5 ms·

Jacob Collier is an interesting example because the general response I've seen to his music from music fans is that it is too "smart". It's impressive and novel

Jacob Collier is an interesting example because the general response I've seen to his music from music fans is that it is too "smart". It's impressive and novel to music academics (and apparently the Grammys) but hardly interesting to fans of the genres he favors (soul, pop, R&B). Common complaints being lack of emotion, lack of taste, poor songwriting, over production. But any negative review will also acknowledge that he's immensely talented and has massive potential.

screye 5y ago
Yeah, I would compare Jacob Collier to Snarky Puppey or Tigran Hamasayan. All of them are virtuosic and are branching away from classical ideas of jazz, and Collier might even be the smartest of the group, but he can't write a song to save a life. Snarky Puppey and Tigram have on the other hand, found a fresh niche for themselves that is similarly creative, but has the humility of adding the necessary sugar and milk to make their supremely creative and bitter music drink palatable to a listening audience.
mabub24 5y ago
That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced", especially when he has made stabs at jazz, a genre that is in many cases "music for musicians". For a genre that prizes free flowing interpretation and individual creativity alongside instrumental virtuosity, his jazz music comes out utterly sterile compared to other modern jazz musicians. The same goes for his soul music. Everything he does feels like an exercise in a genre rather than playing in it. Compare his stuff to the work of Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorson's groups, or Shabaka Hutchings, or Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and you hear an enormous difference in the sheer craft of songwriting, emotional dynamics, and storytelling through their instruments. He's clearly a virtuoso at a kind of playing the instrument, and he's extremely good at explaining music theory and concepts, which is a rather archaic and unique language all its own, but I don't think he's quite there yet for songwriting.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  > archaic and unique language archaic or arcane?
  - mabub24 5y ago
    Some of the words in music theory are just straight latin, or directly descendant from latin and old. A lot of people struggle with music theory until you "translate" it to using modern language (though you do lose some specificity in some cases). Like "ritardando", which is just "slow down", or accelerando, which is, you guessed it, "speed up". You can also use arcane.
    - namarie 5y ago
      I think most of it is Italian instead of Latin, including your two examples.
    - yakubin 5y ago
      Italian, not Latin. Italian is the language of music. Italy used to be the capital of European music. That's where it comes from. I also wouldn't classify it as mere "theory". It's basic notation that appears in notes. Calling it "theory" is like calling control flow constructs in Pascal (the language) "theory".
      - noobly 5y ago
        It's called music theory though? I agree it's a bad name, but that's what it's called..
        chuchana 5y ago
        It is. This video argues it would be more accurate to call it the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA
- Slow_Hand 5y ago
baby 5y ago
I was thinking of Jacob Collier when reading GP's comment. It seems very clever, but I don't find it "nice-sounding".
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
PG dismisses creativity, but IMO that's a mistake in an otherwise interesting essay. Creativity is the difference between someone who is merely smart and someone who originates ideas. Collier is merely smart. He's very, very smart indeed. But in the domain of music, expressive originality is far more important. And it can be created by people who aren't technically music-smart at all. It's a different skill to the kind of grammatical/technical smartness that someone like Collier has. That's not a distraction at all. It's exactly the point - creativity is orthogonal to smartness, and it's poorly understood and even more poorly supported. One of the interesting thing that happened in English pop (until it stopped being possible a decade or two ago) was that successful pop artists were more likely to have been through art school than music school. The exemplar is Eno - who studied with Roy Ascott, who is probably one of the most unknown influential pioneers of computer art. Eno has taste and a willingness to experiment across multiple domains. The rest almost falls into place. IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity. Art school - more than anywhere else - gives people permission to experiment. Taste can be partially taught, but you need an instinctive feel for it, and that's probably innate. Someone like Collier doesn't score highly on either experimentation or taste. He scores very highly on musical competence and technical skill. But both are a kind of conformity - which is the opposite of real originality. I assume where PG is going with this is the suggestion that some people can originate incredibly successful business ideas, and most people can't. Which might be nice if it were true. But in a startup sense the opposite is more likely. You need a baseline of conformity to be in business at all. Truly creative types don't find the business world open enough to be interesting. Success in business relies on having ideas that are original enough to be different, but not so original they're incomprehensibly challenging and difficult. Market fit mostly happens near the middle of the bell curve - for whatever metric you're measuring - and that's not where the most creative people like to live.
- dudouble 5y ago
  >> IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity. This statement strongly resonated with me, thank you for this.

screye 5y ago

Yeah, I would compare Jacob Collier to Snarky Puppey or Tigran Hamasayan. All of them are virtuosic and are branching away from classical ideas of jazz, and Collier might even be the smartest of the group, but he can't write a song to save a life. Snarky Puppey and Tigram have on the other hand, found a fresh niche for themselves that is similarly creative, but has the humility of adding the necessary sugar and milk to make their supremely creative and bitter music drink palatable to a listening audience.

mabub24 5y ago

That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced", especially when he has made stabs at jazz, a genre that is in many cases "music for musicians". For a genre that prizes free flowing interpretation and individual creativity alongside instrumental virtuosity, his jazz music comes out utterly sterile compared to other modern jazz musicians. The same goes for his soul music. Everything he does feels like an exercise in a genre rather than playing in it. Compare his stuff to the work of Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorson's groups, or Shabaka Hutchings, or Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and you hear an enormous difference in the sheer craft of songwriting, emotional dynamics, and storytelling through their instruments. He's clearly a virtuoso at a kind of playing the instrument, and he's extremely good at explaining music theory and concepts, which is a rather archaic and unique language all its own, but I don't think he's quite there yet for songwriting.

Ericson2314 5y ago
> archaic and unique language archaic or arcane?
- mabub24 5y ago
  Some of the words in music theory are just straight latin, or directly descendant from latin and old. A lot of people struggle with music theory until you "translate" it to using modern language (though you do lose some specificity in some cases). Like "ritardando", which is just "slow down", or accelerando, which is, you guessed it, "speed up". You can also use arcane.
  - namarie 5y ago
    I think most of it is Italian instead of Latin, including your two examples.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    Italian, not Latin. Italian is the language of music. Italy used to be the capital of European music. That's where it comes from. I also wouldn't classify it as mere "theory". It's basic notation that appears in notes. Calling it "theory" is like calling control flow constructs in Pascal (the language) "theory".
    - noobly 5y ago
      It's called music theory though? I agree it's a bad name, but that's what it's called..
      - chuchana 5y ago
        It is. This video argues it would be more accurate to call it the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA
Slow_Hand 5y ago

baby 5y ago

I was thinking of Jacob Collier when reading GP's comment. It seems very clever, but I don't find it "nice-sounding".

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

PG dismisses creativity, but IMO that's a mistake in an otherwise interesting essay. Creativity is the difference between someone who is merely smart and someone who originates ideas. Collier is merely smart. He's very, very smart indeed. But in the domain of music, expressive originality is far more important. And it can be created by people who aren't technically music-smart at all. It's a different skill to the kind of grammatical/technical smartness that someone like Collier has. That's not a distraction at all. It's exactly the point - creativity is orthogonal to smartness, and it's poorly understood and even more poorly supported. One of the interesting thing that happened in English pop (until it stopped being possible a decade or two ago) was that successful pop artists were more likely to have been through art school than music school. The exemplar is Eno - who studied with Roy Ascott, who is probably one of the most unknown influential pioneers of computer art. Eno has taste and a willingness to experiment across multiple domains. The rest almost falls into place. IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity. Art school - more than anywhere else - gives people permission to experiment. Taste can be partially taught, but you need an instinctive feel for it, and that's probably innate. Someone like Collier doesn't score highly on either experimentation or taste. He scores very highly on musical competence and technical skill. But both are a kind of conformity - which is the opposite of real originality. I assume where PG is going with this is the suggestion that some people can originate incredibly successful business ideas, and most people can't. Which might be nice if it were true. But in a startup sense the opposite is more likely. You need a baseline of conformity to be in business at all. Truly creative types don't find the business world open enough to be interesting. Success in business relies on having ideas that are original enough to be different, but not so original they're incomprehensibly challenging and difficult. Market fit mostly happens near the middle of the bell curve - for whatever metric you're measuring - and that's not where the most creative people like to live.

dudouble 5y ago
>> IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity. This statement strongly resonated with me, thank you for this.