TED Talks Daily - The wiggly wonder of music | Jacob Collier

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier has a name for the feeling that moves through a great piece of music: the wiggle. Watch him break down the idea into its three parts — melody, rhythm and harmony — with nothing but his own voice, a grand piano and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” Turns out life, like music, was never made to run in straight lines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. The musician and composer Jacob Collier has a theory about music and, in turn, about life. He calls it The Wiggle. And once you hear him explain it, you may start seeing wiggles everywhere. Life does not work in straight lines. Life is full of curveballs, full of ups and downs. And either we yield and we bend and we soften.

or we stiffen up and we break. Jacob starts this talk at the grand piano on stage, playing his adaptation of the famous Louis Armstrong song, What a Wonderful World. He then makes a joyful case that the same quality that makes music move us is exactly what helps us move through a rigid world. Music is a language you already know.

And there's something deeply powerful that happens when we come together to make it. Something connective, something transformative, something vibrational. By the end, he might just convince you that you already know how to wiggle. You maybe have just forgotten. That's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the day.

See tree. Green. I see them blue. And I think to myself. Oh, the colors of the rainbow. So pretty in the sky. All of people going by I see a friend

saying, how do you do to myself? Thank you very much, everybody. Isn't that a beautiful song? I just love it. You know, music is a language you already know. And there's something deeply powerful that happens when we come together to make it. Something connective, something transformative,

something vibrational. It's a feeling that moves us. Now, I have a name for this feeling. I call it the wiggle. Now what's the difference between a wiggle and a straight line? Well, we all know how a straight line feels, right? Rigid, unyielding, inflexible, linear, like a Roman road or the hand of a clock. It's set. It's certain.

But the wiggle, on the other hand, is soft and flexible and fluid. The wiggle is smooth and constantly in motion, right? So where the straight line is firm and brittle, the wiggle is supple and resilient, like water, constantly changing shape, but stronger than almost anything. As the great Alan Watts used to say, there are no straight lions in nature. Now, I've learnt many of the principles of wiggledom through the process of making music, because music is inherently wiggly. Essentially, music is just wiggling your air.

That's what's going on with music. And as musicians, we are constantly oscillating between different states, right? So high to low, or loud to quiet, right? Thick to thin. Music is constantly in motion, and everything in music is learned through play. Now, there are three essential types of wiggle in music that I'd like to talk to you about today. The first is called melody, what we call melody. Now, a melody draws a line from one place to another

and tells a story as it goes. So Louis Armstrong walks down the street, right, looks around and he goes, I see trees are green, yeah. Not, I see trees are green, not that. I see trees are green. It's a tree. I see skies are blue.

It's the sky, right? Clouds are white. There's a little cloud up there. The bright, blessed day, the dark. Is that not the sun going down? It is. A good melody arc tells a story and draws a line that moves us. That's the first

kind of wiggle. Now the second kind of wiggle is what they call rhythm. Now rhythm is about time, but it's also about the body. So Louis does not sing this. I see trees who green red roses too. I see... No, sir. Instead, he goes, I see Trim, like, dwing, lo, lo, lo,

right? Rhythm physically moves the body. And with that motion and play, the melody has something to be in conversation with. And suddenly we have space, and we have form, and we have proportion and dynamics, and that kind of storytelling.

It's beautiful. So rhythm moves us and our melody through time. That's the second kind of wiggle. Now, the third kind of wiggle is my personal favorite. and it's what they call harmony. Now, harmony is about relationships. It's the wiggles between the wiggles. And by adding these chords, like all combinations of notes,

like clusters of notes, we get to take our melody and our rhythm and decide how we want these things to feel. Okay, so with this song, we start home. We begin home, right? Begin to move. Somewhere close by, quite warm. A bit of darkness there.

lightning, saddening. And then something extraordinary happens. Our melody note stays the same. And I think to myself, right? One melody note. But the chord, which could happily stay here, becomes this. And I think to myself.

Did you feel the wiggle? It's special, isn't it? This note just completely changed color, didn't it? Didn't it? That's the power of harmony. So with a chord, I can squint. I can reassure. I can enchant. I can purify. I can terrify. So that when I get home in the end, it's all the more beautiful because we've travelled somewhere new. Harmony tells an emotional story through tension, release, dissonance and consonants by combining many different notes together.

That's the third wiggle. So you may say, but Jacob, why does it make us wiggle so? How do these notes make us feel these things? And I would say, well, because music is about so much more than just notes. Music is about life. In music, we learn that being in harmony with the world doesn't mean everyone's singing the same note at the same time. It's about embracing the dissonance and following the heart to home.

We learn that being in time with the world doesn't have to be stepping into line. It's about motion. and knowing when your time is right, leaving space for the rest. We learn that being in tune, it's not about being perfect, it's about following a line and being open to where it might take you. Because here's the truth of it. Life does not work in straight lines. Life is full of curveballs, full of ups and downs.

And either we yield and we bend and we soften, or we stiffen up and we break. So when the world feels like a straight line, be a wiggler. It's in your nature. Trust me, you already know how to wiggle. You just need to remember. That was Jacob Collier, speaking at TED 2026.

If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner,

and Tonzika Sungmar Nivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Bang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hupe.

I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.