“I set myself the challenge of making a full-length album, using almost entirely the five-stringed guitar, in just four days”: Polymath virtuoso Jacob Collier’s new album is a love letter to the guitar – and alternate tunings

Jacob Collier has announced a new studio album that’s driven entirely by the guitar. But The Light For Days is not your typical guitar album – you won’t hear a six-string on it.

Instead, Collier relies mostly upon his five-string tuned to DAEAD, trading “scales for intimacy”. And he made it all in less than a week. By the sounds of it, Collier couldn’t contain himself. The music just kept on tumbling out.

“Since completing the Djesse album series, my imagination has been brimming with all sorts of ideas of things I’d like to do and create,” he says. “One of the things I’ve wanted to really focus on, and zone into, is the limitation of a single instrument.

“The acoustic guitar sound world has been a foundational aspect of my music universe for as long as I can remember, and so I set myself the challenge of making a full-length album, using almost entirely the five-stringed guitar, in just four days.”

That sort of recording schedule would give many artists a nervous breakdown. Not Collier. He seems way too upbeat for that, and describes this as something of an exercise in embracing what might traditionally be thought of as constraints – of time, of strings, and so on. This, he argues, was liberating.

“As a result I had to work so fast that I couldn’t second-guess anything,” he says. “I just had to roll with and trust the process. The results are warm, scrappy, imperfect, but very close to my heart.”

Those looking to tap into this sort of approach have options. Simply procrastinate for a while – easily enough done in this age of digital distraction. Procrastinate some more until you’ve got hardly any time left.

Then pop onto the music retailer of your choice and get yourself one of Collier’s Strandberg Boden signature guitars. They ship with five strings as standard (Yes, you could lop off a string on your regular guitar but then there’s all that fingerboard lying spare). And off you go. Make a record. Oh, and a 10-string acoustic would be useful too; Collier uses a custom Taylor.

Okay, another quick hack: include some covers. Collier did. You’ve got Beach Boys, Beatles and James Taylor tracks among The Light for Days’ five covers and six original compositions.

But maybe you need a thorough grounding in the creative potential of the five-string, and Collier started out young with that. He told Guitar World that his first guitar was a Tenor four-string, tuned in fifths like a mandolin only an octave lower, i.e. low-to-high GDAE.

“The feeling of this under my fingers became a deeply strong magnet for my music world,” he said.

Many of us will have experienced the creative exhilaration that comes with dropping our sixth string from E down to D, with Drop D tuning making powerchords even easier and bringing new chord voicings into reach. Collier? He dropped his four-string’s top string (E) down to D. That was his ‘Eureka!’ moment.

“It really clicked, as it unlocked some of my 4ths-based language that was native to me as a bass player before that,” he said.

One key detail in Collier’s signature Strandberg is the string spacing. It uses a regular width neck and fretboard, so there’s some extra room for the digits.

“There is slightly more breathing room around each string, which I love,” he said. “The neck is incredibly ergonomic, and the controls are super-intuitive – even to a slight electric guitar novice like me!”

The Light for Days is out October 10 via Hajanga/Interscope/Decca. You can check out the first single, I Know (A Little) above.

Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to publications including Guitar World, MusicRadar and Total Guitar. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.