Quincy Jones Emailed ‘Hey Man, I Want to Say a Word’: How Jacob Collier Made My Room | Jacob Collier

Jacob Colliervocals, instruments, engineering, production

Growing up as part of the YouTube generation, I had the idea that you could build your own fan base by making videos. So when I was about 17, I filmed myself in our family’s back room doing Stevie Wonder songs like Isn’t She Lovely, a layered six-part vocal sung by different versions of me, or Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing, where I was playing different instruments.

When I uploaded these videos, one of the clips somehow found its way to Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson’s producer, who emailed: “Hey man, what’s going on with these strings? I want to talk to you.” I was completely amazed, but we started talking on Skype and having amazing conversations. He signed me to his label and became a kind of mentor.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to artists like Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder and try to count the instruments or analyze what worked, which was really helpful when I started creating my own music. I had some formal education and sang classical music as a boy, but I was not an accomplished player of many instruments. I played the piano, and would love to play everything else, and I had a Casio keyboard full of percussion or bassoons, which meant I could produce the sounds I liked on them, like the harpsichord in Ravel’s piano concerto.

I made “In My Room” in three months. Stevie Wonder and Prince played all the instruments on their albums in recording studios, but there was no instruction manual for doing it all at home. I did this on my laptop, duplicating the instruments and layering the vocal harmonies by hand. Stevie Wonder covers of You and Me and Brian Wilson in my room recognized my influences and loved the Flintstones theme so I thought it would be fun to take them on a drive. The rest of the songs are mine. Real Early Morning began as a poem. I wanted each track to be different, so I used everything from a gentle piano or guitar to a full orchestration.

Ben Blomberg did all this amazing tweaking in Los Angeles, and then Quincy and Herbie Hancock toured the studio until 5 a.m. for the final mix, so they were the first to hear the final recording. In My Room won two Grammy Awards. You don’t think such things are possible, but I wasn’t able to become a big star or for the money. It was just a snapshot of me as a 21-year-old: these are the things I cared about.

Ben BloombergO engineer of balance

I first came across Jacob when Snarky Puppy’s Michael League posted a video of his re-arrangement of the song “Don’t Worry About a Thing” on Facebook. I think this was also the video Quincy saw. Then I watched them all – “Great Rhythm”, “Georgia on My Mind” and so on – and I started asking everyone: “Have you seen this?”

I had just started my PhD at MIT and we were mixing crazy music techniques like instrumental opera and world-class city-to-city orchestral collaboration, so I messaged Jacob on Facebook and said, “If you want to build something live on stage…?” When Quincy brought him a show supporting Chick Corea at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Jacob asked me if there was any way to perform the album without cloning himself in 12 people.

We were thousands of miles apart, so we worked remotely, using loops to build the music. Then I created this thing called a vocal arranger which means he can sing something live and it instantly becomes a backing chorus for it. Friends at MIT created some custom software that combined this huge mix of sounds into one box. We were up four all-nighters before the show, and we did a demo gig at Ronnie Scott’s in London for 200 people, but Montreux was amazing. Quincy showed up with [Thriller songwriter] And Rod Temperton gave a really left-wing inaugural speech: total chaos, but in a good way. Then we had projections of 12 Jacobs, playing different instruments.

Next, Jacob brought his finished album, but there were too many tracks to mix on a regular desk. I discovered that Hans Zimmer’s studio in Los Angeles had an old cinema console that had enough inputs – 512! – So we confused him about that. Jacob had a lot of ideas and he knew what he wanted: it was just a matter of finding a way to capture the spirit of his room. We’ve worked together ever since and are great friends. I’m credited with the title “balance engineer” because I had just read about Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ balance engineer. I liked this term very much and used it.

The 10th Anniversary Edition of In My Room will be released on July 1. Jacob Collier plays Ronnie Scott in London on the same day