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GRAMMYs

Cliff Goldmacher

Photo: Juan Patino

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Cliff Goldmacher: Innovation Through Songwriting where-songwriting-meets-innovation-cliff-goldmacher-puts-his-work-wisdom-words

Where Songwriting Meets Innovation: Cliff Goldmacher Puts His Work & Wisdom Into Words

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With the release of his new book, 'The Reason For The Rhymes,' the outside-the-box creative workshop leader is teaching the business world new skills using the principles of crafting a song
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 14, 2020 - 2:57 pm

Music may be the universal language, but songwriting certainly has its American dialects. Just ask acclaimed champion of the craft, Cliff Goldmacher. Over the past three decades, he's lived and written songs in Nashville, New York, Los Angles, San Francisco and more, each locale with a homespun songwriting culture all its own. He's also collaborated across genres with a wide array of artists including Keb’ Mo’, Kesha, Lisa Loeb, Spin Doctors singer Chris Barron and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. So what can be learned from a lifetime of songwriting? More than one might think, according to Goldmacher's new book, The Reason For The Rhymes, due out Sept. 15.

"The whole idea was just to show you that rhymes, songs, have a larger utility than just for themselves, not that there's anything wrong with writing a song just to write a song. But there's a bigger picture out there, and a whole world," Goldmacher tells us via Zoom. "Know that every skill you develop when you're writing a song can become something even greater when you open up to it."

Today, you can find him opening up new minds to the skills songwriting can teach, whether through leading workshops with businesses across the country (and now via Zoom), giving Ted Talks on songwriting, contributing articles to various outlets, running a recording studio or any of his other many ventures. But Goldmacher's winding journey to discovering the larger context of songwriting started when he moved to Music City in the early '90s, where he cut his teeth, learned to co-write, landed a publishing deal and penned tunes full time for 12 years.

"If Nashville teaches you anything, it's to think about songwriting as the craft that it is." He says. "People think of songwriting as this kind of mystical thing that only… But what I've discovered over time, especially living in Nashville when I did, is that it's a skill. Yes, you need to be inspired, and yes, there has to be a little bit of self-awareness that you want to express yourself. But beyond that, you can break it down into as small a piece as you want and just kind of learn what the songwriting process is about."

Goldmacher had the opportunity to move to New York, where he opened a small studio and discovered a songwriting community that was a "very different animal," with the focus more on bands. After a handful of years learning the city's music culture, he moved to where he really wanted to live, the wine country Sonoma, Calif. From there, he's been ahead of the curve in collaborating from afar, well before the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.

"When I'm home in Sonoma, I've also developed a system where I can run my Nashville studio entirely remotely," he says. "So my session musicians and session singers will come into the Nashville studio. My songwriting clients, who are getting their demos done, will log in from wherever they are, and we'll run the session that way, so it's sort of GoToMeeting for recording studios."

https://twitter.com/ReasonforRhymes/status/1301970808122871814

The Reason for the Rhymes is an excellent tool for startups seeking to differentiate themselves. Cliff's book enhances your ability to innovate and solve problems through a technique that might seem unconventional...songwriting. Thanks for the encouragement @davidhornik! pic.twitter.com/ZMoNK0cG8x

— Cliff Goldmacher (@ReasonforRhymes) September 4, 2020

With his new book, the multi-talented songwriter/producer/educator continues exploring and expanding the creative crossover between songwriting and business innovation, and he's having a ton of fun doing it. We linked up with always witty and upbeat Goldmacher from his studio in Nashville to talk about The Reason For The Rhymes, hear some of his secrets for co-writing online, find out what makes the Motown classic "My Girl" such a great song and more.

Pursuing songwriting, running a recording studio, working and making a living in the music business is a behemoth of a task for anybody. And there's sort of this the musicians' world and then there's the business world. How were you able to create an intersection of the two?

One of the things that I learned in trying to make a living as a songwriter and a producer was that it's extremely rare that everything is going great at the same time. There are times when songwriting's going great. Then when that tends to drop off, then maybe the studio will pick up. So what I decided to do was keep enough plates spinning so that... It's very rare that everything's going great at the same time. It's also very rare that everything is going badly at the same time.

So for me, it was the songwriting, the studio work, and then I started to do this sort of educational component, teaching workshops to songwriters, things like that... The way I like to put it, in all simplicity, is I just want to get up every day and do something that has to do with music. How do I get to do that? So my solution was break it into different parts that are very rarely tethered to each other. When one thing goes badly, it won't drag the others down.

One thing that struck me immediately was that the linchpin for the concept is around innovation. I'm curious what innovation means to you, and how you came to focus on that as something you could offer businesses.

I might flip that around, because I think both of those are great questions. For me, I started with this idea that songwriting develops a certain set of skills that are good for business teams. That's kind of all I had, because I'd been doing these workshops for business teams, getting them to write songs, and I knew it was working. So I started to think to myself, "Well, what are the benefits of teaching yourself to write songs in a larger context?" I was thinking about creativity, and communication, and collaboration, and even empathy.

But I realized, you can't tell a story and just kind of pick out random skills without a unifying concept, and that was what I like to refer to as my dark night of the soul as I was trying to write this book [, was like, "I know this is important. I know it works. But what's the big picture?" Then innovation came to mind, because innovation is the umbrella under which all of these skills work. Because in order to innovate, you need to be creative. You need to be a communicator. There are seven skills [outlined in the book, which bears the subtitle: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning To Write Songs].

https://twitter.com/ReasonforRhymes/status/1299060448977969154

You already have what it takes to be a great innovator. Now it's time to combine your creativity, empathy and collaborative skills. pic.twitter.com/sXYxa9ozdF

— Cliff Goldmacher (@ReasonforRhymes) August 27, 2020

Then I had to go a step backwards, and this is the other part of your question, which is, "Well, what do I know about innovation?" So there was another dark night of the soul. Then I thought, "Well, actually, wait a minute. Every single song is a mini-innovation." One of the things that people don't think about when it comes to songwriting is, when you try and pitch a song in the world, you're not just competing against other people writing songs at the time. You're essentially competing against, oh, every song that's ever been written ever. Because any song can get recorded at any time. So for me it was, "Okay, well, on a mini level, every song I write, I'm trying to do something slightly different and slightly new to compete against every song in the world."

Yeah, no pressure.

Right. I mean, and if you think about that too long, your head will explode. So I don't. [laughs] But then in a larger picture, it was, "Well, in order to have a career in music, you also need to innovate. You need to think about ways to keep the lights on." Because in my experience, and I'm sure you've seen this, there are very few thoroughbreds in our game. Very few people who do one thing and do it so well that that is all they need to do.

So for me, innovation meant, "How do I take my career in music, and even when things seem to be going okay, how do I look for the next thing? How do I change just a little so that if the thing that's currently going okay starts to maybe not go okay, there's something else in the pipeline?" Once I thought about it for a minute, I thought, "Well, innovation is kind of what I do anyway."

Once you uncovered that connection, what was the creative process for writing The Reason For The Rhymes?

What's interesting about being a professional songwriter for as long as I have is I know what it feels like to get up every day and write. Now, usually at the end of the day, I've finished something. That was a little different. Because at the end of every day, I had maybe written a couple more pages or done a little... I made a rule for myself, and this is a rule that I apply across pretty much everything I do, which is just break it down into tiny pieces, and you won't feel overwhelmed.

So it started with an outline. I kind of had an arc of how I thought the book should go. Then I kind of woke up every day and wrote into that outline. The outline was just broad strokes, and then I started to kind of fill it in and flesh it out a little bit. Then when I reached that first crisis point... Because when you write a book, you can go a pretty long way down the road before you realize you don't have a point. So when I got to that, I had to step back a little bit, and that's when I kind of figured out the bigger picture of innovation. Then once I did that, I rewrote the outline and then started to, again, just a little bit every day.

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I wrote the book over a period of about 10 months. For me, that part of it was actually really joyful. Just like writing songs, that's kind of the sweetest tip of the iceberg of all the effort that you then have to expend to get the book out there, to make people aware of it, to get advance blurbs about the book, all of that. It feels like I wrote the book for three minutes, and for the rest of the year, I was just doing the other stuff.

Sure, I think a lot of songwriters can identify with that. The best song of their career comes to them in 10 minutes, and they have to close with it every night they play for the rest of their life, you know?

Yup. If you're lucky.

You cover several concepts in the book, and storytelling is an obvious one for songwriters. Can you talk about how storytelling plays a role in innovation in the business world?

Happy to. For me, when I think of storytelling and when I think of creativity, just like songwriting, I think a lot of business people think to themselves, "Well, I'm productive. I'm good at my job. But I'm definitely not creative." So for me, verses [of songs], learning to write a good verse in a song is all about storytelling, and storytelling is creativity. What I do with this concept is I break down verse writing into some of the rules. Use visual imagery. Show them, don't tell them. All of the little kind of tricks that we've learned over the years to make a good verse ultimately applies in the larger picture to storytelling.

One of the things that I talk to business teams about is how important it is to balance the emotion with the story. A dry narrative, which is kind of just a bunch of details without any reason why we should care, is kind of the end that businesses tend to stick on. And songwriters, heaven help us, we're all emotion. Right? "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you." That's nice if you feel it or if you're the person who is being loved. But for anybody else, that's not really all that compelling.

For business, and the example I use in the book is, I was brought in to work with a business team on coordinating disparate teams. Not so romantic. Not so interesting. The trick is, all right, you've got this concept and you've got all these emotions. How do you bring them together? For songwriters, we have to integrate more story in our verses. But for business people, it's "How do we integrate more emotion? How do we get people to care?"

The example that I use in the book is, instead of saying, "We're going to integrate disparate teams," we wrote a song about geese flying south for the winter. Because if the geese don't work together, they're going to die. They're going to freeze to death. So all of a sudden, there's this baked-in emotion and there's a story about what it means to try and fly south together, and the song we wrote was called "If You've Got My Front, I've Got Your Back." It made this kind of semi-dry concept of coordinating disparate teams into something people care about. Storytelling makes people care if it's done well, and so that's kind of how I coordinate storytelling and creativity and verses all in one area.

For the songwriters reading this, the concept that the verse is where you hone in on storytelling makes sense. Maybe you could do a quick flyby of the structure of a song and some of the elements in each part.

I like to think of songs as being three parts, sometimes just two parts, and in the book I keep it dead simple and just make it kind of two critical parts. Verses are designed to tell the story. It's where you put all your details. It's where you kind of build a world. Choruses, as I like to somewhat indelicately describe it, is where you tie the message of your song, the summary of what you've been leading up to... You tie it to the end of a baseball bat, and you beat the hell out of people with it. That's what a chorus does. You've got just a couple of lines. Usually there's some repetition in the chorus. But the whole idea is, a well-done chorus ultimately becomes unforgettable. It becomes super memorable, because not only are you giving listeners that "Aha, so that's what this song is about," but you're doing it in a way that is catchy and memorable.

When you balance the two, when you've got a well-told verse... I'll give you one of my favorite examples, and I use it in the book, is the song "My Girl" [written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White]. It is dead simple, but the details are great. "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May." So already you've got these kind of really interesting, visceral, sensory details. But nobody knows what you're talking about yet, right? Then you've got this dead simple, beautiful chorus. "I guess you'll say, what can make me feel this way? My girl, my girl, my girl. Talking 'bout my girl, my girl." And now you care. You understand why this person feels this way, and you're not going to forget the chorus. There's nothing to it. And it's genius.

I always use that example, because I want people to understand songs don't have to be long, and they don't have to be complicated, for them to do exactly what they need to do. So verses, choruses. That's kind of how they work.

That’s a great example. So, I have to say, your Zoom setup looks and sounds great. You sound great. How have you adapted to everything being remote?

In all honesty, the reason I hated to collaborate online before I had to was because you miss the body language, you miss the resonance of the instrument in the room. So some of the ways that I've been coping is I've made it so that I'm in a nice, well-lit space. You can see my face. You can read my body language. I have, thanks to the wonderful folks at Shure, a beautiful mic that I use for my voice so that I'm not just relying on the little mic in a laptop. I'm doing the things that make this already somewhat compromised medium work a little better, and not just because it looks a little better or sounds a little better, but because the tangible benefits for a collaboration, where somebody can read my body language or maybe hear a little bit more of what I'm doing on an instrument, actually creates a virtuous cycle of everything kind of sounding better, so you write better, you communicate better.

Your new book, The Reason For The Rhymes, is out Sept. 15 – what does the rollout for this look like for you, and then what's next for you this year and going into 2021?

For the rollout, I'm working with a publicist, and we're doing a series of interviews and podcasts, and I'm writing some articles for some various online outlets, which has been fun. This whole thing has been a little kind of version of celebrity for a day, where it's really fun to focus on this thing. This is like any creative art. You work in obscurity for 18 months on something, and then you've got this really intense couple of months where you're just spreading the word everywhere. So that's a little bit about what these days look like.

In a larger sense, I'm finishing up a record project with a wonderful artist based in New York. We did a lot of recording sort of pre-pandemic, and we're now talking about getting the album out in the world, so that's keeping me busy. And I'm doing some writing with a wonderful songwriter who is married to an artist, a jazz artist named Stacey Kent. So I've been writing with her husband for her. Now we're collaborating on Zoom. Actually, after you and I hop off the line, he and I'll do a little online collaboration to push our songs a little farther down the road.

As far as what next year holds, man, I wish I knew. There was something that somebody said that I thought was genius. Five years ago, anybody who was in a job interview who was asked, "Where do you picture yourself five years from now?" was wrong. So on some level, who knows what's coming?

You can order 'The Reason For The Rhymes,' out Sept. 15, via Amazon or through TheReasonForTheRhymes.com.

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RIAA 2020 Mid-Year Report: Recorded-Music Revenues In The U.S. Grew More Than 5 Percent During The First Half Of 2020 Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

 

 

GRAMMYs

Jacob Collier

Photo: Dyan Jong

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Jacob Collier Decodes The Magic Of 'Djesse Vol. 3' jacob-collier-decodes-magic-behind-djesse-vol-3-talks-working-tori-kelly-daniel-caesar

Jacob Collier Decodes The Magic Behind 'Djesse Vol. 3,' Talks Working With Tori Kelly, Daniel Caesar & More

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The GRAMMY winner dives deep into the latest piece of his ambitious and awe-inspiring quadruple-album puzzle
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 17, 2020 - 6:03 pm

Anyone who knows anything about him, knows: Jacob Collier is on another level. The prodigious British musician, composer and arranger extraordinaire has notched tens of millions of YouTube views and four GRAMMYs with his effortless command of the medium of music. And even though, traditionally, transparent geniuses are hard to come by, Collier shares his heart and mind for music quite openly, leading in-depth workshops and Logic session breakdowns of his songs and his process. Yet, in speaking with him – even for all of the gobsmacking talent and insanely cool theory wizardry – his dominant trait manages to be his reverence for human instincts.

"The thing about when I make music," Collier told GRAMMY.com, "is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings. It's based in an emotional decision."

Most recently, Collier has been channeling those decisions into an epic quadruple album, releasing its latest puzzle piece, Djesse Vol. 3, just last month complete with top-notch features from the likes of Tori Kelly, Kiana Ledé, Tank And The Bangas, Daniel Caesar, Jessie Reyez, T-Pain and more. The album shows off not only Collier's approachable, but his remarkable vision for what music can do and how it can connect people across the world, even during a pandemic. Feeling all of this from an artist who just turned 26 years old last month produces a hope we need more than ever right now.

We tapped into Collier's fascinating world, catching him over the phone from his increasingly famous music room in his home in North London to talk about Djesse Vol. 3 and its stunning collaborations, what he's learned during lockdown, his process of sharing his abundant musical knowledge and even what he does to unwind. Enjoy...

A quadruple album is an ambitious undertaking, and I read somewhere you said you're treating it like a big puzzle. How does Djesse Vol. 3 fit into that puzzle for you?

So this whole quadruple album thing was something I dreamed up about three years ago, two or three years ago now, I suppose. The goal was how can I build bridges between all these different musical faculties that I've been listening to and loving for all these years, and get them all to make sense within each other's contexts? I've been an avid listener of all these different kinds of music for so long. I was brought up on Bartok meets Beck meets the Beatles. And then you've got Björk, and you've got Joni Mitchell and you've got Stevie Wonder and Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire. All these styles and different languages and different parts of the world and different histories converged for me as a teenager.

I just became fascinated with the idea of making it all make sense with each other, so combining different elements. I made this album, I suppose, about five years ago called In My Room, which is my first album. I made it in this room I'm currently in, in my home in North London. And that was really the first time I'd ever written songs. It was good fun.

After that album came out and I toured it about, and I really wanted to do something a little more epic. I set about this four album process delegating my musical ideas as they came out into these different rooms, different boxes. So Djesse Vol. 1 is the birth of the whole thing, the gestation of the sound world. And it's very large. It's a big, expensive work. There's an orchestra present, they are choirs present, the acoustic space taken to great heights, that was the space. And I collaborated with the incredible called the Metropole Orchestra on that record. Djesse Vol. 2 is still acoustic, it's still in the real acoustic sounds world, but it's a much smaller space. So more about songwriting and folk music, world music, a little bit of jazz thrown in, and some music from Portugal, music from Mali, Africa, all sorts of things. So that was a smaller acoustic space.

And Djesse Vol. 3 was always the one I was most excited about because it enabled me the space to explore a lot of the negative space type sounds, sounds made in the digital sphere, electronic stuff, which I suppose lends itself to hip-hop and R&B, and you've got soul music in there, and you've got funky music in there. And pop as well. I always wanted to explore those things.

And the fun thing for me was bringing the aesthetics that I've have been creating and I've been fascinated by for the last 20 years and trying to invent these sounds that I loved listening to in my own terms. And then Djesse Vol. 4 it's going to be the culmination of all these different ingredients thus far.

There are so many great collaborations on Djesse Vol. 3. Does your ability to be so self-sufficient and play every instrument yourself help you when you work with someone?

Well, it's a blessing and a curse because on the one hand, when you've done things yourself for a long time I think it's easier to fall into your own habits and to come into any situation with a preconceived notion of how you'd like it to go and how you'd imagine it could go. In my brain... For example, walking into the room with Tori Kelly, it's like, well, I could go many directions with a voice like Tori's, because Tori's voice is like this kind of music acrobatic machine. It can do so many wonderful things, emotive things.

And so in some ways that stuff is not helpful baggage because it just gets in the way of the present moment. And so with Tori, it was one of the first times really in my musical life where I walked into a room, and I discarded all of my previous ideas. I didn't have a song that I'd written for her. I didn't have an idea, a framework for something I wanted her to be a part of. We walked into them cold and we just started jamming. And so that process to me has proven to be really quite fantastic. And actually, sometimes more effective than when I walk into a room feeling like this is the entire song, can you just sing the melody? Which also can work quite well.

I think for me, it's always about trying to make room for somebody else's musical intelligence and not let my own experience of creating stuff just get in the way, because everyone has their own standpoint. And I think the thing I'm most interested in with all these different collaborators is that some of their standpoints are crazily different from mine. Someone like Jesse Reyez or T-Pain, both of whom are on a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "Count the People." They come from really different times, different generations of music making. And they have very different reaches in terms of who listens to their music and have very different experiences. And they have totally different voices, but for me I was pretty excited by the idea that these two different musical entities could exist within the same breath.

And same goes, for example, on Djesse Vol. 2. There's a song where Steve Vai, the rock guitarist, is playing in harmony with Kathryn Tickell, who's a Northumbrian pipes player from the North of England, and some of the language is quite similar. I love finding these ways of joining these flavors together. So the Daniel Caesar song was another example where I hadn't planned too much of it and we walked into the room, and Daniel's very natural process of coming up with words, lyrics just fell right into the pocket of this groove that I've been working on. We ran with it and that felt really cool.

Wow. What strikes me about your approach to all this is your awareness. You're not short on talent or ideas, but your awareness is really the missing link. In this last six months, where we've all been on lockdown, can you tell us a couple of things that you've discovered or maybe even rediscovered about yourself musically?

Yeah. I think it goes without saying this is a time where a lot of people have gone back to square one or even pre square one. And it's like, "what is a square?" [laughs] And for me, I was so busy with touring and I was so busy with just scampering around the world, doing mad stuff. And if I wasn't touring I was trying to finish something or directing a music video or editing a music video, or trying to keep up with the social stuff or whatever. There's all these different elements. I think when a lot of these things slowed down, the cool thing was we had to take stock of what the hell is going on and actually what's important.

A lot of people that I spoke to, friends and musicians, I think realized that a lot of the stuff that feels really important is not important. And one of those things maybe is rushing and doing things fast and things having to be done now. And if it's not done now, it's going to be too late. It's always urgent. I really think urgency a massive construct. And I think it's been really nice in the last, couple of weeks since Djesse Vol. 3 has come out to remember that actually it's nice to not rush stuff. I finished Djesse Vol. 3 by the end of March, I was ready to go with my 10-week tour, which got thrown out the window when the pandemic hit. And I then spent four months making the album just so much better than it would have been otherwise. It's so much deeper and so much more sonically satisfying.

I'm really grateful for the time, but honestly, I haven't really stopped in quarantine because I've been challenging myself to all these different kinds of things. I mean I've been teaching master classes from home. I performed on TED. I did a Tiny Desk from home. I made a video for Jimmy Kimmel Live. I made a video for Jools Holland in the UK. I made a video for Stephen Colbert. And on top of that, I was mixing my album and producing that. I was directing the videos and I was editing the videos and all this stuff too.

I think for me, it's been a really interesting period of time. Without being able to actually be with people, how do you get stuff done that's collaborative at all? And one fun solution I found is best explained through a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "In Too Deep," which featured Kiana Ledé. I actually mailed Kiana a mic and I installed this program called Source Connect on her computer, which meant that I could move her mouse around on her laptop. So far as to install Logic Pro. I taught her how to put the mic in and stuff, and she was super brilliant at that. She sang her tracks and I could hear what she was singing in real time, and printed the tracks into her computer. And then I sent those tracks to myself at the Dropbox here. I continued mixing my song.

That was a really amazing moment where you think actually collaboration is completely enabled by the tech that is existing, but you have to be courageous enough to follow these things through and to be determined to find solutions to things that might feel weird. I think I've enjoyed being a bit of a problem solver in the last six months or so.

You mentioned the workshops. There's so much of what many people would call genius in your process, but there's also so much transparency. Can you talk about what the process means to you versus the result?

Yeah, it's funny because finishing stuff was something I was really bad at. For the whole of my teenage years I was really bad at finishing things. I wanted to get good at it. So the best way to get good at it was just to practice it. So I practiced finishing stuff. The four-album project was like, this is going to make me shed finishing stuff. I'm going to have to get good at this because otherwise I'm going to suck. The fun thing I think for me is learning how to step away from your ideas when you can. But the last year, or four or five months or so, I rediscovered the joys of going right to the very deepest corners of your process having officially finished the song. It's like, how do you get the song to spring off the page, as it were, and feel alive?

A lot of the purpose of doing that is, for me, even more interesting than what some of it ends up sounding like… And also, I love explaining it because I think by explaining it to others, I explain it to myself, and I've realized the connections that maybe I don't realize just by sitting and doing it all day long.

I fell in love with that process a couple of years ago. And I've since really enjoyed just taking apart my Logic session. So I did one for this track called "All I Need," and I did one for "Sleeping On My Dreams." And in the past I did one for "Moon River," which was the arrangement that won a GRAMMY, I guess earlier this year, which is weird that things are still in this year. Also, "All Night Long."

It was fun just to think about, how do I present this as something that people can maybe understand at a broken down level? The thing about when I make music and how it feels to me is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings, it's based in an emotional decision. I want gravity to come here or I want it to feel like you're twisting here, or deepening here, or some unconscious awareness that a breath will lead to another breath, or whatever. And these things I think, they're fun to take apart and think about in active terms.

Can you give us any clue on maybe what's to come for Djesse Vol. 4?

Djesse Vol. 4 is something I've almost deliberately not planned too much. But one thing I will say for sure is that I think it's going to be very centralized around the human voice. It's my favorite instrument of all instruments, my voice. I started as a singer, really. I started singing all the instruments before I could even play instruments, like the piano or the bass or the guitar. I was singing all those parts. I want to come back to my roots in that way. I want to do that, but obviously with human voice there's so many directions you can go.

One idea I have for the album, that is if I can go on tour within the next two years so I really hope I can, is to begin to use some of my audiences as instruments even more than I have been. In the last year or so I've been... When I was on the road last year I really enjoyed the concept of the audience singing harmony. I would split my audience into three or four or five parts and get them singing these notes, and we'd improvise these chords. So up and down arrows spontaneously dictates it to different parts of the room and it would be this ever changing chords, omnichords. It really inspired me to think about the voices.

I think maybe somewhere between the audiences of my live shows and the choirs that I love so much around the world and have built relationships with, and also some of my favorite musicians and artists in the world, who I guess I can't reveal too much of right now, but there was some extraordinary singers, vocalists, and people who I've been in touch with for a long, long time who are going to be involved in Djesse Vol. 4. I think it's really a celebration of all these different languages. Because for me, I think at this point with Vol. 1, 2 and 3, I've covered a fair few genres, but I think that it's about bringing it home to where it all started for me, which is the voice, and is the voices of the world.

And I think it's such an important time for people to use their voices in so many ways, right? As people and politics in the world and musically, I think a lot of people feel like their voice sometimes is not important, or that it's difficult to use their voice or raise their voice in certain situations. But I think for me it's like the keys to the castle. If you're able to sing, if you're able to speak, and you're able to be honest within that space, it feels like a really good starting point for the whole world of expression. And to me, I think if there's one thing Djesse Vol. 4, it's definitely intended to be, right now, it's to celebrate that, celebrate the voices that make us human.

That's beautiful, Jacob. It's high concept, but it's also rooted in basic human connection... I know that it's a tough time to be planning a tour, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you have in mind for the next time you hit the road?

Yeah, so this is a whole new idea that I was talking to this amazing company called Lyte about recently. We've unveiled this thing, which is kind of a new concept, but it makes sense to me. The idea is, I'm saying I'm going to go to these 91 cities, minimum of 91 cities, at some point in the coming years, and fans can RSVP to these gigs. They can basically reserve their place on the wait list for tickets. So no venue are announced, there's no dates announced because nobody knows when it's going even to be possible, but the moment that things are possible the gigs will go on sale and the people who've reserved tickets will get their tickets.

The coolest thing to me as an artist is that, that means whenever I do go on tour that the fans can dictate the sizes of the venues that we play, which is actually a foreign concept, because normally as a musician, you say, "Oh, I'm going to go play a gig out at the Wiltern and I just hope it sells out. But it might not. Or maybe it will be way too small and there'll be way more people, but we all got to squeeze it in. And it's difficult to move other gigs around on the tour because they're all confirm." So the cool thing now is that however many tickets we reserved in these markets over the next year or so, even if we're not on the road, we can still be planning and thinking and building relationships with venues and thinking how does it make sense to route this and stuff? So, yeah, obviously the exciting thing is the people can go on jacobcollier.com and they can reserve tickets to those gigs, even though we don't know when they're going to happen, there's still something that I can look forward to.

Definitely. Ok, last question. What are some of your interests outside of music?

Good question. Right before you called for this interview I was really deep on YouTube watching videos about Fourier transform and quantum mechanics, which actually is not something I'd normally do just to chill out. I like going deep on some of the concepts that make up our universe. That makes me happy and quite excited. And on a completely different axis, I also enjoy a good game of badminton.

Where Songwriting Meets Innovation: Cliff Goldmacher Puts His Work & Wisdom Into Words

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Carlos Santana

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For The Record: Santana's 'Abraxas' 50 Years Later santanas-seminal-second-album-abraxas-turns-50-record

Santana's Seminal Second Album 'Abraxas' Turns 50 | For The Record

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Relive the magic of Santana's 1970 sophomore album containing some of the band's most recognizable songs such as "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va"
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 16, 2020 - 12:48 pm

Half a century ago, and almost three decades before Carlos Santana and company went Supernatural, psychedelic Latin rockers Santana released their legendary second studio album, Abraxas, on Sept. 23, 1970.

For The Record: Santana's 'Abraxas'

The band borrowed the album's aptly dazzing title from a book called Demian credited to Emil Sinclair, a pen name of author Hermann Hesse, who also wrote Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game. Watch the latest edition of For The Record in the video above to find out where the band got the colorful artwork on the album cover.

The music of Abraxas yielded some of Santana's biggest hits: "Black Magic Woman," "Oye Como Va" and "Hope You Feel Better." The band went on to win eight GRAMMY Awards and rock music has never been the same since Abraxas.

In 1999, the album was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame. Learn more about the classic status of Abraxas by watching the episode above. 

Read More: Santana's "Smooth" GRAMMY Feat: For The Record

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Ebonie Smith

Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

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Ebonie Smith Tours 4U Studios In Memphis ebonie-smith-atlantic-records-producerengineer-gives-all-access-tour-made-memphis-4u

Ebonie Smith, Atlantic Records Producer/Engineer, Gives An All-Access Tour Of Made In Memphis' 4U Recording Studios

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In a clip from the latest episode of "Pensado's Place," the award-winning record maker comes home to walk us through the studio belonging to her "music industry godfather," Stax songwriting legend David Porter
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 2, 2020 - 4:31 pm

Normally, you'd find Ebonie Smith behind the console in the New York City, where she works as a producer/engineer for Atlantic Records. But on the latest episode of audio mainstay "Pensado's Place," Smith gives us an all-access tour of Made In Memphis and 4U Studio, the home base of legendary songwriter/producer David Porter.

Smith was the feautured guest on "Pensado's Place #470" earlier this summer, a must-watch episode. Now, she returns for the special "Shoptalk" segment (2 minutes 45 seconds into the video above), where Smith takes us through the prestigious facility belonging to the man she calls her "music industry godfather," appropriately lauding his legacy by saying, "He's probably one of the smartest, most amazing, most energetic, living legends that you'll ever get an opportunity to be around and to see, so I'm actually grateful that he lets me in here when I come home." 

But Smith is well on her way to building a legacy of her own. As a multi-talented producer/engineer and singer/songwriter, Smith has worked a wide variety of projects, including Janelle Monáe, Sturgill Simpson, Cardi B and the "Hamilton" Original Broadway Cast Recording. She won the Mad Skills Award at the 2020 She Rocks Award, and was nominated for a Pensado Award in the category of "Best Break Thru Mixing Engineer" as well as for Forbes' 30 Under 30.

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She's also extremely active in the music community. Smith is the founder and president of Gender Amplified, Inc., an organization that celebrates and supports women and girls in music production and audio engineering, and in fact she serves as an elected governor of the Recording Academy New York Chapter and member of the Producers & Engineers Wing.

Starting her tour in the Studio A control room, she highlights the API AXS Legacy console, noting the smaller-format API 1608 holds it down at her studio in New York, so she's instantly comfortable with the board and the room. Then she heads out to the live room to talk about how centering the energy in a studio is her first order of business.

"For me, I love to come into a studio and the first thing I find is the piano, because that's how I cleanse the space. That's also how I purify my mind and prepare myself to be of service in the space," she says, just before sitting down to 4U's Baldwin piano and playing beatifully.

Smith also points out some of her favorite pieces of outboard gear, includng the famous Tube-Tech CL 1B compressor, which is always in her vocal chain. She also professes her love for the Neve 1073: "I'm a Neve girl. If I could just have everything runing through a 1073, that would just make my day."

Over in Studio B, Smith shows off the API lunchboxes, especially the 560 graphic EQs, and the Neve 33609 stereo compressor and notes that every detail matters, down to how electricity of a space will affect your gear.

"A lot of folks say, 'Why do you need all this stuff in 2020, especially when you have the software emulators?' In my opinion, I like to say all the time, 'Electronics have a story to tell, and electrons have a story " she says pointing to her favorite API hardware EQs. "These four units sound different, all of them, because electrons have a story to tell."

Read More: Dave Pensado & Herb Trawick On "Pensado's Place," Expanding Audio's Scope & Being Inducted Into The TEC Hall Of Fame

Smith shoots some rather impressive hoops at the court outside the studio before concluding the tour in Studio C, where she likes to jump on the drum kit to let her energy out. Maybe next time you'll catch her in the Big Apple, but for now Smith seemed right at home at Made In Memphis Entertainment's state-of-the-art complex. 

The rest of this "Pensado's Place" episode features an inspiring interview with GRAMMY winner Fantastic Negrito, who shares some serious music motivation. Show creators and co-hosts Dave Pensado and Herb Trawick go deep with its guests from across the vast landscape of the audio world for over 450 episodes and couniting. 

To learn more about Ebonie Smith, you can check out her website, and be sure to follow the Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing on Instagram to stay connected and informed. 

David Porter & Made In Memphis Host Recording Academy Rap, R&B & Latin Writers Retreat

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Karnig Manoukian of Charming Liars

Photo: Miikka Skaffari/FilmMagic/Getty Images

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Charming Liars Cover Posty's "Circles" For Beirut charming-liars-drop-must-hear-cover-post-malones-circles-benefit-disaster-relief

Charming Liars Drop Must-Hear Cover Of Post Malone's "Circles" To Benefit Disaster Relief In Lebanon

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With co-signs from the likes of Elton John and System Of A Down's Serj Tankian, the single is raising money for disaster relief efforts following the Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Aug 26, 2020 - 5:26 pm

Los Angeles alternative outfit Charming Liars have released a brand new benefit single. The song: a soaring cover of one of their favorite Post Malone songs, "Cirlcles." The cause: to raise funds for disaster relief efforts following the devastating Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Have a listen:

Charming Liar's version of the Posty hit has received support on social media from the likes of Elton John and Serj Tankian of System Of A Down. 

https://twitter.com/eltonofficial/status/1297590727875141632

The recent explosion in Beirut and the devastating effects it has had on the people of Lebanon are heart-breaking. @CharmingLiars have released a new single with the proceeds going towards disaster release. Stream or download now to support a great cause. https://t.co/he8fJk7jH6 pic.twitter.com/F0eIdIqWNS

— Elton John (@eltonofficial) August 23, 2020

Originally formed in London's West End by guitarist/producer Karnig Manoukian and bassist Mike Kruger, Charming Liars relocated to Los Angeles in 2013 where they linked up with vocalist Kiliyan Maguire. The band explained the affect of the disaster in a heartfelt post accompanying the new single:

“On August 4th, the third-largest explosion in our world history occurred in Beirut, Lebanon resulting in a devastating amount of destruction, damage, and death to the country and people of Lebanon. Karnig, who is Lebanese Armenian, and all of us Charming Liars, want to do our part to help rebuild and restore the beautiful city of Beirut as well as provide aid to the estimated 300,000 Lebanese who have been left homeless as a result of this tragic event.”

Proceeds from the single will go several organizatons to aid their disaster relief efforts, including the Lebanese Red Cross, Impact Lebanon, Saint George Hospital Beirut, and others.

"Please download, stream, and share it on all music platforms to help us raise funds for an incredible cause," the band added. "Thank you for your continuous support and see you soon!” 

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Beatport Announces 'Together For Beirut' Reconnect Livestream

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Some of the content on this site expresses viewpoints and opinions that are not those of the Recording Academy. Responsibility for the accuracy of information provided in stories not written by or specifically prepared for the Academy lies with the story's original source or writer. Content on this site does not reflect an endorsement or recommendation of any artist or music by the Recording Academy.