Collier's Revenge
I wasn't an instant Jacob Collier fan. Of course I wasn't, why would I be, I'm in my mid 50s and my songwriting and general musical skills have been on the wane for a good few years now; the last thing I need is some 20 year old fresh faced perfect pitched git grinning at me like 10 Cheshire cats as he effortlessly glides and glisses his way through a beautifully ornamented vocal rendition of my Dad's fave Xmas carol - In The Bleak Midwinter. Nah, I thought, you're alright. Definitely more of a Stones man that day. Talented, yes. My cup of tea, no.
Then, a few days ago, while doing that thing that has, sadly, taken the place in my life that noodling about on a piano used to occupy - surfing YouTube - I saw a critique of the Collier piece that completely turned me around. Can't believe I didn't see it before. If you've seen it, you'll be way ahead of me, I'm referring to that insane key change that occurs about 2/3 of the way through, where he modulates from E major to A half sharp. "A" FUCKING HALF SHARP!!! What the bollocks, how the fuck did he do that ?? You can see him demonstrating at a seminar with a keyboard, he starts off in tune with it, then he's out of tune with it, in a key of his own, that's between keys, between A and A Sharp. It's not so much a key change as a temperament change, and it happens MID SONG. A quarter tone modulation, all done a cappella with no digital manipulation, it just uses 4 "magic" chords to put the song in an entirely new tuning range for the final verse. I mean, the guy's got perfect pitch, but even so - c'mon! That is some proper clever shit going on, and it doesn't even sound contrived - his beaming faces underlining that what just happened is that the song massively kicked up a gear. As key changes go, forget your Superbowl anthems or my fave, Georgia Brown's original version of "As Long as He Needs Me" where the final verse jumps a full tone and a half; this is something else entirely. By freeing himself of a tuned instrument, ie a piano, and taking his pitching from, well, inside his head, Collier demonstrates that it is possible to go beyond what has come to perceived as "perfect" and achieve something far more sonically expressive, which is - I dunno, light? It sounds like how light would sound...He does say on another video that by starting a piece in A-432 (slightly flatter than concert pitch) and slowly creeping it up to A-440, that it has the effect of someone opening a shutter and letting daylight into the room. Obviously Stewie did this first with his "weather" song, but still.
So this got me thinking on how I used to view sound, and how musicians are always kind of, not expected to think, but encouraged shall we say, to accept that the page we should all be on, what we should all of us be striving for - is perfection. And what a load of bollocks that is for some of us. Ever since I tried my hand at recording and countless times in various studios, with the help of some lovely people doing their level best to decipher my pass-agg flights of fancy into something tangible, ie a recording of some kind, I've always hit a kind of wall. That point in the proceedings where you realise that there is a bit of conflict going on, that what you want isn't what you're going to get, and that if you persist down this road that things are going to sour slightly, and anyway the clock's ticking. And I've nailed it. It's because I kinda see sounds as images, and sometimes those images are impressionistic, as in they're not crystal clear, they don't have perfect pitch and they ebb and flow timewise. That's the hipster version, but on the other side of my dilated pupils it translates as "can I have it a bit shit please". To which, of course, the answer is invariably "sorry, not really, no."
I'm not talking Lennon level expectance here, I've never asked an engineer to make my voice sound like an orange, but I remember sitting in the control room at Joe's Garage in the early 90s wondering how I was going to get across that Dooyah's keyboard and rhythm guitar parts needed to become "the wings". I could have tried "pan them hard left and right, take some bass off them so they move up into the tweeters and put 2 different Leslie effects on them, keep everything else mono" but A. it wasn't my band or my song, B. I was too anxiously stoned to even think about getting that sentence out in one piece. I think about that "wings" guy sometimes and usually think, what a dick, but Jacob, old son, you've brought him back to life.
Why the fuck SHOULD music adhere to what humanity has decided is the gold standard - the best that mankind can achieve in tuning, timing, clarity and performance? We're musicians, not athletes; we are artists mush, we're not performing keyhole surgery. Why can't we have it "a bit shit" if we want? Ah, says the studio boss, but there's your problem, I don't DO shit. If it's got my name on it...
And so, again the impasse. The point at which a bit of life leaves the room, the point at which you're not creating art but debating craft. I mean, can you imagine this situation for actual artists? By which I mean painters, not people who leave tampons under beds for hard cash.
Can you imagine the process - "Ok, some strokes in blue now. (some strokes are applied). No, not there, I meant more sort of - (some more strokes are applied) NO - could you - sorry...not there. I meant a bit higher and sort of across. Quicker than that. No, not there. No, really quick, like you feel - no, that's wrong, look, do we have to use that brush? I know it is, but I really like this old one. No that's fine, we'll use both to cover ourselves, no problem. Can I possibly mix some paint please? No no, Steve's doing a great job, totally, no it's fine."
Artists working in sonics need to get better at conveying their hearts desires to the good people who've invested thousands of pounds in all the gear to make said desire become flesh. It is that way round, so deal with it.
I'll round this off with a few examples of how certain sounds create certain images in my head, you may feel the same, or totally different.
For me - The Who around '65...is...well, like a Van Gogh - the swirling bleeding sounds and the distortion and the strength of the thing sounds like, you know that Starry Night one or the one where his ear's off.
Late 60s Beatles - ya Penny Lanes, Walruses, that puts me in mind of the abstract but well composed pics, so Dali maybe or Magritte, that one with the apple and the bowler hat (which Macca always loved), done in oils and not quite photographic but elegant and well defined.
Hendrix Purple Haze - The Scream? Swirly and violent.
Billy Childish - A hand tinted photocopy of a battle horse.
I'm Not In Love - an airbrushed dreamscape.
White Light White Heat - a halftone photo from a news cutting of a shooting that's been in someone's pocket for weeks.
Never Mind The Bollocks - 35mm photo of a dog turd, taken with a Nikon with a fisheye lens.
Jonas Brothers - Photoshop.
Pete Townshend once said " A bad sound can be more exciting than a good one",
and in these autotuned, autocorrected days, where any old shite can be enhanced up to the bar of acceptability, it's ever more important to listen to that sound in your head, and at all costs, get it the fuck across. Pair it with an image, pair it with a smell, I dunno. Pairing it with another album's probably the most helpful to the engineer to be fair, but stay true to it, because it is the truth.
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