Jacob Collier, vocals, instruments, engineering, production
I grew up as one of the YouTube generation, with the idea that you could create your own fanbase by making videos. So when I was about 17, I filmed myself in our family back room doing Stevie Wonder covers like Isn’t She Lovely, made up of six layered vocal parts sung by different versions of me, or Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing, where I played various instruments.
When I uploaded these videos, somehow one found its way to Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson’s producer, who sent an email: “Hey man, what’s going on with these chords? I need to have a word with you.” I was absolutely amazed, but we started talking on Skype and having incredible conversations. He signed me to his label and became a sort of mentor.
As a child, I used to listen to artists such as Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder and try to count the instruments or analyse what worked, which was really useful when I started creating my own music. I’d had some formal education and sung classical music as a boy, but I wasn’t a brilliant multi-instrumentalist. I played piano, would have a go at playing anything else, and had a Casio keyboard full of percussion or bassoons, which meant I could produce sounds on it that I loved, such as the harp in Ravel’s piano concertos.
I made In My Room in three months. Stevie Wonder and Prince had played all the instruments on their albums in recording studios, but there wasn’t an instruction manual for doing it all at home. I did it on my laptop, looping instruments and layering vocal harmonies manually. Covers of Stevie Wonder’s You and I and Brian Wilson’s In My Room acknowledged my influences and I loved the Flintstones theme so I thought it would be fun to take it for a drive. The rest of the songs are mine. In the Real Early Morning started as a poem. I wanted each track to be different so I used everything from gentle piano or guitar to fuller orchestration.
Ben Bloomberg did all this amazing tweaking and mixing in LA, then Quincy and Herbie Hancock swung by the studio until 5am for the final mix, so they were the first people to hear the finished record. In My Room won two Grammys. You don’t think things like that are possible, but I didn’t make it to be a big star or for the money. It was just a snapshot of me aged 21: these are the things I cared about.
Ben Bloomberg, balance engineer
I first came across Jacob when Michael League from Snarky Puppy posted the video of his rearrangement of Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing on Facebook. I think that was also the video Quincy saw. Then I watched them all – Fascinating Rhythm, Georgia On My Mind and so on – and started asking everyone: “Have you seen this?”
I’d just started my PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and we were doing crazy music tech mashups like robot opera and global city-to-city orchestral collaborations, so I messaged Jacob on Facebook saying: “If you ever want to build something live on stage … ?” When Quincy got him a show supporting Chick Corea at Montreux jazz festival, Jacob asked me if there was any way of performing the album without cloning himself into 12 people.
‘Total chaos, but in a good way’ … Collier with, from left, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones and Chick Corea at Montreux
We were thousands of miles apart, so we worked remotely, using loops to build the music. Then I created this thing called a vocal harmoniser which meant he could sing something live and instantly become his own backing choir. Friends at MIT created some custom software so he had this big mash-mash of sounds crammed into one box. We pulled four all-nighters before the show, and did a test gig at Ronnie Scott’s in London for 200 people, but Montreux was great. Quincy turned up with [Thriller songwriter] Rod Temperton and gave a really left-field opening speech: total chaos, but in a good way. Then we had projections of 12 Jacobs, playing different instruments.
After that, Jacob brought his finished album over, but there were far too many tracks to mix it on a standard desk. I found out Hans Zimmer’s studio in LA had an old cinema console which had enough inputs – 512! – so we mixed it on that. Jacob had had so many ideas and knew what he wanted: it was just about finding a way to capture the spirit of his room. We’ve worked together ever since and are great friends. I’m credited as “balance engineer” because I’d just read about Geoff Emerick, the balance engineer for the Beatles. I liked the term so much I used it.
A 10th anniversary edition of In My Room is released on 1 July. Jacob Collier plays Ronnie Scott’s, London, the same day