Musician Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty

Hello everybody.

My name is Jacob Collier and I'm a musician.

I've been challenged today to explain one simple concept

in five levels of increasing complexity.

My topic, harmony.

I'm positive that everybody can leave this video

with some understanding at some level.

Bodhi, how's it going?

Good.

Cool.

So do you know what harmony is?

It's when people sing together and it sounds nice.

Yeah, that's 100% correct.

Have you ever heard a song called Amazing Grace?

No.

It's a good one.

The melody on its own just goes.

(hums Amazing Grace)

That melody on its own is kind of lonely, right?

And no one really knows how it feels.

(plays and hums Amazing Grace)

So which one did you prefer?

The second one.

[Jacob] Awesome.

And why did you prefer that one?

Because it sounds better.

Yeah, ah, that's great.

I can decide how I want this melody to feel

and the more notes there are, the more exciting it is.

That's what musical harmony is.

Does that make sense?

Mm-hmm.

You're the best.

Thank you!

(pinging music)

Have you ever heard of harmony?

Yes.

Okay, so what do you think harmony is?

I think basically it's like, one person has the lower

voice and then like, girl usually has the higher voice

and then they blend it together.

I like it.

That's absolutely correct.

Okay.

Harmony is about injecting melody with emotion

so that ultimately, you leave home and you return home

and you've learned something along the way.

Yeah.

So a nice place to start is with the idea of a triad.

A triad is a three-part harmony, basically.

(keyboard harmonic tone)

So that's a triad.

So this triad's called C major.

Okay.

So have you ever heard of this idea

of like, major chords and minor chords?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is C major, yeah?

(keyboard music)

And then this is C minor.

So the feelings are different, right?

Yeah, feels like dark and spooky.

[Jacob] Yeah, this one's dark and spooky.

Haunted house. And how does this one

make you feel though? Happy. And joyful.

Yeah, I like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So in Amazing Grace, you start with F.

You know, if I go

(melodic humming)

♪ How sweet the sound ♪

(scat singing)

(laughs)

Where am I right now?

I don't know where I am.

(scat singing)

And my job is to get back home, but to make this chord

make sense.

Yeah.

So I might go

(hums Amazing Grace)

Oh man, that sounded really good.

(mumbles) thanks. I was surprised.

Oh, cheers (mumbles). That was like, happened.

My job as a harmonizer is to find

that narrative and make it make sense.

That was interesting. Cool.

'Cause I didn't think that that would work together.

Right.

Because there were two two completely different sounds,

but then, like, it just made it happen

and it just was like, pow!

Amazing, that's great. Magic!

(light music)

Essentially what harmony is, is like a language, right?

And so as with any language,

the more words you're capable of speaking

in a language, the more you can say.

All right, so in harmony, this might be

how many notes you can think to add to a chord

to make it feel a different way.

Have you ever heard of the circle of fifths?

Mm-hmm. Okay, that's great.

On one side, we have a lot of the notes which make us

feel brighter, you know, like these kinds of,

(keyboard music)

these really bright sounds.

And the other side is a lot more to do

with the darkness of a key center.

So we're home in F, but imagine we're taking

a quick visit to B-flat, but then the sun comes out.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What notes would you suggest I add?

F.

F is a great one.

Yeah, and if we keep going in that direction?

C? Yeah.

And then G. You got it.

Ooh! Yeah?

Yeah, yeah. So this is really,

this is like a gleaming glade or something, you know?

Let's play this tune, Amazing Grace.

Let's play it in its simplest form.

Yeah.

All right, so we're gonna start in F, right?

Yeah. So say.

♪ I once ♪

F, yeah.

(Amazing Grace)

B-flat, yeah.

F.

C.

F.

So we're home.

Yeah.

Nice, okay cool.

Lets try one more version where we add some colors.

Alright so lets visit the B flat,

with a bit more imagination.

Yeah.

Just to see how things feel. Yeah.

All right, lets do it.

(both playing Amazing Grace)

So it's F major seven, but its over A.

Which is F seven over A.

(both playing)

B flat major seven with an A and a G in it.

F major seven with an E and a D and a G, yeah.

(laughter)

D minor seven with a G in it.

C softs, or minor, nice.

B flat major.

G seven, F sharp major seven.

Home, yeah!

I like that.

So what harmony does is just gives us

even more tools to tell those stories.

Cool, yeah. Nice, man.

Awesome.

One nice emotional device when it come to harmony

is just thinking about how to arrive somewhere.

You know, it can be so sparse, it can be so rich,

and it can be really emotional.

So this idea of the overtone and the undertone

in the harmonic series, how much do you know about this?

Only until I started listening to singing,

like barbershop quartet, and,

and as I was a violinist as well--

Right.

Then I finally understood the idea

where the overtone series came from

that if a bunch of singers were to nail a chord

or have it perfectly tuned, the overtones,

you would hear a tone that necessarily

wasn't being produced by one the singers.

Yeah.

The amazing thing about harmony is that it exists in nature.

So, take the harmonic series of the note F, for example.

Okay.

You have the ups on the fifth and the fourth and then the,

(hums) That seemed a little bit sharp, but that's fine.

And then tones get increasingly small.

Beneath that note, you have the undertone series,

which essentially is like a reflection of something.

In the same way that when a tree grows in nature,

you have the branches which grow upwards and

the roots which go downwards.

So it's quite a nice thing to thing about,

this being the key center, the floor, the ground,

and then these two different directions

of ways in which it can express itself,

and the differences in the sensations with that.

Lots of the time I think when it comes to

reharmonization or harmonization,

people think that the solution to the problems

come when we add more notes.

Yeah.

I think that people forget that you can work

with the notes you already have by just rearranging them,

just the simple idea of inversion,

inversion of the simple triad, of F major.

♪I once was lost and now I'm found ♪

♪ Was blind ♪

♪ But now I see ♪

Now how home do I want to go here, you know?

Is there another verse to come?

Right.

Because I can delay the gratification of going home.

First of all, just by using inversions,

even before we add the notes to the chord.

One thing that I was very joyful to discover

is that every single melody note

works with every single base note.

Would you care to demonstrate that?

Yeah. so this is the note F.

Yeah.

F major, F minor, D flat major seven

G flat diminished, G flat minor major seven,

G minor seven, G soft, G seven, G seven sharp 11.

And then, G seven with a flat 13

(laughs)

That's it! (laughs)

A flat soft, A flat major seven.

A flat major seven sharp five, with a sharp 11.

Essentially, what that demonstrates is that

every note and every base note are compatible.

So once we realize this its like, that's great!

Now what should we do?

What, how, what should we, what should we,

how, what am I supposed to do?

What to do, right.

And sometimes the paralyzing thing

when it comes to arranging, there are too many options,

too many things are possible.

So that's when it becomes super, super important

to be aware of what you wanna try and say emotionally.

But what about negative harmony, the dark side?

So essentially, the way I'd apply negative harmony

would be this idea of polarity, you know,

between the overtone series and the undertone series,

or you know, the one side and the other side.

The perfect and the play goal.

The feeling of a minor perfect--

(keyboard music)

Resolving, it's so moving, you know?

And it's a good alternative to something like,

(keyboard music)

It's funny, you know, you doing that

makes something in a major key

sound like kind of a wistful sad song.

Right.

You know, you changed the feeling of it,

what otherwise would, you know, if you were to tell a kid

that this is a major song, we should be happy.

Exactly, yeah.

No, for sure.

And, you know, F major can be something you arrive in from,

if you arrive in F major from D flat,

then it's like the sun's come up.

Right.

But if you arrive in F major from A major,

then it's like the sun's gone in.

Interesting.

So, there's a lot about context, I think.

Once you have a language, it's about using it

and applying it in those emotional ways.

I think that's what makes the difference.

All right.

(upbeat music)

A lot of people will see you as somebody

who's drank in harmony their whole life.

They've seen so much harmony, heard so much harmony.

How do you make the choices, there's so much

that's possible when you know stuff.

How do you have the courage to make a choice?

It comes from just your life experience.

And that moves you in a certain direction.

How it gets expressed, many times, is sudden.

Complete surprise. (laughs)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I find it fascinating in music to think about,

you know, say I arrive in a place,

if I'm going, say I'm going to D flat major.

And there's something you once taught me.

You taught me this song Don't Follow the Crowd.

Oh, yeah.

And there's that chord.

It's not a Dennerman chord,

but it functions as a dominant chord.

But it doesn't matter, because you're still going

to the place you're going to.

Right, right, right.

It's something like, um...

(keyboard music)

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah.

So this chord being, like a major seven

with a sharp five, and a natural,

like, there's no dominant thing.

Right, right.

But at that moment, I'm coming from here,

and I wanna forge some, some solution.

I get myself in a situation.

(keyboard music)

Yeah.

Right.

That haunted me for days.

(Herbie laughs)

'Cause, you know, I just wouldn't think

to use that chord in that situation.

And there it was!

And, you know, if you read the rule book,

it's, that not in it.

Yeah, and this is what I learned

from the great Chris Anderson.

Chris Anderson, yeah, yeah.

The idea of going to a D flat chord.

Normally it does a dominant like the A flat seven.

But back in the 20s, they also used to do things like,

(keyboard music)

Oh yeah.

So, It's always coming.

(keyboard music)

Coming from just below the key.

From C with a seventh.

And when we don't normally say a C seventh

and an A flat seventh are related,

you know, 'cause so many of the notes are different.

You've got this, and you've got a G--

Exactly right, it gets gnarly right?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

But if you verse that correctly, then you're safe.

Oh yeah, you can get all of those notes.

You can get away with it.

Yeah. (laughs)

The other thing that I like, that we both do on occasion,

is to be on the chord we want to arrive at

with the bottom part of our structure.

And the chord before the arrival chord,

to have that on top.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

(keyboard music)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right, right, right.

Right.

Something like that.

And that's not 'cause like emotionally,

it's almost like I'm here, I'm arriving here.

But, if the base note is the same,

it's like this inevitability about it,

it's like I was there all along.

And it makes like a pull.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like one thing is moving in one direction and one thing

has arrived, so it's this tension and it's glorious.

I love thinking about these things emotionally,

just because that's a feeling,

I know that feeling in my life.

Music is not different from life.

(Jacob) No.

You know, and I think that's probably

the greatest attraction to those of us who play music.

Yeah.

Was there ever a point in your life

when you were younger where you felt like you had

consistently fell back into the same habits?

You'd find, man, I don't want to play this same thing again.

I had a really great experience

when I was working with Miles Davis.

I felt like I was in a rut playing the same stuff,

and I was getting depressed because of it.

And Myles said something to me.

I thought he said, Don't play the butter notes.

And so, I thought, what did he mean by that?

So you thought he said butter.

Butter notes, right.

And he said bottom.

But you thought he said butter.

Yeah.

Wow.

And so, I started thinking,

oh great, what could butter be?

What is butter?

Then I started thinking, what are the obvious notes?

For example in a chord.

The obvious notes are the third and the seventh.

So I said, maybe if I leave those out.

It changed everything for me, from that moment on.

I got more applause for that solo than I did the whole week.

(Herbie laughs)

Wow.

I wouldn't play the voice things

I play today if that had not happened.

That's amazing.

I know.

I've been using this tune Amazing Grace.

Oh, right.

And so, we could play a bit of that if you want to.

And we could talk about some stuff.

I've been doing it in F.

(keyboards playing Amazing Grace)

(laughing)

Thanks Herbie, that was a trip.

Yeah, thank you.