Northern London Accent-Jacob Collier audio-visual musical phenomenon

Thank you. So do you feel that motion? Do you feel yourself as part of that motion, things moving underneath the surface? So the language of musical harmony is an absolutely extraordinary one.It's a way of navigating one's emotional frameworks, but without the need to put things into words, and I think that, as with many other languages, it doesn't matter how much you know about a language. It doesn't matter how many words you can say, how many phrases you know.What matters is the emotional choices you make with this language. So I encourage us to embrace this idea as a community, which is the thing which in time may grow us towards as opposed to away from our own humanity.

KS: Those visualizations we just saw, those were happening in real time, yeah?

JC: Yeah, so everything visual takes cues from things which are audial, or something, if that's a word,and so everything is real time. I cue the loops, I play the instruments and then the tree, for example, that you saw grow, grows in such a way that it takes low long notes and grows thick long branches,and it takes high, quiet notes, whatever, and then it grows thin, small branches. And then my singing voice sort of blows wind against the tree.

KS: So you're 22 years old. JC: Yes, indeed.

Moderator: You played all of that by yourself. How did you get started and how did this all evolve?

JC: I have this magical room in my house in North London, which is, like, over there.

Thank you. Represent North London. And this room -- I mean, this is my family home. I grew up in this room filled with musical instruments, but most importantly, I had a family who encouraged me to invest in my own imagination, and so things I created, things I built were good things to be buildingjust because I was making them, and I think that's such an important idea. But this room was my paradise, essentially, and when I came to tour my album, which is called "In My Room," I thought I'd try and tour the room on the road, and that's quite a strange idea, but it's something that I've been working on for a couple of years, and it's quite exciting to be inside the circle.

KS: So this is really like the setup in your room, here.

JC: It kind of is. It's similar to the room in the sense that I can generate things on the spot and I can be spontaneous, which is what I think both music and all of the best ideas are all about.

KS: So you won two Grammys for a record that you made in your room by yourself. And how is that even possible? We couldn't have done that, that couldn't have happened five years ago even.

JC: It's a brand new world. The power is now in the hands of the creator, as I'm sure you guys would agree, as opposed to the big record company executive or the big man or something like that. It's somebody with a good idea. Here I am at TED saying this to you guys who know this already, but it's somebody with a good idea who can sow that seed. That's the person who carries the torch into the world. And yeah, I made this album completely on my own and I didn't wait for somebody to say,"Hey Jacob, you should make an album on your own." I just went ahead and made it and I didn't mind what people thought, and two Grammys is a massive bonus.