Jacob Collier Quotes

You start to think in terms of making an album that might be greater than the sum of its parts. It's sort of like having a lot of footage and then editing it into something that will make sense to a viewer, you know. Sometimes it might involve even working on an older song that might complete that picture.

There's the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.

The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.

Usually, I write the music and am involved in the production.

You get the beats. You write to them. You go in the studio and lay it down. Hopefully, a song comes out sounding good. If it comes out sounding good, you put it to the side with the rest of the other good ones, and you try to decide which ones you're gonna use on the album.

Making an album is always a puzzle: you start by seeing a lot of different pieces, and they all need to come together into one picture.

I love being in the studio, and I am a huge fan of live music. Without writing good stuff in the studio, you have nothing to play live.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song.

There are seven songs finished and on par with any that are on Siren's.

When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.

It's a very organic process, and it has a specific order to it. I love to write, and once you've written, then you arrange. After the arrangement, you record it, and then you tour it.

When a piece is done, I mix it before going on to any other piece.

Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.

I write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.

If you're thinking the road ahead is a little shorter than the one behind you, you're thinking about trying to write a good song and hoping to make a decent record of it.

I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.

I need a big picture. I can't just do a collection of songs; that doesn't work for me.

My best capacity is to edit. If anything, I am a specialist at editing: my usual approach is to record a song very long. In the beginning just jam, jam on and on. Then break the song and play with it.

Putting together a hit record is like putting together a puzzle.

When I'm not on the road I'm in the studio every day.

I always created things, layered things on top of each other. That hasn't changed at all. With this first album, it was basically a celebration of that process of inventing and building sounds.

For the most part, the real work is done in the songwriting stage and recording; the next step is presenting to people.

Part of my growth as a producer was not just about making beats but also helping in the process of inspiring the song and making the song the center.