How Jacob Collier Helped Me Find Paul McCartney

For the second album project for my horn band Vinyl Hampdin (BLUE), I wanted to include an homage to one of my favorite composers, Sir Paul McCartney. I had one big stumbling block in my way, however… as a jazz composer I was having a hard time cracking the “Macca Code!” Everything I wrote either sounded too “jazzy” or too simple. What up Yo? How could I write something in the style of Paul from piano (I don’t play guitar) that wouldn’t have too much or too little? OY.

My plan was to craft a piece in the form of a “medley” AKA Abbey Road, Uncle Albert, Live and Let Die, or Band on the Run. That concept was easy enough, but what to do with the chords? That deceptively simple harmonic structure that comes from an infinitely creative soul using the resources of an acoustic guitar that is actually profoundly advanced. …it was a conundrum.

At the time I was working on all of this, I was also the Co-Chair (with my pal Art Bouton) of Jazz and Commercial Music at The University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. Being around that faculty and those students was a hotbed of creativity every single day. And one day ESPACIALLY… I was sitting at my desk in my office going through various administrative STUFF via my email when a fortuitous message popped up on the screen with this subject line:  “Popular Music artist Jacob Collier Zoom Lecture Today!”

“Hello…what’s this?!” Queried the suddenly very excited young man. 

In the body of the email it got even better: “CLICK HERE to reserve a spot at the Zoom session.”

“What the freaking WHAT?!” Pondered the owner of a quickly rising blood pressure via an influx of pure adrenalin. 

So OF COURSE I signed up for said lecture and set aside everything else on my schedule for that afternoon! Then I went online right away to study Jacob giving lectures, presentations, and masterclasses so that I could see how he liked to do things in that environment. The first thing I noticed is that people always asked him about “negative harmony.” Wanting to know more about that mystical bit of theory myself, I resolved to ask him about it.

When the moment arrived, I realized that I was one of the only faculty people on screen with a bunch of students most of whom were not music majors. “Excellent!” Thought I…I will be the only one brave enough (and foolish enough) to ask a question. I prepared by having my trigger finger set on the “virtual hand raised” emoji and was fully loaded with questions and a nice ice breaker.

The split second that Jacob finished his opening remarks I hit the emoji and raised my actual hand for good measure.

“Ah brilliant! Yes, Steve…” said Jacob.

“He said my NAME!” Thought the Fan-Boy.

Followed by…

“Well Mr. Collier, let me start by saying that I feel I speak for all of us when I say: I sure am glad you were born!”

Having set the mood with that nice bit of flub dub–I had first heard that line on a video with Gil Evans talking about what he had said to Miles Davis one time–I felt that I could now get into the meat of my questioning.

“Oh brilliant. Thank you.” Said the 21st Century’s own Mozart.

I followed that with my pre-prepared question on negative harmony and off we went! 

Google tells us that negative harmony is:  “a compositional process where chords and notes are flipped around a central axis, creating their polar opposites. This concept was first detailed by Swiss composer and theorist Ernst Levy in his book A Theory of Harmony.”

Why yes it is. But Jacob took it MUCH further. Here he is at another event describing the basics of negative harmony. Buckle in folks! (There is a transcript that you can study on this video as well)