How Jacob Collier Built 'In My Room' Solo on His Laptop
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- Jacob Collier recorded "In My Room" over three months alone on his laptop in his family home, looping instruments and layering vocal harmonies by hand — there was no instruction manual for the home one-man-band approach his heroes Stevie Wonder and Prince had used in studios.
- Quincy Jones emailed the teenage Collier after seeing his layered YouTube Stevie Wonder covers ("Hey man, what's going on with these chords?"), signed him to his label, and became his mentor; Jones and Herbie Hancock stayed at the studio until 5am for the final mix.
- Ben Bloomberg, then an MIT PhD student, built a custom "vocal harmoniser" so Collier could perform live as his own backing choir, debuting the system at Montreux jazz festival supporting Chick Corea after testing at Ronnie Scott's, London for 200 people.
- Standard mixing desks couldn't handle the track count, so the album was mixed in LA on Hans Zimmer's old cinema console, which had 512 inputs.
- "In My Room" won two Grammys; a 10th anniversary edition is released on 1 July, with a release-day show at Ronnie Scott's, London.
Why it matters: The album documents what a teenager, a laptop, a YouTube channel, and custom MIT tech produced a decade ago — no studio, no band, no instruction manual. A 1 July reissue and a same-day Ronnie Scott's show mark the record's 10th anniversary milestone.
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