I feel pg’s point is similar to musicians. As an example, Glenn Gould was a classical pianist and renowned Bach interpreter. He had awesome technical ability at the piano, and a fantastic memory. But lots of incredible pianists have these abilities. Go to any university or observe any competition and you’ll plainly see awesome talent. These qualities are analogous to “being smart”.
However, what set Gould apart from his colleagues was his innovative and iconoclastic interpretations of well-known works with “standard” prescriptions. He had fundamentally different, but wholly consistent, ideas about musical interpretation, recording technology, presentation of music to audiences, and so on. He’s remembered as a pianist not because his fingers were quick and sensitive, but instead because he pushed boundaries in completely original ways.
Leonard Bernstein—a noted conductor and pianist—quips about this when he conducted the Brahms Concerto in D minor, with Gould at the piano [1]. I recommend listening but I’ll copy his words (from [2]) for posterity.
> Don't be frightened. Mr. Gould is here. He will appear in a moment. I'm not, um, as you know, in the habit of speaking on any concert except the Thursday night previews, but a curious situation has arisen, which merits, I think, a word or two. You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a performance distinctly different from any I've ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms' dynamic indications. I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould's conception and this raises the interesting question: "What am I doing conducting it?" I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it, too.
> But the age old question still remains: "In a concerto, who is the boss; the soloist or the conductor?" The answer is, of course, sometimes one, sometimes the other, depending on the people involved. But almost always, the two manage to get together by persuasion or charm or even threats to achieve a unified performance. I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist's wholly new and incompatible concept and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould. (The audience roared with laughter at this.) But, but this time the discrepancies between our views are so great that I feel I must make this small disclaimer. Then why, to repeat the question, am I conducting it? Why do I not make a minor scandal — get a substitute soloist, or let an assistant conduct? Because I am fascinated, glad to have the chance for a new look at this much-played work; Because, what's more, there are moments in Mr. Gould's performance that emerge with astonishing freshness and conviction. Thirdly, because we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist, who is a thinking performer, and finally because there is in music what Dimitri Mitropoulos used to call "the sportive element", that factor of curiosity, adventure, experiment, and I can assure you that it has been an adventure this week collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto and it's in this spirit of adventure that we now present it to you.
Because some took this as an attack on Gould, Bernstein followed up with the remark:
> Any discovery of Glenn's was welcomed by me because I worshiped the way he played: I admired his intellectual approach, his "guts" approach, his complete dedication to whatever he was doing.
Anyway, it’s an interesting parallel in the arts world. Jacob Collier is a musician of today that has similar qualities of “being smart with good ideas”.
Jacob Collier is an interesting example because the general response I've seen to his music from music fans is that it is too "smart". It's impressive and novel to music academics (and apparently the Grammys) but hardly interesting to fans of the genres he favors (soul, pop, R&B). Common complaints being lack of emotion, lack of taste, poor songwriting, over production. But any negative review will also acknowledge that he's immensely talented and has massive potential.
That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced", especially when he has made stabs at jazz, a genre that is in many cases "music for musicians". For a genre that prizes free flowing interpretation and individual creativity alongside instrumental virtuosity, his jazz music comes out utterly sterile compared to other modern jazz musicians. The same goes for his soul music. Everything he does feels like an exercise in a genre rather than playing in it.
Compare his stuff to the work of Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorson's groups, or Shabaka Hutchings, or Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and you hear an enormous difference in the sheer craft of songwriting, emotional dynamics, and storytelling through their instruments.
He's clearly a virtuoso at a kind of playing the instrument, and he's extremely good at explaining music theory and concepts, which is a rather archaic and unique language all its own, but I don't think he's quite there yet for songwriting.
I don't disagree with you, but I'd like to make one small addendum that may go to explain why people might consider his music to feel overproduced. I believe that reason is his use of non-equal-temperament tuning.
For those unaccustomed to hearing pure intervals it can sound like a high-gloss "sheen" that gives an unreal quality to the music. In a way it becomes "too perfect" and unnatural to those who are used to hearing the equal temperament that most western music is recorded in. I hear it a lot in some acapella vocal groups and I often find the sound off-putting and it somehow feels a little corny to me.
I think that his use of Logic in particular is very relevant in this discussion, because not only it has excellent support for different temperaments, it also has Hermut tuning, which dynamically alters temperament of all the instruments played based on actual chords to reach perfect intervals regardless of the key you're in.
Still, his virtuosity allows him to do things that very few people are capable of conceiving, attempting, and doing. We're lucky to have him in the mix.
> That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced",
Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins is an example of someone who has both the talent and the taste for making great music in my opinion. There's a really old video of him shredding like a madman [1] completely off the dome which shows he has very good command of his guitar. He's not in the same sphere as Jacob Collier mind you but here me out. If you compare that video with the music he wrote in the pumpkins, it is very restrained. He knew when to exercise the full range of his skills and when to dial it back. Having learned a lot of pumpkins songs on guitar, it is clear to me that he favoured what sounded better and was more impactful over what appeared skillful.
There's another video of him in 2012 [2] where he talks about influential music coming from the internet and people in their desktop studios, not from guys with guitars trying to make it big. Beyond his talent he had a very keen eye for how music was evolving. Having talent is one thing, being able to contextualise your work, and others work accurately in the arena of the world is a quality that very few people possess and in my opinion is required for producing truly influential and impactful work.
> he talks about influential music coming from the internet and people in their desktop studios, not from guys with guitars trying to make it big
That's a great clip. You might enjoy some of what people have been doing with their desktop studios and guitars in the last few years. Two that immediately come to mind are Tim Henson [1] (already pretty well-known in the guitar world as part of Polyphia) and Manuel Gardner-Fernandes [2].
I cannot leave a comment of bedroom producers go without a mention of judd madden.
Probably quite out there (doom/drone/stoner) for most people but his music has always struck me as incredibly from the heart and not some noodling to impress others.
Some of the words in music theory are just straight latin, or directly descendant from latin and old. A lot of people struggle with music theory until you "translate" it to using modern language (though you do lose some specificity in some cases). Like "ritardando", which is just "slow down", or accelerando, which is, you guessed it, "speed up".
Italian, not Latin. Italian is the language of music. Italy used to be the capital of European music. That's where it comes from. I also wouldn't classify it as mere "theory". It's basic notation that appears in notes. Calling it "theory" is like calling control flow constructs in Pascal (the language) "theory".
PG dismisses creativity, but IMO that's a mistake in an otherwise interesting essay. Creativity is the difference between someone who is merely smart and someone who originates ideas.
Collier is merely smart. He's very, very smart indeed. But in the domain of music, expressive originality is far more important.
And it can be created by people who aren't technically music-smart at all. It's a different skill to the kind of grammatical/technical smartness that someone like Collier has.
That's not a distraction at all. It's exactly the point - creativity is orthogonal to smartness, and it's poorly understood and even more poorly supported.
One of the interesting thing that happened in English pop (until it stopped being possible a decade or two ago) was that successful pop artists were more likely to have been through art school than music school.
The exemplar is Eno - who studied with Roy Ascott, who is probably one of the most unknown influential pioneers of computer art.
Eno has taste and a willingness to experiment across multiple domains. The rest almost falls into place.
IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity.
Art school - more than anywhere else - gives people permission to experiment. Taste can be partially taught, but you need an instinctive feel for it, and that's probably innate.
Someone like Collier doesn't score highly on either experimentation or taste. He scores very highly on musical competence and technical skill. But both are a kind of conformity - which is the opposite of real originality.
I assume where PG is going with this is the suggestion that some people can originate incredibly successful business ideas, and most people can't.
Which might be nice if it were true. But in a startup sense the opposite is more likely. You need a baseline of conformity to be in business at all. Truly creative types don't find the business world open enough to be interesting.
Success in business relies on having ideas that are original enough to be different, but not so original they're incomprehensibly challenging and difficult.
Market fit mostly happens near the middle of the bell curve - for whatever metric you're measuring - and that's not where the most creative people like to live.
Ok, I hadn't really explored Collier's music until I read so many people panning his work on this thread.
One youtube rabbit hole later, and I have to strongly disagree. These threads are littered with Phrases like 'Doesn't score highly on either experimentation or taste', 'lack of emotion'. 'Seems overly clever but not nice sounding'.
Sorry, I'm not sure whether this is people hating on someone outside of your camp or what, but I think they're missing the point.
The way Collier brings ideas from Jazz, Classical, Synth culture, EDM, R&B into a modern a cappella multimedia collage is experimental, creative and I find quite emotional.
Granted it's not the emotion in traditional, analogue music forms coming from the voicing of the instrument - it's from the arrangement, the sampling, even the ebb and flow of precision.
And where most of the modern Glee-style a cappella are sanitized, overly produced and pretty pap (I'm not a fan of the genre, but my kids are), he's really pushing the boundaries of that genre. In ways that, from the handful of examples I've listened to, sound quite successful.
In particular I really enjoyed his arrangements of Stevie Wonder.
The music gate-keepers have always levelled these same criticisms electronic compositions, especially if the the composers are young and popular.
I don't like criticizing anyone or trying to talk about "objective" qualities of art, but I don't agree with your portrayal.
I love electronic composers; I almost exclusively listen to avant-garde/experimental electronic compositions, personally. Most of the artists are quite young. I agree Collier is definitely very experimental.
I do not think he's very artistic or emotional and agree with the above comments that he's in the "intelligent/skilled but not creative" camp. I think he has a lot of potential, but his work just doesn't seem very musical to me, and I have absolutely no biases against experimental, "weird", electronic, or new stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather listen to James Blake or Moreno Veloso than Collier.
I'm not saying you have to like his music. I am saying that anyone maintaining that his compositions are not artistic, creative or musical... well, perhaps someone's definitions of these words are being biased by their preferences.
I mean, to take one example, he's rearranged a classic R&B song in 9-part jazz harmonies rarely heard in the pop genre. He layers in samples from household sounds. He put all this together in an entertaining media format without losing the sensibilities of his genre nor letting it collapse into noise.
You could argue that this is not entirely novel, and this kind of composition has been happening in less popular genres for decades. I can see arguments against his taste. I do agree with an earlier comment that this might be too sophisticated for his pop audience.
But not creative? Not musical? Not artistic? You don't have to like his music to recognise that these words absolutely apply.
When I was a teen, I hated certain genres of music - for example 'new country' and the popular dance music styles of the late 80s. My disdain for whole categories of music was part of my identity.
This made it near impossible for teen me to recognise (or more to the truth, admit) that any of the artists labelled as part of those genres had any talent at all.
This lead to all sorts of silliness, like asserting that MJ had no talent, or insisting that Neil Young doesn't play country. Or just plain missing out on some of the brilliant moments of Willie Nelson's career.
You're right that art is subjective, and I'm quibbling over words that have no quantitative meaning. But seriously, credit where credit is due.
This is mostly a personal stance validated by the talking of some other artists and musicians, and only a weak rebuttal/addendum to your point: But I've long understood creativity as literally just creating. A lot. And publishing only what you deem worthy.
I'm friends with a clique of techno producers and they grind their music 24/7, they have an endless supply of ideas that they've produced,they're also heavily immersed in the music etc. They will publish some tracks twice a year, to the outside it obviously seems like they've had a moment of genius, but it's probably just 5% of their actual production. Another example is the documentary on marina abramovich, where she has a consultant telling her what art to actually publish. The artist Jonathan Meese has outlined a similar stance on a Tracks documentary where he just rambles for 5min to the effect of "create create create".
Obviously doing something a lot develops skill, but choosing what to publish is probably more a question of taste.
Jazz soloing is probably a good counterexample, but a lot of jazz solos aren't that remarkable and these people are at the top of their game so their worst is likely most peoples best?
>> IMO the combination of openness to experimentation and instinctual feel for rightness/wrongness to guide that experimentation is the foundation of useful creativity.
This statement strongly resonated with me, thank you for this.
Yeah, I would compare Jacob Collier to Snarky Puppey or Tigran Hamasayan.
All of them are virtuosic and are branching away from classical ideas of jazz, and Collier might even be the smartest of the group, but he can't write a song to save a life.
Snarky Puppey and Tigram have on the other hand, found a fresh niche for themselves that is similarly creative, but has the humility of adding the necessary sugar and milk to make their supremely creative and bitter music drink palatable to a listening audience.
The lady who cleans Willie Nelson's tour bus finds scraps of paper with lyrics which have more potential than most of what is actually published in Nashville by other artists over the same period of time.
And this is what he's throwing away.
It can be amazing what one individual can do sometimes.
>the trouble with intelligence, they say, is that it's mostly inborn. The evidence for this seems fairly convincing, especially considering that most of us don't want it to be true, and the evidence thus has to face a pretty stiff headwind.
I think this is very well put.
Could be even more trouble with bright illumination if it turns out to be inborn to different degrees too.
Then if you need both in excess the odds get pretty slim for a dual strike between such outliers.
>He’s remembered as a pianist not because his fingers were quick and sensitive, but instead because he pushed boundaries in completely original ways.
Or because a lot of this (even classical music) is pop culture, so he was quirky enough to establish a brand name, whereas others equally competent or even better didn't come with an assosicated story to sell them...
I think the quirkiness perhaps helped propel him to greater fame, and made his name "stick" more easily, but it's certainly not the reason he is famous or remembered. There are countless quirky no-names. He was of note more so because of his technical capacity and strong convictions for his unorthodox approach, which he voluminously described in writing, interviews, etc.
Do you have any personal favorite interviews? I frequently find that folks discussing their craft at a high level often illuminates opportunities for cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer.
Yes! I love his discussion about Bach and appropriate use of instruments here [1]. He also gets into why he chooses some tempos, what’s arbitrary and what’s not, where to seek consistency in interpretative choices, and so on. I adore this interview!
I also love his slightly hyperbolic hot take on why Mozart isn’t that good [2]. It’s hilarious, to me at least, hearing him roast Mozart then proceed to play his music beautifully.
You'll hear Herb Alpert's "Rise" live on today sampled (not trumpet, guitar) in Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize," with enduring appeal. I went to dig up the connection and it's a lot more interesting than I first suspected. "Rise" was actually composed by Herb's nephew, and the article goes into why the Alperts rejected many sampling requests before accepting Notorious.
which is the same song as the one Judy Garland made famous, but Alpert's version is heavenly.
Before the intertoobs and CDs, I searched everywhere for that album (Herb Alpert's Ninth) for years, and finally found a brand new mint one in the cutout bin with the slot sliced in it. For $1. I couldn't believe my prize!
P.S. The yootoob version has poor sound quality. To hear how good Herb is with the trumpet, ya gotta get the CD.
> Before the intertoobs and CDs, I searched everywhere for that album (Herb Alpert's Ninth) for years, and finally found a brand new mint one in the cutout bin with the slot sliced in it. For $1. I couldn't believe my prize!
This cut-out practice is new to me, but a related one in the publishing/bookselling industry rang true. I learn a lot just by reading and reflecting on your comments. Thanks for posting this personal story.
I think we've lost a lot with the transition to digital, these kinds of bargain bins included, which is part of the reason I too love all kinds of secondhand stores and swap meets, etc.
I regularly troll pawn shops and thrift stores, you never know what you'll find there. For example, they usually have a bin full of vinyl. The staff pulls out any that are valuable, but what is valuable on the market has no relation to what I consider valuable. Jackie Gleason, for example, made many records that aren't available on CD. His stuff is great if you enjoy easy listening, old style.
A couple months back, the pawn shop had acquired what looked like an old DJ's 12 inch single collection from the 70s and 80s. $.50 per disk. I grabbed them all.
I’ve found that archive.org also has a large number of out of print vinyl.
What the market finds valuable is partially a signaling problem, as it is only loosely connected to any individual’s taste, and more connected to quick sales for record companies. The market as a whole can’t discover prices for products that individuals aren’t aware of and seeking out in the small window of first-sale. It’s not too different from the traditional VC investment strategy, now that I consider it.
I should also note that Bernstein was widely known to be a complete asshole.
I think this is partial confirmation of pg's observation that independence of thought is important for creativity: if you are both arrogant and independent, you have all the ingredients to be an asshole.
If arrogance is orthogonal to creativity, as I suspect, but independence of thought is not, then we would see a disproportionate number of assholes among those with new ideas.
This reminded me of Sergiu Celibidache, a revered and criticized conductor who had a different opinion about tempo on major classical works.
He viewed his performances more as "experiences" and certainly pushed the boundaries of the conventional style of playing classical music.
I really like his renditions of Bruckner, and the ending for Symphony N4 probably best describes why [1]. He does not rush, letting the music sync in, undoubtedly different from the "right" version.
Not being afraid of criticism is an essential quality of people who discover new things. Smart people often get dragged into the "correct", "proper" way of thinking, doing science, playing music, drawing, or doing other creative work. This is the best way to learn, but unfortunately, you need to go on an unbeaten path that is often criticized and even ostracized to discover new things. The life of Van Gogh and many others is quite an example of that.
> "What am I doing conducting it?" I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it, too.
That is a VERY respectful point of view. I admire that so much.
Nice posting, thanks for that. I still cant really understand the hype around Gould and its goldberg interpretations. Yes, they are good. But no, they are far from the best I know. If you ever get the time and a recording, listen to Ragna Schirmer playing Goldberg. Her interpretation blows Gould's out of the water, IMO :-)
Gould is a sort of package deal. I like his Goldbergs but to see his “authentic self” I’d look at something a little kookier of his like his Alla Turca [1]. It will not be what you expect.
However, what set Gould apart from his colleagues was his innovative and iconoclastic interpretations of well-known works with “standard” prescriptions. He had fundamentally different, but wholly consistent, ideas about musical interpretation, recording technology, presentation of music to audiences, and so on. He’s remembered as a pianist not because his fingers were quick and sensitive, but instead because he pushed boundaries in completely original ways.
Leonard Bernstein—a noted conductor and pianist—quips about this when he conducted the Brahms Concerto in D minor, with Gould at the piano [1]. I recommend listening but I’ll copy his words (from [2]) for posterity.
> Don't be frightened. Mr. Gould is here. He will appear in a moment. I'm not, um, as you know, in the habit of speaking on any concert except the Thursday night previews, but a curious situation has arisen, which merits, I think, a word or two. You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a performance distinctly different from any I've ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms' dynamic indications. I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould's conception and this raises the interesting question: "What am I doing conducting it?" I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good faith and his conception is interesting enough so that I feel you should hear it, too.
> But the age old question still remains: "In a concerto, who is the boss; the soloist or the conductor?" The answer is, of course, sometimes one, sometimes the other, depending on the people involved. But almost always, the two manage to get together by persuasion or charm or even threats to achieve a unified performance. I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist's wholly new and incompatible concept and that was the last time I accompanied Mr. Gould. (The audience roared with laughter at this.) But, but this time the discrepancies between our views are so great that I feel I must make this small disclaimer. Then why, to repeat the question, am I conducting it? Why do I not make a minor scandal — get a substitute soloist, or let an assistant conduct? Because I am fascinated, glad to have the chance for a new look at this much-played work; Because, what's more, there are moments in Mr. Gould's performance that emerge with astonishing freshness and conviction. Thirdly, because we can all learn something from this extraordinary artist, who is a thinking performer, and finally because there is in music what Dimitri Mitropoulos used to call "the sportive element", that factor of curiosity, adventure, experiment, and I can assure you that it has been an adventure this week collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto and it's in this spirit of adventure that we now present it to you.
Because some took this as an attack on Gould, Bernstein followed up with the remark:
> Any discovery of Glenn's was welcomed by me because I worshiped the way he played: I admired his intellectual approach, his "guts" approach, his complete dedication to whatever he was doing.
Anyway, it’s an interesting parallel in the arts world. Jacob Collier is a musician of today that has similar qualities of “being smart with good ideas”.
[1] https://youtu.be/SvWPM783TOE
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Philharmonic_concer...