World’s Best Music Lesson? with Gen Z Mozart Jacob Collier

21:47It's not.

21:52It's sloppy. It's like, whoa, what's going on? It's wiggly. I love it. It feels like being a human being. It's like being a slinky. It's like being a slinky. It's a great metaphor. So that's rhythm and time. Melody and line. Ooh, what a combination. Melody comes from speech. In African countries, a lot of African languages, some languages are quite triadic.

22:17It's like a three-tone language. And a triad is like one of the most basic forms of sound. It's like a three-note chord. So a lot of the rhythm and melody in Africa comes from that form. In European languages, the way that we emphasize a word is to say it more loudly. Oh, yeah. And also to put the pitch up. Or your emphasis in a different space. So, yeah. So in certain African languages, for example, emphasis is not placed on a word through dynamics and through intonation. So if I go da-da-da-da, that means I'm emphasizing. But in African languages, some African languages, emphasis is placed more to do with time.

22:58So the greatest emphasis of a word is actually when the most amount of space comes before it. So it's kind of like if you go da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, that's how certain languages in Africa provide emphasis. And so musically, you can study this and look at it and deconstruct it. And there's such a... Like the whole structure of melodies and everything is different. So it comes directly from speech. And Indian is the same, Chinese is the same. It's amazing. That was one of my questions. I want to get to Harmony in a second, but that was the question I was going to ask you when you were doing the Samba.

23:30What is the word for that space before the release, before the thing? Because, okay, in your last album, I love the song Heaven, Butterfly. Oh, thank you. And one of the reasons I love it is that there is this kind of space that you keep creating where there's just like a twinkle of music, and I'm like waiting for it to come back. I can't wait for it to come back. And so what is that? Is there a word for that? I don't know. I mean, I think space is a good word for it. I think that it's a feeling. It's that anticipation. It's anticipation. And the thing with like samba is it happens on a micro scale.

24:04It's like... Every single beat you're like, oh, anticipation, anticipation, which is really great. That's why the Brazilians are so sexy. Oh, absolutely. Well, they're constantly wiggling at all times. But yeah, I think with melodies, like with that song, for example, Heaven, Butterflies. There's like the sense that you, like you do something and then you leave a space. You do something, leave a space. And often in that song, the melody comes in, like the words come in the space. So the guitar, I can play it actually. Yeah. Do we need to mic up something? So in Heaven it's like, and then it just like, the heart beats.

24:52I see the whole world in your eyes.

25:00I'm going to watch you rise.

25:05Like an angel in the night. You are bringing me back to life. So the way it works is the guitar speaks. Mm-hmm. And then I speak... and then the guitar speaks again. I don't want you to stop playing. This is so good. Oh, that's so... This is like the whole interview is a ruse for Jacob to just serenade me for an hour. The thing with that is... it's just about, like, balancing the things. It's like, it's something I love from African music, actually, where rather than having everything happening at the same time, it's cool if things happen at separate times. So you have the rhythm all the time or something, and then the melody, and then the rhythm, and then the melody.

25:44Harmony. What is harmony? You saved my favorite till last. A lot of people talk about music as being these three elements, rhythm, melody, harmony. Harmony is just about the relationship between things. That's what it is. It's saying, let's have this note and this note and this note all together. So I guess first, there's a difference between like unison and harmony. So unison is when two people or many people are singing the same thing, the same note at the same time. Harmony is when you have lots of different notes at the same time. So like we say, chords is when you have like, so it's like this, right?

26:17This is kind of like unison. This is one note. Harmony is when you go, and it's like, oh, all the flowers are out, all the colors are there. All this thing. So as a child, I would sit for hours and hours and hours and days and weeks and months and just find all the ways I could think of combining notes together that felt good. And some of them don't feel good. If you go like that, it doesn't feel that good, to it, really. But there are so many ways you can play with music. For example, if I move one note at a time, if I play this chord here, and I move only one note at a time, it changes the feeling.

26:55So say I got this, and then it's different, different colour. It's a different colour. It's a different colour.

27:15It's endless for me, endless. And the thing with harmony is, you can kind of make any note work with any other note. There's no real rules and regulations for chords and They're all compatible, except for the one you play together when you just put your palm down on the thing. Yeah, yeah. It's mostly about your attitude. Oh, okay. Which is why I like harmony so much. It's like, because you can kind of use the same attitude in the world. It's like something can feel dissonant. So you might say this. How would you define this as a sound? I think it's like an emotion or a color or what do you want me to say?

27:49It's spiky. It's spiky. Yeah, it's spiky and it's got a little quiver to it. Perfect. That's perfect. It doesn't feel that great, does it? Like in its own right, it's a bit like... It feels like spinal to me. It's better for me to say how I feel things in my body. That's a really good description. Spinal. So the reality is, this by itself, it doesn't mean much, but as a harmonist, I get to create context for this in so many different ways. So if I did this, for example, suddenly it's like, oh, I understand the context of it, you know what I mean? Or if I did, like, so I did that, it's like I understand where it's grounded.

28:30And it becomes much less spiky. It becomes less spike, or I can decide how spiky I want it to be. If I did this, that doesn't make it less spiky. But if I did, that makes it a little bit less spiky. How do you know how to do that? Well, it's just a lot of trial and error. It's a lot of trial and error, and learning to understand the basic building blocks of music and chords and things like that. But to me, the thing with harmony, which I love so much, and I think it's as much a life lesson as a musical lesson, is you can make something sound beautiful by putting it in a particular context or thinking of it in a particular context.

29:11And you can also make something sound ugly and awful and whatever. And in the arts, everything's welcome. You can say whatever story you want. You can tell whatever story you want to tell. But as a child, it was the biggest thing I loved about music was chords because they're so emotional to me. Like you can just, if I sit, I can just sit in here, for example.

29:37Forever. Yeah, I can sit there forever, too. This is good. It feels good. But then if I want to, I can just change the whole color. This is going to be a different color now. When you say color, do you actually see a color as you're saying this? Not a specific color, but I think I use color in the way in which people feel it. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's just like a different hue, a different tonality, a different state of mind. But with harmony, the beautiful thing is keeping one thing the same and changing other things. So if this is here and I go like this, that's one particular color. And then if I go, it's a different thing.

30:13But this has stayed through both. So your heart and mind is like, oh yeah, I'm still there. I still see myself in the thing. It's just changed. It's an amazing kind of thing to study. Before I was a podcaster, I used to make documentary films. One of the reasons I loved it is that I had come from a few years of working in a career consulting, where you did the job of the person above you. And so when that person brought you work, you'd be like, oh, well, this is different how I do it. And you kind of had a sense of how much time it should take and what it should look like. And before you, when you even assigned it, you have a sense of what it is.

30:48Versus when I started making movies, all of a sudden, I didn't know, like, I don't know how to do what a gaffer does, but I can say, oh, it feels a bit gloomy. It feels like I want it to feel more wondrous or whatever. And then that person knows how to make the thing. And same thing when you work with a music supervisor or composer. It's amazing how we can communicate through these things, like light and music. The thing is, you're working with a set of materials that everyone understands. Everyone understands rough and smooth. Or big and small, wide and narrow, thick or thin. like people, we all have an experience of this in our own way.

31:24So if you're a filmmaker or if you're a musician, you're tapping into the same aesthetics. So, oh no, that feels too close, or that feels too open, whatever. And it's the intangible things that we're finding language for. It's like a really worthy thing to explore and study. One thing I would say in general is that the way that I feel like I've learned this is not through kind of routine or discipline or through a sense of, like, trying to prioritize efficiency. I think I've spent a lot of time, a lot of time, doing things slowly and thoroughly. And I think that in this day and age, we're so obsessed with things being efficient.

32:02Like, a lot of the models that we work with, it's all about what's the quickest way to achieve the maximum result. But I just really don't think art works like that at all. But music, to me, reminds me of that feeling. And I think that some of the best and most important things are discovered slowly and expand slowly. And I think that, like, embracing the parts of it which aren't, like, pretty or beautiful or effortless, those are some of the most interesting things you can embrace as an artist. And it's a very worthy thing to kind of remember. So as an artist right now, we're on the precipice of this AI revolution.

32:38It's coming. It's spiky. It's gloomy, some people say. It's everything. It's literally everything. But how do you look at AI coming down the pike? A little cliffhanger. We'll be right back. Guys, today's sponsor, Dumb Question, is from me. I'm going to take the next minute to tell you a little bit about Smart Girl Dumb Questions and to ask you for your help in continuing to make independent, fact-based, and curious journalism. No, I'm not going to ask you for money. Here's what I need. I would love you to tell 10 of your friends about the show, or 100. I don't know. Blast that reunion group that you muted.

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33:47But how do you look at AI coming down the pike, especially as someone whose canon of work is so much about harmony and about humanity and about groups of real life humans doing things together? Yeah, I mean, my first instinct is to be curious. I think I would say that with most things that I encounter. sort of like, ooh, what's this? You know, is this interesting? Question mark. And the reality is, it's very interesting in some ways and very uninteresting in others, especially when you try and get AI to make creative work. Oh, yeah. It's usually really dreary, and to me, it's extraordinary how sterile some of the results can be with something so infinite and so brilliant.

34:27And the question to me becomes as an artist, like, how... what makes something interesting? Like, it's the question we ask. you must ask the same question in your way all the time. What makes a conversation interesting? What makes a piece of music interesting? What makes something interesting in the world? And the reality is, as I've learned from AI, I think, infinity doesn't make something interesting. No. And total capacity and infinite competence, it doesn't lead to something being compelling. So I think to me, it's a time where we're being demanded to think beyond the spectacular. Do you think what's next is something more simple?

35:09I think we're going to see this crazy kind of divergence of approaches. I think there will be people who lock down and say, okay, I'm going to make only things that feel totally human, totally simple. There will be people who go and explore the craziest edges of the technological spaces and things like that. I think we need the whole gamut. But I think there are some real issues at play with AI that are obvious, but kind of need to be stated. I think there are... One of the ones for me is just the sheer climate aspect of it, like the radical inefficiency with regard to energy and the way in which it's kind of centralized in a really ugly way.

35:49How few people have control over the ultimate direction of these things. It's really hard to put guardrails on. The more guardrails you put on, the less interesting it becomes. But also we need the guardrails. There are so many unknowns here. There are a lot of big unanswered questions. I think that people relate to people, and I think the reason is because people aren't finite and infinitely competent. So I'm not threatened that my, as a role, my artist will be taken away. But I do think that my method as an artist will need to change. And I'm excited about the challenge of embracing, like, being more unpredictable for a living.

36:24I actually feel this as a person already. It's just like, maybe our freedom is in being really unpredictable right now, in a very algorithmic space. Which is what I was going to say to you, because that question, if I may answer it, of what makes a conversation interesting, it's not formula, and it's not infinity, but it's often awareness of when you are tickled, when you feel something. And that question about AI, I wasn't going to ask you much later in the conversation in my mind, of my flow and these notes. But it was like it came up at that moment. But it came up in that moment as we're speaking about it.

36:52So I think what makes conversations interesting is the unformulaic nature of it. People need something. Like, you know, there's Billy Wilder's writing rules for films or whatever. And there are certain realities. Like, I think when you end something, you gotta get the fuck out. There's, to me, but sometimes, you know, you can play. You can have an ending. That's the thing. There's always a maybe. There's always a maybe. So it's this life that I think the challenge with a prompt is it requires preemption. And the beauty of a conversation is that it requires abandoning preemption or preface. Yeah.

37:30I think it's a combination of structure and lack of structure that makes something good. I think one thing that's really interesting to me is that when I first encountered, like, Dali in 2022, and everyone was freaking out, there's a whole new thing. You can generate any image you can imagine, you know? I was so excited. I mean, I think, and I wasn't alone. There were so many people who were just like, well, the only limit is what I can imagine? Are you kidding me? Like, that's so thrilling. But it's like, the better it's got at following orders, the less interesting it's become. And so, to me, it's really bust this myth about, like, high-resolution things are actually clearer, because it's not clearer.

38:08It's clearer if it has less... Like, there's a threshold. There's a threshold where, if something has absolutely no skill whatsoever, it's just a lump of mush and it means nothing. If it has too much skill, then it's too overt to be true. It's like sometimes you have to squint your eyes to see something more clearly. There's something beautiful. I just went to see the film Neva Vogue, Richard Linklater's new film. It's black and white. There's something about that resolution that's really compelling to me, or even photos that were taken with those cameras that people would bring out in the kind of 2000s.

38:40I mean, still now we're obsessed with all that stuff. I actually think there's something beautiful in the space for imagination of what the depth of the thing can be. Every single... So I shot a music video for every song on The Light for Days, my new album, on a little dad cam, like a Sony dad cam from like 2004, with my good friend Andre. And Andre has some extraordinarily high-end gear. But we were traveling around South America, around Europe touring, and we would shoot these little videos for every single song. And it was so much more emotional to use the dad cam, almost ever, than it was to use the high-resolution cameras.

39:16To me, that's really interesting. And it's something that I've really learned from AI, is just how the more obedient you try and make this model, the worse it gets at generating an emotional response. So it's like maybe the whole model is wrong, and things that are obedient, including people, just aren't going to generate the kind of change that we need in the world and the kind of interest that we look for as artists and as creators and also of lovers of life and lovers of art. Let's talk about your latest album. Okay, okay. Okay, so your discography, you start with In My Room, then you do Jesse 1 through 4.

39:49Yes. But then not Jesse 5. No, no. Because? It was always going to be a four-album project. That was one of the things that I laid out. That was pretty much the only structure I laid out for myself with Jesse was definitely very collaborative and definitely four albums. Okay. And each album became its own kind of universe, which was the original idea. Mm-hmm. So In My Room was a totally solitary experience. Yes. I made it at home in my beloved childhood music room that I grew up, I learned to walk in that room. It was like a really special zone. It still is a very special zone for me. And that was my first time doing an album, and it was just nerve-wracking and fun and everything.

40:27Everything that it brings, so much I learned from that. And you did it yourself, like you were creating harmony with yourself through different times. Well, yeah, so I mentioned the chord there. I always loved the chords, but my first contributions in music were just to layer myself. It was like, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob. You know, and that was the thing. And then I really craved collaboration. So after in my room, I was like, okay, I really want to collaborate. How can I do this in the most kind of broad way possible? And I made this ridiculous list of people. Right. Let's see.

40:57I want to do a song with Tory Kelly. I also want to do a song with Umar Sanghari. And I want to do a song with Hamid Al-Khassari and Kirk Franklin. I want to do a song with him. And Lorne Ravula. Maybe Jojo would be good. Steve Vai. Anoushka Shankar. Maybe a Camillo could be on the album. It was like all these... Coldplay. Yeah, Chris Martin, right? Yeah. Sean Mandet, you know. So, and I've become friends with some of these people over the years just because people who make music often collide. And I think certain people were kind of excited by my pretty bizarre, pretty irreverent sort of punk harmonic choices early on.

41:37And that sort of extended into a greater musical attitude. But I just made music that I found beautiful, with people I found beautiful. And that was Jesse. And it was a seven-year project. And it was really, really ambitious and really fun. And I learned so much from doing it. OK, and now the sixth album. So now this new era, I was excited to embrace limitations in a particular way. Yeah. So I imposed two main ones. One was one instrument, which was this five-string guitar, which I was playing earlier on. And the second was, I had these four days before my tour began. I was going to go to Asia to play some shows.

42:12And I had these four days, and I thought, well, maybe I should just make a record in these four days. And so I ended up doing it. So it was a combination of very, very small time frame and kind of limited palette. And I think the reality is you can get infinity out of infinity. You can do that. You can say everything's possible, and then go and make everything possible. But you can also get infinity out of finity, and that was what this album was for me. It was a set of limitations that rendered, like it was like a sort of prism, a prism through which I could like shine. and then out came something quite distinct, which was, for me, it was really education, you know.

42:43And was that a reaction to, we were talking about AI earlier, and this infinity out of infinity, was, in some way, is this album a reaction to this time? I wouldn't say so. I mean, well, I would say so in some ways. I don't think I was trying to prove anything beyond just, it'd be really nice to just make something right now. What can I make? Oh, maybe I'll try this as a thing out. Um, I do think that, I mean, the title of the album, that The Light For Days came kind of from three, for three reasons. One is there's a lyric in one of the songs on the album, or a song called Icarus, which is a song by a group called The Staves, which I love so much.

43:16And there's this beautiful line where it's like, I have not seen the light for days. And it's just this beautiful line. And so I wanted to kind of put a vignette around that, which is really nice. Secondly, four days just felt like very ticklish to me. And then thirdly, I just think the idea of light is beautiful. And a lot of the songs were about light, finding light, losing light. And yeah, I think we need light in our days. And it was something that felt warm and kind of soft and supple and very wiggly, very bendy, very unrigid. And it was recorded very much live as well, which is a new approach.

43:52I've spent a lot of my career recording many different instruments, one by one, on top of each other. So it's like drums and then bass and then guitar, and then vocals, vocals, etc. And it's like each one is an individually placed ingredient. And then you build like, it's like building a big mosaic. Whereas this album was built around live performances that I did, as in like full take. So I would do a guitar and vocal take, and then decorate a little bit around the edges. And that became a really different way of working for me. And did the time get in your way? Like, are you somebody who has kind of like a Mad Max, like wanting to perfect every minute and stays in the thing forever?

44:29Or are you somebody who's just like... One of the reasons I love live is I don't have to listen again. It just exists, and it exists in the world, and I can go. But did you feel like a tension of not being able to do more after? I did. I would say I did. I'm definitely very detail-oriented in my process, so I love getting it just right. Though I think that part of the magic is knowing what to leave and knowing what to tweak. Because you can tweak everything, and I've definitely over-tweaked in the past. And I've under-tweaked in the past. So again, it's that mixture of tweakage and lack thereof.

45:03And the four days thing just demanded that I didn't over-tweak. And therefore, it's quite scrappy, which I kind of really like. Is wiggle and tweak related? Like, does more tweaking get you more wiggle, or does less tweaking get you more wiggle? I think tweaking removes wiggle. But you can also tweak something to be more wiggly. So I guess they're sort of like… It's like a curve. …complementary. Yeah, yeah. A u-curve or something. One of those u-curves. Yeah, whatever it's called. You can tweak something a little bit to get the unnecessary gestures away, like the mess, the chaff, and then you find the sweet spot.

45:34But then if you keep tweaking too much, then you start to lose the life. I think that's what the AI lords did. I think they made a model that was really crude, and then they trained it, or many models, and then they trained them to be slightly better, slightly better, slightly better, and then it got really interesting. And then they kept tweaking it, and then it got less interesting. Everything is on the edge. This is a five-string guitar. Dumb question. how many strings do guitars usually have? Six strings. Okay. Which string did you not like? Actually, it's not a dumb question at all. Is it not?

46:03Actually, I grew up playing a four-string guitar. I never got on to it with a six-string guitar. Why? I don't know. It just felt like the only way in was to learn all the shapes that everyone else learns. And for some reason, I wasn't that inspired to really get into it. But I went to a music shop in London once, and I found this four-string guitar called a tenner guitar. And it was tuned like this. Like that. That was the tuning. To me, this is like, this is really open. So it wasn't, it wasn't like overly defined, but it was, it felt like interesting to me in a way that the six string didn't, it felt like simple.

46:40And like, I wanted to expand. So I found all this language on the fourth string guitar. But then the more I did it, I was like, I really, it would be so handy to have a fifth string because, because then, then it could be symmetrical and I can demonstrate that. So these are the five strings. In fact, these are the five strings. One, two, three, four, five. How many fingers do you have on your hand? Five. Exactly. So first of all, let's just, let's just take a moment to acknowledge how logical that is. And so, yeah, this string and the top and bottom string are the same. And then the two strings in, those are the same as well.

47:19And then the middle one is its own thing. So it's actually a mirror. So like for you guitarists who are listening, any shape you play on the bottom half,

47:31like that for example, if I flip it upside down, it's kind of the same. So if I do like, or, like you can kind of, you visually, it's a beautiful language because every shape works upside down. It's just one of these things that excites me. So you're saying you're over the six-string guitar. You're never into it. I'm completely over it. But really what I would fundamentally say is that the five-string guitar is an augmentation of a four rather than a diminution of a six. Oh, interesting. I love that. Can we talk about instruments really quickly? Please. Do a quick lightning round on that? OK, so do different instruments give you different feelings in your body?

48:09Yeah, the quick answer is yes, I suppose. Tell me three parts of your body that you feel different instruments. I think I don't necessarily feel like it's like, oh, it's my middle toe, and it's my left patella, and my right weenus. Do you know about the weenus? What's a weenus? The weenus is this. It sounds dirty. I know it does. This is a weenus. It's this like nerveless part of the elbow. It's the elbow. The elbow's the ugliest part of the human body, I think. That is so unkind. Do you not think that? What is the ugliest part if not the elbow? I don't know. I feel like weenuses have their benefits.

48:40I don't know. I just never thought someone had an attractive elbow. What's the ugliest part of the boy? It's definitely the asshole, isn't it? I don't know. I mean, some people probably think that's beautiful. Okay, maybe, maybe. Yeah, it's true. I just don't think you've ever sat. Like, you could be with the most beautiful person in the world, and then you look at their elbow, and it's like, it's just a fucking elbow. So me and my two little sisters, one of the ways we, like, irritate each other, which is what siblings are designed to do, is this thing called weenus milking. That sounds really dirty.

49:06You sort of, like, grab someone's weenus and start squeezing it in a really annoying way. Wow. And it's become this form of affection, I think, for me, too. Yeah, it's a bit tortured. OK. How do we get into that? Oh, you just asked me where I feel music in my body. There you go. So you didn't say you don't feel it in your weenus, but you feel it. OK, you literally feel, not to keep on going with this, but you literally feel nothing in your weenus at all. Oh, really? Can you pass me your weenus? My weenus? Are you going to do the weenus? No, basically, if I squeeze, I squeeze this as hard as I possibly can.

49:35That's really hard, but you don't feel it at all. Because there's no nerves in there. Is my weenus broken? No, no, it's perfectly mended. What's the instrument that makes you feel most like a genius? And what's the instrument you feel makes you feel most like a novice? Oh, um, well, I can't honestly say I walk around the world feeling like a genius. That's not something I do every day. I know you don't walk around feeling like a genius, but... I think when I play the piano, I feel the most capacious. Maybe I would say that. Like, there's the most that's possible. Yeah. So, yeah, sometimes I'll play something on the piano that feels really...

50:10descriptive or large, and that feels good to me. That feels like, oh, okay, this is good. But there are plenty of instruments. Like, for example, when I was in Brazil last month, I was jamming. They have these beautiful musical gatherings. They call it xoro. And you go and you play these songs, and there's percussionists and instrumentalists and whatever, and there are these offshoots of these gatherings that are just like little rooftop jams. It's really, really special. You have to go and triangulate over there. Well, I'm going to become a world-famous or a Brazil-famous triangulator. Yeah, for sure.

50:37But yeah, I was... I ended up on someone's rooftop, this master accordion player, and we were playing and we were chanting songs or whatever. So he handed me his accordion, and he was like, play us something. And that, I certainly felt like a novice at that moment. I tried to figure something out in the accordion. They're amazing instruments, but they're so different from others. You only play human accordions. I do play human accordions. The thing with the accordions is there's buttons on one side and keys on the other, so that's already just a bit mind-blowing. That was very humble, what you said about you walk around the world, You don't walk around the world feeling like a genius, but you know when you're a master at something.

51:11You know when you played it perfectly. I know when I'm comfortable in a form, for sure. I know when I have control over something enough. Usually, the more control I have, the less I have to try. But I think that genius as a form is maybe unhelpful. I can't think of a way in which that would improve my sense of myself. I'm a genius. Yeah, you don't want to go around being like, I'm the Gen Z Mozart. No, not really. My good friend Brian Eno, He has this term, Senius, which I really love, which is the idea of like the... It's kind of like the genius of the collective, which really is any singular brilliant person, genius, whatever, is the combination of the people who inspired them, showed them things, taught them things, and then their own circuitry, and their willingness to sort of merge those worlds and tenacity to deepen their craft.

52:00Yeah. So I think that Senius to me feels... Yeah, Senius to me feels more interesting than genius. And the audience choir is a very clear example of that. The idea of kind of like, we're way more interesting musically than we are as a group, than when we're totally... Everything's in isolation. And I've worked in both of those spaces, and I think that they both have their benefits. But yeah, to me, I don't feel like someone who focuses on... feeling that sort of isolation of being like, I'm an island. You said you're not an isolationist. You're definitely not. You were so open about your craft.

52:32And I feel like sometimes musicians are like magicians. they don't really tell you how the thing is made. I'm totally a non-smokescreener. Yeah, you give everything. You're like, you're shooting videos of how you make the thing. You know, Cam was describing our great sound engineer mixer that's here today had gone to Hideaway and been at your retreat. But he's describing how open you are with that process. Do you think that comes from the fact that music was always communal to you? Like, it was in your family, it was in your relationship with your mum, or...? Maybe so. I think music was very solitary for me for many years.

53:03It was never like something I did by myself only, but I definitely spent a lot of solitary time studying and deepening and recording and all of that stuff. But I think that I think I was brought up by, well, my mum, she's a very gifted teacher. So I would see students come into the house and she'd be explaining things to them. And I understood through watching her explain stuff how the best explanations make really complicated things feel really simple. Yeah. And I just really like the challenge of that. I love the challenge of taking this crazy, multi-threaded sort of language and rendering it in a way that's just like, this is how it works.

53:41And I think it's how my brain works. I love understanding something in a way that feels like there's a sort of like a granulization of ideas, where it starts with the simple and then it becomes more and more complex. And there's like these layers. I think my brain is happy in that scenario. But also, I've just recognized that the more you give away, the more you get back. There's no reason for me. I don't have the time in my life to activate on all the things I know about and I'm curious about. The more I can give to other people, like, please go and do this idea, because I'm only one person. So it makes me excited to think that the more I just share about this with other people, it's like, great.

54:19That means if you could get to explore it, great. It also makes you more masterful at your craft. I'm sure by putting words on it, you're getting better and better at the thing that you do, because you have to think about your process all the time. It's another one of these accordions. It's like you can over-explain something to yourself, and then it dies. And you can also under-explain something and not fully understand it. So to me, I've always benefited from putting something into words up to the point where I confuse the words with the thing, because, again, music is a verb, not a noun. And if you start to think too much about it, then it can become this thing that exists in the mind and not in the body.

55:01So it's something to be aware of, I guess. What is... But music for you has never... I guess it feels like from knowing you a little bit, knowing your story more, it didn't feel like music is an escape for you. I wouldn't say so. I think for many musicians it is. It can play the role, but to me it's like... It's more about like include... It's like I get to find out how I'm feeling by making music. It's like, how am I doing? And you play another note, you play another note, whatever. And then you learn, like you start to learn how you're feeling. So yeah, I think iterating on your imagination helps.

55:38I do know the feeling of making something that is like the world I would prefer. Like I know that feeling. That's a form of escapism. Like I'm going to make a world that feels like this and that's the thing. But I don't feel like I'm running away from how I'm really feeling. I feel like I'm running towards how I'm really feeling. But sometimes, you could say like, it's the same thing I was saying before. It's like sometimes you need to not necessarily escape, but you need to sort of like trapdoor out of reality in order to process and actually come closer to how you're feeling and understand how you're feeling and let it ripen and let it shine in order to return with more equipment for your life.

56:14And so I think escapism is underrated, you could say, as a form of processing. Do you ever just like do bed rot? What's bed rot? Or maybe that's answered the question. When you like sit in bed and just like look at your phone and don't do anything all day? Absolutely. Like you're so prolific. Oh no, yeah. Do you ever just do nothing? You just bath? No, I totally bed rot. Yeah, you bed rot. Okay. Oh, it's bed rot. No, yeah. Absolutely. Like go just see a film. Oh, that's the way I want to do more. Go see a movie. When's the last time you saw a movie? I watched half of The Nightmare Before Christmas last week, which I'd never seen.

56:44Is it scary? Did you get scared? Have you seen it? I've not seen it. I enjoyed it. It wasn't like terrifyingly scary, but it was delightfully odd. I'm going to watch half of it, and then the next time we hang, we can conclude it. You watch the second half, and I'll watch the first half, and then between us, we will have watched the film. Okay, I want to do a very quick thing where I asked, this is going to be called like, smart guy, smart questions, which is not a sexist trip on my show, but I asked a bunch of musicians to send me questions. Okay, great. Okay, and some of them, maybe you'll know, some of them you don't.

57:13Oh, exciting. Do you know Ali Sethi, who did the song Pasuri? He sent you this. Hi, Jacob. I'm so impressed with your virtuosity, the way you play so many different instruments and play around with so many different styles and sounds and bring them all together. My question to you is, is there a work or a piece or an instrument of non-Western music that you have encountered recently and that has intrigued and inspired you or made you think about music in a different way? Wow, that's a great question. Oh gosh, so many. I mean, the one that came to my mind straight away is an instrument called the automaton, which is a Japanese kind of toy instrument.

57:54Those things are really, really silly, but it's like a little face. What? Like a Tamaguchi machine? Yeah, kind of like a little rubbery face, and it has like a really tall kind of, it's hard to explain, like a sort of like hair. Like a rat tail becoming a... Yeah, kind of like that. And if you touch it at different points, it goes like this, which is bizarre. But so fun to try and make it sound good, make sense out of it. So that's one that comes to mind recently. I love that. But just working with Anushka Shankar with the sitar. Yes, with the sitar, right? It was an insane experience for me. I would like you and Ali to collaborate.

58:32He's one of the best Pakistani musicians of the time. I would be so down. That sounds wonderful. And just fantastic. Guzzle, like all the history of Pakistani music. Great, great. Okay, and then here's one from Jonathan, who's half of the band Archai, which is an electro-acoustic band. Perfect. They play violin and cello together. Oh, cool, cool. Hey, Jacob. I'm so blown away by your creativity and how you personify joy through your music. There seems to be an ease with who you are and everything that you bring to the stage that almost defies reality. And so I'm just curious, like, what do you struggle with?

59:09What do you struggle with besides cooking? I already mentioned the cooking thing. Yes. I mean, I feel like I struggle with infinity, which is a weird thing to say, but I think I need ways of rendering the infinity into finity. And if I don't have those, then my mind starts to feel like a weird place to be, like a strange, unsafe place to be. And also just balance. I think like any artist would tell you, it's like a weird thing to travel constantly and to be meeting people and to be giving energy out and all this stuff. And it's like not a trivial thing to lead a balanced life in that way. So I think that, yeah, in a sense, like those are simple things, but I think that they're the building blocks of who you are as a person.

59:53So I think that those are things I think about all the time. That is it. The balance is such a... It's really... It's always elusive. And then when it's there, you can never appreciate it. You just never... It's hard to know. It will change. It will change its form constantly. So, yeah, I'm curious to hear you speak about that a little bit, if we had more time. But I feel like that's such a lucid thing for all of us to find right now. Okay, Cam, you have a question? Yeah, so I went to Hideaway, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. That week was amazing. And I still gig with a ton of people that I met from there, and it's kind of just the gift that keeps on giving.

1:00:27And I was wondering what that experience was like for you of being now, having reflected on it now, being a couple months away from it. Yeah, yeah. And maybe explain what Hideaway is. Yeah, I'll start by doing that. So this summer, I did my first ever retreat of sorts. So it was like a four-day window of time, where we went to, well, this year, it was Tarrytown in New York, which is a quaint place. And we had about 300 people or so come. And I curated this kind of super group of people who I wanted to have around to help with the process of teaching, explaining, workshopping, exploring, and playing shows.

1:01:06So every day we'd play a little show in the evening, but that followed a whole day of doing a bunch of different types of classes, whether it's something musical or something more imaginatory. I've never experienced anything like it. It was crazy. It makes me emotional to think about Hideaway, because it was this combination of all the things I feel like I've kind of been working towards, but without realizing it. Like, I think it's easy to feel isolated as an artist anyway, but to realize how much community was there and existed there and was also made there gave me a lot of hope in the future and that as a format.

1:01:40And, yeah, I learned so much from doing it. It was like a sort of, yeah, this process of me realizing all the different ways there are of connecting with people these days. And a lot of it does take proximity and time. These aren't things you can just do over a quick message. It's like spending four days with a group of people like that, the energy just got, like, more and more charged. And by the end, it was just this ecstatic feeling. It's kind of funny how quickly people can fall in love in those kinds of settings or create something. Yeah, I think if the conditions are right, then you can create really lasting relationships really fast.

1:02:15And yeah, I just want to do more of them, really. It feels like something I really enjoyed. Okay, perfect. Last question from my friend John Keaton, who happens to be in the studio. Jake, you know for your collaborations, both with other artists and with your whole audiences, What are one or two or maybe three dream collaborations that you haven't done, but you would... Yeah. ...would be amazing, would want to, aspirationally? Oh, that's a great question. Rosalia, I have so much time for her. She's up there with the best. We've been in touch, but we've never met and made music yet, so hopefully that will be one thing.

1:02:49Gosh, who else? I mean, I'm yet to write a song with Stevie Wonder, so I do want to keep on putting that into the universe. And I'll give you one more... card um kendrick i mean kendrick is it is an absolute no-brainer we can send this to kendrick's people great great great yeah kendrick i've i've adored since he was just a wee lad and i was just a wee lad um so you choose kendrick in the kendrick drake drama oh a hundred percent okay that's not even it's not even a question actually while we're here can i just ask you you've collaborated with chris martin what was going through your head when the whole cold play thing was going on in the world I mean, it was a really interesting moment.

1:03:28It was like this unexpected social explosion. I think I know him enough to know... like, how good his intentions were. Yeah, how earnest his point was. His intentions were so good there. It was just... Maybe it was just kind of bound to happen. Like, it was a sort of perfect storm of media stuff. But, yeah, it's been fun. I've been to a show since. And he really leans in to the fact that that happened. It's a really fun... You should start outing people from your human accordion. It feels like a non-audience choir adjacent. Exactly. But maybe. You'll end up with a smaller and smaller choir over time.

1:04:05Okay, I end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions asking my guests what they're dumb about. What's a question you have that you would love us to go and find someone to answer for you? Oh, that's such a good... That's a very non-dumb question of you to ask me. I mean, I already did the Coldplay question. That was my dumbest question. What's a silly question? I feel like I'm full of... It could be about the weenus, it could be about... Well, I guess the question is like, why... Well, first of all, why is the weenus so underrated? And second of all, why no nerves? Like, why the disrespect? It's...

1:04:40Yeah, and is that like always been the case? Or like did some ancestor of ours have nerve endings in their weenus? I'm asking the questions. I don't know. Well, I just like to riff ridiculous. Yeah, no, it's an interesting commodity. I think, okay. I need answers. Yeah. Okay, one thing actually before you leave. What is one piece of advice you'd give to everybody who... You have a parent with whom you have a really good relationship, your mom. And you have a parent who is absent. Absent, yeah. Your father. What is one piece of advice you give to people in thinking about the parental relationships?

1:05:18And not that you're a genius at it, but just what have you learned from your own experience, particularly with, I think, so many people who struggle with that. I mean, I think the sooner you recognize that everyone is just a flawed human, the better, me included. Like, there's... I don't think you can have good relationships from the perspective of feeling or expecting sort of, like, perfection. Like, it's not the reality. Like, my mom is an extraordinary human being, who is capable of, in my mind, like actual real life magic. And I'm just like, how is this possible? And also, she's just a human being.

1:05:57And I know her so well, obviously. And, you know, there are challenges for any child parent relationship as you grow and as you figure out where you end and another person begins and where those lines are and what matters to you. And to me, I think, it's just hard with how much I travel to make that quality time really... Like, to really show up in those moments. Because I go home and I'm just exhausted from my general excursions of energy. But I think, you know, I think just, yeah, recognizing the specialness of somebody. If you're lucky enough to have someone in your life who loves you unconditionally, that is the biggest gift.

1:06:41And I think that there's an amazing sense that that relationship can just ripen and deepen over time, as long as you really make space for the other person. You know, it takes a lot of trial and honest communication about where someone's space ends and the others begins, and all this sort of thing. But the thing that's cool in the creative space is we're kind of telepathic in some ways. So she will know... If I say, oh, it just needs to be more like, she'll be like, I know what you mean, and then she'll... You know what I mean? Those are the benefits. Is she the easiest person to have harmony with for you?

1:07:13Depends what kind of harmony, I guess. I think in that way, I can't think of anyone else who would be able to read my mind in terms of interpretation of music. It's a cool thing. Can I tell you a secret? Please. As someone who I was very close to my father, and I feel like a lot of my career and everything is connected to my father, and he passed away a few years ago. Did he? And I thought this was going to end, this proximity with my father, because he was older, Dad. But I have to say, after he's passed, I still feel these moments of like great connection. And I never knew like how much you could connect with someone who isn't there.

1:07:48Yeah. Because of what you said, the quality of the time you created together. Totally. With what you had. Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's beautiful to hear you say that. I think that the, yeah, the quality of a relationship you have with someone who you're that close with is kind of - That's infinity. Eternal. It is. That is actually how I think about infinity. That's a really healthy form of infinity. Yeah. All right. So lovely to have you. Thank you so much, Jacob. Thank you so much. What a wiggly little conversation. I loved that whole discussion with Jacob. I could have kept him here for the 50 hours that he said that he could just have talked about melody.

1:08:20And I'm grateful that he made me smarter, not just about music and all the words that I say and don't really know the meanings of before, like bars and notes and melody and harmony and all that stuff, but also made me smarter about human anatomy. Like, what is a weenus? Who knew that it is rhymes with the other thing with a P, but much more PG. Anyways, that's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. If you want to follow Jacob further, and you certainly should, you can find him on socials at Jacob Collier. You could check out his new album, Light for Days, which I wonder if he's going to win an eighth Grammy for his sixth album.

1:08:54That would be pretty incredible. That's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I'm your host, Naima Raza. Today's show was produced with Desta Wunderad of Wonder Studios and Cam Schenken, whose voice you heard in the questions there. Special thanks to Healy Cruz. Our theme music is by David Kahn, though it was interesting to hear how Jacob heard Smart Girl Dumb Questions, too. It was edited by Darlena Chim. And our mixing is by Johnny Simon. See you next week on Smart Girl Dumb Questions. By the way, if you like the show, please review it. Please leave a comment. And please definitely share it with your friends.

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