The Wiggly Wonder of Music | Jacob Collier | TED

(Piano music) I see trees Of green Red roses too I see them bloom For me and you And I think to myself What a wonderful world All the colors of the rainbow So pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people going by I see friends shaking hands saying, Saying, "How do you do?"

They're really saying I love you I hear babies crying I watch them grow They'll know much more than I'll ever know And I think to myself What a wonderful World (Music ends) (Applause and cheers) Thank you very much, everybody.

Isn't that a beautiful song? I just love it. You know, music is a language you already know. And there's something deeply powerful that happens when we come together to make it. Something connective, something transformative, something vibrational. It's a feeling that moves us. Now I have a name for this feeling. I call it the wiggle. (Laughter) Now what’s the difference between a wiggle and a straight line? Well we all know how a straight line feels, right? Rigid, unyielding, inflexible, linear. Like a Roman road or the hand of a clock. It's set, it's certain. But the wiggle, on the other hand, is soft and flexible and fluid. The wiggle is smooth and constantly in motion, right? So where the straight line is firm and brittle, the wiggle is supple and resilient -- like water -- constantly changing shape, but stronger than almost anything.

As the great Alan Watts used to say, there are no straight lines in nature. Now I've learned many of the principles of wiggledom through the process of making music because music is inherently wiggly. Music is made out of a bunch of those things, there. Essentially, music is just wiggling air. That's what's going on with music. And as musicians, we are constantly oscillating between different states, right? So high to low Or loud to quiet. Thick to thin. Music is constantly in motion. And everything in music is learned through play. Now there are three essential types of wiggle in music that I'd like to talk to you about today. The first is called melody, what we call melody. Now a melody draws a line from one place to another and tells a story as it goes. So Louis Armstrong walks down the street, looks around and he goes, "I see trees of green."

Yeah? Not, "I see trees of green." Not that. "I see trees of green." It's a tree. "I see skies are blue." It's the sky, right? "Clouds are white," there's a little cloud up there. "The bright blessed day, The dark sacred night." Is that not the sun going down? It is. A good melody arc tells a story and draws a line that moves us. That's the first kind of wiggle. Now the second kind of wiggle is what they call rhythm. Now rhythm is about time, but it's also about the body. So Louis does not sing this: "I see trees of green. Red roses too, I see --" No, sir. Instead he goes, "I see trees green." (Vocalizing) Right? I just saw a bunch of you do this. Rhythm physically moves the body. And with that motion and play, the melody has something to be in conversation with.

And suddenly we have space, and we have form, and we have proportion and dynamics and that kind of storytelling. It's beautiful. So rhythm moves us and our melody through time. That's the second kind of wiggle. Now the third kind of wiggle is my personal favorite, and it's what they call harmony. Now harmony is about relationships. It's the wiggles between the wiggles. And by adding these chords, little combinations of notes, like clusters of notes, we get to take our melody and our rhythm and decide how we want these things to feel. OK, so with this song, we start home. We begin home, right? Begin to move. Somewhere close by, quite warm. A bit of darkness there. Lightening. Saddening. And then something extraordinary happens. Our melody note stays the same.

"And I think to myself," right, one melody note. But the chord, which could happily stay here, becomes this. "And I think to myself," did you feel the wiggle? It's special, isn't it? This note just completely changed color. Didn't it? That's the power of harmony. So with a chord, I can squint, I can reassure, I can enchant, I can purify, I can terrify. So that when I get home, in the end ... It’s all the more beautiful because we’ve traveled somewhere new. Harmony tells an emotional story through tension, release, dissonance and consonance by combining many different notes together. That's the third wiggle. So you may say, “But Jacob, why does it make us wiggle so? How do these notes make us feel these things?” And I would say, well, because music is about so much more than just notes.

Music is about life. In music, we learn that being in harmony with the world doesn't mean everyone is singing the same note at the same time. It's about embracing the dissonance and following the heart to home. We learn that being in time with the world doesn't have to mean stepping into line. It's about motion and knowing when your time is right. Leaving space for the rest. We learn that being in tune is not about being perfect. It's about following a line and being open to where it might take you. Because here's the truth of it. Life does not work in straight lines. Life is full of curveballs, full of ups and downs. And either we yield and we bend and we soften. Or we stiffen up and we break. So when the world feels like a straight line, be a wiggler. It's in your nature, trust me. You already know how to wiggle. You just need to remember. (Piano music) I think to myself, What a wonderful world Yes I think to myself What a wonderful

World (Audience sings) (Singing ends) (Cheers and applause)