LOGIC SESSION BREAKDOWN: "Little Blue" (Live from New York Public Library)

[Music] okay ready [Applause] New York Public Library what's up how's everybody doing are you doing good it's so nice to see you my name's Jacob yeah and I flew the way from London to be here I flew here yesterday and uh it's warm it's it's muggy you say it's muggy Sunny muggy warm but delicious as New York always is um yeah It's it's lovely to be here and actually fairly seldom that I get a chance to specifically wax lyrical about music production um I'm asked all sorts of questions weird questions but uh the whole the

wonderful world of S of sculpting sounds and of logic and of and of The Craft of mixing and recording these are things I I care deeply about and things that are for everybody and so I'm so thrilled to be here and able to S of talk about that of all things today With all of you of all people excellent beautiful um so I I've I've heard it said in the past that when we learn music we learn all there is to know and I've been thinking about this recently i' I've come to realize it's true

when we study music when we make music when we um experience it outward inward we are grappling with and wrapping our minds and fingers and and beings around a lot of the fundamental forces that make life Possible for example within music you find the force of mathematics you find the force of physics you find the the the force of history and geography and the human spirit and empathy and Leadership and language and spelling and syntax and dimensionality and irony and intention and all these amazing things that as people we all experience in different ways but

they all exist within music and so I was just just a a we lad growing up in the world and and looking At the world and listening to the world I was deeply enamored by the the principles that I found in music and how open they they were to be to be explored and to be experimented with and so a lot of what I did when I was very small was just prod around you know what happens if you just oh oh dear oh oh you know and that's where it all starts the process of

just wondering well what what if this happens what if that happens and um I was certainly uh drawn to the piano A very small age and uh it was around the same time that I was exploring the piano that I was exploring software so I I got uh what I suppose my first real software was a Casio Keyboard anyone ever played a Casio Keyboard it's a good vibe isn't it it's a great Vibe 200 sounds 100 rhythms and that's that's the whole of music right there and so I got to Traverse all sorts of staircases

within you know like tuila Bells wow never heard those before Viola okay That's interesting you could say like honky Tong o you know and there was even like an ocean sound it's great great and he was pit so great I think number 127 was helicopter you know wow and so just the ability for my my child mind to climb in and realize the possibility of the sounds was endlessly relieving and exciting for me as a as a as a a young a young boy and when I was about seven years old I graduated from this

ker Keyboard which I love dearly still have in my room at home in London to qase and I was on does anyone use qbase by any chance I'm curious yeah good very good congratulations um does anyone use logic oh Protools anybody okay Ableton whoa that's a lot Reaper yeah come on a garage band what that's pretty cool too I thought all all great all great tools voice memos anyone yeah excellent so um yeah i i s hopped I hop ship from from CER keyboard world to to qbase and I was on qbase for about four

years four young four long years and and then for my 11th birthday I received logic and it was such a moment um and alongside logic I received an sm58 microphone great mic has anyone ever sung into an sm58 karaoke um candidates unite it's a really kind of just great microphone and and uh I was so excited because there was so much that was hearing inside my Brain that I wanted to find a way to get out of my brain and um one one of the earliest kind of principles of of making and producing and mixing

music that I was drawn to was this idea of making things that you wish existed you think what do you wish existed what do you really most want to listen to right now make that you know and so when I was just when I was small I I would listen to all sorts of different kinds of music so there would be like Stravinsky and There would be Stevie Wonder and there' be earthin of fire and and Joanie Mitchell and there' be like Bobby mcfarren and Beck and Bor and brunov social club and all sorts of

beautiful things and I I I never thought to draw any lines between these worlds I just thought well this is what music is there's all of this stuff and um and the same principle occurred I think for me when I started to to produce and create music as well it was like this idea of Throwing paint and um I was very drawn to to this this idea of kind of compound textures I thought of it as like you you take one thing and combine it with another thing and that's there's a sort of alchemy that

that happens between the two like a spark that's created and a lot of it is to do with your expectation being being warped and um expectation War warpage has become a deep fascination of mine and you can do it in so many ways you can do it sonically Which we we'll talk about when we get into logic but you can do it harmonically you can do it rhythmically you can do it melodically um you can do it lyric you can do it with with your body language on stage you know there's so many so many

ways of yeah there are so many ways of of playing with um yeah just like playing with the the the Delight of people's inner worlds but to to go back to what I said at the Beginning it's like all the forces that play are the forces that drive all of us as people to expand and explore and and explain ourselves and things and so I was I was just hooked I was absolutely hooked at age 11 I I spent every living moment that I could when I wasn't at school in this canvas world and um

one of the first things I was deeply drawn to was this idea of vocal Harmony I loved this I still do actually um you know you you record a voice another Voice another voice another voice and you create these kind of towering structures of chords anyone here like chords by any chance does anyone not like C no fair enough um yeah but to to me as a as a singer um I I had my my deafest brush brush stroke when I was when I would sing all all the notes in a chord um and and

the feeling of being a note in a chord is is a feeling I can't I can't um over overestimate it's it's like an Extraordinary extraordinary thing for example can you sing an e okay keep singing the E and I I'll put you in a few different contexts and let me know how you feel yeah in fact you can do a if you want a oh [Music] [Music] delightful thank you very much so feeling you experienced there and I experienced there was of modulating where you stand in a in in a in a Harmonic context in

in an environment so when you were singing a I think that was my favorite moment wow what an amazing [Music] feeling and then becoming is Lovely isn't it isn't it lovely feels like life feels like ah you know feels like turning a corner oh you know and and these these forces I I chase these down I hound them I seek them I I mine for them musically and so what happened when I got when I got in really into logic is I I would transfer some of my pianistic harmonic experiments into the human voice first

of all into logic and I'd start to paint what that felt like and it was a joy it was really an exciting premise even for example that the simple realization that you can double track or triple track or quadruple track each individual note depending on how important the notice in the CT um when I say double track and triple track do do You know what I mean so if for those who who don't who want it to be clarified if I if I record one note in I might want to double check that and record

it a second on top and what happens there is like a lovely sort phasing and like a joint you know and then triple quadruple quintuple sextuple Etc um and you can make massive sounds out of just layering voices and um yeah I just became obsessed basically with this and I I eventually sort of about 10 to 15 years Later would begin to create these like 25 track notes with like many notes so you'd have like 120 voices and it just goes bang like a church organ you know and it's amazing another thing I I became

enamored with with the human voice is that you could go anywhere you wanted to with tuning you didn't have to be locked into say these 12 notes on the piano which is Li it's a it's certainly limitation um yeah in case anyone here doesn't know um Basically about 500 years ago um it was It was kind of decided on mass that the best way to divide an octave this is an octave was into 12 equal parts like this and and the the the concept was if if you do this in this way you can you

can create all sorts of motion and modulation and things like that where all keys are equal but in physics um that's not the way that it is and in all of your mouths at this very moment is the harmonic series and I'll Demonstrate this like have you ever done this yeah it's good isn't it and do you hear those tiny little [Music] notes just it keeps going right this is yeah this is what's known as the overturn series The harmonic Series in every sound or note in nature you have these overtones and um there are

infinite like there's an infinite number of overtones and and and discovering how They're how they fit together how they're tuned is at the heart of a lot of my favorite Harmony and you could argue that the reason why we have such a sound as major and minor is because within the harmonic series are those relationships kind of inherently um and so with the with the voice you can you can climb up into the overtones and and and way past the piano the piano is like quite low R you could say it's like having like an

8bit screen it's like you Can get a certain distance but even between like and there are so many notes that I'll demonstrate so right I could keep going right but you can chop any distance into any number you want and dig out all sorts of crazy like cavernous key centers with your voice you don't have to you have to play the piano you can do it with your voice but wouldn't have discovered this if I Hadn't had my canvas of logic to experiment with you know and you take one note that's a bit Out Of

Tune and then you modulate to that note and then within that there's something inside of chin then you modulate to that note you can go into what what I like to describe as cross terrain modulation that's the term I gave it where you you essentially exit the of Safeguard of the piano and go wherever you please um and so that yeah just the the freedom that's granted To one who is reflected back on oneself in a recording environment is a astonishingly powerful and deep and great um so yeah that's that's what I'd say that's what

I just did say that um and uh yeah I've I've loaded I've loaded for you and for me um a logic session that I created on this laptop here and it's a song I wrote a song called little blue and um yeah thank you and little blue is a song that's on Jesse volume 4 which is n that came out back in uh February March was kind of like right exactly between February and March and um it's a really a really really special song in I might just sing it for you and then then we

can talk about the the the the production um but before I do this just a quick story about the song so some songs you write very quickly and they just fall out and they go oh thank you very much done this song is it was no such song uh I wrote the the verse to this song back in 2020 and I wrote the verse very quickly it was one of these verses oh I like this little blue be my shelter cre will be my oh and it just flowed out was lovely and then I thought

okay great now I write the chorus and that was not trivial and it took me about 3 and a half years to finish it um I tried so many choruses so so many and I can play you some of the ones that didn't make the song um and and the the the critical realization I found with the chorus of This song was you know sometimes when we write music often the chorus sort of gets bigger than the verse you have verse verse verse great great and then the chorus and then the back of the verse

and chor but what I didn't realize this song needed was actually a chorus that was even smaller than the verse and sometimes it's sometimes that's sometimes that's that's life you know and so I I I I was walking back from the dentist one Day and um I and I I began to sing this yeah this this course Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in your heart you're going to find a way to carry with it and I thought this is this is nice I didn't think about it for little blue at all I sort of

thought about it in its own right or for maybe for a different song and then later that that day or maybe the following day it just clicked and I thought hang on this is my little blue chorus and that was Such a a relief for me but this this song came on such a such a journey and and it's being crafted and and I I'll play it for you now if you know it you may sing along if you would like to okay ready [Music] little blue be my shelter be my CR Be my w

be my Bo be my River be the still all the moon if I could I with you to a place I never new in your eyes so dark and open there's a Light that leads me back to you CR your lord so far away I I hear you say You'll Never Walk Lord singing Don't Be Afraid of the Dark sing loud in your heart yeah you going find a way to car The Way of the World on your Shoulders I'm going to find your way home [Music] little blue be my anchor be my light my

cor star be my darkness oh Darkness Be My danger be the strings of my guitar little blue how I love you Since strong I saw and true your W so dark over light that leads me back to you [Music] you're not so far away I hear you say you never work [Music] Lord singing Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in in your heart you're going to find a way to carry the way of the world on your soul going to find our way don't be afraid of the light there so for right now you're going

to find a way to carry the way of the world all your Shoulders you're going to find way find your way more find [Music] thank you thank you very much thank you all thank you thank you um you sounded beautiful really lovely so that's little blue and now we shall dive in to little blue logic Edition so in fact Jose can we switch to the headset now thank you bro hey hey yes yes okay so welcome welcome home it's your new home we have a track count today of 635 which is actually not so bad

it's all right it's so middle middle of the middle of the road and um yeah so so most of these uh most of these tracks that you see here are in fact folders of additional Tracks um yes yes indeed oh yeah I forgot to say actually when when if you have a question you can just you can always just ask you can always just ask the question but maybe before we really get into the questions I'll I'll give you a brief overview in fact the best way to give you no is I'll just press play

there you go little blue be my Shelter be my CR be my be my boy there he is be my Riv be the still [Music] s if I could I go with you to a place I never [Music] knew in your eyes so dark and Open there's a light that leads me back to you cuz you're not so far away I [Music] hear singing Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in your heart you going to find a way to calary [Music] the okay we'll stop there for now e um so where to begin there are

so there are so many Sounds here um and when it comes to having lots of sounds at the same Time which is position I somehow always find myself in um the the trick really really it's it comes down to balance ing forces and um and arcs of different lengths I think about this a great deal you have the Ark of the song you have the Arc of the verse you have the Arc of phrase you have the Arc of of the note The Arc of the word um you have arcs that go down you have

arcs that go over the top you have arcs to go through long arcs short arcs Um and you have arcs within words you have arcs within caes arcs within time there's so many different kinds of arcs man and um and I think much as I would like to sit here and say well I did all of this on purpose um I would I would genuinely say that I did that the way I tend to mix things is very intuitive however um it's possible I think to to have a high resolution imagination and be conscious of

that but also still to be intuitive and I think one thing that I often hear is but Jacob how is it possible to make music that's both emotional and Technical at the same time how is this how is this done and it's it's a funny question because I feel like um I never really consider these two things as to being at odds with each other everybody has a language no matter how conscious they are of their language you you operate within a language and you you learn language by gathering from all around your life and

um music is one Language I deeply enjoy and um and I think that yeah when I when I enter into a state of making music that the last thing I'm thinking is right like this is I'm I'm going to I'm going to deliberately make people feel like this or this is the reason why I'm making the song you know or I'm going to prove this element of the song it's it's much more about well what's what decisions could I make that make this song More itself and that's a good way of measuring many Things actually

in in in life it's not is it is it good or is it bad or is it big or is it small or is it relevant or is it valuable or is it just is it itself because something that's deeply itself has like a sort of um incandescent naturally to it that shines and it illuminates the things that that that render it necessary in the world you know like things find the things that they're meant to find if they are themselves but the moment you make Something that's trying to be many things or trying to

be something that's that's not that's not itself sometimes that sort of like opalescence can be obscured and so often when I make a song the The Art of it really is to is to discover what about this makes this this and you can say the same thing is true for any human um sometimes I'm asked Jacob how do you how how does one find one's musical voice and I I would answer by saying well it's already there you Kind of have to just remove what's what's not you because it's all there you're already there um

but the way I approach production songwriting mixing all these things often is to the most important thing at first is is not to reject any ideas you shouldn't not put something on the page because you're worried it might be weird or wrong or bad or strange the moment you you start considering your choices as as kind of like judged as good or bad for me Personally I find my ideas start drying up because you get a bit sort of curtailed by all the options and all the the the structures and so often when I make

a song I'll I'll put loads in the song that doesn't end up being the song in the end but it all needed to come out for me then to be able to remove the things I felt weren't necessary but only through the expulsion of these ideas was able to actually discover what the what the root of the what the elements are in Fact had let all the ideas fly then I I wouldn't be in such a position I wouldn't know what it is you know and so there's a there there's a conscious process of of

kind of um I I like to think of it as like paint throwing and then there's the process of being like okay so what is this at its most like rooted what what is this I'm trying to say and then you you kind of sculpt with the things you have and some of those things you won't need for the song or You could say that you did need them but they won't be necessary for the final version um and so yeah I think it's it important to say that yeah first of all a lot of

the processes that I will describe may may appear like they were consciously done for a reason but the truth of matter is I I noticed myself doing them a lot of the time and and looking back at logic I always I'm always kind of surprised to think oh gosh I I did that you know and um it's Like almost like I'm I'm sitting in my own audience watching as well I don't know what's going to happen my my job is to let let the thing happen and see you know so anyway I guess to start

at the beginning here's some uh here's some tape hiss isn't that great I'll just turn that up a bit hugely underrated to me take it's it's the difference between like air in the room and no air in the room and you Want air in your room sometimes it dep depends on the story you want you want to tell but um this here this was this was the root of the ver this this is where it all began was this sound and this sound is called lift your headcore merged one bip one6 and that's because lift

your head was a different song how do I get to find it here here we are um avert your eyes uh oh gosh I don't even know it's going to be in this in this photo but Let's let's have a look oh no okay I'll get i'll get to the you conversation in a little while but maybe lift your heads that's fine yeah little head was a song it's like an idea for a song that I wrote went like it was in D flat it went lift your head above the sea show you all all

of me if you tell the truth to me then I and that's what I had for it and I kind of liked it and I maybe I'll finish it one day don't steal it um but this Like this sound was at the heart of it and I'm a sucker for a drone I don't know about you if something's just repeating and constant I'm like yes and everything starts flowing because it's a bit like what we did earlier when you sang that e you can just you can go you go anywhere I like you know and

so I so I I I I kned it up to eat so I thought this song has Been E flat it's one of those songs and um I also I liked where it sat in my voice little blue feels like a sweet part of my voice and um so everything kind of everything kind of came from there and what I did at first I think I I had these guitars going here [Music] and that that just felt like a nice place to start um and what are these dots here what's this oh Yeah that's actually

a balica which I have in my house do you guys have bers oh yeah um I think this actually is the old balica F and uh [Music] yeah sounds a bit weird but anyway that was the yeah that was that was the [Music] thing you know so that went round um and then I yeah I of eqed that here as you can see and Uh and it made this just it's like a it's like a womb you know literally like a womb it's like you're within this lovely thing which is again a repeating pattern but

it's not 1 one one11 one11 it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 which is it it's the nice thing about sevens are that they amble constantly in a new way so at no point in this verse do you have a the same undercurrent going through it oh it's Five sorry my bad [Music] so that just that just runs right through if I take off the EQ that's the battle [Music] like back under water so

yeah that's the that's the heart I'm going to mute old bica go away um and uh and what else do we have there's not much else there is this electric piano Here which is kind of doing the same thing as the guitar and that's just like the logic piano like default sound which is great and I use it all the time hater is going to hate but so that was the warmth of the the thing and a lot of these things are recorded thinking oh this is just a demo you know and later down the

line I'll I'll do the real thing no such new thing was necessary um because I I I had what I needed and so then halfway through this verse there are a few additional elements that that join The Fray [Music] um one of these is it's in fact a Grammy I actually play I I played a Grammy of mine for my for my sins and this is the sound I don't know anything else that sounds like this so but basically I like muting and I'm muting It it's nice isn't it good sound in fact it's the

Grammy for all I need for no for all night long so there so there you go and and I actually I've used this sound few times I I return to it because it's like a very delicate s a goo Bell and um so yeah so that's one thing that comes in just like adds a bit high end to the momentum because the momentum's in the middle right now um but the the things I really the mainly what I do in this vers Is like I add high end and then low and low end and it's

just just just goes like like your experience just like increases and and gets dimensional and there's also this heartbeat here which is some of the low end which is which is just great um my my kick sounds I I I do love battery I don't know how many of you love battery but I oh dear uh I think I can actually let's see if it finds it hey it Did one of those rare occasions so yeah I I have a lot of just custom made battery sounds i' I've made myself just based of of samples

I found and and all sorts of things in fact I'm not going to I'm not going to mess with that I'm going to make duplicate the track isn't it and then yeah so the these are all my different my different kicks um and kick one is my favorite oh isn't that great really just it really just it does The trick so so yeah that's that's the one I that's the one I used for this and um yeah I've got all sorts of interesting since we're here I've got all sorts of interesting libraries like glass all

right let me turn off the transient shaper it's good isn't it and then uh gongs of course oh no I'll skip that one so that's really good it's like a weird like buffering isn't it do you hear that Ben don't know what's going on with that oh well yeah I can't tell either no it's fine I so Focus okay um guns of course sometimes they just they just come in handy sorts of different rims here and so yeah some of the sounds I record myself a lot of them are are just from various sample libraries

I've come across over the years and um some of them are quite textural like these are just wooden Sounds oh and swords honestly swords are great like little joust here and there there no one any home anyway I that was a total dig um I've also got got this so the subbase has entered the freay here as well and I I ride I ride these Dynamics oh what's the shortcut for this aha yeah so it's s carefully carefully ridden here if I Could I go with you and again it's a lot it's just about shape

isn't about arcs so rather than like it's more [Music] like you know it's lovely so that was that was the that's the that's the low end a little bit of a Shaker here yeah innocent enough is there anything else oh yeah there's this thing Haw it yeah I don't know how many of you Know about hocketing but Hocking is love it's it's a great it's a great thing to do it's like um you you divide a Melody between multiple voices it's really fun if you do it with multiple people like you and you go you

know this kind of thing and it just it adds it's almost like a sort of Steve reichian you know this this kind of [Music] thing so so there's that and if I'm my My ears don't mistake if I'm not mistaking my ears there are also some guitar fills maybe they're baked into [Music] this yeah just a little bit of decoration here and there um so like there really aren't there's not a huge amount going on here but there's a lot of space but it's just about detail and and sensitivity and vibron which is actually a

lovely uh lovely element there um so that that's Kind of the verse and uh and then there's then there's the the Jacob of it all and some of you might be wondering well what do I do to my voice to make it sound like this and um the first thing to say is I have a a microphone uh I do have a microphone and it's a it's a u87 nyman microphone but within it is a capsule which is actually more like a it's like a u47 capsule is that is that right Ben where's Ben see

at the back yeah yeah so it's like it's a custommade Capsule which is behaves like a 47 but it's within an 87 so has the brightness of an 87 but the sort of like richness of the 47 which is an extraordinary gift um and it was a microphone Guru named CL Hine who lives in Portland Oregon he um yeah he he he built it for me he heard me sing he said I think I know what you need and I thought really and then he gave me the microphone I was blown away absolutely Blown Away

however the microphone inherently doesn't have a Huge amount of natural high end it's not like a normal 87 so a lot of the highend I I use EQ for this EQ here is a rather involved um and to give credit where credits to you Ben who is the man I often refer to I've often referred to throughout this master class he's he's like a vocal EQ Guru and so he there he is and he really really helped with this um so many of these notches are B but as you can see there's there's yeah there

there's an amount of a high end that's Going on up here excite the neutron Exciter is also just like pretty undefeated and I every time I do any vocals I always use I pretty much always use the Exciter and The Equalizer from Neutron Neutron 4 as currently is there are many neutrons but four is the top one the best there's a little bit of compression too and so the rest is kind of just the microphone doing the talking and at me I suppose [Music] Um with you so that's that soothe anyone use soothe here it's

it's crazy isn't it it's really it's really something Soo has this kind of um impossible superpower of of sort of taming nasty High mids and highend it just makes everything like gluey and transparent and it's especially amazing for orchestra actually it's insane but for this it's like any highend or even like the like 's and things they they get beautifully tamed by sooth um and so And this is the frequency band so yeah around like four 5K that's the the top of the top of the tree that's that's being soothed um RX DSA I'm basically

just a huge fan of isotope plugins in general I think they're just incredibly great so Neutron is an isotope plugin as is rx10 um and so yeah this is this is just dsing my voice basically and everyone has a different sort of threshold of dsing that works for them fast works for me um so that's good and Then there's this uad plugin and U plugins are slightly newer in my in my imagination uh but yeah this it it kind of it glues it together has a little bit of highend it creates some just like subtle

texture um and is and is nice just like as as a final a final glue and then I I also am sending this voal to a delay and indeed a Reverb and the Reverb is ulb I don't know how many of you use tiv verb it's just an astoundingly realistic kind of emulator of real life Spaces and Beyond but this is the mt250 um kind of a preset which is which is really really good um and I often use it for voice because it's not super long it's just kind of rounded and and pacious in

a in a delightful way um and so that yeah and i' I I've actually looks like here we've DS we've dsed it before the Reverb because you don't want the rever to go and take over and then you've there's also some e EQ after the Reverb basically getting rid of the low End because you don't really want sorry I'll keep that up for a time a bit longer so you can see it yeah so because you don't really want the REO to be going not really uh and then the delay I I really I'm I'm

yet to find a substitute for Echo boy I'm sure some of you know sound voice plugins but they're really really good and often what I'll do is I'll I'll set it to dual Echo mode which which means it rather than it just going there are two different Echoes That are sort of left and right um and so I've got one doing an eighth note and one doing an eighth note triplet so it goes so it's kind of like it's just stereo and and and nice so if you listen closely you can hear those things at

[Music] play let see if I turn it right [Music] up yeah so this so that's that that's basically the voice that's that's that's the that's the whole deal and um yeah if I if I unhide the Hidden Track these are all the takes that I didn't use um so I really wanted to make sure every every note of this phrase was just was just pristine and good so so that's what I did I I'll re-hide those again um so so yeah that essentially is the that's essentially the verse we've got as far as the verse

little bits and pieces of [Music] a little bit of BB just just to color Things in it's like such a nice little crayon you can pick up if you need to just to be like see there it's like it's like the energy that's created from the from the main lyric vocal is just carried slightly further by being transferred from voice to backing vocal and it's like it's like you've got the the the counterparts that say I've got you yeah keep going keep it going it's like it's like your friends You know and so I I

mean I always come back to voices cuz they just are so emotional they're always emotional and always helpful and the voice can do so many things and when I was a child I used to just stretch my voice into all these different characters so you know you can be like really like a sine wave like could be really like direct and you can also [Music] be and be more of a like illustrious Breathy P dra like if you want to get like proper chesty and you can go go so many places with this but um

yeah these these are just tin little bits of bits of crayoning under the under the lead [Music] vocal yeah like that's one word I wanted to harmonize [Music] it little bit of company which is nice and I like to think of some of these Elements as you know you don't hear them but you feel them you feel them there and and even though you can't point it out and say ah this has entered the frame it's like you your emotional experience is still yet Guided by them by their presence whether it's yeah harmonic thing or

an emphasis thing or whatever it's like the it's like you're painting a picture and and you have your your foreground characters but what's happening in the background the shading And the shadows and the the way the light falls and and the texture of the leaves like those things why you don't necessarily pay attention to them straight away it's it makes such a difference in the just the believability of your of your your image so so that's that and then in this in this bridge this is where I sort of like dug in and did my

favorite thing in the world which is [Music] This and so there's there's lots of highend on those because I I really wanted them to be oh this one's Neutron 3 it's slightly older older part of the session I guess um yeah look at that Hefty ski down there um and yeah this is this does what what no other instrument I've ever found can do which is just paint the harmony basically so like this is my Harmony sort of describer in the section if I mute these voices there's not that much going on actually So it's

like it's like really the it's the tide it's the ocean and um and if you listen as well you can hear that when I do ver the f is often is often kind of um Chul uh timed so it might be like a lot of the time I don't sing with lots of or because you can't hear the note you know but there's a little bit [Music] here there you he and it's just like it just Thrills it out makes it makes it More textural more more Landing so so that so that's nice and then

underneath you've got these little bits of climbing creatures dyone here this is the thing this is a um spectronics patch I believe here it is come on I'm omere anyone use omnisphere here any chance yeah omnisphere is wonderful such a [Music] lovely so this is a like a deliciously sampled d one of these instruments I had Never heard of until I got the um keycap plugin but it sounds great and um I played this um I played this in on my midi keyboard sounds like this [Music] oh I do not know what happened there that

was really that was really interesting anyway um yeah and I I bounced that down so it's all safe and sound uh so so that's nice and then I think there's one other thing which is Just guitars yeah here they are [Music] and these are these are all hidden it seems but I'm going to unhide them oh and let's power them up so I I record my guitars into usually it's a it's like a matched pair of MAV microphones like a a they're just they're great for string instruments great for percussion instruments there's lots of really

clear high-end um and when I my first album Made was called in my room and I made made in my room with essentially only mono microphones that I panned manually around so I'd record every single sound kind of I mean other than the drums which I had like a a pair of something on the top I I did everything with essentially a mono micr then I would yeah i' pan them around whereas and and then once I started the Jesse process I began to fall in love with recording things naturally in the stereo so rather

Than panning something left and recording it more and panning it left you get two microphones which act as left and right and then you can manually P them physically by saying I'm going to plan this one to the left or I'm going to plan this one to the right and the the believability of the space you create increases drastically um so that that was definitely like a really interesting thing for me to for me to learn uh let me uh here we go so yeah I Here's the um here's the Mavis and then this is

actually the oh that looks mono maybe I did a DI in does it sound like the ey that's the haries though maybe it's my 87 I'm not sure and uh it's being a bit sluggish loading these things up but you you you get the drill so these are these are these are guitar tracks which is very cool I'm going to go ahead and hide those again Because we do not need you anymore do you remember what guitar you were playing for that good question I think I was probably playing so nowadays I play a a

five string guitar but this was before I got the five string guitar and so I was playing a six string guitar which I bullied into being five string adjacent which I believe was a a Takamine Guitar and I think I probably tuned it something like I think that was my that was my Solution at the time and the F guitar is just that's the five string guar so yeah so and yeah if I had the guitar here I could show you but it's it's essentially like a fifth based fifth based shoing my first guitar I

ever received was a tener guitar it's like a four string folk guitar um I walked into a shop age 17 and just like my drawer just dropped what's that and I went up and played it I thought this is for me and so I I bought that was like One of the first I bought for myself and it was so exciting and uh yeah then I start to conform um six strings into being a bit like a bit like four strings and then eventually five strings and then I one day I called up Taylor I

said Taylor can you please just make me a five string guitar I know it's a long shot and they actually said yes so then they made me a five string guitar which I've been playing on tour for the last two and a half years and then there was An electric version of the guitar made by stranberg which is also really fun to play but this was back in the day when I I wished I had a five string guitar but it was in fact a six string guitar um but yeah the the thing yeah the

thing with that is it's it's very much open tuning it's like lots of fifths and nothing fourths Z third here none of that so so so this is the bridge then [Music] Overwatching and I'm sure you you you were wondering why did I put this gong here and that's why just just a wi You'll Never Walk Alone [Music] sing afraid of the so the the chorus is all about this you know the darken your heart of course and um you you combine that with the with the heartbeat and you get you get a pretty emotive

sort of State you know it's literally dark heart you know um I really I really wanted to describe this accurately and I I this is the first time I play the bass um anyone here play the bass nice I play like hner violin base like the Paul McCartney base which I really really adore and this was actually the first time I'd ever played it was when I was recording for this song [Music] Um nice round notes you know um I would I don't normally put Reverb on my base but I did for this course and

it's Valhalla ladies and gentlemen Valhalla um so that's the thing and with the lead vocal here I did a thing which I sometimes do when I do things and the thing that I did in this case was recorded my lead vocal fact I recorded this lead vocal in a rush because I had to leave the house I think I take plane or something and uh it was like I just want to get a rough just want to get a rough take of this chorus so I can listen to on the play in and like think

about whether I'm good at music or not and um and so this was just like a really rough like rough take of the thing which I just bounced quickly and I loved it and I S kept it um and that that's what this sounds like Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in your Heart you going to find and then the thing that I mention the afor mentioned thing that I did was the thing I like something I like to call droing which is a nice one you guys should should steal this um Droid is when

you essentially transpose up the exact same audio file it's the same audio file and I just put up 12 semon which is an octave and I've hard panned them but if I don't if I if you do that Without um messing with if you just do that by itself then this is what it sounds like which just sounds pretty silly so I use little alter Boy again it's one it's a sound to favorite to lower the forant and the forant is is the is the word you give to it's almost like the the gender of

the vocal it's like hey it's like you can be really like this or you can be really like this you know and um so because it was 12 Semitones worth of forant stretched up it sounds like Alvin um not Alvin the base intake six the opposite Alvin the Chipmunk or and the I don't know anyway so this is what you get of like a balanced it's really [Music] interesting yeah how yeah it's fun I'm definitely a creature of habit so when I find something I like I'm just like that will Do forever until until someone

says you know that's really inefficient you know um so little old boy I've used for six or seven years someone told me you should get sound toys just and and I believe them whoever they were and so I got sound toys and turns out it was a great decision and you you all too should get sound toys and the the the the delay I mentioned on Echo boy that's also sound toys and and so is this and there's a bunch of other really good Ones there's the crystallizer which I really love there's the filter freak

which I really love there's the um the uh devil lock which I use all the time get distorted from on but this is really really good for format like I'll show you what it does when [Music] I see that's the that's the me change the format so like this is too low here so you want something in the Middle so that's where I ended up and I actually did each the left and right did slightly different so that it wouldn't sound mono it would sound like slightly stereo so I had a different format here of

oh interesting so what I did here with this one I transposed this up and octave using Flex in logic you know how you on the top corner you know you can you can type in a number of trans the transposed you can do it there so with this one I did that here Um but in order to make the one on the right sound different it's the same audio F sound as different as possible to sound the most stereo I actually did it natively in little alter boy I put the pitch up 12 here in

the plugin and then the performant I also changed here so it goes up five instead of down five so it's like a different algorithm to achieve the same result and so yeah so so it sounds like slightly different characters when you combine [Music] them just has this ghostly presence and and again it's it's one of these Feld hear things it's it's pretty buried in the [Music] mix but it it feels like you've met a new [Music] character and it's it's almost like this is to me this is like as as a songwriting point this is

like a it's It's a it's a mantra isn't it it's like something that is that you that you speak to yourself or that is spoken to you by a a great comforter you know um and so this idea don't be Frid in the dark you're going to find your way to carry the way the one you shoulders you're going to find a way home and um so it's almost like this other charact it's almost like an otherworldly character which is also inherently kind of you because you do know your way but Sometimes you have to

be reminded so that was a bit of the sort of like emotional state that I was going for here um or noticed I I was going for in retrospect um more like and um and yeah let me see whether this has turned on no it's not no it's not do do you know lenon Stella any body lenon Stella yeah lenon Stella sang some sang some BBS on this song um not there that was ended up being muted but she she comes she comes In later on and she has a beautiful voice like a really ephemeral

just sensitive gorgeous voice it's lovely so that's literally that's literally the chorus that's everything in the chorus except for one key ingredient um and the key ingredient is the audience choir so how many of you have ever has have has anyone ever been to a Jacob show before yeah oh great did you sing in the audience Choir Oh yeah should we do a quick one now so I I I'll show you what I did for little blue that wasit quite cheeky well it's not that cheeky that was a little bit so I was on tour

and I was in well I was in the world touring and I had this song little blue and I thought I I really want some bvs but not just like ooh kind of bvs but like colossal human massive bvs I thought well I could probably do it with the audience choir but I don't want to tell them that I've got a new song coming out yet so I'll keep it secret so instead I Just conducted them you with the song in my head playing so I played the chords live and Incorporated it into something else

in the show then I went home and I dragged it into my session and and and it was it was great and I actually I then made a I made a plugin out of audience choir voices which some of you may have does anybody have that plugin I can show it to you later but um yeah I fashion together like a whole bunch of cities from from the tour and it's a Free plugin it's just available for free on Native Instruments and um and yeah but this was like the root of it and so what

I did on stage was essentially if I just if I can if I divide here down the middle here and maybe just like this row as well so like middle actually no you guys be a you be a row and then row row yeah so audience quiet yeah oh [Music] oh oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] very good super so marvelous in the New York Public Library of all places very good so the lovely thing about you audiences are that there ever expanding and uh possible Combinations of it's like a massive instrument you you can

play and so what I essentially did for little blue was something to the effect of uh if I just uh so if I [Music] go so yeah so don't be afraid of the do in your you're going to find our way to car the [Music] Whe on your shoulders you're going to find a way find away let's stop there yeah so the the idea was I had the song go my head um I recorded audiences singing these parts and I'll play you the recordings cuz they sound amazing and event the evental places I used were

Vienna Austria Brisbane Australia and Sydney Australia they were the three Best in well I would say the three best in E flap because I did I T in all sorts of keys um and sometimes I didn't plan what key the a squ was going to be in in fact most of the time I didn't and I would just get to the end of a song and I'd be going and then I would just go a [Music] ah and then a cord would hang in the air supposedly that would all the all those notes and that

would be that would be The key we'd be in so and I always change I constantly change key it's a it's a really bad habit um it's like a yeah like a psychotic key changing something i' i' a condition um but uh but yeah just these were the shows I ended up in E Flat essentially and then I remember in Sydney I did deliberately do the little blue cord sequence because I knew I wanted to get something but but yeah so the way that sounds in fact it sounds The best way to describe this is

the second chus which is here Vienna yeah this is called Vienna audience but in fact it's not only Vienna it's other places too and this is the sound of it [Music] [Music] ignore the crackling [Music] are youing AUD the audience so we have and Ben you can maybe even talk to this best But we have we have a number of ambient mics it ranges depending on the size of the venue we have normally between four and eight ambient mics so normally have two on the stage facing the audience and for big venues like in Sydney

because it was a beautiful venue and I knew I wanted to do audience I knew it would sound good cuz Sydney always sound good it's like a guarantee um so we actually had Mars towards the back of the room too just to have all all the different Options and um but the amazing thing about the audience is it sounds honestly sounds amazing just through a phone Mike as well so I think some of this is even just done through a phone because if you just yeah if you just film through your phone that the compression

it's all there the only thing is it's mono and so the Amit mics are great for when you want it to be really stereo um but yeah we so we we recorded yeah every audience of that of that year 20 I record every Show just for archive anyway but since we're here I I'll show you the plugin I think it's on here oh really oh this CU yeah that's right okay actually you have um Native Instruments let's let's try we can we can even just download it now if it's not because it's it's quite pretty

small it's pretty it's free um yeah I I'll show you show you how we did it Jacob call oh is a prototype oh no uh okay maybe this isn't the best way to do this Oh it's kind of there this is kind of the plugin okay so these are all the cities that I used in the end these are like the rooms with the lowest aircon noises and the best tuning and blah blah blah um and you can literally go home and do this like today this is for free instrument and uh let me just

put this a bit higher there you go and the cool thing about this Instrument is you can change the bow [Music] sound so I had to do like an Olympic amount of planning to make sure I essentially covered every major or minor Triad on all four of our sounds without telling them um but I I I pretty much did it and then there were a few shows the end of the store where I actually said like okay guys got to be honest I'm I'm making an instrument that's for you for free and I'd love for

you to LIT can you just sing F sh on an e please and then and then so it like filled in the gaps um but but it's it's fun and then there's also some some percussion sounds oh no no these are like just Triads these are raw raw Triads there's some really cute animations as well and uh yeah yeah Stomps snaps Bing yeah maybe No clap yeah I use these claps all the time and you can too um they're really uh yeah they're just like proper you know claps like on on mass I think these

claps are pretty much Copenhagen only Copenhagen was we played in this V called Vega Copenhagen and it had Hollow floor and it wasn't a huge R it was quite small it's like 1500 and so the floor was just like and it was just s literally that and I remember I came off Stage and I I was just like that's my stomp stomp yes you know um but but yeah so so that's that's the magic however I didn't use the on Chet instrument in this song in this in this little blue because it hadn't been made

yet so I did it manually um but I really I was so moved uh by the incorporation of these 10,000 or so people in my song it made me weep when I was making the song cuz just the the feeling of all these strangers just lifting Don't Be Afraid Of the Dark it's beautiful it's so special and I feel really really lucky be afraid of the dark in your heart you're going to find a way to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders going to find a way don't be afraid of the light

it's all right you're going to find your way to carry the weight of the World on your shoulders you're going to find your way so that's the thing and in the first chorus you do hear the audience choir but it's filters it's like underwater this is the first cor choir which is also really special I think I'm pretty sure it's the same the same second chus bounc down and I've got a chunking great big EQ on it and um the other thing to say about this is it's very again very heavily Written um art and

so it really swells it's literally it's like the ocean it's like just SWS if I took away the automation it just sounds like a flat sound but it's it's the it's this that you get with the automation which is really it's it's like a yeah just hopefully evocative of all the of the push and pull of the journey that you're kind of traveling on you know so um so that's that and um and then then we meet our our s of secondary Character who is none other than the mighty Brandy carile um and Brandy I've

been a fan of Brandy's for so many years and her storytelling vocally is just kind of like unparallel to me and I I I really had a strong feeling that I wanted like a another character to join the song to lift it up and I'd written the song and recorded the second verse but I I called up Brandy um who I actually met because Brandy reached out to me about coming over to Joanie Mitchell's house and playing with jany Mitchell which literally blew my mind but Brandy kind of host these jam sessions at Jan's house

and um and I was invited to do that so I met Brandy and then yeah it was a couple years later I said you know Brandy I've got a song that I really think you could offer some wisdom to you know and she agreed to record it like about 2 three days later it was an amazing turnaround um incidentally if anyone's in Los Angeles In uh October I'm actually playing piano on the joury Mitchell Hollywood Bowl shows so I'll see you there um thanks to Brandy but here is Brandy now since we're since we uh

since we're talking about her where where is she oh here she is [Music] yeah be my danger be the strings of [Music] my all right she's just beautiful isn't That amazing and um Brandy has what she have on what she have on her say it again sorry is her vocal stack the same is her vocal stack the same it's it's not dissimilar but it is is it's a whole different EQ um for Brandy is this bry's EQ yeah yeah oh no that looks like an effect EQ uh trying to figure out where the where the

root of that is it might even be baked into the stem oh here it is I think this is this is potentially the EQ Yeah no it is that one okay yeah so Brandy is she has a whole different kind of tonality to me because my voice is naturally quite mellow my voice ends up often needing some high-end help on a mic Brandy has is quite bright tone so in a sense like as you can see all I've done here is just tame tame it a little bit um and yeah some some of them is

and again Ben Ben bloomo here is is like master of U and he was so helpful here and the Exciter once again the Exciter Is so helpful the excite what the excit does it just like brightens in in a in a in a distortion native way like it's almost like it adds like a tape saturation brightness to the sound in in the frequency band that you dictate so I've dictated eight here 8.7k and up which is pretty high and it's distorting this amount um and so yeah just just as point I can't I can't overestimate

neutron as a vocal EQ it's so good literally so good um so that's That and then the second verse it things are sort of kicking off so there are a few more few more vocals involved here too [Music] so you may have heard Lennon here here Lennon has made her appearance here isn't that lovely lenon Stella that is she's a very a very beloved singer to me and again one of the things that voices can do that nothing else can quite do is Glide you know so rather than going you know rather than going okay

I want my vocal I want my my PVS to go to go it can go and that emotion is very specific and especially when it's layered on top of itself multiple times it really carves like a it's a really emotional way of being Harmony you know to be a voice so yeah what you what you heard here is when on strings of my guitars You hear this sort of like all this kind of stuff and those approaches those all that stuff it goes goes a long way um and I I'll play the rest of the

BBS uh of this verse it goes like this [Music] I thought I I'd love myself just a little bit of spice there thought I just I I I put the uh put the just put the gear up and then back down quickly I thought I I might might get away with That one you know and that's just one of those things where you take a chord and then every note in this chord is replaced by the note on directly on either side of the note so this is replaced by this this is replaced by this

and this is replaced by this so you get you know what I mean so it's a good tip good tip there's a home that me You that kind of thing you know and the thing with chords and harmony which I know is not what this mcass is about is what we call Voice leading where every every voice has a a kind of pathway that makes sense so if if it was like you know that's a bit more angular still works but this chord is illegal in most countries why you ask because has an E flat

and a d and an e in it can't do That or so they say but you actually can because of the strength of the voice leading everything goes in a in a Direction so yeah so that's that's what I that's what I did just there I thought just a littleit color a little bit of spice give [Music] Mees yeah yeah yeah the question for those who didn't hear and for are watching the stream or something in the Other rooms is is am I ever afraid to break the rules that's the question right um yeah I

in in different ways as a human in in different ways um but I would say that I mean in music every single rule is arbitrary that's the first thing to say it's all made up you just do whatever you want at all times literally I'm being I'm being serious every rule is arbitrary you can do whatever you want um with that said there are forces That create strong motion and maybe weaker motion weak motion is fine if you want to do weak motion that's fine but what you can study and deepen your understanding of is

what kind of motion or I say motion because of Harmony but just choices in general feel good to you if something feels good to you then it is literally right that's it you're the you it's up to you you're the creator of the song no one else right so you decide if it's if it's good or bad there's no Such thing there's no objectively good or bad choices in music at all um with that said you can be very Discerning about your choices based on really really learning what you like it's like the biggest thing

you can ever learn is what you what you respond to and that's not to say that you should only do what you like because sometimes doing things that you don't like or you respond to in a strange way can be deeply interesting and challenging to you and others um but Understanding your compass that is the whole rule book that's that's your rule book and the only rules are yeah understand what you understand what you like and don't like and then do what feels right for the thing that you're making you know and you can even

break those if you want but I find those two that those two things helpful to remember but when it comes to Harmony I mean literally every you do anything you know every single every single note Works with every other every single other note if you just want it to um and so yeah there's there always a way you can solve a problem and even though this chord would have I would have got thrown out of school for using that it's I like it I think it sounds good and and there are reasons why from my

own study and I say study not from teachers per se but study of my reactions to things and how things work that I care about I know I can Justify this decision emotionally because I know that it feels feels resolved at the end and uh that's cool but yeah that's the study the study is not of trying to be good all the time or try or what it's just it does that feel right and and you can ask yourself if something feels right in many areas of your life not just music too um I have

a friend who asks this part of himself it's like it lives here it's like what do you think H yeah you know like about Like what do I order on the menu or should I move to Melbourne or whatever decision you want yeah you know no but you can kind of like you can describe that however you wish but there are so many ways to solve problems and there is no such thing I will say that going through Educational Systems for anyone who is remotely creative is usually a challenge for me it was definitely a

challenge there a lot of people who were sort of like frustrated with my lack of Compliance um and I was confusing as a student I wasn't a very good student I was a very good learner if I cared about the thing I was learning about but I wasn't a great student per se because I wouldn't I would I would reject things that I didn't I didn't believe believe in even if it was like you this is the truth it's like but it's not though it's not is it though no it's not um and so but

but it's it's that agal thing it's like you know education is what others Do to you but learning is is what you must always do for yourself no matter who you are or what what you're learning and that's not to say education is not of huge value you can learn from others so many things and I mean everything is learned from others ultimately but I think everything is a your relationship with with every piece of learning that you do is done within yourself so you must always be an active learner and um you know for

example with mixing Production I I never had a teacher for mixing production but I did have my my teachers were all the records I listened to and all the things I cared about and the forces that I I recognized enjoying um some of them more consciously than others and when you start making things you you discover what who you are oh I oh I respond to this oh okay you know and so that can be immensely freeing I also I think had the the Deep privilege of an incredible mom who is also pretty Unconventional as

a thinker but deeply liberating and her like big superpower for me as a kid one of them was was just giving me space to be me like be to be Jacob and that is ever changing but there was like always a sense of no matter what happened at school or happened what and then eventually that became in the music industry and all the everything's just all these different structures you end up going in they all have like usually good intentions and Often things that don't really work and problematic figure whatever but like having a mom

to be like yeah but what do you want to say was like really important for me and I I I built think so much of my you could say like lack of worry about God what happens if I play a note that's not what's going to happen it's like oh that's okay you know and then there are some days where I do get worried thought oh I don't want to you know I mean not not about chords but About other things you know think I I don't want to upset people with this but then there's

also a part of me that like quite enjoys upsetting people so there's like there's there's two there's always two sides to everything but again it's about like get getting to know your interior like your your own personal philosophical geography and being like I'm comfortable yeah I'm comfortable with that and I will say that performing live taught me so much about this kind Of Courage because life there's no I mean I remember I used to do things like this when I was small and I used to get really pretty worried beforehand you think oh no hello

please like me you know one of those things and then you sort of realize that one of the biggest gifts you can give I think as a as a being as a you could say a public person or or any person really is just to be really you and if you're able to be comfortable With that um and sort of learn you can say study or learn it in those kinds of environments you build also a lot of Faith with yourself and so in life shows I mean the audience choir is is an example of

something that came I didn't plan it it was an accident it it sort of came by itself but um I i' like the the the thing that happened was I got to the end of a song and i' been getting different section of the audience looping things I think I was doing Blackbird which is a great song and um uh at the end of the song I sort of got people going like singing in the dead of night singing in the dead of night singing in the night and then singing in the of night the

dead of night singing in the dead of night singing in the dead of night singing in the dead and there I was with F major going at me and I thought hang on and it was like what it was crazy you Can stop there and I I just had this idea I was like What if I move I've got three notes Here well I move them up and down so I did and it was this amazing like life-changing moment for me when this happened it was like hang on this is a whole this is a

whole front this is back in 2019 it's a whole Frontier that I didn't even know was possible but you always know more than you think you know so you I'm tapping into what people didn't know they knew but they do know Which is how to move inside cores anyone's ever heard music has has some amount of an intuition some more than others but in general audiences tend to what they love being involved and being trust being given being placed upon them but then it's also for me it's just incredibly fun and rewarding to do that

but that came from a willingness to be like what happens if I just you know and that that process of being willing to step outside in this Case the white circular rug is um is a really important part of life and I think I've learned so much from music in life you know and sometimes I'll come up against something in life that I'm unsure or uncertain about and and then I'll remember that I I've done that learning in music and I can transpose the learning into life you know so even with with with decisions I

I can I get pretty like serious decision fatigue or decision like even if it's just like What do I order on the menu I'm just like be this or this I don't know you know whatever and then and then I remember that if I was on if I were on stage and you know and then someone's phone went then I wouldn't hesitate in I wouldn't hesitate in changing the chord so I know I I know the feeling of not being afraid to take the risk in music so and I practiced that for it's taken practice

it's taken 10 years of playing Shows and 10 years of making records and stuff but now like I have a qualification to take a risk in one area of my life that I can put in another area and them and just like what do I want to order or way More Les way less trivial decisions it could be like I do know the feeling of they're not being resistance to a decision because like that's the feeling i' I've experienced before and because I've experienced it before I can it's like I all the things That that

are unhelpful can just fall away and sometimes that's really sometimes that's really helpful I know that's a bit of a long answer but it's it's something I think I think a great deal about and um yeah and I think I think music is such an amazing teacher in so many ways but yeah one of the biggest ways for me is recognizing again how many of the forces that you find in music and navigating the decisions of it that can directly impact and help you as A Creator as a human but also those who listen to

your your music and you can you can sense like an an an inner permission to take a risk you can sense that it can make you laugh or it can make you uncertain or it can make you make you challenge yourself a bit and and you can sense when something is willing to be itself and not change and to me some of my favorite music in the world is that it so itself was unwilling to change and I'm always just so Relieved when I listen to that music thank you for not changing for just being

even if I don't like it it's like gosh that's weird but thank God thank goodness that exists you know and it's not just trying to bend into being something that's similar to or something that's more appropriate with because nothing's going to move forward if you already make those things so that that that granted me a lot of courage to remember the value in stating things as You see them not as other people want you to see them no one has that right to say don't see it the way you see it you already see it

the way you see it so just explain that and um a lot of these tools that I'm explaining are kind of manifestations of my own personal journey to that to uncovering what it is that interests me and that Delights me and that surprises me and then and then embedding those things within songs and then sharing Them and and then those forces how many of those forces end up being received and there's a whole number of reasons why some forces may or may not be received by anyone that's outside my control but what's within my control

are the forces that play Within the process some the within my control and so stating things as I see them always ends up feeling like the most sensible responsible and helpful thing I can do for people you know how do you know when To start journeying especially in the context of a song you're working on you're working on it you're getting ideas and it's like spilling out of you how do you know when the Journey's about to end for that specific piece how do I know when to stop the Journey of a song yeah um

should we transition to a Q&A now this feels like what we want to do um I think there were microphone around for people for Q&A I'll ask your question as we like get going on that But yeah it's a funny thing I I if if I didn't have to finish music it would ultimately never be never be finished because you can continuously tweak things forever and ever amen it's just like oh is that reever was probably 1 point it's probably 1.3 no 1.2 DB too loud oh just what that's slightly out of Che you know

there's a threshold that you pass and once you pass it things get worse even they're getting better they're getting worse um then there's This funny thing where you know it's like the thing of people aren't actually moved by competence at all competence is one of the least moving things in the world you're moved by something being resonant and clear and there's an amount of kind of you can say competence that's necessary to get something to be clear and then there's amount of like Superfluous competence which is just like wh like whittling away all the life

in it you know and so I've definitely Been guilty of that in the past just being like I could make it slightly and it's partly because I've exercised so many of the tools that I I I'm aware of so many things like I'm aware that the F jop could be 0.2 Tob quieter and the call would be slightly but you know and then and then there's nothing more frustrating and and disempowering in a sense than working for two days making a demo sound better and then you listen to it it's just like That's just not

as good as the demo I'm sure you many of you have been there and so it's such a funny thing to try and get right because you can't just not improve anything ever but at the same time you have to again it's like trust your trust your friend trust your gut and be like is this does this feel like itself would making it better make it more like itself if not then it's itself enough you don't have to keep on making it better better is made up anyway you Know you know what I mean yeah

yeah have we got microphones at the ready for questions uh we'll take a question from from youo over there hi thank you um on that note yeah um would you ever consider making a live album yeah I would in fact um I I I've made one before and it was a live piano piano ballads album in 2022 cuz in 2022 in amongst all this audience choir manness that I spoke about before I set myself a challenge Which was every show I would play a song that I've never played before and a different song for every

show and I did 91 gigs that year um with the band and so I did 91 different piano ballads and it was really um challenging and fun to do that and so I I put my favorite 11 of those onto an album called Piano ballads 2022 or something um and uh so so I did do that however I think that there are collaborative live albums to be made in the next few years for me I don't know What form they'll take yet but i' I'd love to explore that for sure yeah yeah yeah that's who's

who's got the question um me here sorry sorry good to see you hi um earlier I was curious about how do you decide which instrument to pick I feel like half the time I'm just going through sounds and do you just like pick one and then you just leave it for that or like yeah I'm curious what the Process yeah don't don't necessarily have a method or a theory but I definitely have my favorites again it's like I said to to the gentleman before it's like I'm a creature habit so like the subbase in this

song is is a sound called basement base and it's just like a logic preset it's just basically a sine wave and I've used that for 20 years I just think it's great I S you don't need anything more than that so I I don't necessarily think that you need New sounds to be interesting there are definitely times where like fresh options coming in can be really beneficial um but I'm also to guilty of and delighted by just oh that one sounds good you know because that that's also part of the process a Time Li a

time limit yeah sometimes it's sometimes it's necessary um and sometimes you know you really dig for hours and then it's worth it because you find like the Ultimate Sound but Usually something that's approximately the thing you want to get to is again it's sometimes more interesting that the exactly the right sound it's kind of go back to what I was saying to you it's like the best possible option is not necessarily the most interesting um so yeah so you have you have to you have to control yourself at times to be like I it's fine

leave leave it alone it's like Jacob slaps his own hand of many many a time yeah who's who's next Uh yeah let's take a question from just just down here thanks so much thank you um you said you never had teachers for mixing and production right but what was the way of learning for you what was the sources that you were using when you were learning yeah well mostly it was TR tried an error it was just it was like try this and and like like you know my first music experiments were not great you

know like I didn't come out of the out of the gate being like you know I All I just did it's like the same as anyone you start with basic stuff and you kind of deepen the resolution of your craft until you feel like like you know I I talk about this a lot I'll give you like a two two-minute demonstration of this IDE of resolution because I think about it a lot and I don't mean resolution like I mean resolution like 8 bit 16bit 24bit like how how many pixels in your screen cuz when

you're a child you sit down this is a good exercise for Learning anything including mixing production first thing you do when you sit down at piano when you're kid is you do this which is really important because that is like all the stuff is there and now you've made a start so now you can just Whittle away the things to make them slightly higher resolution so you realize okay well sound or no sound that's an option cool then there's high and low no That's option there's more options too there's Thin and Thick there's options okay

so now I've like acquired a bunch of interesting tools and ideas that's loud and quiet you know so that's cool those forces are incredibly important to understand and takes very little to understand them just takes like being willing being willing to try something out basically and then like a good example I always think of is stride piano you know [Music] like you know this whole thing that thing if you sit down and and pretend you're a stride [Music] that is a lot of like that's a lot of the thing you've basically you basically got there

now you just need to like slightly refine and maybe instead of you could do you know so but like you don't think much about where your hands going you of you of aim For things and you know it's not perfect but the the the process of doing something and then and then deepening the resolution deepening the resolution that to me feels like how learning works for me and that's a pianistic explanation but in terms of mixing production you know sound or no sound okay I'll record a sound and then then once you figured that out

it's like oh you can actually but just you open up The EQ thing oh I can actually make this sound like high or high Endy or low Endy and then that suddenly that option is available to you and I remember I remember the day I discovered panning whoa left and right are you crazy and so I had all these mono songs and I was like you know and then so I remember the first time I discover panning it everything was hard paned like the Beatles in the 60s you know drums Le vocal you know and

then and that's like That's like the simplest version of the axis and then you realize okay some things can be panned slightly um or a little bit to the right a little bit to the left and then you can have a mixture of things that have Pan um some things can be ued slightly you don't have to be like or it can be like a a little bit of so the more you do things the closer you get to understanding what what you really want and it's like who who your teachers is the music you

you like That's your teachers you listen to things and you kind of like figure you kind of figure them out oh what's what's going on there why do I feel good oh it's because of the time I feel good because of the time and I would say that some of my music musical teachers and I most of my musical teachers were in my life between about 16 and 19 years old and I study s of Jaz piano that was like the main thing I studied um but what when I was studying jazz piano I did

Like two years out a four-year degree as a jazz penis in London at the Royal Academy Music and um it was good it was it was good fun but my favorite teacher his name is Barack SCH he didn't teach Jazz he taught like Rhythm and so I would like skip Jazz classes to go to all his rhythm classes I went to every single one of his rhythm classes for all four years of students in my first year and I was just like absolutely obsessed with the his ideas and I see Rhythm but He he hit

me to like the harmonic series just intonation negative Harmony like swing senses ratios music from all over Africa South America funky it's just he's just an insane guy um and so like when I latched on something I liked like you you you pull it but a lot of the lot of the principles he said and taught me it's it's like he opened my ears to them and a lot of the the greatest lessons where he'd be like come with me to a gig I'm going to take you to a like a bat Like a Cuban

bat and I want you to watch the Third guy and the third guy would be like doing the same thing for the whole night then suddenly he do something different and he'd be like you see you know he's like those kinds of lessons were were incredible because they're practical lessons you know you you don't need formal teachers to give you these principles what what sometimes do people can do is they can refine those principles with like for you and with You um you know so like learning about the pentatonic scale or learning about modes and

things like this like I I kind of figured i' kind of figured them out before I was told what the names were um intuitively an an amount but learning what the names of them were were it was kind of interesting it was helpful to to learn to learn things like that and then I would like Break Stuff I would just be like hang on if you've got lydian why should you stop why did you Just keep going forever you know and then I came up with this like super ultra hyper Mega meta lyan idea of

like it's like like a scale as a spectrum instead of instead of a scale which I actually think goes for a lot of life as well rather than like labeling one thing or another thing you just think well it's all a spectrum you find yourself on it wherever you want and it can change so I I kind of like discarded a lot of the ideas that I I Was receiving in terms of scales but I I wouldn't have been able to discard them had I not learned them to to a point yeah so it was

it was a process I think that I went through of absorbing things that I was interested and wasn't interested in and the filter system that goes about by by exercising things you like and you're playing and you're composing you're writing and arranging whatever but the production mix thing was always like my own secret world I Was I never really told anyone about it I was like I go and play and be a good jazzer and stuff and then i' come home and be like right like let's get those tonies out again and like oh what

if I mixed it up with a vibh thing and I put just banjo and dubstep you know and it's like you just try and make something that's interesting and I kept doing that and then I started to make videos of those things and share them and then people started to be like hang on that's Like that's really weird and interesting and then I was really excited and then I ran away from college and pursued my cathedral which I'm still living in um or still building but um yeah the process I guess of of doing it

it really was about doing it often and being determined that there was always a way you can get the thing you want even if even if you have no idea what you're doing you can there's still a way of getting it you know and I I would do all Sorts of ridiculous things when I didn't like I remember before I learned about side chain compression does anyone hear know about side chain compression it's like this thing it's like I love that sound but I didn't realize you could change the threshold on a compressor so I

I put like 11 compressors all with a really high threshold so they would add up and be like and I'd be like pretty frustrated but I like I did an arrangement of a song called close to Back in like 2014 10 years ago and that one goes like and it's if you go in the session it's just like 11 compressors I had no idea what I was doing but I knew there must be a way like there must be a way and sometimes I go on YouTube and be like how to make blah blah blah

blah but um yeah a lot of the my solutions to things are ra like they're rather unconventional and like probably like ill advised but I I think I think but Potentially the attitude is advised which is just believe that you can always like things become possible when you start doing them you can't wait for things to be possible before you do them you have to just start and it would it would just kind of do if you're if you're determined enough and trust that there's something to be found it's like you it just happens and

often you end up somewhere that you didn't think you wanted to go to or something that was New to you whatever but that process is as if as meaningful if not more than getting to the place that you thought you wanted to go to and I I the last 10 years of my my musical life I I couldn't have planned it if IID tried I just there's no way the audience choir like I couldn't have planned that couldn't I couldn't have planned in my room or the one man show or the bandour or I harm

you or any of these things they just kind of happen if you're just like I'm Sure there's a way I can there must be a ah you know it's like doing this but in your life you're like yeah you know and your your greatest Ally there is not how much information you know or how qualified you are it's your friend it's your yeah yeah you know and that muscle is very very worth building up and you you need no qualifications to begin having like listening to that voice and some of the most qualified people make

the least interesting stuff It's just as simple as that um and some of the least qualified skilled people have the most interesting stories to tell and so there's no excuses to wait until you're qualified enough to start doing anything whether it's production or music of any kind of anything because your voice is as is as valuable as anybody else no matter how qualified they are and and that's the amazing thing about 2024 and Beyond is we're in this world Where um where there's just no there's like there's as few rules as there's ever been you

literally can do whatever you want whatever interests you you do that and you do it well like do it really well like lean into it like understand it explore It Whatever It Is explore it just go and explore it because you just don't know what you're going to find but you won't find anything if you stand still you have to start moving in a direction and that's Not to say that there's a big rush because there isn't a big rush you can take as much time as as you'd like but the the the process of

study is a is a weird word to use because it's not really study it's more it's experiment and it's determination and it's Cur and it's curiosity probably most of all like what if I just oh you know it all starts with that all starts with oh you know and the more the more time you spend refin Those things the the the more yeah kind of like the the deeper your your resolution becomes and and then the more the higher that the Fidelity is with which you're able to express things that you feel and um that's

a delightful principle to to chase you know yeah cool yeah thank you all right um let's take a let's take a question from the from the very very back so somebody at the very right you you Decide uh hi oh no I live oh yes I'm I'm hi oh hello hello hello hello what's up okay um so earlier you talked about how um when you start creating a piece that you just draw everything down right and then later you can now remove that stuff um that later part removing that stuff what is your process in

doing that yeah um become from a short scale of like 12 or tracks it's kind of easier but over 600 tracks when you have like 30 40 tracks That are deleted like how do you do that yeah oh it could be so hard to mute tracks be like I don't want to mute you I'm sorry oh you know agony um but I will say like I don't think about these 600 tracks individually I think about them as kind of collective so all these tracks you see right now that's whatever it is 20 tracks or yeah

25 and that's all that's like bvs so that's like kind of one I wouldn't say one track because it's 25 tracks but it's it's one like Strand and so you can you can kind of organize and logic has done this amazing thing now where you can group groups you know about this you can bust other bus before this I was as they say up creek without a paddle um but now see this is a folder that exists inside another folder which is called bgv and this this contains my BV choir audience choir lenon base vocals

like responses um the AOL who I actually Haven't spoken about but there an incredible choir from Huntsville Alabama who I used at the end here that's 25 undergrad students from Oakwood University crazy sound [Music] isn't that crazy they are so special the last song of just falling forward is called World o world and that's the choir that sings World o world I think the great greatest choir on the face of the Earth as far as I'm concerned but Anyway I digress um pocketing yeah there's another back and vocal St so all the these are all

groups of Stack this is there's another 30 or so tracks um but I I grouped them sort of in in orders so bgv becomes one strand of many other many other strands there's kind of like percussive elements there's base elements there's vocal elements there's sound effects elements and all these things end up end up um like participating in the overall picture but When it comes to losing things and adding things it can sometimes help at certain point to group the things you're adding into into into sections and then prioritize within each section section what's necessary

because it might be that you try three or four different keyboard ideas and one of them is the best one um but you don't to M mute all the keyboard groups you can just mute the one that you that you you can solo the one that speaks most to you and then The rest can sort of go go by by the wayside um but it's harder when it's like I want to delete delete a whole section you know like I don't think we need verse three like oh that's so hard um but I would just

I'll splice it out the session and paste it at the end so I can always get it back if I want to and also like save as is the king isn't it we all know that but you you can't I used to do everything in one session only when I did my in my room it was Just like everything was just it was like down the line full stop and it just everything was done in that one session all the Renditions were just it was just difficult and then um as I've grown older I've I've

learned the um the I've sort of reaped the benefits of like a different revisions of sessions so you can always save as and you always have the old version to go back on but um I think it does help sometimes to be quite merciless and be like unless I Absolutely think this is so crucial I must remove it um it's definitely like an interesting psychology it's not always the right one but uh yeah just kind of being like what ultimately like circling all the words that you think are necessary the story of the song and

then literally deleting all the other words and starting you know starting again that's like a drastic example or um you know yeah so I think you have to you have to keep on asking yourself like Does this feel like it's improving things and does it feel like it's it's distracting from things and you can't always tell when you're working on something so sometimes like go and play it in the car it's such a good one or playing to a friend or playing through your phone or um changing the key like that's one thing I do

a lot is like like you know this thing very speed up here verot speed is so helpful verot speed just changes the speed of your Song so for example we we've just gone up 2.6 semitones and what can I do now well I can evaluate if things actually sound [Music] good you say You'll Never Walk [Music] Alone right I just released that on Tik Tok and I'm I'm a huge star um but the the thing the thing that happens there is that you remov the sort of previous um like your expectations and your Preconceptions about

the Harmony and and just that your your familiarity with it it's like you go I often go in between seiton again cross terrain idea because if I just put it up to F then I know F I know it like the back of my hand but if I go up to then I I have no have fewer reference points and I can hear it more like it's FR so sometimes that can help you just decide that works that I've done that since I was like 16 I don't know why but I really love that process

of being like put it in the key that doesn't exist then evaluate it then put it back to the original key and then make drastic decisions um based off of that yeah I guess I guess I'd say that I hope that helps um where are the where are the mic oh we we got to wind up oh oh yeah we we really do have to wind up um maybe we'll take one more really quick question then we can we can call it a day let's go over Here hi Jacob thank you so much for chatting

with us today um I love Topline m Melody songwriting and I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your process or philosophy of how you come up with Melodies and lyrics um do you start with a bed of cords or a key or do you come up with a concept or a story that you really want to tell yeah oh it's such a big question to be the last one that I have to rush the answer of I I'll say there was a lesson that Was taught to me a Melody lesson that

was taught to me by a man named Mike Walker when I was about 17 and he's an amazing jazz guitar player and I said Mike how do you write good Melody and he said Play me Melody so I played him a Melody at some Scotty thing that went there it wasn't really a form there was just like a few notes and blah blah blah he said and then he said okay and he said now Sing Me A Melody so I sang A Melody and it had a little bit more form A little bit more rhyme

structure still a bit rambly and then he said now imagine there's a girl who's singing melody in your ear and then sing the melody back that you imagine hearing I thought oh and then I sang this melody though that had all this like rhyme and reason and structure and like it was simple and you know and he was like that's the that's the end of the lesson that's what he said I Lov I loved that because it's like this process of Getting out of your own way and following again it's like it's like the thing

that you want that you most want to hear not the thing you not the thing you think others most want to hear or the thing that you feel will be most appropriate to contribute but the thing you want to hear you want to hear it and um all all the best melodies come from speech in a sense um and the study of like ionics and languages like a deep study but it's the idea of Phrasing like my European language of English has this kind of like emphasis is about Dynamics and ination so Melody goes and

there's an amount of inner logic that your M needs to have to sort of make a sort of syntaxial sense in in in in a certain kind of a way like if it's like it's like up and down answer you know question answer so sometimes those things can be helpful to think about but normally yeah to create a bed of sound Of some kind or like a like a is a great example but something that's constant that I can push against can be helpful if I try and write melody in a vacuum that's hard but

if I if I write a melody over this [Music] then I'm off because I have something to push against and so that can be helpful the idea of CounterPoint and not like not that kind of CounterPoint but Like one thing and another thing and the spark that's created when they rub together it's like friction without friction there's no movement it's like a wheel on the ground you need friction to to make a movement so you need to push you need something to push against for me anyway otherwise I just like my mind goes faster and

faster and faster and there's no form and then I get I freak out and stop you know so it's like having something that holds me to to Myself where I can be like okay I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to push against this and oh there it is and then you follow the movement that that for me can be helpful I usually do lyrics later than Melody though I've recently become more interested in doing lyrics for because it's newer to me and I I've yeah recently been enjoying that as a challenge so again

there's not there's not one way at all but yeah maybe some things within that can can help Um cool I I honestly would love to keep going forever um but we have reached the end of our time here in the New York Public Library um is that is that well thank you very much thank you thank you all [Applause] thank you um thank you for coming and for asking such lovely questions and for listening to my various ramblings um is there time for me to play a song and you Can say no powers it be

there is okay I might just do a quick song and then then we really will stop okay [Music] you're just too good to be true can't take my eyes over you you feel like heaven to touch I want to hold you so much and long lost love is arriving and I thank God I'm alive you're just too good to be true [Music] Part in the way that I stare there's nothing else to compare the side of you makes me weak there run the words left to Sweet so if you feel how I feel please let

me know that it's real you're just too good to be true take my eyes [Music] I love you baby and if it's quite all right I need you baby to one night I love you Baby trusting me when I say see iTab don't let me die pray oh Now That I Found You Stay Let Me Love You Baby Let Me Love You you're just too good to be true my eyes over here you feel like to I want to you so much I'd love love has arrived I thank God I'm alive you're just too good

to be [Music] True take [Music] don't [Music] [Music] wo wo wo [Music] w w [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] no [Music] I love you baby and if it's right all right I need you baby to one L L I love you baby trust in me when I say go B don't let meay Now That I Found You say Let Me Love You Baby Let me love You love you love you s [Music] sing you you you I really love I do it I know [Music] all you [Music] [Music] you like [Music] you really [Music] you

[Applause] you thank you so very much [Applause]