itt we make fun of rick beato

inspired by my browsing youtube in private mode so as not to fuck up my sidebar recs and getting a rick beato video titled "Today's Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad" recommended on the sidebar

for the record the video it's recommending me this on is a live version of "dazed and confused"

helpfully genius has transcribed complete lyrics for the live version of "dazed" on "the song remains the same":

[Instrumental Intro 00:00-01:40]

[Verse 1]
I've been dazed an' confused
So long it's not true
I wanted a woman, never bargained for you
Now lots of people talkin', pretty few of them a-know
Soul of a woman was created below, that's right
You're the one, you're the one

[Verse 2]
Oh, everybody's been talkin', Lord
I swear they been talkin' trash (trash)
The way that ya push, push, push, push, push, push me darlin'
I can't take too much of that
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon whoah darlin' show me the way
I wanna make love to ya, little girl, twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ohhhhhhh

[Verse 3]
Said you hurt an' abuse, tellin' all of your lies
I try to quit you, baby, but ya keep me
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mesmerized
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, say what you will
I wanna make love to ya again, darlin', twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ahhhh
Ma-ma-ma-ma
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma
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Dazed and Confused
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (Live)
Led Zeppelin
Whole Lotta Love (Live)
Led Zeppelin
[Instrumental Break/Guitar Solo 04:10-06:37]
Oh, yeah

[Verse 4]
If you're goin' to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're goin' into San Francisco
You're gonna meet a lotta gentle people there ohhh
Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, oh ho
Everywhere

[Instrumental Break 07:15-07:50]

[Vocal Interlude]
I know, I know, I know, I know, I knoow
Whooooooooooaah, whooooooooooaah
Ahh, ahhh, ahhh
Ahhh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ah ah, ah ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ahh

[Instrumental Break 08:34-13:46]

[Vocal Interlude]
Ahhhhhh
Ah ah, aah, ah, ah, ah, ah
Dun dun dun [repeated call-and-respond between Page and Plant]
Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahh, ahhh, ahhh
Ah, ah ah ah ah ahhh ah ah
Push, push, push, push, push, push
Push, push, push, push, ah, ah
Ahh
Ah
Uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, uhh, ahh, ahhh
Oh
[Instrumental Break/Guitar Solo/Vocal Improvisation 14:59-25:12]

[Verse 5]
Oh everybody's been talkin', Lord
I swear they been talkin' trash
The way that ya push me darlin'
Ya know I couldn't take too much of that
So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, show me the way
I wanna make love to ya little girl twenty five
A-twenty five
Twenty five
Twenty five
Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ahh

[Instrumental Outro/Guitar Solo/Vocal Improvisation/Drum Solo 25:52-29:18]
Ohhh, suck it
Yeah
Ohh

[Spoken]
Jimmy Page, electric guitar

and yes, definitely the best lyrics out of that set are:

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Get tickets as low as $42
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Dazed and Confused
Led Zeppelin
The Ocean (Live)
Led Zeppelin
Whole Lotta Love (Live)
Led Zeppelin

i like his classic song breakdowns but his comments on contemporary music are infuriating. he either hates or does not understand hip-hop, electronic, reggaeton, etc. and makes the same tired criticisms of the genres whenever they pop up. oh a hip-hop song uses a repetitive loop throughout, you say? a reggaeton song uses the reggaeton riddim? my stars!

yeah he's honestly pretty knowledgeable about stuff within a certain genre but at this point his constant old-white-guy-isms...

all i can say to that is "ok boomer", even knowing that doing so makes me the middle aged white lady in 2003 talking about "bling bling".

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

Earlier today I enjoyed his video about the James Bond theme. My knowledge of music theory is rudimentary at best, but I was mostly able to follow his analysis and it sort of made me want to learn more. He's a good teacher.

His tastes seem to be about what I'd expect from a guy his age, so yeah, not the first person I'd consult about new music. I get it, I'm old too.

Mostly I'm annoyed when yt recommends his videos to me, but he's good when worshipping (white) jazz legends like Keith Jarrett, Mehldau, and Metheny.

I like his analysis just fine, I came across him at first because of those amazing videos of his son's perfect pitch. I started to really go off him when he went down the path of bitching on and fucking on about being demonitized or record companies/management blocking his shit, nobody cares.

I love when http://www.youtube.com/@pat_finnerty rips on him

even his classic rock breakdowns aren't all that interesting though. he has a great ear and an obviously deep well of musical knowledge but he rarely has anything to actually *say* about songwriting, which seems to be his greatest passion.

as youtube music geeks go, i much prefer adam neely, who's a deeper thinker, knows how to tell a story, understands other people's stories, and actually likes pop music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyxatBvKfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebwjOEqxYd8

sorry, right, rick beato. he's annoying! not as annoying as the fantano guy but he's annoying for sure.

I’ve been enjoying his recent interview series tbh. Nowhere near as annoying as his other material

even his classic rock breakdowns aren't all that interesting though. he has a great ear and an obviously deep well of musical knowledge but he rarely has anything to actually *say* about songwriting, which seems to be his greatest passion.

it's cool to hear the stems and individual parts on all those songs, and his breakdowns of the chord progressions are enlightening, if not insightful. he never engages with the substance of the song, that's true

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

I bet you he hates "Yummy Yummy Yummy' though.

His dissections of contemporary music can be annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the video thumbnails for his dissections of contemporary music.

Like I feel like his videos are at least a little more nuanced and insightful than the titles and thumbnails have you lead to believe.

a lot of the titles of his videos are clickbait, though sometimes he does make interesting points. like there was one about how all 90s rock sounds alike, yeah okay sure it does blah blah blah but if you watch it it breaks down the various producers who were involved and the samples that wind up in a bunch of different recordings, which of course was not how things were done beforehand. it's kind of interesting. i'm lukewarm on him overall, but he's a pretty decent interviewer, one of the few who actually knows the subjects' records well

another goofy looking guy makin faces for those youtube videos looking straight into my eyes, this is so up my alley

I kind of thought his resume would be much more impressive based on his YT clout but nope, his discogs looks like any other mid-90s indie obscurity... his band that had the most exposure has never been mentioned on this board that claims to LOVE music.

https://i.imgur.com/JCHdVE5.jpeg

This sounds like a demo that our station would have received and get quickly tossed in the pile without making it to the airwaves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBDrUqJhMQ4

He's rockist in predictable and boring ways, but I like his enthusiasm for stuff he likes. I've found some of his videos interesting, made me more aware of the architecture of a song. Also I thought his tribute to Mimi Parker was totally unexpected and really nice.

He surprises me sometimes. He once listed Curve as one of the best bass sounds of all time or something.

Yeah those are the times you remember he was in a '90s band.

He also reminds me of the Italian guys I grew up around in the Rochester suburbs (where he's from too). In good ways, mostly, the gregariousness and excitability.

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era, idk if lyrics today are much worse than that

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili)

I bet you he hates "Yummy Yummy Yummy' though.

― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.)

dave barry declared it to be the second worst song ever... i do think of dave barry as sort of the canonical white male boomer in terms of musical taste

i looked up the song to see if anybody has confirmed or denied the allegations that it's about swallowing cum. wikipedia was silent on the fact but provides an all-time disambiguation page:

For the Julie London album, see Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (album). For the national anthem of Vanuatu, see Yumi, Yumi, Yumi.

anyway, what i did find is that "yummy yummy yummy" is a kasenetz-katz joint (unsurprisingly), written by artie resnick and joey levine. i don't know what exactly resnick's contributions as a songwriter are, since all of his songs are co-writes. joey levine i can get a better bead on, since he went on to be a jingle guy. i mean kind of a natural career path once you've done "yummy yummy yummy", the song's basically a jingle. i mean look at this guy's career, absolute fuckin' legend:

Starting in the early 1970s, Levine began working on jingles for television commercials, as well as singing on them, with one of his most well-remembered jingles being "Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut" for Mounds and Almond Joy chocolate bars.[4]

just for that alone levine's in my good book. one of my go-to orchiectomy jokes is based on that jingle.

Popular campaigns from the past include: “Pepsi – The Joy of Cola", "Gentlemen Prefer Hanes", "Just For the Taste of It – Diet Coke", "Orange you smart, (for drinking Orange Juice)", "Come See the Softer Side of Sears", "Heartbeat of America – Chevrolet", "Dr Pepper – You Make the World Taste Better", "You Asked For It, You Got It, Toyota," "Who's that Kid With the Oreo Cookie," and "This Bud's For You" for Anheuser-Busch, and also the infamous "Proud as a Peacock" image campaign for NBC used from May 1979 to Summer 1981

just wall to wall bangers here. (if anyone here hasn't seen the "WE'RE LOUD!" parody, please do - peak "dunking on fred silverman" shit. i'll always love fred silverman for orchestrating the rural purge, but his nbc was fuckin' _dire_.) i'm sure dave barry would make fun of someone who made his career writing ad jingles, except, well. if you look at the career of jake holmes, the folkie who wrote the original "dazed and confused", then he went on to write the "be all that you can be" jingle for the us army. to me, hating on someone who can write jingles like that, one's just showing one's ignorance. i didn't hear the "valumarket" jingle for 30 years, and the second somebody brought it up again, bam! right back in my head. i don't know who wrote that one, that one's a classic tho.

the point is even if the song's _not_ actually about fellatio, it can reasonably be interpreted to be about fellatio, and that makes it an all-timer in my book. even if the residents' version is probably technically better.

oh, also, i was once again reminded that the ohio express and the ohio players were two different bands.

basically what i'm saying is that rick beato, if you do a video talking about the genius of joey levine's jingle writing, all will be forgiven

There were also (at least) three versions of Ohio Express: the original band which recorded their first single, the band hired to promote the single after the original band fell out with their record company and all their subsequent releases, the studio band who actually recorded all of their material (with Joey Levine on vocals). Oh and 10cc were Ohio Express for one single. I don't know who Dave Barry is but he's completely wrong about 'Yummy Yummy Yummy".

Oh no, Kate, you can't defend the Rural Purge!

"Yummy Yummy Yummy" is definitely about swallowing cum. I think it is firmly in the tradition of Serge Gainsbourg's "Les Sucettes" and Annie's "Chewing Gum."

I don't know who Dave Barry is but he's completely wrong about 'Yummy Yummy Yummy".

― Tom D (the first British Asian ILXor) (Tom D.)

dave barry is some american guy

named "dave"

i thought he was really funny when i was 12. he had a syndicated newspaper column. i remember his headshot in the newspaper column looking sort of like one of the wilson brothers, somewhere between brian and carl.

he had a sitcom too. like one that was supposedly "about" him. it ran for like three or four seasons. he was played by harry anderson from "night court". i don't think it had very much to do with dave barry's actual life.

Oh no, Kate, you can't defend the Rural Purge!

― Josefa

well, maybe i won't, critique it and i'll listen :)

btw while we're talking kasenetz-katz joints, i fucking love "1, 2, 3, red light" by the 1910 fruitgum company... talking heads' cover of that one is sooooo good

idk how i feel about how many of those bubblegum pop songs were kind of gainsbourgian. gainsbourg was a creep, and i don't like the idea of pressuring young women to put out that way. it's a good song, though.

Green Acres was still a viable show when cancelled - its reruns ran for YEARS - as was Hee Haw, as proven by its long afterlife in syndication. We did need more urban shows, but not at the expense of the classic rural shows.

Dave Barry played in a rock group with Stephen King and Amy Tan. I think he said "MacArthur Park" was the worst song ever, which is extremely wrong.

Rick Beatoff

One of his videos was about why quantization makes modern music suck, contrasting Nickelback and Zep.

I really don’t think some natural swing was the missing piece to Nickelback.

He dislikes a lot of the same music I do, and for more or less the same reasons, but at least I try not to be a scold about it.

"Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut" for Mounds and Almond Joy chocolate bars."

i STILL sing this to this day. like, i was singing it two days ago. that's how genius it is. that's seriously like 50 years of me singing that jingle. peterpaulsalmondjoysgotnuts...mounds don't.

xps I used to find great joy in Dave Barry's columns in the Miami Herald back in the day, and he seems like a good guy, but he's the kind of Boomer who thinks the lyrics of "Hang On, Sloopy" are superior to the lyrics of "MacArthur Park."

Calvin K. Kazanjian was the founder and president of Peter Paul Inc., the maker of the Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars, located in Naugatuck, Connecticut. For 30 years, he met and solved the problems of an ever-growing business.

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a6c0f4_ef69d9a633994e54b32ca482643ff6fa~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_238,h_298,al_c,lg_1,q_80,enc_auto/a6c0f4_ef69d9a633994e54b32ca482643ff6fa~mv2.jpg

Just watched the Beato video where he takes down Jack Harlow and "Texas Hold 'Em," and have to say, at least he's punching upwards.

I think what's happening here is you have a guy who's only kinda annoying being forced into being really annoying by the YouTube algorithm

i STILL sing this to this day. like, i was singing it two days ago. that's how genius it is. that's seriously like 50 years of me singing that jingle. peterpaulsalmondjoysgotnuts...mounds don't.

― scott seward

mounds: yes
nuts: no

i mean, batting two for two here

Green Acres was still a viable show when cancelled - its reruns ran for YEARS - as was Hee Haw, as proven by its long afterlife in syndication. We did need more urban shows, but not at the expense of the classic rural shows.

― Josefa

mmmm i just don't know that commercial viability... i don't think of it as the be-all and end-all

like, for me, there's cultural impact to both the westerns and the rural sitcoms that followed them. bonanza? yes, great, classic all-time show, cancelling it for "being a western", that would be silly. the andy griffith show? same, fucking all-time. if the rural purge had cancelled the andy griffith show instead of, like, "mayberry rfd", i might have a problem with that.

i guess what i'd say is that i'd frame it more in terms of... like, the doctor shows. like, to me the problem with "the other martin loring" wasn't just that it was broadcast, it was that THIS FUCKING DR. KILDARE-ASS SHOW WAS STILL ON THE AIR IN 1973. Like WHAT THE FUCK. CBS had Mannix. NBC had the NBC Mystery Movie. ABC is showing fucking MARCUS WELBY, M.D.? That's pathetic. Completely pathetic. I'd rather watch "The Girl With Something Extra", even after learning that the "something extra" was ESP and not, like, a penis.

I think what's happening here is you have a guy who's only kinda annoying being forced into being really annoying by the YouTube algorithm

― frogbs

forced "well, actually" is my least favorite sexual fetish

I didn't know he was in a band I sorta like that YouTube song you posted lol

xp i raced my bike in naugatuck once it was kinda terrifying. the town seemed kinda post-industrial-washout consistent tho

yeah, that's a hell of a jingle. "you asked for it-- YOU GOT IT, TOYOTA!" was WAY more immense. it owned all media. everywhere. all the time. it owns me. now.

he should go full inverse maron and do a tight 5 after each interview

there was that time he spent years practicing chord identification with his son who later turned out to not really be interested in music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI

the YouTube ecosystem needs Beato to feel like the teacher so people like Neely and Finnerty can feel like your peers

i basically know this guy only from pat finnerty videos but his signature lp special is rad imo

https://images.ctfassets.net/m8onsx4mm13s/3l9hCDnmmlh9da4eD9kf3K/6169e1577647e4b25be663352bd3732a/LPSDB21BMNH1_front__1_.png

i think i also have a bias against someone like rick beato because of my occupation. 9 out of 10 times people similar to him (dude dad musos) will come in and grill me about my receiver and my speakers - things i have no interest in other than i know what sounds good to me - and then they will leave. without ever buying anything.

I think I'm right in saying that for a lot of music tuition youtubers - and especially in the guitar world - the real money they're making is not from adverts or patreon or sponsored videos or paid promo or whatever but from selling courses off the back of their channel. Rick's approach to this has long been something called the Beato Book which he sells at fifty bucks a pop, and if you've ever wondered whats actually in it, here's a review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EfLcFImdg8

conclusion: lol, no thanks pal

in his defence, he always has nice things to say about swervedriver, who he often cites in random videos as one of the greatest ever rock bands. that fanboy side of him is quite endearing

c'mon the guy is a complete tool

Yes he likes Swervedriver but he only likes Mezcal Head on, which is analogue to only liking Nirvana Unplugged or something, at least in my house.

haha yeah for sure, I don't fully hate him though xp

(I only really love mezcal head too, oops)

i find him quite likeable but conversely find most of his musical taste excruciating.

His first big mistake was not calling his debut album Meet the Beat-O

meato beato manifesto

I've never watched a rick beato video but I made fun of one of his yt thumbnails on twitter once and I still occasionally get his fans replying with "well actually" so fuck him.

if there was a music youtuber in london with the same last name, he'd be the english beato

Haha

this thread justifies its existence with pat finnerty promo. well done all around!

Hey, hey, hey
Just think, while you've been gettin' down and out about the liars
And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
You could've been makin' fun of
This.
Rick.
Beat.

i'm pretty sure my uncle tim would be a big fan of rick beato if he was alive

tim died young - had a stroke a couple years back. he was a couple years younger than beato. big classic rock fan. had a home studio, knew a lot of stuff about music and so forth. sweet guy. i loved him a lot.

i once asked him, though, if he liked kate bush, and he reacted like i'd just asked him if he was a girl.

i'm not saying rick beato himself is like that. i'm just saying that my uncle tim would have LOVED rick beato.

he should do a video on the jazz messengers and the innovation in art blakey's drumming style and call it something like 'hail the beat of art'

this man came of age in the "yummy yummy yummy i got love in my tummy" era

he was born in '62 so he would have been around 6 years old... idk if this is what "coming of age" means

old enough to develop perfect pitch

I think the first video I saw of his he was deconstructing the chords of Phil Collin’s “against all odds” and almost orgasming (gasming?) at the sheer genius of it

AND

he was born in '62 so he would have been around 6 years old... idk if this is what "coming of age" means

― c u (crüt), Tuesday, March 26, 2024 2:02 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk how old he is, the point is you can pick out huge hits from any era with terrible lyrics. not a new thing.

KDH's ascension as the killer journalist of guitar youtube has been such a treat

People keep mentioning youtubers in the music/guitar zone who are more likable than Beato, but we should be fair and consider the whole field: would you rather be locked in a room for two days with Beato or fifteen minutes with Rob Chapman?

I actually do think of Beato kind of like the teacher you basically like but everyone will crack up doing mean impressions of after school; being make-fun-able is surely a big part of what makes the channel work. He's stodgy and blowhardy about certain stuff and does those hilarious short lessons where he's like "here's an easy exercise you can try as a warmup (plays convoluted modal solo with no further explanation)" and spends a weird about of video time pointing a finger in the air and acting out how much he's savoring a harmony or whatever. But I find him broadly likable, he's fun to watch taking apart stuff he's genuinely really into, and his "I will listen like a disciple to all your old stories" approach often gets some great interviews out of people. (Though I really wish I could see edits of those at like 1/3 the length.) If forced to watch an hour of an old session musician talking to Beato or Jack Conte, I think I'd take Beato.

itt lots of people doing a bad job of making fun of rick beato

a defend the indefensible thread is more interesting

I could have sworn we only recently had this debate, but I have no problem with the dude. The only problem I have with him, honestly, is the thumbnails that every single look at me YouTube clip gets. But I've never heard him say anything, particularly stupid or offensive, and if anything he's one of the few interviewers on YouTube that just lets his guests speak. Sure, he might have relatively conservative guitar oriented taste, but I have heard him say multiple times that he tries to keep abreast of contemporary music, if only to learn about what people are listening to, which is more curiosity than many people his age show. And when he doesn't like something, he says why. It has the same reggaeton beat or cicada trap hi hats, for example, it's the same four chords over and over again, for example, there's no key change, that sort of thing. It's not just knee-jerk.

I tried to throw some making-fun-of in there, the short guitar lessons are genuinely hilarious

The other guy who is equally annoying and shows up in my algo as much as Beato is Paul Davids, the Dutch/Scandi guy with a creepy telecaster fetish.

It's not just knee-jerk.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 26, 2024 2:58 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

complaining that reggaeton uses the riddim or a rap song uses a loop actually are knee jerk rejections of the genres and their conventions

oh also I don't know if this counts as making fun of but if this dude were balding the channel would fail. it's an economically load-bearing hair situation

Beato’s pre-YouTube career was in producing nu-metal/butt rock, he’s not even really a classic rawk guy

I don't think it's knee jerk to call something repetitive or the same as something else as repetitive or the same as something else. that just seems like a matter of taste.

like, remember that one Nickelback song that sounded exactly like that other Nickelback song? I'm sure there are people that like both of those Nickelback songs, and other people who hate at least one of them because it sounds exactly like the other.

anyway, dude has his preferences, but from what I have seen of him, he keeps a relatively open mind, and is specific about what he likes or dislikes about something. I've never seen him outright dismiss any genre, for example. just aspects of songs.

no he doesn’t say “i hereby dismiss this genre,” sure. but he is a textbook rockist who will apply the conventions of his favorite genre across all kinds of music

One of these Nickelback songs always lies, and the other one always tells the truth

Anyway, I find Beato pretty easy to ignore, there are better music theory for the masses guys out there, Kirk Hamilton, for example

it's an economically load-bearing hair situation

looool. It's been a long time since I've been able to say this, but nabisco...otm.

this is not in the spirit of the thread AT ALL (apologies) but off the top of my head these are the music youtube people i really like - some are a bit more niche than others but all pretty informative, entertaining, doing content that no-one else really does and above all seem like good people...

Cyberattack (guitar pedals, music production)
Jorb Loves Gear (synth gear)
Puisheen (offset guitars)
Michael Banfield (guitar pedals)
Red Means Recording (electronic music production)
Hainbach (old weird synths)
Look Mum No Computer (old weird synths)
twooba (guitar playing, songwriting, she's funny)
Earthquaker Devices (guitar pedals and the amazing 'show us your junk' series)
Adam Vox Music (the history of electronic music explored using korg volcas)
Simon The Magpie (kinda wacky guy making shit instruments from scratch, it's pretty silly tbh)
Sarah Belle Reid (electronic and improvised music)
Ben Levin (music composition)
Alex Ball (old synth gear)

feel like i'm missing some women there, sorry

lol recommending good music YT people is in the spirit of the thread if you ask me

Beato is totally a rockist, no argument from me. But if he says that songs that (for example) don't change key or are often limited melodically, that's kind of a statement of fact. Whether you care or not (I don't) is a matter of taste and preference. I've got friends that consider a lot of radio songs right now like nails on a chalkboard because many of them are just the same four chords over and over again (a good friend calls it the shell game, just moving the order of things around). And many of the songs on the radio *do* (and always have) feature the same handful of chords shuffled around, or the same beat. Again, whether that's a bad thing is a matter of preference, but I can understand why someone might find it boring. Imo Beato is pretty attuned to what sets a song apart, or at least makes him perk up his ears, whether I agree with his assessment or not.
so

There was one clip of his some months or years back where he made the argument that most songs would be improved by the addition of just a little bit of guitar, then demoed it. That's *totally* rockist, but whether I agreed with him or not, iirc most of the stuff he played certainly didn't make the song *worse*.

I would love to see more of these fixtures of music YouTube make original music, or see what they would add or demonstrate in a band situation. Or, like, put Beato in a room with his buddies and have him come up with a "Def Leppard" song, or Taylor Swift song, or Ariana Grande song, whatever. Some way to demo their skills or knowledge well deconstructing current trends or studio tricks. Like that dude that discovered that old Genesis floppy disk, and then made his own fake Genesis song, that was fun.

Rob Scallon and Andrew Huang do a lot of that stuff and are way more entertaining than Beato, even though their music is not my thing at all

Will 2nd Puisheen (Mike Adams) from NickB's list, dude has helped me many times with DIY projects.

He seems like a genuinely lovely person

Blayne Westphall (everything unless it's 4/4)

I have no beef with Rick Beato, but the obvious problem when you judge songs based on the number of chords or key changes or melodic complexity or whether a chord progression is used in other songs is that you immediately remove a whole lot of genres from any kind of consideration whatsoever. Criticizing a piece of music because it conforms to the conventions of its genre is an amateur move.

not to mention how many rock songs you'd have to eliminate using those criteria: "i can't get no satisfaction" is repetitive and doesn't modulate!!!

He doesn't really criticize, though, does he? He mostly will just say it's not for him.

that's not true at all, especially when it comes to reggaeton

I thought he just didn't like that beat, or that so many of the songs on the charts have that beat. I don't really know reggaeton, is that the only beat?

yes

his reactions are dismissive and pander to the folks in the comments who can't stop talking about how today's music doesn't have soul, maaan

Is that stuff like Bad Bunny? I guess I don't really like what I've heard from him, either, or I'm not impressed. But I don't think I've heard much. Regardless, I still think his (Beato) rockism is pretty mild.

People complaining about dembow, it's like complaining about how 99 percent of rock and pop songs are 4/4 with a backbeat on the 2 and 4. Just dumb.

there are better music theory for the masses guys out there, Kirk Hamilton, for example

this guy is amazing, could listen to him break songs down forever. I'm amazed he hasn't got a youtube channel

in this thread, we agree with everything rick beato says, apparently

I had to Google dembow!

in this thread, we agree with everything rick beato says, apparently

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili)

you know i do blame youtube. i've seen it with other people. you put something "controversial" in your title and thumbnail to get clicks, and then you say some reasonable, thoughtful, respectful, and nuanced stuff, which is how you get fans. i mean half of the youtube people i subscribe to do the same thing.

which, you know what, i feel like we're doing the same kind of thing here, so it all works out imo

honestly, on reflection, i don't even blame youtube, that's like... i'm not going to watch a three hour video about something i already know i agree with. i can tell you this for a fact because mia mulder made a three hour video about the ways capitalism is bad and i didn't watch it because i already know capitalism is bad.

so yes, welcome to the "let's make fun of rick beato" thread, wherein we collectively conclude, you know what? rick beato is kind of ok, actually.

Cyberattack (guitar pedals, music production)
Jorb Loves Gear (synth gear)
Puisheen (offset guitars)
Michael Banfield (guitar pedals)
Red Means Recording (electronic music production)
Hainbach (old weird synths)
Look Mum No Computer (old weird synths)
twooba (guitar playing, songwriting, she's funny)
Earthquaker Devices (guitar pedals and the amazing 'show us your junk' series)
Adam Vox Music (the history of electronic music explored using korg volcas)
Simon The Magpie (kinda wacky guy making shit instruments from scratch, it's pretty silly tbh)
Sarah Belle Reid (electronic and improvised music)
Ben Levin (music composition)
Alex Ball (old synth gear)

feel like i'm missing some women there, sorry

good list. a few faves there and some that are new to me.

Emily Hopkins (cool harp videos) is worth checking out.

Good music YouTubers
Hainbach
Ricky Tinez
Jonwayne/Jon Makes Beats
Anthony Marinelli (studio musician who worked with Michael Jackson among others)
Alex Ball (vintage synth nerd)
Bald Beato (Pat Finnerty)
Si Spex
Todd Barton (Buchla/Serge synth stuff)
Guitar Moves (guy from Zwan’s Vice series he got back and went independent)

Ella Feingold is great for breaking down classic funk and soul guitar parts, she's played with Badu and other major R&B ppl

Ha, that youtube-ecosystem thing pulls me the other direction -- the fact that Beato has all these obvious it's-my-job incentives to trot out periodic pandering pop-is-bad-now bait makes it feel sadder and more craven (to me) than if he actually really wanted to spend his time on that. (But I also have zero idea if the content inside has gotten all nuanced; I think I saw part of one and was like yeah, this is not the kind of video I ever need to watch from him)

Moodles post makes me want to see Beato's Ge1r H0ngr0 interview

Fact Mag’s Against The Clock and similar series (Patch Notes?) were good but discontinued I guess.

Telekom Electric Beats has some good series like making a group of producers/DJs guess records

Ardrian “anyone can play guitar” my go-to guitar YouTuber. Non-rockist rock explainer, very good at dissecting original arrangements. Also very good at showing why arrangements are effective and not just on the theory level, but because of feel/texture/timbre. His take on The Good, Bad and the Ugly is a good example.

Just wanna add Jameson Nathan Jones (classically-informed synth ambient guy) to the list of good music YouTubers.

Who’s the guy who draws while breaking down theory or songs? 12Tone?

I had no idea about any of these other nerds, looking forward to exploring!

Should there be another thread for non-Beato YT nerds actually worth watching?

If forced to watch an hour of an old session musician talking to Beato or Jack Conte, I think I'd take Beato.

Conte annoys me no end, but I've really come around on Jack Stratton (Vulfpeck) and love listening to him talk about '70s session musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-xu0x5-B9g

My phone must have heard me talking about this stuff, because it just reminded me that there is a new video out of Beato interviewing the drummer from Tool, and I would be lying if I said I was not all in.

His dissections of contemporary music can be annoying, but not nearly as annoying as the video thumbnails for his dissections of contemporary music.

― MarkoP, lunes 25 de marzo de 2024 10:14 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Like I feel like his videos are at least a little more nuanced and insightful than the titles and thumbnails have you lead to believe.

― MarkoP, lunes 25 de marzo de 2024 10:15 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ugh I know. I want the ragebait titles and fake indignation reactions trend to fucking die already but it seems they send in the views and it’s going to stay for a long time.

I don’t mind Beato. It’s been more than a year since I see anything by him… Spent several pandemic days watching him out of boredom and he seems chill and knowledgeable… at least when it comes to talking about music he likes which is mostly rock and jazz. His opinions on “most listened tracks on Spotify” were very bland and uninteresting… at least those I watched.

never heard of this guy. ilxors apparently spend a lot of time watching youtube videos where ppl break down songs?

I watch more Youtube on the my living room tv than any network or streaming service, tbh.

I don't know much Tool but thought it was a lovely interview. Danny is beyond humble and charming which kind of carries it for me. Pretty cool that an active, renowned band's genesis, existence and entire catalog happened/happens in two little rooms.

its subtle but I think this might be the guy he's making fun of in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3oHvFjtMlQ

lollllllll

that was great

Lol that was otm

i think tony's perserverence is doing some of the work there. the points are true but not funny in delivery rly? but 10 dips in it's like...lol u mad bro. yeah ok. damn. you keep going ha B- /gradeeverything

Iirc Beato did have an okay video about why people his age might not like contemporary music. He had some ok specific insights, whether or not you agreed with his takeaways.

josh, do you agree with his takeaways?

I can't remember honestly. The only one I remember is him complaining that things are a little too quantized, and there is no subtle tempo variation, which our (old) ears can detect. I guess I understand that. I don't care too much about lack of key changes or things like that, though I suppose I can see someone who is into that stuff being annoyed with their absence.

Me, I do know that my appreciation of what's on the charts ebbs and flows over the years, based on trends, some of which I jibe with, some of which I don't. Sometimes the radio seems pretty copycat and conservative, sometimes it's pretty wild.

jaymc, Beato was first brought to my attention when I was learning about theory behind the modes of Steely Dan guitar solos, I wanna say Larry Carlton's KidC...?

I'm obviously incredibly sorry I ever clicked that because now I have to look at a thumbnail of his every other time I glance at the YT recommends sidebar.

here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wZp3LleWF0

i think tony's perserverence is doing some of the work there. the points are true but not funny in delivery rly? but 10 dips in it's like...lol u mad bro. yeah ok. damn. you keep going ha B- /gradeeverything

― schrodingers cat was always cool (Hunt3r), Thursday, March 28, 2024 11:11 AM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean if you don't know Tony Zaret's shtick I highly encourage you to at least check out the thumbnails here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

oooh well that didn't work. try this

http://www.youtube.com/tonyzaret

i did enjoy larry carlton's kid charlemagne breakdown

TY—soon enuf i will

sorry weird xp

beef!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnveSqQgpqk

Great, can they both lose please.

just remember: everything is scripted.

i'm so confused, hasn't rick beato done this same video 50 times before

the "quantization ruined music" video i mean

it kinda did tho, at least rock music

The example I've seen him bring up was a 20 year old drum track from Nickelback. I don't think some John Bonham swing would have rescued Nickelback but I wonder how much of a problem it is even in rock music now. I assume there's a lot of rigid quantization in the wanky prog-metal world but that seems like a choice integral to the form.

you know i thought this was rick beato making a video about how rick beato is wrong, which... i mean honestly it's not off-brand for him. "WHO IS THIS OLD OUT OF TOUCH WHITE CIS DUDE ALWAYS SPOUTING ALL THIS 'GREAT WISDOM' ABOUT MUSIC!?!?!"

it'd probably be a really good video! i might actually watch that video. i'm _not_ interested in hearing Fantano complain about Beato. NOBODY BEATS BEATO LIKE BEATO.

Rick Beato takes ecstasy, dances all night and becomes the Boomer James Murphy

I'm Losing My Edge Signature Stratocaster in the Divorce

xxxpost - it doesn't even have to be Bonham, like most 70s rock bands have drummers who can really play and swing

also it's a huge problem now even more than it was 20 years ago

I got to wondering if anyone had ever introduced Beato to Lefsetz and INDEED!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5bsiXchDG2ruAa19cLEz78?si=CZLxv0YSStybd83CvY8qaA

Note that I haven't listened to this, but I figured there would be interest here.

xxp - sure, but replace Bonham with anyone else and put them on the Nickelback drum throne... and the band is still going to suck.

Is quantization a symptom or the problem - do the bands with 1/64 grid drums have heart and soul otherwise or is that just one more step in an artless production process?

"trust the art, not the artist" feels tangentially relevant to you there, milo.

btw i hadn't listened to af yet when i posted. he says in the beginning that they're buds and this is a debate amongst respected colleagues, so it became even funnier to me that i posted it here. i started beato's essay a while back when he first posted but lolnope'd within the first few minutes. like kate implied, a little self-awareness would go a lo g way in beato's case, but oh well. fantano has the basic retorts. all fine, all articulated fine. i did like the diy "HEY YOU CAN MAKE MUSIC HOWEVER TF YOU WANT" sentiment of fantano's post.

they should definitely film the kiss and make up at the end of all this. i don't mean metaphors, either. i wanna see some hot dilfy internet music dudes locking lips for the good of the discourse dammit. and think of the views!

xxp - sure, but replace Bonham with anyone else and put them on the Nickelback drum throne... and the band is still going to suck.

Is quantization a symptom or the problem - do the bands with 1/64 grid drums have heart and soul otherwise or is that just one more step in an artless production process?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, July 10, 2024 12:27 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

well yes of course nickelback would still suck i'm not arguing otherwise

listen people can have whatever opinion they want but for what i want personally out of rock music, a feel for the interplay between musicians, a certain feel, it diminishes the appeal for me and i can tell in most cases. also i did not use words like "heart" or "soul" that's not relevant to what i'm saying. this is my own personal (excellent) taste in rock music and what i care about. but i do think that it's not a coincidence that mainstream rock is basically dead now.

I don't think it's a good way to make quality rock music either, but I don't see Pro Tools becoming de rigeur (and abuse of Pro Tools) as a turning point in the death of radio rock. It was bad before, too, and the reliance on it is a symptom of bands with nothing to say and streamlining the process of making product for the easiest consumption.

Rock music is subject to Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"). Technological changes do not alter fundamental principles of existence.

I think the crap % for rock music in particular may have crept higher over the years

when you hear some of the breathtaking musicianship on a lot of '70s rock albums, then you hear more contemporary stuff, it's a world of difference. there's just such beauty and depth to a lot of it. and the swing is a part of it for sure, i mean we don't have to go back a very long time to hear it, just compare the swing Nirvana had to the stiffness of a lot of current day bands, even yknow Foo Fighters.

Ahhhh I clicked the link and now I'm watching an Anthony Fantano video, how did this happen

I am listening. Anthony has excellent diction so I can turn the volume way down and still understand him

I think the crap % for rock music in particular may have crept higher over the years

It hasn't. There are a ton of great rock records from any given year of the 1970s, but they floated to the top of a flood tide of swill and were skimmed off. There are a ton of great rock records being released in 2024, but they haven't floated to the top yet and nobody's doing the skimming.

I don't think it's about actual 'swing' so much as just human timing and variation, which is just nice to hear in genres that are supposed to represents humans playing instruments, and more interesting and less fatiguing to the ear. Those Nirvana records never had a click track as far as I know. Then again, the recent Foo Fighters records probably don't either but I still don't want to listen to that.

OK I stopped listening. This is a dumb discussion. Whenever stuff like this hits my brain I just repeat my mantra-- "music is easy"-- and close the window

Why does Fantano hold the side of his head like a diva about to step up for a solo? He doesn't appear to have an earbud in.

And it's not just timing, there's also all the tiny variations you get from actually playing and singing the same thing multiple times, and not copy/pasting. And if you're making music more digitally you end up doing a ton of things to compensate for not having that (bringing different layers in & out all the time etc).

xp lol @ "music is easy"

must contain his liquid brain

Music is so easy! I've been saying it for years. Music is easy. Don't forget it!

you just wrote a Jonathan Richman song. it really is that easy.

Not sure if Nirvana used a click, but I've long been under the impression that Nevermind features a fair amount of copy and paste editing.

Not sure if Nirvana used a click, but I've long been under the impression that Nevermind features a fair amount of copy and paste editing.

It does. I've told this story before; when I studied audio engineering, the guy I did my studio work with pulled up "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and showed us that the drum take used on the first verse and the chorus was looped throughout the song.

Definitely seems to be a lot of that going on with In Bloom

but that's totally different than digital quantization

These conversations seem so utterly removed from the realities of actual music production that it’s hard to take them seriously. Some of the freest most delicious drum performances in history were done to a click. Some of the most quantized-sounding music out there has a meticulous weird-grid so that every element is sounding at slightly different times, all the transients are staggered in an appealing way. I beatmapped a Tony Allen performance today for a client, and for my own interest I meticulously broke down his performance into notation. Perfectly in time, played to a click (I think) or at the very least, the guy was a human metronome. But the swing is always shifting, always so tasty. Impossible to correctly notate without insane subdivisions. Nothing makes sense and it’s so beautiful.

If more contemporary drummers played like Tony Allen, we may not be having this discussion.

you guys have to promise to stop watching rick beato videos. there must be some worthwhile music person on youtube who isn't him. F@n^@n0 i won't even say his name out loud. he might appear under my bed or something. he's frightening.

If more contemporary drummers played like Tony Allen, we may not be having this discussion.

No kidding. What a legend. Going deep on his playing today felt like such a privilege.

I interviewed him once and he told me, "I could show you what I do, but I can't tell you how I do it," which is really the whole thing right there, isn't it?

the problem with rock music nowadays is that there's _so much of it_

you guys are rad. me trying to stay positive here: i recommend old marian mcpartland radio shows for full jubilation in critical music discussion of this type ("HOW DO WE THINK ABOUT HOW WE MAKE MUSIC?"). she sits at the piano with her guest and sometimes they get so passionate about what they need to say, all they can do is play their response. puts all this f'kn garbage in its place real quick and is way more fun.

i regret sharing this link. i'm so sorry.

i regret sharing this link. i'm so sorry.

Not at all. I watched about 2/3 of that AF clip and that was the most tolerable he's ever been, for me anyway.

lol moment when he’s interviewing Mills and Beato says “I’ve given a thousand guitar lessons where blah blah blah…”

I just want less and less of his personality , it’s so grating. I should try it with the video off , that might play a lot better. And those stupid intrusions when he goes on about “not many people know this, but this is actually my second channel…” aggghhh

“You can't blame the computer. If there's no soul in the music, it's because nobody put it there.” — Björk.

xp not sure which of beato or fantano you're talking about, describes both.

these two people are exactly what I try to avoid by coming to ILM

Hate this cunt so much

AF is worse than RB. RB has solid music theory knowledge and can explain what a song is doing decently. AF is just some generic music vlogger

my experience based on not watching either is:

* I will never click on an AF video but it seems he's covering some good/interesting music, albeit in an unwatchable style.
* RB is the pioneer of the "this is why all modern music SUCKS!" videos which have spread across youtube like syphilis. Maybe he has some knowledge of music theory, IDK, but if he does then he is using it for evil.

if your business model is "reassure white people that the reason they don't like pop music today is nothing to do with racism/homophobia/sexism/transphobia/snobbery/natural preference for music you heard when you were a teenager, no, it's down to this music theory I've pulled out of my ass which coincidentally reinforces all of our prejudices" then you are not an expert weighing in, you are The Problem.

His youtube channel and the comments on them feel like some sort of AM talk radio regeneration. Not shaming those who get their two minute hate out of it, but I'm avoiding.

If you look at the view counts on Beato's recent videos, all the ragebait stuff gets more views and I assume Beato is well-aware of that. It's nice that he still puts out some more positive videos but I guess they don't get the same traction

reassure white people that the reason they don't like pop music today is nothing to do with racism/homophobia/sexism/transphobia/snobbery/natural preference for music you heard when you were a teenager

lol assuming that people who hate modern pop music must do so for identity politics reasons is a very ILM take

you go read the yt comments on pretty much any music performed by a woman and get back to me

ok i'm reading them and i'm not seeing anything

not denying that many people are sexist and racist and homophobic obv but it's ridiculous to imply that those are the primary reasons most "white" people might not like pop music

sorry, i'm being way too cranky about this. just something that annoys me as someone who finds a good chunk of popular music unlistenable and/or grating.

I didn't talk about "primary reasons" but I don't think saying that for many people their taste is affected by prejudice is controversial or amounts to talking about "identity politics" - otherwise it would have to be a massive coincidence that their faves are nearly all white male het boomers.

I don't know what your taste is but very much safe to assume that you aren't beato's target demographic here.

Beato caters to the Steve Hoffman Forum/perpetually stuck in the 70’s/“rap is crap, but I’ totally not racist” crowd

Fantano overuses the word “aesthetic” the way Michiko Kakutani OD’d on “limn”

feel like everyone should state how many Rick Beato videos they've watched

me: 1 with the guitar player from Stone Temple Pilots talking about how he wrote a song, was interesting he went through it with an acoustic

I think I've seen 4 - two were interviews which I thought were pretty good - he definitely knows more and asks more interesting questions than your typical rock journalist. the other two were more clickbait but were more interesting than they looked, yeah some of it is complaining about how things suck now but when he breaks down a bunch of tracks and picks out individual samples that's kind of neat

if you don’t like or understand primarily electronic styles of music, rap and reggaeton included, i don’t really care about your opinion about modern pop, but apparently i will watch every one of your spotify top ten reviews so i can yell at you in my head

lol

beato is a muso who is primarily looking for virtuoso musicianship and intricate harmony in his music, and pop music hasn’t prioritized that since…

i like reggaeton but i definitely notice when that same groove gets plastered over a shitty pop song so i don't mind when he points it out

2 - one about quantization 4-5 years ago, where he pulled up Nickelback and something about jazz plus bits and pieces over the years.

I think catering to the classic rawk/rap is crap crowd is accurate but it doesn't seem to describe him personally. He's probably claim an appreciation for some electronic music and rap but then circle back to wanking over U2 and Radiohead.

Beato vs. the That Pedal Show guys

feel like everyone should state how many Rick Beato videos they've watched

me: 1 with the guitar player from Stone Temple Pilots talking about how he wrote a song, was interesting he went through it with an acoustic

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, July 11, 2024 9:52 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i've watched clips of his interview with matt cameron, and i watched the full jimmy chamberlin interview he did. he should only interview drummers

I’ve seen zero Beats videos. I watched an Adam Neely video once because he took my phrase “the excellence and supremacy of Western music theory” from a satirical Facebook post at face value to imply that I actually believe that stuff. I wrote him! Clearly satire, my dude! He never apologized. Why don’t people apologize? Like people have such a hard time with it

think catering to the classic rawk/rap is crap crowd is accurate but it doesn't seem to describe him personally. He's probably claim an appreciation for some electronic music and rap but then circle back to wanking over U2 and Radiohead.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, July 11, 2024 9:29 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

like most people in digital media i imagine he's seeing his worst instincts being the most rewarded by the algo

Adam Neely has some good videos where he gets into copyright lawsuits but his video game music jazz band is one of the worst things I've ever heard.

I never heard of him before him popping up as a punchline in Finnerty videos, but got enough context quickly to deduce that he was some guitar youtube guy with likely a generic taste.

Otherwise I saw a clip of him gushing about specific Swervedriver guitar chord progressions and agreed with his appreciation of that.

Beato not Neely

I’ve seen zero Beats videos. I watched an Adam Neely video once because he took my phrase “the excellence and supremacy of Western music theory” from a satirical Facebook post at face value to imply that I actually believe that stuff. I wrote him! Clearly satire, my dude! He never apologized. Why don’t people apologize? Like people have such a hard time with it

― Europe, where they eat flowers (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, July 11, 2024 9:36 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that's really fucked up

* RB is the pioneer of the "this is why all modern music SUCKS!" videos which have spread across youtube like syphilis. Maybe he has some knowledge of music theory, IDK, but if he does then he is using it for evil.

if your business model is "reassure white people that the reason they don't like pop music today is nothing to do with racism/homophobia/sexism/transphobia/snobbery/natural preference for music you heard when you were a teenager, no, it's down to this music theory I've pulled out of my ass which coincidentally reinforces all of our prejudices" then you are not an expert weighing in, you are The Problem.

― This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

so i'm a white transgender woman, i started this thread having watched 0 rick beato videos, but i basically immediately changed my stance based on the comments of people who _have_ watched beato videos and i now feel like beato is a Good Thing, Actually. i've still watched 0 rick beato videos. i don't have any particular interest in watching rick beato videos.

speaking _only for myself_, i don't see Beato as The Problem. i _certainly_ don't see him as the pioneer of "this is why all modern music SUCKS!" videos. look i vaguely remember the Rockist Wars here. people complaining about how modern music sucks compared to Classic Rock goes back _way_ farther than Youtube. shit, in my younger days i thought modern music sucked and they just didn't make them like Zep and Floyd anymore. (for the record they _do_ still make them like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, they're just not _good_ like Zep and Floyd.)

i see beato as trying to work with the audience he has. i mean i'm sympathetic because i _do_ love zep and floyd and classic rock and it frustrates me because i wish people could see there's more to music than that, that yeah modern music has problems but they're not what the classic rock nerds _think_ they are, that it's _certainly_ not because of BIPOC or queers or women or those darn kids today, that a lot of the music made by those people is _good_ actually. and that's always been the way, that's _why_ rock critics hated zep, it wasn't because their music was _stupid_ necessarily. a lot of critics have this very strong ethos about what music should be, and part of that is often _appealing to diverse people_, and zep has _never_ been good at that. their audience was meathead white kids who grew up to be meathead white adults who are now meathead white old men.

which is why what beato is doing is an impossible task because his audience, yeah, they _are_ racist/homophobic/sexist/transphobic/boomer-centric. i mean their favorite music is music that structurally works to exclude anybody but cis white men. that doesn't make the _music itself_ invalid or bad. led zeppelin is good, actually. jimmy page has sexually abused minors, this is well-known and undisputed, and you know, the music is still fucking great IMO. i've loved it since i was 12 and i'm not going to stop loving it.

rick beato isn't the problem. the problem is that this audience exists and youtube actively works to cater to that audience. if someone wants to present an opinion counter to that, subterfuge is necessary. beato can do that because he's an attractive cis white man with good production values (and i do say beato is attractive as part of... cis white men are always commenting on women's appearance in uncomfortable ways and think they're _complimenting_ women. and they're not. it's _ok_ to say someone is attractive. i do find rick beato very attractive). beato's attractiveness _is_ definitely part of the reason he has so many viewers, whether guys are willing to acknowledge that or not.

a lot of my favorite youtube viewers do title their videos disingenuously to generate rage clicks, and then provide nuanced and thoughtful analyses of something that may or may not be related to the title. my understanding of beato is that he exists within that paradigm.

that's _not_ my understanding of fantano, whose videos i also haven't seen. he's some cis white dude with Opinions and i find him kind of annoying.

I have started maybe 4 or 5 beato videos, I have finished 0.

their audience was meathead white kids who grew up to be meathead white adults who are now meathead white old men.

lol i see what i did there, implicitly gendered "kids" and "adults", patriarchy is insidious like that

I've skipped through a couple of his Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time type videos and his taste is just absolutely abysmal. I think it was even worse, it was something like Strangest Guitar Solos Of All Time, I mean I wasn't expecting to find Francois Mativet's solo on Lard Free's "Warinobaril" on there but his choices were all boring mainstream dreck.

the real Beato fun fact is that prior to Youtube his claim to fame was producing Shinedown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxQaQla-VMs

which is why what beato is doing is an impossible task because his audience, yeah, they _are_ racist/homophobic/sexist/transphobic/boomer-centric. i mean their favorite music is music that structurally works to exclude anybody but cis white men. that doesn't make the _music itself_ invalid or bad. 

the real elephant in the room is that you can find every sort of music that has ever existed being made now, along with quite a few combinations that have never been tried before, so any attempt at reducing 'modern pop' to an essence will be lamebtably reductive at best

the amount of music that there is, can never hope to be even slightly conveyed by any of these bozos

take it to the ws of shame thread rush :)

when in doubt, pander for clicks

Default assumption upon viewing any popular internet anything is that they know their audience all will do whatever is necessary to facilitate

i could watch a million hours of fantano and not learn even one thing right? it's just him saying shit is good or bad

this is the one i watched, i like this kind of geeky stuff where he's running through the chord changes and talking about ragtime music etc, from what ivy said maybe his interviews are his best stuff, but i should probably quit while i'm ahead and not watch another one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPSyOvPX5UI

and*

I can't really stand to watch Fantano but his taste seems to be alright, I mean he pointed his fans towards YMO's Solid State Survivor, I can't hate him

Fantano has decent taste but his existence is a structural evil in the contemporary music nerdosphere

i wouldn't assume he's necessarily more righteous than beato, likely far less

https://www.avclub.com/popular-music-blogger-responds-to-accusations-of-alt-r-1819126906

xpost - i mean - great he has okay taste who gives a shit? what is the point of watching him talk about a record? at least beato might do an interview that reveals something musical like the STP clip above

oh I completely agree yeah

0% of my extremely extensive contemporary music listening is derived from Fantano

my point is if a ton of people are watching him for whatever reason it's cool that he's pointing them towards records I like as opposed to records I don't like

why do people watch him? when I was a teenager I used to read music sites by the likes of Mark Prindle, George Starostin, John McFerrin, etc. - mainly because I wound up liking a lot of the records they gave good scores to, so I figured whatever they liked I'd probably like as well. those sorts of sites don't really exist anymore so maybe Fantano is filling that void for today's teenagers?

a good case study is Joanna Wang. he recently put a bunch of his followers onto her cos he liked her (amazing) new album. and that's nice and everything, but most people who'd be massive fans of hers...already were, because there are other, far superior systems of discovering music now

iow, that void for teenagers is being filled not by fantano but by Discord servers and RYM. and that's where I come in. officially much more influential than Fantano. yeeeeahhhh

anyway I'm pals with some people who are working on musicological analysis stuff that will leave beato in the fuckin dust. stay tuned

well idk about that, looking on RYM her new one has more ratings than nearly all of her prior stuff combined. and it's rated well too, so I'm guessing he really did bring a bunch of new fans on. not doubting there are far superior and less annoying systems of discovering music but this is the guy people watch, if he's turning people onto Joanna Wang then he's doing the Lord's work

that's a fair point frogs wrt discovery

fantano is p4k for the current generation of #passionatemillennialgenzmales

correlation is not causation. it's been a few years since the last JW album during which time her existing fanbase has grown in size and keenness. it isn't purely through Fantano that this has happened; this has the feel of an album that was always going to be a breakthrough

I've skipped through a couple of his Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time type videos and his taste is just absolutely abysmal. I think it was even worse, it was something like Strangest Guitar Solos Of All Time, I mean I wasn't expecting to find Francois Mativet's solo on Lard Free's "Warinobaril" on there but his choices were all boring mainstream dreck.

― Wee boats wobble but they don't fall down (Tom D.)

...did you just say "Warinobaril" is boring mainstream dreck? :)

why do people watch him? when I was a teenager I used to read music sites by the likes of Mark Prindle, George Starostin, John McFerrin, etc. - mainly because I wound up liking a lot of the records they gave good scores to, so I figured whatever they liked I'd probably like as well. those sorts of sites don't really exist anymore so maybe Fantano is filling that void for today's teenagers?

― frogbs

every generation gets the dave marsh they deserve

what's frustrating is that there are _a lot of people here_ whose takes on music are far more interesting and diverse than fantano's, but everything does come back to /mu/

i used to be one of those people who shit-talked p4k as "hipsters" and came up through RYM. and RYM just feeds _heavily_ from /mu/

a lot of people write or wrote for p4k, and i mean, looking back on it a lot of the criticism i dismissed was great stuff. music writing as a career collapses and what's left? 4chan _is_ structurally exclusionary in a lot of the ways "rock" music was. cis dudes and the most fucked-up, self-loathing trans women you can imagine. much love to trans women who came up through /tttt/ but jesus god did they deserve better than 4chan.

anyway I'm pals with some people who are working on musicological analysis stuff that will leave beato in the fuckin dust. stay tuned

― imago

i mean there are plenty of people doing musicological analysis that leaves beato in the dust, it just doesn't get the views, they don't have the production values, they're not attractive cis white men like beato, it's not beato's _fault_ for being an attractive cis white man but it's frustrating that those of us aren't don't have the opportunities that beato does. like folks _here_ can find every sort of music that has ever existed, but most people don't have that access. just because it's _out there_ doesn't mean you can _find it_. people like beato and spotify playlists are the gatekeepers. and i guess spotify playlists do a better job of opening people up to different music than, you know, mob radio did. the trade-off is that there's no _money_ in it. nobody gets _paid_ except for the execs at spotify and, i mean, joe rogan i guess. all of the work musicians do right now, it all goes to people like fucking joe rogan. that's progress for you.

fantano def takes cues from rym (when choosing what to review, not necessarily what scores he gives)

yeah exactly, he's increasingly unnecessary even on his own terms

lol i don't think anyone was arguing that rick beato was like charles ives with a fender american professional ii stratocaster

people like beato and spotify playlists are the gatekeepers

if the gate is in the middle of a massive flat plain with zero walls anywhere, sure.

we traded bad gatekeepers for no gatekeepers at all, Beato has an angle on that that is interesting - there's too much music out there, and as a consequence it's devalued

oh heaven fucking forfend there's too much music

learn to hunt music better

music isn't a zero-sum game, it isn't a competition. 'devalued' what the fuck is this, the stock market

there IS too much music out there, it's too readily accessible, and as a consequence it is devalued. I find that to ring true for me personally, one of the ILX champions of crate digging, Google, Soulseek, Discogs, whatever

there IS too much music out there, it's too readily accessible, and as a consequence it is devalued.

I disagree. Here's how I see it:

"There is too much music" — yes, and most of it is shit.

"It's too readily accessible" — no it's not. Radio used to spoon-feed people music; now you have to actively seek things out, whether that means signing up for a streaming service or going on YouTube. Music requires direct engagement now, which is why engagement is down, because people are lazy.

"As a consequence it is devalued" — this is an individual determination. How much you value music is entirely up to you, and what "people" think doesn't mean anything. We are in an age of atomized consumerism. For someone like me, who never felt any kinship with other people just because we enjoyed the same records, it's paradise.

Beato and Fantano don't really have anything in common besides being incredibly popular. Beato doesn't review music (complaining about rap and chart pop doesn't count), but is good at nerdy deep dives on the music he likes. I find the '90s rock nostalgia shit mostly tedious, but watched his videos with white jazz piano legends (Brad Mehldau and Keith Jarrett, which were both excellent). And I appreciated the level of detail in the Jimmy Chamberlain one, although I skipped the ten minutes where he was asking about drum sizes and heads (which perfectly illustrates his talent for missing the point in music, although on another day I might actually want to know that info).

lol i don't think anyone was arguing that rick beato was like charles ives with a fender american professional ii stratocaster

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

ok but who _is_

we traded bad gatekeepers for no gatekeepers at all, Beato has an angle on that that is interesting - there's too much music out there, and as a consequence it's devalued

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel)

i mean i'm half-tempted to argue that the existence of bull of heaven devalues music

well it's like the ai thing

i do all this writing and i can't get anybody to read it

and i talked to my ex-girlfriend and she says it's interesting because it's written by a human

most writing on the internet, by volume, probably isn't by humans nowadays

but even before ai, yeah. i've worked hard to git gud, as the kids say, as a writer, and i am in fact a good writer. but not only can i not _sell_ my writing, there are maybe three people who have time to read my writing

there's some advice people give to writers, writers worry that their "cake" isn't as good as someone else's "cake" so people won't like it, and instead the audience, they argue, will say "oh boy, two cakes"

what happens when you have 10,000 cakes, though? that's more cakes than you can even fart on

the role of "gatekeepers"... maybe that's not the right way of putting it. maybe it's _matchmakers_. matching creators to an audience. they keep fucking around with the rules and i can't keep up. livejournal, tumblr, blogging, podcasts, video essays, and each has a new set of skills to learn, and that'll last about five years and it'll take a huge toll from you, burn you out, and it'll be onto something else. progress!

well i mean i'm still posting on internet message boards on 2024, it's pretty clear where i'm at

my existence is, in capitalist terms, _unnecessary_. i'm _obsolete_.

music isn't a zero-sum game, it isn't a competition. 'devalued' what the fuck is this, the stock market

― imago

what do you _do_ for a living, how do you get _paid_?

i am overwhelmingly unwilling to countenance the possibility that what is screwing professional musicians over financially is the amount of recorded music being released

Some of the freest most delicious drum performances in history were done to a click. Some of the most quantized-sounding music out there has a meticulous weird-grid so that every element is sounding at slightly different times, all the transients are staggered in an appealing way. I beatmapped a Tony Allen performance today for a client, and for my own interest I meticulously broke down his performance into notation. Perfectly in time, played to a click (I think) or at the very least, the guy was a human metronome. But the swing is always shifting, always so tasty. Impossible to correctly notate without insane subdivisions. Nothing makes sense and it’s so beautiful.

Yeah of course it's just another tool, which can be use artfully. I'm not sure if the basic tracks on D'Angelo's Voodoo were actually done to a click or not (probably varies), but famously were slid around in Pro Tools on the microsecond level to create that more-human-than-human behind the beat feel. And that art of it was to move everything perfectly off the grid rather than militaristically fix any note that stepped out of line, which is how many bad records are made.

Re: notating Tony Allen, oh wow. I've seen people tried to do it with jazz transcriptions or Dilla beats or whatever and I can't imagine it's actually possible or advisable. I just think of every offbeat note as if it's on an analog slider between 'straight' and 'overly exaggeratedly swung', with good feel somewhere in the middle and constantly being adjusted depending on song, style, phrase, etc.

i am overwhelmingly unwilling to countenance the possibility

this is a message board, you can safely countenance a theory about there being too much music without it destroying your soul, I can be wrong and still not abandon my tangent right away because it's an interesting angle

see I don't read "devalued" as necessarily a monetary thing (since we all know the industry will screw you over every chance they get) but rather in the ears of the listener, there's just so much good music being released each and every day that it's impossible to give even a small fraction of it the attention it deserves. its not like the old days when there was only so much music being pressed and you had to pick from whatever was in the record store. I mean in a sense this is a very good thing if you're willing to put in the work as a listener but it does seem like these days, if you're a decent band that has a shot at becoming great there's basically no chance at getting picked up in the first place anymore

"There's too much music and it's too easy" isn't an interesting viewpoint, it's a driving impetus behind the vinyl renaissance and people under 35 pining for glory days of being forced to listen to an entire side of a LP without skipping. Buying my first CD player at 12 or 13 was glorious - no more rewinding and fast forwarding juuuuuuuust right to get the good shit.

This morning I had to drive for an hour and spent it listening to an Apple Music playlist generated from The Pop Group, which had a nice scattering of music I knew and music I didn't - I don't become as obsessive about one album as when each cost me $20, for sure, but the amount of music entering my ears is equal and I don't see it as any less valuable to hear 15 artists from 5 genres rather than one record from one band and being less precious about each individual song.

i am overwhelmingly unwilling to countenance the possibility that what is screwing professional musicians over financially is the amount of recorded music being released

― imago

that's not what i was saying, but if that's what you want to take from my post i radically accept that

what was unexpected for me as someone who grew up loving music pre-Internet and then got the dream of access to pretty much everything ever all at once is that the availability was initially invigorating but just kind of exhausted me and made me not to want to engage with it at all.

it's accepted wisdom that creativity is enhanced by limitations, I guess it turns out appreciation is too

"There's too much music and it's too easy" isn't an interesting viewpoint

yes, it is

idk, i don't find it jading at all. there's *always* more to find, more wonders, incredible stuff you'd not even imagine could exist

rusho what were you saying then? asking how i make a living in the context of a discussion about content saturation lends itself directly to my conclusion, no?

'Interesting' implies that it's unique, challenging or un(der)explored IMO - too much music doesn't hit any of those marks.

Yeah, I disagree with you unperson, I do think recorded music has been devalued, but I don't think of it as a bad thing, entirely. Access is up which is great. Revenues now go straight to DSPs which is awful.

@ Jordan I've done this kind of thing a few times! 17-tuplets usually are the move, it doesn't take a lot of deviation to make the MIDI playback work. I did "Hwwambo" a few years back, that was a trip, I just wanted to see what the "rolling egg" rhythm looked like mathematically. I think it'd be an interesting educational exercise to create "new clicks" for drummers to practice to, instead of straight metronomical things.

I don't remember what song it was, but I noticed, a decade ago, on a song I liked, that the third beat (of four) always dropped 10bpm, to create this buoyancy. I wanted to recreate that feel on a recording. I made a click that reflected the 10bpm drop and tried to have my drummer play along to it. He hated that! We ended up tracking the whole thing straight (no click). I beat mapped it, snipped all the audio regions at the transient of beat four, and then moved everything to create that 10bpm dip, artificially. The result was great! A gorgeous gravity-defying swing, it sounded like playing jumprope with a hawser

rusho what were you saying then? asking how i make a living in the context of a discussion about content saturation lends itself directly to my conclusion, no?

― imago

for me the issue isn't content saturation - i feel like maybe we're talking at cross purposes here. i don't think there's "too much" content in that i'd rather see _less_ content. i just value people who... facilitate, curate, gatekeep, call it what you want. people who do that have often been scorned and now that it's all done an an amateur level, it's easy to see that as a victory for The People, and i don't. i mean i don't _miss_ it per se any more than i _miss_ coal mining, it's more like... what the fuck do we do now? i'm overwhelmed, overstimulated, overloaded. i have more music in my library than i can remember. every time i listen to a lot of songs it feels like i'm listening to it for the first time, because there's no room in my brain for it. i can't fit more than about 100,000 songs in my head. that's the limit. and beginner's mind is nice but what's also nice is being _able_ to construct narratives, to construct meaning, to be able to live on a continuum between past and future rather than this fragmented, dissociated, incoherent existence. that's what i hear in a lot of the music i listen to, a lot of the music you love, pain and confusion and _despair_. i mean yeah it's great that we all get to cry out in pain in our own unique ways, right? let's celebrate the diversity of it!

I think the main problem with 'too much music' is one of community. My non-musician friends who are not hardcore heads but love music have stopped keeping up, don't know where to find music, etc. But I think what they really miss is having an album that everyone in their friend group has in common, whether that was '90s radio rock & rap or an '00s/early '10s Pitchfork album that you would hear at everyone's party. And I get that. And online music communities help, but they're not hanging on Discords or message boards.

@ Jordan I've done this kind of thing a few times! 17-tuplets usually are the move, it doesn't take a lot of deviation to make the MIDI playback work. I did "Hwwambo" a few years back, that was a trip, I just wanted to see what the "rolling egg" rhythm looked like mathematically. I think it'd be an interesting educational exercise to create "new clicks" for drummers to practice to, instead of straight metronomical things.

I don't remember what song it was, but I noticed, a decade ago, on a song I liked, that the third beat (of four) always dropped 10bpm, to create this buoyancy. I wanted to recreate that feel on a recording. I made a click that reflected the 10bpm drop and tried to have my drummer play along to it. He hated that! We ended up tracking the whole thing straight (no click). I beat mapped it, snipped all the audio regions at the transient of beat four, and then moved everything to create that 10bpm dip, artificially. The result was great! A gorgeous gravity-defying swing, it sounded like playing jumprope with a hawser

Haha, see I still just think of this (visually in a DAW) as nudging the note to a non-discrete position before or after the beat line. These days I see that in my head even when I'm playing drums sometimes. Like, in that situation I would create my own 'click' track that way, turning off the quantization and moving samples or midi notes around. It probably would end up sounding the same (or extremely similar) as doing it with a crazy subdivision or floating master tempo, so whatever works for you!

i think that's true, one of my big problems has always been talking about my interests with other people, because my interests are niche and obscure enough that people don't know what i'm talking about most of the time

i'm not saying that as a hipster thing, i just, like, can't talk about fire-toolz with most people i know

Isn't losing touch with new music a part of 'getting old' that existed long before Napster or Spotify?

If anything, the ready availability of music has stemmed that tide for me - I don't have to try to make it to a record store to spend $20 on one album and hope it's good or choose the release from the genre/band I know I like so I'm not wasting money. ("New music" is an amorphous concept now, though - I don't really care what year it was released in, if it's inside of 5 years old and I haven't heard it I'm calling it new.)

I watch too many youtube music reaction videos, it's a problem I have. There are loads that are terrible, and they all choose the same fucking songs/artists to react to - otoh even some very well known music from as recently as 10 years back will be completely off their radar. Then there are a few - like about five - halfway decent ones, they go out of their way to find different choices (I can imagine the crowds of patreon supporters begging them to do "bulls on parade" or "time" or fucking "rich men north of richmond" so it must take some willpower) and - most importantly - they connect on a deeper emotional level with the music, explore it from different angles, are even open to exploring why they dislike it if that's their reaction. This is what I do not get from beato or fantano, from both I just get smug detachment, their analysis just to prove themselves as alpha dog critics.

I was looking for the Toadies "Possum Kingdom" video so I could momentarily relive 1996 and found that two of the original Toadies (bass and drums) have a reaction channel. I didn't watch any but it's cool that they're doing it. If Kim and Kelley Deal put up a reaction channel I would definitely like and subscribe.

started 2 Beato videos finished 1 - the Mills interview. the other one was a deconstruction of Kiss From a Rose. It wasn't exactly 'bad' but something felt off. My tolerance for YouTubers is so low that its 32 min length and the dry, well-filmed professionalism of the whole thing - halfway through he needs an answer to something so he *phones Seal* on facetime, as you do if you're Beato I guess? - just put me off. youtube hasn't got the message.

F@ntano can get fucked the bland ignorant bastard with the contemptuous reach.

"I watch too many youtube music reaction videos, it's a problem I have."

I never would have thought that "African American couple validate white indie rocker's nostalgic music tastes on video by saying things like *OMG, Weezer are fire!*" would be a successful business model but that's America for you. more power to them.

Ken Tamplin's are hilarious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=230dJXnnW1M

I've only watched one Beato video all the way through...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Mj4Nv_ip0

The Beatotudes

"take a walk on the wild side" as a classic rock slogan is still weird for me. i mean, yes, i know "Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs and the flesh machine" was used to promote Carnival Cruises. they just always act in those classic rock radio ads like "take a walk on the wild side" is about getting on your harley and going to sturges and it's kind of, uh, the opposite of that?

It’s like the far right parties in the UK/US taking songs like “killing in the name of” as anthems, completely oblivious what the actual song stands for.

Did you know that song is in Phrygian mode tho

Shades of John Philip Sousa

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/07/separated-by-more-than-a-century-two-musicians-share-a-complaint.html

https://i.postimg.cc/50PhkhgC/111726.jpg

my final thought on all this: stop treating music like sports.

sousa's portuguese and german heritage led him to the siren song of the tuba. that and his dad made him join the marine band when he was 13.

seriously though the death of music is so last on my list of things to worry about.

i do hope that AI and new tech makes music mutate into something unrecognizable because i'm so sick of hearing bad disco in the club scenes on sci-fi shows. people would be listening to nothing but sine waves by then i hope.

xpost bendy―
none of this advanced cynicism has anything to do with your post or that piece. this is just dumb and i really do want to see beato+fantano porn. at least that would be something new.

sure let's talk about john philip sousa but not walter benjamin lol

Kenny Aronoff is much maligned (maybe mostly for his time as touring dude with the silly glasses in the Smashing Pumpkins), however:

-He did a performance at the Jewish summer camp I went to as a kid and basically inspired me to play drums

-Later on he was giving lessons at a local music store for a day, and had me play a beat and called every snare hit I played as 'behind', 'ahead', 'on it'. It seemed like black magic as a high schooler but makes perfect sense in retrospect, also that it would be one of the most important things for someone like him.

(haven't watched the interview that's been forcibly popping up in my recommendations)

Looks like our guy is healing up from heart surgery

https://www.threads.net/@rickbeato1/post/C9nvFXkObcz/

This is the best music instruction video in existence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_8iD5xS1hI

was it doing odd meters? xpost

i enjoyed that piece bendy, idk much about sousa, thanks for posting

that article bringing up player piano rolls makes me wonder: are there revenue channels for midi sequences?

MIDI packs are definitely targeted at wannabe producers for ridiculous prices.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50m2Q7wPUFg

sample packs and midi packs seem to be a big part of how a lot of electronic musicians stay afloat

that unison beatdown -- haven't watched it all but wow, fascinating. Gotta be similar scams for every daydream career that can be done digitally.

In photography and video there are all the Make It Look Like Kodachrome products but those are at least legitimately useful and sometimes expand on the built in capabilities of Lightroom/etc..

"Why Shrek? (with Anthony Fantano and Vera Drew)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLkThpZqg4o

Congratulations, Youtube channel This Exists, I am now having to say "This Exists" about the videos you yourself are making. I really, really, really was not expecting that to be a thing. All I was trying to do was explain to people that Donald Duck was a Nazi. OK, he wasn't really a Nazi, it was all a bad dream, in reality he bombed Tokyo in the Doolittle Raid, but you know. It's a meme.

Rip on the guy all you (all) want, but I like that he goes from interviewing Kenny Aronoff to Tony Levin to Rick Rubin to Tori Amos. Some of these guys, like Rubin, are almost professional interview subjects, but someone like Levin or Amos, you just don't see many mainstream longform interviews with them.

And jumping back to Jordan:

(haven't watched the interview that's been forcibly popping up in my recommendations)

The Aronoff interview is really great. He seems exhausting as a person, but I gained a newfound respect for the guy and his work ethic/education. Insane to learn that back at Indiana he was being tested by playing violin pieces on vibes (iirc). It's also one of the rare interviews I've seen that addresses appearance (which matters, even if most musicians don't address it) and health and fitness (which also matters, especially if you are 71, like Kenny).

i like beatos long form interviews

Beato interviewing people who make boring music (and Tori Amos) is a very on brand.

I don't understand how you could look at the hundred or so people he has interviewed and conclude that
Tori Amos is the only one of them to not make boring music.

Probably because I’m just looking at the names recently mentioned in this thread, Rick.

Sorry I’m not taking the Bad Rick Interviews Even Worse Rick show seriously.

Fairplay. But Tony Levin has an amazing discography. I would be shocked if you didn't like a single record that he has been on.

Imagine how much more sense the world would make if this happened instead. pic.twitter.com/YKhUuZnW3y

— Benn Jordan (@bennjordan) October 19, 2024

This 90 minute Rick Wakeman interview slash autobiographical outpouring is fan-friggin’-tastic. The details about sessions alone are great!

Sorry I’m not taking the Bad Rick Interviews Worst Rick Of All show seriously.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 17 October 2024 23:55 (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

tbf i have this bookmarked to watch properly, it's surely long enough to dig in a bit past RB's poorly timed gurning and RW's trademark affable moaning into at least a little concrete music-talk

RE’s “affable moaning” doesn’t come in until the last few minutes. Good stuff beforehand.

Rubin is the worst Rick of all FWIW, I have no opinion of Wakeman

lol, the biggest dork move of all was Beato releasing a video some weeks back whose whole gist was him whining that he would never interview David Gilmour because legacy artists and their handlers at that level don't know his reach. Well, go figure, the whine fest worked! Looking forward to watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3OazxoPRK8

I'm curious if any of the other Rick Beato defenders in this thread took music lessons as youths. He has such music teacher energy to me. I get that he comes across as a dorky music know-it-all, but i happened to have spent a lot of time with dorky music know-it-alls growing up, so i find it kind of nostalgic.

I took music lessons as a kid *and* I take music lessons as an adult. While I never thought about, his music teacher energy is partly what makes him a good interviewer, imo. He listens, he's generally not judgmental, he's patient, he's enthusiastic. Those are all good characteristics of a music teacher. (And, for that matter, for a producer/engineer, as anyone who has spent time in a studio can attest.)

hah never realized it, but yes, he is very similar in personality to my former guitar teacher

The Wakeman interview is pretty good, lots of entertaining stories about his early studio sessions, a few bits of piano and Hammond organ playing (the latter is especially interesting and impressive), and only a few questions from Beato, mostly about studio techniques of the 60s and 70s. It falls off at the end when Beato asks for Wakeman's take on the music industry in 2024, but otherwise it's entertaining, and some of it is valuable oral history unlikely to be captured except in this kind of interview.

try and guess what song was featured in the very first episode of what makes this song great, no cheating and use spoiler tags. never in a million years would i have guessed. though it seems like he is a bit of a pop-punker now that i've been served up his top pop punk songs of the 90s video

he doesn't like the term "yacht rock". that's what i learned this week.

Funny it's often derisive names that are the ones that stick. See also: shoegaze, kraut rock.

see also Steve Miller's autobiography Non-Playing Motherfucker

Rick Meat Beato Manifesto

I imagine rick beato is so, so, so very much the type of guy that appears in Scott’s “things I didn’t say at the record store” thread.

Saw a dumb Rick Beato clip taking rockist shots at Taylor Swift for collaborating in an alleged manufactured simplistic way with Max Martin and later Jack Antonoff, as opposed to how geniuses the Beatles collaborated artistically with others . Beato wasn’t merely saying he liked Beatles better, but was insisting that Swift wasn’t trying to create music but was just trying to create product that sells to the masses. No mention of Beatles covering Motown or Brill Building pop, or of Swift writing many songs herself, or that songwriter / producer collaborations can be hits .

Fun/funny/bizarre to see Beato’s name on the new Swervedriver EP

I liked his recent discussion with Adam Franklin about the guitar on "Duel"

Ever since I heard ‘Raise’ I always thought they leaned closer to sonic youth than shoegaze. That video kinda confirms it.

I had no idea they were so into the alternate tunings

i always hoped he'd be able to get buzz from the melvins!

https://i.imgur.com/FDEZEq1.png

Saw a dumb Rick Beato clip taking rockist shots at Taylor Swift for collaborating in an alleged manufactured simplistic way with Max Martin and later Jack Antonoff, as opposed to how geniuses the Beatles collaborated artistically with others . Beato wasn’t merely saying he liked Beatles better, but was insisting that Swift wasn’t trying to create music but was just trying to create product that sells to the masses. No mention of Beatles covering Motown or Brill Building pop, or of Swift writing many songs herself, or that songwriter / producer collaborations can be hits .

I think I agree with you basically (for example the Beatles sought out a commercially successful name producer in Phil Spector), but there's a difference now where pop producers are always co-songwriters. Taylor has not written any of her hits by herself.

Yeah, plus that Rick Beato video isn't just saying that she's creating product for the masses. It's saying that the way her songs are put together is vastly different (read: less creative) than the way the Beatles put their songs together. Which I think is something well worth saying.

Wish this phoney Beatomania would bite the dust

he way her songs are put together is vastly different (read: less creative)

define "creative"

I do think it's a thing worth examining but you gotta consider the flip side which is that 'product for the masses' has always been the goal of pop music, even during periods where it was incredibly weird. I was reading recently about The Nazz and how Todd Rundgren filled their second album with all sorts of crazy studio effects and experimental arrangements not for artistic reasons but rather because you had to be freaky to sell records back then. I believe the Monkees expressed a similar sentiment. You could make the argument for the 90's too - of course a lot of cool weird shit was happening, songs like "One Week" and "Summer Girls" and "Intergalactic" were topping the charts.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFraoTGO07O/?igsh=MTkweWo3cjdsNTBtdg==

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXG8F4lV96g

Taylor has not written any of her hits by herself.

― encino morricone (majorairbro), 3

Not true, she started doing that from the start (Our Song, Love Story etc) and then ended up releasing an album without co-writers (Speak Now) .

Yeah I mean I thought she started out writing songs for other artists

Conceding that he has his name on some of my favorite albums of all time, has Rick Rubin done anything interesting in the last 20 years?

Looking at his wiki, lots of big records, but musically it looks like his last great act was listening to Yeezus and (famously) trimming it down by miles.

I think a lot of those records he did just a track or two.

ts: rick beato vs rick rubin

which stupid old cringey white guy prattles on most obnoxiously?

The Even Worse Rick Interviews Bad Rick show

Now is as good a time as any to tell people that Rick Rubin is a behind-the-scenes rightwinger who tries to recruit music industry folks to Q-anon type stuff and is who (according to Kanye) convinced Kanye to meet Candace Owens and endorse Trump.

He just looks like a hippie.

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) March 8, 2024

Conceding that he has his name on some of my favorite albums of all time, has Rick Rubin done anything interesting in the last 20 years?

― Josh in Chicago

He produced The Strokes - the new abnormal which might be the best produced album in their discography.

'The Adults Are Talking' and 'Bad Decisions’ in particular are the best they have ever sounded imho

Has it not been alleged that Rubin doesn't particularly do anything when he produced, like show up at the sessions

I'm not sure he's wildly different from Eno in that regard, tbh. He's a sounding board who delegates the more technical stuff to more qualified folks. But Eno is prone to prompts like "play like you floating in outer space and running out of oxygen" and Rubin seems to be stuck in "play like you are just four guys in a room again" mode.

Rubin has you do alternating ice bath and sauna sessions until your third eye opens and you can channel the Buckcherry that you used to be.

I do think that the old-school producer role has value and gets underrated these days - provide the right people and environment, be available to confidently provide opinions when asked in order to keep things moving, keep artists out of their own way.

The whole right wing thing is fucked up if true, all the more so because it's so not evident when you hear him talking about music and creativity and meditation or whatever on podcasts.

it's so not evident when you hear him talking about music and creativity and meditation or whatever on podcasts

i have no idea what rr's actual political proclivities are, but to me, the potential for batshittiness is very very evident when i hear him talk. he reeks of the left coast hippie wellness community, which is full of anti-vaxxers and related conspiracy theorists.

as a producer, it's pretty clear that whatever he does or doesn't do, it has worked for a whole lot of artists over the course of his career, so i give him full props for that.

S

Johnny cash’s American recordings is a particular bit of magic. Name another cash album you can sit through all in one sitting and come back to do all over again the next day. And it’s hardly “produced” at all!

I do t know shit about his production resume but I do get that creepy vibe from Rubin. Have a major soft spot for Beato and his goofy enthusiasm and I can almost follow most of his theory lessons.

[

Has it not been alleged that Rubin doesn't particularly do anything when he produced, like show up at the sessions

I'm not sure he's wildly different from Eno in that regard, tbh. He's a sounding board who delegates the more technical stuff to more qualified folks.

the impression i've always had is that eno is a lot more musically hands on though

There is a making of Death Magnetic documentary where you can really see how little Rick Rubin can be involved with a record while still getting a producer credit. Especially considering how much Bob Rock is involved in other Metallica recording session docs.

i have no idea what rr's actual political proclivities are, but to me, the potential for batshittiness is very very evident when i hear him talk. he reeks of the left coast hippie wellness community, which is full of anti-vaxxers and related conspiracy theorists.

as a producer, it's pretty clear that whatever he does or doesn't do, it has worked for a whole lot of artists over the course of his career, so i give him full props for that.

― fact checking cuz, viernes 28 de febrero de 2025 12:34 AM (six hours ago)

I don’t know much about him as a person tbh but his overall persona does remind me a lot to couple of pothead friends (who are Metallica and RHCP fans btw) who are generally very chill but have the worst takes ever. One of them is even a flat-earther. They seem to be really into conspiracy bullshit and are constantly fed right wing proganda without realizing the hipocrisy of some of the shit they parrot e.g. Epstein Files.

Not saying Rick Rubin is that kind of loonie but he fits the part.

Not true, she started doing that from the start (Our Song, Love Story etc) and then ended up releasing an album without co-writers (Speak Now) .

By hits I mean if you look at her most popular, say, 30-40 songs, none of those she wrote herself.

not the thread for this anymore but love story is one of her five biggest his, or so

(xp) In fact, she's had 32 Top 10 singles in the US, 7 of which are solo compositions.

I appreciate the confidence in stating something so easily proven wrong twice, with no reservations, but going forward I'd still recommend a different posting strategy.

I can’t believe it’s 2025 and “they don’t even write their own songs” is still a line of criticism someone’s trying to pull on this messageboard

OTM

Billy Strings interview was very cool. Such a humble open honest guy. Talked so much of his father's instilling the love of music and playing in him. Never seen a guitar picked like that. Genius.

the impression i've always had is that eno is a lot more musically hands on though

Eno's thing is weird to me, it's not so much that he produces as it is he just becomes part of the band, similar to what he did in Roxy Music where he wasn't really playing all the time but he'd do his thing here and there. but yes on some albums he produces I dont think he does much of anything, that first Devo album for instance, though weirdly he is credited with "vocals", anyone know what he actually sings on ?

probably backing vocals somewhere, he famously loves to do those. he apparently tried his usual thing and came up with a ton of keyboard parts but the band rejected most of his ideas

way off on a tangent: i often think about the various recollections of eno's collaboration with neil halstead for souvlaki. nobody can really agree on what his actual input on "sing" was besides engineering the recording lol.

AC/DC was not impressed with Rubin. I guess he was never around.

Devo famously said that Eno did next to nothing on that one album. In terms of actual contributions to other projects, yeah, he sings, co-writes and arranges, but he also messes with recordings and mixes in the studio, plus adds effects and keyboards, etc. For instance, "With or Without You" has a little repeating Eno keyboard part that runs throughout the song. I always thought was a guitar, but it's pretty much unplayable on guitar, or at least wildly impractical.

Eno said Devo wouldn't let him do anything and wanted the record to be as close to their demoes as possible. He said Jerry Casale was constantly hovering over his shoulder saying, "What are you doing there?"

I think he very quickly went off Devo after that.

nobody can really agree on what his actual input on "sing" was besides engineering the recording lol.

the version i'm familiar with is the one where he went into a studio with halstead and recorded a lot of halstead's guitar playing which he heavily processed to produce some ambience which the band used as the basis for "sing".

idk if he plays the keyboard line in the foreground though, it sounds like the sort of thing he might play and he's credited with "keyboards and treatments" on both "sing" and "here she comes now" but i have no idea what he did on "here she comes now"

For some reason* I watched an Avett Brothers documentary where Rubin sits in a lotus pose and talks one of the brothers through a divorce.

* = the reason being that I almost always consume music documentaries, even if I have no interest in the music or musicians involved. I could not possibly care less about Rick Rubin or Sad Scruffy Avett Brother #1 or Sad Scruffy Avett Brother #2. There are two of them, right? I also watched a documentary about the Sad Scruffy Kings of Leon brothers and I give even less of a shit about them, because they don't also have banjos.

Eno said Devo wouldn't let him do anything and wanted the record to be as close to their demoes as possible. He said Jerry Casale was constantly hovering over his shoulder saying, "What are you doing there?"

I think he very quickly went off Devo after that.

― Please play Lou Reed's irritating guitar sounds (Tom D.)

i wouldn't say he went _off_ DEVO, i'd say they just didn't click. devo were doing their first album and they had a very specific idea of how they wanted to sound, and eno actually did a really good job producing that record. to me that's what makes him a great producer, there was a lot of cool stuff he _wanted_ to do and the band were just like, no, this is how we want it to sound, and he helped them sound that way. and after that he didn't work with him again because that wasn't what he was interested in. what he was interested in was more the stuff that he wound up doing with talking heads. someone from devo, i think it might be jerry, has said yeah, i wish we could have done more with him, he had some really cool and interesting ideas but they had a pretty good idea, having been around for like five or six years at that point, of what they wanted to sound like. if you compare the eno-produced songs to "come back jonee", "come back jonee" doesn't sound _bad_ but it just doesn't represent devo's sound as well, to me, as eno's stuff does. same way, if you hear talking heads 77, they're great songs, but the production doesn't do them any favors. so having had that experience with their first album, when eno came in for "more songs about buildings and food", talking heads were more receptive to the ideas he had. that's my take.

also god rick rubin's vibe is totally fucking creepy. when it comes to the "old white dudes with beards" thing, he gives way more of a charles manson vibe than a robert wyatt vibe. plus he thought raging slab's _black belt in boogie_ was crap and wouldn't release it, so obviously his taste is shit.

I appreciate the confidence in stating something so easily proven wrong twice, with no reservations, but going forward I'd still recommend a different posting strategy.

I'm going by play counts on Spotify to determine her most popular songs:

https://kworb.net/spotify/artist/06HL4z0CvFAxyc27GXpf02_songs.html

You know what? Sorry. I did exaggerate when I said her 30/40 most popular songs are written with others. So here's a different strategy: I looked at a Spotify playlist that has 40 songs that were top 10s at least in the hot 100, and I checked the writing credits for each, which gave me a list of 11 solo compositions.

Correct me if I'm wrong: of the 15 most-streamed songs in the above list, her only solo composition is Lover (#5)? Love Story is #16 on this list. Vigilante Shit and Back to December are #56 and #60 respectively. The rest are #111 and down. So two of her top 50 songs, when ranked in popularity via Spotify, are solo compositions. So as far as I can tell, she had co-writers on her 15 most popular songs, and she had co-writers on 48 of her 50 most popular songs?

BTW, I never expressed a view that an artist is less-than because they don't write their own songs.

** her 15 most popular songs, aside from Lover.

Well we've certainly come a long way from 'she has not written any of her hits herself' - not true, many of her hits are written by herself, to 'none of her 30-40 most popular songs' - not true either - to 'only one of her top 15 on spotify is a solo composition'. So whatever your original point is, it's pretty watered out. She's a songwriter in the traditional sense who started out writing songs by herself on a guitar and releasing them as singles and album tracks, paired with other songs with usually only one co-writer.

If the point is that the modern producer of highly produced pop songs is almost by default credited as a co-songwriter, then that's true enough, which is why you something like Taylor's Speak Now, an album without any co-writing credits, is so rare in mainstream pop, and which she probably won't repeat while travelling in synth or electro pop sounds, because those are inevitably tied to a strong producer voice. But it's pretty easy to identify a pop singer-songwriter, like Taylor or Olivia Rodrigo, from songwriting credits alone, even with a producer who gets credit - because the producer will be the only credited co-writer, unlike a pop singer who's not primarily a songwriter, and may be credited here and there, but together with songwriting teams, topline writers, etc.

https://i.imgur.com/EWDK6GY.png

a secondary point (maybe worth raising but extremely hard to dig into within any certainity) is that song-writing and album-making credits are less far from the hollywood system of agreed recompense as signalled on-screen than they are an index of "authentic proportion of creative input" (which will anyway always be highly contested post-release, hence the need for a very off-page pre-work contractual discussion). credits are a delivery system for who is will be paid what and how (above the line, below the line, other), emerging from engagement between hired artisans often manifesting as brands (term not derogatory: swift very clearly "thinks like brand" and e.g. antonoff functions as a brand within this particular ecology)

(scott walker bringing evan parker into climate of hunter had a branding function: scott decoupling himself from his past, parker signalling that yes he *would* play on the vic reeves alb)

way back in the mists of ilx time i used to whang on a bit abt the "julia lennon theory of who's in the band": if george martin is the fifth beatle, lennon's late mom is like the seventh or whatever -- bcz her contant presence in his mind at all stages of composition and performance is a key element in how the music emerged. absent consideration of such elements (non-fanciful but unlikely to be raised in the credit negotiations except by weirdos) (me) -- our model for the geometries of creative input is always just simplified conventions designed to produce a working agreement going forward

creative input is never not collective but it also always passes through an intricate and generally invisible machinery, practical but also financial and legal -- the credits are a palimpsest of the design of this machinery

(yes i shd go on rick beato's youtube and set this out, he would straight away see what i mean and start to think more clearly abt music old and new) (i must watch the rick wakeman interview to see how much of this angle gets discussed)

post probably easier to follow if you substitute "closer to" for "less far from", my mind is drawn towards double negatives, yes i am the hegel of ilx (this is derogatory)

not true, many of her hits are written by herself

I guess I disagree with "many"

and we're back

Is 4 out of 100 many? I'm seriously asking.

Depends how you define "hits" perhaps.

ALmost all her album tracks hit the top 15 of Spotify on release. Even back in the Speak Now days, with less streaming '11 of the standard edition's 14 tracks charted on the Billboard Hot 100' - these are all hits.

So your position is that Taylor Swift has hundreds of hit songs?

Yes

But also 32 top 10 singles, 7 of which are solo compositions, that also counts as 'many'. 7 top 10 hits written by herself.

Let's move on.

Look I might not be a fan but I hope she wins a Grammy someday

to be fair to wakeman (and i guess beato) his tales abt life as a very busy very young session musician were p interesting, including the digression via harpichord lief into owning horses and the queen mum lol, he always gave excellent anecdote, which is why rock hacks loved him

as for discussion of music? well he played instead. his chops are in p good form considering a life well-oiled (audibly better than they sometimes were on tour in much of the late 70s). beato stood open-mouthed with startled joyful amazement as RW whirled thru his usual narrow shtick: he is of course at his best when very tightly directed and produced = steered away from his little bag of fleet-fingered devices

when he wasn't insisting none of the others in yes (bruford possibly excepted) ever listened to anyone but themselves he was enthusing abt the yes process -- beato shd have stopped him here and said "well which is it?" -- but tbh RW was visibly tiring by this point, not explaining this process well anyway except by launching into fragmentary playback. a bit sad to see 😔 im a hater but this is evidently an amiable, biddable, talented guy (whose ideas about music suck)

so the jimmy thomas session RW discusses at such entertaining length did not (as far as i can tell) ever emerge as an actual release? in another version of the anecdote — yes he’s of course told it before, that’s the rick wakeman guarantee! — he says that he will “never forget” that it was called “the running kind”. assuming he HASN’T got the title wrong, this track is not to be found under jimmy’s name on discogs. he had mid-60s releases on Mirkwood (an LA label) but released no solo LP before 1973's ABYSS, while his minor northern soul classic “the beautiful night” (1969) is parlophone, which seems to fit, except it’s self-produced by thomas not denny cordell (i believe — meaning i read on wikipedia — that thomas was actually on p good terms w/cordell and tony visconti bcz they were happy to teach him the wiles of the producer?)

nor is it listed on among the sessions acknowledged on rick’s own website — almost none of the 60s sides at issue are in fact (though of course the research and fact-checking are tough as he wouldn’t have been credited for most of them — teenage session musician! — and he admits to poor memory in this area (a lot of sessions a long time ago)

which is not to say the session never happened! tbh this isn’t the kind of imagination rick has: he’s a workhorse of a tale-spinner, which is to say a tale simplifier, but most of the detail here is surely solid (plus visconti’s still around to back it up if someone wants to ask him lol)

in conclusion: the story is good at setting up rick’s own trajectory (from know-nothing doofus at his first session to unstoppable whizzkid veteran of 2000 sessions), and to humblebrag abt cordell exclaiming how RW's unorthodox (presumably quasi-classical?) style will get him lots of session work! a more spiteful reader than me might imagine jimmy thomas listening back and saying “wait this white-boy piano fkn sucks” and refused to release the cut despite the sunk cost — but it’s annoying we can’t play the song to check what was going on back then

lol MIRWOOD not mirkwood

as a producer, it's pretty clear that whatever he does or doesn't do, it has worked for a whole lot of artists over the course of his career, so i give him full props for that.

There are external factors to consider, like the fact that (for the last 30 years or so) Rubin working on your record has meant the entire industry is gonna fall all over itself to get behind that record and push the fuck out of it to press, radio, etc. His involvement is a major biz-side co-sign.

Especially if he sits in a lotus position with bare feet and says "I hear you, man."

a meeting of the minds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ2O_LPcPu8