
Jacob Collier’s four magical chords - bobbiechen
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2019/jacob-colliers-four-magical-chords/
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reilly3000
Its hard to be captivated by complex harmony when you are perfectly satisfied
with I vi IV V. I was a music student and piano improviser, and I spent much
of my time finding ebullient and brooding chord progressions. It was a fairly
lonely space, but texture took life. It takes somebody very special to capture
that essence and take it to market. I feel like Owen Pallett pulled it off in
modern times, Vincent Persichetti two generations earlier. Just like Blaise
Pascal did with his Ponces, freely integrating the scientific and the
spiritual; just like Marcus Aurelius somehow eschewing the concept of legacy,
only to outlives billions.

In my younger days, I felt it a dichotomy between self-rewarding and reach. I
wanted to choose the former, but ended up with neither.

These days I'm more interested in resonance. It creates excitation and
movement across multiple dimensions. It starts in one place and time, and ends
up spilling across the rest of your lives and that of others. Maybe you were
at a concert, or a church service, or around a campfire when some music struck
your 'heart strings'. Something about that sound energy turned your mesh of
physiology in a new direction. Maybe when you were driving home you realized
something about yourself, and eventually your career took a new path; maybe
your love for someone became clear. Whatever happened next, the places you
traveled, the things you purchased, the fields you trod upon; all real-world
effects started when part of you resonated with some sound energy.

Developers and DevOps and Deep Learning folks face the same kind of choices
with their creations each day- do I make code that is marvelous to behold? Do
I care what others think of it? Does it compile fast enough for my busy
schedule? Does it modify the real world in the ways I intend it to?

I no longer think there is some choice between integrity and commercial
success. I think there is a choice to seek, embrace, and amplify sympathetic
vibrations - or to allow dissonance to wash over you, finding your own
stillness in its torrent. Of course, great artists do both in their own
measure.

~~~
Ice_cream_suit
"Blaise Pascal did with his Ponces"

Pensées.

Ponce is an old term of abuse directed at gay men.

"ponce

/pɒns/

noun

1.

INFORMAL•DEROGATORY

an effeminate man.

2.

INFORMAL•BRITISH

a man who lives off a prostitute's earnings.

verb

1.

INFORMAL•BRITISH

seek to obtain (something) without paying for it or doing anything in return.

"I ponced a ciggie off her"

2.

INFORMAL•BRITISH

live off a prostitute's earnings.

"he was arrested for poncing on the girl"

"

~~~
reilly3000
That's my new favorite malapropism. Doh!

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ajkjk
I basically agree. Collier is a harmonic genius, but mostly his music doesn't
do much emotionally. I don't think it's necessarily that he needs to write
more dance-able music to improve -- just, something with more meaning and
emotion (which might just come naturally by growing up).

That said his cover of Danny Boy shows that he does have it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXIApugIuqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXIApugIuqk)

~~~
codyogden
> his music doesn't do much emotionally.

Guh...thank you for articulating this so perfectly! I've been struggling to
understand why I could tell some of Collier's music sounds good from a
technical perspective, but couldn't understand why those pieces didn't leave
me 'feeling' (e.g. moved, touched, in awe, etc). I agree that I hope he is
able to incorporate more emotion into his work as he matures.

~~~
lwhalen
As a semi-professional jazz nerd, he's absolutely "got it" in the majority of
tracks he records. "Right now", his appeal is to folks who understand all of
the tricks in modern contemporary harmony, and his payoff is that he subverts
it in "the Jacob Collier style". His burden is how/when is he going to figure
out how to invoke that frisson in the average (non jazz-nerd) listener. See:
Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Herbie Hancock, and others.

I am reasonably confident people are going to be dissecting Jacob Collier
harmonic choices in the 2100s and beyond, similar to how we dissect John
Williams, Charlie Parker, Jaco Pastorius, and other modern composers today.

~~~
abakker
I guess I am the most unimpressed with his covers. To me, his harmonic choices
and reharmonizations are always on the side of complexity rather than aural
pleasure. I just want him to do more original stuff.

FWIW, I find the Adam Neely/Sungazer work more listenable, so its not a
dislike of covers, but I also don’t enjoy taking the melody out of things just
to substitute functional harmonies.

~~~
lwhalen
That's the "Jacob Collier Thing" though. Consider that he's doing
'complicated' reharms, but with significantly more emphasis on microtonality.

For the average listener, it's not so much that he's "putting the harm in
reharmonization", but that he's tastefully (to the western ear) being
_specifically_ sharp or flat (depending on the original key - hence
'microtonality') in a way that he is gambling is more appealing to the western
ear trained/developed in western music.

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bevinahally
Jacob is such a gift to the world. I am so glad that I got to see him perform
at a tiny dingy room at 3:30 AM the night before he won his first two
Grammy's.

To get a sense for his creativity and technical nous I recommend his IHarmU
series [1]. He crowdfunded an album that he recorded entirely by himself.
Donors could send him a 20-30 second audio clip and he would overdub those
tracks with his magic and upload it to YouTube as linked. I recommend the clip
sent in by Herbie Hancock!

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=iharmu](https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=iharmu)

P.S. if any HNers are attending GroundUp this year, hit me up!

~~~
dharma1
I would also start with IHarmU. His own music is great, but the vocal
harmonisations of simple melodies sent by people are mindblowing, and there
isn't any complex production masking his genius. There is a definite Take 6
influence there, but Jacob takes it to the next level. He has an incredible
gift.

After IHarmU I would watch some of his live gigs - where he effortlessly plays
6-7 instruments like a pro. And he's only 25. I really look forward to hearing
Jacob's music for decades to come.

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jasin
While I've always appreciated some music due to some amazing specific
technical aspect, such as Jacob Collier's harmonies or Steve Vai's guitar
skills, the records I'd take with me on a desert island tend to consist of
very simple elements combined and executed just perfectly. And by "perfectly"
I mean with all their imperfections and unquantifiable emotional appeal, which
has very little to do with the level of technical prowess. I guess what I'm
saying is that for me, taste matters more than skill in music.

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maehwasu
“But now maybe it’s time to get in the studio with some other people, who
maybe don’t have your chops, but who are cooler than you, who listen to more
hip-hop and dance music, who can balance out your intellect with some guts.”

And then he should become a teacher and teach inner-city kids multiplication
tables using rap!

~~~
freehunter
For a less snarky take, the Arctic Monkeys Album AM is undeniably a rock album
but with a hint of hip-hop influence in the meter and composition and it’s an
incredibly striking album. No one is rapping but just lifting the idea of
rhyming in the middle of a word and rhyming schemes that span multiple bars
gives a breath of fresh air to a mostly stale genre. What are music genres for
if they can’t learn from each other?

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egypturnash
> It’s intellectually interesting, but nobody could actually dance to it. In
> Dungeons and Dragons terms, the song has astronomical Intelligence, fairly
> high Charisma, and low to medium Wisdom. I’d rather hear all this craft
> being poured into a straightahead groove that’s more amenable to audience
> participation.

It's kinda nice to see someone getting all elitist about Music Should Be
Danceable; usually when I see this sort of attitude it's connected to people
sneering at music that makes people wanna shake their asses for being
"simple".

But there's lots of things you can do with music, and some of them are
danceable, and some of them are most emphatically not. You can't dance to
bebop, you can't dance to Gregorian chants, you can't dance to ambient. And if
this Collier dude wants to chase cold intellectual undanceable thrills and has
an audience willing to pay him to do this, then it ain't my problem if I don't
like that, there's an uncountable number of other musicians, past and present,
who have made music chasing other goals.

Personally this was the first I'd heard of Collier and he's not doing much for
me. I'm not at a point in my life where I wanna hear cold crystalline overdubs
of one white dude's voice. But whatever.

~~~
fredsanford
>> cold crystalline overdubs

I do not mean this to be harsh or nasty, but there are no goosebumps.

Needs some grease from Stax or some touches of Motown.

Booker T and the MGs, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, something...
is... just... missing...

~~~
egypturnash
It did nothing for me either. A vaguely pleasant noise. But he won a Grammy
and has a bazillion subscribers, so obviously there’s an appeal there for
people who are not you or I.

There’s people who love living in Northern places who will rhapsodize
endlessly about the joys of winter and snow and being all cozy and shit, I
think they’re crazy but I’m glad they exist so they don’t all try to live in
the places I like. Same thing. It ain’t for you, me, or the author of this
post about it, and that’s fine.

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sheinsheish
Too much negativne comments for Jacob. Give him some time, he is a genius for
that we are all sure here. Regardless if you feel emotionally moved or not,
the article is about technical skills and theory. For once show humbled when
you see something God-like similar to this phenomenon of a human. He is our
times Mozart along with Cameron Carpenter.

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cousin_it
"In the bleak midwinter" is an amazing recording:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPZn4x3uOac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPZn4x3uOac)

But the people who say it doesn't strike a chord with them do have a point.
Here's Myrone doing something similar, with 1/10th the complexity but 10x the
feeling:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUGkqXcFV4o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUGkqXcFV4o)

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tempguy9999
Highly off-topic but maybe someone can help, The title rang bells for a bit
but turns out the wrong ones.

There was a track I heard by terry callier (not collier) which had 3 chords
(not 4), repeated slowly over and over, and sung over. I loved it, does anyone
have any idea what that may be. I did some digging but never found it again.

Please flag if too far OT, thanks.

~~~
fredsanford
Give Lean On Me[0] a shot. This is not the Bill Withers song.

It was pretty popular and something I remember from my radio listening days.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfFJ2OC0Cpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfFJ2OC0Cpw)

~~~
tempguy9999
Thank you, interesting but not what I heard. It was just 3 chords repeated,
nothing else but the singing. It was very minimal. But thanks anyway!

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dopylitty
If you’re looking for some technically brilliant music that actually has some
emotion in it check out Knower (Genevieve Artadi+Louis Cole). They both have
the technical chops and education of Collier but their music is interesting,
satisfying, and fun instead of being an intolerable mind numbing dirge.

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cameronehrlich
Every musician talking shit in the thread is in denial. He’s a genius and
ya’ll are jealous. Let’s be real here.

~~~
was8309
jealous musician here, was unaware of his music and am thankful that HN has
again pointed me to something great. His arrangement of Moon River is amazing.
but what I want to hear _from anybody_ is the next new song as great as 'Moon
River'

