Making old things new
Great artists know that the past provides essential ingredients for the future. Jacob Collier exemplifies this. So does Jesus.
Century illustration (Source images: Public domain and Met Museum, NY)
When musical savant and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier found himself stymied by the guitar, he walked away for a time. Then he came up with his own approach to the instrument. He removed the first string—the highest-pitched one—and then learned to play on the remaining five in an alternate tuning. This narrowed his choices—which had the counterintuitive effect of opening new harmonic horizons. For example, it made it intuitive to play an unusual and hauntingly beautiful chord. “It’s one of my favorite chords ever,” Collier gushes in a YouTube interview with Paul Davids, “and I would never play this chord if it wasn’t for this guitar.”
It’s a lesson in remembering the thread. The point of a guitar, after all, is to make music. There are many moving pieces—taut strings on a thin piece of wood, a fretboard to navigate, fingers to strum or pluck with, and more. With so many technical details, it can be easy to forget the point: All of it is in the service of harmony and melody.
If it takes audacity to tweak an instrument that’s been around for centuries, there is also an inherent humility. “On any instrument, there is no objectively good technique for everyone,” he says with openness and generosity. But he is no maverick paving a lone path, so he quickly adds, “There are also core principles.” For Collier, innovative technique rests on foundational principles. And for anyone who has listened to his unusual music, the result is a blurring of boundaries with an almost transgressive quality.
