2020 IB Extended Essays

Whilst Jacob Collier’s piece begins by producing multiple sounds programmatically illustrating a picturesque morning sunrise with birds awakening. The earlier reference to Collier’s hallmark of reharmonization is noticeable immediately with the commencement pitch of A at 430 and its constant changing from this low point to a high point of 466.18 before settling to 440 (when the metrical beat commences), being used to create harmony that sounds microtonal. Combined with the percussive sounds (such as glass harmonica sounds, wind chimes, bells, triangles, glass) the whole imagery of the morning, reflects the approaching lyrics of “why do birds suddenly appear”. The onset devoid of metre until the entry of the drum set at 0:38 with bass drum and the rim shots on snare occurring after the bass drum creating back beat in common time shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – Jacob Collier’s Transcript

Tonality is ambiguous throughout the introduction with descending sitar strums hinting at various partial scale forms although affected by the constantly changing pitch of A (shown in Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Jacob Collier’s Transcript (Lee, 2018)

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