How Jacob Collier Reinvented The Guitar

[Being uncertain and curious is a more interesting place for me than knowing what I'm doing.]

[More important than recognizing the name or function of the notes played, I have an awareness of their emotional properties and how they will pull the listener into specific spaces.]

[It's popular and valid to recreate and enjoy something you heard before; try to be clear when you want that versus something new.]

[Rather than have a disciplined practice regime, I find myself in specific and tsrgeted moments of deep exploration.]

[One of the best gifts you can give to an audience is to fumble, because it's an invitation for them to join you at the edge of your own exploration where mist of the interesting stuff is. Music isn't really that serious.]

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A master with the humility to learn on camera.

Brad Mehldau: The Greatest Jazz Pianist of Our Generation

[Written chord changes are an expedient way to quickly coordinate playing together, but they lack precision to specify things like voice-leading, even from more popular songs like Blackbird.]

[I like to add a note to so-called 'stock voicings' for crunch.]

[The intellectual aspect of improvising happens as you make sense of music. What happens in real-time while playing is a natural reflexive response based on everything you've learned.]

[Can you tell the same story with just two notes?]

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fluid switches between discussion and piano playing

One of the coolest things I've been told about jazz is that the better you are as a player, the better experts sound. I've been called a talented musician but I am absolutely, unabashedly ecstatic to hear music that I can barely understand what's happening. The piano and that sax solo mostly sound like random chaos and it excites me to know there's structure and intent and beauty in there, waiting to be understood by the skill I have yet to achieve.

Jacob Collier Answers Instrument & Music Theory Questions From Twitter

I aspire to talk this deeply, fast, and fun.

My way of playing includes how I deal with the unexpected: musically, and physiologically.

If too focused on technique while playing piano, we miss enjoyment and the point of sharing stories. Is there a similar consequence if too focused on "breathing correctly" as opposed to enjoying and feeling each breath?

Similar to language, it might be useful to perform songs slightly under-prepared so that you can start accommodating shortcomings sooner.

FAQs – All the Music LLC

[We generated and wrote to disk all mathematically possible melodies, then dedicated them to the public domain.]

Composition as a way to remember musical ideas by putting them in mental structures.

How Caetano Veloso Revolutionized Brazil’s Sound and Spirit

He is soft-spoken, even shy. As a boy, he once wrote, “I was timid and extravagant.” He can seem suspiciously modest for a world-famous musician. Many of his contemporaries are technically superior, he’ll say. “But there is this more mysterious aspect” to his talent, he told me: “The atmosphere that comes with my voice.” He described it as “my presence, my personality,” which echoed an old song of his, called “Minha Voz, Minha Vida,” or “My Voice, My Life.” His liquid tenor, melodic and trance-like, is one of the most distinctive voices in music. Away from the microphone, he listens intently, and goes into languorous digressions full of references to books and films.