Rick Beato

In short

Podcast Summary: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Episode: Rick Beato

Episode Overview In this episode of Tetragrammaton, host Rick Rubin engages in a captivating discussion with Rick Beato, a seasoned musician, producer, and educator known for his insightful breakdowns of music theory and songwriting on his popular YouTube channel. The conversation covers Beato's career, his insights on music creation, education, and the impact of technology on the music industry.

Key Themes and Discussions

Rick Beato's Journey

Early Musical Career:
Played in bands until 1999; transitioned to record production after his band was dropped by Universal.
Launched his YouTube channel in 2016, initially sharing musical concepts taught to his son, Dylan, who has perfect pitch.

Perfect Pitch and Music Education

Teaching Perfect Pitch:
Discusses the concept that all infants have the potential to develop perfect pitch if exposed to music early.
Shares personal anecdotes about teaching his son music from a young age, emphasizing the importance of early exposure to complex musical sounds.

Music Production Insights

Production Philosophy:
Explores the differences between learning music by ear versus formal education and the challenges of teaching jazz improvisation.
Discusses the subjective nature of sound quality in music production, the importance of the emotional connection to recordings, and how various elements like mic placement and room acoustics affect sound.

The Evolution of Music Consumption

Impact of Streaming:
Discusses how the transition to streaming services has devalued music, altering the experience of music consumption compared to physical albums.
Highlights the loss of the scarcity factor in music, which added to its desirability in the past.

AI and Technology in Music

AI's Role:
Beato expresses excitement about AI technology's potential in music production, particularly in separating sounds and enhancing audio quality.
Discusses the implications of AI-generated music and its acceptance among listeners, hinting at the future of how music might be created and consumed.

Cultural Context in Music

Art and Music Relationship:
Beato emphasizes the interconnectedness of music with historical events, literature, and visual art movements, and how they influence one another.
Reflects on the importance of understanding the cultural context in which music is created and how that shapes its impact.

Audience Engagement

YouTube Dynamics:
Shares insights on analyzing audience demographics and adapting content based on viewer preferences.
Discusses the importance of engaging with audiences through live streams and responding to trends in music consumption.

Key Takeaways

Diverse Learning Approaches:
Perfect pitch can be nurtured through early exposure to music, reflecting the importance of a child's learning environment.

Sound Quality and Production:
Emotional authenticity in music production is paramount; clarity and connection with the artist's truth enhance the listening experience.

Streaming Challenges:
The availability of music has shifted from a curated experience to an overwhelming amount of content, which can dilute listener engagement with individual songs or albums.

Future of Music:
AI's integration into music production holds promise for enhanced creativity and sound manipulation, but raises questions about the essence of musical authenticity.

Cultural Appreciation:
Understanding the historical and cultural context of music enriches the listening experience and deepens appreciation for the artistry involved.

Conclusion This episode of Tetragrammaton offers a rich dialogue between two insightful figures in the music industry, exploring the nuances of music creation, education, technology, and the evolving landscape of how music is consumed. Rick Beato's perspectives shed light on both the challenges and opportunities in contemporary music.

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Transcript

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0:03Tetragrammettin.

0:22I played in bands until 99 and then I started producing records after I was in a band that got dropped. A band called Billionaire that was on London Sire, then Universal got dropped and when all the labels and consolidations started happening and started producing full time then did that till I started my YouTube channel in 2016. How did you start a YouTube channel? In December of 2015 I did this video with my son Dylan. He's 17 now, he's 8, he has insanely good, perfect pitch, born with it. But I taught him when he was 3, I used to be a college music professor and I said I was like, okay Dylan, when you hear these notes together CEG as a C major chord.

1:07Okay, you know, you hear E, F -Shar, G -Shar, B, that's E -Add9. I taught them all these different chords and everything. So then I would play multiple chords at the same time, up to four chords and Dylan could name them all instantly, even if I played them 12 note chords. Wow. Do you think it's because it was an inborn thing or do you think it's because you started teaching him at the age that you taught him? So I played, I'm starting making playlist when Dylan was 15 weeks in Udaro because I read in what you can expect when you're expecting the book for parents, you know, that kids can start to hear that.

1:43So I started playing what I call this in retrospect was high information music, rock, well tempered clavier, I have a Turkish friend that's an amazing pianist that makes disease like contemporary classical improvisations but all really sophisticated music. After he was born, I kept doing it every day. I'd spend about an hour with him and I'd dance around and do stuff like that with him for the first year and a half or so. And then my wife got pregnant with our second daughter, Lenin, or with our second child, Lenin and we didn't do that with her. And I'd never said a note name or anything to Dylan.

2:18And when he was three and a half we're driving in the car and I was just like, hey Dylan, sing a Star Wars theme and he sings it and it's like, that sounds like it's it. I don't have a perfect pitch but I've got great relative pitch. Sounds like it's the right key and I check in my phone and sing the Superman theme. And it's like, that's in the right key. And every song I asked him, he's saying in the exact key. So I turned my car around and go back to my house and hit the note D flat and I said, what what is this Dylan? He goes Star Wars. Instantly, Star Wars starts on a big D flat major chord.

2:52Then I hit the note G and he goes Superman. I hit the note C and he's like, this is the excavator song or some kids tune. And then I taught him all 12 note names. I realized he had perfect pitch. And he learned the names based on the song that he knew. No, he just, he knew the note. He already had perfect pitch. And then it was just adding the names to the notes. He knew every notes and after I said, how do you know this? He goes, every note sounds completely different. Yeah. But I saw a video on YouTube called the linguistic genius of babies. There's a woman Patricia Cool. And so she had this theory.

3:33It's pretty much proven out that babies have this ability in the first nine months of their lives where they can hear the sounds of all 6500 languages on earth. So they have all the synapses available and their ears can can detect these things. The 2200 different phonemes. And starting at nine months, they begin to lose the ability and then they become culturally bound listeners. So they can only hear the sounds of the language is spoken in the household. But if you expose a child, let's say to Mandarin, only a few times within that first nine months, they can hear those sounds of Mandarin forever.

4:11So I have a theory that all babies can develop perfect pitch up to nine months of age. If they have a certain threshold of this high information music played for them that goes through all the different, they hear all 12 notes statistically, I guess you would say above the, you know, the background sounds that they hear. So they hear enough of this music that they begin to recognize that these pitches are unique and have their own sound to them. It seems like something that anybody could learn. Yeah. I think if you start with relative pitch, learning relative pitch first, do you think we can train ourselves for anything?

4:50Yeah. It's just finding the method and doing the work to be able to do it. Yeah. It's interesting because when I meet people with perfect pitch, there's so many different levels of that. And relative pitch is far faster. So people that have good relative pitch, they're not confused if things are not in tune or not, you know, because so many old recordings are out of pitch. Things that I didn't realize when I was listening to them, you know, they, I'm sure you've done this word. So I go, I want the tempo a little faster. If you're a tape, you'll just speed up the tape machine. You must have done that in some recordings or and I was a college music professor from 87 to 92.

5:35I taught jazz studies in Ethnic College in upstate New York and I also taught it a tough or one year at the new school. Something for a friend of mine, I taught, I just taught one day a week there what I teach your training and teach intervals to people and how to do that. And I was very, was interesting to to teach people, especially kids that were music students, some of which found it extremely difficult to learn these things. And so the strategies that you use for them are different than you do for a child. People that never learned to listen. Yeah. It's really fascinating because when I started producing, I had no technical skills, even though I'd been recording in studios and things like that, played on records.

6:25But I never knew what Mike's used or anything like that. And it's like, well, what is a good snare sound? What is a good bass drum sound? You know, like things like that. And all it depends on what the song is. And I always studied records. But there's a difference between what are these sounds and how do you get the sounds? What are the microphones that you use on them? How do you make a snare drum? How do you make a bass drum? And I always found that coming from a person that learned by ear at first as a musician playing guitar and then learned what I was doing in music school and then going back to learning by ear and by asking questions with people about how you actually do this, how do you get microphones in phase?

7:13How do you get, you know, what makes this record punchy? Why would you use reverb on something? Why would you not use reverb on something? You know, how do you create ambience, even things like acoustics? What makes a room sound good? You know, or what what creates the vibe for people to want to record in a certain place? How do you know where to go? So it's might been my quest in my YouTube channel to answer all these questions by asking people like yourself. Yeah, all of these things. It's great. And there probably are no right answers. There are probably a lot of answers that are interesting and helpful, but there isn't one right way to do any of it.

7:59Right. I'm fascinated by what I watch you interviewed. I'm fascinated by your philosophy and just your thoughts on creativity. I've been reading your book, but I'm really a student of I've studied records that you've produced for years. And to be able to, for me, to be able to ask the people from the producers to the actual musicians to the the sound engineers, whoever it is, to ask them about specific recordings. So you started with the video of your son and perfect pitch? And that thing went insane. It got 80 million views. It was on Facebook. And it was just time a personal Facebook. Wild. Yeah.

8:51So and people wrote to me musicians from all over the world wrote to me. How is it possible? It's one thing to have perfect pitch, but Dylan's perfect pitch is that was so unique because I played chord. I played chord. He's like, see, augmented over D D flat, augmented. He had nine over F major. Things that your jazz musicians or modern flask musicians would, even with perfect pitch, could not identify like that. And to me, I saw with the power. I never post recognized the shape of the chord. Or would he recognize each of the individual notes that laid up the chord? Both. Yeah. So it's kind of a combination of relative pitch.

9:32Here's it as a sound. And then you can pick out every note and you can sing every note, no matter what the space is. So I would do things where I'd play the most disnake chords. And he would and one of the, I did like four videos and one of the videos he wrote on us on a white board thing. I had with the staff. He'd write the notes out and sing them. And Dylan was never interested in music. He took piano lessons for a few years and he quit. He never wanted to practice. And then last year he set just turned 17. Last year he's picked up the guitar. He's like, okay, show me a couple of things. So he never, he listened to things all his friends.

10:11You know, they, he listened to whatever 17 year olds listened to or 16 year olds. He's like, okay, show me something I guitar. So I show him an E minor chord. I show him a D chord. And then the next day comes to show me a couple other things. So he show him a couple other chords and stuff out of strom. And then he comes down the next day. He's like, I learned stairway to heaven. What? So and now he's improvising and stuff. And it's really really fascinating. My middle daughter Lenin has no interest in music. And my youngest Layla, Lenin's 15 and Layla is 11 and she plays drums and she played the piano and just all stuff on their own.

10:49All the kids learn stuff on their own. Not interested in structured lessons. Tell me about teaching jazz. That's an interesting concept. It's extremely difficult to teach jazz because it's like, how do you teach someone how to speak a language? Yeah. And typically jazz is taught to me. Most jazz musicians learn by learning solos. So just like you learn a language, you learn a phrase, then you learn another phrase. And then you learn about how chords work together in progressions and then you learn how to improvise over those progressions. The most common progressions in jazz would be like a 251.

11:34If so if you're in the KFC, it'd be D minor G major C major. Usually you sevenths in jazz, D minor 7 G C major 7. And then you teach people and it's almost impossible to teach them Rick about how do you play a melody over a set of chord changes? And most people will just run scales and that just doesn't sound melodic. And then you teach him that, well, you play the notes of the chord and that really describes them. So it's D minor 7's D F A C. But then you're just playing arpeggios and that doesn't sound musical. So it's like how do you actually make music and also make the changes? Making the changes are playing things that sound good over each chord because you have things that are happening vertically, the chords that move along.

12:25Then you have the melody which moves horizontally. And you have to teach people to, we can't really teach them, how do you play a phrase? It's like playing blues. And you really kind of need to start with just developing motifs the same way if you're if you're a rapper and you're just writing a phrase coming up with some type of a hook line. It's like any songwriting is done in the exact same way that you would learn or paint or paint or paint or just learning the skills, the craft aspect of it first. Right. Yeah. But teaching jazz is I'm not sure that it can be taught because very few of my students were able to actually learn to improvise well.

13:16And I'd hate to think that it's on me as a teacher that I wasn't able to teach them that, but I learned jazz because my dad listened to jazz records. And he said to me, my dad worked for the railroad. He was a very, you know, both my parents were blue collar. People, my mom worked in a can factory in upstate New York, fairport New York, right suburb of Rochester. My dad when I was in 10th grade, I started playing guitar when I was 14, but he bought me this record, Joe Pass, his record called Virtuoso. It's just solo guitar, all jazz standards. And he's like, if you've ever learned to play like this, you've accomplished something with your life.

13:56My dad said very few things, but that's one of the things that he said. I just left the things in front of the stereo for months. And one day, I'm like, oh, let me open it up and put it on. My dad listened to jazz all the time. So I put it on and started to night and day and then sell it by starlight. And all these old standards, the fifth tune or the fourth tune on the record was all the things you are, Jerome Kern tune. And um, starts playing. I was like, I can figure that out. So I start working on it and everything. I work on it all day. And my dad comes home from work. I was like, check this out.

14:31And I start playing along with it. My dad said, how did you do that? I said, just listen to it. I figured out the chords, the lot, single note lines and the bass walking and everything. I just listened to it. His response, he just shook his head and he's like, wow, that to me was the ultimate praise for my dad. Yeah. Well, listen to a track from it and from your childhood, just cool to hear. Yeah, all the things you are virtuoso's name of the record, 1973.

18:56Okay. How do you heard that song before in any form? No. So that's the first time you heard that song because that Joe pass is taking a lot of liberties with the song. Yes. In terms of learning the song, this would be a hard way to learn the song. Yes, those are the impossible way to learn the song. Yeah. Yeah. So you played along with it. I played along with it. And your dad, my dad couldn't believe it because it's, I mean, technically, it's incredibly difficult. Even today, and to be able to figure it out by ear, that was the thing with no lessons, figure out all those chord voicings. And the essence of jazz is pretty much in that one improvisation.

19:39Once I heard that, Rick, and then I started to take some guitar lessons, some jazz guitar lessons with a guy in my neighborhood that owned a music store. And he taught me the chords and kind of the, how the song worked and how the simple melody went. And then explained to me how the improvisation, how the Joe was improvising over the chord progression. And he would just keep cycling through. And about the form of jazz students and things. So I, learning that taught me pretty much everything about jazz, phrasing, swing, baselines, comping. It's all there in that one improvisation. It's amazing.

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22:05L -M -T. After the videos with your son, what happened next? L -M -T. So about six months later, I had an intern in my studio and he said, you should start a YouTube channel. L -M -T. What year was this? L -M -T. It was 2016. So it was June 2nd of 2016. I did my first video. L -M -T. It's kind of the early days of YouTube now. L -M -T. Yeah, I mean YouTube started in 2005 or the first videos, but really people then start using it until a lot, until probably 2009. They were guitar channels. In terms of the first time you were made aware of YouTube? L -M -T. Yes. Tell me. L -M -T. My brother, one of my older brothers, from a family of seven, my oldest brother, Mike.

22:52I was trying to send a video to my mom of my kids and it was in 2006. I was like, how do you send a video to someone? You know, they were huge files at the time. He said, go to YouTube. I said, what is that? It's just a place you can upload a video and then you just send mom a link. Okay, so I've signed up and put up a link there and so that's how I'd share videos. L -M -T. So you started using it as a user, not as a watcher, right from the beginning? L -M -T. Yeah. What do you use it for as a user, not as a maker? L -M -T. I'd find out of print things that people have put up there. I watch concerts and I watch a lot of interviews on there.

23:36I was a YouTube user for years though before it even occurred to me to upload a video there. So I was very familiar with the platform but as far as when I started, you know, I was like, okay, what kind of video is I'm going to make? So this is an intern's like, you should be a YouTuber. I was like, nobody's going to watch a white -haired guy on YouTube. I think they will. And I had to have that video six months before with my son Dylan and you know, a video with 250 ,000 comments. I mean, it was insane. And even though I was a rock producer, that's what I'm going to make videos, go back to what I used to do and I was teaching college.

24:20I'm going to make these really kind of sophisticated music theory videos and improvisation and ear training and all that kind of stuff. So I did that because there was nothing like that on YouTube at the time. There's nothing from advanced musicians. And about four months later, it's funny because I just said do weasel's apple on. And do weasel's the first musician that reached out to me. I had about 4 ,000 subscribers. And he told the story of that he's discovered my channel because I was explaining things that he always wondered about. And so he wrote to me out of the bin. I was like, he put a comment in.

24:57I said, I can't be do weasel's apple. I only had a couple thousand, you know, a few thousand followers. And I click on it. It's like, no, let's do weasel's channel. Then the next day I got an email from and he's like, I want to talk to you. Here's my phone number. Can you call me? It's like, I called them and I talked to him. And the next day Steve Vy wrote to me. Then I started, I did some interviews, just Skype interviews at the beginning. But most of my videos were there were about all different types of things that all educational nothing about contemporary music at all. And links typically?

25:29Oh, however long they needed to be. I had a lot, I had videos that were 45 minutes long. I did whiteboard videos on things explaining stuff. I did like a class. Like teaching a class. Yeah. And nobody did whiteboard, it's funny because nobody does whiteboard videos. Some people do. But I did whiteboard videos. They were some of my videos. But then I'd make videos like on how Apple ruined iTunes and things like that. I'd not realizing that people were, people freaked out about this. Me criticizing Apple devices and everything. Like, why have they changed iTunes? And it sucks now on all this stuff.

26:07And people went crazy. I got millions of views. So I would I would even venture out beyond things like that. But just anything that came to mind. I made videos always music based. Yes, always music based. Yeah. I never have mentioned anything other than the music on my channel. I don't get into politics, contemporary, nothing. It's only music. But I I make videos on AI and I've been invited to testify. These different congressional hearings. I made videos on fair use practices on YouTube and content ID policies and things like that. So always trying to be where modern technology is. And also where the business of music is.

26:55In addition to commentary on, you know, the Spotify top 10 and how these things work and how streaming works and how people don't get paid. And and then obviously now it's progressed to to having interviews with people. How do you think streaming has changed the way people relate to music? So I think that the availability of having anything at your fingertips in a way devalues music, least in my opinion from growing up and actually going out and buying records and having a physical representation of someone's art, including the album cover, the credits, is a completely different experience than being able to make a playlist that don't necessarily go together, things that you know are not meant to be listened to in that way.

27:54I mean, people used to have an album order that was an important thing and a side and a b side. And with streaming, I made a video recently that I talked about. It turned on the faucet in my kitchen and I said, this is basically Spotify, let's say. And so the water keeps going and just keeps going on indefinitely. Every day a hundred thousand new songs are added to Spotify. And at any point, you can interrupt the stream and I put a glass in there and said, this could be in Led Zeppelin's entire catalog right here in this glass, taken Eyedropper. This is the Zeppelin 3 and I start naming off the songs in Zeppelin 3.

28:37And then this is the rest of Zeppelin's catalog, you know, dump it out. And streaming music in some ways is too available. It's too easy to obtain. The scarcity element has been taken away. And the scarcity element made it desirable. You want it to get it. Yes. You had to make effort to get it. Yes. And because of that, it had value. Yes. And you know, maybe I had a Jimmy Hendrix record that my friend didn't have, but he had a Edel's record that I didn't have. And we would trade the things or we go over and make a cassette copy of it or whatever you would do. And you know, you carry the record over to someone's house.

29:25I mean, you literally would physically carry the physical record. And now on your phone, those people listen to music on their phone and everything is available for you there between the Spotify or Apple music or title or whatever you listen to. And YouTube, you pretty much have everything that's ever been recorded. It's hard to wrap your head around, but it's how much is it worth? Well, it's worth whatever YouTube premium is if you have that or Spotify, 16 bucks a month or whatever they raise the price to. And there's a complete disconnect between even who makes the records. Like, who are the people that made the records?

30:12If I want to know who the engineer was on one of your records. And let's say Tom Petty Wild Flowers. Now, there's different engineers on there. I know Jim Scott engineered some of it. I don't know who mixed the record. You can't even find these things out. If you try to go to, it's like where do you go? You go to all music .com or do you go to find out who the people are that contributed to the sound of that record, which is an amazing sounding record. And that's been lost. And you, you sure, you can look at the credits on the Spotify. It lists a couple things. And I guess if there's a few clicks here, and you know, but they make it incredibly difficult.

30:50I tried to look something up the other day. I was listening to it and wondering what the layers before it were impossible. Yeah, right. You can go to Wikipedia, but that doesn't give you who the, and a lot of it's incomplete or wrong or wrong. Yeah. Right. And to me, that something has been lost there with streaming. Now, the fact that you carry this stuff with you and listen to it in the car, we listen to music on the way here today. Yeah. And what do you do listen to on the way? I listen to a lot of your records. And usually when I, the music I listen to is when I'm preparing to do an interview with someone, I go back and I listen to, I think about records that I've listened to in the past and what I want to ask the person about.

31:44Because to me, it's, it's all about learning, you know, and I always, I'm always hoping, Rick, that the person that I interview remembers, because a lot of stuff happened years ago. And you don't always remember exactly what you do. But if I play you the, a song that you produced, it triggers something. Absolutely. So I'm thinking like, what am I going to play Rick that I want to know about? And there's so many things. And I'm thinking like, I hope that Rick remembers these things. But when you hear something, it does trigger a feeling for sure. So I don't know how you feel about streaming. What if you have any of the same things, we're just for people to know I'm one year older than you.

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32:34I see the pluses and the minuses. I love being able to be anywhere in the world and have any piece of music that I want to hear available to me at that time without the preparation, without having to order it, without having to find a shop that would have that disc. I love the availability. I know that in the past, I would listen to albums more often and for a longer period of time. And now, even when a new album comes out that I'm excited about, it has a very short shelf life, not because it's not great, but it's the nature of this conveyor belt moving by with more stuff. So I think we listen less, I want to say less deeply, but maybe that's not right because you can listen deeply one time.

33:31I guess we just put less time and effort into listening now. Now, maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. You know, it's like I can see both sides. I know the joy that I had of listening in childhood and it's different now. For the way I like to listen, streaming works well for me because I like to hear new things. I don't necessarily like to hear new today's music, but I like to hear things new to me. Yes. So I listened to a lot of 60 psychedelic music that I've never heard before, for example. I was into a lot of classical and a lot of jazz that I didn't grow up listening to. And I like having it available and I like being able to go down a rabbit hole and continue forever, which you couldn't do back in the vinyl days.

34:20That's right. That's the plus side of it. You said something interesting there that new to you. And when people talk about, oh, what is new music? They think it's music that's coming out in 2024. No, new music is something that you haven't heard. Yes. As far as I'm concerned. Yes. New to me. But that's what's most exciting to me is, I'm not so interested in listening back to things I listened to before, unless there's a reason or a particular memory comes up and I'm curious about something. But for the most part, I listen to things I haven't listened to before and they tend to be old things, not new things.

35:01Do you have an idea? Like, I really want to hear this or are you on a hunt for things that may be related to something that you know and you want to know what the influence of one thing is on something else. I'll give you a guitar reference. There's a jazz guitar reference. Well, West Montgomery was influenced by Charlie Christian. Now, if people like West Montgomery, well, who's Charlie Christian? And then you go and start listening to that. You see, oh, how does that influence? Do I recognize anything in what West Montgomery played, the Charlie Christian played? I would definitely look for the lineage.

35:43And for any artist I like, historically, I would always want to know all of the artists that they like. And that was usually how I found the things to like. I guess you'd say, in a way, the artists you liked were trusted source. I like to say that I think a lot of people, including myself, when I didn't understand how records were made, when you think about it, if it records recorded, you know, the 1960s, 1970s, 80s, whatever was recorded on tape. And that tape started as a blank piece of plastic or whatever it's made out of, you know. And then the music was recorded. And the things don't magically appear.

36:33Songs are written, they're recorded, sometimes they're recorded over months, sometimes over years. And demystifying that has been one of the things that I like to do on my YouTube channel. So how is music actually? I'll say it's interesting to know as much as you can. And it's completely mystical. And the more you know about it, the more you realize it is magic. And it does just appear. Because that's how it happens. It's like it really is unbelievable. I've seen it happen enough times where your jaw drops. And it's not because you're good that it happens. It happens, because it happens. A tremendous amount of effort and patience is involved.

37:27But then something else has to happen. And we are not in control of that other thing. And that's why sometimes, you know, you'll do 30, 40, 50, 60 takes of a song. Yeah. Seems insane. Yeah. But it's weird when it goes from everyone's doing the same thing on track 59 as they are on track 60, but all of a sudden on track 60, it comes together. Who knows why? Nobody knows why. Right. But it does. And you have to remain patient enough to recognize it when it happens. If you want it too bad, it might never happen. To really let go and just see what happens. I like to say that music is time travel. A lot of the times the musicians are not with us anymore.

38:27Yet when you're listening to their performance, it's happening right then as soon as you play it. Just like there's no recordings of Beethoven playing, but there is these, the music that was in his mind, any orchestra can play. Just put it up and you can perform it. And that's the amazing thing about music. And it's time travel too. And that the performances don't have to happen all at once. You have overdubs and things like that that that happened later on that you listen to. And you let's add this thing. I had that experience the day Tom Petty passed away. I was out at dinner in Santa Monica with friends who were in town.

39:14And the Tom Petty song came on in the restaurant. And I remember feeling the energy in the song and feeling like, he's more alive now than he's ever been. In this moment, he is more alive than he has ever been. He was incredible. And it was just like, put in my face. I wasn't looking for that story. It was given to me in that moment. Markable. I always loved how you, not every record, but you would have this really upfront drive vocals, Johnny Cash or Tom Petty or the intimacy that thing just jumps out. And I always wondered why that presentation like that, what appeals to you about that? Because to me, that's brilliant.

40:10And it gives a depth to the music, especially when you hear the band that has this beautiful, maybe natural room sound. If it's the chili peppers or something, and you hear that natural room sound, then you hear that upfront voice kind of like spatially how the band would be with Anthony would be out front. And the band would be behind him. Do you think about that? Is that why you you want the thing or are you looking for the emotion of it? I think usually when we add things to vocals, it makes them, I'll use the word blurry. It's not the right word. But it smears them in a way. And if something about the clarity of the voice that really speaks to me to hear every enunciation, every click and pop, it feels more personal and more real.

41:10I'm not looking for a theatrical presentation. I'm looking for much more documentary, a feeling of reality of somebody sharing their truth. And that goes to the writing as well. It's like the sound is part of it, but it's also in the lyrics. If I hear lyrics that I don't believe the person saying those lyrics, that'll be a comment I make often in the studios. I don't really believe this. Do you believe this? Do you mean this? And if you do mean it, why don't I believe it?

41:51How often will you have people rewrite lyrics? Does that happen a lot? It depends. Case by case. Some people really are gifted lyricists and it's unbelievable. And then other ones, they're in the ballpark, but can use help. It's helpful to them when I can point out, this part isn't as good as the rest, but it really is case by case. Now I'm going to ask you something that I would, because I'm struggling to not ask you questions here. And this is very, I'm not completely understood. Yeah. I watched so many interviews of you. I'm really fascinated that I watched Anderson Cooper interview you. And the way that you state things in the issue about gear, I don't know anything about the gear.

42:43I don't know. I don't know anything about music. I don't really play instruments, but that's not true totally, right? Ricky started playing guitar. You play some guitar, right? I played guitar in a punk rock band. Yeah. You can play power forces. Yeah. I play rudimentary guitar. Okay. I'll play you an old recording of something where you can hear me playing the instruments. I need to understand. I'm not a studio musician. Right. But you know what reverb is. You know what snare, how good you know a good snare sound. You know a good kick drum sound to all these things. I know what I like. You know what you'd like.

43:19I know what I like. Yeah. But I don't necessarily know how to do it. But ultimately people come to you for your taste. Yes. Absolutely. That's it. That's what the job of a producer is. That's it. Taste. That's my job. Yeah. In my world, the producer is a non -technical function. Yeah. I find that to me, that is what the job of a producer is. And everybody kind of comes to it in their own way. But ultimately, this is a good performance. That's not a good performance. This is a good vibe. That's not a good vibe. Yes. These lyrics are good enough. These lyrics are not this drum pattern is an interesting enough.

43:59Right. But it's not because I know how to play drums that I tell you that. It's because my taste is my taste. But that to me is literally the job of a producer. But probably nine out of ten producers don't do that. So it's a question of terms. Yeah. Yeah. Through interviewing producers, I think it's really important. I only interview people that I'm interested in. I've done very few producer interviews. I've interviewed Daniel L 'Annois, Brendan O 'Brien, butch -fig, who else? Alan Parsons. Very few. Almost none. They're all different. They're all different. Yeah. Everyone is different. Yeah. Everyone is completely different.

44:44I would imagine that. But taste is the thing that they all agree on. Ultimately, they all have different, you know, some Daniel L 'Annois comes more from a... Well, he had his own studio. So he comes at it from as a originally kind of as a studio owner. He and his brother produce things together. Alan Parsons, you know, he worked at Abbey Road Studios. He came at it through that way. But you know, when I interviewed Brendan, he was... He credits you as like he would not be... Have done the stuff he did without you. You basically helped him with his career. And the same. He helped me with mine.

45:29He is a great engineer. He's a great guitar player. Sonically brought a lot to the table. And that was the nature of our relationship. And it was great. But definitely the thing that I've come to realize after interviewing these producers is that it's the thing that I knew. It's the taste that people come to them for. Whether it's George Martin, even though I never met George Martin, that's something that I don't know has been really talked about enough. It's like George Martin's contributions. Because I don't think that people understand what a producer does. And if there's anything that I can contribute in explaining this through interviews with people, I think that first -person accounts of people that made classic records like yourself is the most valuable thing I can do with the millions of people that follow my YouTube channel.

46:26If I can give back in my... Any small way to society by having these... These accounts, what was it like to be in the room then? How did you do this? How are these records made? And then whatever thoughts that you have on contemporary music, whatever it is that you want to add to these discussions, to me, it's my... I wouldn't say duty, but it's incredibly important to me to be able to put this information out there for people. And they can do with it what they want. But these first -person accounts, I think, in the future will be when the history of music is written. It's a historical documentation of how the things that we love were made.

47:14Yes. And I wish that they existed from the past because they don't always exist. I would love to see footage from the 1950s in Little Richard in the recording studio, how those records were made. I've never heard anyone talk about it. Right. But they sound as good today as they've ever sounded. What's amazing is that bands like The Beatles actually filmed in the studio. I mean, we're lucky that we have the footage that we have that some people were thought to do that. That's one of the miraculous things if you've ever seen that Beatles anthology 8 -video series. Oh yeah. Do you see that? Yes. So amazing.

47:52The fact that there's so much film of them from such a young age is unbelievable. Yeah. It's miraculous. Yeah. I just saw a video. I've seen it before of Elton John writing Tiny Dancer that he just had written it and he was playing it for a couple people. And there's a video of it. Great. He puts up the lyrics just on there and he plays it. And and he hasn't even recorded it yet. I just wrote this the other day, burning gave me the lyrics and I thought, and this is the verse and this is this little part is going to be the chorus. And then he performs it. And it's unbelievable. That somebody had the presence to film that and capture that moment.

48:35Have you ever seen Neil Young on the BBC from the 70s where he's playing songs from Arvis before The Alon came out? No. Oh my god. It's unbelievable. That's the stuff that I think everything is out there like that, which is unbelievable that you can actually pull it up and having the visual part. It's one thing to to hear people. It's another thing to actually see the performances. I mean, it's really amazing. Even the, I was wondering when they announced that Oasis is going to get back together and then I saw some video come up and it was the Liam singing, champagne, supernovaed, just a take in the studio.

49:13And it was an amazing take. It's not to take on the record. Yeah. And it just shows you what a great singer he is. And to hear an alternate take that is from that same time period when it's recorded. You know it's recorded within that, probably on that day, even. And you can see the shape of the melody is not everything is quite there, but it was an amazing take. Easily could have been the take of the record and stuff. Or McCartney singing, let it be from the get back video. Or long and winding road. And these are incredible alternate takes. And there they are on video. And I just, to me, that's just amazing.

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51:36Tell me about your recording studio. So my studio is most people don't know. It's in my basement. I built it in back in 2005. I bought a house that had a big basement. It's probably about 4 ,300 square feet or so. It's good size. And the whole basement is a studio. So it's got a control room. It's got an isobooth. The floating floor, both of those. And then I have a live one live room. The people see on my videos is used to be my live room. No, it's my YouTube set. I mean, it's what it is. It's basically a set. And then I have another room next to that that I track drums and has a fire place and stuff.

52:20And then like a hangout room. And then there's a far room that's like a rehearsal room that I have drums set up. And I'll go in and jam with my kids and stuff. From my daughter, Layla, I'll play drums. I'm a sundown, play guitar. And I'll play bass. Or my daughter, Lenin, I'll play bass. And I'll play second guitar and stuff. So that's our jam room. Hersel space. So I have everything that I've ever wanted. And I don't use it now because I don't really produce anything except for stuff that I make in videos. But in my control room, I have my, you know, racco -needs and helios. And I've got everything that to make records.

53:07And I'm not making records. But you choose not to. I choose not to. You're doing something else now. Yeah. But I would love to record performances. And you know, when I interview people that come to my studio, many times people that are touring through town will come to my studios. And so we use it in that way. And most people play in, when I'm... That sounds like a home to their channel. A voice -life performances from your studio. Yeah. I'd really like to do that. I did my first kind of artist spotlight thing or something. I had the singer that her name is Ella Hone in Ford. She's from England.

53:51And I started following an Instagram. She only had about 45 ,000 followers. Beautiful songwriter. And was originally a jazz musician, but she writes pop songs. But they have... I started to cover Wichita alignment. And she calls them forever songs. Songs from the early 70s and stuff. And she writes these modern songs that sound like forever songs. They have beautiful melody shapes and credible chord progressions and things like that. And so I did an episode with her. She happened to be in New York when I was there a couple weeks ago. And I'd talked her on the phone. And she's like, oh, it's too bad you're not going to be in New York.

54:32And then I said, oh, I actually am going to be in New York. And so I had her come by the studio where I was doing another interview. And I talked her and she played a couple songs. I made a video of it. Great. And so I'd like to do that with bands and things and have people come into my studio. And great. So that's kind of something in the future that I would that I want to do. Sounds fun. And again, it fits in the message of it spreading music. Right. One way or another it's spreading music. Yeah. Do you remember your first memory of music as a kid? Yes. My first memory is my grandfather playing guitar.

55:10He was an acoustic guitar. A acoustic guitar. Yeah. It was probably in the mid 60s. And we'd go over to my grandparents house. He was from Italy. He was from Sicily. He and my grandmother. All my grandparents came from came from Italy. And he would play a acoustic guitar. And he kind of played a lot of traditional songs either Italian folk music or you know, could be the star -spangled banner or something or American folk music. He would play. And he'd play chords and melody at the same time. And I would sit right in front of his guitar and watch him play. And I was mesmerized by watching this thing.

55:51Probably three. Something like that. And my Aunt Penny would play the piano. My Aunt Mary and played the violin. My Uncle L was a bass player. So it was a musical family? Yes. They would play after dinner. Would they be recorded music in the house? You grew up in as well. Yes. What would that be? My dad listened to jazz. My mom listened to classical music. So and then I've you know, so I've five older siblings and one younger sibling. And they all listened to different music. My sisters, my oldest sister Pat loved the Beatles and the Stones and the Led Zeppelin, you know, Jimmy Hendrix, all all different things.

56:33Motown and all different genres of music would be playing. Everybody who have their own little cassette players or their little stereo. So we had nine people in a three bedroom house with one bathroom but music all the time. What was the first music that you would say was your music? Not your parents, not your brothers, this is.

57:00When I think about my music, I think about what did I buy? Like what did my mom give me 25 cents for to go to the drugstore and buy a single? Probably Angie by the Stones. I bought the single to that. And I to this day, it's one of my favorite songs. It just great song. It just means so much to me. And I always think it's like, I don't know of a song that's like that. To me, it's such a unique song. Something about it is just the lyrics. The key thritchers never played a guitar. This such a unique guitar part for him. And it sounds amazing. And but that was one of the first things I spent money on.

57:47I remember in the drugstores, have a rack that have the top 40. And you can just buy the 45 and pull it out and go up. When they start analyzing it versus just listening to it and enjoying it. Oh, I never analyzed it till I started. Probably till I took guitar lessons in my teens or so. Everything I learned was by ear. That's the thing is I think people think that I learned I'm a theory guy. Most of the names for things I learned for the most part in college, like what things were. So all my learning was done by ear. All the guitar stuff I learned. I started on bass or sat on cello when I was in third grade.

58:28I took this musical aptitude test called the C -short test that they had in second or third grade. They gave it to all the students. And the people with with the best ears got to play string instruments. And then the next group got to play wind instruments and being the band that was the next year. So I remember going with my mom. I got selected and they put they had the force things. cello, violin, and viola. And not bass yet because you weren't big enough to play bass when you're in third grade or so. And I got to pick one instrument. And since I heard the cello, it was like, I want to play that.

59:04So I started taking cello lessons. And I did that until sixth grade. Then my orchestra director asked me if I wanted to play the bass. And I moved to bass to upright bass. And then guitar happened. Summer of eighth grade, I broke my ankle first week of the summer. And I was stuck for 13 weeks in a cast. Couldn't do anything. And there was a guitar sitting in the corner that my brother got from a buddy of his. And a little cord book, Mel Bay cord book. Let me just like pick a big guitar and look at the chords and start. And since I already played the cello on the bass, I didn't go through that period of calluses or anything.

59:48I started picking up and I was like, oh, that sounds like, you know, first chord of this song or that sounds like, let's up. And that sounds like Boston. And that sounds like Queen. And then I started being able to pick things off records pretty immediately. Once I figured out how to tune the guitar and everything. And I was obsessed. That was it. All through high school. I was obsessed. I started playing in bands six months later. When was the last time you played cello? I played cello on a record I want to say in probably 99 or so. I rented a cello to play. What was the experience of going back to it after not playing it for years?

1:00:25It was weird. It was, but I could play it. I could, um, I knew the notes I wanted to play and I knew where they were. It was fun. I'd like to get another cello. I have a bass. I have an upright bass at my studio, but it's not a great one. I'd like to get a nicer one so I could play. But I can sit and I could play any orchestral music. I can still read and I could play bass along with if I put on, you know, uh, Bach, Brandenburg, and Cherito and G. I could, I could sit there and I could pretty much play it. Just read and play. Cool. Even though I haven't played since the mid 80s. What would you say you've learned through posting videos?

1:01:13A lot. There's many layers of that too. Videos that people would watch in 2016 or not videos that they watch in 2024. The attention span of people has gotten shorter and I've had about two billion views between YouTube and Instagram and you have analytics of these things and you can see how long people watch. People like short form content, for example, 35 seconds is about all people have the attention span to watch. So and he's short over 35 seconds, Rick, people, they swipe away. So I typically don't make things that are over 35 seconds long, which is very funny if you think about that. It's not like I try to make them that long.

1:02:04I just know how long 35 seconds is. So if I were to sit and make a video with you and I sit and somebody said go until you think it's 30 minutes, I would be within 30 seconds of it in 30 minutes. Yeah. I have a really good sense. If it's uninterrupted, I have a very good sense of those like time increments, like 30 minutes. I also used to have cameras that would shut off after 30 minutes. So you could start feeling it. You the thing would go off. But the types of topics of videos are wildly different. I mean, I didn't make any content about contemporary music until I'd had 200 ,000 followers on my channel subscribers on my YouTube channel.

1:02:55Up till then, what would it be? Before it was contemporary, you'd be examples of what it would have been. I would do things like a breakdown of the string parts of the Shawshank Redemption Thomas Newman. Here's this scene, and I would do a recreation where I would play all the parts that the orchestra would play. Take one scene, the original scene, where they do the flyover of the prison when they're all arriving. I would do a piano reduction on the screen, have it going, and I would talk about the orchestration. I would show when the, the, the, the, the evil guard, Byron Hadley comes on the screen, and he goes to this really ominous kind of sounds.

1:03:40And I would say why he did this. And then I interviewed Thomas Newman later on. And we talked about all these wonderful film scores. He did American Beauty and Shawshank Redemption 1917, Finding Nemo, and to get to ask him about those things and talk to him about why did you choose these things? And the very beginning of the video, he placed the American Beauty theme on the piano, the wonderful piano, mysterious introduction. And I hear it and I said, did you play it on this piano? And he goes, yeah, I think I did because it was at the village, because I'm sitting there and he's playing it. It's like, that sounds exactly like it's like on the same piano.

1:04:22He says, yeah, it was on this piano, which is really amazing, because on many levels too. So cool. Yeah, to do that. Yeah. And the idea that early videos I would do that or talk about modes of the double harmonic major scale or something, and I would do a little example, I'd write an orchestral piece based on each one and, and talk about that. That's the stuff that Dweezel loved. So when you say not contemporary, you mean not pop music? Nothing. I never made it about a rock song, a pop song about anything. Never talked about it. So it was all based on classic music jazz as well. Yes, classic music and jazz.

1:05:00And then one day, it was like the 28th of January of 2018, I started a series called What Makes This Song Great. And I started doing breakdowns using multi tracks of famous songs. Where would you get the multi tracks? I got them from somebody back in the early 2000s. Some guy at a studio gave them to me that I won't mention where the studio was, but I had gone to do a, to work on a record. It was something for Geffen. And I walked in and the engineer of the studio was playing the multi track. It was smells like teen spirit. It was just Kurt Cobain's voice. I was like, what is that? Well, it's a multi track to smell something spirit.

1:05:39Where'd you get it from? I can't tell you. It was like, we'll solo some of the other tracks. He's soloing me or the bass who the drums and everything. So I was like, I need that. And he's probably a whole black market of multi tracks floating around. Yes. Rick, he had thousands of them on a hard drive. And I convinced him. I traded them two samples. A bass drum sample and a snare sample. I had two samples I traded. When I told him whose samples I had, it's a mixers samples. And he traded me the like 2500 songs for a kick in the snare. That last each of them that long. It's unbelievable. Yes. And so I have a second channel.

1:06:24Rick, be out of tune that I that I started right at the same time as during my first one. I would go on at 10 o 'clock at night on that second channel. I only had a few hundred subscribers. And I would try new material on there, kind of like a comedian wood. And I never would label the things a lot of times I would take the videos down. And one night I played multi track of all the small things by Blink 182. And there's a in the layers of everything that Roger Manning plays this active keyboard part that becomes a dissonance sound like a moge or something. It's beautiful little just single note thing.

1:06:59Actives alternate. Do do do do do do do do and it creates this dissonance on the three chords in the chorus. And that really makes this tension of the chorus with the harmonies. It makes it happen. It creates this flat nine interval. It's very dissonant. And one of my friends was listening. My friend, Rat. He's actually was my intern that got me to start my channel. He goes, you should make a video like that for the main channel. And I was like, yeah, call it what makes this song great. So the next day I did a breakdown of that song. And then I did about five videos in a row of breakdowns. I did every little thing she does.

1:07:36It's a magic and police. I did kid charlomaine, steely Dan. I had the multi track saw these things. And I and each one I would like I'd play Larry Carlton solo of kid charlomaine. And I noted the drum part, the Bernard, pretty plays on it and Chuck Raine's bass part and the keyboard part. And it then just blew up. And I started getting a thousand subscribers a day. And it never stops since then. I did 105 episodes of song breakdowns. Did you continue doing the ones that you were doing prior? Those kind of videos, the jazz videos and stuff. No, I started to phase those out. I'd always told stories on my YouTube channel right at the beginning.

1:08:19I told a story about not getting into college for music. When I first auditioned, I failed the audition at two colleges. And I lied to my family about it. And I said, I got in. And the only reason I got into college was because I was really good in track. And I got a scholarship to go to school. And I was a history major from one semester. And I re auditioned at Ithga College where I'd gotten rejected. And I got in. This freshman guitar player taught me how to play the classical guitar pieces that you needed to play properly to get into the college. Some freshmen taught me. And I went in re auditioning.

1:08:59I got in. And then six years later, I was teaching there. I'd got my master's degree. I went back to Ithga College. So in the same room that I failed the audition, yeah, I was the professor there teaching. Great story. So I told that story. And I'd never told any of my siblings because I forgot about it. My parents were deceased at that time. And I said, this is a story I've never told even to anyone in my family. Yeah. And I told it on my channel. Did your family ever see it? And respond? Tell me about that. Yeah, they were blown away. Yeah. And I was so embarrassed. I had so much shame about that, Rick, that I hid the letters.

1:09:39And I didn't tell either my parents about it. But since the track coach caught me in, as Mr. Major, I went there to Ferdonia State University first semester. I went to the guitar teacher and she would not take me on as a student. I said, I really want to re audition and become a guitar major. And she's like, I don't have time to teach you. So then I had this guy in my dorm that was a great classical guitar player, freshman. And he taught, he goes, I can teach you these things to get in. And he taught me how to play proper classical guitar in like five weeks to re audition back at Ithaca. Madass like, why are you re auditioning if you just got in, but last time, because it's a new year.

1:10:19And I lied about it because I was embarrassed. And that was a real pivotal thing. It really made me question the shame of that. I knew I was really talented, but I just didn't have any training in that. And my guitar teacher at the time didn't know anything about classical guitar. So I couldn't pass the audition. And they didn't want to know about your aptitude, your abilities. It was like, can you play these three pieces in three different style periods? I don't even know three style periods are. So it's funny that another 18 year old kid is teaching me this stuff to get into to get into college.

1:10:59Yeah. Story. Yeah.

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1:12:33How has your relationship to music changed over the course of your life? I don't know if it has. I have the same feelings for it. Anytime I listen to a song, if I've heard it a million times, I've never changed. It always does the same thing to me. I never get sick of things I've heard. And I always want to listen to new music. And I want to see if I can get that same feeling that I had. It's tough. It becomes more difficult. The older you get, the more music you consume, becomes more difficult. And I find that when I ask people that are my age, that question, it's hard to hear things is new. It's hard to do new things for people.

1:13:17I think things are very difficult. And especially now, I think people's tastes. That's one of the things about streaming since everything's based on numbers. It's usually things of the least common denominator that are the things at the top of the charts. And there are things that blow up in TikTok and then they transfer to Spotify. And in the old days, when things were decided upon by A &R people for the good or bad, people would take chances on things that may have been, you know, strange. And music was what got pushed, got determined by the people that ran record labels. Ultimately, things would either connect with people or they wouldn't.

1:14:05You know, why did Blood Sugar Sex Magic connect with everyone? What it was at about that record that like you, I don't know that you can say that it's a particular thing, right? It just did. The songs just connected with people. But trying to find something like that, like, is there another Blood Sugar Sex Magic that's being created today? I haven't heard it. Maybe there is. Maybe I haven't listened to enough things. But music is not made in the same way it was done.

1:14:44And I said in the same video, I said that music is too easy to just consume and it's too easy to make as well. It's just too easy to fix things, to fix performances. And I think the people, not everyone, but people can go overboard with these things. Instead of getting performances, they will do 80 takes of a vocal and comp it together. And yeah, comping has always existed in music. But when you were recording and tape, sometimes you just had to live with the imperfections because you didn't want to go in and try and fix one little thing that somebody might have been bugged by. Now we're not going to take a chance doing a punch in on that.

1:15:26It's too risky. You know that that's just the thing. But also, I know that we would make slave multi -track of 24 tracks just to do a million vocal techniques. Sure, yes. We would do whatever we would need to do for it to be good as it could be. Yeah. I wouldn't say that we settled off. And you mentioned earlier, we hear things in old records that are out of tune now. But at the time that we heard it originally, we didn't know it was out of tune. But now because we live in a world that's so quantized, everyone can hear when it's out of tune because so much of the music we hear is so quantized and put in tune that when anything is outside of that, it becomes more obvious.

1:16:12Yes. So do you think that people have more discretion with that or that they, or they've just become rigid because they've been the gratification of music as I call it? You know, everything has been, you know, I find gritted music less interesting unless it's made by craftwork. You know, like I really like electronic music. So it's not like I'm against gritted music. But in terms of live music that's gritted, it starts feeling solace to me. Yeah. I feel the same way about things that are recorded in order as opposed to a band playing together, which is unusual because most even existing rock bands who maybe started in the 80s tend to record the drums and then the guitars and layer it.

1:17:06And to me, it doesn't sound like music. Right. It's hard to find things that connect with me in the same way at least in stuff that I hear when I do my Spotify top 10. Now that's the, you know, you can say that's least common denominator music voted on by the masses based on spins period. But there is amazing music out there being made by people every day. Absolutely. I almost feel like I would love you to do in addition to the Spotify top 10, another, I don't know if top 10 is the right word, but it's 10 songs that are worthy of attention. And those would be more like the songs that the A &R people of the past with good taste might have said, this is different, but we really think this is great.

1:18:03And that could be real service to the artistic community if you're, if you have a platform, they could turn people on to new things that they wouldn't get to hear otherwise. It'd be beautiful. One of my friends says that people say things that are aspirational, but then they vote, I say this, that they vote with their attention. If I put out a video within 12 minutes, I know how well the video is doing because I have so many people that watch my channel, you have massive amounts of data and that will, you know from from doing this, it's like, oh, this video is not performing well. I might change one word in the title and then all of a sudden it doubles in views.

1:18:53It's amazing the psychology of the viewer, the title or the thumbnail, you change, you do an AB test with the thumbnail and different thumbnail will all of a sudden create, make the video blow up. How do you do an AB test? This is all new to me. Well, now you can actually, in YouTube, you can do it, but I don't do it that way. I just will literally change the thumbnail out and I'll watch because it gives you minute by minute analytics on it. And I look at it and it's usually noticeable. Sometimes it gets worse than I go back to the other video and it goes back to the same. I'll can show you screenshots of videos that just literally double in views and then explode just by changing one.

1:19:40If you change a thumbnail, let's say you have 10 ,000 views and you switch the thumbnail. Now you're starting to think that I did probably three, four years ago. It's one of my favorite videos. I did a remake of the Get Solo of Stairway to Heaven. So I brought in a friend of mine to track the drums. I said, listen, I called my friend Jack. I'm like, hey, I need you to come over and play exactly what John Bonham played in the solo section. He's like, what do you mean? I said, every fill the same. So we tracked along with the record and everything so it'd have the same feel and then I played all the other parts.

1:20:22I paid Jimmy Page's guitar parts and keyboard part that John Paul Jones played and everything. Then I did. Me, I played what I thought Peter Frampton would have played. If he played the solo, then I had my friend Phil X play what he thought Eddie Van Halen would have played and then I had Eric Johnson played a solo that I called Eric. He would play. He would play. I said, Eric, would you mind playing on this video and he's like, what do you want to do? I said, I want you to play on Stairway to Heaven. He goes, what do you mean? I said, what you would play? And I said, just imagine you're 15 year old self playing over Stairway to Heaven.

1:20:56Okay, I said, but you have to film it. Okay, no problem. So we make this video and since the first part of the video is creating the backing track and then I play my Peter Frampton, Phil does Eddie Van Halen thing. He's got Van Halen guitar and he basically combined different elements of Van Halen solos and does this incredible solo and then Eric played his solo over it. We put it out and then Eddie Van Halen died the next day. But that video to me is one of my favorite videos that I've done and every once a year it just blows up in views and it'll get a million views in a month or so. What do you attribute it to?

1:21:39I don't know. It's just somebody will watch it and it just connects with people and they share it with people so they continue to get views every day forever. All the videos do, really. So the only changes you're talking about are the thumbnail and the headline, but the content remains the same. Yeah, well that particular video. Okay, so I missed this part of it. I was doing a show in England in London where I did a few shows from live nation, asked me if I wanted to do some live shows. So I was doing the show in London and I said that I said, how many watch this video that I did on Stairway to Heaven?

1:22:16Most of people didn't see it. It was probably about 600 people there. And I said, if anyone has a better title and thumbnail, because I think that the title and thumbnail is not, I don't like, I think it's good. And so some guy that works with Brian May came, wrote me, he does archiving for Queen and he wrote me and he suggested a different title and video. So I changed it and then it blew up again. Wow. Yeah, and this was years after it could come out. So just that at any time, if the algorithm, every single video has a zone algorithm. So anytime you change anything in it, the algorithm recognizes it and it'll send it out to new people.

1:22:57And sometimes it will blow up even even a video that had millions of views, it got even more. Really interesting. Yeah. So so much is communicated through the, I don't know, advertising, you know, Netflix, when you go on there will show different thumbnails to different people. I will click on it. And if my kids click on the same videos, they'll have different thumbnails. Wow. Yes. They know the kind of thumbnails that I will click on. It's really amazing. Fascinating. Yeah. And so if I'm not in the thumbnail, people don't know it's my video and they'll bypass it many times. I'm pretty much always in the thumbnails in my videos.

1:23:44I have to be, then people know it's a Rick Biotto video. So that's the thing that once my channel got to a certain size, you know, a million followers or so. After that, I pretty much have to be on the, on the thumbnail. So people know it's my video. It's really weird. Yeah. No, it's just interesting. This is a video where I change the thumbnail or title. And that's a minute by minute view. And as you can see, right there is where the change happened and all of a sudden the views doubled. And what's different about this is that in real time, Rick, you can actually change the trajectory of your video.

1:24:27It's like re -releasing a single, but you don't lose any of the plays that you had. Yeah. This is another video here. So it's over the course of an hour, same kind of a thing. But it's so noticeable. You just, the instantly within a minute know that it worked. And sometimes it goes down. So often you change them. I've changed, sometimes I'll change it five times in 10 years. You say you always change them or no? No. But I'd say probably half the time. Yeah. And is it based on the feedback you're seeing? Yeah. I have a gut feeling for how well a video should do. And I know some videos are not going to do well.

1:25:10And you're fine with that. Yeah. Fine with that. Yeah. I don't make videos for views. I make videos for me. Yeah. I only make videos on things I'm interested in. And that seems to have served me well here in eight years. And but I always do this anytime that I that that's a video that's had a thumbnail or title change. And you can see the trend. And then immediately jumps up and like that. And then and then once you have once YouTube realizes that it's a hit, then it starts pushing it out to bigger audiences. But if you have a video that does badly for me, a video that does badly is something under 400 ,000 views, which I mean how long in three days.

1:25:57So yeah, if it's under 400 ,000 and that's for your four days, that's a really bad, which is insane actually. Right. That's a bad video. But I will know within the first 12 minutes if a video is doing what it should. I've an idea. Do you posted a certain kind of day or does that not matter? I post whenever the video is done. I don't do any I've never done anything that's conventional YouTube. I just do stuff I do. You do anything to optimize other than changing the thumbnail and changing the title. Yeah. Do you always change both or do you might change one? That's usually changed the title first.

1:26:40And then if that doesn't work, then I'll change the thumbnail. But I've literally changed the title in thumbnail five times in the first hour. Do you have a bunch of thumbnails ready to go just in case I make them I make them on my phone. Yeah, which is very, but I'm I'm so not the typical YouTuber person. I'm like the like the I don't know that there's a typical right. Do you know what I mean? It really is a it's for everyone. It's so cool. Yeah, but I'm like the indie rock YouTuber in that way that I get kind of just go on feel. But it's always making videos on things I'm interested in. Only interview people that I am a fan of.

1:27:27And somebody sent me a sent me an email. Check out this new song I wrote with AI. I think it's a hit. That's absurd, right?

1:27:43Check out this so I click on it and stuff and it's absurd. So this will be the I'll make a video about this but the absurdity that but two of my kids can recognize an AI song immediately if something's completely generative. My son Dylan was like, oh, that's a why you listen to AI my 11 year old Lalo say, but Dylan always recognized him like, what are you hearing? He goes, I hear there's some weird thing that it's coming in and out. He's hearing an artifact in the reverb actually of the voice typically. And yet I'll play it for his friends who have some of his friends over. This is last year when they were in 10th grade.

1:28:22I played 10 tracks. Five or AI generated and five were humans. And Dylan everyone got right things he had never heard before. But his friends they couldn't tell. But Dylan got it right every time. But Dylan said to me, he's like, you know, six months from now it'll probably be where I won't be able to recognize. Wow. Billy Korgon was the first person to bring this up to me when I interviewed him about a year and a half ago. He said that people will listen to AI music and like it. There will be things that they like. And I agreed with them. And it's not like real musicians are going to go away.

1:29:01But I think that there will be AI songs that people like. And they know it's AI and they don't care. And I said in the future it's going to be the Beatles and the Beatles AI and Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin AI or whatever. And while I like the Beatles AI, far more than the Beatles, you know, is absurd as that is that that will be, you know, if they say I like it, AI, AC, DC, then I'm going to really then we're in trouble. But I don't think that people necessarily care except when they go see live music. Obviously you want to have real musicians. But I can see that I can see a thing where people prompt from the audience and you have speakers up there and it plays different types of music.

1:29:52And there's people on stage that are improvising and just improvise to what they hear. And that would be a cool use of AI. Did you by any chance see the Abishau in London? Do you know about it? I do know about it. Yeah. If you get a chance, see it. Remarkable. I interviewed Bjorn when I was in Stockholm. That was that. That was great. And we talked a lot about about AI. You were at the end of July. I was there. I mean, he didn't say what label, but President of the label played him stuff that he couldn't believe was AI that sounded so realistic. And we related it to the the ABBA show using the holograms and things like that.

1:30:30And he's very pro technology and stuff. Which is really cool for a guy that's 78, 79 years old now. Of the interviews you've done, what would he say you've been most surprised by?

1:30:47I think I'm most surprised by the fact that the people that are making the music on either side of it, whether they're the performance or the people that are like yourself that are the producers, they almost never know what's going to be successful. And I'd say that that's a common thing. They don't know. I think that people when they've had hit records, they have more of an idea for something that's going to be a going to be successful. And that when they listen to music, because I always play stuff in there, they always doesn't matter. They hear stuff that even if it's recorded 35 years ago, that still bothers them.

1:31:44I think it's interesting. Yeah. Although some of the people will say, I forgot what I used to hate about this. All that's interesting too. I don't think I would have that feeling. I think I would maybe say, I hear what I would do different today. But I certainly wouldn't change that because that was a document of that moment in time. That was true in that moment's time. Yeah. It's strange to see people that don't like something in their performance and it still bothers them today. Something that's been out that people have heard a billion times. For a lot of old music, music made in the 60s, there are these re -records that the artists did later on, usually to do with rights issues.

1:32:35And it really bums me out. It bums me out to hear a re -record of a record. There's some magic thing that happens in the original recording that makes that thing that thing. If you want to do another version of it, do a new version of it. Don't do a re -record. I find it heartbreaking. In some cases, where all you can find are the re -records. It's just soul crushing. I also did another thing that bothers me is when you hear things that are remastered on Spotify, that where they'll add a lot of top end or whatever they do to records. I don't know if the labels do it to extend the copyright on the music or whatever.

1:33:19I have no idea why they do it. Everyone feels like every 10 years or so the technology gets better and you want to up what's possible. That always bums me out. Then you can never get back to the, unless you have the CDs or the LP, you can't find those old versions of the songs to even do a comparison between them. There's records that I really love the sound of, but I can't listen to on the streaming platforms because they just don't sound right. That bums me out. Do you think of yourself as a music critic? That's a great question. Yes. Not an intentional one. I just try to be honest with what I think.

1:34:08I don't care what people, that's my opinion. When I listen to the Spotify top 10, I do it every four months because that's usually when there's a turnover and there's all new songs. I say, well, I listen to it see that you don't have to. I think that's important for people that's a responsibility in my part of a big channel to let people know what is popular today.

1:34:34There's been a real trend towards having guitars in music. In the last, I just did one last week and every song that was in the top 10 has guitars in it. That wasn't the case here ago. That was the first time in a long time, probably that was the case. I think some people thought I was criticizing the fact that there's no hip hop in it, but there's a, I had done a video recently that showed the trend in, there's a thing called chart cipher that does trend analysis based on all these data, based on a bunch of different charts. They show that country music has been rising. What you notice, there's more country songs that are in the pop charts over the last year.

1:35:17You're seeing these trends play out, but they'll show the trends over the last five years. They'll talk about lyrical content, what types of lyrics are more popular now. It's really fascinating actually to... It's interesting. The 70s country made its way into the pop chart for a window of time. Remember? Yeah. Yeah, we're kind of back to that too. It's funny. Some videos I make, there's no commentary on what I say in the video. It's people's post their own experiences. I always say that the comments are really about the people writing them more than they are about what I'm saying in the video.

1:35:58It's a reflection on that. I think that's the thing about social media is that, you know, I tell other people I know that do YouTube or whatever it don't. Take the comments personally because the people are really writing about themselves. If you read the comments with that in mind, they have a different ring to them. Are certain types of music more popular on your channel? Or is it agnostic as far as the content goes? People don't like jazz in my channel, even though I... It's interesting. Yeah, even though my channel started as that. When I interview a jazz musician, I interviewed Keith Jarrett, I interviewed Ron Carter in Pat Muthini and Brad Meldow.

1:36:41I've interviewed a lot of the jazz legends. Those interviews do really well. But if I were to make a video on anything related to jazz, they just don't do well. But that doesn't keep me from doing them. Yeah, I don't care if people like that. But yeah, that jazz does worse than anything. But every single video has its own algorithm. If I interview somebody from Prague, Metals, seen the band, Polyphea, Tim Henson, as a friend of mine, it's been on my channel a few times, Greek, guitar, or young kid. That's 18 to 24 or 25 to 34. That's the demographic, that's how old he is and that's the people that watch that video.

1:37:27And people that are in the older demographics don't watch that. If I have an interview with Jimmy Webb, people that know who Jimmy Webb is, well, watch that video. That is, I interviewed Jimmy Webb. How was that? That was amazing. Oh my God, he's I'm a fan. I love Jimmy Webb. And I've made a video on which it's all I'm gonna do on the song. It's one of the greatest songs. Bob Dylan called it the greatest song ever written. Wow, I didn't know that. And to me, that song sounds as great. Today, as it did when I heard it in 1968 when it came out, in Jimmy's wife wrote to me. And I was like, oh my God, I love the interview.

1:38:06So I went up to the power station in New York and interviewed him there. And we talked about that. It was funny because he said that Glenn Campbell had recorded the track. And Jimmy's like, you know, I wish that I had this idea for this part and you had this organ, like electric organ or something. And he played it for Glenn. He's like, oh, we need to put that on the song. And then he said the thing weighed 500 pounds. And so the Glenn called this moving company to come over and move this organ to the studio. And Jimmy's like, it's really low in the mix. And so then we played the song. And it's like, it's actually the loudest thing in the mix.

1:38:43He goes, oh, just in my mind, it was the look, it was low in the mix. But it's when they're doing the beef lat to see chord. And the little post chorus interlude thing. And it's funny that he goes, I just remembered it being really low. It's really an important thing. And he's like, I played that on the recording. But that was really fun to talk to him. I mean, all those tunes. The park, I was single or regional. Yes. There's no one else like Jimmy. No one like Jimmy. No, really one of a kind writer. Yeah. All -time favorite artists. Beatles, the stones, Zeppelin, Miles, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, West Montgomery, God, Queen, Peter Frampton.

1:39:40I love Tom Petty. I love Nirvana. I love, you know, there's so many different things that really depends on what mood I'm in. And then I'm a massive classical music fan. And it goes from Bach to to Palestrina, to Prakaufi, to Beethoven, to Mendelssohn, to Schumann. Has that always been the case classical music from childhood? Yeah. And I'd still listen to classical music all the time and listen to a lot of modern classical music. I'm equally versed since my undergrad is in classical bass. And my master's degree was in jazz studies. And then I was, and then I was a rock musician before that. I'm kind of an expert in multiple genres.

1:40:32Great. So I know every recording, not every recording, but of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, which is to me one of the greatest piano concertors ever written. And I'm so particular about the recordings. Let's go. What's your favorite? Chris, Christian Zimmerman, this recording with Bernstein conducting. Okay, Christian Zimmerman. There's a video of all five Beethoven piano concertos that, and Bernstein, he conducted three of them. And the Zimmerman conducted two from the piano, but he plays all five incredible. I'm just, I'm going to find a here. This is like the, it's the best performance and recording both.

1:41:23Great.

1:44:14It's amazing how long the orchestra, the pianos, the introduction, then there's this long exposition of the orchestra, then the piano enters here.

1:45:15I love this right here.

1:45:39There's no recording that's first of all it's on video too. And this was done I think in 1985 and the orchestra and the piano are perfectly balanced and the perform, the piano performances is so musical. And I've listened to every recording and there's, I just can't think of one that is just this is perfection. So beautiful. Yeah, I'm big into into performances. There's there's a yeah, I didn't understand Rick why I'd like certain things until I learned about engineering and learn more about the recording process and then it started to make sense to me why I liked that it was it went beyond even the performance.

1:46:28Sometimes if the piano is getting lost in the orchestra and you can't even or you're not hearing the interlines of the obos and the clarinets that are sitting right behind the piano because it's not mic properly, you know, and you're missing the internal parts of the orchestra. I didn't understand that before I knew about how orchestras are recorded. There's a there's a piece that jazz a Ranger Klaus Ogram and did. I love Klaus Ogram. Yeah, he did a record called city scape that came out in 1982 and with Michael Brecker the saxophonist and there's a the title track to me is absolutely brilliant but the there are some inner lines in there that I can't hear and I went so far as to tracking down where the score is because Klaus died in 2016 Mike Brecker died in 2009.

1:47:19And I wanted to hire an orchestra just to hear this a bars that is unheard that you can't distinguish what the orchestra is doing because it's just not clear enough for them. Yeah, so I thought I wanted to do that for for a video. That would be great one. That would call it I paid $30 ,000 to hear eight bars of music or something you know that's great. Get in with an orchestra to the string range when saw the synatra Joe B. Malville. Yes, my favorite Frank Sinatra. Oh my god, my favorite two. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. I that record. The strings are ridiculous. Yes, so beautiful. And that's when I first heard it.

1:48:00My dad loved that record and loved Joe beam and love Frank Sinatra and I heard those arrangements and they just blew me away. Even when I was a kid, I just knew it's like this is amazing. The favorite albums.

1:48:19John Coltrane, Johnny Hartman. It's one of the best sounding records ever. That's tough. That changes all the time. Beatles revolver. That to me is revolver and rubber soul are just two of the most brilliant records. That made pretty much back to back. It still can't even fathom how those guys came up with song after song after song after song like that. How do you just how do you do that? Nobody has done it since no.

1:49:01I don't know if music can occupy that place in the culture anymore. I've made videos about this that I think kids are so connected to the screens that it's very difficult for music that it doesn't have video associated with it to penetrate into culture in the same way. And I also think that there's very little shared music experiences anymore since everybody has suggested things through algorithms that people are siloed into different things. I did a video on I did a series of videos on top one hit wonders of different decades 70s 80s 90s 2000s then 2010 to 2020. All the videos had would have millions of views.

1:49:54September 2020 people are in the comments. I've never even heard any of these songs. And because they have no shared experiences anymore because there is no radio. There's no MTV. There's no. There's nothing that people like, oh, I know that song. I've heard it a million times. I've heard it the grocery store. I've heard it on TV. I've heard it here and there. The labels of outsourced the promotion of records to TikTok essentially. And I just don't think that they're. I don't know if there's even another way to do it other than that. People kids will listen to a 15 second clip and they'll use it and these things will blow up and get millions of streams and songs get big because of that.

1:50:39I talked to Max Martin. I didn't interview Max, but I got together with him. I had a great conversation with him for a couple hours when I was in stock on last year. And we talked about popular music. Can he talked about the. I think we're talking about blinding lights, the weekend song. That's the most stream song on Spotify ever. And at the time it was. I don't know if it still is. And that. Like a part of the song blew up in TikTok. And it. It became this giant song. I think it's an amazing pop song. Really, really incredibly well written pop song. But how TikTok shapes the way that people interact with music.

1:51:19And it's through videos. It's the songs related to videos. And I don't know if people can even. Take in music in the same way unless they. Because we used to listen with our imagination. Very little known about the bands. You know, you didn't know about.

1:51:40Did you know about Marvin Gaye? Did you know about Led Zeppelin? Did you know about. What did you know about these people? Nothing. I lived in Rochester. Very few people came through Rochester. It was like a secondary city. And I didn't have money to go to concerts as a kid. And so your only experience is the album cover and the music and the song you heard on the radio. And then everything else you imagined. What were these people like? What are these songs about? You didn't even care what the people were like. I remember the first time I heard Eddie Van Halen speak. I thought that's what Eddie Van Halen said.

1:52:16That's not what I imagine Eddie Van Halen sounded like. California. It sounded like Darth Vader. It's funny. Yeah. Can you describe what it is about the music that you love that makes you love it? I would say that I love different things about different types of music. Some music I listen to because I just love the melody or love the lyrics. Some music I listen to because I love the sound of it. There are records that I love the sound of it but I don't like the music that I've listened to many times. I'll listen to records because they sound amazing. And that's maybe it's my producer brain. But I can't believe how fat the low end is.

1:53:10If you've ever been to a high -fi show, there's a lot of that. Like high -fi shows have incredible sound and not always the best music. But the sound is ridiculous. Yeah. So I have tremendous appreciation for that. And that was that's long before I was worked as a producer. I always found records that I love the sound of even if I hated the music. Which is funny to say. It's a different thing. It's a quality of the piece. What are your music listening habits like? Is there music that you listen to that's not work related for you now? A lot of times I've listened to stuff that my kids listen to.

1:53:57Would you say they have good taste? They have good taste to them. It's interesting because my kids don't typically, my 11 -year -old daughter doesn't listen to stuff that 11 -year -old girls listen to. Except for Billy Eilish. She loves Billy Eilish. But then she'll listen to the police. Or she's really varied taste. And I don't know how she finds stuff. She just goes on Spotify and makes her own playlist and listens to things. So I listen to stuff that they listen to because I like to be informed about what they're into. And then I'm constantly searching for new music. So I'm a lot of times I'm on Spotify.

1:54:43I have Apple Music and Spotify. But I find that my experience on Spotify, just the way that the thing is laid out, I just prefer it. It's easier to make playlists. And I'll look for new music on there. So I'm constantly looking for new things. When you say looking for new things, what would be a marching order? You'd give yourself in terms of looking for a new thing. Like be a genre? What would it be? No, it could be anything. Like sometimes I'll go down and look through any rock bands. I like to look for things that have 100 ,000 or a few monthly listeners. I know that sounds weird, but I like to see if there's something that's unknown.

1:55:26And that's that I think is really good. Or a lot of times I'll go on Instagram because that's where most musicians post. I say that Instagram is the musician's platform. And musicians don't really post on TikTok. I mean, some do, but most don't. People that want to advertise for their gigs or want to connect with their fans, go to Instagram. So I find a lot of artists through that, at least playing parts of songs. And then I'll go to Spotify and see if I can find them on there. Do you have any trusted sources that you look at for recommendations of new things? I have people that send me hundreds of emails a day.

1:56:05But things, and they'll usually include YouTube links or Spotify links. Do you listen? Yeah. So if you're finding anything that way. Once in a while I do. It's so easy though Rick to click on something to, it's not like if in the old days of somebody would send me a CD you have to open it up. You have to do this stuff as a hassle. Now it's like you just literally click one link and you're into a song. I drive my 11 year old laylittah school every day. And I'll put on a playlist. Whatever genre music could be, could be rap, whatever. And she'll be like, and I'll listen to 30 seconds of each song.

1:56:43She's like, why do you do that? I said, because I'm just trying to see if I find something interesting. Why do you listen to a whole song all the way through? Because you know in 30 seconds whether you want to listen to the rest of the song. Exactly. Exactly. And then after Rick, after about five songs, she's like, yeah, go to the next song. Ah, training them well. That's right. Do you like to be challenged by the things he listened to?

1:57:10There's an artist named McGee that is an indie rock singer and guitar player. And it's kind of low five, low five guitar rock. And what he's playing is really beautiful. The odd kind of chord progression and stuff. And I'm listening to it on my phone and it sounds cool. And then I put it in my car and it's like, God, it's just too low five to enjoy in the car. So I would only, I can only listen through speakers. It's kind of a weird thing, right? And that's the challenges is, I like stuff that's low five, but it can't be too low five to where it doesn't sound full.

1:57:50What do you know about your audience? My audience, the age range, the biggest group is 25 to 34, but only by a little bit, probably by a percentage point. It's pretty much equal from 25 up to 55. Every demographic is around 20%. So my audience is really varied. And you said earlier that the particular content will skew more towards a certain part of that audience. That's right. Every video has a completely different audience. Some videos, depending on how big it is, will, yeah. How often do you post? Probably three times a week. And no, I post more than that because I post a short almost every single day.

1:58:41But I mean, I post a long form video three times. Well, two long form videos a week and a livestream once a week. My livestreams are typically music teaching related. Cool. I will always do that. I always have done it. And you do it as a livestream, but then it lives as a video. Livestreams have a different algorithm that are associated with them. Some of my livestreams will get millions of views, but most of them have a very short shelf life, because YouTube will push videos on demand. They call a regular upload. Livestream has its own algorithm. Short has its own algorithm. Can you take something from a livestream and make an underband video out of it?

1:59:21Yeah, I don't do that usually because it's just as easy for me to film a video than to do that and take parts. But a lot of people, a lot of podcasters will take parts that will do livestreams. They'll do long form videos and they'll make their shorts based on them and make clips and things like that. Are your shorts are all made to be shorts? Most of them are made from videos, but sometimes I'll do things like... I've interviewed so many people that have played different roles on records. I had one there. Funny, because Michael O'Marty and his producer, but also was a session piano player played a lot of the Steely Dan records.

2:00:04And I had him and Christopher Cross talking about the song sailing and I'm going back and forth between them. The song starts with strings, but that was actually a mistake. The tape machines didn't link up. And the string part that was on the second machine played first. And Christopher Cross's brother was there in the studio and he goes, oh, that's a great intro. And Michael O'Marty was like, well, that's not supposed to be there. And there's like, well, we should make it like that. And so they actually changed the arrangement based on the thing playing incorrectly. But I made a short of that, we put these two different people that were on there together.

2:00:41So that's cool is when you can actually have multiple people that played... Yeah. ...that are from the same group that you've interviewed. I interviewed all three of the police separately. Cool. And so I've had videos of them talking about Roxanne or something like that. Yeah. From each of their different perspectives. And they have very different opinions. And when you interview people, it's better to interview them separately. Absolutely. I think that the memory is... It's something of a combination of what they all remember of that. You very rarely will find the same story. I interviewed all four people that played on the song Asia, the Steely Man song Asia.

2:01:24It's Larry Carlton played guitar on the basic track Steve Gad on the drums. Chuck Rainey on the bass and Michael Amardi on the piano. That was a rhythm section that recorded the basic track. Yet Chuck Rainey swears it was recorded four different times. Michael Amardi said there were two takes. There was one take where they started laughing because Steve Gad does these insane drum fills on it. And they screwed up. They made all these mistakes. He couldn't believe what he was playing. So he had to do a second take where they kept it together. And then I interviewed... I got the engineer at it. Bill Schnee sent me the track of the...

2:02:06That somebody made his assistant engineer did a dub that he wasn't supposed to do of the basic tracks and Bill had it. And he sent it to me. It's amazing to hear. And I included it in the Bill Schnee interview. But I made a short where it's got the different people. Steve Gad talking about it. He doesn't remember anything from the session. He can't even remember it. Yeah. And Chuck saying that they played it four times. And it's very funny, right? That in Larry Carlton completely different memory. It might also when you're playing on records every day in the recording studio, different songs, it's impossible to remember.

2:02:44Right. It does all sort of blend together. Yeah. As you said, sometimes listening to it helps jog your memory. But other than that, it's very difficult. I interviewed Bernard Purdy and I played him just the drum... The solo drum track of Kid Charlemagne. He never heard it. And I played Chuck Rainey, the solo based part of Kid Charlemagne. And he had never heard it before. And it was fascinating because they never came in for playbacks. They never listened to their parts by themselves. Never. Why would they? Right. It was fascinating to see their reaction to it. Absolutely. Here's a... This is an example of a short I did.

2:03:26So it's Daniel and Juan and then Tony Levin to talking about the bass part of Sledgehammer. Right. And because it has an amazing bass sound. Well, we're talking Sledgehammer. I didn't realize that. Yeah. He produced the solo exactly. He was playing the bass on Tony Levin playing the bass. I was playing a fretless music man with an octave pedal and with a pick. And it was just a massive sound. I just turned every knob up to 10. They compressed it more. They had enhanced the low end. That much wasn't coming out of the bass. It compressed, expanded and gated. He hit an O... It was ridiculous. Yeah.

2:03:57Working with Peter Gabriel sends you into some alternative universe, thinking outside the box is the norm. And that became the basis of the bass sound from that record.

2:04:08Now the fact that I've been able to interview people that I now I just need to interview Peter Gabriel. And then you can kind of put these things together. But that's fascinating to me because that's such a unique bass sound on that. Absolutely. And it's funny to go back and forth hearing them talk. It's almost like they're having a conversation. Yeah, it's great. So that's so cool. Yeah, that's really fun. What are the new technologies used in music that you're most excited about? Honestly, AI. There's things that I use AI tools that I use all the time now. Like what? To separate the vocal. If I have bleed in my microphone.

2:04:53If I'm playing examples or something and I need to isolate my voice. AI can do that. Yes. And it does. Yeah. There's a program used called La Laudat AI that's some it's online thing and you put it in and you can separate the music from it. I did a video when the Beatles, they put the new song out with John Lennon and stuff. So I showed how the AI you can use these AI tools to separate a piano and voice. So I sang and played piano the first verse of the new Beatles song. And then I separated it. And you can't hear any artifacts in my voice of the piano. And you can't hear my voice in the piano.

2:05:31And it was just recorded with one microphone. Wow. It sounded like a good recording of your voice. Good recording of my voice. I mean, it is good as you could get with one microphone, you know, three feet away. But you couldn't hear. Not worse than your regional rating. No, my voice is pretty bad.

2:05:51But there are definitely some AI tools now that are to me that are in the audience. And I think people think of me as being anti technology. I'm extremely pro -techno. I mean, I, whatever the technology is available, I am trying these things out. I've tried a lot of the AI programs. I like to see what is out there and what people are using. And I think that there's a lot of opportunities for AI in mixing records, things like that. That I think people will rely on more in the future. Give me an example of how you imagine that would work. Maybe you can give drums recorded, let's say. And then you're like, well, what if we did the drums and with this kind of a sound?

2:06:43And you can radically change it just instantly using the drum performance. That something that might take you 30 minutes of, you know, I want my drums to sound like a Chad Blake recording, like every lasting, like, you know, like a black keys or something. I want something that sounds like that. And all of a sudden it'll change the bass drum to be like a Chad Blake kind of bass drum and distortion on the snare. Or, you know, I want my drums to sound like Andy Wallace's drums on the Bulls on Parade or something that he mixed, the Rage tune. And that will change the drum set to be in a room like that.

2:07:29Or you don't know how it feels. I want the drums to have that kind of a sound and it'll just change them. It'll create that, it'll create that room sound, you know. And get the balances just right, the EQs and everything to sound really, really fat. So I think that there's some, I think that that's a good use of AI to aid people. I think that AI or maybe show you some possibilities that you might not think of. What about modeling? Is that what modeling is? It might, maybe it's kind of like modeling. Universal Audio is making these microphones now that model different mics. Like, they have these small diaphragm condensers that kind of have a neutral sound.

2:08:16And then you use one of their plugins to get a KM84 or something. Or you can change them to AKG 451s or other small diaphragm condensers. They have an SM7 mic that looks like that. So you can record it and then change the sound of the mic. Yes, that's really interesting. Yeah. So those are, to me, really interesting technologies, those, those modeling, that's definitely modeling technologies. Now, I own these microphones as well. So for me, they need to do that. It's not as great as someone, but some a kid that can't afford to buy these things. This is a, to me, it's a great. I think these are amazing tools.

2:09:04And also the, for people to kind of get familiar with, at least a close facsimile of what these microphones that people like us have been lucky enough to be able to use in studios that are not even really hardly available nowadays. You know, the KM84. Now they start making human 1992. And most of them are pretty beat up. You know, I, Neumann actually made me. I went to Neumann in last year. I did a show in Berlin and I went over to Neumann to, to a little factory tour and stuff. And I'm. One of the guys that said, is there any mic that you'd like to, you know, wish that we would make? I said, yeah, we should make the KM84s again.

2:09:53And he started laughing. And I said, what, what do you want? Why are you laughing? He said, because we have enough parts to make 60 match pairs. And so we're going to do that. And I got one of the match pairs. Wow. And these are new old stocks. So the, the bodies, everything. So these are exactly. Yeah. Brand new KM84s. Incredible. Which is really cool, you know, to hear what. Super cool. Yeah. So then I was like, thinking Rick, okay, do I use these? I drop one. So I'm so careful now every time that I use them, that I don't dent them or something.

2:10:34Do you like to read? Are you a reader? I do like to read, but I typically read. I. Read short form content, typically. I'm not a book reader. I have some type of ADD where reading is difficult for me. That I always compensated for by having incredibly good memory. But I would, when I was a kid, it was undiagnosed, but I would read a paragraph. And then I'd forget everything I read. And when I bought your book, I had to buy the audio version along with the book. Because I had to listen to you speak it. And then I read it at the same time. And that, to me, is the perfect, perfect way to do it. I listen to a lot of audiobooks as well.

2:11:25I like listening. I like closing my eyes and listening. I probably listen more than read now. I like it in the author's voice as well. Yeah. Your book sounds great. The audio version sounds amazing. Because you have a great speaking voice. And when I'm reading it, it sounds like it's spoken. And when I hear it's spoken, it just, I think I have a deeper understanding when I'm reading it and listening to you say it. Cool. So it's a very deep book. Are there any other forms of art that impact your music listening? Or bounce off of the way you react to music?

2:12:19To me, visual art and understanding of different style periods of art, of visual art, and understanding how they overlap with the musical style periods is really important. The Baroque era in music and the Baroque era in art, it's 1 ,61750 roughly. Some of the era's impressionistic music and art, some of them don't exactly overlap. Renaissance music, Renaissance art kind of did, but there are three separate periods of Renaissance art. I'd like to know how history and art and music all relate to one another. Did the French Revolution or the American Revolution affect composers? Did they even know about it?

2:13:15Who was Mozart lived from 1756 to 1791? The French Revolution started in 1789. Beethoven's 1770 to 1827. What was happening? He was obviously a fan of Napoleon at first, right? And he was also influenced by German philosophers. Those things to me are interesting. I don't know if they're important to other people, but there are movements of art, of writing, of music that overlap one another, and of historical events. And I believe that those things are all interrelated, and that's something that I want to understand. It's definitely helpful to have an understanding of the culture when you go past just the music and see the music in the context of its times, or the other art movements that we're going on at the time.

2:14:16It is fascinating. I don't know how much people knew. People didn't readily have, didn't have scores of album. You couldn't listen to music if you were Beethoven. And you just could experience it through reading it, either through playing it, or through just looking at the score, and that people, Beethoven, when he was deaf, the thing I like about that fourth piano concerto, that was the last piano concerto he performed. It was a concert December 22nd, 1808, he performed a concert where he premiered. The fourth piano concerto, the fifth symphony, the sixth symphony. All these pieces, it was a six -hour concert, and it was to me probably one of the greatest concerts of all time.

2:14:57But it was in the winter time in Germany, and it was the last time I believe that he performed with an orchestra, because his hearing had gotten so bad that he couldn't perform anymore after that. And he conducted, and there's a beauty, and when he was losing his hearing, I'm totally unattangent here, his pieces, to me, opened up again, and he started writing for extended ranges in the music when he was completely, or when they think he was completely deaf, his late string quartets used a full range of the instruments, as opposed to some of the pieces that, you know, he'd lost his hearing from the top down.

2:15:36It's interesting to see how, as he got more and more deaf, I was writing changed. But those things are important, and just like I think literature and visual art, all these are interrelated somehow. When is it helpful not to know versus knowing? In other words, where are the lines of expertise versus innocence? I think ultimately doesn't matter what the genre is, whether you know music or don't understand what you're doing. To me, the best musicians play instinctually. Even if they know everything that they're playing, it's still always based on how they're feeling at the time.

2:16:41So, even though I know every note, if I'm improvising, I know all the notes I'm playing, I don't think about it. And I think that most players, the greatest ones, are just play intuitively. So, it doesn't matter whether they have the training or not. I think that intuition is the biggest part of the most important part of music. And just being in the moment is really incredibly important. I interviewed Vinnie Caliuda, who is one of my old friends. I've known Vinnie for 35 years. And I said, Vinnie, talk about flow. It's the first thing I said that he goes, thought is the enemy of flow. And he just improvised that because that's what Vinnie does.

2:17:31He's a drummer. He doesn't have to think if he's playing in 27, 4 or whatever. He doesn't think about that. He might think about it for a split second, and then it's just all feel. He doesn't have to think about it. And ultimately, it's just whether you know what you're doing or you don't know. You almost need to play like you don't know what you're doing.

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From the publisher

Rick Beato is a musician, producer, and audio engineer whose deep passion for music has made him one of the most respected educators in the industry. A multi-instrumentalist with a background in jazz and classical music, he has produced and engineered countless records across genres, working with artists like Shinedown, Needtobreathe, and Parmalee. As the owner of Black Dog Sound Studios and the creator of a YouTube channel with 4.8 million subscribers, Beato has built a global community of music lovers. His channel demystifies everything from music theory and songwriting to iconic song breakdowns, making even the most complex musical concepts accessible and inspiring to all.

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