You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Special Guest: Rick Beato Part 2

Episode Date: November 19, 2019

In part 2 of Peter's interview with Rick Beato, they discuss the ways that jazz has influenced their lives and careers.You can check out Rick's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/pegzchSee what Rick's up to by following him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickbeato1/?hl=enWant every Open Studio course for free? That's right - over 300 hours and 1200 lessons can be yours with free lifetime access! All you have to do is enter Open Studio's 2019 Holiday Giveaway. Go to https://learn.openstudiojazz.com/giveaway/, or watch this video of Peter for more info: https://youtu.be/KsdhVXE5ovILike those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam, I'm not even going to wait for you to say you're not here. I know you're all Sayanara in Japan and all, but you're about to miss part two of my interview with Mr. Rick Biato, everything music. I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast, Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you, super excited for part two of my interview with Rick Beato, and just to let you know, you haven't heard the rest of the interview,

but I have, because I was there. I was conducting the interview, if you will. So I already know what's going to happen. So I'm kind of going back in time here or going ahead in time, depending on how you look at it. We decided to break this one up because we went and just talked and talked and talked. I mean, Rick, this dude is knowledgeable on music and we went on some deep dives. So we hope you enjoy this. Please let us know.

And here we go with part two of my interview with Rick Biato. Rick, let me ask you about this. do you consider yourself I mean I know that you're you know a big jazz fan and player but that's just one part of kind of what you do but do you consider yourself sort of a sneaky YouTuber when it comes to jazz and maybe even classical

in terms of like are you intentionally trying to throw some some jazz and classical information and references even if you're doing something like the Katie Perry you know flame lawsuit video which is really actually where I kind of first came to know about you because all the St. Louis connections, but where you kind of go off on a little bit of a tangent, and I know that was hugely popular because you were speaking to like a news

item of the day, and it was music, and it was, your analysis was, I mean, you were kind of like, you were sort of like the real expert witness that they should have had in the lawsuit, and you almost treated it like you were on, you know, in front of the judge and had been sworn in, and you actually broke it down correctly. But you went on those little tangents where you'd said, like, you know, this is not really a melody jazz players are playing this all the time. but you actually sang little parts, little harmonic things that could have gotten super nerdy, but they kind of stayed within the general music area. But do you kind of consciously do that, or is that sort of just part of your flow and how

you see jazz fitting into the larger music world? I always try to fit jazz in. I always try to sneak jazz in somehow. I think of myself as a jazz musician. I grew up playing jazz, listening to bebop because of my dad. and even though my undergrad degree was in classical bass, I always, and I played rock music first. I started on the guitar.

You know, I mean, when I started playing guitar, I played rock guitar. But I always, if you ask me what kind of musician I think of myself as a jazz musician, really, because I am, I improvise all the time. So I improvise my videos. I'm a massive believer in improvisation. Yeah. No, that's great.

So how do you think that that, because I'm always thinking about that. We talk about that on the podcast a lot. But like, it's interesting you saying in terms of improvising the videos from, like, is it from a storytelling standpoint or is it from a form or the arc of how you put together your videos? or is it from, you know, truly just like the rant video where you're just improvising your thoughts, but you're still putting it together as a cohesive thing? Like, how does that actually manifest itself and how you craft these videos? Very much like a, like playing a solo, but playing a really extended solo, more like a, you know, if you were Keith Jarrett and you're doing, you know, the Brayman-Luson concert from 1973,

where you've got a 64-minute improvisation that kind of goes from gospel into picking around inside the piano, and then at minute 34, there's a beautiful Keith Jarrett meets Bach that part that is probably the most brilliant Keith Jarrett, two minutes that I've ever heard. But then he always finds a way to kind of get back to where, you know, the original idea. And sometimes when you're, you know, when I'm making a video, I'm always thinking about those things about tying it back together and keeping the overall overarching theme intact and returning to that.

So I do it as if I'm, you know, playing over how high the moon or something. And you always want to, although in jazz you're kind of developing, you know, many of the times you develop ideas from chorus to chorus. if you're Cannonball Adderly or you're Johnny Griffin or your West Montgomery or Pat Mathini or whoever you might be, you know, that people that play Motifix, Dexter Gordon, that have really sophisticated motific development and their solos. I mean, I think of Cannonball or I think of Johnny Griffin. If you know the, there's a West Montgomery live album that is one of the, one of the, one of the, greatest. It's basically Miles's rhythm section with Wes and Winton Kelly's on

it. But Johnny Griffin plays there's a tune called Blue and Boogie. And every chorus, Johnny Griffin just develops a new idea and is incredible. Just said, just idea after ideas, about 12 choruses on a blues. And, and,

you know, so that's like a, that's a chorus to chorus development. But then you have the Keith Jarrett's that will do these long improvisations. So kind of like I'm babbling now about this. You want to bring things back and come back to all the themes that you developed in your video or whatever the story that you're telling is.

So I think that that's a really important thing is trying to keep that storyline intact and come back to it. Absolutely. And I'm seeing. you know, I can see that in the different types of videos that, you know, that you put out. And now that you related with these solos, I think for certainly for our listeners being a lot of jazz heads and players and aspiring players, it's a great sort of reference point because you don't do all the same kind of videos. And the, you know, the ability to take these different kind of forms and put it on in this medium now.

I think we were probably better equipped as jazz musicians with the kind of mentality we have, not just in terms of obviously we're improvisers, but to your point of being able to identify different forms and different ways of it. I mean, improvisation is not just, you know, get them in the saying whatever you want, throwing together whatever, like the popular culture thinks it is.

But I think that, you know, even like when we were, you came to this interview, the way that I come to it very much as a jazz musician in terms of let's just talk this through, let's see where it goes or whatever, which is kind of a rare thing. And it feels like in watching your YouTube videos and connecting with your channel,

and I think for your fans and followers, is they've kind of tapped into your ability to leverage this platform in the way that a jazz musician, I don't know. Maybe I'm overselling it here. This is a jazz podcast, Rick. You've got to understand. But, I mean, I can really see that,

especially when you talk about the, yeah, Johnny Griffin and Keith Jarrett, like their solos are so different, but they're both like, they're so different. So different. But their, but their abilities to, to develop an idea, a motif, a motive, however you want to say it. You know, if you look at Keith Juretz, all the things you are off the standards, volume one. Ooh. That is a very different solo than his, you know, there's a tune.

There's a record he did called Dark Intervals. Oh, I love that. And he has a thing called a parallel parallels. There's a track on. I think it's the first track. It's a live. It's from a live concert. And it's a very different idea,

a very different improvisation. Really, for most of his improvisation, it's kind of a special track. You know, that compared to the song, Birth, which is off that record, or if you go back to belonging, that record, the wind-up,

which is Jan Garberak plays these really great rhythmic ideas and melodic ideas and Keith does too. And it's a very different way of soloing compared to the trio record where he plays all the things you are with Jack and Gary Peacock. The way that he develops

ideas are really different. And that's why Keith Jared is such a brilliant improviser. Whereas somebody like Lee Morgan had a very different, you know, when you talk about hard bob players, have a very specific way that they develop ideas.

And they're more linear players. Right. And they're not motific players like cannonball, for example. I mean, you would say, right, that certain jazz players, when you think about them, they play from idea to idea and just developing those things from chorus to chorus. Right, right. Yeah. As opposed to more linear players that kind of play more overarching things,

but Coltrane or something like that. Right. Yeah. And it's always interesting when. they kind of like, I don't know, Freddie Hubbard just popped in my head too in terms of like, you know, idea to idea. Although he would get into some, some,

sometimes, like he definitely had the ability to do that overarching kind of thematic thing. But I wonder, you know, even somebody like Keith Jared, if he were, if you were to plop him in the Johnny Griffin quartet in 1968 or something, you know, how different he would sound and how he'd be able to adapt. And probably the other way, too, with Johnny, I actually got a little chance to play with him

when I was super young and totally ignorant. I actually recorded some with Johnny Griffin. I didn't know what I was doing. And so we will not be linking to any of that. But it's, I remember like we were playing a ballad or something. And, you know, of course, I was in awe of him because I heard recordings, you know, growing up. And he kind of went into this whole other way of playing.

I kind of looked at him and he sort of looked at me. And this was probably all in my mind, actually. But I felt like he looked at me like, aha, you didn't know I could do that too. You know, there's always that great thing. He probably was like, aha, who the hell are you on the piano? Where's my regular guy? But now, man, that's, that's, that's, I'm a huge Keith Jared fan as well. So like just, I mean, you know, belonging, facing you.

I mean, facing you is the, that was the record that just like, change, change my piano life, you know. You know, you know, there's a, there's a record that Keith put out in 1986, though, called spirits. And a lot of people, most people don't know that record. And it's, it's Keith playing everything on it from, from record. to, you know, people that don't know Keith Soprano sax playing, which is astoundingly good. Yeah, intonation. Wow.

Intonation, his tone, everything. But there's a tune on that called Spirits 20 that starts. It's in six, actually. But it's definitely improvised. The basic track is improvised on the piano. But then he puts a recorder on it and he does all these overdubs and then plays the most beautiful soprano solo on it that I actually transcribed for my Beato club that I have.

And you can't play, I can't talk about it on YouTube because it's an ECM release and you can't play anything from YouTube on ECM. Manfred is tough, man. Which is really a crime, I think. Yeah. I mentioned that to you the other day. I'm very anti-ECM. Yeah.

And yet I'm a huge fan of it. But they're killing the legacy of the, their artists, their heritage artists like Keith Jarrett. Right, right. Rendering them, you know, I don't know. So, so it's, but that particular record, Keith's soprano playing is just outstanding. And I, you know, I'm really a believer in, you know, I check out young players, modern players that are on the scene now.

And I, but yet you have to know the history in jazz. That's the biggest part of it. Right. who came from where Absolutely There you go Part 2 of my interview with Rick Beato

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