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

The following is a conversation with Rick Biano, legendary music educator, interviewer, producer, songwriter, and a true multi-instrument musician playing guitar, bass, cello, and piano. Rick, with his incredible YouTube channel, celebrates great musicians and musical ideas and helps millions of people, including me, fall in love with great music all over again. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor, check them out in the description or at lexfreedman.com/sponsors. It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got up live desk for my favorite office desk, better help for mental health, element for electrolytes, fin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and our friend, Proplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration, the number of things that Proplexity ships at the rate of ships is freaking incredible. Choose wisely, my friends. 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That's fin.ai/lex. This episode, finally, is brought to you by Shopify. A platform designed for anywhere with a great looking online store. Shopify's CO that I will talk about Toby is now going wild programming. His GitHub is on fire. He's obviously building a lot of cool stuff. It is always really inspiring and I think really important for the engineers at the company to see that the leadership is building. Leadership is down ground level, understanding the state of the art technologies that are involved in engineering. The product, in this case of Shopify, but also just products in general. How to build, I think, a builder is what makes for a great leader of other builders. I'm always a fan of following along of all the incredible engineering that Shopify's doing behind the scenes to deliver all the products that they're delivering. 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What's an early guitar solo that you remember you connected to spiritually musically where you're like, wow, there's magic in this. Well, the first solo that I learned was Hey Joe. It was actually a good beginner song. You know, when I first started playing the guitar, because it has pretty simple chords, right? So it's like e, c, g, d, a. And I learned the solo, and I figured out this like, oh, it's this pent up. tonic scale. You might have a pentatonic scale. I didn't know that's what it was called, but learn this thing. And it's like, whoa, he's just in this one shape here. Now, there was no, you couldn't go look anything up. You just, if you could figure out the notes, you noticed that there was a little pattern to it. And then I, I got so obsessed with it. And I showed my younger brother, John, who started playing guitar right at the same time I did. So I was 14. He was 11. And I would play rhythm for him for five minutes. Well, he would solo over Hey, Joe. And then as soon as I'd start soloing, he'd throw the guitar down, then we get in the fight. And so my mom eventually was like, what's going on here? And I was like, John won't play rhythm. John won't play rhythm for me. She's like, okay, I'll play rhythm for you. What are the chords? And I was like, okay, it's like E that C G D A. And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play hashtag parenting. When I look back on it now, my mom's been gone for 10 years now. When I look back on it, it's like, my God, my parents were so cool. We should mention that Hey, Joe and Hendrix in general is kind of known for the rhythm, not being simple rhythm, just the chords that you mentioned. That's what you do with those chords. It's almost improvisation in the rhythm side. He did all his really cool chord fragments, riffs, and things like that. That's just part of his, that's the Hendrix style. What do you think? I mean, many people put Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time. What do you think is part of that? You know, I make lists. You do. If you somehow don't know who Rick Beato is, go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent interviews with musicians, watch your breakdown analysis of different songs and watch your top 20 lists where you're very opinionated, sometimes very openly critical about certain kinds of songs. It's fun. Opinions are fun. But they do change Lex from day to day. Yeah, exactly. But anytime I do a list, if I do 20, I like to do 20 because that gives me some leeway to throw in. I have to throw in something that is so weird that people, you know, something that a lot of people won't know just to have it on there. So I can at least introduce a part, you know, I'll put somebody like Alan Holtzver who's a famous fusion guitar player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something. There's just some oddball solo in there just so that people as they're listening down to the list will get exposed to something they would not necessarily get exposed to. Yeah, a lot of variety. But Hendrix, did you show up here today right? Try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there. I just'm getting that vibe right now. No, I'm not. But I don't want him to say greatest, you know, you can say, well, there are people that inspire Jimmy Hendrix, Charlie Christian, older guitar players. Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt were the first two really big and probably in Andrei Sagovia were three of the giants of the 20th century as far as guitar influences for most of the players that were to follow. So here going to proplex the Django Reinhardt was of course a jazz guitarist and composer active mainly in France and as well as a guard as one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history. So Django was, well, there's a huge movement right now, Gypsy Jazz movement as they call it, that is kind of built around the style of music that he played back in the early 20th century. One of the things about Django is that he was in a fire and he had two of his third and fourth fingers. So his ring finger and pinky were essentially melted together. He had no use of them, although he could use them while he was courting. But a lot of these incredibly fast lines, he's just playing with two fingers and it's amazing. What is that? So that's Gypsy Jazz. That's Gypsy Jazz, yeah. Him, Stefan Grappelli is a violinist that played with him a lot. How much of this is improvisation? Everything he's doing there is improvised. It feels so free. Yeah. And fun like swing and then at least you had pre-Bbub. So Bbub was the kind of jazz that was also influential on you and your own live journey. And it's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz. I was very influential on the music that followed. So what was Bbub? Well, after the big bands were happening from the 20s through the 40s, small people would go out and play in small groups that they would tour with. And Charlie Parker, who's really one of the main figures of early Bbub, really developed the language of it. Usually the music that they're playing over are standard chord progressions that they would use as vehicles to improvise over. A lot of them were ABA form. And Charlie Parker created this language of improvisation that was far more sophisticated than the swing players of the big band era. You know, think of people like Benny Goodman of that era. They would have really fast tempo songs, angular lines, chromaticism, things like that, chromatic notes. Chromatic notes are just notes next to each other. Next to each other's support. I like to think of as connecting notes. Connecting. You're putting in more notes than are supposed to be there and so doing creating some interesting texture. Yeah. So that is one of the most difficult styles to master. Because all these things are a language. Yeah. Blues playing. They're all just languages, right? Just like you'd learn any type of language. My dad loved Bbub. Now, when I was a little kid and he's listening to these Bbub records, whether it's Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie or Oscar Peterson, Joe Pass, great jazz guitar player, I'm just here in this stuff. I don't know any different. My dad was not a musician, but for some reason, he liked incredibly sophisticated music that was very technical and I just heard it and just was like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. And not realizing that it was developing my ear because I really, Bbub is one of the hardest to improvise in that style, in that language of Bbub. It's very difficult to do. And hearing it as a kid is one of the things that I think enables you, just like languages, enables you to learn it as opposed to somebody that's never been exposed to it and tries to learn it as a teenager. So I think it's very similar to learning languages, which kind of is like my theory on perfect pitch that every child is born with perfect pitch and they start to lose the ability around nine months when people become culturally bound listeners when babies do. They start out as citizens of the world. You know, they can, they have the phone, the neural pathways to hear the sounds, the phonemes of all 6,500 languages spoken on Earth. But then around nine months, they begin to lose that ability and they, when they become these culturally bound listeners, there's a great YouTube video with this woman, Patricia Cool. She's a language researcher. And I watched this, the linguistic genius of babies. I saw this in 2010, this lecture that she did, like a TED Talk. And she talks about this, the kids, they did an experiment. They exposed kids to Mandarin three times a week for 25 minute sessions, just a person speaking Mandarin to these babies. And they were able to recognize the sounds, the phonemes of that language even later on. And when I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch, I thought, why does Dylan have perfect pitch? But no one in my family had ever had perfect pitch. And I thought, well, it must be because of the things I exposed to him prenatally. And then in the first nine months of his life, because it's the only way I could explain it. We're going to return to Joe Paz. We got to go to Dylan. You mentioned Dylan. I guess it's in part one of the origin stories of you putting out videos into the world is the early videos you did with Dylan set of videos on his perfect pitch. And for people who don't know, maybe you can speak to what perfect pitch means. It's a ability to identify any note without a reference tone. So you can play, it doesn't matter how quickly they are that they can perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately identify it. Or a collection of notes. And taking a tangent upon a tangent, you also have a course on ear training. Yes, but my course is for relative pitch, not to be confused with perfect pitch. Is it fair to say that relative pitch as far as the thing you would learn is more useful for musicians? Yes, yes. Can you explain the difference between the two? Relative pitch is basically learning how to identify pitches relative to a stated tonic or something that you've heard or just relative to each other. If you hear a note and then you hear another note after it, you can recognize, let's say it's a minor third interval. So if you're on the note A, the next note would be C. So once you're given a reference note, you can use relative pitch to identify the relative nature from one pitch to another. And of course, intervals make up scales and intervals make up cores. And so that if you develop a change degree relative pitch, you can understand, you can hear the music better. Yes. So what does it take? Because we're taking attention, attention. What's what does it take to train your ear? What's a TLDR in the course before people go out and sign up? It just practice basically. You start with intervals. Typically with small intervals, like minor second, major second, so minor second and behalf step, major second and behold step. Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together? Both. So played separately, it's called melodic intervals, right? Like a melody. And harmonic intervals are played like a harmony together. So you have to be able to identify them both, both ways. With an early journey, like we'll give people a preview of what they should, like what does that look like? What does what does practice look like? Well, my course, it will play you an interval, and then you identify it by clicking on whether it's, you know, major third or minor third or major six or minor six or perfect fifth or tri-tone, whatever it is. And it will teach you gradually over time how to recognize all the intervals. So you listen to a melodic interval or a melodic interval. How quickly does the ear in the various age groups that we humans are in? How quickly does the ear learn the different intervals? Is it a week, two weeks, a month, two months, five years? I think you do it pretty quickly. Within, you know, if you practice within a couple months, you can, you can really make a lot of progress on it if you practice daily. What benefit does it have to, to you as a musician in general? Well, it's great. If you want to hear a chord progression, if you're trying to figure out a song, and you can say, Oh, it's going from the six minor chord to the four major to the five major to the one major, you can just identify it immediately. And then you figure out what the first chord is, then you know what the rest of the chords are, because they're in relation to whatever that first chord is. And for learning solos, for example, or learning melodies, being able to sound something out. Not do you recommend people couple that with music theory, in terms of education, the education journey. They have to be taught together because these terms are really music theory, right? Those intervals, major second, minor second, major third, minor third, perfect fourth. So as you're doing that, and then you, once you learn the intervals, the twelve intervals in an octave, and you learn them both melodically and harmonically, so played together and separate, then you learn chords. And so then you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended chords, things like that. Well, you're basically learning music theory at the same time with that, because learning music theory is just the name of things in music. So there's the sound of things, there's the name of things, and then there's the haptic, like playing the thing, probably. So playing chords, playing scales, you have, I believe, a course on scales and on chords. Yeah. Okay. Since we're doing the tangent, let's go. How do you recommend people, there's a bunch of people listening to this that are curious about how they can start and playing guitar, maybe you're playing piano, maybe playing other instruments, although guitar, of course, is the greatest instrument of all time. What are the early steps of that journey? What do you recommend people do in general? Well, if you're a beginner, getting a good beginner guitar course and learning, first of all, the open chords in first position, a lot of songs can be played that way, a lot of old songs can be played that way, and maybe not new modern songs necessarily. So learning a few chords and with a night towards maybe playing a song. Yeah. With a night towards you learn, you learn the chord shapes and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing for learning a guitar is actually how to position your fingers so that you don't mute strings that you don't want to mute. That's the hardest thing for people to do, basically, is to get their fingers arched to where they, if you're playing a C major chord, your index fingers on the first fret of the B string, you have to have that open E string ringing there. And it's hard for people to make those micro, micro adjustments. You take it for granted, like you've been playing guitar for, I don't know how many years forever, right? And you don't even think about stuff like that when you're playing a guitar solo, every little thing that you do if you're playing your comfortably numb guitar solo, you have to out of mid-air strike the string that your fingers on to play the note. And these are all fine adjustments that you're doing. I'm just a hobbyist for creation player, but it, wow, you're taking me all the way back. You're right. It's the haptic, the physical aspect of it is really tricky. Comfortly numb is a good example. But if you do lead, you have to get a super clean sound. Now that's both when you're playing fast, you want it to be super precise. But when you play slow, when you have one note and you're holding it and you're bending it, it better be really clean. For that, I guess you have to really place the finger in the right place, plus there's the, well, there's the calluses, so it doesn't hurt. And then the positioning of the string on the curvature of the finger, where does it fall? I come up to you, bend the finger. You have to have enough of flesh on it to actually raise the string in pitch. Otherwise it, yeah, because you're lifting it with part of a flesh. And of course, you have to decide, depends how low CD you are. Do you want to be like the perfect, the proper musician? Or do you want to do a Hendrix? So the thumb over the top, way over the top, yes. And so like you, if you have a fretboard here, I think the more like classical guitarists, the very proper, perfect, a perpendicular alignment of the finger tips to the fretboard versus like Hendrix is like, fuck it. You nerds. I'm going to do it with the messiness. It's part of the magic. Of course, like BB King is also kind of messy looking in terms of his positioning of the fingers, but his tone is incredibly clean. Yeah, super clean. So like that teaches you that maybe any position can converge towards a super clean tone. You just have to figure it out. I think a lot of it has to do with how they wear their guitars. If you wear your guitar low, if you're Hendrix and you're wearing your guitar, that's true. If you're wearing it lower, lower, then you so you can't get your fingers on top of it like that. And the thumb acts as a way to mute the lower strings from ringing if you're playing through a loud amplifier. So there's so many other micro adjustments when you're playing leads because you have to kind of mute the other strings that are so they don't ring out. If you're playing the first note and comfortably numb in the solo at the end and you're at the ninth fret of the G string and you bend that, if you bend that G string and you accidentally hit the B string under it, you don't want that ringing. So you have to kind of angle your index finger so to mute that. So all these micro adjustments that you don't even think about, I mean, you're not thinking about that likes when you're playing it. You've done it so many times that these things are just part of your of your brain. That's why this is such a great brain developer for kids to learn instruments. And of course, you have to solve that puzzle. It must be really frustrating in the beginning, like holding a cord. Yes. Like all of them. It hurts too, right? It does. You know, acoustic guitar. After that long, though, for like a week, a couple, yeah, couple weeks, couple. I don't want to discourage anyone. You know, it's actually pretty easy to learn basic stuff. Right. But the pain is temporary, I guess, is the point of driving. It is. So what else? So the physical component, play a few chords. What is the journey continue if you're learning guitar? Well, then it's like if you play electric guitar, then you get into single note playing and stuff like that. That's where it gets to me where it gets really fun. You know, you have single note playing that with riffs, if you think of back in black, right? That has a riff embedded in the actual melody or many songs that have riffs, the Hendrick stuff that has cordal riffs. And you're moving up the neck and involving all the fingers and things like that. So there's, it really depends on what you want to, what styles you want to play. So you're thinking about song learning, so different components of song learning. So riffs and songs, lead and songs. And then you have finger picking. If you have stairway to have in songs like that, how about wanting to learn that then involves finger picking because that you have to isolate certain notes of the chord and play two together, you know, and multiple times. There's a few crossroads. You get to select things. So I guess you're speaking to the fact there's the, if you're ready, there's a right hand, you can use your fingers or you can use a pick. Correct. That's the choice you make. And sometimes you use both. Because in stairway to heaven, you're using the fingers at the beginning or fingers and fingers. pick, hybrid, they call it hybrid picking. And then later on, you're using the pick, the flat pick, the picking patterns on the music theory front. Do you recommend people learn scales and chords and like theory of it, later on, I would say, I wouldn't say necessarily right, right off the bat. I think, I think learning songs is the, is the first thing that you should do because that you want to keep people motivated. So you get them to like fall in love with music and playing. All right. And that takes a couple months, three months, depends on how motivated they're. So you recommend practicing what every day, every day. My son Dylan, when he started learning the tariff a couple of years ago, I said, it's better to practice 10 minutes a day, seven days a week than to practice one day for an hour, which is roughly the same amount of time. Yeah. But it usually turns into something longer. But otherwise, like if you're busy life, you know, taking a day off, that day turns into a week and then a week turns into a month and all of a sudden, you haven't touched the instrument for months, which is why I'd leave my guitar on a stand all the time so that if I walk by it, I'm like, okay, I'll just pick it up for a second. And then the second turns into 10 minutes and an hour, two hours. All right. We got to talk about this Dylan video. So this might be one of the earliest. That's the first one. That's the first video on the channel. It was it was actually before the channel because this actually blew up on Facebook. And then I put it on YouTube after. So if it's okay. Yeah. Okay, Dylan, we're going to do the hardest year training test of all time. Are you ready? Wait. Now, I just have a quick backstory on this. I made this for my friend Shane's wife who wanted to see, because Shane was a friend that I was producing. And he was there and Dylan had come down the day in the day. And I said, Oh, check this out. And I played this stuff. He's like, that's amazing. Can you make a video so I can show my wife? And I was on the way to a school board meeting because I was on the school board at Dylan's school. And I said, Hey, Dylan, come downstairs. I want to make this video take one minute. Just do to do this thing for my friend Shane. And he's like, I don't want to. And I said, come on. So take one minute. I don't want to. So I said to my wife, I'm like, need it? Would you tell Dylan to come downstairs? I want to do this video. Take one minute. She's like, Dylan, go downstairs. And he had he has a mouth full of candy there because he was eating candy. So if you look at him, he's he's he's literally has a mouth full of candy. Well, he's doing this. And we should say on Facebook, I want quite viral. Yeah. Look at it. I don't know. 80 million views. I'm like, it had like 250,000 comments, something like that. Insane. How old is Dylan here? He's eight. Eight years old. Yeah. Can you actually give some more backstory about like how you discover that Dylan has perfect pitch? So when Dylan was about two, he I was doing a FaceTime with my brother, John. And and I was, I was like, check this out, John. And I played the stone in love. Neil shones solo from journey. And I was like, check this out and Dylan would sing along. And and my son, my brother, John was like, wow, Dylan can sing all the notes. And I was like, yeah. And then I played black dog Zeppelin and Dylan would sing that. And so Dylan's got a good ear. And then John and I were like, well, we have good ears too. So this is maybe we could have done that. We were that age. So a couple of years goes by. Well, he was about three and a half. And I'm in the car. I was like, Dylan, sing the Star Wars theme. And he sings it. And I'm like, that's in the right key. And I check. I play it on my phone. And I was like, oh my gosh. Then I ask him, sing the Superman theme because we had been listening to John Williams sound tracks the week before. And he sings that. And that was in the right key. And I ask him another song. So I turned the car around and I go back to the studio. I go to the piano. I hit the note B flat. And Dylan says Star Wars. Star Wars starts on a big B flat major chord. But it's the note B flat is the main one that you hear. And then I played the no G and he goes Superman. And that's the first note in the trumpet part of the Superman theme. And then I realized that he had perfect pitch. And then in five minutes, I taught him the name of the 12 notes, which he already knew, but he just didn't know the names. Also, he's just associated the names to the thing he knows. What do you think is this in his mind? Because it's not just individual notes. He can like hear everything. Yeah. What is that? He doesn't see colors. He just says every note sounds completely different. Wow. Like you said, maybe it's a language thing. Yeah. Is there really is a he just learned the language? Yeah, the language is like, it's like perfect. It's like native music fluency if you think of it like that. So let's listen to some of this around. Here we go. As fast you can, we're going to start with single notes. And we're going to do some intervals then chords. Okay. Here we go. Okay. Good. Two notes at once. Here we go. See what? Great. How about this? Great. What about this? This is incredible. See what? And then how about this? He's annoyed. He's annoyed. The part of this, when I play these next chords, that's really I think why the video went so viral. The next part of this where I play these super complex poly chords. Okay. I'm going to do some poly chords for you. These are really going to be hard. You ready? What's this? Okay. Sing a B flat. Very good. What's this chord? Great. Sing enough sharp. Excellent. What's this chord? Great. What's this chord? He had nine over F major. So I had to look at my hand to make sure that that's what it was because they're all in inversions. So I think the reason that this went so viral is that the more that someone knew about music, the more that they shared the video, because these poly chords, so the people that were the best musicians were that would look at it. I was like, oh my God. You know, he's see augmented over D flat augmented. And the second chord was A flat major over A major, but they were both in inversion, right? So it was like a first inversion A flat major chord, first inversion A major chord. And then a minor over D flat major and then E add nine over F major. And for an eight year, I mean, for anyone, plus they're all close voiced. They're all just right next to each other. It's not like, you know, where you can hear them clear. It's all in the mid range of the piano. So you have to really listen and you have to die. He has to dissect each one. Like what are the notes being played there? And what is like, what's the theory? Because he's actually using music theory to dissect them. It must be in his brain, those components of the chords all sound different, like very clearly different. Yes. It's truly incredible. The human mind is incredible. And so you're saying, like some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life. I did a thing where I played what I call high information music. High information music would be Bach, well-tempered clavier, fugues, anything Bach. And I would play the well-tempered clavier. And I would play, I have a friend who Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard. It's either Iden Essen. And I would play Iden's improvisations for Dylan. It had very sophisticated harmony and linear things in it. And Keith Jarrett and mainly jazz, classical and modern classical music. And then we would play, listen to rock music once he was born. I'm talking on my wife's stomach before Dylan was born, starting at 15 weeks for 30 minutes a night. And then when Dylan was born, I would sit with him for an hour every morning and listen to music. And I would look at him. In order for them to hear these phonemes apparently and develop this language or get the language as acquisition has to involve the social brain. So when kids look at you, when babies looking at you, they're looking at your mouth and they're getting social cues from that. And this is also another component of saying this is where this word stops or starts and stops. These are how the phonemes are separated from one another. These are how they're connected. So I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch. And then around nine months, they begin to lose it. If you don't engage their social brain, making these pitches, I never played pitches for Dylan. I said, this is a C, this is a B flat, this is a G, I just played complex, high information music form and played with them. And it applies maybe even more generally to high information language. Yes. And it starts before they're born. I think I saw some of these incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience and your biology, the psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is, in the mother's stomach, you're listening to the mother speak. Yes. That's right. That's how, on the language side, you're picking up the language already. That's right. And you're picking up the musical language, so native music fluency, you could call it. So if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some people have jazz, you have a pretty good chance. Much better chance. Okay. All right. As we unwind, our way back, Joe Pass and B-Bob, you were funny enough talking about what is B-Bob jazz and people like Joe Pass and in your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and sophisticated music. But it wasn't a musician. It wasn't a musician. However, my I have six siblings and we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz. We just took it for granted at that time. Yeah, just take it for granted. And my dad passed away in 2004 and we never really talked about that, but he and I used to listen to music together all the time. But we put on a record, I sit on one side of the room, he'd sit on the other and not say a word, listen to the whole side A, I go flip it over, listen to the side B, never say a word and then get up and go do stuff. We did that all the time. And so the first time you impressed your dad was with the Joe Pass, all right? Yeah. And by the way, we have to go to this song because people must have forgot because people just think you're like a good communicator or something. They don't realize how good you are at guitar, how good you are. Actually, a lot of instruments, but guitar, especially in this video, the greatest guitar solo period. Can you give me some context for this particular intricate, complicated solo? Who's Joe Pass? Joe Pass was a guitarist. He lived from 1929 to 1994 and he was one of the greatest bebop players and solo guitar players. So he made a record that this is off of called Virtuoso in 1973 that my dad gave me for Christmas when I was in 10th grade and he said, and this is not like my dad. My dad worked for the railroad, he was very, you know, few words spoken or in 1919, he said, "If you ever learn to play guitar like this, you've accomplished something with your life." And I was like, "What?" So this record state was unopened until about March after Christmas and one day I was like, "Okay, I'll open it up and I put it on. I start listening to it." And I was like, "Whoa, this is kind of cool." And so I said, "I think I can figure out some of this stuff." So I figured out this thing by ear, just by ear. I didn't know any of the chords or anything. If you can listen to a little bit here. If you go back to that brother, brother, to brother, Geno Vinelli thing with Carlos Rios playing, that stuff is incredibly hard. This? I'm starting. I don't know any of these chords. I don't even know what that chord is. But I figured out, I just, and it's weird. I mean, look at that weird bar. So you were just finding, like, playing what I was putting your fingers in the various positions? Right. Trying every combination of fingers. I'd never played that chord. It's a weird-looking chord. Yeah. But I kept, I moved my fingers around till I heard toward sounding like, "Oh, that's it. Definitely." And I was looked at my hands and was like, "What is that?" I had no idea what it was. So you were connected to the cell. You were really connected to the music, yeah. And so that, that's why you can hear, it's not necessarily, did you even, you didn't have perfect pitch? No. And not even relative pitch. No, I did not. Yeah. No, I didn't know anything about intervals. I didn't know anything about music theory, anything. This is all just. You just like playing around with different shapes. That's amazing. I mean, look at that weird bar there. And then you get into these things. So that stuff there, I could figure out, and then this, that stuff I could figure out. And then these things here, those are just inversions of it, but I didn't know that. I'd heard Joe play that on the record, this the last song out there, and listen to a bunch of times. So you just replay over and over and over and over, and you're like trying to replicate it. Yes. And I'm memorizing every different chord shape, all chord shapes that I had never played before. Would you recommend people do something like that on a really complicated song? Yeah, but there's so many YouTube videos that you can go and just learn it without having to. Yes. Yeah, I would recommend. I feel like the struggle. The struggle is where it's at. This is true for education in general. People, like there's all these educators that try to make learning easier and more fun and all that kind of stuff, great, wonderful, but part of the thing is the struggle, absolutely. But yeah, let's uh. I heard licks like that all over this. So I knew that that was. and then these licks here, he plays a lot of ideas like that. That's basically a C9 chord in the top notes of it. So all these are just inversions of the same chord. So if I could play that, then it's just figuring out the single notes, okay? So, okay, so if you just take this first part here, when he goes, so this intro part. You make it sound so simple when you break it down and by the way, Joe Paz is an incredible guitar player. This is obvious. And he improvised all this. He could have played like that. But you know, the first. It was the indivision, but it was hard. Maybe it's finally that. That sounds more realistic. The amount of different genres that you're able to replicate is just incredible. This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little. And then by the end, the record was so scratched. But it was worth it. When I played it for my dad, he couldn't believe. I mean, he didn't say that's amazing. He was just like, "Hmm, pretty good." So what was the role of bebop jazz in the history of music? It seems like it was influential in your life. Another guy you had an incredible interview with Flea. People should go, "Listen to that. It's a great conversation." One of the things that surprised me is just how many musical genres influence Flea. And the guy showed up in a Miles Davis t-shirt and came up. Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker when he was 18 years old. And that's. Charlie Parker was really his mentor. Can you explain to me why with many of the folks you've interviewed, and in general, out there, in the world of jazz, all roads lead to Miles Davis, why he's such an influential figure? Because he was the greatest innovator in the history of jazz. He was at the forefront of all these different styles of jazz. And he started as a bebop player and then he had records like the birth of cool and modal jazz and hardbop and records like Bitches Brew where he started to, I guess you would call Fusion. You start to get these records. You had two main groups of Miles Davis. You had the Miles Davis 50s quintet and the Miles Davis 60s quintet. Now Miles made records with many people, but the 50s quintet had John Colt train in it. I mean, a different piano players could win in Kelly, but Paul Chambers and the bass Philly Joe Jones and the drums. And that particular group was made just incredibly important records. And then he had his 60s group, which was Herbie Hancock and the piano, Ron Carter and the bass, Tony Williams and the drums and Wayne Shorter on the saxophone. And they made all these incredibly important records. I forget who said it interview with you, but they talked about like Miles Davis, his music feeling like the toes hanging over the cliff or something like this, meaning like there's always a risk. There's a danger that you're willing to make to fuck it all up live. And that feeling is what creates the the aliveness of the music. You can speak to that, just the creating in the music, the feeling like you're on the edge, like you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen and it all can go to shit. And because of that, it feels alive. Well, when I interviewed Ron Carter that played in Miles's 60s quintet, I asked Ron because Ron did records, he played bass on 2200 recording, famous records. And I said, did you guys ever rehearse with Miles? No, never. I said, so what would you? He goes, we'd just show up at the studio and he'd have the charts, put him on the stand and we would, he'd just roll. And I said, would you listen to it after no? And I said, well, what about the live records that you did when you'd record at clubs and things like that? He goes, we never knew that we were recording. He goes, maybe I'd see a microphone, a different kind of microphone in my bass amp. He goes, then months later, their record would come out and I'd see it. And I was on it and I would take it down to the union and say, I played on this record. So he could pay for it, but he said, we didn't even know we were recording. Some miles was always about, you know, don't think about it, just, just play. - That's crazy. That was on purpose, that was on purpose, not to do the rehearsals, not none of that. - Yeah, he wanted people to just feel it, play it, thought is the enemy of flow. As Vinnie Calu to told me. - Thought is the enemy of flow. - How do you make sense that flea, the basis for the very hot chili peppers is influenced by bebop jazz? So his stepfather was a jazz bass player. And his, when his parents got divorced, he was born in Australia. And then they moved to New York. Then his parents got divorced and his mom married his stepfather, who was a jazz musicians. And then they used to have jam sessions at their place. And flea loved it. It was kind of like my upbringing with my dad playing jazz all the time. And once it gets inside you, it's just there. And so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians. - Yeah, his oppression was just hilarious. I mean, he's a character, his whole physical way of being is a character. And his impression of just upright bass is just for this fun to watch, his whole. - His intensity, when he picked up his bass during the interview, it, he's an intense guy and funny and, you know, really emotional. And he picks up his bass and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel. And he starts, he talks about how he practices. And then when he starts doing slapping stuff, he gets, it's so into it. And I'm just sitting there going, whoa. - Yeah, he talked about practicing routine with you. And one of the things he's like, I have to practice the slap. - Yeah. - No, there's differences in the structure of the different bands. But usually like the bassist has a vibe to them. I don't know if we can put words to exactly what that is. It's a kind of energy that drives the band. - To me, the bass is one of the only instruments that when you play a bad note, everybody notices. I started on the bass as a kid. - Oh, interesting. - Yeah. - But you also play drums, you also play. - Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in third grade. And then I switched to the bass in sixth grade. And I majored my undergrad degrees in classical bass. So I, I always think of myself as a bass player. First, and I always think the bass is the most important instrument because as much as I love to play the guitar, and I love to play the guitar more than anything I think, but the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is. 'Cause you can put the root in there. You can put the third of the chord in the bass. You can put the fifth in there. You can play a lot of notes. And whatever you play in the bass kind of defines what kind of chord it is. So the bass player has a lot of power. I have to go back to the beginning of our conversation. What do you think are some of the great solos of all time? Can we put a few in a consideration? You have a great list on the top 20 rock guitar solos of all time. - Yeah, so I put comfortably numb as my favorite, as my top one, on that day, right? - On that day, right. Now the day later, I would have said, it's the second solo. But I did the first solo because nobody talks about that. And that solo is equally great. And when David Gilmore, when I played it for him, and we were talked about it in my interview with him, it was just to watch his face when he listened to it was incredible. I mean, I'm thinking of myself. It's like, I'm sitting with David Gilmore and he's listening to comfortably numb. And he's hearing it. He's played it a million times live. But how many times has he gone back and listened to it on the record? Probably not for a long time. And then he's hearing, he's like, ooh. - Maybe you just don't look back. When you do great things, you don't look back. - Miles never looked back. He never wanted to hear the old stuff. He always moved on. - There was this funny moment where you made a video why David Gilmore will never be on the channel. And then you ended up, of course, interviewing him twice. He's one of the greatest guitar players of all time. What do you think is that the core of his genius? - He has just an incredible melodic sense. He knows how phrases should be put together. There's a flow to his ideas that I think is just incredible. It's the same with Hendrix. This flow, how one idea leads to the next, how there's space between them. It's just like speaking. - That's why I read about Miles Davis. He was very good at understanding tempo and the value of silence. - Yes. - And I think David Gilmore doesn't always play fast. But he does a lot with less. - Yes. - And then some of that is also on the more technical side, probably the tone of the, I mean, he's one of the most uniquely recognizable tones in all of music. - Yes. Do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Gilmore? - He has a very sophisticated setup for his tone. And that was one of the things when I went to his studio. And I said, so David, is there anything I'm not supposed to see here? I mean, he never sits down and shows people his gear. And he laughed about it. But there I am sitting there right next to all these pedals. And I asked his tech Phil. I said, these are the same ones he used on the records. He's like, yeah, his tech has been with him for like 50 years. And I mean, the exact ones, yes. It's just hard to imagine that those things still, of course, though, he's just kept it. Yeah, this is his Vincent Echo that he played through. And this is this, you know, these are all the same effects pedals. And wait, is this the same high watt amp? Yeah, is this the same? Yes. Yeah, you get some new stuff. But they keep all their own gear. And that's, I mean, he did sell his guitars for charity. But like, he has a black strap that is a signature version. It's like, he's that copy of his old one. So to him, it sounds exactly the same, plays the same. Well, of course, they converged towards that kind of hardware. But there's so many tiny details over the years. You see the final result of it. But there's a, there's a journey there of, of exploring. And of course, he's not, I guess he's not doing any soft, like no emulation, no. He does do emulation, actually. He does, he has this thing. And this is, I asked him in the first interview about this. There's a little rack thing that I had heard that he used, but I asked him for sure. It's called the zoom 9030. I put out a short where he talks about it. I said, so that, that zoom 9030, is that a real thing? Because I've read about it. He's like, yeah. And he talks about how, when he's sitting there recording on his own, and he runs pro tools himself. And so he'll be sitting there. There's no one there to help him. And he's like, I'll just plug into this thing and then he'll play a solo with this model. It's like a kind of 90's modeling, early modeling thing. And he'll play a solo. And then after a while, you hear the solo and it's like, well, I'm not going to replay that. That sounds great. You get used to the sound of it. And that's what it is. Let's talk about, oh, well, he couldn't have used that. He's recording through an amp because it sounds great. And then he's like, yeah, so that's what I use. And then I have the video of it right there. And it has his presets, DG1 and DG2 and you know, whatever. What's your process for preparing for interviews like that? You've done a few legendary people. I never prepare for interviews because I ask people things that I'm interested in knowing. So just letting your curiosity just play. Yes. And I can think of a hundred questions to ask David Gilmore. But I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. So but I do make a playlist of songs that I want to talk about. So that kind of guides me is that because I want to make sure that I, there's specific things I need to play to so that you can jog his memory because at any time you play something that somebody recorded, even 50 years ago, they'll remember. If they don't remember the exact specifics, they, that brings it to life to them again. And they can, they can kind of piece together some aspects about it and they can really talk. You can talk about the phrasing and the, you know, the kind of melodic direction of things like that. So there's a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song, whether it's in the production, know how it's played, how it's composed, all that kind of stuff. And you don't know what those are ahead of time. No. You just know the song and you just are looking to jog their memory. And maybe your own curiosity of like, how did you do this or how to what this sound or that, you make it look easy, but you have to have a depth of knowledge. You're saying you don't prepare. I have an incredibly good memory. Exactly. That's what it is. It's that I can remember when records came out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the engineer, what songs were on it, and not only that, but the people I'm interviewing know that I can play all the parts of all the instruments because I've done breakdowns of their songs, which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place, really. But the actual like the skill of the interview, the thing you're not saying, the preparation is the you young listening to bebop, that's right. It's the background now. It's the soul carrying with you, being able to radiate the love of the soul of music. I will say this lexas that the other thing is that most of these people have a really good sense of humor. When I was, when the first time I interviewed David in New York, my brother John came along and he is a massive David Gilmore fan. That's his biggest influence as a guitar player. So he said, you're interviewing David Gilmore? I'm coming. I was like, all right, come on, come on down. So my brother John standard about five feet away. John is a sales guy, but he's a great guitar player, so John's like, this is, David, this is my brother. John, David, great to meet you, buddy, and you know, John's like, so he's a sales guy. And so during the interview, I, I was like, hey, John, what was I going to ask David? Asked about the Gilmore effect. Oh, yeah, that's right. And Gilmore effect is my thing that I say in the comments section when people say, anytime anybody plays anything technical, oh, yeah, that's great. But I much prefer David Gilmore. And so I always called the Gilmore effect. Anytime I have, like, Ing vee Momstein, anybody that has chops that I interview, the negative comments are always, well, I prefer David Gilmore. And I said that I told David that he's like, well, maybe they should keep their opinions to themselves. Yeah, a lot of these folks have really wonderful personalities with the trusted person to be able to reveal that personality. So comfortably numb at the top on that day. What else is up there? Starrer to heaven, hey, Joe, what in that list, your top Hendrix solo was, hey, Joe, it's the first guitar solo I ever learned. So I had to put it on there. So I don't, I don't necessarily do these by, I do those in kind of how, how important they are to me and my development. So there, there's always a biographical component to these lists. Number 3 was Kid Charlemagne, a steely-dance solo, Larry Carlton, amazing solo, extremely difficult to figure out. Probably there's two solos on the list that are just about our very, that one I can play. Oh, but there's a few solos that are very hard to play, Stone in Love by Journey by Neil Sean. Neil Sean is very hard to play some elix, um, the, um, there's a song, there's a solo by a guitarist, Carlos Rios that people don't know. It's a brother to brother, a genome and Ellie song, but it's very hard to play and figure out and, um, that people don't know the solos. I put it on my list because I knew a lot of people are going to watch it and they're going to know what the solo is. For me as a sentimental one, my, my first solo is Mr. Crowley, Randy Rhodes. I like the musicality, Mr. Crowley, that there is a melodic component to it. You're playing really fast, but there's, there's a melody to it. And also there's like a legendary nature to the, the, the, the, the brief time we had to, we had Randy, yes, it's probably one of the greatest guitarists ever. 56 to 82, I think, terrible. Um, he was, um, um, absolute brilliant guitarist had his own style, which is say he's the guitarist for Ozzy Osborne, the band, yeah, and that Mr. Crowley solo is a, is a great solo, and, um, he's incredibly influential as a guitar player, um, to, for metal guitar players. And, um, I love Randy Rhodes, uh, another guy. So one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler. Yes. And I did have Mark Knopfler on my list, Sons of Swing. That's right. No, I had it high in the list and I'll tell you why. Yeah. I would have had it at lower because it was one of the early ones because I wanted people to be like, okay, oh, this is a serious list. So Rick's going to talk about serious stuff. So, um, and Rick's going to play along with all these things. So I wanted to kind of state that at the beginning of the video. I mean, I made the video in one day to do 20 solos. So I think I played 19 of them, but the heart solo that I had on there, Nancy Wilson. I, uh, I played the video of, and I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the, um, ice cream man, Van Halen solo. So I called Dweezle Zappa and I was like, Dweezle, can you play the ice cream man solo? I'm making a video about it. He's like, oh, I'd have to practice that. And I called my friend Phil X, who's an amazing guitar player and that, and he's like, no, I'd have to practice that. Come on, man, can't let me play ice cream man, the opening lick of ice cream man that he plays is very hard to play because it's an incredibly long stretch. And it hurt my fingers to do. And Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to, to play. And plus it's a tricky, it's just, it's a tricky rhythm. And, and it's such a big stretch is like, man, I can't, that hurts my hand. I just love that that's the Van Halen solo you have, the top 20. Yeah, I have to do some, yeah, yeah, there's so many Van Halen, my god, it could be, I could pick 25 different Van Halen solos. But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler. I mean, there's, there's unique guitars. There's something about his tone, speaking of Gilmore, there's just the tone, the care, the timing of the notes, his improvisation, like the live performances of Salt and the Swing, that's been actually going, like similar viral around recently, his, his pretty old live performance of Salt and the Swing. For me, brothers and arms, these kind of soulful, mournful type of solos, he does really, really well. The interesting instrumentation of La Romeo and Juliet, just so, so many, it's truly one of the greats. Now, obviously, the intro to money for nothing is one of the greatest, almost impossible to recreate that because of the sound is so unique and his, it's just improvised, it's so cool. Yeah. There's certain songs like Europa by Santana, Santana can have that tone too, that Mark Knopfler makes me really, just how clean it is. I think he beats BB King in my book on terms of cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note, like a power of a single note, I don't know anybody who beats Mark Knopfler. Well, that thing about being able to recognize somebody from a note, you know, when I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize his Brian May, incredibly melodic, the tone that he has, Gilmore Hendrix, everyone that we're talking about, Van Halen, it's just they have that one note, oh, I know who that is. And that's, that's why we're talking about him. That'd be funny. That'd be a good video. BB King, you hear one note as a test of like how quickly can you recognize just a solo starts playing. That's a great, I'm going to make that video tomorrow. Lex, the day after tomorrow, you'll see it. I would love to see that. Can you recognize these players by one note? By one note. Yeah. I think it's, I think we're being a little too aggressive with that. I think you need like two or three or four or five notes. No, no, no, no. I guarantee you. So I was going to do a video last week where I was going to play songs in reverse. Okay. See if you can recognize these songs in reverse. And I had my two assistants command, it's like, do you know what song that is? They're like, oh, that's Adele. Like what? And then they're like, oh, that's, that's Nirvana. Instantly they could recognize it's like, well, that's not worth me. It's so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter. You know what it is. Okay. So it's about the tone. Yeah. How could you possibly know the, from a single note is, I guess, man, hailing you can. One note of a BB King's vibrato, you could know. I'm going to, what I'll do is I would separate the guitars. I can actually separate the tracks and I'll just play one note. You think from a single vibrato, you can know as BB King. Yes. Well, we'll see. Put it on record. I'm skeptical. I'm going to do, I'll do 20 of them. Can you recognize these guitars from a single note? Could you recognize Steve Rivaughan, Abs versus Eric Clapton? Yeah. All right. You might be right. You might be right. Quick 30 second. Thank you to our sponsors. Leave them all in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfreeman.com/sponsors. We've got Uplift Desk from my favorite office desks, Better Help from Mental Health, Element. for electrolytes, thin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. Choose wise, my friends. And now back to my conversation with Rick Biano. What do you think is the best air-claptin song? One of the things we haven't mentioned so far is the importance of lyrics and maybe meaning of the song. It represents, so in that sense, tears in heaven. Well, the story behind that is heartbreaking. And then I personally really love the sound of "Wonderful" tonight. That's a great song. That's one of my favorite claptin songs. And as I was like listening to it, just doing a whole personal journey introspection, knowing that I'm going to talk to Rick Biano's, listening to just a bunch of songs. And I learned as a bear saying that I didn't know the stories behind the music. But I learned that air-claptin was married for decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to. And that this woman was the muse, the inspiration for so many of the legendary songs of rock, including "Wonderful" tonight, including "Layla," and including "George Harrison's Something," "Legendary" song, also. The same woman. Is she the greatest muse in rock history? Probably, yes. This is great. So in your interviews of musicians and producers, I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole process, the recording, the production, the songwriting, the different elements of the process. So are there examples of different things that stand out to you from all the interviews you've done? And by the way, all the recording and production you've done yourself. So on the recording front, on the production front, on the songwriting process front, just things that pop into memory. When I've interviewed the guys that are the producers, like Rick Rubin, Daniel and Bob, Brendan O'Brien, which big, the thing about producers, as opposed to people that are musicians, if you're a musician, even if you're David Gilmore, you do a record, then you tour, and then you do another record, maybe years go by. But producers are working on multiple records. You know, sometimes at a time, Rick Rubin could be working on multiple records, and the variety of things that they do, you can talk to, I mean, I can talk to Rick about the chili peppers, and I can talk to him about Johnny Cash, I can talk to him about Tom Petty, and all these records that I love, and there's just so many interesting stories that, I mean, these interviews could go on for days with Rick, and the variety of records that he worked on. And there's so much knowledge to be gained for me at least. And I think that the craft of production and recording engineering is something that is not well documented. Especially since there's no, there's so few studios nowadays where there used to be a mentorship thing where you go and you work as an assistant engineer, and you work your way up. I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the Beatles. I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios just two months ago, and he started as a tape op when he was 16. He started on the hard day's night record with the Beatles, and he worked his way up, and he said, "The first time you ever recorded an orchestra "was he recorded, I am the walrus, the orchestra part." He set up the mics, and I asked him, and said, "So where was the band standing right behind me, "the Beatles, right behind him? "The guy I'm interviewing at Abbey Road recorded, "I am the walrus there." I mean, he recorded many Beatles songs, and he was 18 years old, and I mean, I just can't even fathom that. They have a little cafe in the basement of Abbey Road, and I said, "Did the Beatles come in here?" He goes, "Oh, yeah, they come in here and get coffee, "and I remember when they got two microwaves "that the first microwaves in 1965, "and they were amazed by them." And it's hard to imagine that I'm talking to people that worked on these historic records, but they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive, and then you've eventually filled them up with this music that you can never imagine it not existing, like, start way to heaven or whatever it is. - Yeah, it's funny, like looking back, you're probably for them just to realize they've created that magic, it's hard to believe. - Yeah. - 'Cause you're looking at a blank thing, and then magic comes out and you don't even understand. You don't even understand, probably a lot of these artists don't understand where that came from. They're channeling some deeper thing. - When I interviewed Brian May, he told me, I can't remember if this was, if we talked about it, on camera or not, but we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody, and at the very end, there was a thing where he was depressing his whammy bar a little bit, and it sounds like the piano is out of tune. I never noticed it before, he mentioned this to me, and he said it always bothered him, and there's always something about these songs that bothers people. Even these songs are these things, right? There's always little things, and they sit and they hear it, and they're like, oh man, I wish I'd bent up a little higher on that or whatever. - I mean, that, there's certain moments in songs that are just, unlike anything else, on Bohemian Rhapsody, when Freddie Mercury is, sometimes wish I've never been born at all. And then guitar comes in, I mean, there's just nothing like that, yeah. I don't even know. I mean, that whole thing, and you've done videos on it, it's an incredibly complicated composition, it's crazy that a popular song, popular rock song, could be this operatic, so complicated. The other thing akin to that moment is Focollins, in the air tonight, the drum bridge. (humming) - What is that? I don't understand how you can create that. What is that? Why is that so magical? Why is that so singular inside a particular song and in rock history period? Like these moments, I don't know musically, I don't understand how you create them, 'cause it might be bigger than musical, it might be culture, all bunch of different elements, and plus it's him filled with, like I've seen live before, who he is like a headset, he does something, he's like a telemarketer, or something like this whole vibe and look to him, he doesn't look like a rock star, but he is. Those are hooks, when you think about it, right? It's as much of a hook as the chorus of the song or any song, that drum thing is something that people wait for, and they air drum to it, everybody air drums to it, and it is a hook, and those are hard to create, those moments are really hard to create, and usually they're done by accident. - Yeah, it's hard, if you chase it, you're not gonna get it. - Yeah. - And your conversation was staying. He said something about how modern music is simpler, more minimalistic, and the bridge is gone, I think he said. And he said he thought that the bridge is therapy, yes. It's like a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse before the chorus comes in. - It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose, the therapeutic nature of it, at least, lyrically, you think he's onto something? The value of the bridge? - The bridge is a place, I think, where you can kind of change the frame of reference of a song. - You could probably do anything, I guess. Lenin used to, he would have some kind of biting lyrics like, we can work it out. So McCartney writes the, try to see it my way, do I have to keep on going until he can't go on? And then, but the bridge is very Lenin. Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend. I've always thought that it's a crime. So I'll ask you once again, I mean, it's very Lenin-esque. This is, that was really a kind of a real collaboration between the two of those. - This were different parts of the band can clash. - Yeah. - Interesting ways. I mean, the Beatles are depending of that. Such, like, each individual beat is a great talent in their own right. - Yes. - How were the Beatles able to create some of the greatest songs of all time, all before they turned 30 years old? - I have never been able to figure that out, but I have a theory that, because. - I have a theory. - Because PA systems were so bad back then, from the Beatles, people screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, okay, we don't need, we can't tour anymore 'cause we can't even hear ourselves. So we're just gonna be a studio band. And maybe because of, we have all these great late Beatles records are from 1966 on, just because they had bad PA systems. And they had no monitors. you know, they're in Shay Stadium. People are screaming so loudly. They can't hear themselves. They're like, okay, forget this. We can't tour. We'll just make studio records. So that's what they did. And in that one year, like from August 6, 1965, they put out help. Then in December 3, they put out rubber soul of 65. Then then August 5th, they put out revolver. So within 365 days, they put out three 14, I think 14 song records. So they wrote and recorded three incredibly important records. They were in the studio. It's like working out. They're practicing their craft every day, writing songs, trying to outdo the other ones. And so you had the perfect thing of four supremely talented musicians, songwriters, singers. And then the best producer you could possibly have, George Martin. And it was just a perfect storm. I think that when I would talk to friends that would just play in local clubs and they'd play four hour sets, five nights a week, and they never lost their voices because they're always working those muscles. And same with the Beatles, they were always in the studio singing every single day doing takes. And I think that that was part of it at least. But you also have this theory that the greatest productivity that musicians have is before they turn 30. The greatest sort of creative genius that can come out of the human mind musically is before the age of 30. I think it's the same in mathematics as well. You have this fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence fluid intelligence up until you're about, you know, in your late 20s 30 years old and then crystallized. So you're using the crystallizes you're using your life experience to to write things. So you'll find that that composers Bach Beethoven Mozart wrote their most important works at the end of their lives, Beethoven the late string quartets, the ninth symphony things like that. So they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this and there's not they're not improvising, but things for improvising writing pop songs and that I think when your mind is really most active and your brain processing speed is at its pinnacle that this is my theory that people can come up with those kind of ideas. Same with improvising. I think that most jazz improvisers, not all, but most do their best improvising before the age 30. Creating something new. Yes, truly novel that requires youth. It's just a theory though, but it seems to apply. What do you think about the 27 club? A bunch of the music rates died at 27 Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Kirkobain, of course. A big part of music history is linked to drug history. LSD, Coke, heroin, weed, smoking, smoking. I think about this a lot. If you go back and you watch videos, the Beatles, any of their movies, they're smoking all the time. They get back documentary, they're smoking constantly. Go watch any of the MTV Unplugged Nirvana. Kirkobain is smoking every second that he's not playing. He's smoking. Every singer smoked. Every musician smoked. Nowadays, I asked my son Dylan, Dylan, is anybody smoke at his high school? He's like, smoke. Nobody smokes. He's, he's, he's think they was an absurd question. And that was part of culture. Yeah, it was for everybody. I mean, that was, that was a big transformation over the past 20 years that just everybody stopped smoking. But I don't think smoking has the kind of hard negative effect that we're talking about. I mean, I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs. Maybe smoke distracts them from the hard. I mean, heroin and Coke. I mean, those things really in alcohol, unfortunately, can be easily abused, I think. It seems like it's the life of a musician. This dopamine thing of getting on stage and being, being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, the high of that. And then the come down after is really hard life for just even near biologically of like, how do you deal with that? You have to be able to control the roller coaster or your mind. And of course, drugs will be a part of that. And you think everything is allowed and everything is possible. And then there's also culture, depending on who you hang out with, that certain kinds of categories of drugs are good for your creativity. And so, naturally, start to abuse those drugs. I don't know. I think, I think, I think it's really interesting that all the drugs have played in the in the history of music. They have certainly been extremely destructive. But they have also certainly been productive, muses, inspirations for some of these folks. Oh, absolutely. Now, would we want to, you know, advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity? No. I wouldn't. But just like smoking, which I think improved people's voices, I mean, really, the raspiness of it. This is the reason that so many of these virtually every famous singer, no matter what genre of music, jazz, soul, rock, they all smoked. That can cool. Miles Davis too. Miles, everybody smoked. Miles didn't, well, Miles was a heroin addict too. I mean, yeah. So many jazz musicians. Well, Miles had a sound to him. You're right. I mean, smoking must, must play a gigantic role to that adding some complexity to the voice. Yes. Yeah. Some richness to the voice. Matt King Cole. He's, he smoked, I think four packs a day. He died of lung cancer. A lot of heavy smokers, those singers. Frank Sinatra, heavy smoker. McCartney was a heavy smoker. Lenin, all those guys smoked. Yeah. It's hard to know. Chicken or the egg, but I certainly wouldn't recommend doing drugs as a way to get better at music. But you know, it does seem to go hand in hand. And some of it has to do with the period, with the time period, with the place, because sometimes it's part of the culture. The drug is like you're saying smoking. If you're smoking now, that's going to be a very different experience. The smoking 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago is a different, different vibe. So sometimes the drug is a deep integrated part of the culture versus an actual chemical substance. The 60s, right there. I don't know. They were on everything in the 60s. Yeah. I mean, it has to account for something, Lex. You know, on the songwriting front, you mentioned a story about Elton John recording. So he's one of the legendary songwriters. But yeah, you've met him and you know something about the process of his, yeah, because he was recording in a studio in Atlanta that I was working with the band that I was producing. And he was in, I was in studio B. He was in studio A. And this band that I was working with, they were called Jump Little Children. And so he had his assistant come in and ask, "Hey, is this, are you guys Jump Little Children?" Yeah. And then all of a sudden, I couldn't see out into the live room. Elton walked into the thing and we were getting ready to track. And I'm pressing the button. Yeah, we're, where are you guys? What's up? I thought we're going to start this. And no one's responding. I can hear talking. He's like, "What's going on? Where are they?" Then all of a sudden, they come back in the studio and they were stunned. I said, "Where were you guys?" Elton John just walked into our session and he said, "He's a big fan." He said to come over when we're done and hang out in studio A. So, so we did. And he was there with Bernie Topin. They were working on a song. And we talked to him there for an hour and he was talking about recording two records a year. And then they'd go on tour and they'd write and record the whole record in two weeks. So Bernie would give him lyrics. Elton would go out and spend 15 minutes writing all the melody. He'd look at his lyrics and he was doing that that day. Bernie was there and they had a lyric sheet up in the piano and Elton would go on and they'd just record this and Elton would sit there and play and come up with the song in 15 minutes or so. There's a great version of, I think, tiny dancer where Elton is coming up with it on it's on YouTube. And he's just coming up with the music right there and then the band, "Okay, here's how it goes and they record it right then." They move back to the next song. It's really incredible. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. There's one near that I've done the other day with tiny dancer, which is about Bernie's girlfriend. So I just sort of ran it through and put two verses together, then a middle, then a chorus and then back to the verse sort of thing. It happens very quickly. It sounds long, but it sort of starts off here. It seems just for the band. It's really amazing that he's just - he's looking at the lyrics. Yeah, and it's one of the - he's one of the very few people that has the lyrics first and writes the music to it, which to me is far more difficult. 99% of songwriters write the music first and then they put the melody and lyrics to the finished backing track. And maybe they write like lyrics, they write like nonsense words kind of thing and then they figure out from there. Yeah, that's - I mean, I don't know what skill that is exactly, but that's incredible. I mean, in that process, he makes it his own. Yes. Okay. You had an amazing interview with Kirk Hammett, I'm a huge Metallica fan. Same here. There's a lot of interesting stuff that came out of that from that conversation. One is the distinction between heavy metal and hard rock, which is very interesting. Of course, Metallica went through their own evolution. They had many periods. I mean, they've been around 40 years. Over 40 years, yeah. Crazy. The other thing is the downpicking, which is interesting, which is creating that really distinct sound. James and Kirk, the downpicking, I used to be able to do that. I just can't do that anymore. It hurts my thumb to do it. I think, honestly, I thought a lot about it. It's like, why is it so painful? Why is it so hard? It's from swiping with your thumb on phones. And I think it affects that basal joint there. I'm sorry. No, I'm serious. No, I'm serious. I think that's actually right. Because I'm thinking like, why does that hurt so much to do that? All the downstrokes and stuff. It's like, gotta be something. It's like, yes, from swiping with the phone. The other thing that came through is that he's an improviser at heart. And then I think clashes with this kind of rigid structure that metal is. So there's a real soulful melodic aspect to him. And he gave a lot of props to James Hadfield for just being a great composer, being a great musician, and writer, of riffs, of rhythm. The improvisation part of it, you don't think of because you have the finished songs that you listen to. But those songs are born out of improvisations of jams, of little fragments of ideas, and then they craft them into these masterpieces. I was like, imagine that this is where they didn't know that Hendrix was these different gauges strings. Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, these are the things that I like to learn from these interviews with these people. I don't know, like, what? I've never heard of that. It's like, it's one of the ways you can find uniqueness of sound is by trying different things that are not, I mean, I guess Zappel was really good at this, right? Yeah. Completely break it out of what you're supposed to do. The ways you're supposed to do them, and doing it completely differently. You often ask musicians what their perfect song is. For sure, that's an interesting question, but it's a perfect song. Like one surprise me is how Zimmer said, "God only knows by the peach boys." I was surprised by that too, but I thought it was like, "Yeah, okay, that's a perfect song, for sure." The first interview I ever did was with Peter Frampton in 2018, and I asked him in that interview, "What's a perfect song?" And he said, "White or shade of pale." And I was like, "Ooh, that's a great song." And then I thought, I'm going to ask that to people, just to see what they, now people are prepared if I ask that. But it's like, they're willing to go out and all of them and say it. Yeah. If you ask me, I don't even know, I guess you just say it, whatever, right? Like, what would I even say? What's a perfect song? Yeah, I would go, see, I feel the pressure, right? Because the problem is the reality is it changes day by day, like minute by minute. I, yeah, I would probably, I'm sorry, but I would have to go mark an author, and I would probably go, is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing? I would go solvents this way, even though I'm tempted to say Europa, then like, solvents this way, it hits on so many levels because it's got a great melody, great lyrics, and then multiple great guitar solos. And it has such a unique sound to it. The other thing is that it sounds very different from other dire straits songs. I mean, this is like early dire straits strat tone, and then you think of like money for nothing is a less Paul, and it's a totally different kind of vibe than him playing on solvents this way. But that song's amazing. Plus, it's about music. Yes. So I think there's a meta aspect to it, but then there's also like, we're talking about this guitar stuff, but Leonard Cohen, hallelujah, and Leonard Cohen in general, like these songwriters that go super simple on guitar. And there is just what's that called, singer songwriter type. I told you off my, one of my, maybe the music guests, that's a dream guest, that's Tom Weitz. I've wanted to talk to Tom Weitz for a very long time, and I've gone through different periods of, you've met me at a point of my life where I've given up on it a little bit. That's what's going to happen. Once you give up on it, it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Um, by Tom Weitz won't be on your podcast. Exactly. Exactly. This is my, this is my moment. Tom, come here, let's do it. I want to see it. Um, I'm such a, a fan of like this apple, like artistry on the, on the musical front, which Tom Weitz has, but I'm a, I'm a sucker for great lyrics lyrics to me is such a big part of great songs. And, and he's another example. He has a song called Martha. It's about a love story that didn't work out, and it's an older man calling the woman that he was in love with and basically reminiscing about like, you know, thinking about like, what would have happened if it worked out that kind of thing. And then, you know, I love that song for a long time. And, you know, uh, at some point, I found out that he wrote that when he was in his early 20s. And you realize similar with the Beatles, like the, these guys somehow were able to capture the human condition so masterfully, and they're kids, yes, this, I don't get it. I don't understand it. I can't speak for Tom Weitz, but in the Beatles case, they went to Hamburg. They spent time on their own. They played cover gigs that were eight hours long and they lived, lived, they've lived, they live life. Yeah. It's not like, not like kids today, not you're in a porch. Uh, you also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan, master pumpkins. Uh, he is definitively one of my favorite musicians of Billy. You asked him an interesting question about how he creates this melancholy feeling that permeates a lot of his songs and he jokingly said that the secret is all about the seventh and then, and the ninth, um, so like musically cord wise, what do you think about that? You think he's out to something? He's talking a little music theory there. Yeah. Seventh and ninth over the chord that he's playing. So if you're playing a C chord, he's singing a B would be the seventh, D would be the ninth. And he does use a lot of those notes, but almost all these people that were talking, no, all these people that were talking about use these notes and this is why their songs. I, and when I interviewed Sting, I called them surprise tones and it stings like, I like the way he uses the word surprise. That's that are outside the chord that are dissonant with the chords that they're playing. And that creates emotion, dissonance equals emotion. And that's, that's what I like. I want music to be, to depress me. Yeah. What is that? I don't know. But melancholy, and I think you articulate in the anyways, it's not actually that depressing. There's something about that melancholy feeling that is somehow the other side of the coin of happiness is a kind of longing. There's a hopefulness to it, that loneliness that you feel, I mean, that's actually like one of the intimate connections you have with music is when you're alone. There's, I think there's a social way of listening to music when maybe a concert and so on. But there's this, there's nothing like your alone in the car, driving, listening to like whatever it is. Bruce Springsteen. Well, I think Louis CK has a bit about that. It was a Bruce Springsteen. But he sometimes has to pull over to the side of the road, just weep or something like this. It's just, there's something, there's something about that sometimes the song just connects with you. And I don't know, it's nothing like a melancholy song could do that. It, you think about like, maybe things you regret or how life could have worked out. And sometimes it's not even about like, it's not even real. It's just connects something to the, in the soul, the, the uneasiness that we all feel. Maybe the loneliness we all feel that underpins so much of the human condition, it just connects with that. I don't know what that is. There's a Kurt Cobain lyric. It was on the Inuit or a record from the song Francis Farmer. The chorus part is, I miss the comfort of being sad. And I was like, "Yes." ♪ There's a conference being said ♪ I was like, "Yeah, that's it right there." In terms of love songs, somehow I find powerful, that kind of desperation. So I've always connected with Pearl Jam's black. Oh, amazing. That line, a friend of mine was going through a breakup, so I was listening, and he's the one that introduced me to Pearl Jam during that whole period when Pearl Jam was huge with ten. Is that line someday? Some day you'll have a beautiful life. You know, some day you'll be a star, and somebody else's sky. Why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine? Oh my God, that blows me away. That's an amazing line. Why, yeah. The delivery is incredible on it, too. Eddie Vettor, one of the great frontmen of all time. Yes. And that whole period, that whole moment in history of Kirk Cobain and Eddie Vettor that captured, that was the '90s. That was one side of the '90s that just this singular moment in history. Who do you think are the great frontmen in history of music? Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant. Freddie Mercury, number one probably. Stephen Tyler, Jim Morrison. Jim Morrison, yeah. Roger Daltry. Well, we have to say, I have to say, we have to say, James Headfield, James Headfield. I mean, there's nothing. I mean, I have to talk to you about this. I mean, this is the greatest, I think the greatest concert of all time. This is their historic performance in Moscow in September of '91. This is shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed. Plus we should mention ACDC and Pantera were there too. And about 1.6 million people were there. Now, by the way, there's like some kind of reporting that there was a half a million people, 500,000 people that's somewhere, I've seen statements like that. That's a ridiculously inaccurate statement. So it's a free concert. So any official counts don't count. It's definitely over a million. It's very likely to be 1.5, 1.6 million people. And this moment in history that I think they channeled, it's like whenever great music, the Metallica was firing on all cylinders at the very top of their game. And they meet this moment in history and this place in history. Those are a defining part of the 20th century collapsing. And you have these people who are for a moment through music are able to escape the fear, the anger they feel, all of it. There's also a political, social, cultural moment meeting, the musical moment. And the set list, I was just, I was listening to the several times over the past few days, just taking myself back into that moment in time. Listen to the set list. Enter Sandman, creeping death, Harvester Sarov, fate to black, sad but true, master of puppets, seek and destroy for whom the belt holds one and whiplash. Look at that. How is that that just get the fuck out of here? That's amazing. That's my kind of set right there. I don't know if you could take off anything that could beat that. I think that the guys in the band would say that too. That was, I mean, they were really at their peak. The black album had just come out. Then and that must have been so, so exciting. I mean, what stock was big? There's certain moments in time when I really, really meet the moment. Are you a fan of live, live like big? I used to be, but at this point, I can't, you know, I'd much rather see people play in small clubs and or go to the, I'd like to listen to the studio, go to the studio even. I generally almost entirely agree with you. I just think that there's these historic moments, but you don't know which are gonna be which, but you make it in the concert free. It's just all of it to get plus Pantera and ACDC. The other which actually is a legitimate thing you mentioned is as one of the greatest concerts of all time, his Beethoven's world premiere of Nine Symphony. You know, I didn't really know the personal side of Beethoven until I saw this movie called Immortal Beloved. It was excellent movie with Gary Oldman. I really, it's a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an interesting kind of way through the perspective of a love letter that he's written. But then I realized like this early is many, many, just a couple of decades ago now, that, you know, he went deaf before he even started writing the Nine Symphony, which is why they consider to be one of the greatest compositions of all time, greatest symphonies of all time. He went deaf, couldn't hear anything. Before he even started writing it. And so there's that famous story of him in that world premiere of having to be turned around because he can't hear people applauding. So he has to be turned around to see that people are actually clapping. I mean, there's this whole tragic element. Plus the meaning of the symphony that ends in this beautiful ode to joy. The symphony itself is a kind of, it starts with a chaos and conflict and ends with this celebration of peace and brotherly unity, and I guess a call for that, a reaching for that, for that peace. And there's a tragic element to it, again, connected to history, which is it was post-Napolitanic wars. And before the American Civil War, so like, you're in this middle, this respist from war, calling for peace, not knowing that truly horrific wars are coming, so you have the Americans of a war, and you have, of course, the two world wars coming. So this, all of it together. And the fact that he's conducting deaf, and you wrote this whole thing deaf, I was reading a lot about his process, and he's just edits and edits and edits. So the fact that he had to edit in his head, is just insane. - I mean, Beethoven was sick all the time too. I mean, a lot of people were sick all the time, it was very common. What would motivate you to write music, this beautiful music that you can never actually hear, except for in your head, right? Like, why the amount of time it takes to write, to write a 35-minute, 40-minute peace, all the parts you gotta hear, all the orchestration in your head, you're editing, you're doing all these things. Where do you get the motivation? When you can't hear the actual finished work, and people would say, well, he's here, here's his head. But what kind of enjoyment is it? Do you wanna hear the orchestra? I mean, it's really profound that he was inspired to do this. There's a thing called the Heliastat Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers from 1802. I think they found it in his desk after Beethoven died. And he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss. And he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him of all people, that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear or a shepherd singing in the field that, and he could not hear this. And of all the people why him were hearing played such an important part. Another person that would have had to have had perfect pitch 'cause you could never do this if you didn't have perfect pitch, which I think all these great composers for the most barbroms didn't from what I know, but all the rest of 'em for sure had perfect pitch. So they could hear these things in their head, and that's how they composed. I mean, you love sound and music. What do you think was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven? - It must have been terrible. I mean, just terrible. I mean, I had heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth and put it on the sound board of the piano, and you could feel the vibrations in his skull and things like that. - He's just probably trying to. - Yeah, I just. - But also, what is that that he's able to write? Like one of the greatest symphonies ever, while deaf. So there's something about that we mentioned darkness, but torment that he's going through. And ultimately, owed to joy, like not a cynical thing - Right. - to call for the positive. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's, I've devoted many, many hours thinking about that. - And plus Napoleon broke his heart, because he was a supporter in Napoleon, because Napoleon was supposed to represent the French Revolution, this hopeful future of no more kings, no more monarchs, no more authoritarian regimes, and Napoleon ended up becoming essentially king. - Right. - Becoming a thirdarian and Beethoven, sort of famously was critical of that, nevertheless, I think maintaining a fascination with Appolian throughout his life, but sort of a kind of more sophisticated complex view of human nature and human civilization, so becoming more cynical, like seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you, the dreams get shattered, and through that is able to still do this call for the hopeful future. All right, so, okay, so Beethoven, one of the greats for sure, like basically everybody, I know how to play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata, but I always avoided the third movement because I was like, I'll never be good enough. Never, never, never. One of these days, maybe, you know, be great if Tom Wates writes me an email that says, I only talk to people that can play the third movement. That'd be a dream come true. There you go. Like for this, that's motivation. That's my dragon or whatever you do. You have to have a prince and rescue the princess. My dragon is the third movement of Moonlight Sonata. Okay, you often highlight the importance of Bach. In fact, so many of your guests, every famous songwriter is influenced by Bach. They are the greatest composer of all time, the greatest musician of all time, even Stingen, Dominic Miller said they go to Bach, even for like practice every day. People talk about Bach was not known other than in his places he lived, Eisenach. He was born in Leipzig. He spent many years, but Bach was known to great musicians. It was difficult to find manuscripts, but there was a premiere of the St. Matthew Passion that Mendelssohn had done in 17 and 1829. It was on March 11, I believe. He had a manuscript because his father and mother collected manuscripts and he got a manuscript of this piece. I think he was 20 years old and they had a performance of it in Berlin. Beethoven, Mozart, they studied the well-tempered clavier, the two books of the well-tempered clavier, but Bach were profoundly beautiful music and some of the most complex, contrapuntal music that I don't think anyone has ever done like that. Streamly break, I had 20 kids, ten of them, only ten survived to adulthood, lost both his parents when he was nine within nine months of each other, went to live with an older brother, an extremely productive. Yes, I so. I think from all the music teachers I've ever had, I understood the importance of studying Bach. He didn't write master puppets, but he wrote some great, powerful music. Well put. I tried to educate the aforementioned music teachers of the brilliance of the master of the puppets. Sometimes a good riff is greater than any musical composition. I agree. I go back and I play master of puppets every time I'm trying out a new amplifier. That's my go-to. That's your go-to. So the stereotypical guitar store, when you come in, you're playing master of puppets. I'll play master of puppets. I have to play some heavy riff and so usually it will default to some Metallica or something like that. Or I'll play Alison Chains or I do usually like a lot of times I'll go and I'll do drop D something or play tool. I usually would do something do do some drop tuning thing. It's got always got to be some some type of metal that I'll test to see if the if the bottom ends tight on the amp and stuff. So yes. All right. We have to talk about this a little bit. You made a much of videos about it. There's a moment in time. It still goes on, but there's a moment where it's really people are freaking out about the use of AI in music. So there's these, I would say incredible apps, like Suno, UDO, 11 Labs music is also great. They can generate basically text to song full song from a text prompt. And a lot of you start freaking out just by based on how good it is. So you start to immediately imagine how this is going to transform music and you go into replace musicians and all that kind of stuff. It is legitimately nerve-wracking because these are early versions. So you don't know where it goes. But in your intuition now, you've been thinking about this. You made a bunch of videos now like being able to reflect. Okay. Everybody chill calm down. So if you write us a prompt in Suno and it spits out a song, which I've done. I've done made a bunch of videos in this. I made up a fake artist, Eli Mercer in this video. Then I did a thing for CBS News. I made up this fake artist, Sadie Winters, and came up with this song walking away. Well, the computer, the program came up with it. There is some creativity in a process. So in this particular thing, the processes generate an image. I didn't chat GPT the image. Then I went to then I went to Claude and I wrote the lyrics because Claude's way better at lyrics than Suno is. Suno is bad at lyrics, at least right now. So I did. I created the lyrics in Claude and then I imported the lyrics into Suno and I had great results with the songs that I came up that it came up with. I always have to qualify that. But I started thinking about this. People freak out about this. Oh, this is bad. This bad. And I thought it was like, no, who are going to be the ones that are going to benefit from AI? Well, the people that are already great songwriters because you have to be able to recognize when it spits out something good versus when it spits out something that's not that good. And every other song, I've probably created 130 song ideas out of which there's three good ones. And there's the thing that's happening where people's ear very quickly is becoming a tune to AI slop. Yes. And that's actually quite fascinating. Like for example, one of the things there's this viral clip going around of an AI base, like a soul jazz remix of songs like 50 sent many men. And I think it is super impressive. And there's a different pipeline actually. It's a tricky pipeline to how to pull that off. And I think a lot of the creativity in that, even that kind of remixing is in the pipeline that of how you actually do that. Because there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline. But I think ironically, it's very cool at first. But when you listen to it for a while, you understand that this is AI slop. Yes. For a soul remix, it actually lacks soul. But maybe you think of like when I listen to soul or blues, I think I really want in that case to know, I don't want a AI BB King. I want the real BB King. And I if I if I know if any AI is involved in a BB King process, I'm tuning out. Yes. And I don't think I'm being curmudgingly old dude in that. I think we humans want authenticity. So when when AI when I first started making these AI videos, I started back in 2023. I made my first one. And I would take my phone, come up in the kitchen, I play a song and my my youngest and Dylan, my youngest Laila and I have three kids in my oldest Dylan. As soon as I play it, while you listen to AI and I was like, Oh my God, instantly. I was like, how do you know? Oh, it has this ringing sound in the thing. So it took me probably about four or five days to figure, okay, what are the hearing that I'm not hearing? So I did it. I separated all the parts and what they're hearing was the artifacts that are in the vocal reverb that sent that were that made incomplete. You just couldn't do the ambiences correctly, right? Cause it's trained on a lot of these AI programs are trained on very low bit, bit rate MP3s, right? So they feed all this stuff in there. So they're getting really inferior information on the in the training process, whereas now when they make these deals with the major labels, they'll get the multi tracks, they'll get high quality wave files to train from, right? And whoever opts in, they get the solo vocal tracks, you know, if Ed Sheeran wants to do it or Drake or whoever wants to give their voice to it, let it do his thing and then get their royalties from it. I'm not saying that any any of them are doing. I'm just giving you an example, but every time that I would do it, I could be down the hall and I would play something on my phone just to see if they'll like why you listen to AI, they can instantly tell then eventually started getting better. And then it'd be like, is this AI, I'd be in the car with Layla coming back from Taekwondo practice and she's like, is this AI? Why does it sound like AI sounds like it could be AI and I'd be like, yeah, she's like, oh, it's getting better. And then I did this song for it was an NPR interview, I created a song with a fake artist and the song was called Neon Ghosts and I played it for Layla in the car. She's like, can you separate the tracks? I said, yeah, I have them separated back home. Okay, I want to go down here. So we go down the studio and I play it for and she listens to the solo vocal. She said, wow, this is really realistic. This is very hard to tell even with the solo [BLANK_AUDIO] I think the room for creativity right now for humans is lyrics. It seems like the lyrics that are being generated a lax soul somehow that's I don't know the words correctly. Yeah. I mean, they can be incredibly sophisticated, but there's something the edge is not there. Some kind of edge that you we want in our lyrics, some kind of surprise, but not cringe or not cliche or something truly novel in the lyrics, but that if that's the case, it's kind of sad that that's where the creativity is to come from, but not from the music. Because then if we can create very realistic music that sounds really damn good, where's the role of the musician there? I think the role of the musician is that in actually if they use AI to assist them in coming up with ideas, like as a creation tool, then the musician, like some of this stuff is just not high quality, sonically high quality. So the musician goes in and redo stuff and changes things and adds parts and then they actually do music production. And maybe they re-sing the parts and they change the stuff and then then it's just basically like an idea generator. And I think that that's a great use of AI is for that. But let's see, if you do that, does it make you sad that you don't necessarily need to learn instruments? So basically you can, I mean, you could think of it as a different kind of instrument, but you can write lyrics, you can hum the melody, you could just hum parts. And then do a B kind of thing, just kind of rhythm, this kind of, and stitch them together, and never actually have your fingers on a guitar or face on a drumstick. That's why I'm not going to use AI, Lex, is for that reason because to me, it's just boring. And when I use it, it's like, I used it for about a month or so just because I was making videos and I was trying to see how it's advancing. Maybe three or four months, I'll sit down and I'll see whatever new versions they have, and I'll write some songs, write some songs, I'll prompt some songs and see what they come up with and see if they're improving on the things. But ultimately, I don't find it interesting to use. I hear you. You're a bit old school. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm trying to think about the future, and I think it's still even in the future also going to be boring. I think there's something fundamentally boring about it, and I'm going to try to figure it out for it. So for example, I use it a lot for more and more and more for programming. So for building stuff. And there it's not about the final output is not the code. The output is what the code creates. And there it's extremely useful, it doesn't matter if it's boring and that's useful. But when the final output is the thing that AI creates, which it would be in music, then there's something about us that just like we know, there is something boring about it. Yes. We want to celebrate and see the thing that's hard to create. And if AI can just text the song, generate a top 10 hit, we will quickly lose value for that, I think. And so we'll want raw, like raw, whatever shape that raw takes, I want to say raw talent, but that raw talent of any kind. And perhaps it would make me a little bit sad, but that's also awesome. Perhaps the new kind of raw talent that civilization is asking for is how to make great TikToks. Maybe that's what raw talent looks like. It makes me a little bit sad, because I'm a huge fan of long form. So that also creating TikToks is also talent. It is a talent, absolutely. When I see anything that's AI generated, I instantly recognize it. Any video, I'm like, boring, boring, boring. And my kids do the same thing. They just have no interest in engaging with it as soon as they recognize it. And they can spot it a mile away. And they're just like, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. And then they kind of just, then they didn't even want to engage with the social media platforms, which is a danger, which I think they need to crack down on the AI Slop. YouTube's done a pretty good job on it, but it's hard to stay on this, it gets flooded with so much of this stuff. It's so easy to create and put up there and to just be in the whack-a-mole thing where you're just trying to get rid of it all. It's fundamentally like, it's fundamentally boring. I think boring is a really good, boring, and it's annoying to have to flip through the AI Slop. But I think actually, as a civilization, it's just inspiring for authenticity, because you want to be real, and being raw, which I, you know, one of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting shit and just being themselves in the long form versus overproduced. Because I think AI is making people realize the AI is good at being overproduced. So there'll be more. Let's get that covered. Yeah. Even artists, because you're saying like, yeah, they'll use it as tools. Part of me thinks like, not really, like, I think they'll quickly, this kind of process of generating a bunch of different options and choosing the one you like the most, I think it's a really frustrating process for artists. I think AI will definitely be used extremely effectively as a very fine, grained tool in the image domain, it's editing images, but not like macro editing, but very specific kind of editing that Photoshop is increasing the integrated in. I mentioned to you offline, so there's a whole isotope of Rx, group of software that does a lot of the denoising, all the D, removing the wind, all the, they integrate machine learning extremely effectively for working with audio in different kinds of ways. There's a bunch of different other programs that do that, maybe for like B-roll footage and same thing on the audio if you just need a little audio to create a feeling of a scene that might be used there in that kind of way, but truly original stuff. I've saved videos where I'm doing speaking over music, for example, in an interview, somebody's playing and we have two dial out, two people speaking in labs, but there's so much bleed coming from the person playing that you can't hear what we're saying, and then we'll split out the voice for that section, the two voices separate them and then take the music and separate that stuff. And so it's really helpful for things like that. And now once again, quick 30 seconds, thank you to our sponsors, check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast, go to let'sfremend.com/sponsors. We got up live desk from my favorite office desks, better help from mental health, element for electrolytes, fin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online and perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration, choose wisely my friends. And now back to my conversation with Rick Beato. So you have this video breaking down, so being a component is a song, "Man Child." And you use that as an example of building up people's intuition about the music business and how the music production for these popular songs is being done these days, who's doing the songwriting, how's it being done, and all that kind of stuff. I was wondering if you could speak to that. In that particular song, Jack Antonoff, who was one of the writers, Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter, said in some awards thing that there's an old guy on YouTube that says that Sabrina had very little to do with the song, and so he said in this clip, "You being the old guy." Me being the old guy, that, well, Sabrina really was the, she's amazing, and she's the one that wrote everything in the song, so my response is like, "Well, why are you guys even included on the songwriting, man?" So one of these you highlight is a lot of people are included on the list of songwriters. Yeah, ten people, eleven people, I mean, you know, like why are the song, why is the song of the year have songs that are interpolation, meaning that they have melodies from other songs in their interpolation, they used to call it stealing, and then you have songs that are used samples for the whole thing, like the Do Chi song that's out right now, and I said, look, she took a Go Chi A song and basically took off his melody, and she created her own melody over it. So like, well, it saves time for, you know, to actually create a track, you just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful. Yeah, you pointing that out, the song anxiety broke my brain. I mean, it's so absurd. Yeah, this feels unfair, it feels, it's a good song, but it was also a good song before, and it was before that, it was also a good song. Right, 2011 to Louis Bonnfeu in 1967. So why is that considered to be in the top songs of the year? It's like, come on, you can't find anything. another song that's not based on that, that's ridiculous. - Yeah, yeah. - And don't you have some really good songs on a record? - Yeah, but why are these the ones that are coming to the top right now? This is interesting. That might be just a criticism of the machinery of the business that drives them. It's not necessarily like a lot of these folks are really good musicians. First of all, I think a lot of them are also good, like the actual songs that make it to the top of good. I'm a big fan of Bruno Mars. He's a great songwriter and he's a great musician, all of them out. - Absolutely, you know, is the Michael Jackson reincarnated and is super talented guy. - Incredible, right? - Yes. - You mentioned Billie Eilish and her brother, right? A lot of the songs. - So good. - Yeah, super talented. - I mean Taylor Swift is unlike anything, I mean, that's a historic figure in music. She's a fundamentally, at least originally, a singer-songwriter. - Yes. - So that's a, I mean, that, I'm sorry, but that is like of the kind of music that Rick Biano gets props to. She carries the flame forward. - She works on her own songs, absolutely. And she, but she never has more than two co-writers on things. - You wanna take a group at the break? - Yeah. - Okay. - I have to ask you about this complexity that you're facing on a basically daily basis. I think it's a challenge a lot of YouTube folks experience, but you're just so viscerally experiencing it because a lot of what you do in your channel is celebrate music broadly. And so as part of that process, you have to sometimes show clips of music. And I think all of that falls under fair use quite obviously. And so you get all these YouTube copyright claims. And for folks who don't know, if you get three of those, it's each one of those can be a strike on the channel and it can take down your channel. And you get some insane amount. You said you got like, I think I had a similar thing on my Rick Rubin episode, like 30s. I think he said 13 after 13. So what, can you just speak to this whole thing? You've been in a constant battle, WMG, UMG, all the three letter name record labels, the music business people. So what's the story there? Well, this has been going on since the beginning of my channel. And I've made videos periodically. When I first started, it was just instant blocks. So you never knew back in, I started, it'll be 10 years in June. So when I play music in a video, YouTubers were not playing music in videos because they didn't because of the content ID things and the takedowns and stuff. So I would play music and I just see what happens. And then you get a content ID claim, or you realize that people were quote unquote, blockers. And I came up with that term that they would block your video, take down your video. And I realized at first it was like, anything guns and roses would just still the case. Guns and roses, ACDC. I mean, many bands Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and then something happened. There was a guy in the skateboard on TikTok that had the ocean spray thing and he was listening to dreams by Fleetwood Mac. And that blew up and became a number one song again. And the labels then realized, I mean, I had made many videos about, about why this is wrong and it should be fair use and everything. Well, because of that, the label was like, ooh, maybe we should rethink this. And then they just started demonetizing videos and demonetizing means they get all the money. They get all the money. In a one hour video, if they, if you use 20 seconds of a clip, they get all the money, okay? So I hired a lawyer finally after the Rick Rubin video because I thought it was ridiculous. I go over to Tuscany, I interview Rick at his house and I hired a lawyer to fight this, who I'm going to have in my channel, I don't want to say who it is, but he's another YouTuber. And he had approached me a couple of years ago and it's not cheap to do. You're going to do like a public interview with him? I'm doing interviews with him, yes, I talked to him today about it. I can't wait. Yeah, that would be great. So he said, you should fight these because every single one of them is fair use. And he went through my entire catalog, I have 2100 videos. And he's fought 4,000 content ID claims and won every single one of them. 4,000. That's a lot. I mean, when I do top 20 guitar solos, there's 20 content ID claims, you know? And it can be either from the sound recording, if I use that, or if I just play it, it can be from the publisher. That's amazing. Yeah. So is there, I mean, it's still a lawyer, it's still work. Does that, is there a hopeful thing you can say about the future of, yeah, fight these content ID claims? If it's fair use, if you're not just playing the song and listening to it, because a lot of stuff that are reaction videos or whatever, that are not where they play the whole song, I mean, I'm using these things and I'm talking a lot of the times it's in interviews or it's in, I'm breaking down a solo and there's a, yeah, see that's an obvious one, but even reaction videos, right? Yeah. Even reaction videos. Yes. Absolutely. Those are more borderline. Yeah. But I don't know. I love those videos. Absolutely. Like when a person is just sitting there and listening to it and they're like, you know, like a voice teacher is listening to a vocal performance. Yeah, but those are breakdowns. Yeah, those are breakdowns. I think that the content ID stuff that was happening with these major labels, they would hire third parties, they would go out, use AI and go and anytime they detect anything, they always go to the biggest channels first to get the most views and make sense and stuff. And they would claim everything that they could and historically, YouTubers never would fight back. Oh, this is easy money. YouTubers never fight back and at these things because they're afraid of their channels taken down. Yeah. And so, Rick, be honest, I hope my beer. There you go. I mean, it's important. I mean, it took me years though, Lex, I didn't, I've been doing this, so I've been doing it for one year now and I'm nine years, I'm 10 years into my channel, so it took me that long. I mean, hopefully it, there's a ripple effect. And so it's not just your situation, hopefully you don't have to deal with this for much longer. Right. How has Spotify changed music? Sometimes we highlight the fact that the change in nature of music and that it's the scarcity is not there. But also, it's like every kind of music is available and so fast and so easy, it's easy to explore. It's a commodity. It's like turning on a water faucet. Do you think it's some good to, I mean, it's a lot of good. It's good to that, right? Have you, did you go through that whole process? I still remember where I had to basically throw away the albums and never did that. What if you, if you uploaded them into your computer? Yeah, so there's that two step process. One there's like the hard albums, CDs, and then you upload them into your computer and you save them. And then you, how do you put it? Allegedly a friend of yours, pirates, some extra songs, and then put some on the computer. So you have, but you have your stash on the computer, you're like, this is my finely selected stash of greatness, sometimes organized by album, sometimes not. And the big moment for me, that was really difficult to do, really difficult to do, is throw away that stash, and switch to Spotify, switch to streaming, and basically rebuild the stash of playlists and all this kind of stuff. And it was heartbreaking because so much love and effort went into that. Both the CD, the stashing of the CD and the stashing of the MP3s in the computer. And then in Spotify, it just seems just effortless. But it helped me discover all kinds of artists I'd never would've discovered otherwise. And Pandora, I use a lot, Pandora is more prioritizing on the discovery part versus the organization part. And that was really wonderful. So one of the things I, I'll start with the positive that I like about Spotify is that they show view count, they show play counts, whether they're real or not. That's another question. That they show how many plays songs have, and that's how the charts are based. Does that give you signal that something is listened to a billion times, does that mean something to you? Yeah, it means that it's a popular song, but that's a massive hit. That's very few songs that have a billion, billion plays. Now, the downside of Spotify is the way that they pay their artists, now they've lumped in podcasts that are getting a cut of the streaming with the music. And the search and discovery, there's benefits of algorithms and there's negative things of algorithms. And algorithms happen to kind of, many times, pigeonhole people, intues. Listen to the same genre of music all the time and not expanding their You know The discovery of of new music where that you might hear on the radio back in the day. We're program directors Would play things that they liked right and you might hear something. What is that? Oh, that's a new Sound garden record or something. I'm like whoa. I like that. I'm gonna go about check that out And you know something you might not have heard or something odd Like one thing I really love doing on spotifies you can you can have radio. Yeah, meaning like give a few it's some of the Pandora like you can Okay, this is gonna reveal a little too much about myself, but usually want to go work out I'll listen to something like rage against the machine radio I'm sorry. I mean what else would you listen to I need a motivation classical music? I don't know But yeah, it's pretty good because I recommend a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't even know some of it I know obviously, but I akin to the similar to the rage against the machine-y type thing And it recommends a bunch of artists and it's like oh holy shit. That's awesome So I don't know that that discovery works really well. So this is some of it is a technology thing But that experience is fundamentally more Vibrant than I had previously with my stash That was just keep a stash, and I'll listen to the same record over and over and over and over But yeah, there's what's lost is the I'm sure you love you love this but listening through the Led Zeppelin records Just driving in a car and listening to the whole thing all the way through. Yeah, that's lost So I have my old iTunes libraries from 2005 that I listed that I That I have saved the CDs that I uploaded into my computer Yeah Anytime I do that I play songs on my When I'm doing interview I always play wave files that put them in and it's funny that when I interview a mixer I've interviewed this mixing engineer Andy Wallace and people comment Wow that the song sounded amazing and you're well not only are they great mixes that he did but I'm using wave files in there and people notice there and these are wave files from From you know original encoding not not remastered things that Spotify keeps doing and adding a bunch more top-end and things like that that these are the these are actually the The original wave files from off the CD that I ripped 20 years ago What's your current and people are really curious about that? So what's your current stack? What are the tools you use? What's your DAW? What's the audio interface? What are the mics? So I use Pro Tools Pro Tools for the most part, but I also use Logic Enable 10. I've got all I've got all those for your most in a Mac. I'm only on a Mac. Oh in a Mac only on Mac I'm only the opposite although we have multiple PCs because my kids use PCs. Yeah, just through about they do it for gaming They like to get right master. I but like in terms of editing. I hate how how good Mac is So good and just integrating the hardware and the software just work well together both If I didn't have a Mac honestly, I wouldn't be talking to you right now because I got a G3 that so the only good thing That a major label did for me is when when my band was on UMG and they bought a They bought me a G3 and an SM7 and Pro Tools did you own one the first Pro Sumer Pro Tools thing and I learned how to use Pro Tools and that allowed me to learn how to edit video and become a record producer So I got to give it give it to Macs for that So Pro Tools, I mean that's still the standard. That's kind of the industry standard Yeah, I got to ask you because I know I've never used Pro Tools. I've used Again, I'm a caveman. I've used Reaper. I've used Studio one. That's the reason I've used that and yeah for the most time I've used Ableton live. I feel like I'm using 1% of the power of the tool Like Ableton live makes me feel like I'm literally just pressing the record button Ableton's amazing. It really is. It is. Yeah, but I feel like that I mean it's designed for people they're doing like all kinds of meaty stuff and like looping and What is it the push buttons with the with the beats and this is I mean, I saw I saw them really out of touch But there is just the power is incredible. Also, it's I think it's Not just for recording. It's also for live performances. Yes, so this is why Studio one has been a little bit nicer for me because it's simpler made for Recording more so any DAW that you get used to Lex that's just using it using it. Yeah, and yeah, you have to become a master at the things if you want to be a Recording engineer or producer you you become an expert a lot of the you know, Phineas and Billie Eilish I think that they use logic. That's their DAW that they like to use and logic you know a lot of pros use logic You know, I fire up logic every couple days and I use it for things I have it on my laptop here and I I've Pro Tools and Logic and my laptop. I use both I use Pro Tools mostly though But Pro Tools, that's what you feel like at home. I'm an I'm an expert in Pro Tools. Are you using any Emulation any ampsims or it's all real amps. No, I use ampsims on my laptop here when I travel and things like that I use Neural DSP which I just did a video at their headquarters in Helsinki and they're The CEO dog Castro is a friend of mine. I actually talked to him today as a matter of fact And I have a Kemper Ampsum, you know a modeler. I have an XFX. I've got a Helix. I pretty much have all these things But for me I can I have a hundred amps in my studio So and I have Mike set up all the time and cap it and stuff. I have a hundred amplifier's real amplifiers real real Yeah, they say a hundred. I have a hundred. Yeah, about a hundred maybe 95 How do how does won't go Get to that level collecting and being I'll be 64 and not in April so so you just don't let go I don't let go no Why would you get to a hundred like is it is a tone difference? Yes, you know that everything does one thing really well And so it'd be like Okay, so I have this Marshall GCM 800 that's modded that does this one thing It's got great mids and it's good for this kind of a tune And so I will pull that out then it's like no, I need more of like a scooped metal tune sound It's more like Metallica or dream theater or something so I'm gonna pull out my my Mesa Mesa boogie or I need a I need something that's chiming this more like Brian May or like the edge I'm gonna pull out my Vox AC 30 so everything and and That's that's why I have so many amps because they all do Every amp I have does one thing really well if it doesn't do well. Do it well. I get rid of it And I'm down to a hundred down to a hundred. It says only a hundred. Yeah, but you get by with probably 75 Come on, but you then you're really throwing the risk of not having just the right hand But you're using emulation so it's that's that's great. I mean on that but there's the other side of it, which is the guitar I told you offline. I think having multiple guitars is cheating, but whatever Nobody agrees with me on this. I only have like one. I do have some side pieces But one main the great is what do you put it? Yeah, I said I would never do this But I was in a guitar store. I looked next to our guitar store in Cambridge and One day I would always stop by. I don't know why I just just look at the guitars like it And I don't really know why exactly just to be in the aura of these great instruments and I They brought in this American strat that had these different shades of it was like a silver And I just I've never had this feeling they talk about love at first sight. I just fell in love with the guitar Can you just speak to the kind of guitars you have and you love I pretty much have mainly Old-school guitars, right? So I have Gibson's I have fenders. I have PRS guitars and then I have I have two Gibson acoustics I have a 1957 country in Western that I've had for probably 30 some of the years. It's a great guitar and I have a J 45 Gibson and I have a Martin D28 so I only have three Nice acoustics and I have a guild 12 string and I have a guild Nashville tuned guitars the low strings are up up the octave so the e a and d and g are up the octave That's Nashville tuning six string though Like basically what David Gilmore plays uncomfortably numb in my video. He plays a Nashville tune but with one variation the low E is up two octaves so um he He demonstrates actually the and this how he wrote comfortably numb the the chorus part of it was with this particular guitar that he's playing in the video What can you say about like the different fields that the guitars the acoustics have. Like how do you know which one to pull out? It depends on the kind of part that I'm playing. If I want something with really tight mid-range with that that doesn't have a lot of low bass, this particular old Gibson that I have the 57, I will pull that out. It's got very balanced strings and mid-range doesn't have a booming bottom end, booming low E-string or anything or A-string. So it depends on what kind of sound I'm looking for. If I'm more about sound versus feel. Yeah, all my guitars play equally well. I have them all set up to where they play well. I have a signature Gibson guitar that I've had for five years now. Why is it Gibson? Gibson is a double-cut, less-pull special. Yeah. With P90 pickup I don't know what double-cut me is, but it's also a must-to-cut, to, as opposed to a less-pull that has one cut. So it's a less-pull special that has two. I have it over there, my signature guitar. That's the, all right, nice. When you play this, you're going to be like, "Oh my God, this is butter." Now, again, I said it's cheating. And what amp do you play through? Do you play through an amp, Sim, or do you have, what do you have? This is going to be, yeah, I use bias effects. I'm sorry. Lex, I use amp sims, too. So I just got the new John Mayer Neural DSP plug-in today that I have not tried out. He did a modeling of all his amplifiers that Neural DSP did. And it sounds great. John played it. It sounds just like his amps. Yeah, John is incredible. John's great. I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with him two times. And I thought of being an incredible musician. He's also conversational. Yeah. I've known John since he lived in Atlanta, but when he got signed, and I knew John from way back then, right, in the early 2000s. I think he doesn't get enough credit. Like, he's one of the greatest living guitarists. He's a fantastic guitar player, absolutely. And a celebrator, if that's a word, of great guitar player. Absolutely. By way of advice, you started your YouTube channel in your mid-50s and found incredible success. You've had essentially multiple careers. Is there some wisdom you can extract from that? So my theory is that somebody's got to be successful, so why can't it be you? That was that was that was my when I started my channel. I mean, I didn't start it to it started by accident with the Dylan video. And and really so many people reached out to me. I started it six months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, can you teach me this pro musicians, well known ones that you wouldn't who you know. Can you teach me this? I can't teach you what Dylan did, but I can I can teach you relative pitch, develop your ear that way. But then I had conservatories writing to me about this stuff from all over the world. How did you teach Dylan this? Because we made about four different videos and they got more and more sophisticated. And so I thought, okay, I'll make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff. This is that's really why I started. So I didn't have to keep I couldn't answer the emails. There's so many of them. So I just started making videos on how to train your ear and music theory. And that's really how I started my channel. And and my wife was like, what are you doing? I said, I'm making YouTube videos. Why? So I don't have to keep telling people how I did this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you know, few I had four thousand subscribers the first month and another four thousand and hit a hundred thousand after a year. And then six months later, two hundred thousand and three months later, three hundred thousand. So I think there one thing that should be said, that a modern culture for young people, a lot of them will see YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. And they kind of want to be famous. They want to get the clicks and the views and so on. And that's the thing they chase and optimize. I think the thing that you're leaving unstated perhaps is that you spend many years pursuing the mastery of a craft. And there's a lot of value to getting good at something. Absolutely. Off line. You can actually reveal your journey online, but the thing you're chasing is not a fame. It's getting good. That's something. And I think actually what happens is even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for. If that's the thing you're that ends up happening, it's still like getting good at one thing kind of somehow released to getting good at another thing. Somehow they'll lead you to get better at getting better at the next thing at the next thing and the next thing. But if you're just chasing fame and trying to figure out how do I do the viral thing or so on, it just seems to you might actually get there, but it'll be unfulfilling and not long-lasting. My theory of my channel has always been make videos on things I'm interested in. And at first I thought, oh, nobody's going to watch an old white-aired guy on YouTube. That was kind of my thing. Well, that was not correct. And then it's like, we'll just make videos on stuff I'm interested in. It just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I'm interested in. And keep learning. And when I produce bands, I never let them take my picture ever and never let them record me in the studio. There's virtually no pictures of any band I ever produced. So from 1999 to 2015, when I December 2015, when that Dylan video came out, no one took my picture. There were no pictures of me on the internet. You're fully behind the camera guy. No pictures. No pictures with people. Hey, can we take a picture? I said no pictures with people. And now you're like, you're the talent. You're the face. I mean, but again, the thing you're leaving on stated there is like, you spent a lot of years teaching music, like really exploring music, trying a music career of like trying to create, trying to produce, trying to be a musician and all these not just trying, like being getting extremely good at it. I just, I think in modern culture, there's a sense you want to skip that part. I want to be famous. I want to, you know, this, and that is a thing that's not going to be in most cases effective as a primary thing to chase. So I have an undergrad in classical bass. I have a master's from doing the conservatory and jazz guitar. Then I taught college for, I taught jazz studies for five years from 87 to 92. Then I got a publishing deal, my first publishing deal in 1992 with polygram publishing. And then I became a producer when I was 37, having no idea how to engineer. I taught myself engineering. And then YouTube, I taught myself at edit videos. And then you taught yourself how to interview. And I taught myself an interview. I'd never done an interview before. And that was like an interviewer with you haven't just done that. You've taught yourself not how to do just YouTube but YouTube shorts. Yes. Different totally different thing, totally different skill. And not just YouTube, but like how to be like it. There's a, because you're both a YouTuber and like a musician who posts stuff on YouTube. YouTuber means like you're thinking about stuff like thumbnails. Which I make my own thumbnails. I've always made my own thumbnails. By the way, before I forget, I think I speak for the entirety of the internet, thanking you for how you introduce your videos and how you close them. Because you, this is a big part of YouTube where people have a 30 minute introduction to a five minute video. You just go straight in. That's really wonderful. It's, I mean, on all fronts, I mean, I suppose that has to do with the production of the skill that you have of understanding cutting, cutting, cutting fast on. Yep. Yeah. Cutting, cutting the fluff, cutting the bullshit. I'll just get straight to the core of the thing. I figured you talked about maintaining friendships for a long time. You said, never waste a friendship. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. That's one of my things is that I really value the time I've spent with people, friendships, and keeping in touch with people. I talk to each one of my siblings multiple times a week. I talk to my sisters probably every night, my two sisters. I have friends from college. I get friends from growing up. I have friends from, you know, both colleges I went to. I have friends from all different eras in my life that I keep in touch with and visit whenever I can and you must have met some incredible humans and incredibly weird and interesting humans throughout your life. So it's worth it. The effort to connect and reconnect. I mean, it's pretty much everything in life. Nothing means anything more than the friendships that you make in your family. What's the point of this whole thing? That's right. What's the role of music in the human experience? Well, hopefully to enlighten people and to create the soundtrack of their life. It is, right? Yeah. Music does something. I'll get sometimes when I'm alone, I'll listen to a song, and there's nothing quite like a song that makes me truly feel, like feel alive, and whatever that is, sadness, or hope, or excitement, or when I'm working out, listening to Rage Against the Machine, like protest, or as I was listening to the Metallica, I was re-using to the set that they played in Moscow, just hyped, like truly hyped, that was like pacing, listening to it. And there's nothing like that. I've never found anything. And I don't know what that is in the human psyche, it's that. But I'm so glad we found it. We humans created instruments that can vibrate strings and together create harmonies and melodies, and ones that reverberate to generations, and they carry that. It's one of the greatest things that humans ever did, reading music. And all of that led up to you, some guy being listened to by millions of people on the internet. This is all a simulation, and I've been a fan of yours for a long time, like I told you, this is crazy to meet you. Same Lex. Thank you for everything you do for the world, for celebrating music, for helping us discover and rediscover some of the incredible musicians and songs that have been created over the decade, over the centuries. Thank you for being who you are, and thank you for talking to me. Thanks, I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Rick Beato. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now let me leave you some words from Friedrich Nietzsche, as I often do. Without music, life would be a mistake. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time. [Music]