy for impact. It is, exactly. It is ironic, though, given the widespread appeal of your work to not be on a chart. I'm like, do you know how many people are listening and watching? Right, right. What's wrong with the chart? Yeah, it's interesting though, because I think I'm excited by the idea of the long arc as an artist, the idea that these kinds of relationships I'm building with my audience members now, I hope will last a lifetime.

32:07And I'm much more interested in that than I'm interested in, in sort of getting a bunch of reach. And it's like, oh, I reached lots of people. It's like, to what end? You know, did you engage them or did you move them? And then, then the question becomes, well, how do you move someone? What's the difference between moving someone and engaging someone? and I think the only real way you can move someone is by being someone. You have to just be a person, like the actual person that you are, kind of like imperfections and all, and really show it. And I think that there's literally no other way of moving somebody.

32:40All right, we're going to go to the audience first, a lightning round. Cool. You ready for this? Yeah. I'm going to hold you to it. Yeah. Okay. Who would you most want to have dinner with? Stevie Wonder. That was fast. Okay. Worst advice you've ever gotten? Do the thing that everyone wants me to do. Something you've changed your mind about or rethought lately? That high resolution equals clarity. And it doesn't. Ooh. You've elevated verbs several times tonight. Do you have something against nouns? No, nouns are fine. You know, the great philosopher Homer Simpson said that verbing weirds language.

33:22Verbing weirds language. loved it what about nouning i've never heard that verb touche uh audience we have some mics coming around if you raise your hand we will not ask you to sing okay we can go to nicole hi i'm curious in addition to children and babies you find inspiration for wiggliness when you look out in the world i mean you see it everywhere you see like if you look at any place in that in the natural world is wiggly constantly wiggly Wiggly on the ground level, wiggly on the horizon, wiggly in the leaves and the trees in the sky. There aren't really any rigid lines in nature. Even something like bamboo will just bend with the wind.

34:04But it all applies to life, right? You can't just be slop all over the floor like there's no form. I mean, you can if you want, but it's not interesting. Just as it's not interesting to be clinically perfect and grid-based. So it's usually in the tension between the wiggly and the non-wiggly. That's where the life is. I feel like I might have to cold call one or two people. Do it. Spence Pasek here. Okay, so can we give you a mic for a second? We have another extremely talented musician in the audience. If you've seen The Greatest Showman or Dear Evan Hansen, this is Pasek of Pasek and Paul. I would love to hear the two of you talk a little bit.

34:39Hi, Jacob. I'm a big fan of yours. Oh, it's so nice to meet you. I guess my question for you is, how did you decide that you wanted to be the conduit of your creation? I work behind the scenes, So I write things for characters and I kind of have visibility. I'm curious when you decided or when you found that it was advantageous to be the vessel, because that's a thing that I have always resisted. Yeah, I don't necessarily always feel like the main character. Like, for example, last year I did this arrangement of a song called Bridge Over Trouble Water and Tori Kelly and John Legend and Yeba all sing a verse.

35:13And I don't sing a verse, I just accompany their verses. And I really like that. I really like that as a setup, because I think that a lot of my skill set is actually more about giving context to someone to really shine than actually also being the one who has to shine and i love shining but i think there are two sides so the first album i made was literally made by only me but i don't think of it as being something i made by myself i think of it as like everyone in my whole life was a collaborator and all my inspirations were collaborators and i'm just like extending their limbs by growing as a human you know what i mean it's like this constant we're all collaborators in that way so yeah and the short answer is i think i go I go from your side of the fence to the performer side of the fence every day and I'm kind of okay with it um Jacob can we send you to the keyboard for a second yeah that actually reminds me of something that I wanted to are you taking requests yeah sure I think part of the way that you've managed that tension is by doing a lot of covers of other people's music as opposed to saying I'm always going to do my own thing yeah yeah yeah I think of all your covers I have to say my favorite it might be the Flintstones.

36:19Oh, really? Yeah, can you do a version of it for us? I can. I mean, so I did this absolutely bananas arrangement of the Flintstones theme tune, which actually won me a Grammy. And it's so, I mean, it's like truly unplayable. But as a theme song, it's one of the best because it's so repetitive and strong and memorable and all this stuff. Do you know this song? Yeah, but yeah. Should we sing it all together? This might be a fun way of doing this. So this is your first note. Flintstones, right? Meet the Flintstones. Okay, we're gonna go. Yeah, let's let's let's snap on the offbeats like this. Yeah.

36:53Flintstones three floor Flintstones meet the Flintstones. They're the modern stone is family.

37:07I don't know the words

37:22That's the Flintstones Yeah it's it's one of the more kind of capacious songs to arrange because this chord progression is old as the hills like we all we've all heard this a million times so the ways in which you can subvert that are incredibly fun so the my arrangement starts with i think it goes

37:49and you're like where the hell is the time first of all and it's actually here five

37:59So off the bat, like I'm already subverting your expectation. This is one of the reasons I love arranging other people's songs, because if you know a song already, then I can work with your expectation structure that exists within you already. Maybe a song like Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Do you know this song? So everyone knows Somewhere Over the Rainbow. He goes, somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. If I do that, you probably think, something's off. Because he goes, way up high, way up high. But if I go, way up high, that's a different colour than what I'm used to. There's a land that I heard of once In a lullaby I think, oh, now we're in a different world, right?

39:00What I play with is locality. It's like, you were here and now you're here. And you can do this in so many different ways. But yeah, I love taking a song that everyone knows and showing how far you can take it and for it still to be familiar to you. And I think it's something that it was, it was my first, it was the first thing I did as a musician in the world was, was do this. Like I did, like, isn't she lovely? And I did PYT and don't you worry about a thing and all these things. And I was harmonically irresponsible. You know, it has to be said, like it was so far away from the song. but then I got an email from Quincy Jones and he said what what have you done to this song you fool and and we became friends partly but that's kind of how it happened actually because I was so enamored by taking the language beyond what was sort of usual and I think that there's something about the attitude of that that Quincy thought was kind of punk and I think if I'd gone off the bat and was just like okay I'm gonna play Jacob's songs only and you're gonna listen to it, I think I would have had a much harder time building the trust with people actually, because I think that I developed the trust by walking that line between the thing that people expect and don't expect.

40:15But yeah, arranging other people's music is a great place to build trust and break it. Okay. I think the overwhelming reaction that I've had to you in the last few months is I want to put you in every room that I go in. Wow. And I was trying to figure out why. and I was reminded of a great line from Bono when he said that joy is an act of defiance. And the contrast between what some people might call dark or uncertain or turbulent times and the unapologetic joy that you bring into a room is that there's something really magical about it. I'd love to hear you just say a little bit about that. Oh, well, thank you.

40:57It was the main thing I want to say. I do think joy is an act of defiance I think that joy Is misunderstood Because I think people mistake joy For cheeriness or happiness But joy To me is about being alive And I think one of the things That I've learnt actually most from music About life is that music doesn't discriminate At all, you can incorporate anything In music, it can be the Dirtiest, gnarliest Most disturbing experience or the most menial, meaningless piece of fluff, you know? And it's like, cool, no questions asked. It's in the cauldron of your life. And then you get to pull out of the cauldron things that matter to you.

41:40And so I think of joy, for me, I think of joy is about vitality. Like I'm feeling vital. And I think now's a good time for that because there are days, all of us experiencing right now, where it's harder to find that thread and think, what are we living for actually but it's always just one step away and and sometimes it's about ah that single thing that note it flips you out of the argument and into your life again and that's like what it's all about love that i'm going to record you doing the notes and play them because they work much better than when i try but thank you jacob thanks everyone thanks everybody

42:51Thank you. and Alison Leighton Brown.

42:59If anyone in here has ever worked with AI, then you'll know about this thing called Top K, which basically lets in more chaos. And I think that me, as a large language model that I am, we all are, I think a lot about ways of making my Top K greater or my temperature higher to sort of like encourage me to be more chaotic because the more chaos I get as an input, the more interesting my output will be. Wow. Jacob Collier saying I am a stochastic parrot was not on my bingo card for tonight.