Welcome to a portal dedicated to the insightful musings of the multitalented musician, Jacob Collier. Renowned for his unparalleled musical prowess and innovative approach to composition, Collier stands as a beacon of creativity in the contemporary music landscape. With a distinctive blend of jazz, pop, classical, and a myriad of other influences, Collier’s work transcends genre boundaries, captivating audiences worldwide.
Born in London, England, Jacob Collier’s journey into the realm of music began at a tender age, fueled by an insatiable curiosity and boundless imagination. From his early experimentation with various instruments to his groundbreaking YouTube videos showcasing his unique harmonic language, Collier has continually pushed the boundaries of what is possible in music. His unwavering dedication to his craft and unbridled passion for exploration have earned him accolades and admiration from peers and fans alike.
As you delve into the profound words of Jacob Collier gathered here, prepare to be inspired and enlightened by his deep insights into the artistry and magic of music. Below, you’ll find a collection of his most thought-provoking quotes, ready to be savored, shared, and perhaps even transformed into visual art to further amplify their impact. Let the wisdom of Jacob Collier ignite your creativity and passion for music.
I’ve always wanted to keep my own personal creative space, and do everything myself. Jacob Collier
It’s not like I wake up and think, ‘Now I’m going to go to work.’ It just feels like a continuing exploration. Jacob Collier
I love to zoom in and study why a chord is making me feel a certain way, but then I’ve learnt to zoom out again. Because if I’m not actually feeling it, there’s not much point making it in the first place. Jacob Collier
Woke Up Today’ is a number of different sections compounded together. There’s the melodica solo section which is three divisions; there’s the really funky thing in eleven before that, there’s the chorus and verse and there’s the ending which slows down and speeds up. Jacob Collier
I want to write orchestral music. I want to get a group of singers together and sing William Byrd songs. Jacob Collier
I find it difficult to stand up for what you are and what your essence is, and seeing that clearly can be an unbelievably hard thing to do. Jacob Collier
I grew up in this room filled with musical instruments, but most importantly, I had a family who encouraged me to invest in my own imagination, and so things I created, things I built were good things to be building just because I was making them, and I think that’s such an important idea. Jacob Collier
You can’t make music on your own for your whole life. Jacob Collier
There are a whole bunch of instruments I’d like to build. Jacob Collier
I’ve spent so much of my life examining the smallest details. In some ways, it’s where I feel most at home. For me, it’s super-important to understand all of the different nuances of light and shade. But if you can’t paint in primary colours, no one’s going to listen to your songs, because they need to feel like something. Jacob Collier
I was given this music programme called Cubase, one of the first multi-layering programmes, when I was seven, and I graduated to Logica at 11, and that became my primary instrument. Jacob Collier
The Proms are everything life is all about: people coming together, and joy and music and celebration and togetherness. Jacob Collier
There’s one song that I recorded called ‘Saviour’ and every single sound from that song was actually recorded in a shipyard on my iPhone. Jacob Collier
I suppose technically I could say I’m based in jazz, just because it’s the school of thought that I’ve been encouraging myself to operate within. Jacob Collier
I just became accustomed to being all the members of the band. That was something that was really exciting to me. Jacob Collier
A lot of the music that I really love, and a lot of my favourite music and a lot of my favourite things and a lot of my favourite people, these can be experienced on many levels. Jacob Collier
The thing with music education is that it is good at teaching technique, but not texture. You only learn about that from listening to music and experimenting on your own. Jacob Collier
The only reason I create something is because I’m chasing a feeling. You can use a bunch of musical or psychological operations to achieve that result. Jacob Collier
Really, I was brought up with music as a second language. My mother was extremely encouraging of the sensitivities of my brain. It was this sense of curiosity but never pressure. Jacob Collier
Having an idea is easy, courting one can be difficult. Jacob Collier
The world of Stevie Wonder – in particular, the kind of overflowing joy that exists in every single thing I’ve ever heard him do, every note he sings – that is so deeply inspiring to me in every way. Jacob Collier
The whole life of a song doesn’t end with the way that it sounds on the record. How does this song grow? What works live? What do people like to sing along to? Jacob Collier
Parents write to me, or come up to me after shows and ask me ‘How can we get our children to be as excited as you obviously were as a child?’ It’s not necessarily what they want to hear when I say, ‘Don’t make them practise!’ Jacob Collier
You can get people to follow very intricate pathways of musical information, but it feels like a nursery rhyme or a children’s story. Jacob Collier
I love the interaction with people online, I love engaging with the fans. Jacob Collier
I think that the journey of self to truth is always kind of a gnarly one. Jacob Collier
The whole ‘Djesse’ project is, like, the paramount example of something that has evolved alongside me creating it. It started as one album, and then I realized that I had too many ideas for just one album. Jacob Collier
In my experience, my music has drawn people of all ages, which is a real wonderful thing. And at my gigs you get everyone from six year olds to 90 year olds. And I find that really quite moving, actually. Jacob Collier
I have lots of strange ideas in the back of my mind. Jacob Collier
It just so happened that I had this place called YouTube where everybody in the world could do exactly what they wanted to do and it’s potentially one of the most exciting times I’ve discovered in the history of anything ever. Jacob Collier
I think of what I do for work as playing/jamming. Music for me is so much fun so I don’t take my work very seriously in terms of not being humorous, but I take it absolutely seriously in terms of taking the time to make it as rich and glorious as possible. Jacob Collier
You always have those moments of standing outside your own life and thinking, ‘This is kind of bizarre and quite wonderful.’ And I think those moments always catch you off guard. Jacob Collier
I was sort of brought up to sing from the age of two or three I was definitely giving it a go. Jacob Collier
There’s an amazing power that music has, and it definitely had its power over me as a boy. I just saw fit to keep exploring it. Jacob Collier
I always created things, layered things on top of each other. That hasn’t changed at all. With this first album, it was basically a celebration of that process of inventing and building sounds. Jacob Collier
Music is one whole force. And I think the Proms have always represented very clearly that music is a universal language, one that everyone can speak. I’ve just followed my goosebumps in every direction and have found a recipe for what my music feels and sounds like. Jacob Collier
I’m one of those people that’s listened to so much music, I feel like I’ve soaked it all and not rejected anything, so it’s all present there when I’m in my inventing room. Jacob Collier
For me, jazz is an understanding of music, rather than an end in itself. Jacob Collier
It’s a really interesting situation, because when you make music at home all the energy goes into the process, and touring’s all about the energy going outward. I had to learn how to do that transition, but once I figured that out it’s so much fun. Jacob Collier
I suppose for me, with ‘Djesse,’ I realized fairly early in the process that I also needed a character to walk this path, which in some ways is me, and in some ways is not me. I think of Djesse a bit like the infinite child who can see everything and walk into everything as light as a feather and just alchemize. Jacob Collier
As a member of a generation who have been subjected to much over-stimulation, it’s hard to say I fit into any one category. Jacob Collier
I’d say that I’m a really quite a joyful person in general, but I think the idea of joy can be extremely complex, and rich and varied. Jacob Collier
Even if nobody was listening to it, I’d still be making music. Jacob Collier
I’m a firm believer in the saying that goes, ‘If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans,’ kind of approach. Jacob Collier
It’s hard to say that one way of doing things is the best for everybody all the time. Jacob Collier
I can support my sound from the diaphragm, I can project and I can enunciate and things like that. But I was definitely singing from a lot younger than that. Jacob Collier
D is a wholesome key. It’s not bland, like C. It’s not neutral. It’s probably on the bright side. Jacob Collier
AI as a tool in music-making is fine, but it’s always going to be the humanity in music that makes people want to listen to it. Jacob Collier
So the language of musical harmony is an absolutely extraordinary one. It’s a way of navigating one’s emotional frameworks, but without the need to put things into words, and I think that, as with many other languages, it doesn’t matter how much you know about a language. Jacob Collier
I’m a huge fan of voice memos. I put down many ideas there and sometimes I even use some of those audio files in my actual recordings. You get this really raw energy from voice memos that you can’t get when you sit down in a studio with a microphone. There’s this sense of immediacy, which I’m really drawn to. Jacob Collier
I suppose my job is to describe spaces that are honest to me. And the goal, I suppose, is that the listener can hear themselves in some way in that song and also, in some way, hear me. And so if the listener is able to identify with my honesty then I’m being the most helpful I can possibly be. Jacob Collier
I enjoy exploring music so much. Jacob Collier
My mother was this force of nature when it came to both communication with people and the whole of learning music. She’s a champion. Jacob Collier
It was what I did after school. I’d learn a song in choir that day and I’d sing it, all the parts. Jacob Collier
It’s funny, I guess when I was growing up, I didn’t really think about being an instrumentalist, per se. I didn’t think, well, I want to be a piano player, or, I want to be a guitar player, or even, I want to be a singer. I just wanted to be a musician. Jacob Collier
Music is just another language, but it’s very special because it crosses everyone’s borders. Jacob Collier
Music is like cooking for me: you mix the ingredients together in one big pan and see how they end up. Through experimenting, you find what you really like and stick with it. Jacob Collier
Djesse,’ essentially, is this spirit. It’s this sort of character, very much with some childlike energy, which permeates all of this music… The first album represents kind of pre-dawn, to that moment at the end of the morning when everything’s very much alive. Jacob Collier
With the Internet you can research anything. Jacob Collier
I’m a firm believer that embracing the imperfections of making music is so much of what makes something groove. Getting rid of these imperfections runs the risk of removing a lot of the magic that makes this music really special, and diminishes music’s ability to connect with us as human beings. We are all imperfect, after all. Jacob Collier
Making music with other people feeds spontaneity, and lends ideas to your solo work. Jacob Collier
I love songs with, like, six or seven or eight different things going on at once, and that’s just me. Jacob Collier
The way my brain works, it created me thirsty. From the off, I was a sponge for information that had emotional connotations, I think that was it. I was brought up to see the world as emotional, and anything that I could get my hands on that helped me explore that emotional stuff, I was fascinated by. Jacob Collier
It was a challenge with ‘In My Room,’ because I was the only person in that room making the record, to maintain perspective. Jacob Collier
I always wanted to, at some point, sit down and consider how to plot out one piece of work, one album, from start to finish. Jacob Collier
I jumped into a world of musical learning that was very much led by myself and then I drew from the music that was all around me. Jacob Collier
The bottom line is you need to be authentic, you have to be really honest to yourself. Jacob Collier