Comment by mabub24 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabub24 | Hacker News Reader

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That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced", especially when he has made stabs at jazz, a genre that is in many cases "music for musicians". For a genre that prizes free flowing interpretation and individual creativity alongside instrumental virtuosity, his jazz music comes out utterly sterile compared to other modern jazz musicians. The same goes for his soul music. Everything he does feels like an exercise in a genre rather than playing in it.

Compare his stuff to the work of Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorson's groups, or Shabaka Hutchings, or Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and you hear an enormous difference in the sheer craft of songwriting, emotional dynamics, and storytelling through their instruments.

He's clearly a virtuoso at a kind of playing the instrument, and he's extremely good at explaining music theory and concepts, which is a rather archaic and unique language all its own, but I don't think he's quite there yet for songwriting.

I don't disagree with you, but I'd like to make one small addendum that may go to explain why people might consider his music to feel overproduced. I believe that reason is his use of non-equal-temperament tuning.

For those unaccustomed to hearing pure intervals it can sound like a high-gloss "sheen" that gives an unreal quality to the music. In a way it becomes "too perfect" and unnatural to those who are used to hearing the equal temperament that most western music is recorded in. I hear it a lot in some acapella vocal groups and I often find the sound off-putting and it somehow feels a little corny to me.

That may be an aspect of it, but...

https://twitter.com/trndytrndy/status/1395944850911080459

I think that his use of Logic in particular is very relevant in this discussion, because not only it has excellent support for different temperaments, it also has Hermut tuning, which dynamically alters temperament of all the instruments played based on actual chords to reach perfect intervals regardless of the key you're in.

Logic Pro documentation link for Hermode Tuning: https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/hermode-tuning-lgcp...

Touché.

Still, his virtuosity allows him to do things that very few people are capable of conceiving, attempting, and doing. We're lucky to have him in the mix.

> That was my immediate impression of his music. It feels strangely cold and extremely "produced",

Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins is an example of someone who has both the talent and the taste for making great music in my opinion. There's a really old video of him shredding like a madman [1] completely off the dome which shows he has very good command of his guitar. He's not in the same sphere as Jacob Collier mind you but here me out. If you compare that video with the music he wrote in the pumpkins, it is very restrained. He knew when to exercise the full range of his skills and when to dial it back. Having learned a lot of pumpkins songs on guitar, it is clear to me that he favoured what sounded better and was more impactful over what appeared skillful.

There's another video of him in 2012 [2] where he talks about influential music coming from the internet and people in their desktop studios, not from guys with guitars trying to make it big. Beyond his talent he had a very keen eye for how music was evolving. Having talent is one thing, being able to contextualise your work, and others work accurately in the arena of the world is a quality that very few people possess and in my opinion is required for producing truly influential and impactful work.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hYPo2py77A

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C7NCpfUC90

> he talks about influential music coming from the internet and people in their desktop studios, not from guys with guitars trying to make it big

That's a great clip. You might enjoy some of what people have been doing with their desktop studios and guitars in the last few years. Two that immediately come to mind are Tim Henson [1] (already pretty well-known in the guitar world as part of Polyphia) and Manuel Gardner-Fernandes [2].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHD4OVjS4E

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLCtH0KAY8Q

I cannot leave a comment of bedroom producers go without a mention of judd madden.

Probably quite out there (doom/drone/stoner) for most people but his music has always struck me as incredibly from the heart and not some noodling to impress others.

https://juddmadden.bandcamp.com/album/float

https://juddmadden.bandcamp.com/album/artesian

Another person in the same vein: Tim Finn. Able to dial it back at will and to let it shine when needed.

> archaic and unique language

archaic or arcane?

Some of the words in music theory are just straight latin, or directly descendant from latin and old. A lot of people struggle with music theory until you "translate" it to using modern language (though you do lose some specificity in some cases). Like "ritardando", which is just "slow down", or accelerando, which is, you guessed it, "speed up".

You can also use arcane.

Italian, not Latin. Italian is the language of music. Italy used to be the capital of European music. That's where it comes from. I also wouldn't classify it as mere "theory". It's basic notation that appears in notes. Calling it "theory" is like calling control flow constructs in Pascal (the language) "theory".

It's called music theory though? I agree it's a bad name, but that's what it's called..

It is. This video argues it would be more accurate to call it the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA

I think most of it is Italian instead of Latin, including your two examples.

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