Jacob Collier Answers Instrument & Music Theory Questions From Twitter | Tech Support

What's up, everybody?

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

and I'm here to answer

some of your questions from the internet.

This is Instrument Support.

[upbeat music]

This is a question from @rachelgarza1.

Why does a hashtag piano have 88 keys?

It is indeed the case that there are 88 keys on the piano.

Should we listen to them all one by one.

[descending piano music]

And [low piano note]

Over the last few hundred years,

composers have sought an increasing amount of range

to work with in their compositions.

So this note here, the C8, this is 4,186 hertz,

which is actually a very high note.

And this note here, which is A0,

is 27.5 hertz, which is a very low note.

Human beings can hear from about 20 hertz

to about 16,000 hertz,

which is a great deal of range.

So the piano covers like

a hefty amount of that.

So yeah, 88 keys,

and much discovery to be found.

Here is a question about guitars.

Here's a guitar.

This question is from @zarhayda.

Why does holes in guitar exist?

They are annoying when things fall into them.

It is actually annoying.

I've lost plenty of my belongings.

I've lost passport, keys, all sort of stuff.

And when I play a chord,

the whole body of this instrument is vibrating.

The best sound is actually kind of inside the instrument.

[guitar music]

A hole in a guitar exists so that the sound can project.

A question from @TeacherOnTopic.

How does a theremin make music?

Is it through science or from being haunted?

Valid, valid question.

This, in fact, is a theremin.

And to rig this up, I think I just need

this.

Which is one of two antenna that makes this work.

I'm gonna put this into here.

[thuds]

Ah.

And then

[high pitch tone] powers on the back.

Right.

[tone warbling]

[high tone trilling]

Okay, so, the way this instrument works

is by generating two electromagnetic fields

from two antenna.

So this is one antenna and this is the other down here.

This one controls volume.

So the further my hand gets away from this,

the louder the sound and this one

[tone warbling]

controls pitch, which is kind of neat.

[trembling music]

I'm not a masterful theremin player,

[trilling]

But it's in that process

that you generate notes and things,

which is beautiful.

Our bodies conduct electricity.

What these antenna are measuring are essentially

the electricity that our bodies are conducting.

So it's a kind of a beautiful process of measuring

and proximity and things like that.

But anyway, maybe they're also haunted.

This is freaking me out slightly.

@Papa_Gibby, Please what is treble.

And there's not even a question mark

at the end of this question.

So it's really kind of quite candid.

Treble is the word that we give

to the very high sounds in music.

You have bass, like

[low oomph sounds]

[low piano thrumming]

All those low sounds, that is bass frequencies.

Got some frequencies in the middle.

[gentle piano music]

These ones.

And up here,

[high piano chords]

this is the treble end of the sounds.

Yeah, so basically treble is high.

I could've just said that.

Treble is high.

Okay, here's a question from @PeculiarYetReal.

Guess, that's me too.

Do people know what a rhythm section does?

People do know what a rhythm section does.

I know what a rhythm section does.

A rhythm section is the part of the band,

or the part of the ensemble

that plays the kind of the underlying rhythmic parts

that create the body, the bed of the sound

over which other things can happen.

So say you're in a big band,

the rhythm section comprises of the drummer,

and the bass player, the guitar player,

and the piano player, primarily.

And that provides the underbelly of all of those horns,

flutes, trumpets, trombones,

whatever you having in your big band.

The rhythm section is the part

that like holds down the fort.

Here's a question that I endorse the asking of.

Explain to me, dot dot dot, the concept of micro tones.

Do we ever use them in western music?

It does show up in popular music, especially

with instruments like the guitar.

You can bend notes on the guitar

and trumpets, clarinets and flutes

and things like this

where you have control over where you put your finger,

where you place the note.

An easy way to explain micro tones

is through a game

that I often play just for fun.

I like playing games for fun.

You take two notes,

G

[piano note resonates] ♪ Ma ♪

And E [piano note resonates]

♪ Ma ♪

How many notes can you fit

between these two notes

[piano note resonates] on the piano,

[descending notes ring]

there were two notes between,

[descending notes ring]

Right?

♪ Ma da da da ♪

What happens if you try to squeeze in more notes?

♪ Ma da da da da ♪

Right?

♪ Ma da da da da da ♪

♪ Ma da da da da da da ♪

♪ Ma da da da da da da da ♪

♪ Ma da da da da da da da da ♪

♪ Ma da da da da da da da da da ♪

You could go forever.

These are all micro tones.

These are notes that you can't find on the piano.

Here's a question from piss kink.

Wow, what a username.

Bro. Why do people even play bass?

You can't even hear that shit.

Laugh my ass off.

That's crazy to me.

Okay, well let's get this.

There's actually a bass here. It's handy.

Bass players are extremely important in music.

As a bass player, you can be the drummer,

[deep slapping bass]

you can play melodies,

[bass music]

and you can also play chords.

[serene bass music]

So the bass is a beautiful and very important instrument

in music and I'm a huge fan of the bass.

[ascending bass chord]

From @hexachordal,

Why do minor chords sound sad?

I would probably say that I think the reason

why minor chords potentially sound sad

is that a minor chord is actually an exact reflection

of the relationships of a major chord.

So a major chord sounds like this.

[piano chord resonates]

This is E major, one of my good friends.

[piano chord resonates]

and that is E minor, another one of my good friends.

Major chords exist in physics. They exist in nature.

For example, there's a harmonic series in your mouth.

If you go,

♪ Woo aa ♪

What you actually may hear

[soft piano music]

is really, really quiet notes here

in my mouth.

Every note has these overtones.

If you yell in a chapel

or a cathedral,

I'd recommend yelling in cathedrals in general,

it's just actually quite a fun thing to do.

But if you go,

♪ Ahh! ♪

In a massive room,

you will hear all those overtones shining back at you

and you hear a major chord, which is crazy.

A minor chord,

[descending piano notes]

which you could say is derived from the

undertone series as opposed to the overtone series.

It doesn't actually really exist in nature

in that exact state.

In a nutshell I would say,

minor chords don't always sound sad,

but perhaps one of the reasons

why they can inherently feel a little heavier

than major chords is that they are

the exact opposite in physics

to what a major chord is.

It's actually not a question, it's a statement.

I think we're entering a post-riff world.

All the riffs have been used up

and there are no more riffs left to be written.

All new riffs are either bad or a copy of another riff.

I disagree, personally.

Yeah, I think you can make up riffs.

Think there are new riffs.

Like let's make up one right now.

[low piano music]

[Jacob singing notes]

Right, I've definitely heard,

[piano music] ♪Boo Wa Oo Wa Oo Wa ♪

I've heard that before.

And I've heard like,

[piano music] ♪ Dum Dum Dun Dun Dun Dun ♪

Or something like that before.

Perhaps no one has collided,

I mean, let me know the comments if you think

this riff is taken, and I won't write a song with it but,

it's my ability as a riff maker to combine things

that I like that maybe aren't normally put together.

That's what's cool. That's what's interesting

and that's what's worth doing.

So don't be afraid to take something you like,

like a riff or a chord or whatever

and make it your own in an interesting way.

From @rodgoelz,

What makes a baseline funky?

That's in capital letters there.

What makes a baseline funky is also a little bit subjective,

but stable time,

[foot tapping] [bass music]

right?

So just having something that's stable

that you can move your body to.

Repetition.

[bass music] [foot tapping]

Sit on this all day.

And then

[melodic bass music]

making variations on that.

It's not just the notes that you play

or when you play the notes,

it's actually the duration of the notes,

like how long the notes are.

[bass music]

If I play all those notes long,

[slower bass music]

that is maybe less funky in my opinion.

So it's actually a mixture.

[bass music alternating]

See, some of those notes are longer?

[bass music]

And the control you have over the length of your notes,

you can go a huge distance.

Here's another bass related question

from Ad Comfortable 8-4-6-7.

Do bassists always tune the octave down from the guitar?

The answer is fundamentally yes.

Actually the bass is essentially tuned an octave down

from an ordinary guitar.

Not this 5-string Taylor,

but this is a 6-string Taylor

that I have just stowed down here.

[guitar notes resonate] E, A, D, G, B, and E.

Now these four notes here

[guitar notes resonating]

are the same as these

[lower guitar notes resonating]

on this basic guitar here.

Okay, this is a drum question,

so I'm gonna answer it here at this drum kit.

What are your favorite tricks

to keep your drum tracks interesting and or evolving?

Well, I think about this all the time.

If you take an ordinary beat.

[drum music]

That's one of the most legendary beats of all time.

You can make that interesting without adding any notes

or even changing any notes.

All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna nudge certain things forward

and certain things backward.

Say for example, I move the snare drum backwards,

just a fraction.

This is what that sounds like.

[drum music]

And already I'm kind of like, ooh, ah.

If I move the high hat forwards,

[drum music]

Right?

So it's kind of sluggish falling all over itself.

One of the absolute pioneers of this

was of course Jay Dilla,

the legendary hip hop producer from sort of around 2000.

He was just absolutely masterful at creating

these kind of recipes.

Sonic recipes for grooves that had gravity in them,

had grooves that have momentum in them.

So certain parts of the groove,

pulling back, certain parts of the grooves,

pulling forwards.

All that stuff makes your drum tracks far more interesting

without having to add a bunch of crazy fills.

This is from a core user.

What is four on the floor?

There are a few different elements

here before me at the drums.

There's symbols.

[symbols ringing]

There are toms.

[Toms resonating]

There's a snare drum.

[snare rattles]

But most importantly for four on the floor is a kick drum.

[drum beating]

And four on the floor,

every beat of a four four bar is filled

or anchored by a kick.

[kick drum beating]

So something like this.

[drum music]

As long as those four beats are going, you're fine,

you can call it four on the floor.

Here's another question from Walusqueegee.

How the hell do you count odd time signatures in music?

In music we have these things

called time signatures.

Within every measure or every bar you can divide that

amount of space into a variety of different numbers.

So a lot of music is in four beats in a bar.

[sticks snapping] One, two, three, four,

one, two.

So if I go

[drum music]

One, two, three, four,

One, two, three, four.

That's a grooving four.

If I were to go

[sticks snapping] One, two, three, four, five,

six, seven,

one, two, three, four, five, six,

[drum music]

Right?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, one.

That is cool. That's a bar in seven. Seven four.

You can basically divide time into any number of beats

or subdivisions as you so please.

This is a fun question from @jp_bse,

and the question is,

Hey, music nerds!

I'm trying to understand the concept of polyrhythm.

Aren't we all.

I've long been fascinated with the idea of polyrhythm.

Polyrhythm just means many rhythms at once.

If I play three in my left hand and five in my right hand,

that sounds like this.

[tapping]

See?

So one, two, three, four, five,

one, two, three,

one.

When I was a teenager, I set myself a challenge.

What if I could do five rhythms at the same time

on the fingers of one hand, so like a five way polyrhythm.

Here it goes.

[tapping]

So one, two, three, four, five, six,

one, two, three, four, five,

one, two, three, four,

one,

two,

three,

one,

two,

one.

They happen at the same time.

It's funky, it's fun, it's cool.

This question comes from Charles Welcher.

How does a musical piece played with unweighted keys

compare to it played with weighted keys.

This is an old keyboard and this keyboard

[piano music]

has what we call weighted keys

in the sense that when I play a note,

[piano note rings] the key is a little heavy.

It's actually, it's mimicking a real piano

and inside of a piano are hammers

and a hammer will hit three strings per note.

Many of us who play keyboard instruments,

we kind of seek that feeling.

There's just more degrees of nuance

that you can find, it's nice to able to

lean into the dimension of the sound.

Now in this drawer here, now look what have we here?

We have this lovely MiniLab 3 by Arturia.

This keyboard is unweighted.

We say unweighted in the sense that the keys

are light as a feather.

[keys rattle]

This can be really fun,

especially if you're playing like fast stuff.

You can whizz around like

[Jacob trilling]

your fingers don't get so tired.

If I whizz around on here,

[fast piano music]

it just takes a bit more muscle power.

This is easier to fly around on,

but it's harder to maybe find some of the depth

to sort of maintain some of the nuance

and performance with something like this.

Here's a question.

What is the difference

between the white and the black keys on a piano?

The white keys on the piano

[piano chimes]

are all the notes of the C major scale.

[piano music]

The black notes are all the notes

which are not in the key of C major.

[piano chimes]

So there are seven notes in C major

and there are five notes that are not in C major.

They're in a pretty different part of the musical key.

Question here from VegetableOil_.

Why do some chords sound better together

in chord progressions than others?

It's a great question.

If I

pick up this 5-string guitar here,

this is in the key of D.

[guitar music]

So certain chords when you're in D, they sound nice.

Or you could say they sound constant in D

because

[guitar notes resonate] they have common notes.

So for example, the chord of G major,

[guitar notes resonate] right?

Does not sound too foreign

[guitar notes resonate] in D Major

because both chords contain a D.

[guitar note resonates]

In fact, this G major I played also can end in A

because it had a little bit of color in it.

[melodic guitar music]

It's about the notes that carry over between chords.

Okee doke. That's everything we have time for today.

Thanks for such amazing questions.

Hope you learned something. I sure did.

And hope to see you out there very soon.

Okay, cheerio. Bye.