#492 – Rick Beato: Greatest Guitarists of All Time, History & Future of Music

legendary music educator, interviewer, producer, songwriter, and a true multi-instrument musician playing guitar, bass,

cello, and piano. Rick, with his incredible YouTube channel,

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“You had, I think an incredibly fun and diverse beginning to your music journey. I heard somewhere”

that one of the things I made you fall in love with music was listening to guitar solo, some epic guitar solo. What's an early guitar solo that you remember, you connected to spiritually musically where you're like, wow, there's magic in this. Well, the first solo that I learned was hey, Joe. It was actually a good beginner song. You know, when I first started playing the guitar, because it has pretty simple chords, right? So it's like E, C, G, D, A. And I learned the solo

and I figured out this like, oh, it's this pentatonic scale. You might have pentatonic scale, they'll do. I didn't know that's what it was called, but learned this thing and it's like,

just, if you could figure out the notes, you noticed that there was a little pattern to it. And then I, I got so obsessed with it and I showed my younger brother, John, who started playing guitar right at the same time. I did. So I was 14. He was 11. And I would play rhythm for him for five minutes. Well, he would solo over H. Joe. And then as soon as I'd start soloing, he'd throw

“the guitar down, then we get in the fight. And so my mom eventually was like, what is going on here?”

And I was like, John won't play rhythm. John won't play rhythm for me. She's like, okay, I'll play rhythm for you. What, what are the chords? And that's like, okay, it's like E that's C, G, D, A. And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play hashtag parenting. When I look back on it now, my mom's been gone for 10 years now when I look back on it. It's like, my God, my parents were so cool. We should mention that hey, Joe and Hendrix in general is kind of

known for the rhythm not being simple rhythm, just the chords that you mentioned. It's what you do with those chords. It's almost improvisation in the rhythm side. He did all this really cool chord fragments riffs and things like that that's just part of his, that's the Hendrix style.

“What do you think? I mean, many people put Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time.”

What do you think is part of that? You know, I, I make lists. You do. If you somehow don't know who Rick Beato is, go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent interviews with musicians, watch your breakdown analysis of different songs and watch your top 20

lists where you're very opinionated. Sometimes very openly critical boss or kind of song. It's fun.

opinions are fun. But they do change legs from day to day. Yeah, exactly. But when any time I do a list, if I do 20, I like to do 20 because that gives me some leeway to throw in. I have to throw in something that is so weird that people, you know, something that a lot of people won't know just to have it on there. So I can at least introduce a, you know, I'll put somebody like a Allen Holdsworth who's a famous fusing guitar player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something.

Just some, some oddball solo in there, just so that people as they're listening down the list, we'll get exposed to something they would not necessarily get exposed to. Yeah, a lot of variety. But Hendrix, did you show up here today, Rick? Try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there. I just am getting that vibe right now. No, I'm not. But I don't want to say greatest, you know, you can say, well, there are people that inspire Jimmy Hendrix, Charlie Christian, older guitar players.

Charlie Christian and Django Ryan Hart were the first two really big and probably an Andre

Sagovia were three of the giants of the 20th century as far as guitar influences for most of the players that were to follow. So here, going to plus the Django Ryan Hart was, of course, the jazz guitarist and composer, active mainly in France, and his widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history. So Django was, well, there's a huge movement right now. Gypsy jazz movement as they call it. That is kind of built around the style of music that he played

back in the early 20th century. One of the things about Django is that he was in a fire and he had two of his third and fourth finger. So his ring finger and pinky were essentially melted together. He had no use of them. Although he could use them, well, he was courting, but a lot of these

incredibly fast lines. He's just playing with two fingers and it's amazing.

What is that? That's Gypsy jazz. That's Gypsy jazz, yeah.

“Him, Stefan Grapelli, is a violinist that played with him a lot. How much of this is improvisation?”

Everything he's doing, there's improvised. Feels so free. Yeah. And fun, like swing. And then that leads to, he said, "Cree Beebob." So Beebob was the kind of jazz that was also influential on you and your own life journey. And it's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz. I was very influential on the music that followed. So well, well, it's Beebob. Well, after this, the big bands were happening in the, you know,

tour with. And Charlie Parker, who's really kind of the one of the main figures of early Beebob,

“really developed the language of it. Usually, the music that they're playing over are standard”

chord progressions that they would use as vehicles to improvise over. A lot of them were ABA form. And Charlie Parker created this language of improvisation that was far more sophisticated than the swing players of the big band era, you know, think of people like Benny Goodman of that era. They would have really fast tempo songs, angular lines, chromaticism, things like that, chromatic notes, chromatic notes are just notes next to each other. Next to each other.

Yeah. I like to think of as connecting notes. Connecting, you're putting in more notes that are supposed to be there and so they're doing creating some interesting texture. Yeah. So that is one of the most difficult styles to master. There's all these things are a language. Yeah. Blues playing. They're all just languages, right? It's like just like you'd learn any type of language. My dad loved Beebop. Now, when I was a little kid and he's listening

to these Beebop records, whether it's Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie or Oscar Petersen, Joe Pass, great jazz guitar player, I'm just here in this stuff. I don't know any different. My dad was not a musician, but for some reason, he liked incredibly sophisticated music that was very technical and I just heard it and just was like, oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. And not realizing that it was developing my ear because I really Beebop is one of the hardest to improvise in that style

and that language of Beebop. It's very difficult to do. And hearing it as a kid is one of the things

“that I think enables you just like languages enables you to learn it as opposed to somebody that's”

never been exposed to it and tries to learn it as a teenager. So I think it's very similar to

learning languages which is kind of like my theory on perfect pitch that every child is born with perfect pitch and they start to lose the ability around nine months when people become culturally bound listeners when babies do. They start out as citizens of the world. You know, they can they have the phone, the neural pathways to hear the sounds, the phonemes of all 6,500 languages spoken on earth. But then around nine months they begin to lose that ability and they

when they become these culturally bound listeners is a great YouTube video with this woman Patricia Cool. She's a language researcher and I watch this the linguistic genius of babies. I saw this in 2010 this lecture that she did like a TED talk and she talks about this that kids they did an experiment they exposed kids to Mandarin three times a week for 25 minute sessions just a person speaking Mandarin to these babies and they were able to recognize the sounds, the phonemes

of that language even later on and when I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch I thought why does Dylan have perfect pitch but no one in my family had ever had perfect pitch and I thought

well must be because of the things I exposed to him prenatally and then in the first nine months

“of his life because it's the only way I could explain it. We're going to return to Joe Pass.”

We've got to go to Dylan. You must have Dylan. I guess it's in part one of the origin stories of you putting all videos into the world is the early videos you did with Dylan set of videos on his perfect pitch and for people who don't know and maybe you can speak to what perfect pitch means. It's a ability to identify any note without a reference tone so you can play it doesn't matter how quickly they are that they can a person with perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately

identify it or a collection of notes and taking attention upon a tangent you also have a course on your training. Yes, but my course is for relative pitch not to make it with perfect pitch. Is it fair to say that relative pitch as far as the thing you would learn is more useful for musicians?

Yes. Can you spend a different between the two? relative pitch is basically

learning how to identify pitches relative to a stated tonic or something that you've heard or just relative to each other. If you hear a note and then you hear another note after it you can recognize let's say it's a minor third interval. So if you're

to identify the relative nature from one pitch to another. Of course intervals make up scales and intervals make up cores and so that if you develop it dangerally relative pitch you can understand you can hear the music better. Yes. So what is it take because we're taking attention on tangent what's what is it take to train your ear what's a TLDR in the course before people go out

and sign up. It's just practice basically you start with intervals. Typically with small

intervals like minor second major second so minor second be half step major second be whole step. Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together? Both. So played separately it's called melodic intervals right like a melody and harmonic intervals are played like a harmony

“together. So you have to be able to identify them both both ways. With an early journey like”

we'll give people a preview what they should like what does that look like what is what is practice look like. Well my course it will play you an interval and then you identify it by clicking on whether it's you know a major third or minor third or major six or minor six or perfect fifth or try to on whatever it is and it will teach you gradually over time how to recognize all the intervals. So you listen to melodic interval or harmonic interval how quickly does the

year in the various age groups that we humans are in how quickly does the year learn the different intervals. Is it a week two weeks a month two months five years? I think you do it pretty quickly within you know if you practice within a couple months you can you can really make a lot of progress on it if you practice daily. What benefit does it have to use a musician in general? Well it's great

“if you want to hear a chord progression if you're trying to figure out a song and you can say oh”

that's going from the six minor chord to the four major to the five major to the one major

and you can just identify it immediately and then you figure out what the first chord is

then you know what the rest of the chords are because they're in relation to whatever that first chord is and for learning solos for example or learning melodies being able to sound something out not do you recommend people couple that with music theory in terms of education the education journey they have to be taught together because these terms are really music theory right those intervals major second minor second major third minor third perfect fourth. So as you're

doing that and then once you learn the intervals the 12 intervals in an octave then you learn them both melodically and harmonically so played together and separate then you learn chords and so then you learn to identify major minor diminished augmented suspended chords things like that

well you're basically learning music theory at the same time with that because learning music

theory is just the name of things in music. So there's the sound of things there's the name of things and then there's the haptic like playing the thing probably so playing course playing scales you have I believe a course on scales and on chords yeah okay since we're doing the tangent let's go. How do you recommend people there's a bunch of people listening to this that are curious about how they can start and playing guitar maybe playing piano maybe playing other instruments

although guitar of course is the greatest instrument of all the time. Where do they really stop to that journey with what do you recommend people do in general? Well if you're a beginner getting a good beginner guitar course and learning first of all the open chords in first position lot of songs can be played that way a lot of old songs can be played that way maybe not new modern songs necessarily so learning a few chords and with a nod towards maybe playing a song yeah

with nod towards you learn you learn the chord shapes and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing for learning a guitar is actually how to position your fingers so that you don't mute strings that you don't want to mute. That's the hardest thing for people to do basically is to get their fingers arch to where they if you're playing a C major

“chord your index fingers on the first fret of the B string and you have to have that open E string”

ringing there and it's hard for people to make those micro adjustments you take it for granted like should be playing a guitar for I don't know how many years forever right and you don't even think about stuff like that when you're playing a guitar solo every little thing that you do if you're playing your comfortably numb guitar solo you have to out of mid-air strike the string that your fingers on to play the note and these are all fine adjustments that you're doing.

you're right it's the haptic the physical aspect of it is really tricky,

“comfortably numb as a good example but if you do lead you have to get a super clean sound now that's”

both when you're playing fast you want it to be super precise but when you play slow when you have one note and you hold it and you're bending it it better be really clean yes for that it's I guess you have to really place the finger in the right place plus there's the all there's the calluses so it doesn't hurt and then the positioning of the string on the curvature of the finger where does it fall like how much do you bend the finger you have to have enough of

flesh on it to actually raise the string in pitch yeah otherwise it yeah because you're lifting

it with part of a flesh and of course you have to decide depends how old the DUR do you want to be like

the perfect the proper musician or do you want to do a Hendrix so the thumb over the top way over the top yes and so like if you have a fretboard here I think the more like classical guitars the very proper perfect a perpendicular alignment of the the fingertips to the fretboard versus like Hendrix is like f**k it you nerds I'm gonna do it with a messiness this part of the magic of course like BB King is also kind of messy looking in terms of his

positioning of the fingers but his tone is incredibly clean yes super clean so like that teaches you that maybe any position can converge towards the super clean tone you just have to figure it out I think a lot of it has to do with how they wear their guitars if you wear your guitar low if you're Hendrix and you're wearing your guitar that's true if you're wearing it lower lower then you so you can't get your fingers on top of it like that and the thumb acts as a way to mute

the lower strings from ringing if you're playing through a loud amplifier so there's so many

“other micro adjustments when you're playing leads because you have to kind of mute the other strings”

that are so they don't ring out if you're playing the first note and comfortably numb and the

solo at the end and you're at the ninth fret of the G string and you've been that if you bend that G string and you accidentally hit the B string under it you don't want that ringing so you have to kind of angle your index finger so it to mute to mute that so all these micro adjustments that you don't even think about I mean you're not thinking about that likes when you're playing it you've done it so many times that these things are just part of your of your brain that's

why this is such a great brain developer for kids to learn instruments and of course you have to solve that puzzle must be really frustrating in the beginning like holding a chord yes like all of them it hurts too right it doesn't have a acoustic guitar for that long though for like a week couple yeah couple weeks couple I don't want to discourage anyone you know it's actually pretty easy to learn basic stuff right but the the pain is temporary I guess is the point I'm trying

to mean it is so so what else so the physical component play a few chords word is the journey continue if you're learning guitar well then it's like if you play electric guitar then you get into single note playing and stuff like that that's where it gets to me where it gets really fun you know you have single note playing that with riffs if you think a back and black right that has a riff embedded in them in the actual melody or many songs that have riffs the

Hendrick stuff that has chord or riffs and you're moving up the neck and involving all the fingers and things like that so there's it really depends on what you want what styles you want to play so you're thinking about song learning so different components of song learning so riffs and songs lead and songs and then you have finger picking if you have a stairway to have in songs like that

“how about wanting to learn that then involves finger picking because that you have to isolate certain”

notes of the chord and play two at together you know in multiple times there's a few crossroads you get to select things so I guess you're speaking to the fact there's the if you're ready there's a right hand you can use your fingers or you can use a pick correct and it's a choice you make and sometimes you use both because instead of having you're using the fingers at the beginning or fingers and pick hybrid they call hybrid picking and then later on you're using the pick to

flat pick the picking patterns on the music theory front do recommend people learn scales and chords and like the theory of it uh put later on I would say I wouldn't say necessarily write it right

because that you want to keep people motivated so you get them to like fall and love with music

“playing all right and that takes a couple months three months pens on how motivated there so you”

recommend practicing what every day every day my son Dylan when he started learning the guitar a couple years ago I said it's better to practice 10 minutes a day seven days a week than to practice one day for an hour which is roughly the same amount of time yeah but it usually turns into something longer but otherwise like if you're busy life you know taking a day off that day turns into a week and then a week turns into a month at all so you haven't touched

instrument for months which is why I leave my guitar on a stand all the time so that if I

walk by it I'm like okay I'll just pick it up for second then the second turns into 10 minutes and

an hour two hours all right we gotta talk about this Dylan video so this might be one of the earliest that's the first one that's the first video on the channel it was actually before the channel

“because this actually blew up on Facebook and then I put it on YouTube after so if it's okay yeah”

okay Dylan we're going to do the hardest year training test of all time are you ready wait oh no I just a quick backstory on this I made this for my friend Shane's wife who wanted to see because Shane I was a friend that I was producing and he was there and Dylan had come down the day in the day and I said oh check this out and I played this stuff he's like

that's amazing he make a video so I can show my wife and I was on the way to a school board meeting

because I was on the school board at Dylan school and I said hey Dylan come downstairs I want to make this video take one minute just need to do this thing for my friend Shane and he's like I don't want to and I said come on so take one minute I don't want to so I said to my wife like need we'd you tell Dylan to come downstairs I want to do this video take one minute she's like Dylan go downstairs and he had to he has a mouth full of candy there because he was eating

candy so if you look at him he's he's literally has a mouth full of candy will he's doing this and we should say on Facebook I won't quite viral yeah like I don't 80 million views something like I had like 250,000 comments something like that insane how old is Dylan here he's eight eight years old yeah can you actually give some more backstory about like how do you discover the Dylan has perfect pitch so when Dylan was about two he I was doing a face time with my

brother John and and I was like check this out John and I played the stone in love Neil Sean's solo from Journey and and I was like check this out and Dylan was sing along and my brother John was like wow Dylan can sing all the notes and I was like yeah then I played black dog Zepelin and Dylan was sing that and so Dylan's got a good year then John and I were like well we have good years too so maybe we could have done that we were that age so a couple of

more years because but well he was about three and a half and I'm in the car I'm like Dylan sing

“the Star Wars theme and he sings it and I'm like that's in the right key and I checked I played”

my phone I was like oh my gosh then I asked him play it sing the Superman theme because we'd been listening to John Williams soundtracks the week before and he sings that and that was in the right key and I asked him another song so I turned the car around and go back to the studio I go to the piano I hit the note B flat and Dylan says Star Wars Star Wars starts on a big B flat major chord but it's the note B flat is the main one that you hear and then I played the note G and he

goes Superman and that's the first note and the trumpet part of the of the Superman theme and then I realized that he had perfect pitch and then in five minutes I taught him the name of the 12 notes which he already knew but he just didn't know the names also he is just associated the names to the thing you know what do you think is this in his mind because it's not just individual notes he can like hear everything yeah what is that he doesn't see colors he just says every

note sounds completely different wow like you said maybe it's a language thing yeah is there really is it just learned the language yeah the language is like it's like perfect um it's like native music fluency if you think of it like that so let's listen to some of this matter on here we go fasty can we start with single notes so we're going to do some intervals then chords okay here we go

two notes with one zero go see what great I would this great what about this this is incredible

these quick next chords that's really I think why the video went so viral the next part of this where I play these super complex poly chords okay I'm going to do some poly chords for you these are really going to be hard you ready what's this okay sing a B flat there again what's this chord right sing an F sharp next one what's this chord great what's this chord

“he had nine over F major so I had to look at my hand to make sure that that's what it was”

because they're all in inversions so I think the reason that this went so viral is that the more that someone knew about music the more that they shared the video because these poly chords so the people that were the best musicians were that were looked at it was like oh my you know it's

see augmented over deflett augmented and the second chord was A flat major over A major but they're both

in inversion right so it was like A first inversion A flat major chord first inversion A major chord and then A minor over deflett major and then E add nine over F major and for an eight you I mean for anyone plus they're all close voiced they're all just right next to each other yeah it's not like

“you know where you can hear them clear it's all in the mid range of the piano so you have to”

really listen and and you have to die he has to dissect each one like what are the notes being played there and and what is like what's the theory because he's actually using music theory to dissect them it must be in his brain those components of the chords all sound different like

very clearly different yes it's truly incredible the human mind is incredible and see you're saying

like some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life I did a thing where I played what I call high information music high information music would be Bach while tempered Clevver fugues anything Bach and I would play the well tempered Clevver and I would play I have a friend Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard any Biden essence and I would play items improvisations for Dylan had very sophisticated harmony and

linear things in it and Keith Jarrett and mainly jazz classical and modern classical music and then then we played listen rock music once again I'm talking on my wife's stomach before Dylan was born starting at 15 weeks for 30 minutes a night and then when Dylan was born I would sit with him for an hour every morning and listen to music and I would look at him in order for this for them to hear these phonemes apparently and develop this language or get the the language as acquisition has to

involve the social brain so when kids look at you when a baby is looking at you they're looking at your mouth and they're getting social cues from from that and this is also another component of saying this is where this word stops or starts and stops these are how this the phonemes are separated from one another these are how they're connected so I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch and then around nine months they begin to lose it if you don't engage with

their social brain making these pitches no I never played pitches for Dylan I said this is a see

this is a be flat this is a G I just played complex high information music form ending and played with them and it applies maybe even more generally to high information language yes and it starts before they're born I think I saw some some of these incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience and your biology psychology of language in early life I think a big part is in the mother's stomach you're listening to the mother speak yes that's right so like that's

“that's how on the language side you're picking up the language already that's right”

and you're picking up the music musical language so native music fluency you could call it so if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some people have jazz you have a pretty

be Bob you were funny enough talking about what is be Bob jazz and and people like Joe Pass

“and in your own life your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and”

sophisticated music but wasn't a musician wasn't a musician we never my I have six siblings and we

could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz we just took it for granted at that time yeah just take it for granted and my dad passed away in 2004 and we never really talked about that but he and I used to listen to music together all the time but we put on a record I sit on one side of the room instead of the other and not say a word listen to the whole side a I go flip it over listen the side b never say a word and then get up and go do stuff and we did that all the time

and so the first time you impress your dad was with a Joe Pass anyway and by the way we have to go to the song because people must have forgotten because he would just think you're like a good communicator or something they they don't realize how good you are at guitar how good you are actually a lot of instruments but guitar especially and there's this video the greatest guitar solo period can you give me some context for this particular intricate complicated solo who's Joe Pass

Joe Pass was a guitarist he lived from 1929 to 1994 and he was one of the greatest bebop players and solo guitar player so he made a record that this is off of called Virtuoso in 1973 that my dad gave me for Christmas when I was in 10th grade and he said and this is not like my dad my dad worked for the railroad he was very you know a few words spoken born in 1919 he said if you ever learned a play guitar like this you've accomplished something with your life and I was like what so

this record state was unopened until about March after Christmas and one day I was like okay I'll open it up and I put it on I start listening to it and I was like whoa this is kind of cool

“and so I said I think I can figure out some of the stuff so I figured out this thing is a bite”

bite ear muscles just by ear I didn't know any of the chords or anything if you're going to listen to a little bit here if you go back to that brother brother brother genovan alley thing with Carlos Rios playing that stuff is incredibly hard this I'm starting I don't know these chords so I start out I don't even know what that chord is but I figured it out I just and it's weird I mean look at that weird bar so you was just finding like playing without putting your fingers on the

various positions right trying every combination of fingers I'd never played that chord it's a weird

looking chord yeah and but I kept I moved my fingers around till I heard towards suddenly oh that's it definitely and I looked at my hands like what is that had no idea what it was so you were connected

“to the cell you were really connected to the music yeah and so that that's why you can hear it's”

not necessarily did you even you you didn't have perfect pitch yeah and not even relative pitch no I did not yeah no I didn't know anything about intervals I didn't know anything about music theory anything this is all just you just like by growing different shapes that's right I mean look at that weird bar there but then you get into these things so that stuff there I could figure out and then this that stuff I could figure out and then these

things here those are just inversions of and but I didn't know that I heard Joe play that on the record this the last line out there listen to a bunch of times so you just replay over and over and over and you're like trying to replicate it yes and I'm memorizing every different chord shape all

chord shapes that I had never played before would you recommend people do something like that

on a really complicated song yeah but there's so many YouTube videos that you can go and just learn it without having to yes yeah I would recommend I feel like the struggle the struggles where it's at this is true for education in general people like there's all these educators that try to make learning easier and more fun and all that kind of stuff great wonderful but part of the thing is the struggle absolutely but yeah let's start hearing there's I heard

licks like that all over this I knew that that was and then these licks here he plays a lot of

of the same chord so if I could play that then it's just figuring out the single notes okay so

“okay so if you just take this first part here when he goes so this this intro part”

you make a sound so simple when you break it down and by and by the way your best incredible

guitar player like this is obvious and he improvised all this but you know the first that's hard maybe finally that that sounds more realistic the amount of different genres that you able to replicate is incredible this is just taking the needle moving it there then going back a little there and then by the end the record was so scratched it was but it was worth it when I played it for my dad he couldn't believe I mean he

didn't say that's amazing he was like hmm pretty good so what was the role of bebob jazz in

“the history of music it seems like it wasn't fun showing your life another guy you're an incredible”

interview with flee people should go listen to that what's a great conversation one of the things that surprised me it's just how many musical genres influence flee and the guy showed up in a mouse Davis teacher and I was Davis played with Charlie Parker when he was 18 years old and that's his Charlie Parker is really his mentor can you explain to me why with many of the folks you've interviewed uh and in general out there in the in the world of jazz all roads lead to mouse Davis

why he's such an influential figure because he was the greatest innovator in the history of jazz he was at the forefront of all these different styles of jazz how many started as a bebob player and then he you had records like the birth birth of cool and modal jazz and hardbop and records like bitches brew where he started it I guess you would call fusion you start to get these records you had two main groups of miles Davis you the miles Davis 50s quintet and the miles Davis 60s

quintet now miles made records with many people but the 50s quintet had John Coltrane in it I mean a different piano players could winton Kelly but Paul Chambers in the bass filly Joe Jones in the drums and that particular group was made just incredibly important records and then he had his 60s group which was uh herbie Hancock in the piano around Carter in the bass Tony Williams in the drums and Wayne Schorter on the saxophone and they made all these incredibly important

records I forget who said it in interview with you but they talked about like miles Davis

“his music feeling like I think I think toes hanging over the cliff or something like this”

meaning like there's always a risk there's a danger that you're willing to make

to fuck it all up live and that feeling is what creates the the aliveness of the music like can you speak to that just the creating in the music the feeling like you're on the edge like you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen and all can go to shit and because of that it feels alive well when I interviewed Ron Carter that played in in miles as 60s quintet I asked Ron because Ron did records he played bass on 2200 recording famous records and I said

did you guys ever rehearse with miles no never I said so what what we do you guys we just show up

in the studio and you have the charts put them on the stand and we would you just roll and I said would you listen to it after no and I said well what about your what about the the live records that you did at when you'd record it clubs and things like that you goes we never knew that we were recording he goes maybe I'd see a microphone a different kind of microphone in my bassamp he goes then once later there a record would come out and I'd see it and I was on it and I would take it

down to the union and say I played on this record so he paid for it but he said we didn't even know

that's crazy that was on purpose that was on on purpose not to not to do their rehearsals

“not on none of that yeah he wanted people to just feel it play it thought is the enemy of flow”

as Vinnie call you to told me thought is the enemy of flow how do you make sense that flee the basis for very hot chili peppers is influenced by bebop jazz so his stepfather was a jazz bass player and his when his parents got divorced his he was born in Australia and then they moved to to New York then his parents got divorced and his mom married his stepfather was a jazz jazz musician and they then they used to have jam sessions at their place and flee loved it

it was kind of like my upgrain bringing with my dead playing jazz all the time once it gets inside you it's just there and and so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians yeah his oppression which is hilarious I mean he's a character his whole physical way of being as a character and his impression of just the upright bass is just fun to watch his whole his intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview it he's an intense guy and funny

and you know really emotional and and he picks up his bass and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel and he starts he talks about how he practices and then when he starts doing slapping stuff he gets it's so into it and I'm just sitting there going oh wow yeah he talked about his practicing routine with you and one of the things he's like I have to practice the slap and yeah no there's differences in the structure of the different bands but usually

like the bassist has a vibe to them I don't know if we can put words to exactly what that is as a kind of energy that drives the band to me the bassist one of the only instruments when you play a bad note everybody notices I started on the bass is a kid oh interesting yeah but you also play drums you also play yeah but my first instrument was the cello in third grade and then I switched to the bass and sixth grade I majored my undergrad degree is in classical bass

so I I always think of myself as a bass player first and I always think the bass is the most

important instrument because it's much as I love to play the guitar and I love to play the

“guitar more than anything I think but the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is”

because you can put the root in there you can put the third of the chord in the bass you put the fifth in there you can play a lot of notes and whatever you play in the bass kind of defines what kind of chord it is so bass player has a lot of power I have to go back to the beginning of our conversation what what do you think are some of the great solos of all time can we can we put a few in the consideration you have a great list on the top 20 rock guitar solos of all time yes

I put comfortably numb as my favorite is my top one on that day right on that day yeah right now the day later I would have said it's the second solo okay but I did the first solo because nobody talks about that solo and that solo is equally great and when David Gilmour when I played it for him and we were talked about it in my interview with him it was just to watch his face when he listened to it was incredible I mean I'm thinking of myself it's like I'm sitting with David Gilmour

and he's listening to comfortably numb and he's hearing it he's played it a million times live but how many times has he gone back and listened to it on the record it probably not for a long time and then he's hearing he's like oh maybe he just don't look back when you do great things

you don't look back miles never looked back he never wanted to hear the old stuff he always moved on

there was this funny moment where you you made a video why David Gilmour will never be on the channel and then you ended up of course interviewing twice he's one of the greatest guitar players of all time what do you think is that the core of his genius he has just an incredible melodic sense he knows how phrases should be put together there's a flow to his ideas that I think is just incredible it's the same with Hendrix this flow how one idea leads to the next how there's space

“between them it's just like speaking that's why I read about Miles Davis is he's very good at”

understanding tempo and the value of silence yes and I think I think David Gilmour doesn't always

technical side probably the tone of the I mean he's one of the most uniquely recognizable tones in all music yes what do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Gilmour he has a very sophisticated setup for his tone and and that was one of the things when I went to

his studio and I said to him so David is there anything I'm not supposed to see here I mean he never

sits down and shows people is gear and he laughed about it but there I am sitting there right next to all these pedals and I asked his tech feel I said these are the same ones he used on the records he's like yeah if it's tech has been with him for like 50 years and I mean the exact ones yes such is hard to it's hard to imagine that those things still of course though he's just kept it yet this is his Vincent echo that he played through and this is this you know these are all the

same effects pedals and the wait is it the same high-wide amp yeah is it the same yes yeah he gets some new stuff but but they keep all their own gear and that's I mean he's did so he does sell his guitarist for charity but like he has a black strat that is it's a signature version it's like he's that copy of his old one so to him it sounds exactly the same plays the same well of course they converge towards that kind of hardware but there's so many tiny details over the

years you see the final result of it but there's a there's a journey there of of exploring and of course he's not I guess he's not doing any soft like no emulation no and it does do emulation actually

he does he has this thing and this is I asked him in the first interview about this there's a

little rack thing that I'd heard that he used but I asked him for sure it's called the zoom 90 30 I put out a short where he talks about it I said so that that zoom 90 is that a real thing because I've read about he said yeah and he talks about how when he's sitting there recording on his own and he he runs pro tools himself and and so he'll be sitting there there's no one there to help him he's like I just plug into this thing and then I'll play a solo with this model it's like a kind of 90s

modeling early modeling thing and hopefully a solo and then after a while you hear the solo and it's like well I'm not going to replay that that sounds great you get used to the sound of it

“and that's what it is so people always talk about oh well he couldn't have used that he's recording”

through an amp and because it sounds great and and then he said yeah yeah so that's what I use and then I've I have the video of it right there and it has his presets dg1 and dg2 and you know whatever was your process for preparing for interviews like that you've done a few legendary

people I never prepare for interviews because I asked people things that I'm interested in knowing

so just letting your curiosity just pull it yes and I can think of a hundred questions to ask David go more and but I always ask my questions based on what they say to me yeah so but I do make a playlist of songs that I want to talk about so that kind of guides me is that because I want to make sure that I there's specific things that I need to play to so that you can jog his memory

“because any time you play something that's something you record even 50 years ago they'll remember”

if they don't remember the exact specifics that brings it to life to them again and they can they can kind of piece together some aspects about it and they can really talk he can talk about the phrasing and the you know the kind of melodic direction of things like that so there's a lot of tiny details are going to a particular song whether it's in the production or how it's played or how it was composed all the kind of stuff and you don't know what those are ahead of time

no you just know the song and you just are looking to jog their memory and maybe your own curiosity of like how did you do this or how to would this sound or that you make it look easy but you have to have a depth of knowledge you're saying you don't prepare I have an incredibly good

“memory exactly that's what it is is that I can remember when records came out who produced them”

where they recorded them who was the engineer what the what songs were on it and not only that but the people I'm interviewing know that I can play all the parts of all the instruments because I've done breakdowns of their songs which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place really but the actual like the skill of the interview the thing you're not saying the preparation is the

being able to radiate the love of the soul of music I will say this Lex is that the the other thing is that most of these people have a really good sense of humor when I was when the first summer interview David in New York my brother John came along and he is a massive David Gilmore fan that's his biggest influence as a guitar player and so he said you're interviewing David Gilmore I'm I'm coming I was like all right come on come on down so so my brother John standard about five feet

away and John is a sales guy but he great guitar player is a John's like it's like this is John is David this my brother John David great to meet you buddy and you know John's like it's so he's a sales guy and and so during the interview I I said I was like hey John what was I gonna ask David ask him about the Gilmore effect oh yeah that's right and the Gilmore effect is my thing that I say in the comments section when people say anytime anybody plays anything technical

yeah that's great but I much prefer David Gilmore so I always call the Gilmore effect anytime I have

like Invae Momstein anybody that has chops that I interview the the negative comments are always well I prefer David Gilmore and I said that I told David that he's like well maybe this you keep their opinions themselves yeah a lot of these folks have really wonderful personalities with the trust of person to be able to review that personality so confidently known with the top on that day what else is up there stare at heaven hey Joe what in that list

your top Hendrix solo is hey Joe it's the first guitar solo I ever learned so I had to put it on

“there so I don't I don't necessarily do these by I do those in kind of how how important they are”

to me and in my development so there there's always a biographical component to these lists

number three was Kid Charlemagne a steely dance so Larry Carlton amazing solo extremely difficult to figure out probably there's two solos on the list that are just about are very that one I can play oh well there's a few solos that are very hard to play stone and love by journey by Neil Shawne is very hard to play some mix the there's a song there's a solo by guitarist Carlos Rios that people don't know it's a brother to brother

Juno Vanelli song but it's very hard to play and figure out and that people don't know the solos I put it on my list because I knew a lot of people are going to watch it and they're going to know what the solo is for me as a sentimental one my my first solo is Mr. Crowley Randy Rhodes I like the musicality Mr. Crowley that there is a melodic component to you're playing really fast but there's there's a melody to it and also there's like a legendary nature

to the the the the the brief time we had to go ahead and use it's just probably one of the

“greatest guitarists ever 56 to 82 I think terrible um he was um um absolute brilliant guitarist”

had his own style which is they he's the guitarist for Azi Osmourne band yeah and that Mr. Crowley solo is a is a great solo great solo and um he's incredibly influential as a guitar player um to for metal guitar players and um I love Randy Rhodes uh another guy so one of my favorites is Mark Noffler yes and I did have Mark Noffler on my list songs of swing that's right you did now I had it high in the list and I'll tell you why I would have had it at lower because it's one of

the early ones because I want people to be like okay oh this is a serious list so Rick's gonna talk about serious stuff so um and Rick's gonna play along with all these things so I wanted to kind of state that at the beginning of the video I mean I made the video in one day

“to do 20 solos I think I played 19 of them but the heart solo that I had on there”

Nancy Wilson I uh I played the video of and I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the ice cream man Van Halen solo so I called Dweezle Zappa and I was like Dweezle can you play the ice cream man solo I'm making a video about he's like oh I'd have to practice that and I called

my friend Phil X is just amazing guitar player and I and he's like no I'd have to practice that

it's like come on man can't let me play ice cream man the opening lick of ice cream man that he plays is very hard to play because it's an incredibly long stretch and it hurt my fingers

tricky rhythm and and it's such a big stretch it's like man I can't at her it's my hand I just love

“that that's the Van Halen solo you have the time to go ahead so yeah I have to do some yeah”

there's so many Van Halen my god it could be there I could pick 25 different Van Halen solo's but to me I mean there really is nobody like Mark Noffler I mean there's this Juni guitarist there's something about his tone speaking of his Gilmore there's just the tone the care the timing of the notes his improvisation like the live performances are something the swing has been actually going like somewhat viral around recently his his pretty old live performance of

songs of swing for me brothers and arms these kind of so full mournful type of

solo he does really really well also the interesting instrumentation of Raumil and Juliet just so many is it truly one of the great now obviously the intro to money for nothing is is one of the greatest almost impossible to recreate that because of the sound is so unique and his it's just improvised it's so cool yeah there's certain songs like uh Europa by Santana Santana can have that tone too yeah that Mark Noffler makes me weird it's just how clean it is

I think he beats BB King in my book I'm totally cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note like a power of a single note I don't know anybody who beats Mark Noffler well that thing about being able to recognize somebody from a note yeah you know when I hear Brian May I can immediately recognize his Brian May's incredibly melodic the tone that he has Gilmore Hendrix everyone that we're talking about Van Haland it's just they have that one note oh I know that is

“and that's that's why they were talking about him that'd be funny that'd be a good video”

BB King you hear one note as a test of like how quickly can you recognize just a solo start playing that's a great I'm gonna make one of you a tomorrow Lex you don't have the day after tomorrow you'll see it I would love to see it can you say can you recognize these players by one note by one note yeah I think it's I think we're being a little too aggressive with that I think you need like two or three or five I guarantee you so I was gonna do a video last week

where I was gonna play songs in reverse okay see if you can recognize these songs in reverse and I had my two assistants come in it's like do you know what song that is they're like oh that's a del like what and then they're like oh that's that's Nirvana instantly they could recognize like well that's not worth making it so obvious you hear the tone of the voice backwards forward it doesn't matter oh yes okay so it's about the tone yeah how could you possibly know the

from a single note is I guess Van Haland you can one note of a BB King's vibrato you could know I'm gonna what I'll do is I would separate the guitars I can actually separate the tracks and I'll just play one note from a single vibrato you can know as BB King yes well we'll see put it on record I'm skeptical I'm gonna do all due to want 20 of them can you recognize these guitars from a single note could you recognize Tv1 abs versus

Eric Clapton yeah all right you might be right you might be right quick 30 second thank you

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go to lex freeman.com/sponsors we've got upload desk from a favorite office desks better help from mental health element for electrolytes thin for customer service AI agents Shopify for selling stuff online and proplexity for curiosity driven knowledge exploration choose what is in my friends and now back to my conversation with Rick Biano what do you think is the best Eric Clapton song one of the things we haven't mentioned so far

is the importance of lyrics and maybe meaning of the song it won't represent so in that sense tears in heaven well the story behind that is is heartbreaking and then I personally really love the sound of wonderful tonight it's a great song that's one of my favorite Clapton songs and I as I was like listening to it just doing the whole personal journey introspection knowing

as a bear saying that didn't know the the stories behind the music but I learned that Eric Clapton was married for 10 for decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to and that this woman was the muse the inspiration for for like so many of the legendary songs rock including a wonderful tonight including Laila and including George Harrison's something yeah legendary song also the same woman is she the greatest muse in rock history probably yes this is great

“so in your interviews and musicians and producers I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by”

is their whole the process the the recording the production the song writing the different elements of the process so are there examples of different things that stand out to you from the all the interviews you've done and all by the way all the recording a production you've done yourself so on the recording front and the production front and the song writing process front just things that pop into memory when I've interviewed the guys that are the

producers like Rick Ruben Daniel and Bob Brendan O'Brien which fig the thing about producers as opposed to people that are in musicians if you're in a musician even if you're David Gilmour you do a record then you tour and then you do another record maybe years go by but producers are working on multiple records you know sometimes at a time Rick Ruben could be working on multiple records and and the variety of things that they do you can talk to I mean I can talk to Rick about

the chili peppers and I can talk to him about Johnny Cash I can talk to him about Tom Pettie and all these records that I love and there's just so many interesting stories that I mean these interviews could go on for for days with with Rick and the variety of records that he worked on and

“there's so much knowledge to begin for me at least and I think that that the craft of production”

and recording engineering is something that is not well documented especially since there's no there's so few studios nowadays where there used to be a mentorship thing where you go and you work as a assistant engineer and you work your way up I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the Beatles I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios it's just two months ago and he started as a tape-op when he was 16 he started on the hard days night record

with the Beatles and he worked his way up and he said the first time you ever recorded an orchestra

was he recorded I am the walrus the orchestra part he set up the mics and I asked him I said so where was the band standing right behind me the Beatles right behind him the guy I'm interviewing at Abbey Road recorded I am the walrus there I mean recorded many Beatles songs and he was 18 years old and I mean I just can't I can't even found that they have a little cafe in the basement of Abbey Road and I said did the Beatles come in here he goes oh yeah they come

“in here and get coffee and I remember when they got two micro waves that like the first”

micro waves in 1965 and they were amazed by them and it's hard to imagine that I'm talking to people that worked on these historic records but you know they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive and then you've eventually filled them up with this music that

you can you can never imagine it not existing like Star Way to Heaven or whatever it is

yeah it's funny like looking back you can probably for them just to realize they've created that magic it's hard to believe yeah because you're looking at a blank thing and then magic comes out and you don't even you don't even understand I you don't understand probably a lot of these artists don't understand where that came from there you're channeling some deeper thing when I interviewed Brian May he told me I can't remember if this was if we talked about it on

camera or not but we talked about Bohemian rhapsody at the very end there was a thing where he was

depressing is Wami Bar a little bit and it sounds like the piano is out of tune I never noticed

it before he mentioned this to me and he said it always bothered him and there's always something about these songs that bothers people even these songs there's always little things and they

I mean that that there's certain moments and songs they're just unlike anything else and Bohemian

“rhapsody when Freddie Mercury is sometimes wish I've never been born at all and then guitar comes”

in I mean there's just nothing like that yeah that was that I don't even know I mean that that whole thing you've done videos on it it's incredibly complicated composition is it's crazy that a popular song popular rocks song could be this operatic so complicated the other thing akin to that moment is for Collins with the in the air tonight the drum bridge and what is that I can't I don't I don't understand how you can create that

what is that why is that so magical why is that so singular inside a particular song and in rock

history period like these moments I don't know musically I don't understand how you create them because it might be bigger than musical it might be cultural all in a bunch of different elements and plus it's him filled with like I've seen live before he's like a headset it does just shoot something he's like a telemarketer or something like this whole vibe and look to him he doesn't look like a rock star but he is those are hooks when you think about it right so it's as much of

a hook is any as the chorus of the song or any song that drum thing is something that people wait for and they air drum to it everybody air drums to it and it is a hook and those are hard to create those those moments are really hard to create and usually they're done by accident yes it's hard if you chase it you're not going to get it yeah and your conversation was sting he said something about how modern music is simpler more minimalistic and the bridge is gone

I think he said and he said he thought that the bridge is therapy yes it's like a chance for you to reflect I guess on the verse right before the chorus comes right it changed my view of the bridge I suppose the therapeutic nature of it at least lyrically you think he's onto something the body is a bridge the bridge is a place I think where you can kind of change the frame of reference of a song you probably do anything I guess Lenin used to he would have some kind of biting lyrics like um

we can work it out so McCartney writes the you know try to see it my way do have to keep

“I'm going until he can't go on and then but the bridge is very Lenin life is very short and there's”

no time for fussing and fighting my friend I've always thought that it's a crime so I'll ask you

once again I mean it's very you know very Lenin ask this is that was really a kind of a real collaboration between the two of those this were different parts of the band can clash yeah interesting ways I mean the Beatles are depending of that such like each individual Beatles uh a great talent in their own right yes how were the Beatles able to create some of the greatest songs of all time all before they turned 30 years old I have never been able to figure that out

but I have a theory that because I have a theory because PA systems were so bad back then for the Beatles people's screams so loudly that the Beatles thought okay we don't we don't need we can't tour anymore because we can't even hear ourselves so we're just going to be a studio band and maybe because of we have all these great late Beatles records are from 1966 on just because they had bad PA systems and they had no monitors you know they're in chase stadium people are

screaming so loudly they can't hear themselves they're like okay forget this we can't

“tour we'll just make studio records so that's what they did and in that one year like from”

August 6 1965 they put out help then in December 3rd they put out rubber soul of 65 then then August fifth they put out revolver so within 365 days they put out three 14 I think 14 song records so they wrote and recorded three incredibly important records they were in the studio it's like working out they're practicing their craft every day writing songs trying to do the other ones and so you had the the perfect thing of of four supremely talented musicians songwriters singers

I think that when I would talk to friends that would just play in local clubs and they'd play

four hour sets five nights a week and they never lost their voices because they're always

working those muscles and same with the Beatles they were always in the studio singing every single

“day doing takes and and I think that that was part of it at least but you also have this theory”

that you know that the greatest productivity that musicians have is before they turn 30 the greatest sort of creative genius that can come out of the human mind musically is before the age of 30 well I think it's the same in mathematics as well they you have this fluid intelligence versus crystallize intelligence fluid intelligence up until you're about you know in your late 20s yeah 30 years old and then crystallize so you're using the crystallizes you're using your life

experience to to write things so you'll find that that composers Bach Beethoven Mozart wrote

their most important works at the end of their life Beethoven the late string quartets the

ninth symphony things like that so they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this and there's not they're not improvising but things for improvising writing pop songs and that

“I think when your mind is really most active and your brain processing speed is at its”

pinnacle that this is my theory that people can come up with those kind of ideas same with improvising I think that most jazz improvisers not all but most do their best improvising before the age 30 creating something new yes truly novel that that requires a youth that's just a theory though but it seems to apply what do you think about the the 27 club a bunch of the music grades died at 27 Hendrix Brian Jones Jim Morrison Janice Joplin

Amy Winehouse Kirk O'Bane Kirk O'Bane of course a big part of music history is linked to drug history um LSD coke heroin weed smoking smoking I think about this a lot if you go back and you watch videos the Beatles any of their movies they're smoking all the time the get back documentary they're smoking constantly go watch any of the MTV unplugs Nirvana Kirk O'Bane

is smoking every second that he's not playing he's smoking every singer smoked every musician

smoked nowadays I asked my son Dylan Dylan's anybody smoke it is high school I think smoke nobody smokes he's I think they was an absurd question and that was part of culture yeah it was for everybody I mean I was that was a big transformation over the past 20 years and just everybody stops smoking but I don't think smoking has the kind of hard negative effect that we're talking about I mean I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs maybe smoke

it distracts them from the hard I mean heroin and coke I mean those things really an alcohol unfortunately can be easily abused I think it seems like it's the the life of a musician this dopamine thing of getting on stage and being being adored by tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people the high of that and then the come down after is really hard life

“for just even nearby logically of like how you deal with that you have to be able to control”

the roller coaster you mind and of course drugs will be a part of that and you think everything is allowed and everything is possible and then there's also culture depending on who you hang out with that certain kinds of categories of drugs are good for your creativity and so naturally start to abuse those drugs I don't know I think I think I think it's really interesting they're all that drugs have played in the history of music they have certainly been extremely destructive

but they have also certainly been productive muses inspirations for some of these folks oh absolutely now would we want to you know advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity no I wouldn't but just like smoking which I think improved people's voices I mean I really the raspiness of it this is the reason that that that so many these

that can't cool yeah miles Davis too miles every smoke miles didn't well miles was a heroin

attitude I mean yeah so many jazz musicians well miles had a sound to him you hear right I mean smoking must must play a gigantic role to that adding some complexities to the voice

“yes yeah some richness to the voice that King Cole he's he smoked I think four packs a”

day he died of lung cancer a lot of heavy smokers those singers Frank Smatra heavy smoker McCartney was a heavy smoker Lenin all those guys smoked yeah it's hard to know chicken of the egg but I certainly wouldn't recommend doing drugs as a way to get better music but you know it does seem to go hand in hand and some of it has to do with the period with the time period with the with the place because sometimes it's part of the

culture the drug use like you're saying smoking if you're smoking now that's going to be a very different experience the smoking 10 years ago 20 years ago 50 years ago it's a different different vibe so sometimes the drug is a deep integrated part of the culture versus an

“actual chemical substance the 60s right there I don't know they were on everything in the 60s yeah”

I mean I asked to account for something like you know on the songwriting front you mentioned a story about Elton John recording so he's one of the legendary songwriters but yeah you've met him and you know something about the process of his yeah because he was recording in a studio in Atlanta that I was working with the band that I was producing and he was an I was in studio B he was in studio A and this band that I was working with they were called jump little children and so

he had a assistant come in and ask hey is this are you guys jump little trying to yeah and then all of a sudden I couldn't see out into the live room Elton walked into the thing and we were getting ready to track and I'm I'm pressing the button yeah where are you guys what's up I thought we're gonna start this and no one's responding I can hear talking it's like what's going on where are they then all of a sudden they come back in the studio and they were stunned I said where were you guys

Elton John just walked into our session and he said he's a big fan he said to come over when we're done and hang out in studio A so so we did and he was there with Bernie top and they were working on a song and he'd we talked with their front front hour and he was talking about recording two records a year and then they'd go on tour and they'd write and record the whole record in two weeks so Bernie would give him lyrics Elton would go out and spend 15 minutes writing all

the melody he'd look at his lyrics and he was doing that that day Bernie was there and they had a lyrics sheet up in the piano and Elton would go on and they just were okay just record this and Elton would sit there and play and come up with the song in 15 minutes or so yeah there's a great

“version of I think tiny dancer where Elton is coming up with it on it's on YouTube and he's just”

coming up with the music right there and then the band okay here's how it goes and they record it right

and then they move out of the next time it's really incredible yeah that's it yeah there's one year that I've

decided to sort of run it through and put two verses together then a mid late then of course and then back to the sort of thing it's very it happens very quickly it sounds long but it's sort of these sort of stars of blue jeans baby Elie laid it seems just for the band hurts my pretty eyes you're married okay it's really amazing that you just he's looking at just the lyrics yeah and it's one of the he's one of the very few people that has the lyrics first

and writes the music to it which to me is far more difficult 99% of songwriters write the music first and then they put the melody and lyrics to the finished backing track and maybe they write like lyrics they write like nonsense words got them thing and they figure out from there yeah that's I mean

I don't know what skill that is exactly that's incredible I mean in that process he makes it his own

yes okay you had an amazing interview with the Kirk Hammett I'm a huge metallic fan same here there's a lot of interesting stuff that came out of that from that conversation

Metallica went through their own evolution they had many periods I mean they'd been around 40 years over 40 years yeah crazy the other thing is the downpicking which is interesting which is creating that really distinct sound James and Kirk the down the downpicking

“I used to be able to do that I just can't do that anymore it hurts my thumb to do it I think honestly”

I thought a lot about it say why does it why is it so painful why is it so hard it's from swiping with your thumb on phones and I think it affects that basal joint there and absolutely no I think that that's actually right because I'm thinking like why does that hurt so much to do that all the downstrokes and stuff it's got to be something it's like yeah it's from swiping with the phone the other thing I came through is that he's an improviser at heart

and then I think clashes with this kind of rigid structure that metal is so there's a real soulful melodic aspect to him and he gave a lot of props to James had field for just being a great composer being a great musician and writer of riffs of rhythm the improvisation part of it you

“don't think of because they because you have the finish songs that you listen to but those songs”

are born out of improvisations of jams of little fragments of ideas and then they craft them into these masterpieces also you mentioned that this is weird that didn't know the Hendrix was these different gauges strings yeah he was the one that talked about that wasn't he yeah yeah that was really interesting see these are the things that I like to learn from from from these interviews with

these people what never heard of that it's one of the ways you can find uniqueness of sound is

by trying different things that are not I guess that was really good at this right yeah it's completely breaking out of what you're supposed to do the ways you're supposed to do them and doing it completely differently you often ask musicians what their perfect song is for as well that's an interesting question what is a perfect song like one surprise me is how Zimmer said god only knows by the peach boys I was surprised by that too but I thought it was like yeah okay

that's a perfect song for sure the first interview I ever did was with Peter Frampton in 2018 and I asked him in that interview what's a perfect song and he said wider shade of pale and I was like oh that's a great song and then I thought I'm gonna ask that to people just to see what they now people are prepared if I ask that but it's like they're willing to go out and all him and say yeah okay if you ask me I don't even know I guess you just say it whatever right like what would

I even say what's a perfect song yeah I feel the pressure right because the problem is the reality is

it changes day by day like minute by minute I yeah I would probably I'm sorry but I'd have to go mark an author and I would probably go is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing I would go solvents this way even though like I'm tempted to say Europa then like solvents the swing hits on so many levels because it's got a great melody great lyrics and then multiple great guitar solos and he has such a unique sound to it the other thing is that it sounds very different from other

dire straits songs I mean this is like early dire straits strat tone and you think of like money for nothing is a less Paul and it's a totally different kind of vibe than him playing on songs

the swing but that sounds amazing plus it it's about music yes so it's like there's a meta aspect to it

but then there's also like we're talking about this guitar stuff but let her go and Hallelujah and let her go in in general like these songwriters that go super simple on guitar and there is just what's that called singer songwriter type I told you off my one of my maybe the music guest that's a dream guest is Tom Waitz I've wanted to talk to Tom Waitz for a very long time and I've got the different periods of you've met me at a point

“of my life where I've given up on it I don't know a little bit and that's how it's going to happen”

yes once you give up on it it's going to happen yeah yeah my Tom Waitz won't be on your podcast exactly this is this is my this is my mom come come here let's do it I want to see it I'm such a

I'm a I'm a sucker for great lyrics lyrics to me is such a big part of great songs and

“and he's another example he has a song called Martha it's about a love story that didn't work out”

and it's an older man calling the woman that he was in love with and basically reminiscing about

like you know thinking about like what would have happened if it worked out that kind of thing and then you know I love that song for a long time and you know at some point I found out that he thought that what he was in his early 20s and you realize similar with the Beatles like this these guys some power able to capture the human condition so masterfully and there are kids yes this I don't get it I don't understand it I can't speak for Tom Waitz but in the Beatles

case they went to Hamburg they spent time on their own they played cover gigs that were eight hours long and they lived lived live life yeah it's not like not like kids today now you're in a porch you also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan yes he is definitively one of my favorite musicians lovely you asked them an interesting question about how he creates this melancholy feeling that permeates a lot of

the songs and he jokingly said that the secret is all about the seventh and then and the ninth

so like musically cord wise what do you think about that I think he's out to something he's talking a little music theory there yeah seventh and ninth over the chord that he's playing so if you're playing a C chord he's saying a B would be the seventh D would be the ninth he does use a lot of those notes but almost all these people that we're talking no all these

“people that we're talking about use these notes and that's why there's songs I and when I”

interviewed staying I call them surprise tones and it's things like I like to use the word surprise notes that are outside the chord that are dissonant with the chords that they're playing and but in that creates emotion dissonance equals emotion and that's that's what I like I want music to be to depress me yeah what is that I don't know but melancholy and I think you are particularly in the memories it's not actually that depressing there's something about the melancholy

feeling that it's somehow the other side of the coin of happiness it's a kind of longing yes there's a hopefulness to it that aloneness that you feel I mean that's actually like one of the intimate connections you have with music is when you're alone there's I think there's a social way of listening to music would maybe a concert and so on but there's this there's nothing like

“your lone car driving listening to like whatever it is Bruce Springsteen I think Louisie”

cares a bit about that it was the Bruce Springsteen please sometimes that's to pull over to the side of the road just we put or something like this it's just there's some there's something about that sometimes the song just connects with you and I don't know it melt nothing like a melancholy song could do that it's you think about like this maybe things you regret or how life could have worked out and sometimes not even about like it's not even real it's just connects something to

this in the soul the the uneasiness that we all feel maybe the loneliness we all feel that underpins so much as the human condition it just connects with that I don't know what that is there's a Kurt Cobain lyric it was on the innuter or record from the song Francis Farmer the chorus part is I missed the comfort of being sad and I was like yes yeah that's it right there in terms of

love songs I feel somehow I find powerful that kind of desperation so I got I've always connected

with Pearl Jam's black oh amazing that line there's a firm I was going through a breakup so I was listening and he's the one that you used me to Pearl Jam during that that whole period when Pearl Jam was huge oh ten is that line is a someday someday you'll have a beautiful life you know someday you'll be a star and somebody else's sky why why why can't it be can't it be mine oh my god that blows me away that's an amazing line well yeah the delivery is incredible on it too

Eddie vetted one of the great frontman of all time yes that whole period that whole moment of history of Kurt Cobain and Eddie vetted that captured that was the 90s those one side of the 90s

true music Freddie Mercury Robert Plant Freddie Mercury number one probably Steven Tyler Jim Morrison Jim Morrison self yeah Roger Doltery um well we have to say I have to say we have to say James headfield James at the old I mean there's nothing I have I mean I have to talk to you about this

“I have I mean this is the greatest I think the greatest concert of all time this is uh there”

historic performance in Moscow in September of '91 this is shortly before the Soviet Union collapse

plus we should mention AC DC in Pantera um where there are two and about 1.6 million people were there

now by the way there's like some kind of reporting that it was a half a million people 500,000 people that's somewhere I've seen statements like that that's a ridiculously inaccurate statement so it's a free concert so any official counts don't count it's uh it's definitely over a million it's it's very likely to be 1.5 1.6 million people and this moment in history that I think they channeled it's like whenever great music the metallic was firing on all cylinders at the very top of their

“game and they meet this moment in history in this place in history those a defining part of the”

20th century collapsing and you have these people who are uh for a moment through music

are able to escape the fear the anger they feel all of it there are also a political social cultural moment meeting the musical moment and the the set list I was just I was not listening to the subtle ties over the past few days just taking myself back into that moment in time listen to the set list enter salmon creeping death harvesters are a fate to black sad but true master of puppets seek and destroy for whom the belt holds one and whiplash look at that

how was that that just that's my kind of sad right there I don't know if you could think of

“anything they could beat that I think that the guys in the band would say that too that was I mean”

they're really at their at their peak the black album would just come out then and that must have

been so so exciting I mean what stock was big did there certain moments in time when I really really meet the moment are you a fan of live live like big I used to be but at this point yeah I can't you know I'd much rather see people play in small clubs and or go to I'd like to listen to the studio go to the studio even I generally almost entirely agree with you I just think that there's the historic moments but you don't know which I'm going to be which but you make it in the concert

free it's just all of it to get plus pentera and acdc the other which actually is of the germany thing you mentioned is as one of the greatest concerts of all time his Beethoven's world premiere of nine symphony you know I didn't really know the personal side of Beethoven until I saw this movie called the Mortal Beloved it's exomely with Gary Owen yeah just I really is a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an interesting kind of way through the perspective of a

love letter they he's written but then I realized like this early is many many just a couple decades ago now that you know he went deaf before he even started writing in the nine symphony which is why they considered to be one of the greatest compositions of all time go to greatest symphonies of all time he went deaf couldn't hear anything before he even started writing it and so there's that famous story of him in that world premiere of having to be turned around because he can't

hear people plotting so he has to be turned around to see that people are actually clapping I mean there's this whole tragic element plus the the meaning of the symphony that ends and this beautiful ode to joy the symphony itself is a kind of it starts with the chaos and conflict and ends with this celebration of peace and brotherly unity and a call I guess a call for that a reaching for that for that peace and there's a tragic element to it again connected

to history which is it was post Napoleonic wars and before the American Civil War so like you're

horrific wars are coming so you know the Americans have a war and you have the of course the two world wars coming so this all of it together and the fact that he's conducting deaf and you wrote this whole thing deaf I was reading a lot about his process and he's just edits and edits and edits and edits so the fact that he had to edit in his head is just insane I mean Beethoven was sick all the time too I mean there a lot of people were sick all the time

is very common what would motivate you to write music this beautiful music that you can never

actually hear except for in your head right like why the amount of time it takes to write to write a 35 minute 40 minute piece all the parts you've got to hear all the orchestration in your head you're editing you're doing all these things where do you get the motivation when you can't hear the actual finished work one and people would say well he's here here isn't his head but what kind of enjoyment is it you want to hear the orchest I mean it's really a profound that he

that he was inspired to do this there's a thing called the hella your stat testament that he wrote it was a letter to his brothers from 1802 I think they found it in his desk effort Beethoven died and he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss and he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him of all people that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear or a shepherd singing in the field that and he could not hear this

and of all the people why him were hearing played such an important part another person that

had would had to have had perfect pitch because you could never do this if you didn't have perfect pitch

which I think all these great composers for the most by Brahms didn't from what I know but all the

“rest of them for sure had perfect pitch so they could hear these things in their head and that's how they”

composed I mean you love sound and music what do you think was like coragially losing your hearing for Beethoven it must have been terrible I mean I just terrible I mean I had heard things where he had to would have a stick in his mouth and put it on the soundboard of the piano and he could feel the vibrations in his skull and things like that I desperately trying to yeah I just but also there's what is what is that that he's able to write like one of the greatest symphonies ever

while deaf so there's something about that we mentioned darkness but torment that he's going through and ultimately owed to joy like not a cynical thing right call for the positive yeah yeah that's that's I I I have devoted many many hours thinking about that and plus Napoleon broke his heart because he was a supporter in Napoleon because Napoleon was supposed to represent the French Revolution this this hopeful future of no more kings no more monarchs no more authoritarian

regimes in Napoleon ended up becoming essentially king right uh becoming the authoritarian and

“Beethoven um sort of themes that was critical of that nevertheless I think maintain a fascination”

with Napoleon throughout his life but sort of a kind of more sophisticated complex view of human nature and human civilization so becoming more cynical like seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you the dreams get shattered and through that is able to still do this call for a hopeful future all right so okay so Beethoven one of the greats for sure

like basically everybody I know how to play the first movement of monocenata but I always avoided

third movement because I was like I'll never be good enough never never never never never never never I was one of these days maybe you know it would be great if Tom weights rights me and he knows says I only talked to people that can play the third movement that's that'd be if he had dream come true there you go like for this that's motivation that's my dragon or whatever you

“do you have to have a prince and rescue the princess my dragon is the third movement the monocenata”

okay you often highlight the importance of Bach in fact there's so many of your guests every

musician of all time even stinging Dominic Miller said they go to Bach even for like practice every day people talk about Bach was not known other than in his places he lived izanach he was born in life say he spent many years but Bach was known to great musicians it was difficult to find manuscripts but there was a premiere of the St. Matthew Passion that Mendelssohn had done in 17 and

“1829 it was on March 11th I believe he had a manuscript because his father and mother collected”

manuscripts and he got a manuscript of this piece and I think he was 20 years old and they had a performance of it in Berlin and Beethoven Mozart I studied the well tempered clavier the two books of the well tempered clavier but Bach wrote profoundly beautiful music and some of the most complex Contraponal music that I don't think anyone is ever done like that extremely bright guy had 20 kids 10 of them only 10 survived to adulthood lost both this parents when he was nine within nine

months of each other went to live with an older brother extremely productive yes so I yeah I think from all the music teachers I've ever had I I understood the importance of studying Bach

and he did write master puppets but he wrote some great powerful well-plusic well-put

“I I tried to educate the aforementioned music teachers of the brilliance of the master of the”

puppets sometimes a good riff is greater than any musical composition I agree I go back and I play master puppets every time I'm trying out a new amplifier that's my go to so the the stereotypical like guitar store when you come in you're playing master puppets I'll play master puppets I will play I have to play some heavy riff and so usually it will default to some metallic or something like that or I'll play Alice and chains or I do usually like a lot of times I'll go and I'll do drop D

something or play tool I usually would do something do do some drop tuning thing and it's got always

got to be some some type of metal that I'll test to see if the if the bottom ends tight on the app and stuff so yes all right we have to talk about this a little bit you made a bunch of videos about it there's there's a moment of time it still goes on but there's a moment where it's really people freaking out about the use of AI in music uh others these I would say incredible apps well like soon know you do 11 laps music is also great they can generate basically text to song

full song from a text prompt and a lot of you start freaking out just but based on how good it is so you start to immediately imagine how this is going to transform music in you go into replace musicians and all that kind of stuff it is legitimately nerve wracking because these are early versions so you don't know where it goes but in your intuition now you've been thinking about this made a bunch of videos not like being able to reflect okay every chill calm down so if you

write us a prompt in soon know and it spits out a song which I've did I've done made a bunch of videos in this I made up a fake artist Eli Mercer in this video then I did a thing for CBS news I made up this fake artist Sadie Winters and came up with this song walking away well the computer the program came up with it there is some creativity in a process so in this particular thing the process is you generate an image I didn't chat GPT the image then I went to then I went to

Claude and I wrote the lyrics because Claude's way better at lyrics than soon know as soon as bad at lyrics at least right now so I created the lyrics in Claude and then I imported the lyrics

into soon know and I had great results with the songs that I came up that it came up with I always

have to qualify that but I started thinking about this people freak out about this so this is bad this bad knife I was like no who are going to be the ones that are going to benefit from AI well the

“people that are already great songwriters because you have to be able to recognize when it spits”

out something good versus when it spits out something it's not that good and every other song I've probably created 130 song ideas out of which there's three good ones and there's the thing that's happening where people's ear very quickly is becoming a tune to AI Slop yes and that's

of an AI based like a soul jazz remix of songs like 50 sent many men and I think it is super impressive and there's a different pipeline actually it's a tricky pipeline how to pull that off

“and I think a lot of the creativity in that even that kind of remixing isn't the pipeline that”

of how you actually do that because there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline but

I think ironically it's very cool at first but when you listen to it for a while you understand that

this is AI Slop yes for a soul remix it actually lacks soul but maybe think of like when I listen to soul or blues I think I really want in that case to know I don't want to AI be be king I want the real be king and if I if I know if any AI is involved in a be king process I'm tuning out yes and I don't think I'm being cromundingly old dude in that I think we humans want authenticity so when when AI when I first started making these AI videos it

started back in 2023 my made my first one and I would take my phone come up in the kitchen I play

“a song and my my youngest and Dylan my youngest Laila and I have three kids in my oldest Dylan”

soon as I play it while listening to AI and I was like oh my god instantly how do you know

oh it has this ringing sound in the thing so it took me probably about four or five days to figure okay what are they hearing that I'm not hearing so I did I separated all the parts and what they're hearing was the artifacts that are in the vocal reverb that's not that were that made in complete it just couldn't do the ambience is correctly right because it's trained on a lot of these AI programs are trained on very low bit bit rate MP3s right so they feed all the stuff in there so they're

getting really inferior information on the in the training process whereas now when they make these deals with the major labels they'll get the multi tracks and they'll get high quality wave files to train from right and whoever opts in they get the solo vocal tracks you know if Ed Sheeran wants to do it or Drake or whoever wants to give their voice to it let it do his thing and then get their royalties from it I'm not saying that any any of them are doing I'm just giving you an

example but every time that I would do it I could be down the hall and I would play something on my phone just to see if they'll like why you listen to AI they can instantly tell then eventually it started getting better and then it'd be like is this AI being the car with Leyla coming back from Taikwondo practice and she's like is this AI why does it sound like AI sounds like it could be AI and I'd be like yeah it's AI she's like oh it's getting better and then I did this song

for it was an MPR interview I created a song with a fake artist then the song was called Neon Ghost and I played it for Leyla and the car she's like can you separate the tracks I said yeah I haven't separated back home okay I want to go down here so we go down the studio and I play it for and she listens to the solo vocal she said wow this is really realistic

“this is very hard to tell even with the solo vocal I think the room for creativity”

right now for humans is lyrics it seems like the lyrics that are being generated a lacks soul somehow I don't know the words correctly yeah I mean they can be incredibly sophisticated but there's something the edge is not there some kind of edge that we want in our lyrics some kind of surprise but not cringe or not cliche something truly novel in the lyrics but that if that's the case it's kind of sad that that's where the creativity is the comfort but not from the music

because then if we can create very realistic music that sounds really damn good where's the role of the musician there I think the role of the musician is that in actually if they use AI to assist them in coming up with ideas like as a creation tool then the musician like some of the stuff is just not high quality sonically high quality so the musician goes in and read does stuff and changes things and adds parts and then they actually do music production

and maybe they re-sing the parts and they change the stuff and then then it's just basically

does it make you sad that you don't necessarily need to learn instruments so basically you can I mean you think of it as a different kind of instrument but you can write lyrics you can hum the melody you can just hum parts yeah you know and then and do a B kind of thing

this kind of rhythm this kind of insistence together and never actually have your

fingers on a guitar or or faster touch I'm not going to use AI x is for that reason because to me it's just boring and when I use it it's like I used it for about a month or so just 'cause I was making videos and I was trying to see how it's advancing every every three or four months I'll I'll I'll sit down and I'll see whatever new versions they have and I'll write some songs write some songs I'll prompt some songs and see what they come up with and see if they're improving

on the things but ultimately I don't find it interesting to use I hear you your bit of old school

“I'm sorry yeah I'm trying to think about the future and I think it's still even in the future also”

going to be boring I think there's something fundamentally boring about it and I'm trying to

figure it out for so for example I use it a lot for more and more for programming so for building stuff and there's not about the final output is not the code the output is what the code creates and there's extremely useful not it doesn't matter if it's boring and that's useful but when the final output is the thing that AI creates which it would be in music then there's something about us that just like we know there is something boring about it yes we want to

celebrate and see the thing that's hard to create and if AI can just text the song generated

top 10 hit we will quickly lose value for that I think and so we want raw like raw whatever

shape that raw takes I want to say raw talent but that raw talent of any kind and perhaps it would make me a little bit sad but that's also awesome perhaps the new kind of raw talent that civilization

“is asking for is how to make great tech talks maybe that's what raw talent looks like”

it makes me a little bit sad because I'm a huge fan of long form but that that also creating tech talks and is also talent it's a it is a talent absolutely um when I see anything that's AI generated I instantly recognize any video I'm a boring boring boring boring and my kids do the same thing they just have no interest in engaging with it as soon as they recognize it and they can spot it a mile away and they're just like boring boring boring boring boring and then they kind

of just then they they don't even want to engage with the social media platforms which is which is a danger which I think they need to crack down on the AI slot YouTube's done a pretty good job on it but it's hard it it's hard to stay on this it's getting it gets flooded with so much of the stuff it's so easy to create and put up there and to just be in the in the whack-a-mold thing where you're just trying to get rid of it all this is fun to be like it fundamentally boring any

“boring really good boring and it's and it's annoying to have to flip through the AI slot yeah but I think”

actually as a civilization is just inspiring for authenticity because you want to be real and being raw which I you know one of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting shit and just being themselves in long form versus overproduced think AI is making people realize the AI is good at being overproduced right so there'll be more let's get that covered yeah even artists because you're saying like yeah they'll use it as tools part of me things like not really I think I do I think

they'll quickly this kind of process of generating a bunch of different options and choosing the one you like the most I think is a really frustrating process for artists and I think it I think AI will will definitely be used extremely effectively as a very fine-grained tool in the image domain it's editing images but not like macro editing but very specific kind of editing that photo Photoshop has increased in the integrated and I mentioned to you offline so the whole as it all

by Rex group of software that does a lot of the denoising the all all the deep removing the wind all

kinds of ways there's a bunch of different other other programs that do that maybe for like b-roll footage and a same thing on the audio if you just need a little audio to create a feeling of a scene yeah might be used there in that kind of way but truly original stuff I've saved videos where I'm doing speaking over music for example in an interview some is playing and we have two dialogue two people speaking in labs but it's but there's so much bleed coming from the person playing

that you can't hear what we're saying and then we'll split out the voice for that section the two voices separate them and then take the music and separate that stuff and so it's really helpful

for things like that and now once again quick thirty-second thank you to our sponsors check them out

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we got uplift desk from my favorite office desks better help from mental health element for electrolytes fin for customer service AI agents Shopify for selling stuff online and complexity for curiosity driven knowledge exploration choose wisely my friends and now back to my conversation with Rick B. Adam so you have this video breaking down so being a carpenter is a song man child and you use that as an example of building up people's intuition

about the music business and how the music production for these popular songs is being done these days who's doing the songwriting how is it being done and all kind of I was wondering if you could speak to that in that particular song Jack Antonoff who is one of the writers Amy Allen

“Sabrina Carpenter said in some awards thing that there's an old guy on YouTube that says that”

Sabrina had very little to do with the song and so he said in this clip you being the old guy

me being the old guy that well Sabrina really was she's amazing she's the one that wrote

everything of in the songs like some of my responses like well why you guys even included on the songwriting man so one of these you highlight a lot of people are included on the list of songwriters yeah 10 people 11 people I mean you know like why are the song why is song in the year have songs that are interpolation meaning that they have melodies from other songs in their interpolation they used to call it stealing and then you have songs that are

use samples for the whole thing like the dochi song that's out right now and I said look she took a gochi song and basically took off his melody and she created her own melody over it so like well it's I mean saves time for you know to actually create a track you just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful yeah you're pointing that out the song anxiety broke my brain I mean it's so absurd yeah this feels unfair it feels it's a good song but it was also a good song

before and it was before that it was also a good song right 2011 to Luis Montefon 1967 so why is that considered to be in the top songs of the year it's like come on you can't find another song that's not based on that that's ridiculous yeah yeah and dochi has some really good songs on a record yeah why are these the ones that are coming to the top right now this is interesting right that that that might be just a criticism of the machinery of the business absolutely that

drives them it's not necessarily like a lot of these folks are really good musicians

“first of all I think a lot of them are also good the actual songs that make it to the top of”

good I'm a big fan of Bruno Mars he's a great songwriter and it's a great musician all absolutely you know it's a Michael Jackson and we incarnated super talented guy incredible yes you mentioned Billie Eilish and her brother right a lot of the songs yeah super talented I mean Taylor Swift is unlike anything I mean that's a historic figure in music she's a fundamentally at least originally a singer songwriter yes so that's I mean that I'm sorry

well that that is like of the kind of music that Rick Biano gets props to she's the she carries

the flame forward she works on her own songs absolutely and she but she never has more than two

co-writers on things you take a quick bath break yeah okay I have to ask you about this complexity that you're facing on a basically daily basis I think it's a challenge a lot of YouTube folks

is celebrate music broadly and so as part of that process you have to sometimes show clips of music

“and I think all of that falls under fair use quite obviously and so you get all these youtube”

copyright claims and for folks who don't know if you get three of those it's just the each one of those can be a strike on the channel and can take down your channel and you get some insane amount you said you got like I think I had a similar thing on my Rick Rubin episode like 30s I think he's at 13 yeah 13 so what can you just speak to this whole thing you've been in a constant battle WMG UMG all the all the three letter name all the record labels right

the music business people so what what's the story there well this has been going on since the beginning of my channel and I've made videos periodically when I first started it was just instant

blocks so you'd never knew back and I started it'll be 10 years in June so when I play music

in a video youtubers were not playing music in videos because they didn't because of the content ID things and they take down stuff so I would play music and I just see what happens and then you get a content ID claim or you realize that people were quote unquote blockers and I came up with that term that they would block your video take down your video and I realized it first it was like anything guns and roses would just still the case guns and roses ACDC I mean many

bands Fleetwood Mack led Zeppelin and then then something happened there there was a guy in the skateboard on TikTok that had the ocean spray thing and and he was listening to dreams by Fleetwood Mack and that blew up and became a number one song again and the labels then realized I mean I had made many videos about about why this is wrong and it should be fair use and everything well because of that the laborers like oh maybe we should rethink this and then they just

started demonetizing videos and demonetizing means they get all the money and one hour video if they if you use 20 seconds of a clip they get all the money okay so I hired a lawyer finally after the Rick Ruben video because I thought it was ridiculous I go over to to to Tuscany interview Rick at his house and and I hired a lawyer to fight this who I'm gonna have him my channel I don't want to say who it is but he's another youtuber and he had approached me a

couple years ago and and it's not cheap to do you're gonna do like a public interview with them I'm gonna do an interview with him yes I talked to him today about it I can't wait yeah that would be

“great so he said you should fight these because every single one of them is very used and he went through”

my my um entire catalog I have 2100 videos and he's fought 4,000 content ID claims and one every single one of them 4,000 that's a lot I mean when I do tap 20 guitar solos there's 20 content ID claims you know and it's either it can be either from the sound recording if I use that

or if I just play it it can be from the publisher that's amazing yeah so is there I mean that's

it's still it's still a lawyer still work does that is there a hopeful thing you can say about the future of yeah fight these content ID claims if it's very used if you're not just playing the song and listening to it and because a lot of stuff that are reaction videos or whatever that are not where they play the whole song I mean I'm using these things and I'm talking a lot of the times it's in interviews or it's in I'm breaking down a solo and there's a yeah see that's an

obvious one but even reaction videos right yeah absolutely those are more borderline yeah but I don't know I love those videos absolutely like when a person is just sitting there and listening to it and they're like you know like a voice teacher is listening to a vocal performance

“yeah but those are breakdowns yeah those are breakdowns I think that the content ID stuff”

that was happening with these major labels they would hire third parties they would go out use AI

and go and anytime they detect anything they always go to the biggest channels first to get the

most views make sense and stuff and and they would claim everything that they could and historically YouTubers never would fight back they were like oh this is easy money youtubers never fight back and at these things because they're afraid of their channels taken down yeah so Rick Beatty said

this so I've been doing it for one year now and I'm nine year I'm ten years into my channel so

took me that long I mean hopefully it there's a ripple effect also it's not just your situation hopefully you don't have to deal with this for much longer right how has Spotify changed music sometimes we highlight the fact that the change in nature of music and that it's the scarcity is not there but it also allows it it's like every kind of music is available and so fast and so easy it's easy to explore to commodity it's like turning on a water faucet do you think there's some

good I mean there's a lot of good to that right have you did you go through that whole

“priority as still remember where I had to basically throw away the albums and never did that”

why if you if you don't upload them into your computer yeah so there's that two step process one there's like the hard albums CDs yeah and then and then you upload them into your computer yep when you say them and then you how do you put it allegedly a friend of yours pirates some extra songs you know and I'm put some on the computer so you have but you have your stash on the computer you're like this is my finally selected stash of greatness sometimes we're gonna as

by album sometimes not and the big moment for me that was really difficult to do really difficult to do it's throw away that stash big in switch to Spotify switch to streaming and basically re-build the stash of playlists all this kind of stuff and it was heartbreaking because so much love and effort went into that both the CD the the stashing of the CD and the stashing of the MP3s in the computer and then in the Spotify just seems just effortless but it helped me discover all kinds of

artists I'd never would have discovered otherwise and Pandora I use a lot Pandora is more

prioritizing on the discovery part versus the organization part and that was really wonderful so one of the things I I'll start with the positive that I like about Spotify is that they show view count they show play counts whether they're real or not that's another question but

“they show how many plays songs have and that's how the charts are based does that give you signal”

that something is listened to a billion times does that mean something to you yeah it means that that it's a popular song well that's a massive it that's very few songs that have a billion

billion plays now the downside of Spotify is the way that they pay their artists now they've lumped in

podcasts with that that are getting a cut of this the streaming with the with the music and you know the search and discovery I mean there's see it's there's say there's benefits of algorithms and there's negative things of algorithms all the algorithms happen to kind of many times pigeonhole people into listen to the same genre of music all the time and not expanding their you know the discovery of of new music where that you might hear on the radio

“back in the day where program directors would play things that they liked right and you might”

hear so what is that oh that's a new sound garden record or something you know well I like that I'm going to go about check that out you know something you might not have heard or something odd like one area of doing on Spotify is you can you can have radio yeah meaning like you have a few it's somewhat a Pandora like you can okay this is going to reveal a little too much about myself but usually when I go work out

I'll listen to something like rage against the machine radio I'm sorry and what else would you listen to I need a motivation classical music I don't know but yeah it's pretty good because I've recommended a bunch of other stuff I wouldn't even know some of it I know obviously but akin to the similar to the rage against the machini type thing it recommends a bunch of artists and it's like oh holy shit that's awesome so I don't know that that discovery works really

well so this is some of the technology thing but that explains it fundamentally more vibrant than I had previously with my stash that was just keep a stash and I was listening to the same record over and over and over but yeah this what's lost is the I'm sure you love you love this but listening through the Led Zeppelin records just driving in a car and listening

2005 that I've saved the CDs that I uploaded into my computer yeah anytime I do

“that I play songs on my what I'm doing interview I always play wave files I put them in”

and it's funny that when I interview a mixer I interviewed this mixing engineer Andy Wallace

and people comment wow that the song sounded amazing or well not only are they great mixes that

he did but I'm using wave files in there and people notice that and these are wave files from from you know original encoding not not remastered things that Spotify keeps doing and adding much more top end and things like that that these are the these are actually the the original wave files from off the CD that I ripped 20 years ago what's your current and people really curious about that so what's your current stack

what are the tools you use what's your DA what's the audio interface what are the mics

so I use Pro Tools for the most part but I also use logic and Ableton I've got all I've got

all those so you're most in a Mac I'm only on a Mac only on Mac only on Mac I'm only the opposite although we have multiple PCs because my kids use PCs yeah just throw a bell but they do have for gaming they like to get right mr but like in terms of editing I hate how how good Mac is so good it's just integrating the hardware and software just work well together both of you

“if I didn't have a Mac honestly I wouldn't be talking to you right now because I got a G3”

that's the only good thing that a major label did for me is when when my band was on UMG and they bought a they bought me a G3 and an SM7 and Pro Tools did you own one the first Pro Sumer Pro Tools thing and I learned how to use Pro Tools and that allowed me to learn how to edit video and become a record producer so I got to give it give it to Macs for that so Pro Tools I mean that's still the the standard that's kind of the industry standard yeah I gotta ask you because I know I've

never used Pro Tools I've used again I'm a caveman I've used the Reaper of used Studio 1 that's

recent I have used that and for the most time I've used Ableton Live I feel like I'm using one percent of the power of the tool like Ableton Live makes me feel like I'm literally just pressing the record button Ableton's amazing it really is it is yeah but I feel like it I mean it's designed for people they're doing like all kinds of media stuff and like looping and do do do the what is that the push buttons with the with the beats and this is amazing I saw them really out of touch

but it's just the powers incredible also it's I think it's not just for recording it's also for live performances yes so this is why Studio 1 has been a little bit nicer for me because it's simpler made for recording more so any DAW that you get used to like that's just using it yeah

“and yeah you have to become a master at the things if you want to be a recording engineer”

or producer you you become an expert a lot of the you know thinniest in Billy I wish I think that they use logic that's their DAW that they like to use and logic you know a lot of pros use logic you know I fire up logic every couple days and use it for things I have I have it on my laptop here and I I produce an logic on my laptop I use both I use Pro Tools mostly though but Pro Tools that's what you feel like at home I'm an expert in Pro Tools are you using any

emulation of the ampsims or it's all real amps now I use ampsims on my laptop here when I travel and things like that I use NRL DSP which I just did a video at their headquarters in Helsinki and they're the CEO dog at Castro is a friend of mine I actually talked to him today as a matter fact and I have a Kemper ampsim you know a modeler I have an X effects I've got a Helix I pretty much have all these things but for me I can I have 100 amps in my studio so and I have mics set up all the

time and cabo things stuff I have 100 ampulifiers real ampulifiers real yeah sorry 100 I have 100 yeah about 100 maybe 95 how do how does one go get to that level collecting and being I will be 64 in April so so you just don't like go I don't like oh no why would you get to 100 like is it is a

Marshall GCM800 that's modded that does this one thing it's got great mids and it's good for this kind of

a tune so I will pull that out then it's like no I need more of like a scoop metal tune sound that's more like metallic or dream theater or something so I'm gonna pull out my my mesa mesa boogie or I need to yeah I need something that's shiny me this more like Brian May or like the edge I'm gonna pull

“out my vox AC 30 so everything and and that's that's why I have so many amps because they all do”

every amp I have does one thing really well if it doesn't do well do it well I get rid of it and I'm down to a hundred dollar a hundred this is only a hundred yeah but I can get by with probably seventy five come on but you then you're really right in the risk of not having just the right but you're using emulation so that's that's great I mean on that but there's the other side of it which is the guitar I told you all fine I think having multiple guitars is cheating but

whatever nobody agrees with me on this I only have like one I do have some side pieces but one main the greatest guitar I said I would never do this but I was in a guitar store I looked next to a guitar store in Cambridge and one day I would always thought but I don't know why I just

“just look at the guitars like and I don't really know why exactly just being the R of these great”

instruments and I they brought in this American strat they had these different shades of it was like a silver

and I just I've never had this feeling they talk about love at first sight I just fell in love with

the guitar can you just speak to the kind of guitars you have and you love I pretty much have mainly old school guitars right so I have Gibson's I have Fenders I have PRS guitars and then I have I have two Gibson acoustics I have a 1957 country and Western that I've had for probably 30 some odd years it's great guitar and I have a J45 Gibson and I have a Martin D28 so now I have three nice acoustics and I have a guild 12 string and I have a guild

Nashville tune to guitars the low strings are up the octave so the E A and D and G are up the

“octave that's Nashville tuning sixth string though like basically would David Gilmour plays”

on comfortably numb in my video he plays a Nashville tune but with one variation the low E is up two octaves so he he demonstrates actually the and this how he wrote comfortably numb the the chorus part of it was with this particular guitar that he's playing in the video what can you say about like the different feels that the guitars the acoustics have like what how do you know which one to pull out it depends on the kind of part that I'm playing

if I want something with really tight mid range with not that doesn't have a lot of low base this particular old Gibson that I have the 57 I will pull that out it's got very balanced strings and you know mid range doesn't have a booming bottom end booming low E string or anything or A string so it depends on what what kind of sound I'm looking for if I'm more about sound versus feel yeah all my guitars play equally well okay I have them all set up to where they play well

I have a signature Gibson guitar that I've had for five years now when I say Gibson Gibson this ball Gibson it's a double cut less Paul's special yeah with P90 pickups I don't know double cut me his because I'm not too cut cut to oh yeah as opposed to less Paul that has one cut so it's a less Paul's special with the as to I have it over there my signature guitar that's the all right yeah when you play this you're gonna be like oh my god this is butter now I'm again

I said it's cheating I don't and what amp do you play through do you play through an amp simmer do you have what do you have like a this is gonna be a yeah yeah I use boys effects I'm sorry Lex I use amp Sims too so I just got the new John mayor neural DSP plugin today that I have not tried out he did a modeling of all his amplifiers that the the neural DSP did and it sounds great

John played it sounds just like his amps yeah John is incredible John's great I've been

fortunate enough to have dinner with him two times and I thought of being an incredible musician

signed and I knew John from way back then right in the early 2000s I think he doesn't get enough credit

“like he's one of the greatest living guitarist this is fantastic the world player absolutely and”

a celebrator if that's a word of great guitar player absolutely by way of advice you started

your YouTube channel in your mid 50s and found incredible success you've had essentially multiple

careers is there some wisdom you can extract from that so my my theory is that somebody's got to be successful so why can't it be you that was that was that was that was when I started my channel I mean I didn't start it it started by accident with the Dylan video and and really so many people reached out to me I started it six months after that viral video so many people wrote to me can you teach me this pro musicians well known ones that you

wouldn't who you'd know can you teach me this I can't teach you what Dylan did but I can I can teach you relative pitch develop your ear that way but then I had conservatories writing to me about this stuff from all over the world how did you teach Dylan this because we made it about four different videos and they got more and more sophisticated and so I thought okay I'll make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff this is really why I started so I didn't have to keep

I couldn't answer the emails there's so many of them so I just started making videos on how to train your ear and music theory and that's really how I started my channel and my wife was like what are you doing? I said I'm making YouTube videos why so I don't have to keep telling people how I did

this stuff and then all of a sudden you know a few I had 4,000 subscribers the first month and

another 4,000 and then hit 100,000 after a year and then six months later 200,000 and then three

“months later 300,000 so I think they're one thing that should be said that in modern culture for”

young people a lot of them will see YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and they kind of want to be famous they won't get the clicks and they've used it so on and that's the thing they chased and optimized I think the thing that you're leaving unstated perhaps is that you spend many years pursuing the mastery of a craft and there's a lot of value to getting good at something absolutely offline you can actually reveal your journey online but the thing you're chasing is not

fame it's getting good at something and I think actually what happens is even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for if that's the thing you're that ends up happening it's still like getting good at one thing kind of somehow release to getting good at another thing somehow they'll lead you to get better at getting better at the next thing at the next thing and the next thing but if you're just chasing fame and trying

to figure out how do I do the viral thing or so on it just seems to you might actually get there

but it'll be unfulfilling and not long lasting my theory of my channel has always been

make videos on things I'm interested in and at first I thought oh nobody's going to watch an old white aired guy on YouTube yeah that was kind of my thing well that was not correct and then it's like we'll just make videos on stuff I'm interested in just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I'm interested in and keep learning and I when I produce bands I never let them take my picture ever and I never let them record me in the studio

there's virtually no pictures of any band I ever produced so from 1999 to 2015 when I December 2015 when I'd Dylan video came out no one took my picture there were no pictures of me on the internet you're fully behind the camera kind of guy yes like no no no pictures no no pictures with people hey can we take a picture said none of the pictures with people and now you're like you're the talent you're the face no I mean but again the thing you're leaving on

stated there is it's like you spend a lot of years in a teaching music like really exploring music trying a music career like trying to create trying to produce trying to be musician and all these

“not just trying like being getting extremely good at it I just I think in modern culture”

there's a sense you want to skip that part I want to be famous I want to you know this and

so I have an undergrad in classical bass I have a masters from doing the conservatory in jazz guitar

“then I taught college for I taught jazz studies for five years from 87 to 92”

then I got a publishing deal my first publishing deal in 1992 with polygroom publishing and then I became a producer when I was 37 having no idea how to engineer I taught myself engineering and then YouTube I taught myself at edit videos and then you taught yourself how to interview

and I taught myself an interview I'd never done an interview before and it was like an interview or

with you haven't just done that you've taught yourself how to do just YouTube by YouTube shorts yes totally different thing totally different skill and then not just YouTube but like how to be like it there's a because you're both a youtuber and and like a musician who post stuff on YouTube youtuber means like you're thinking about stuff like thumbnails which I

“make my own thumbnails I've always made my own thumbnails but before I forget I think I speak for”

the entirety of the internet thanking you for how you introduce your videos and how you close them because this is a big part of YouTube where people have a 30 minute introduction to to a five minute video you just go straight in that's really wonderful that's I mean and on all fronts I suppose that has to do with the production you skill that you have of understanding cutting cutting to face on yep yeah cutting cutting the fluff cutting the bullshit

I'll just get straight to the core of the thing I figured you talk about maintaining friendships

for a long time you said never waste a friendship can you elaborate on that yeah that's one of

my things is that I really value the time I've spent with people friendships and keeping in touch with people I talk to each one of my siblings multiple times a week I talked to my sisters probably every night my two sisters I have friends from college I get friends from growing up I have friends from you know both colleges I went to I've friends from all different eras in my life

“that I keep in touch with and visit whenever I can and you must have met some incredible humans”

and incredibly weird and interesting humans throughout your life hmm so it's worth it the effort to to connect and reconnect I mean it's pretty much everything in life nothing means anything more than the friendships that you make in your and your family yeah what's the point of this whole thing that's right what's the role of music in in the human experience well hopefully to enlighten people and to create the soundtrack of their life it is right yeah music music does something I'll get

sometimes when I'm alone I'll listen listen to a song and there's nothing quite like a song that makes me truly feel like feel alive and whatever that is sadness or hope or excitement or when I look it out listening to rage against the machine like protest or as I was listening to the Metallica the I was racing to the set that they played in in Moscow just hyped like truly hyped I was like pacing listening to it and there's nothing like that

I've never found anything and I don't know what that is in the human psyche that's that

but I'm so glad we found it we humans created instruments they can vibrate strings and together create harmonies and melodies and and ones that reverberate their generations and they carry that it's one of the greatest things that humans ever did creating music and all of that led up to you some guy being listened to by millions of people on the internet this is all a simulation break and I've been a fan of yours for a long time

like I told you this is crazy to meet you same likes thank you for everything you do for the world for celebrating music for helping us discover and rediscover some of the incredible musicians and songs that have been created over the over the decade over the centuries thank you for being who you are and thank you for talking and thanks I appreciate it thanks for listening to this conversation with Ric Biano the support of this podcast please

check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me ask questions gift feedback and so on and now let me leave you with some words from Fridrick Nietzsche as I often do

(gentle music)