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

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

Rick Beato is a music educator, interviewer, producer, songwriter, and a true multi-instrument musician, playing guitar, bass, cello & piano. His incredible YouTube channel celebrates great musicians & musical ideas, and helps millions of people fall in love with great music all over again. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep492-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/rick-beato-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Rick’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/RickBeato Rick’s X: https://x.com/rickbeato Rick’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/rickbeato1 Rick’s Website: https://rickbeato.com Rick’s Ear Training: https://beatoeartraining.com The Beato Book: https://beatobook.com SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: UPLIFT Desk: Standing desks and office ergonomics. Go to https://upliftdesk.com/lex BetterHelp: Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://betterhelp.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex Fin: AI agent for customer service. Go to https://fin.ai/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex Perplexity: AI-powered answer engine. Go to https://perplexity.ai/ OUTLINE: (00:00) – Introduction (00:28) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (09:17) – Guitar solos (13:16) – Gypsy jazz and Django Reinhardt (14:48) – Bebop jazz (19:00) – Perfect pitch vs relative pitch (23:37) – Learning to play guitar (47:08) – Miles Davis (52:34) – Bass guitar (53:41) – Greatest guitar solos of all time (1:22:56) – 27 Club (1:27:37) – Elton John (1:30:51) – Metallica (1:35:21) – Tom Waits (1:41:12) – Greatest rock stars (1:44:35) – Beethoven (1:51:10) – Bach (1:54:01) – AI in music (2:07:52) – Sabrina Carpenter (2:11:23) – YouTube copyright strikes (2:16:59) – Spotify (2:27:51) – Guitars (2:32:13) – Advice PODCAST LINKS: – Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr – Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 – RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ – Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 – Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips

The following is a conversation with Rick Biato, 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 seconds.

could mention of each sponsor, check them out in the description or at lexfredman.com slash sponsors. It is, in fact, the best way to support this podcast. We got Uplived 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, perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. the number of things that perplexity ships at the rated ships is freaking incredible. Choose whysen, my friends.

And now, onto the full ad reads, I try to make them interesting, but if you skip, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. To get in touch with me for whatever reason, go tolexstreaming.com slash contact. All right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by Uplift Desk. my go-to for all office and podcast studio furniture.

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We have an incredible episode coming up on psychiatry. What an episode. What a mind-blowing, no-pun-n-tintended. episode. The human mind, as I'm sure we'll get to in that episode, is an incredibly complex machine, and each individual mind has its own intricate complexities. And the history of psychiatry, which is the focus of that episode, is a history of people trying to figure out how to be a kind of mechanic to that machine. I personally think that talk therapy is one of the most powerful ways to at least elucidate, bring to the surface the issues that need to be

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All right. Anyway, get a free eight-count sample pack with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Finn, the number one AI agent for customer service. Like I said, I have agents right. running everywhere all the time. This particular agent specializes in customer service. 65% average resolution rate. It's trusted by over 6,000 customers, including AI companies,

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anywhere with a great-looking online store. Shopify's CEO that I always 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,

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handle seamlessly. All of that at your fingertips if you just want to sell some t-shirts like I do or actually run a legitimate large-scale business. All of that is supported by Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Lex. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Lex to take your business to the next level today. This is Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, 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, dear friends, here's Rick Beato.

You had, I think, an incredibly fun and diverse beginning to your music journey. I heard somewhere that one of the things that made you fall in love with music was listening to guitar solo, some epic guitar solos. 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, I was like, it's this pentatonic scale. E minor 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 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 solo, the guitar down, then we get in a 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, C, G, D, A. And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play. Hashtag parenting. That's amazing. 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 Hendricks in general, is kind of known for the rhythm, not being simple rhythm, just the chords that you mentioned. It's what you do with those chords. It's almost improvisation on the rhythm side. He did all those really cool chord fragments, riffs and things like that that's just part of his, that's the Hendricks style. What do you think? I mean, many people put Hendricks 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 Biotto is, go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent interviews with musicians, watch your breakdown in 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, you know, I'll put somebody like Alan Holdsworth, who's a famous fusion guitar player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something, just some oddball solo in there just so that people, as they're listening down to list, will get exposed to something they would not necessarily get exposed to. Yeah, a lot of variety, but Hendricks, did you show up here today, Rick?

Try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there. I just am getting that vibe right now. No, I'm not, but I don't want to say greatest, you know, you can say, well, there are people that inspired Jimmy Hendricks, Charlie Christian, older guitar players. Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart were the first two really big, and probably, and Andre Segovia were. 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 perplexity, Django Reinhardt was, of course, a jazz guitarist and composer, actively in France, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history. So Django was, well, there's a huge movement right now, Gypsy Jazz movement, as they call it, that is kind of built around the style of music that he played back in the early 20th century. One of the things about Django is that he was

in a fire and he had two of his third and fourth finger. So his ring finger and pinky were essentially melted together. He had no use of them. Although he could use them while he was courting, but a lot of these incredibly fast lines, he's just playing with two fingers. And it's amazing. That, what is that? So that's Gypsy Jazz. That's Gypsy Jazz, yeah. Him, Stefan Grapelli, was a violinist that played with him a lot. How much is this is improvisation? Everything he's doing there is improvised.

Feels so free. Yeah. And fun, like swing. And then that leads to, you said, pre-Beeba. So bebop was the kind of jazz that was also influential on you and your own life journey. And it's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz that was very influential on the music that followed. So what was bebop? Well, after the big bands were happening in the, you know, 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 kind of the one of the main figure. of early beb 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 on the frontboard. 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? It's like just like you'd learn any type of language. My dad loved bebop. Now, when I was a little kid, and he's listening to these bebop records, whether it's Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie or Oscar Peterson, Joe Passe, great jazz guitar player,

I'm just hearing 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, bebup is one of the hardest to improvise in that style, in that language of bebop, 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. I think it's very similar to learning languages, which 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 Kuhl. She's a language researcher.

And I watch this, the linguistic genius of babies. I saw this in 2010, this lecture that she did. like a TED talk. And she talks about this, that kids, they did an experiment. They exposed kids to Mandarin three times a week for 25-minute sessions, just a person-speaking Mandarin to these babies. And they were able to recognize the sounds, the phonemes of that language even later on. And when I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch, I thought, why does Dylan have perfect pitch? But no one in my family had ever had perfect pitch. And I thought, well, 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 Pass. We've 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, a 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 ability to identify any note without a reference tone. So you can play, it doesn't matter how quickly they are that a person with 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. 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, to identify the relative nature from one pitch to another. And of course, intervals make up scales and intervals make up chords. And so that if you develop, to any degree, relative pitch, you can understand,

you can hear the music better. Yes. So what does it take, since we're taking a tangent on tangent, what does it take to train your ear? What's a TLDR on the course before people go out and sign up. It's just practice, basically. You start with intervals.

Typically with small intervals, like minor second, major second. So minor second will be a half step, major second be a whole step. Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together? Both. So played separately, it's called melodic intervals, right, like a melody. And harmonic intervals are played like a harmony together. So you have to be able to identify them both,

both ways. With an early journey, like, we'll give people a preview of what they should, What does that look like? 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, a major third or minor third or major six or minor six or perfect fifth or tritone,

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 harmonic interval. How quickly does the ear in the very, 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 really make a lot of progress on it if you practice daily. What benefit does it have 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, that's going from the six minor chord to the four major to the five major to 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. Now, 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 12 intervals in an octave, then you learn them both melodically and harmonically, so played together and separate, then you learn chords. And so then you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended, bended 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 danger, 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 in playing guitar,

maybe even 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 an eye towards maybe playing a song? Yeah, with an eye towards, you learn the chord shapes and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing for learning guitar is actually how to position your fingers so that you don't mute strings that you don't want to mute.

That's the hardest thing for people to do, basically, is to get their fingers arch to where they, if you're playing a C major chord, your index fingers on. on the first fret of the B string, and you have to have that open e string ringing there, and it's hard for people to make those micro adjustments. You take it for granted, it'll actually been playing guitar for, I don't know, how many years, forever, right? Forever, yeah. 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. doing. I'm just a hobbyist recreational player, but wow, you're taking me all the way back. You're right.

It's the haptic, the physical aspect of it is really tricky. Conferently 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. Yes. For that, it's, I guess you have to they 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? Like, how much do you bend the finger? You have to have enough of flesh on it to actually raise the string and pitch.

Yeah. Otherwise, it... Yeah, because you're lifting it with part of a flesh. And, of course, you have to decide, depends how OCD you are. Do you want to be, like the perfect, the proper musician, or do you want to do a Hendricks?

So the thumb over the top. Way over the top, yes. And so like if you have a fretboard here, I think the more like classical guitarists, the very proper, perfect, perpendicular alignment of the fingertips to the fretboard, versus like Hendrix is like, fuck it. You nerds.

I'm going to do it with the messiness is part of the magic. Of course, like, B.B. King is also kind of messy looking in terms of his positioning of the fingers, but his tone is incredibly clean. Yes, super clean. So, like, that teaches you that maybe any position can converge towards 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,

If you're wearing it lower, lower, then 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 so they don't ring out. If you're playing the first note and comfortably numb and the solo at the end, and you're at the ninth fret of the G string and you 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 to mute that.

So all these micro adjustments that you don't even think about, I mean, you're not thinking about that Lex 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. Yeah, of course, you have to solve that puzzle. It must be really frustrating in the beginning, like holding a chord. Yes. Like all of them. It hurts too, right? If you're doing an acoustic guitar. Not for that long, though. For like a week. A couple, yeah. A couple weeks. 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 I'm trying to me. It is. So what else? So the physical component, play a few chords. Where does 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 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 Hendricks stuff that has cordal riffs, and you're moving up the neck and involving all the fingers and things like that. So 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 in songs. And then you have finger picking. If you have stairway to heaven, songs like that, how about wanting to learn that? That involves finger picking. because you have to isolate certain notes of the chord

and play two it 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 if you're righty, there's a right hand, you can use your fingers or you can use a pick. Correct. And that's a choice you make. And sometimes you use both.

Because in Stairway to Heaven, you're using the fingers at the beginning or fingers in pick, hybrid, they call it hybrid picking. And then later on, you're using the pick to flat pick the picking patterns. On the music theory front, do you recommend people learn scales and chords and, like, the theory of it? Later on, I would say, I wouldn't say necessarily right off the bat. I think learning songs is the first thing that you should do because 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 there. So you recommend practicing, what, every day? Every day. My son Dylan, when he started learning the guitar, a couple years ago,

I said, it's better to practice 10 minutes a day, seven days a week, than to practice one day for an hour, which is roughly the same amount of time. Yeah, but it usually turns into something longer. But otherwise, like, if you're a busy life, you know, taking a day off, that day turns into, a week and then a week turns it to a month and all of a sudden you haven't touched the instrument for months.

Which is why I leave my guitar on a stand all the time so that if I walk by it, I'm like, okay, I'll just pick it up for a second. And then the second turns into 10 minutes and an hour, two hours. All right, we've 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 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 gonna do the hardest Your training test of all time Are you ready? Right

Oh Now I just a quick back story 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 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 it 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.

It'll take one minute just need to do this thing for my friend Shane. And he's like, I don't want to. And I said, come on. So take one minute. I don't want to. So I said to my wife, I'm like, need, would you tell Dylan to come downstairs? I want to do this video. Take one minute.

She's like, Dylan, go downstairs. And he has a mouthful of candy there because he's. He was eating candy. So if you look at him, he's literally has a mouthful of candy while he's doing this. And we should say on Facebook, it wasn't quite viral. Yeah, like that, I don't know, 80 million views. Something like, they 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 Shone's solo from Journey and and I was like check this out and Dylan would sing

along and and 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 I was like Dylan's got a good ear and I were like well we have good ears too so maybe we could have done that we were that age so a couple more 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 checked.

I play it on my phone. I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I ask him, sing the Superman theme because we'd been listening to John Williams' soundtracks the week before. And he sings that. And that was in the right key. And I asked him another song.

So I turned the car around. 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 note 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. So you just associate 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, just says every note sounds completely different. Wow. Like you said, maybe it's a language thing. Yeah.

There really is a... You just learned the language. Yeah, the language. 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. Right around. Here we go. As fast as 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. C, flat. Great. How about this? How about this? This is incredible. And then how about this? What is it?

E. Fla. Correct. He's annoyed. He is annoyed. Yeah. 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. polychords. 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. Okay, sing a B-flat. Very good. What's this chord? Great, sing an F-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 polycords, so the people that were the best musicians were looked at it. I was like, oh, my God, you know, C augmented over D flat augmented. And the second chord was A flat major over A major, but they were both an 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, and what? And what? 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, fuges, anything Bach. And I would play the well-tempered clavier, and I would play, I have a friend, Turkish pianist, who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard,

it's named Iden Essen. And I would play Iden's improvisations for Dylan, had very sophisticated harmony and linear things in it. And Keith Jarrett and mainly jazz, classical and modern. in classical music. And then we would 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 the language acquisition has to involve the social brain. So when kids look at you, when a baby is looking at you, they're looking at your mouth and they're getting social cues from 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 and said, this is a C, this is a B-Fled, this is a G. I just played complex,

high-information music for them, and played with them. And that 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 neurobiology,

psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is in the mother's stomach, you're listening to the mother speak. Yes, that's right. So, like, that's how, on the language side, you're picking off 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 bebop jazz, you have a pretty good chance. Much better chance. Okay. All right. So that is we unwind our way back, Joe Pass and Bebob, you were funny enough talking about what is Bebob 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 wasn't a musician. It wasn't a musician. We never, my, I have six, six, six. and we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz. We just took it for granted at that time. Yeah, just took 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. We'd put it on a record. I'd sit on one side of the room. He'd sit on the other and not say a word. Listen through the whole side A. I'd go flip it over. Listen to side B, never say a word. And then get up and go do stuff.

and we did that all the time. And so the first time you impressed your dad was, did you a pass song, right? And by the way, we have to go to this song because people must have forgot. 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. Born in 1919, he said, if you ever learned 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 it. out some of this stuff. So I figured out this thing. Is it by ear mostly? Yeah, 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, Gino Vanelli thing with Carlos Rios playing. That stuff is incredibly hard. This, I'm starting, I don't know any of these chords. So I start out. I don't even know what that chord is. But I figured out, I, I just, and it's weird. I mean, look at that weird bar. So you were just finding, um, Playing around, putting your fingers under various positions. Right, but 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 until I heard to where it sounded like, oh, that's it, definitely. And I looked at my hand. I was like, what is that? I had no idea what it was. So you were connected to the, 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. It's all just... You're just like playing around with different shapes. That's amazing. I mean, look at that weird bar there. But then you get into these things. So that stuff there, I could figure out... And then this.

That stuff I can figure out. And then these things here... Those are just inversions of an... But I didn't. know that. I had heard Joe play that on the record. This is the last song on there. I'd listen to a bunch of times.

So you just replay over and 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, I would recommend. I feel like the struggle.

struggles where it's at. This is true for education in general. People, like, there's all these educators that try to make learning easier and more fun and all that kind of stuff. Great. Wonderful. But part of the thing is the struggle. Absolutely. But yeah, let's, 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 C-9 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's an incredible guitar player. Like, this is obvious. And he improvised all this.

He could have played it like this. But, you know, the first was the individual. Oh, that's hard. Maybe he's playing it like that. That sounds more realistic. The amount of different genres that you were able to replicate is this incredible. This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little over there. And then by the end, the record was so scratched.

It was, but it was. worth it. When I played it for my dad, he couldn't believe. I mean, he didn't say that's amazing. He was just like, hmm, pretty good. So what was the role of B-Bob 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 influenced Flea. And the guy showed up in a Miles Davis t-shirt. And...

Miles. Davis played with Charlie Parker when he was 18 years old. And that's his, Charlie Parker was really his mentor. Can you explain to me why with many of the folks you've interviewed, uh, and in general, out there in the, in the world of jazz, all roads lead to 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. He started as a B-B-B-B-B-B-B. I mean, he started as a B-B-B-B. player and then he you had records like the birth birth of cool and modal jazz and um hard bop 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 coltrain in it. I mean, different piano players could be, Winton Kelly, but Paul Chambers in 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 in the piano, Ron Carter on 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

in an interview with you, but they talked about, like, Miles Davis, his music feeling like, I think toes hanging over the cliff or something like this, meaning like there's always a risk, there's a danger that you're willing to make,

to fuck it all up live, and that feeling is what creates the aliveness of the music. like can you speak to that just the creating in the music the feeling like you're on the edge like you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen and it all can go to shit and because of that it feels alive well when i interviewed ron carter that played in in miles's 60s quintet i asked ron because ron did records he played base on 2 200 recording famous records

And I said, did you guys ever rehearse with Miles? No, never. I said, so what we do? He goes, we just show up at the studio, and he'd have the charts, put him on the stand, and we would, we'd just roll. And I said, would you listen to it after? No. And I said, well, what about your, 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, a record would come out and I'd see it, and I was on it, and I would take it down to the union and say, I played on this record so he could get paid for it. But he said, we didn't even know we were recording. So Miles was always about, you know, don't think about it, just play. That's crazy.

That was on purpose. That was done on purpose, not to do the rehearsals, none of that. Yeah, he wanted people to just. feel it, play it. Thought is the enemy of flow, as Vinie Kaliuta told me. Thought is the enemy of flow. How do you make sense that Flea,

the bassist for the right hot jellie peppers, is influenced by Bup Jass? 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 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, which is hilarious. I mean, he's a character, his whole physical way of being as a character. And his impression of just upright bass is just fun to watch his whole.

His intensity, when he picked up his base during the interview, he's an intense guy and funny and, you know, really emotional. And he picks up his base 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, wow. Yeah, he talked about his practicing routine with you, and one of the things he's like, I have to practice the slap

and, yeah, no, there's differences in the structure of the different bands, but usually, like, the bassist has a vibe to them. I don't know if we can

put words to exactly what that is. There'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 degree as in classical bass. So I always think of myself as a bass player first, and I always think the bass is the most important instrument. Strong words. Because as much as I love to play, play the guitar, and I love to play the guitar more than anything, I think, but the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is, because you can put the root in there, you can put the third of the chord in the bass, you 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 the consideration? You have a great list. on top 20 rock guitar solos of all time. Yeah, so I put comfortably numb as my favorite, is my top one. Yeah, on that day, right? On that day.

Yeah. Right. Now, the day later, I would have said it's the second solo. Okay. But I did the first solo because nobody talks about that solo, and that solo is equally great. And when David Gilmore, when I played it for him, and we 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 to 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. 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 at 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 Hendricks, 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 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. What do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Goose? 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 to him, so David, is there anything I'm not supposed to see here? I mean, he never sits down and shows people's 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, did 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, it's hard to imagine that those things still, of course, though, they, 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 the, wait, is this the same. Hy watt amp, yeah. Is this the same? Yes. Yeah, you get some new stuff, but, 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 strat that is a, it's a signature version. It's like, he's a copy of his old one. So to him, it sounds exactly the same, plays the same. Well, of course, they converge towards that kind of hardware, but there's so many tiny details over the years. You see the final result of it, but there's a journey there of exploring.

And of course, he's not, I guess he's not doing any soft, like no emulation, no em. 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 Zoom 93, 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. 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 90s 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. So people always 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, 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 pull it. Yes. And I can think of a hundred questions to ask David Gilmore. And, but I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. Yeah. So, but I do make a playlist of songs that I want to talk about. So that kind of guides me is that, because I want to make sure that I, there's specific things that I need to play to, so that you can jog his memory. Because anytime 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, he can talk about the phrasing and the, you know, the kind of melodic direction of things like that. So there's a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song, there's on the production or how it's play or 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. is that I can remember when records came out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the engineer, what songs are 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, Lex, is 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. And that's his biggest influence as a guitar player. And 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's standing about five feet away. And John is a sales guy, but he's great guitar players. John's like, I was like, this is David, this is my brother John. David, great to meet you, buddy. And, you know, Don's like, so he's a sales guy. And so during the interview, I was like, hey, John, what was I going to ask David?

Ask me 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 call it the Gilmore effect. Anytime I have like Invee Malmsteen, 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 a trusted person to be able to reveal that personality. So comfortably known at the top on that day, what else was up there? Stair way 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 necessarily do these by, I do those in kind of how. how important they are to me and my development. So there's always a biographical component to these lists. Number three was Kid Charlemagne, a steely dance, a lady, Carlton, an amazing solo, extremely difficult to figure out. Probably there's two solos on the list that are just about, are very, that one I can play.

Well, there's a few solos that are very hard to play. Stone in Love by Journey, by Neil Sean. is very hard to play some elix. There's a solo by a guitarist Carlos Rios that people don't know. It's brother to brother, Gino Vanelli's song, but it's very hard to play and figure out and that people don't know the solos.

I put it on my list because I knew a lot of people are going to watch it and they're going to know what this solo is. For me, the sentimental one, my first solo is Mr. Crowley, Randy Rhodes. I like the musicality, Mr. Crawley, that there is a melodic component to it. You're playing really fast, but there's a melody to it. And also there's like a legendary nature, too,

the brief time we had to, we had radio roads. It's probably one of the greatest guitarists ever. 56 to 82, I think. Terrible. He was absolute brilliant guitarist, had his own style. We should say he's the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, the band. Yeah. And that Mr. Crowley solo is a great solo, great solo.

And he's incredibly influential as a guitar player, too, for metal guitar players. And I love Randy Rhodes. Another guy. So one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler. Yes. And I did have Mark Knopfler on my list. Solons a swing. That's right.

You did. Now, I had it high in the list, and I'll tell you why. I would have had it had at lower because it's one of the early ones because I want people to be like, okay, oh, this is a serious list. So Rick's going to talk about serious stuff. 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. I think I played 19 of them, but the heart solo that I had on there, Nancy Wilson, I played the video of.

and I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the Ice Cream Man Van Halen solo. So I called Dweezel Zappa, and I was like, Dweezel, 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 Lex, who's amazing guitar player. And he's like, no, I'd have to practice that. It's like, come on, man, can't let me play Ice Cream Man? The opening lick of Ice Cream Man that he plays is very hard to play because it's an incredibly long stretch.

and it hurt my fingers to do. And Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to play. And plus it's a tricky, it's just, it's a tricky rhythm. And it's such a big stretch. It's like, man, I can't, that hurts my hand. I just love that that's the Van Halen solo you have. The top 20. See, I have to do some.

Yeah, yeah. There's so many Van Halen. My God, it could be, I can pick 25 different Van Halen solos. But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler. I mean, this is a unique guitarist. 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 somewhat viral around recently his pretty old live.

performance of Sultan's the Swing. For me, brothers in arms, these kind of soulful, mournful type of solos, he does really, really well. Also, the interesting instrumentation of Romeo and Julia.

Just so many, is 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. Yeah. That Mark Knopfler makes me really just how clean it is. I think he beats BB King in my book in terms of the cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note.

It's 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. Yeah. You know? When I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize as Brian May. It's incredibly melodic, the tone that he has, Gilmore, Hendricks.

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 why we're talking about him. That'd be funny. That'd be a good video. Beb 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 we're being a little too aggressive with that. I think you need like two or three or four or five notes.

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 come in. It's like, do you know what song that is? They're like, oh, that's Adel. Like, what? Then they're like, oh, that's Nirvana.

Instantly, they could recognize it's like, well, that's not worth me. I said, yeah, it's so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter. Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's about the tone.

Yeah. How could you possibly know from a single note? I guess Van Halen, you can. One note of BB King's vibrato, you could know. 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 BBK? 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 guitarists from a single note? Could you recognize Steve Ray Vaughn? Absolutely. Versus Eric Clapton? Yeah.

All right. You might be right. You might be right. Quick 30 second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to Lexfreedman.com slash sponsors. We've got Uplift Desk for my favorite office desks,

BetterHelp for mental health element for electrolytes, Finn 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 piano. What do you think is the best Eric Clapton song?

One of the things we haven't mentioned so far is the importance of lyrics and maybe meaning of the song and what 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 Clapton songs. And I, as I was like, listening to it, just doing a whole personal journey introspection, knowing that I'm going to talk to Rick Biotto, listening to just a bunch of songs. And I learned, as embarrassing, that I didn't know the

the stories behind the music, but I learned that Eric Clapton was married for a decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to, and that this woman was the muse the inspiration for, for like so many of the legendary songs of rock, including A Wonderful Tonight, including Leila, and including George Harrison's something. Yeah. Legendary song also.

The same woman, is she the greatest muse in rock history? Probably, yes. This is great. So in your interviews of musicians and producers, I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole, the 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 Anois, Brendan O'Brien, Butch Vig, the thing about producers, as opposed to people that are musicians, if you're in a musician, even if you're David Gilmore, you do a record, and 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 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, 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 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 Days Night record with the Beatles. And he worked his way up. And he said the first time he 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, I 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, like 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, you know, they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive. And then you've eventually filled them up with this music that you can never imagine it not existing,

like stairway to heaven or whatever it is. Yeah. It's funny, like looking back, even probably for them, just to realize they've created that magic is hard to believe. Yeah. Because you look at a blank thing and then magic comes out. and you don't even, you don't even understand, you don't 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. 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. These little things, yeah. 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, there's certain moments in songs that are just unlike anything else. on Bohemian Rhapsody when Freddie Mercury sometimes wish I've never been born at all. Mm-hmm. And then guitar comes in. I mean, there's just nothing like that. Yeah.

That was that I don't even know. I mean, that whole thing, 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 Phil Collins in the air tonight, the drum bridge. Do do do do do do do. Yeah. What is that?

I kill it. I don't understand how you can create that. What is that? Why is that so magical? Why is that so singular inside a particular song and in rock history period? Like these moments, I don't know. musically, I don't understand how you create them. Because it might be bigger than musical.

It might be cultural, a bunch of different elements. And plus it's him filled with, like, I've seen live before, he has 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 any, as the chorus of the song or any song. That drum thing is something. the 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 are those moments are really hard to create and usually they're done by accident yes it's hard if you chase it you're not going to get it yeah and your conversation was sting he said something about um how modern music is simpler uh more minimalistic and the bridge is gone I think he said.

And he said he thought that the bridge is therapy. Yes. It's like a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse. Right. Before the chorus comes in. It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose, is 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 can 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, you know, 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, you know, very Lenin-esque. That was really a kind of a real collaboration between the two of those. This were different parts of the band can clash in interesting ways. I mean, the Beatles are the epitome of that.

Each individual Beatles 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 PA systems were so bad back then, and the Beatles, people screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, okay, we don't need, we can't tour anymore because we can't even hear ourselves.

So we're just going to be a studio band. And maybe because of, we have all these great late Beatles records are from 1966 on, just because they had bad PA systems. And they had no monitors. You know, they're in Chase Stadium. People are screaming so loudly they can't hear themselves. They're like, okay, forget this. We can't tour.

We'll just make studio records. So that's what they did. And in that one year, like from August 6th, 1965, they put out help. Then in December 3rd, they put out Rubber Soul of 65. 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, you know, that the greatest productivity that musicians have is before they turn 30. The greatest sort of creative genius that can come out of the human mind musically is before the age of 30.

Well, I think it's the same in mathematics as well. You have this fluid intelligence versus crystallize intelligence. Fluid intelligence up until you're about, you know, in your late 20. 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 composers,

Bach, Beethoven, Mozart wrote their most important works at the end of their lives. Beethoven, the late string quartets, the 9th Symphony, things like that. So they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this and 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 age 30. Creating something new. Yes. truly novel, that that requires a 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 grades died at 27. Hendricks, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Amy Winehouse. Kirk Cobain. Kirk Cobain, 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. The Get Back documentary, they're smoking constantly. Go watch any of the MTV unplugs, Nirvana. Kirk Cobain is smoking every second that he's not playing. He's smoking. Every singer smoked.

Every musician smoked. Nowadays, I ask my son Dylan, Dylan, does anybody smoke at his high school? He's like, smoke. Nobody smokes. He's thinking it was an absurd question. And that was part of culture. Yeah, it was for everybody. I mean, that was a big transformation over the past 20 years

and 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 it distracts them from the hard. I mean, heroin and coke. I mean, those things really, and 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 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 neurobiologically, of like, how you deal with that,

You have to be able to control the roller coaster of 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 it's really interesting.

They're all the drugs that've played in the history of music. They have certainly been extremely destructive, but they have also certainly been productive, muses, inspirations for some of these folks. Oh, absolutely. Now, would we want to, you know, advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity?

No. 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 these, virtually every famous singer, no matter what genre music, jazz, soul, rock, they all smoked. Nat King Cole. Miles Davis, too? Miles, everybody smoked. Miles didn't.

Well, Miles, was a heroin? act too. I mean, so many jazz musicians. My mouse had a sound to him. You're right. I mean, smoking must play a gigantic role to that, adding some complexity to the voice. Yes. Yeah, some richness to the voice. Nat King Cole, 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. No, no. 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, that's smoking 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, is a different vibe. So sometimes the drug is a deep, integrated part of the culture versus an actual chemical substance.

The 60s, right? I don't know. They were on everything in the 60s. Yeah. I mean, it has to account for something, Lex. 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 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, 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. I'm pressing the button. Yo, where are you guys? What's up?

I thought we're going to start this. And no one's responding. I can hear talking. I'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? Out and 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 we did. And he was there with Bernie Toppin. They were working on a song. And we talked 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 on the piano, and Elton would go on, and they just record this, and Elton would sit there and play and come up with the song in 15 minutes or so. Yeah. There's a great version of, I think, Tiny Dance. or 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 out to the next song. It's really incredible. That's it, yeah. There's one that I've sort of done the other day, but tiny dancer, which is about Bernie's girlfriend.

So I just sort of ran it through and then put two verses together, then a mid-lake, then a chorus, and then back to the sort of verse sort of thing. It happens very quickly. long but it sort of it sort of starts off Blue Jean baby LA lady

seamstress for the band Pirates my pretty eye you're married Okay I mean it's really amazing that he just He's looking at it's just the lyrics Yeah and it's one of the

He's one of the very few people that has the lyrics first and writes the music to it, which to me is far more difficult. 99% of songwriters write the music first, and then they put the melody and lyrics to the finished backing track. And maybe they write, like, lyrics, they write, like, nonsense words kind of thing.

And then they figure out from there. Yeah, that's, I mean, I don't know what skill that is exactly. That's incredible. I mean, in that process, he makes it his own. Yes. Okay. You had an amazing interview with 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 was interesting,

which is creating that really distinct sound. James and Kirk's, 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 love your theories. I think that that's actually right, because I'm thinking like, why does that hurt so much to do that? All the downstrokes and stuff. It's got to be something.

It's like, yeah, it's from swiping with the phone. The other thing that came through is that he's an improviser at heart, and that 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, 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. Also, you mentioned that this is weird that I didn't know that Hendrix was used. different gauges strings. Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah, that was really interesting. See, these are the things that I like to learn from these interviews with these people. I'm 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. It's completely breaking out of what you're supposed to do, the ways you're supposed to do them and doing it completely differently. you often ask musicians what their perfect song is. First of all, that's an interesting question.

What is a perfect song? Like one surprised me as Hans 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 on the limb and say it. Yeah. Like 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 Nothler And I would probably go Is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing

I would go Salton's a swing Even though like I'm tempted to say Europa But then like Solons of Swing 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 Dyer Strait songs. I mean, that's like early Dyer Straits' Strat tone. And then you think of money for nothing is a Les Paul, and it's a totally different kind of vibe than him playing on Salons the Swing. But that song's amazing. Plus, it's about music. Yes. So it's like there's a meta aspect to it.

But then there's also, like, we're talking about this guitar stuff, but 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 Mike, one of my maybe the music guest, that's a dream guest,

that's Tom Waits. I've wanted to talk to Tom Waits for a very long time. And I've gone through different periods of, you've met me at a point in my life 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.

Why, Tom Waits won't be on your podcast. Exactly, exactly, dude. This is my moment. Tom, come here. Let's do it. I want to see it. I'm such a fan of, like, this Apple-like artistry on the musical front, which Tom Waze has, but I'm a sucker for great lyrics.

Lyrics to me is such a big part of great songs. 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, 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 this 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 waits 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. Yeah, they've lived. They lived life. Yeah.

It's not like kids today. Now you're on a porch. You also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan, a smash of pumpkins. He is definitively one of my favorite musicians. I love 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 the ninth. So, like, musically, chord-wise, what do you think about that? You think he's onto something? He's talking a little music theory there. Yeah, 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 there's songs. And when I interviewed Sting, I call them surprise tones and it's things like, I like the way you use the word surprise. Notes that are outside the chord

that are dissonant with the chords that they're playing, but that creates emotion. Dissinence equals emotion. And that's what I like. I want music to depress me. Yeah, what is that? I don't know. But Melancholy, and I think you articulated in the interviews,

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 it kind of longing? Yes. There's a hopefulness to it, that aloneness that you feel. I mean, that's actually, like, one of the intimate connections you have with music is when you're alone.

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 you're alone in a car driving, listening to like, whatever it is, Bruce Springsteen. I think Louis C.K. has a bit about that. It was it Bruce Springsteen? Sometimes it has to pull over to the side of the road, just weep or something like this.

It's just there's something about that. Sometimes a song just connects with you. And I don't know, nothing like a melancholy song could do that. 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 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 in-uterre record from the song Francis Farmer. The chorus part is, I miss the comfort of being sad. And I was like, yes. I miss the comfort and being sad. I was like, yeah, that's it right there. In terms of love songs, somehow I find powerful

that kind of desperation. So, like, I've always connected with Pearl Jam's black. Oh, amazing. That line, there's a friend of mine was going through a breakout, 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 10.

Is that line, is, someday. Someday you'll have a beautiful life. You know, someday you'll be a star in somebody else's sky. Why, why, why, why can it be? Can it be mine? Oh my God, that blows me away.

That's an amazing line. Yeah. The delivery is incredible on it too. Eddie Vedder, one of the great frontmen of all time. Yes. And that whole period, that whole moment in history of Kirk Cobain and Eddie Vedder, 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 and 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 Hepfield. I mean, there's nothing. I have, I mean, I have to talk to you about this.

I have, I mean, this is the greatest, I think the greatest concert of all time. This is 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 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. There was 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 listened to 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 of sorrow, fate to black, sad but true, master of puppets, seek and destroy for whom the bell tolls won, and whiplash. Look at that. How is that? That's my kind of set. Get the fuck out of here. This is amazing.

That's my kind of set right there. I don't know if you could think of 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. Yeah. 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 going to be which.

But you make it the concert free. It's just all of it to get, plus Pantera and ACDC. The other, which actually is a legitimate thing, mentioned is as one of the greatest concerts of all time, his Beethoven's world premiere of the Ninth Symphony. You know, I didn't really know the personal side of Beethoven until I saw this movie called The Mortal Beloved. It's an excellent movie with Gary Olman.

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 decades ago now, that he went deaf before he even started writing the 9th Symphony,

which is why they considered to be one of the greatest compositions of all time, the 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 the chaos and conflict and ends with this celebration of peace

and brotherly unity, and I guess a call for that, a reaching, for that piece. And there's a tragic element to it, again, connected to history, which is, it was post-Napolianic wars. And before the American Civil War, so, like, you're in this middle,

this respite from war, calling for peace, not knowing that truly horrific wars are coming. So you have the American Civil 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, wrote this whole thing deaf. I was reading a lot about his process and he 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, there are 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 piece, all the parts, you've got to hear all the orchestration in your head, you're editing, you're doing all these things. Where do you get the motivation when you can't hear the actual finished work?

And people would say, well, he's here's in his head. But what kind of enjoyment is it? You want to hear the orchestra. I mean, it's really profound. that he that he was inspired to do this. There's a thing called the Heelgastat 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 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 because you could never do this if you didn't have perfect pitch which i think all these great composers for the most bar brahms didn't from what i know but all the rest of them for sure had perfect pitch so they could hear these things things in their head and that's how they composed. I mean, you love sound and music. What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven?

It must have been terrible. I mean, just terrible. I mean, I've heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth and put it on the soundboard of the piano and you could feel the vibrations in his skull and things like Desperly trying to. Yeah. I just. But also there's, what is, what is that that he's able to write

like one of the greatest symphonies ever while deaf? So there's something about that. We mentioned darkness, but torment that he's going through. And ultimately owed to joy, like not a cynical thing for the positive. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, I, I've devoted many, many hours thinking about that. And plus, Napoleon broke his heart because he was a supporter of Napoleon, because Napoleon

was supposed to represent the French Revolution, this, this hopeful future of no more kings, no more monarchs, no more authoritarian regimes, and Napoleon ended up becoming essentially king. Right. becoming an authoritarian, and Behoen sort of famously was critical of that. Nevertheless, I think, maintained a fascination of Napoleon throughout his life, but sort of a kind of more sophisticated, complex view of human nature and human civilization, so becoming more cynical, like seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you, the dreams get shattered, and through that is able to still do that.

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 Moonla Sonata. But I always avoided the third movement because I was like, I'm never be good enough. Never, never. Never say never, like one of these days. Maybe, you know, it would be great if Tom Waits writes me an email and says, I only talk to people.

can play the third movie. That would be a dream come true. There you go. You'd be like, for this. That's motivation. That's my dragon or whatever you do. You have to have a prince and rescue the princess. My dragon is the third movement. The 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 Sting and 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 in 1829 it was on March 11th, I believe. He had a manuscript because his father and mother collected manuscripts, and he got a manuscript of this piece. I think he was 20 years old, and they had a performance of it in Berlin. And Beethoven, Mozart, they studied the well-tempered clavier, the two books of the well-tempered clavier. But Bachar, profoundly beautiful music. And some of the most complex

contrapuntal music that I don't think anyone has ever done like that. Extremely bright guy. I had 20 kids, 10 of them, only 10 survived till adulthood, lost both his parents when he was nine within nine months of each other, went to live with an older brother. Extremely productive.

Yes. I, yeah, I think from all the music teachers I've ever had, I understood the important of studying Bach. He didn't write Master of Puppets, but he wrote some great, powerful music. Well put.

Well put. I try to educate the aforementioned music teachers of the brilliance of the master of 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, like, guitar store, when you come in, you're playing Master Puppets. I'll play Master of Puppets. I will play, I have to play some heavy riff. And so usually it will default to some Metallica or something like that. Or I'll play Alice in Chains or I do usually, like a lot of times I'd go and I'll do drop D something or play tool. I usually would do something, do some drop tuning thing. And it's got always got to be some type of metal that I'll test to see 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 bunch 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 Suna, UDO. 11 Labs music is also great. They can generate, basically, text to song, full song from a text prompt. And a lot of people start freaking out just 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 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 program came up with it. There is some creativity in a process. So in this particular thing, the process is you generate an image. I did in chat, GPT, the image. And 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 created the lyrics in Claude and then I imported the lyrics into Suno.

And I had great results with the songs 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 is bad. And then I was like, no, who are going to be the ones that are going to benefit for? from AI. Well, the people that are already great songwriters, because you have to be able to

recognize when it spits us something good versus when it spits us 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 a thing that's happening where people's ear very quickly is becoming attuned 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-based, like a soul jazz remix of songs like 50, Many Men. And I think it is super impressive. And it's a different pipeline, actually.

It's a tricky pipeline how to pull that off. And I think a lot of the creativity in that, even that kind of remixing is in the pipeline 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 it made me think of like when I listen to soul or blues I think I really want in that case to know I don't want to AI BB King I want the real BB King And I, if I know if any AI is involved in the 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 AI, when I first started making these AI videos, it 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 youngest and Dylan, my youngest Layla, and I have three kids, and my oldest Dylan, as soon as I play, why are you listening 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 it just couldn't do the ambiances correctly right because it's trained on a lot of these AI programs are trained on very low bit bit rate mp3s right so they feed

all 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 and they'll get high quality wave files to train from, right? And whoever opts in, they get the solo vocal tracks, you know, if Ed Sheeran wants to do it or Drake or whoever wants to give their voice to it, let it do its thing, and then get their royalties from it. I'm not saying that any of them are doing. I'm just giving 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 are you listening to AI? They can instantly tell them. Then eventually started getting better. And then, and then,

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? It sounds like it could be AI. And I'd be like, yeah, it's AI. She's like, oh, it's getting better. And then I did this song for, it was an 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. it back home. Okay, I want to go down here. So we go down the studio and I play it for it and she listens to the soloed vocal. She said, wow, this is really realistic. This is very hard to tell, even with a soloed vocal. I think the room for creativity right now for humans is lyrics. It seems

like the lyrics that are being generated, they lack soul somehow. I don't know the words correctly. Yeah. I mean, they can be incredibly sophisticated, but there's something. something the edge is not there, some kind of edge that we want in our lyrics, some kind of surprise, but not cringe or not cliche, something truly novel in the lyrics. But 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 the stuff is just not high quality, sonically high quality. So the musician goes in and re-does stuff and changes things, parts, and then they actually do music production. And maybe they re-sing the parts and they change the stuff. And then it's just basically like an idea generator. And I think that that's a great use of AI is for that.

But 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 can think of it as a different kind of instrument, but you can write lyrics, you can hum the melody. You could just hum parts. Yeah. You know, and then do A, B kind of thing, this kind of rhythm, this kind of, and stitch them together and never actually have your fingers on a guitar or, or fingers 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, eh. I used it for about a month or so just because I was making videos. I was trying to see how it's advanced. Every 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 so am I. Yeah. I'm trying to think about the future. And I think it's still even in the future

also going to be boring. I think there's something fundamentally boring about it. And I'm trying to figure it out. So, for example, I use it a lot more and more, 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 the AI creates, which it would be in music, then there's something about it. us that just like we know we 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 whatever shape that raw takes, I wouldn't 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. but 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. And my kids do the same thing. They just have no interest in engaging with it. As soon as they recognize it, and they can spot it a mile away. And they're just like, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. And then they kind of just, then they don'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, it's hard to stay on this. It's, 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, in the whack-a-mole thing where you're just trying to get rid of it all is. Yeah, fundamentally, like, it's fundamentally boring. I think boring is really good. Boring.

And it's annoying to have to flip through the AI slot. Yeah. But I think actually as a civilization is just inspiring for authenticity. Because you want to be real, and being raw, which one of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting shit and just being themselves in the long form versus overproduced. I think AI is making people realize that AI is good at being overproduced. Right.

So there will be more. that's got that covered. Yeah. Even artists, because you're saying like, yeah, they'll use it as tools. Part of me things like, not really. I think they'll quickly,

this kind of process of generating a bunch of different options and choosing the one you like the most, I think is a really frustrating process for artists. And I think 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 increasingly integrated in. I mentioned to you offline, so there's a whole isotope RX group of software that does a lot of the de-noising, all the D removing the wind, they integrate machine learning extremely. effectively.

Yes. 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 the same thing on the audio, if you just need a little audio

to create a feeling of a scene, yeah, it 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 dials, two people speaking in laughs,

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-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description.

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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 of Breaking Down Sabrina Carpenter song, Manchild,

and you use that as an example of building up people, was intuition about the music business and how the music production for these popular songs is being done these days. Who's doing the songwriting? How is it being done? I was wondering if you could speak to that. In that particular song, Jack Antonoff, who is one of the writers, Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter, said in some awards thing that there's an old guy on YouTube that says that Sabrina had very little to do with the song. And so he said in this clip,

you being the old guy. Me being the old guy that, well, Sabrina really was the, she's amazing and she's the one that wrote everything. And the song is like, so my response is like, well, why are you guys even included on the songwriting then? So one of the things you highlight is a lot of people

are included on the list of songwriters. Yeah, 10 people, 11 people. I mean, you know, like, why are the song 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 Dochi song that's out right now. And I said, look, she took a Goetie song and basically took off his melody and she created her own melody over it. It's like, well, it saves time for, you.

You don't have to actually create a track. You just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful. Yeah, you're pointing that out. The song, anxiety, it 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 or Louis Bonfa 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 another song that's not based on that. That's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Dochey has some really good songs on a record. Yeah, but why are these the ones that are coming to the top, right? 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, the actual songs that make you 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 around.

Absolutely. You know, this is a Michael Jackson and reincarnated. Super talented guy. Incredible, right? Yes. You mentioned Billy Elish and her brother write 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. But she's fundamentally, at least originally, a singer-songwriter. Yes. So that's a, I mean, that, I mean, I'm sorry, but that, that is, like, of the kind of music that Rick Biotto gives props to. She's the, she carries the flame forward. She works on her own songs, absolutely. And she, but she never has more than two co-writers on things.

You'll take a quick bathroom break? Yeah. Okay. I have to ask you about this complexity that you're facing on a basically, daily basis. I think it's the 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, each one of those can be

a strike on the channel and can take down your channel. And you get some insane amount. You said you got like, I think I had a similar thing on a Rick Rubin episode, like 30, I think you said 13. Yeah. So what, can you just speak to this

whole thing? You've been in a constant battle WMG, UMG, all the all the three letter name record labels, right? the music business people. So what, what's the story there? Well, this has been going on since the beginning of my channel, and I've made

videos periodically. When I first started, it was just instant blocks. So you 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'd 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, which is 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 and he was listening to Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

Yep. 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 labor is like, ooh, maybe we should rethink this. And then they just started demonetizing videos. Demonotize means they get all the money. They get all the money. In a one hour video, 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 on my channel, I don't want to say who it is, but he's another YouTuber. And he had approached me a couple years ago, and it's not cheap to do. You're going to do like a public interview with them? I'm going to do an interview with them, 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 cattle. I have 2,100 videos. And he's fought 4,000 content ID claims and one. every single one of them.

4,000. That's a lot. I mean, when I do top 20 guitar solos, there's 20 content ID claims, you know? And it's either, it can be either from the sound recording, if I use that, or if I just play it, it can be from the publisher. That's amazing. Yeah.

So is there, I mean, that's, it's still, a lawyer, still work. Does that, Is there a hopeful thing you can say about the future of... Yeah, fight these content ID claims. If it's 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.

Yeah. They would go out, use AI and go and anytime they detect. anything they always go to the biggest channels first to get the most views make sense and stuff and yeah and they would claim everything that they could and historically utopers never would fight back they were like oh this is easy money yeah YouTubers never fight back and at these things because they're afraid to have their channels taken down yeah so Rick be honest they hold my beer there you go so I mean it's important I mean 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

10 years into my channel, so it took me that long. I mean, hopefully there's a ripple effect also. It's not just your situation. Hopefully you don't have to deal with this for much longer. How does Spotify change music? Sometimes we highlight the fact that the change in nature of music and that it's the scarcity is not there. But also allows it, it's like every kind of music is available

and so fast and it's so easy. It's easy to explore. commodity. It's like turning on a water faucet. Do you think there's some good to, I mean, there's a lot of good to that, right? Have you, did you go through that whole, I still remember where I had to basically throw away the albums. I never did that. When if you, if you, if you, upload them into your computer. Yeah, so there's that two-step process. One, there's like the hard albums, CDs for me.

And then you upload them into your computer. Yep. When you save them. And then you, how do you put it? Allegedly a friend of yours, pirates, some extra songs. Yep.

And then puts them on the computer. So you have, but you have your stash on the computer. You're like, this is my finally selected stash of greatness. Sometimes 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 and the computer. and then in Spotify, it just seems just effortless. But it helped me discover all kinds of artists I never would have discovered otherwise. And Pandora, I use a lot.

Pandora is more prioritizing on the discovery part versus the organization part. And that was really wonderful. So one of the things I'll start with the positive that I like about Spotify is that they show play counts, whether they're real or not. That's another question. But they show how many plays songs have.

And that's how the charts are based. Does that give you signal that something is listened to a billion times? Does that mean something to you? Yeah, it means that it's a popular song. Well, that's a massive hit. That's very few songs that have a 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, you know, the search and discovery, I mean, there's, there's benefits of algorithms and there's negative things of algorithms. Algorithms happen to kind of, many times, pigeonhole people into listening to the same genre of music all the time and not expanding their, you know, the discovery of new music,

that you might hear on the radio back in the day where program directors would play things that they liked, right? And you might hear something, oh, what is that? Oh, that's a new sound garden record or something. I'm like that. I'm going to go about check that out. You know, something you might not have heard

or something odd. Like, one thing I really love doing on Spotify is you can have radio. Yeah. Meaning, like, you have a few, it's similar to Pandora. Like, you can. Okay. This is going to reveal a little too much about myself.

But usually you want to go work out, I'll listen to something like Rage Against the Machine Radio. I'm sorry. What else would you listen to? I need motivation. Classical music, I don't know. But yeah, it's pretty good because it recommends a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't even know.

Some of it I know, obviously, but akin to the similar to the rage against the machini type thing, it recommends a bunch of artists. And it's like, oh, holy shit, that's awesome. So I don't know. That discovery works really well. So some of it is the technology thing. But that experience is fundamentally more vibrant than I had previously with my stash.

That we just keep a stash. And I would listen to the same record over and over and over and over. But yeah, what's lost is the, I'm sure you love this. But listening through the Led Zeppelin records, just driving in a car listening to the whole thing all the way through. Yeah, that's lost. So I have my old iTunes libraries from 2005 that I've saved, 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 an interview, I always play Wave files. I put them in. And it's funny that when I interview a mixer, I interviewed this mixing engineer, Andy Wallace. And people comment, wow, the song sounded amazing on here. 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 remastered things that Spotify keeps doing and adding a bunch more top end and things like that. These are the, these are actually 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 for the most part, but I also use Logic and Ableton. I've got all, I've got all those. So you're mostly on a Mac? I'm only on a Mac.

Only on a Mac. Only on Mac. I'm only the opposite. Although we have multiple PCs because my kids use PCs. Yeah, just throw a bell. They do it for gaming. They like to game.

That's true. But like in terms of editing, I hate how good Mac is. So good. It's just integrating. The hardware and the software just work well together. If I didn't have a Mac, honestly, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

Because I got a G3. So the only good thing that a major label did for me is when my band was on UMG and they bought a, they bought me a G3 and an SM7. and Pro Tools Digio1, the first prosumer 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 to Max for that. So Pro Tools, I mean, that's still the standard. That's kind of the industry standard, yeah. I've 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 1. that's recently I've used that. And 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.

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 the, what is it, the push buttons with the beats. and the, I saw them. I saw them really out of touch. But it's 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 anything. Using it, yeah. And 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 Billy Eilish, I think that they use logic. That's their DAW that they like to use

and logic. 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 have pro tools and logic on my laptop. I use both. I use pro tools mostly though. But pro tools, that's where you feel like at home. I'm an expert in Pro Tools. Are you using any emulation, any amp-sims, 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 the CEO, Doug Castro, is a friend of mine. I actually talk to him today, as a matter of fact. And I have a Kemper, Ampsum, you know, a modeler. And I'm a modeler. I have an AxeFX.

I've got a helix. I pretty much have all these things. But for me, I can, I have 100 amps in my studio. So, and I have mic set up all the time on cabinets and stuff. I have 100 amplifiers, real amplifiers. Real? Yeah. Wait, sorry, a hundred?

I have 100, yeah. About 100, maybe 95. How do, how does one go get to that level? Collecting and being, I'll be 64 in April. So you just don't let go. I don't let go, no. Why would you get to 100? Like, is it a tone difference?

Yes. So everything does one thing really well. And so it'd be like, okay, so I have this Marshall GSM 800 that's modded that does this one thing. It's got great mids and it's good for this kind of a tune. So I will pull that out. Then it's like, no, I need more of like a scooped metal tune sound. It's more like Metallica or Dream Theater. something. So I'm going to pull out my,

my, uh, mesa, Mesa boogie. Or I need a, uh, I need something that's chimed that's more like Brian May or like the edge. I'm going to 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've, and I'm down to a hundred. Down to a hundred. It's only a hundred. Yeah. But I can get by with probably. 75.

Come on, but then you're really running the risk of not having just the right ass. But you're using emulation, so 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 greatest guitar, what do you play? Yeah, American Strat. I said I would never do this, but I was in a guitar store. I looked next to a guitar store in Cambridge. And one day, I would always stop by, I don't know why.

I just, just to look at the guitars, like, I don't really know why exactly, just to be in the aura of these great instruments. And 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 two Gibson acoustics. I have a 1957 country and western. that I've had for probably 30 some odd years. It's a great guitar.

And I have a J-45, Gibson, and I have a Martin D-28. 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 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 he demonstrates actually the, and this is how he wrote comfortably numb. The chorus part of it was with this particular guitar

that he's playing in the video. What can you say about the different feels that the guitars, the acoustics have? How do you know which one to pull out? It depends on the kind of part that I'm playing. If I want something with really tight mid-range with not, that doesn't have a lot of low 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 lot. It 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. It's 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.

When you say Gibson, Gibson Les Paul? Gibson, it's a double-cut, Les Paul special, yeah, with P90 pickups. I don't know what double-cut me is, but sounds impressive. That must two cut, two. Oh. Yeah, as opposed to a Les Paul that has one cut. So it's a Les Paul special that has two. I have it over there, my signature guitar.

That's the, all right. Right, nice. When you play this, you're going to be like, oh, my God, this is butter. Again, I said it's cheating. I don't. 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 a, yeah, yeah, I use by SFX.

I'm sorry. Lex, I use Am 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's incredible.

John's great. I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with him up two times. And I thought of being an incredible musician. He's also conversational. Yes. I've known John since he was, 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 fantastic. A guitar player. Absolutely. And a celebrator, if that's a word, of great guitar playing.

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 my, when I started my channel, I mean, I didn't start it to, it started by accident with the Dylan video. And really so many people reached out to me. I started at six months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, can you teach me this? Pro musicians, well known ones that you would, who you'd know, can you teach me this? I can't teach you what Dylan did, but I can, I can teach you relative pitch, develop your ears. 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. 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 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, I had 4,000 subscribers the first month, another 4,000, then hit 100,000 after a year, and then six months later, 200,000, then three months later, 300,000. So I think there, one thing that should be said, that in modern culture for young people, a lot of them will

see YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, and they kind of want to be famous. They 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. Offline.

you can actually reveal your journey online, but the thing you're chasing is not fame. It's getting good at something. And I think actually what happens is, even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for, if that's the thing that ends up happening, it's still like getting good at one thing,

somehow relates to getting good in 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 would be unfulfilling and not long-lasting. My theory of my channel has always been make videos on things I'm interested in. At first, I thought, oh, nobody's going to watch an old white-haired guy on YouTube. Yeah. That was kind of my thing. Well, that was not correct.

And then it's like, we'll just make videos on stuff I'm interested. It just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I'm interested in and keep learning. And I, when I produced 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 kind of guy. Yes. Like, no. No, no pictures. No, no pictures with people. Hey, can we take a picture? I said, no, no pictures with people. And now you're like, you're the talent.

You're the face. No, I mean, but again, the thing you're leaving unstated there is, is like you spend a lot of years, you're teaching music, like really exploring music. trying a music career of like trying to create, trying to produce, trying to be musician and all these, not just trying, like, being, getting extremely good at it. I just, I think in modern culture, there's a sense you want to skip that part. I want to be famous. I want to, you know, this. And 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 and classical base.

I have a master's from New England 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 do. an interview. And I taught myself an interview. I'd never done an interview before. And it was like an interviewer. What? 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 then not just YouTube, but like how to be like a, 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 thumbnail. 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 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. I mean, on all fronts, I suppose it has to do with the production skill that you have. of understanding, cutting the fat. To make a song. Yep, yeah, cutting the fluff, cutting the bullshit. I'll just get straight to the core of the thing.

I've heard you talk about maintaining friendships for a long time. You said never waste of 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 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. Mm-hmm. So it's worth it, the effort to connect and reconnect. I mean, it's that pretty much everything in life. Nothing means anything more than the friendships that you make in your family. Yeah, 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 the I was listening 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 that'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 their generations

and they carry that It's one of the greatest things that humans ever did, creating music. And all of that led up to you, some guy being listened to by millions of people on the internet. This is all a simulation, Rick. 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. 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 with 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.