Switched on Pop - Jacob Collier on staying creative and his 646 track song “All I Need”

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Quarantined in his family’s music room, musician Jacob Collier has been remarkably productive. Known for his polymathic musical talents, Collier has used this time to reflect on, and release new music. His latest song “All I Need,” was created with new technology that let him record remotely with his collaborators Mahalia and Ty Dolla $ign. The song is uplifting. It modulates into arcane keys that evoke the euphoria of newfound love. Collier’s also been convening live streams with artists like Tori Kelly and Chris Martin where Collier seemingly defies the laws of physics to collaborate, in time, over long-distance video chat. Collier is a hopeful voice, demonstrating how music can boost our spirits in dark times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a period of per a month on shopify on records. Welcome to Switched on

pop I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. On our last episode we

reported about what it means to make music in 2020 and one of the voices that you heard excerpted was from a four-time Grammy Award-winning artist who has figured out how to defy physics to perform collaboratively over video. In our full conversation,

we spoke about how he's staying creative and he broke down for me how he produced a song that had over 600 tracks in it. I think you're going to really enjoy the entire chat. I'm excited to welcome today's guest. Hello everybody. My name is Jacob Collier. And I'm calling from North London, according from my lockdown location, my family music room, and I'm a multi-instrumentalist producer, kind of arranger, composer, musical human being, and trying to figure things out just like the rest of us. I want to start with the room that you're in.

We're chatting over a very mediocre video connection, and I can see that you surround yourself with musical instruments. I've read that you are a self-proclaimed autodidact and love learning new things. Has this been a time for you to take on some new instruments or new challenges? You know what's so rare as a musician is having time to sit with your craft without needing to use it all day long? I find, or I guess I have found that over the last 10 years or so of doing music kind of like full time in my life, it's like the one thing I'm concentrating on, one thing leads to another and the whole thing will perpetuate.

And it's rare just to have a moment to kind of sit with your life, figure it out, get right into the deepest corners of it and start to explain those stories as they make sense. And for me, this lockdown period whilst being rather confusing for many, many people and a little bit devastating at the same time, it's an enormous creative gift. I think that for people who are used to kind of alchemising strangenesses in the world and weird energies and things that don't quite make sense and forging a way for those to make sense are kind of amongst these people who are making the most of this period of time. But for me, I guess having always been so interested in so many different kinds of music and different flavors of music from using my voice

in a multitude of unusual sort of left-field ways to playing the piano and the bass and the drums and the guitar and all sorts of other kind of strange instruments and things that make sound that I've discovered on the edge of my explorations. It's very rare that, you know, that one gets to sit and think about what it all means. tell me about this in the context of the music that you're making. I've loved being able to just sit with my creative life at this funny part of my musical journey. I'm bang in the middle of this quadruple album, I suppose. Four albums in one called Jesse, DJ E S-S-E.

And that process, I suppose, has been going on for a couple of years or so. And each of the albums is a totally different musical space, different genres, different collaborators. About 40 collaborators in total across the whole project. Wow. And I really haven't sat down and taken stock of it at all. I've just been racing, racing to get it finished. And so now be able to think, okay, well, see as the deadlines are all kind of up for grabs and everything's changing and it's

all a bit delocalized, why not kind of see how it's all feeling and zoom out for one second and kind of recalculate my priorities, which is, I suppose, what I've had the privilege of being able to do. What are you feeling about it right now? How has it changed for you? Well, one thing, some things that have been lacking, I think in my life as a touring musician, as somebody who travels a lot for work and someone who's consistently in the studio and recording

is the moments of your life that don't feel spectacular. Sometimes those things give you the most stories to tell but you kind of skim over them because there's always something big and important to do, you know? It's like everything's lean towards this big moment where this will happen or I'll meet this person or I'll travel to this place or I'll play in this venue or something big.

Something big is always coming, right? It's the sort of eternal myth of most certainly education across the entirety of the universe in my experience, but also the industry, that means nowadays. I think that there's this thing that everything's leading to that one moment everything will kind of blast and come true. And I think that that's the myth that seduces so many people to begin this journey of kind of releasing music and discovery, hoping that something big will happen.

And I think the realization is with quarantine is that it's kind of all happening right now if you're ready to hear it. And I think that the moment you stop rushing around, those little moments of your life become so much more significant than the moments that feel kind of big and feel important and feel like they have a lot of gravity, somehow the quietest moments with your family or with your cat or whatever tend to be the most disarming, the most surprising. And if you're ready to see them, the most kind of emotionally important, I find. Have you found that it has changed your relationship to the role of music in your life? In some ways it has, and in some ways it hasn't, I've always been a bit of a sort of omnipresent sponge when it comes to music. It's

there's always been music going on in some way, whether it's going out or coming in, right, whether I'm listening to it or whether I'm creating it. I think that one sort of practical thing that's changed is that I love listening while traveling very much. And traveling is one of the only excuses I find where I can enter into listening properly because it's like the moment where you feel like there's nothing much to be done other than just sitting and being in somebody else's world for a little while, you know? And so I missed that. I've had to create some scenarios where I have nothing to do but listen. So for example, vacuuming the house or as we call it in England, hoovering,

much to the delight of my family is a wonderful space for listening to music, but I feel like I'm making a lot more of it than I am consuming, which is very interesting. And it changes your process when you listen to your own sounds as they're coming out more often than you listen to other sounds as they're coming in. But I sort of value both directions. And I'm experiencing a kind of a bit of a change in, again, priorities, like what I listen for is changing both in the music that. seems to be coming out of me and the music that enters my life from other sources. Could you speak to one thing that you feel like a priority has shifted?

What may be something that had been less of a priority and now is something you're listening more for now? Yeah, for sure. I think in some ways, I've been so focused for a lot of my life on what is going on musically, whether it's a rhythm or a harmony or a melody or a kind of production element or something strange, something sonic that moves around or whatever, the texture of the sound, that I haven't thought about space until now. And it's funny how you think about space when you're given it. I think that the space between the notes is where a lot more of the magic is occurring in my sort of reactive imagination than it used to be.

I used to be responding to the stuff that was there. But I suppose a bit like the ancient Japanese writing philosophy, that writing is actually an inscription within stone, which makes it a yin process in the sense that you're carving out of something to find the shadow, and the shadow is the form, I love this idea, and I've always enjoyed it, but I've never really understood it until now.

It's like you have to see within something, like you have to be able to look into something to be able to find something in it, I think rather than being kind of splurged at and having things which present themselves to you as kind of yang motifs or whatever, I feel like the things between the things are the things that right now are the most new to me

because this space is so new. Well, maybe we can hear about some of that in what you've been working on, you have continued to record the ongoing four-part album, Jesse. You've even released a song during this time. All I Need with Mahalia and Tite Dala Sign, which are some spectacular collaborators. Tell me a little bit about how you have adapted your recording part of your life to this moment where you're now working entirely from home. It's funny.

I think a lot of people have had to change plans drastically. People who use studios a lot of the time, use engineers, use producers and, you know, use other instrumentalists. I feel kind of miraculously fortunate that I've always made music in this room and I've always produced it here and mixed it here and played the instruments and done things alone. It's, you know, that comes with its own challenges, I suppose. but in a time like this I've got this room

which I'm currently speaking to you from which is full of different things that make sound there are little microphones hidden all over the place within the piano above the door these little room mics drum overheads and little guitar microphones around the room I can sort of walk around and prod things and the sounds that come out I can record

right into this computer here and the wonderful thing I think about that is that this period of time has not really meant that the process has changed much. It's more the perspective that's changed. Because I've always, well, I suppose I say always, but when I was about seven years old, I got Cubase, which is a recording software. By 11, I was hooked on logic. And so I've used logic for over half my life, I suppose, 14 years. And I think of it almost like an extension of this room. And I think of this room almost like an extension of myself, in the sense that when I'm in here and I'm imagining music, almost before I've

before I finished imagining it, it started to be created. And I found that I've kind of manifested a situation where there's an instantaneous flow from whatever madness is going on inside my head to something of a canvas or a real world. And I'm very lucky that this room is in my life. And this is the room where I learned to walk as a one-year-old, you know.

And it was my mom's teacher room for a while. And by about, I suppose about 10 years old, I sort of kicked her out and said, hey, do you mind if I, if I use this room now? And she very graciously said, that's fine. And so since then, I've spent so much time in here. And I've really enjoyed just sort of examining the process of listening and creating music. I've always listened to music, I suppose, as I've created it, with all these different layers going on, all those different facets.

And I guess I'm the kind of musician who likes to stretch concepts to their absolute limits, whether it's, you know, musical harmony with chords, adding as many notes as I can into a chord, trying to figure out the significance, the gravity with all these notes and what they will bring. And same is true with rhythm, you know, rhythms that are asymmetrical I really love and things which. have a bit of a lilt, whether it's J. Diller or Viennese waltz. It's all very fascinating to me, and I've loved just having a space. And I suppose I mean a physical space, but also I think I mean a space where I felt safe to create things. And I think as a parent, one of the things that my mother really nailed was just enabling a dialogue to happen on my own terms, where it wasn't about right and wrong, it wasn't about, but it's the thing you're making valuable. It was the fact that you're making things is valuable.

And so I think I really learned the safety of this room, and it very much signifies that today. And so being quarantined here feels kind of like nothing much has changed other than obviously, as I've mentioned, just the way that I've been thinking about the whole thing is shifting and changing from day to day. You, to a certain degree, are a representation of how all recording has been shifting more towards the home

more and more great hit records are being made at home. And you just happen to be the sort of pinnacle example of you have merged your talent, your home, your music, your career into a space. It is all one extension of itself. So this is totally natural. Yeah, I guess so. It wasn't something I necessarily planned. You know, I didn't think, I'm going to make a room that means everything to me.

It was more like I realized that I'd accidentally. found myself with a space that I trusted and which trusted me, almost like I accidentally found myself with a musical career. It's not something that you sit down and plan. I was just so fascinated with music as a young man, as a boy. And that sense of play led me to a point where it was inevitable that I would make something which reflected the joy that I was feeling when I listened. And that kind of accidentally became a career, I suppose.

And it's crazy that it is. but I realized a couple of years ago, like, well, I guess, I guess this is kind of the thing, but I was so busy making the music that I almost didn't think about it too much. You are still collaborating with people, though, remotely, and I'm curious about, you have a very particular process that is about the space you're in right now. How have your collaborations evolved, and maybe we could talk about it through the case study of all I need? Good thinking. Yeah, well, I suppose the whole idea of collaboration is still fairly new to me, strangely enough. I made an album called In My Room, which was my first ever album,

and I made that in this exact room completely in its entirety. That was my first album which I toured for a couple of years with this one-man show. And after that was all over, I felt this real urge to reach out and kind of expand the walls, so to speak, of this room into other people's worlds, other people's walls and other people's environments, creative environments. And so I embarked upon this huge album, this quadruple album, wherein I would be learning about the things I didn't fully understand, but wanted to dive into by way of the musical lens and view

of all of the people who inspired me to make music in the first place. So some of those people are young, some of those people are old. And when I began the process of recording the album, a lot of those collaborations were done in real life. So for example, Jesse Volume 1, which was recorded with an amazing orchestra called the Metropole Orchestra, was recorded in Holland at their beautiful studio, MCO, and across Volume 1 and also Volume 2,

a lot of the collaborators came over here to this room, which is just so much fun, because it's nice, like, my mum crips up a Bolognais, and we all have a lovely time, and we just kind of hang out together, and we make music, and it all feels good. And obviously, for Volume 3, for a couple of reasons, it's been harder to get people to come over here directly, one of which, because,

one of which being that people are so busy that I'm trying to reach now, that they can't exactly jump on a plane or a train or whatever, and just come visit. And so it makes a lot more sense for them wherever they are in the world at that time on tour or whatever, just to kind of lay things down as they see fit when they see fit. And then quarantine here. And I just feel like it's all happened kind of with perfect timing with regard to technology advances. There's an amazing platform called Source Connect nowadays,

which enables you to essentially control somebody else's computer and hear the audio that comes out of the computer in real time. So I've done a bunch of stuff for Jesse Volum 3, which is one that's almost finished now that I'm working on, from which the songwell I need is taken, where I'll be dialing into somebody else's setup, installing logic on that setup, organizing all of my key commands

to replace the default so that I can basically racetrack them to finishedness. And then obviously they lay down their tracks and they appear on my computer screen, which is insane. It's absolutely insane that it's possible, but it's so cool. And it's enabled me to really just extend this space

to their space in real time, but six months ago, this thing hadn't been built. So it's like so it's so clutch. It's so the epitome of the marriage routine, so circumstance and tech, that thing. Just to clarify, you are basically acting as a remote engineer from anywhere in the world. People can record on their whatever device they've got, but you're controlling it all and it ends up right back on your machine. Exactly, which is crazy.

But yeah, there was one collaborative from the album where I actually bought her a microphone and a little interface because she was stranded without anything. And I said, look, this is some gear, sent her to her house and then I phacetimmed her. We plugged on all the cables. We rigged up the microphone and then we installed SourceConnect. I jumped on the machine, installed Logic, got everything up with the, you know, with the mixer window, had a couple plugins to make it all feel organic. And then I dragged in my reference track, press record, she sang and the latency of FaceTime and Source Connect was equivalent. So I saw her in real time singing on the FaceTime and at the same moment it came up my monitor's, I then press save and it's on my desktop, which is insane. So I'm so so grateful for that.

one of many things that's made this quarantine period possible. And how about through all I need? So you've worked here with Mahalia and Tide Dollar Sign. Tell us a little bit about the song and the collaboration. Yeah, this song was a, I suppose it was kind of a long time coming. It was one of the songs that I wasn't, I knew it had to be written, but I wasn't sure who was going to sing it with me. Mahalia, who I've been such a fan for such a long time, she agreed to be on the song right when lockdown hit. So we couldn't even have a drink and just talk about it or like give each other a hug or even meet. It was like FaceTime.

all the way. But she's such a bubbly human being. She has so much energy and so much kind of, like, authentic, kind of just joy. We kind of hit it off instantly. And I sent her a bunch of voice memos with every single bit that I needed done from like the lead vocal to backing vocals, each individual harmony parts on those backing vocals. And then a couple of areas where I just wanted her to kind of do her thing. And obviously I asked her to interpret as she saw fit. It's just a shame that we couldn't hang out because the vibe was so amazing and I feel like had we been in the same room

it would have been stratospheric but she was rad she engineered it all herself on her own she sang those tracks and sent it to me and the song got to the point where it was a couple days off mastering in fact where I realized that I needed something

I needed some secret source to get this to the point where I felt it could be in terms of hype in terms of kind of universality and joy and it needed like some kind of euphoric vocal thing and so Thai who I've known for about two, three years.

He popped into my mind. I gave him a FaceTime, and he was like sitting at his setup, and I was like, hey, I've got a song, and would you be down to sing on it? He said, of course. And so he then spent the next day singing all this stuff, and it was so beautiful,

and it was so colorful. And I've never heard him sing like that before. Because the thing about all I need, the song that I wrote was that, you know, it's kind of relatable groove-wise, but there is a bunch of harmonic skull-dog going on. And Ty Dulles-Lyne being the kind of maverick that he has, he heard it all,

and he knew what to do with it. And I think people forget how deep that guy goes because he's just, he's such a, such a whole, some rounded musician, even though he's known for doing a particular thing in pop music. He's just, he has his finger on so many pulses. And so, yeah, he sent through all these tracks.

And he actually, he first sent me a video of just like playing the logic session, and the video was like bouncing up and down the whole way through just from his sheer enthusiasm. And I knew I'd found my, my collaborators. Brought his tracks in, mixed them all together, did a bunch of master bus compression and the whole thing.

Man, this song was a bit gnarly because this is actually, this song broke my record for a number of simultaneous logic tracks. When I say logic tracks, it means like, I guess, one row of audio in the session. 646 had never made that many. 46 tracks? Yes, sir. I'd never made that many tracks before. Yeah, well, logic, much to my, my delight.

Earlier this year, I believe it was, or maybe it was maybe it was. the end of last year, they actually upped the track limit to 1,000 from 256. Yeah, in fact, I heard, I heard from the grapevine that it was indeed for me, and I was quite bold over by that fact. But it's amazing. It's so liberating. I used to have to make, you know, three or four logic sessions and sort of comped them together after the fact, but having an infinite canvas both both horizontally and vertically is liberating for sure. At what moment in the song do we hear the most tracks that you ever put together? second chorus

I guess the structure of the song is it's verse and then it's another verse and then it's a chorus and then there's Ties middle section and then it goes into this euphoric second chorus and every time I think about it can't stop thinking about it and you're all I need

and there are a couple of noteworthy things that happen at this chorus first is that it breaks the track limit long standing and and second is that it goes up half a semitone in pitch. So actually enters a microturnal key that does not exist on the piano.

But what it does to your psychology is profound because people aren't used yet. I'm looking forward to the time when they are used to it, but people aren't used to what I call cross-terrain modulations, which is modulating away from A equals 440. So the song is A equals 440 until that second chorus. And it just, like, it's a bit of a skyrocket, but it goes up to the key of,

I guess it's like G half-sharp minor. or B flat half sharp major. And it's a key that most of us don't think about when we go to sleep. I mean, I do, but people haven't listened to this key before. Like it feels a bit like untrodden snow to the ear, especially having been in 440 for the whole song. It's like this whole new terrain. It feels impossible.

It feels impossibly euphoric. It's like you've entered this other world where it's like your ears are hearing all these chords for the first time in their lives because they kind of are. And I remember when I figured this out when I was about, 18 and 19 that if I got bored of a song, especially a harmonic song, that if I transposed that song up half a semitone, it would be like hearing it for the first time, because it's not like transposing a song from C to C sharp, because I know C sharp, and I know C sharp, those keys are on

the piano. C half sharp is a, it's a whole scene, it's a whole vibe. And so I got really hooked on the idea that one day I wanted to write a song that felt traditionally like a pop song and just like kick, kick this microchone modulation up just to kind of see what would happen. And and sure enough, I get goosebumps when I listen to it because it feels like it's this whole new, whole new planet. And what is this ethereal modulation? How is it sort of connecting with the lyrical message of the song? What's it doing? Well, the song, I guess, is about the sort of the infinite joyfulness that one feels when one falls in love for the first time. It's like that, that opening period of a relationship where everything's golden, everything's starlit, everything's moonlit. everything's moonlit, everything's just gorgeous, and everything belongs to just the two of you,

everything in the world. And so the chorus of this song is about that kind of stratospheric infiniteness, the unlimited kind of omnipresence of another person in your life, and how joyful that is. And I suppose all the, all of these kind of modulations throughout the song, you know, even besides the micro-returnal madness, it reflects the kind of ever-changing, ever-colourful creative space. But this final chorus, it really feels like you've kind of arrived. that feeling. And I know just from experience that there are times in a relationship where you almost can't believe that the other person would see these colors in you, even though you can see them in them. It's like, but why, why me? Really? Me? It's me. Is that really? That's what

you're saying? And then I think the realization that actually you're enough as you are and that the two of you can be enough just as the two of you are without even needing to change. I mean, I've always wanted to describe that feeling. And I think that's what chorus too and all I need kind of does. It's like so unlimited and so extravagant and so incandescent because it's like taking the lid off yourself. It's like you're uncompressed. It's like you're able to just be joyful and present and sort of celebratory and cyclic and all of these wonderful feelings. Wow, it's gorgeous. I love this. This is so beautiful. There is something that the music is doing, which is both giving you something new that you've never heard that has that

lovely euphoria and yet it is speaking not just harmonically to us but like to a deeper order of the soul of like we can go to new places you can see who like that connection is really beautiful yeah thank you yeah i think for me when when you're in love and you look at ordinary things which is one of the lyrics of the song when you look at the ordinary things it's like you've seen them all for the first time you know even things you've seen a million times like trees and sky and sunshine and like walking down the road or suddenly these things are like so special and wonderful and glowing and everlasting and I think that you know I wanted people to hear a chorus that felt like they were hearing the chorus for the first time and obviously you know you hear it once the first time in an in a normal

key in a key that exists and then the second time when the key doesn't exist you're hearing the same chorus but it's just there's this new feeling about it and I think that in some ways sort of psychologically for me that's what happens when you're when you're in love it's that process of you see something again that you've seen many times before, but you just, it's like this whole new thing. And that gives me goosebumps, even thinking about it. I just got goosebumps. Amazing. And it's not from, and it's not from the little yipy dog in the background. Yeah. Yeah. So we've gotten to talk about your musical practice, your recording life. I want to chat just briefly to close things out about live performance. Obviously, people are not able to go out,

do live performance right now. But you've been doing extensive. extensive live over Instagram video series and with some great collaborators. Tide Dala Sign, I really enjoyed the two of you singing Lean on Me together. You have also collaborated with Chris Martin of Coldplay. You did an amazing rendition of I saw sparks. I have been watching live streams go on Instagram and actually like a lot of videos that people been posting of hey, look at these cool collaborations that I've been doing. And I'm like, yeah, but how are you doing that?

it's not possible. Like, even just to have this conversation, the two of us had to, like, change devices three times and reset up and change Wi-Fi connection. It's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I've heard that you've kind of figured out, you've sort of gamed this system and you have figured out how to do a live performance.

What is going on? Right. Yeah, I was determined to crack this one because it just felt like so silly that we had to wait for technology to fix a problem that is not fixable. So I figured that human beings are much better at doing that than computers. Why don't we bend? Just to describe, what is the problem that we're addressing? The problem is that when two people get on Instagram Live or FaceTime, for that matter,

there is a small amount of latency which exists in physics because you're basically sending data across the ocean. You know, for example, right now I think we're about 9,000 kilometers apart or whatever. I'm in London, so I guess it's X amount of milliseconds, maybe 100 milliseconds or sometimes even less of latency. Now, when you're playing something, especially when it's something rhythmic, that amount of latency, breaks the whole thing. And so really what the Instagram latency thing is, it's kind of just an excessive version of drag, except that it's happening in the opposite direction. I'm like preemptively dragging. As in like I'm playing ahead of the beat for a ticker-round, but it sounds like they're just being super, super expressive from my end, because they're just being so dragged. They're so behind the beat, but it kind of comes out right. When you say drag, what do you mean?

If I go, I'm trying to think of a good example now, there's a song by DiAngelo, well, it's not by DeAngelo, but he covers it called Feel and Makein' Love. There's a horn line in that that goes, Like that. So if you play that, it's like, okay, that's fine, sounds in time. But if you go,

and you drag behind the beat, just that. with it and you drag behind the beat just that small amount. The tension between what time is for the drums and what time is for the horn line is so magnetic for the listener. It unlocks this whole zone of your brain where things are possible by bending time. Okay, so what you're saying is to perform on Instagram live rather than dragging time and being late. You're kind of arriving early at any given moment.

Can you give me an example of how you do this? You know, say, for example, it's like, if I'm in three beats in the ball, one, two, three, one, and you sing, happy, baby, boy. birthday to you, right? Yeah. Then if you sing that now, which you don't have to. I'm not going to make you do it. I would hear it like this.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. That's how I'd hear it. You just broke it. And so what I have to do in my brain is I have to compensate for that psychologically. I have to stay in time with myself. I have to listen a particular comma of an amount of time behind myself so that I'm interacting with you within your time frame and responding.

but I'm staying where I am. So essentially, I'm perceiving the music that's being played in two simultaneous tempos, one which is in the future and one which is in the present, and basically making that latency composition in my mind before everything I hear by a certain amount consistently so that it will come out with zero latency. Thank you for introducing us to the rhythmic multiverse. I didn't know that such a thing existed. How did you train yourself to do this?

I like these kinds of challenges. They make you think about music in a new way. I've got one of those brains that enjoys doing that. I suppose you have to get started. There's not really a hack for it other than being rhythmically aware and kind of being a bit courageous. You just have to try. Reason with me here. Did you like sit down for 10 hours and try this and you finally got it?

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a 10 hour thing. In fact, I got on a live stream with Tori Kelly. Okay. So you're going to do the thing where you don't listen to my time and stuff? Yes. Okay. Should we make a plan as to who's going to sing what fit or should we just see what happens? Let's just see what happens.

Two, three. And I hadn't figured it out yet, but I had by the end of the live stream. You and I, you and I, you and I, you and I, you and I, you're not. And when I watched it back and I saw that there was no latency, I figured that this is probably worth doing it a few times. And so it's, it's become almost like a little series on my Instagram. You know, whenever I have a moment, I'll do what I call it, hashtag, to live duo. Let's go.

That was beautiful, bro. It brings me great joy, because obviously as a musician who likes to perform, I really, really miss that buzz of like, you know, X,000 people are in the room and we're going to make something work and we're going to make something happen. And the fact that I have to do

a little bit of a mathematical puzzle to make that possible is nothing compared to the joy that it brings to me to just communicating with someone in real time. But now you're one of the probably few people that have this gift to be both in the present and in the future at the same time. I'm just curious for your collaborators, though, who haven't been able to play music with other people. Has this been a unique and joyous experience for them? I think so. I mean, it feels

almost impossible until it's done, as Nelson Mandela might say. It's a funny old game, but as far as they're concerned, they sing along to me in their idea real time. So they sing along to me as if I'm in the room and it kind of figures itself out by magic. You do things that I've never seen happen before. Your audiences, they truly are an orchestra. I love that feeling. I recently realized the most joyous instrument to play on stage is the audience, saying it's a wall of human beings, and I'm lucky enough to have a pretty musical fan base too. So yeah, I've recently got into a thing where I'll split the audience into different groups, all of this I guess without saying a word, I'll try and do it just with gestures alone,

so it really feels like the process belongs to them, and then I'll feed notes and those notes will go up, down and sometimes we'll do rhythms and we'll do grooves. It's always very spontaneous, but that really is something I miss, and I can't wait until we can get back out. We'll have to train your entire audience on the rhythmic multiverse so that they can all collaborate together over video chat. That would be, if you can crack that one, then kudos to you, sir. I'll call Instagram's engineers.

Perfect. It's been a lot of fun talking with you, Jacob. I really appreciate it. Likewise.