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

- The following is a conversation with Rick Beato, 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. This is the Lex Fridman 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 solos, 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'll say it's this. pentatonic scale, E minor pentatonic scale though. I didn't know that's what it was called, but.

learned 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 while he would solo over. Hey Joe. And then as soon as I'd start soloing, he'd throw the guitar down, then we'd get in a.

fight. And so my mom eventually was like, "What is 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, what are the chords?" And—. - That's awesome. - ... 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 Hendrix 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, 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 Hendrix style. - What do you think? I mean, many people put Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time. What do you think is part of that?

- You know, I make lists. - You do. If you somehow don't know who Rick Beato is, go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent. interviews with musicians, watch your breakdown analysis of different songs, and watch your top 20 lists, where you're. very opinionated, sometimes very openly critical about certain. kinds of songs. It's fun. Opinions are fun. - But they do change, Lex, from day to day.

- Yeah, exactly. - You know, like I... But when, 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... So, something that a lot of people won't know, just to have it on there, so I can at least introduce a per- you know, I'll put somebody like a- Allan Holdsworth, who's a famous fusion guitar. player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something. Just some, some. oddball solo in there, just so that people, as they're listening down the list, will get.

exposed to something they would not necessarily get exposed to. - Yeah, a lot of variety. But Hendrix... Did you show up here today, Rick, try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there? I just am getting that vibe right now. - No, I'm not. I, but I don't want to say greatest, you. know... You, you can say, well, there, there are people that inspired Jimi Hendrix. Charlie Christian, older guitar players. Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt.

were the first two really big, and probably, and Andrés. 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, active mainly 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 this 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 chording, 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, Stéphane Grappelli was a violinist that played with him a lot. - How much of this is improvisation?

- Everything he's doing there is improvised. - It feels so free. And fun like swing, and then at least you said. pre-bebop. So bebop was a kind of jazz that was also influential. on you in 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 figures of early bebop, 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 AA, BA 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-. - Next to each other, yeah. - ... on the keyboard. - I like to think of it 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. 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 Pass, 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, bebop 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. So I think it's very similar to learning languages, which kinda. 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 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 watched this, The linguistic genius of babies. I saw this in 2010, this lecture that she did, like a TED. Talk, and she talks about this, that kids, they did a, 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.". 'Cause that's the only way I could explain it. - We're gonna return to Joe Pass. We gotta go to Dylan. You mentioned Dylan. I guess.

that'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 the 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-. - 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-. - Yes. - ... for musicians? - Yes. - Can you explain the difference between the two? - Relative pitch is basically learning how to identify pitches relative to. a stated tonic or something that you've heard, or just relative. to each other. If you hear a note and then you hear another note after.

it, you can recognize, let's say, it's a minor third interval. So if you're on. the note A, the next note would be C. So once you're given a reference note, you can use relative pitch to identify the. relative nature from one pitch to another. - And of course, intervals make up scales, and intervals make up chords-. - Chords, yup. - ... and so that if you develop it to any degree. relative pitch, you can understand, you can hear the music better.

- Yes. - Um, what does it take since we're taking a tangent on a tangent, what's. what does it take to train your ear? What's a TL;DR. 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 would. be a half-step, major second would 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. - What's an early journey? Like, we'll give people a preview of what they should... Like, 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 sixth, or minor sixth, 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 a harmonic interval. How quickly. does the ear in the various age groups that we humans are. in, how quickly does the ear learn the different. intervals? Is it a week? Two weeks? A month? Two months? Five years? - I think you'd do it pretty quickly. Within, you know, if you practice, within a couple of. 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 wanna 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, or the four major, to the. five major, to the one major.". And 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 'cause 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 'em both melodically and.

harmonically, so played together and separate. Then you learn. chords, and so then you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended chords, things like that. Well, you're basically. learning music theory at the same time with that. 'Cause 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-. - Right. - ... probably. So playing chords, playing scales, you have, I believe, a course on scales.

and on chords? Okay. Since we're doing the tangent, let's go. How do you recommend. people... There's a bunch of people listening to this that are curious about. how they can start in playing guitar, maybe even playing piano and maybe. 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, 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. arched to where they... If you're playing a C major chord, your. index finger's 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-. microadjustments. You take it for granted, like, you've 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 finger's on to play. the note. And these are all fine adjustments that you're doing. - I'm just a hobbyist recreational player, but it... Wow, you're taking me all the way. back. You're right, it's the haptic, the. physical aspect of it is really tricky. Comfortably 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. And for that, it's... I guess you have to really place the finger in the right. place. Plus, there's the... Well, there's the. calluses, so it doesn't hurt. And then the. positioning of the string on the curvature of-. ... of the finger. Where does it fall? Like, how much do you bend the finger? - You have to have enough flesh on it to actually raise. the- raise the string and pitch. Otherwise it-.

- Yeah, 'cause you're lifting it with part of the flesh. And of course, you have to. decide, depends on how OCD you are, do you wanna be, like, the. perfect, the proper musician? Or do you wanna do a. Hendrix? So the thumb over the top. - Way over the top, yes. - And so, like, you... if you have a fretboard here, I think the. more, like, classical guitarists, the very proper, perfect perpendicular. alignment of the fingertips to the fretboard, versus,

like, Hendrix's, like, "Fuck it. You nerds. I'm gonna 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. - That's true. - ... if you're wearing it 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, 'cause you have to kind. of mute the other strings that are... so they don't ring out-.

... if you're playing the first note in 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 so it. - To mute. - ... 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 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. Like all of 'em, and it hurts too, right? - It does hurt. - If you're doing acoustic guitar. - Not for that long, though. For like a week. - Couple, couple, yeah. - Couple weeks. - Couple. - I don't want to discourage anyone, you know. It's actually pretty easy to learn. basic stuff. - Right, but the pain is temporary, I guess is the point I'm trying to make.

- It is. - Uh, 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 Hendrix stuff that has chordal. riffs, and you're moving up the neck and, Involving all the fingers and things like that. So there's... it really depends. on what you wanna, what styles you wanna play. - So you're thinking about song learning. So different components of song learning. So riffs in songs, lead-in songs. - And then you have finger picking, if you have Stairway to Heaven, songs like that. How 'bout wanting to learn that, that involves finger picking, because the, you.

have to isolate certain notes of the chord and play two. together, you know, and multiple times. - There's a few crossroads where you get to select things. Uh, so I guess you're speaking to the fact there's a... if you're righty, there's a right hand. that you can use your fingers or you can use a pick. - Correct. - And that's a choice you make. - And sometimes you use both, 'cause in Stairway to Heaven, you're using the fingers at. the beginning, or fingers and 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? - Uh, 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 'cause that you want to keep people motivated. - So you get them to like fall in love with music and playing? - Yes. - All right. And that takes a couple months, three months? - Depends on how motivated they are.

- 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 into 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, "Oh, okay, I'll just pick it up for a second." Then that second. turns into 10 minutes, and an hour, two hours. - All right, we gotta talk about this Dylan video. So this might be one of the earliest-. - That's the first one. - That's the first video on the channel. - It was, it was actually before the channel, 'cause this actually blew up on Facebook-. - Facebook. - ... and then I put it on YouTube after. - Uh, so if it's okay?

- Yeah. Okay, Dylan, we're gonna do the hardest ear training test of all. time. Are you ready? - Ready. Oh. - Now, I... just a quick backstory on this. I made this for my friend Shane's wife who wanted to see... 'cause Shane was a-. a friend that I was producing, and he was there, and Dylan had come down the day, in the day, and I said, "Oh, check this out," and I played this. stuff. He's like, "That's amazing. Can you make a video so I can show my wife?".

And I was on the way to a school board meeting, 'cause 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, this'll take one minute." "I don't want to." So I said. to my wife, I'm like, "Nina, would you tell Dylan to come downstairs? I want to do this. video. It'll take one minute." She's like, Dylan, go downstairs." And he had, he has a mouthful of candy there-. ... 'cause he was eating candy. So if you look at him, he literally has a.

mouthful of candy while he's doing this. - And we should say, on Facebook it went quite viral. - Yeah, like got... I don't know, 80 million views. Something like, it. had like 250,000 comments. Something like that. Insane. - How old is Dylan here? - He's eight. - Eight years old? - Yeah. - Can you actually give some more backstory about, like, how you discovered that Dylan has perfect. pitch? - So when Dylan was about two, he... I was. doing a FaceTime with my brother Jon, and I was like, "Check this.

out, Jon." And I played the Stone in Love, Neal Schon's solo from Journey, and I was like, "Check this out." And Dylan would sing along. and my brother Jon was like, "Wow, Dylan can sing all the notes." And I was like, "Yeah." Then I played Black Dog, Zeppelin-. ... and Dylan would sing that. And it's like, "Dylan's got a good ear." Then Jon and I. were like, "Well, we have good ears, too." So it was probably... Maybe we could have done that when we were that age. So a couple years, 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, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." Then I ask him, "Play... 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 ask him another. song. So I turn 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 play the.

note G, and he goes, "Superman." And that's the first note in the trumpet part of the-. ...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. - Oh, so you just associate the names—. - Yeah. - ...of the thing he knows. What do you think is this in his mind? 'Cause it's not just. individual notes. He can, like, hear everything. What is that? - He doesn't see colors. He just says every note sounds completely different.

- Wow. Like you said, maybe it's a language thing. Because it really is a... He just learned the language. - Yeah, the language. - There's-. - It's like, it's like perfect it's like native music. fluency, if you think of it like that. - So let's listen to some of this. - Turn around. Here we go. As fast as you can, we're going to start with single notes, then we're going to do some. intervals, then chords. Okay, here we go. A. C-sharp. B-flat. C. D. A-flat.

- Okay, good. Two notes at once. Here we go. - C-flat. Great. How about this? B-flat, A. Great. What about this? B-flat, A-flat. - This is incredible. - Great. How about this? C, B-flat. - And then how about this? - E-flat. What is it? E, E-flat. Correct. Okay. He's, he's annoyed. He's annoyed. The part of this, when I play these next chords, that's really.

I think why the video went so viral, the next part of this. Where I play these super complex polychords. Okay, I'm going to do some polychords. for you. These are really going to be hard. You ready? What's this? C augmented over D-flat augmented. Okay, sing a B-flat. Mm. Very good. What's this. chord? Uh... A-flat— Oh, A-flat major over A major. Great, sing an F-sharp. Mm.

Excellent. What's this chord? A minor over D-flat major. Great. What's this chord? E add 9 over F major. Excellent. E add 9 over F major. So I had to look at my hand to make sure that. that's what it was— ...'cause 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 polychords... So the people that were the best musicians. were li- were... Would... Looked at it and was like, "Oh my God." You know, it's C. augmented over D-flat augmented. Um, and the the second chord was A-flat major over A. major, but they were both in inversion, right? So it was like a first. inversion A-flat major chord, first inversion A major chord. And then.

an A minor over D-flat major, and then E add 9 over F major. And for an eight-year-old... I mean, for anyone—. ... plus they're all close-voiced. They're all just right next to each other. - Yeah, yeah. - 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 and you have to di—... He has to. dissect each one. Like, what are the notes being played there, and and what is... Like, what's the theory? 'Cause 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's incredible. So you're saying, like, some. part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life? - I did a thing where I played what I call high information music. High information music would be Bach, Well-Tempered Clavier, fugues, yeah, any-. anything Bach.

And I would play the Well-Tempered Clavier, and I would play... I have a, a friend who... Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've. ever heard. His name's Aydin Esen. And I would play Aydin's improvisations for Dylan. It had very. sophisticated harmony and linear things in it. And Keith Jarrett, and mainly. jazz, classical, and modern classical music. And then, then we would play, listen to rock music once he was born. I'm talking on my wife's stomach before.

Dylan was born— ... starting at 15 weeks, for 30 minutes a night. And then when Dylan was born, I would sit with him for an hour. every morning and listen to music—. ... and I would look at him. In order for this for them. to... hear these phonemes apparently and develop. this language, or get the... The language acquisition has. to involve the social brain. So, when kids look at you, when a baby's 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 this, 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. know ... I never played pitches for Dylan and said, "This is a C, this is a B flat-".

"... this is a G." I just played complex-. ...high-information music form. And played with him. - 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, the neurobiology, psychology of language. in early life. I think a big part. is you, 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 up the language already. - That's right. And you're picking up the music, 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, you have a pretty good chance. - Much better chance. - Okay. All right. So as we unwind our way back Joe Pass and bebop. You were.

You were funny enough talking about what is bebop. jazz and, and that would be 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. - Wasn't a musician. - Which was very weird. We never... I have six siblings. and we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz. - We just took it for granted at that time. - Yeah, just 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 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 with the Joe Pass song, right? And by the way, we'll have to go to this song 'cause people must have.

forgot 'cause right? 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 at. actually a lot of instruments, but guitar especially. And there's 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 learn to play guitar like. this, you've accomplished something with your life.".

And I was like, "What?" So this let, record stay, 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 kinda cool.". And so I said, "I think I can figure 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 to Brother, Gino Vannelli 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 it out. I. I just, and it's weird. I mean, look at that weird bar. - So you're just finding like, playing around with the, putting your fingers-. - Yes. - ... on the various positions. - Right, but trying every combination of fingers. I had never played that chord. That's a weird-looking. chord. And, but I kept ... I moved my fingers around till I.

heard to where it sounded like, "Oh, that's it, definitely.". And I just looked at my hands like, "What is that?" Had no idea what it was. - So you were connected to the... you were really connected to the music. The... And so that, that's why you can hear... It's not necessarily... Did you even, you. didn't have perfect pitch. - No. - You, and not even relative pitch. - No, I did not. No, I didn't know anything about intervals. I didn't know anything about music theory, anything. This is all just-. - Yeah. You're just like playing-. - Ear. - ... around with different shapes. That's amazing. - That's right. I mean, look at that weird bar there. . But then you get into these.

thing. So that stuff there, I could figure out And then this. That stuff I could figure out. And then these things. here. Those are just inversions of 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 listened to it a bunch of times and.

I started-. - So you just replay over and over and over and over, and you're, like, trying. to replicate it. - Yes. And I'm memorizing every different chord shape. All the chord shapes that I. had never played before. - Would you recommend people do something like that on a really complicated song? - Yeah, but there are so many YouTube videos that you can go and just learn it without having. to— Yes. Yeah, I would recommend. - I feel like the struggle-. - The struggle is where it's at. - ... this is true for education in general. People... Like, there's all these.

educators that try to make learning easier. and more fun, and all that kind of stuff. Great, wonderful, but part of the thing is the struggle. - Absolutely. - But yeah, let's—. - I'm sorry, hearing there's. - Let's... You're nuts. - I heard licks like that all over this, so I knew that that was and then. these licks here, he plays a lot of ideas like that. That's basically a C9.

chord in the top notes of it. So all these are just inversions of the same chord. So if I could. play that, then it's just figuring out the single notes, okay? So...

Okay, so if you just take this first part here when he goes. So this, this intro part is... - You make it sound so simple when you break it down. And, and by the way, Joe Pass, 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 notes. Look at that. - Ooh, that's hard. Maybe just play it like that. That sounds more realistic.

- The amount of different genres that you're able to replicate is just incredible. - This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little, oh, 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 bebop jazz in the history of music? It seems like. it was influential in your life. Another guy you had an incredible. interview with Flea. People should go listen to that. Was 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-. - Bebop. - And -. - Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker-. ... when he was 18 years old. And that's... He was... Charlie Parker was really his.

mentor. - Can you explain to me why, with many of the folks you've interviewed. and in general out there, in the world of. jazz, all roads lead to Miles Davis? Why he's such an influential figure? - Because he was the greatest innovator in the history of. jazz. He was at the forefront of all these different. styles of jazz. I mean, he started as a bebop player, and then. he, he had records like the Birth of Cool, and modal jazz, and 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 Coltrane. in it. Had, I mean, had different piano players. Could... Wynton Kelly, but Paul. Chambers in the bass, Philly Joe Jones on the drums. And that particular group.

was made just incredibly important records. And then he had his '60s group, which. was Herbie Hancock on the piano, Ron Carter on the. bass, Tony Williams on 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,

uh, 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, the. creating in the music, the feeling like you're on the.

edge. Like, you're challenging the. possibilities of what can happen, and, 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, 'cause Ron did records, he played bass on 2,200. recording, famous records. And I said, "Did you guys ever. rehearse with Miles?" "No, never." I said, "So, you, what, what would you do?" He goes, "We'd just show up at the studio, and he'd have the.

charts, put them 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, the live records that you. did at, 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, 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 you 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, not to do the rehearsals. Not, none, none of that. - Yeah, he wanted people to just feel it, play it. Thought is the enemy of flow, as Vinnie Colaiuta told me.

- Thought is the enemy of flow. How do you make sense that Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is influenced by bebop jazz? - So his stepfather was a jazz bass player. And his... When his parents got divorced, his... 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 musician. And they then 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. Once it gets inside you, it's just there. And. and so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians. - Yeah, his impression was just hilarious. I mean, he's a character. His whole physical way of being is. a character. And his impression of just upright bass is just fun, fun to. watch. His whole-. - His intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview,

it... He's an intense guy and funny, and you know, really um, emotional. And, And he picks up his bass, and there's a fierceness that you. immediately feel. And he starts, he talks about how he practices. And then when he starts doing the slapping stuff, he. gets, he's so into it. And, and I'm just sitting there going, "Whoa." Like, "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-.

... you know, 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. But you also played drums. You also played-. - Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in third grade. - Oh. - And then I switched to the bass in sixth grade. And my, I majored, my undergrad.

degree is 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 because-. - Strong words. - ... because as much as I love to play the guitar, and I. love to play the guitar more than anything, I think, but the bass really. defines what the quality of the chord is. 'Cause you can put the. root in there. You can put the third of the chord in the bass. You can put the fifth in there.

You can play a lot of notes. And whatever you play in the bass kinda defines what. kind of chord it is. So, the bass player has a lot of power. - I have to go back to our, the beginning of our conversation. What do you think are some of the. great solos of all time? Can we. put a few into consideration? You have a great list on top. 20 rock guitar solos of all time. - Yeah, so I put Comfortably Numb as my favorite, as my top one. - Yeah, on that day, right? - On that day. Right. Now the day later, I would have said, "It's the second solo.".

- Okay. - But I did the first solo because, because nobody talks about that solo. And that solo is equally great. And when David. Gilmour... 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. Gilmour, 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 it, and he's like, "Ooh.". - Maybe you just don't look back. When you do great things, you don't look back. - Miles never looked back. He never wanted to hear the old stuff. He always moved on. - There was this funny moment where you made a video. why David Gilmour 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. Hendrix. This flow, how one idea. leads to the next, how there's space between them. It's just like speaking. - That's what I read about Miles Davis is very good at understanding tempo.

and the value of silence. And I think David Gilmour doesn't always play fast. But he does a lot with less. And then some of that is also on the more technical side, probably the tone. of the... I mean, he's one of the most uniquely recognizable tones in all of music. What do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Gilmour?

- 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 his gear, and he laughed about it. But there I am, sitting there right next to all these pedals that ... And. I, and I asked his tech, Phil, I said, "These are the same ones you 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, it's hard to... It's.

hard to imagine that those things still... Of course, though. They... He's just kept it. Yeah, this is his Binson Echorec that he played. through, and this is this. You know, these are all the same effects pedals. And the... Wait, is this. the same Hiwatt amp? Yeah. Is this the same... Yes. Yeah, you. get some new stuff. But they. keep all their own gear, and that's, uh ... I mean, he does sell his. guitars for charity. But, like, he has a black Strat that is a, it's a.

signature version. It's like an exact 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 f-... 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 amp? - He does do emulation, actually. He does. He has this thing,

this is... I asked him in the first interview about this. There's a little. rack thing that I had heard that he used, but I asked him for sure. It's called the. Zoom 9030. I put out a short where he talks about. it. I said, "So, that, that Zoom 9030, is that a. real thing?" 'Cause 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.

I'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 gonna replay that. That sounds great." You get used to the sound of it, and that's what it. is. So people always talked about, "Oh, well, he couldn't have used that. He's recording through an. amp," and... 'Cause it sounds great. And, 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 says 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 a-. - Yes. - ... pull you forward? - And I can think of 100 questions to ask David Gilmour, and... But I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. So, but I do make a playlist of songs that I wanna talk about.

So, that kind of guides me, is that... 'Cause I wanna make sure that. There's specific things that I need to play to, so that you can jog his memory. 'Cause anytime you play something that somebody recorded, even 50 years ago, they'll. remember. If they don't remember the exact specifics, that, 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, whether it's in the. production or how it's played or how it was 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 do, what, this.

sound or that?" You make it look easy, but. you have to have a depth of knowledge. You're saying you don't prepare. - I have an incredibly good memory. - Exactly. - That's what it is. It's that I can remember when records came. out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the. engineer, what songs 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, 'cause 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, it's the background knowledge, 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 Gilmour fan. That's his biggest influence as a guitar player. And so he. said, "You're interviewing David Gilmour? Oh, I'm coming." I was like, "All right. Come on. Come on down." So, so my brother John's standing about five feet. away. And John is a sales guy, but he... Great guitar player. So John's. like... I was like, "This is John... This is... David, this is my brother, John.". "David, great to meet you, buddy." And you know, it sounds like it's so... He's a sales.

guy. And, and so during the interview, I said, I was like, "Hey, John, what was I gonna ask David? Oh, ask him about the Gilmour effect." "Oh, yeah, that's. right." And the Gilmour 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 Gilmour." And so I. always call it the Gilmour effect. Anytime I have, like, Yngwie Malmsteen-. - Mm, yeah. - Anybody that played, that has chops that I—.

... interview, the negative comments are always, "Well, I prefer David Gilmour.". - Yeah, yeah. - 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, with a trusted person. to be able to reveal that personality. So, Comfortably Numb at the top on that. day. What else is up there? - Stairway to Heaven. Hey, Joe. - But in that list, your top Hendrix solo is 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. 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 Dan solo—. Larry Carlton. 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.

But there's a few solos that are very hard to play. Stone in Love by Journey, by Neal. Neal Schon, is very hard to play some licks. Um, the, um—There's a song... There's a solo by a guitarist, Carlos. Rios, that people don't know. It's Brother to Brother, a Gino Vannelli song, but it's. extremely hard to play and figure out. And. that people don't know the solos. I put it on my list 'cause I knew that a lot of people were gonna watch it and. they're gonna know what this solo is.

- For me, the sentimental one, my, my first solo is Mr. Crowley, Randy. Rhoads. I like the musicality of Mr. Crowley, 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 to the, the brief time we had Randy Rhoads. - Yes. - It's probably one of the greatest guitarists ever. - '56 to '82, I think. Terrible. Um, he was an 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, um, I love Randy Rhoads. - Uh, another guy, so one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler.

- Yes. And I did have Mark Knopfler on my list, Sultans of Swing. - That's right, you did have-. - Now, I had it high on the list, and I'll tell you why. I would've had it lower 'cause it's one of the early ones, 'cause I wanted people to be like, "Okay, oh, this is a serious list.". So Rick's gonna talk about serious stuff. So, um-. And Rick's gonna 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. - Yeah, it was just-. - So I called Dweezil Zappa, and I was like, "Dweezil, 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." Then I. called my friend Phil X who's an amazing guitar player, and he's like, "No, I'd have to.

practice that." I was 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 'cause. 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 just... It's a tricky rhythm, and, 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, yeah. - ... There's so many Van Halen. My God, it could be... There... I could pick. 25 different Van Halen solos. - But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like. Mark Knopfler. I mean, his is unique guitars. There's something about his. tone. Speaking of Gilmour, there's just the tone, the care, the timing of the notes.

His improvisation, like the live performances of Sultans of Swing that's been. actually going like somewhat viral around recently, his pretty old. live performance of Sultans of Swing. For me, Brothers in Arms, these kind of-. - Great. - ... soulful, mournful type of. solos, he does really, really well. Also, the interesting instrumentation. of Romeo and Juliet. Just so many... Just... Truly one of the greats.

- Now, obviously the intro to Money for Nothing is one of the. greatest. Almost impossible to recreate. that because of the sound is so unique and his... It's just improvised. It's so cool. - Yeah. There's certain songs like Europa by Santana, Santana can have that tone too. That Mark Knopfler makes me real- just how clean it. is. I think he beats B.B. 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. You know? - Yeah, that's-. - When I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize it's Brian May. Incredibly melodic, the tone that he has. Gilmour, Hendrix, everyone that we're talking about, Van Halen. It's just, they have that. one note. It's like, "Oh, I know who that is." And.

that's, that's why we're talking about him. - That'd be funny. That'd be a good video-. - B.B. 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 gonna make that video-. - ... one note. - ... tomorrow. Lex, you'll-. - I don't know. - The day after tomorrow, you'll see it. - I would love to see that. - Can you say, can you recognize these players by one note? - By one note. I think it's... I think we're being a little too aggressive with that. I think you.

need like two or three or four-. - No, no, no, no. - ... or five notes. - I guarantee you. So I was gonna do a video last week where I was gonna. 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 Adele." Like, "What?" Then they're like, "Oh, that's, that's Nirvana." Instantly, they could recognize. Like, "Well, that's not worth me." It's like, yeah, it's so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter. You know who it is. - Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's about the tone.

How could you possibly know the... from a single note? I guess Van Halen, you can. - One note of, of B.B. King's vibrato, you could know. I'm gonna... 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 you could, from a single vibrato, you can know it's B.B. King? - Yes. Well, we'll see. - Put it on record, I'm skeptical. - I'm gonna do, I'll do twenty of them. Can you recognize these guitarists from. a single note? - Could you recognize Stevie Ray Vaughan-.

- Absolutely. - ... versus Eric Clapton? 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 lexfriedman.com/sponsors. We've got Uplift Desk, for my favorite office desks, BetterHelp, for mental. health, LMNT, for electrolytes, Fin, for customer. service AI agents, Shopify, for selling stuff online,

and Perplexity, for curiosity-driven knowledge. exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, back to my conversation with Rick. Beato. 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 it represents, so in that sense, Tears in Heaven. - Well, the story behind that is heartbreaking.

- And then, I personally really love the sound of Wonderful Tonight. - That's a great song. That's one of my favorite Clapton songs. - And I, as I was, like, listening to it, just doing a whole personal journey introspection, knowing that I'm gonna talk to Rick Beato, listening to just a bunch of songs, and I. learned, it's embarrassing that I didn't know the. stories behind the music, but I learned that Eric.

Clapton was married for 10, for a decade. to the same woman that George Harrison was married to. And that this woman was the muse, the inspiration. for, like, so many of the legendary songs of rock-. ... including Wonderful Tonight, including Layla-. ... and including George Harrison's Something. Legendary song also. The same woman. Is she the greatest muse in rock history?

- Probably, yes. - This is great. So in your interviews of musicians and producers, I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole, 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 the all the interviews you've done? And all 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 Lanois, Brendan O'Brien, Butch Vig, the thing. about producers, as opposed to people that are musicians, if you're a in a. musician, even if you're David Gilmour, 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 the variety of things. that they do, you can talk to. I mean, I can talk to Rick. about the Chili Peppers. 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, for days.

with Rick, and the variety of records that he worked on. And there's so. much knowledge to be gained, for me at least, and. I think that the craft of production and. recording engineering is something that is not well-documented. Especially. since there's so few studios nowadays, where. there used to be a mentorship thing, where you'd go and you'd work as an assistant engineer.

And you'd work your way up. I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the. Beatles. I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios, it's just two months. ago, and he started as a tape op when he was 16. He started on the Hard Day's Night. record with the Beatles, and he worked his way up, and he said the first time he. ever recorded an orchestra was he recorded I Am the Walrus, the orchestra part. He set up the mics, and I asked him, I 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, and he was 18 years old, and the ... I mean, I just can't, I can't even. fathom that. We ... 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't, you can never. imagine it not existing, like Stairway to Heaven, or whatever it is. - It's funny, like, looking back, even probably for them, just to realize they've. created that magic is hard to believe.

'Cause you're looking at a blank thing and then magic comes out, and you don't even, you don't even understand. I 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 even remember if this. was, if we talked about it on camera or not, but we talked about. Bohemian Rhapsody, and at the very end...There was a. thing where he was depressing his whammy bar a little bit, and it.

sounds like the piano is out of tune. I never noticed it before. He mentioned. this to me. And he said it always bothered him. And there's always something. about these songs that bothers people. Even these songs that he-. - These old 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 been up a little higher. on that," or whatever. - I mean, that... there's certain moments in songs that are just.

unlike anything else. In Bohemian Rhapsody when Freddie Mercury is, "Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.". And then guitar comes in. I mean, there's just nothing like that. 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 with In the Air Tonight, the drum bridge. Do do do do do do do do. Yeah. What is that? I don't understand how you can create. that. What is that? Why is that so magical? Why. is that so singular inside a particular song and in. rock history period? Like, these moments, I don't know, musically, I don't understand how you create them 'cause it might be bigger than musical.

It might be cultural, all... a bunch of different elements, and plus, it's him. filled with ... Like, I've seen live performances. He has, like, a headset. He. does something. He's like a telemarketer or something. Like, his whole vibe and look to him, he doesn't look like a rockstar, but he is. - Those are hooks when you think about it, right? It's like, it's as much of a hook. as any, as the chorus of the song or any song. That. drum thing is something that people wait for, and they air drum to it. Everybody air drums to it, and it is a hook, and.

those are hard to create. Those 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 gonna get it. In your conversation with Sting, he said something about. how modern music is simpler, more minimalistic, and, "The bridge is gone," I think-. ... he said. And he said he thought that, "The bridge is therapy.".

It's, like, a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse-. ... before the chorus comes in. - That's right. - 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 could probably do anything, I guess. - Lennon 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 I can't go on?" And then, but the bridge is very. Lennon. "Life is very short, and there's no time. For fussing and fighting, my. friend. I have always thought that it's a crime, so I'll ask you once again.". I mean, it's very, you know, very Lennon-esque. This is... That was really. a... kind of a real collaboration between the two of those. - This is where different parts of the band can clash-.

... in interesting ways. I mean, the Beatles are the epitome of that. Such ... Like, each individual Beatle is a great talent in their own right. 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-. - I have a theory. - Because PA systems were so bad back then- ... and the Beatles ... People.

screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, "Okay. We. don't, we don't need... We can't tour anymore 'cause we can't even hear ourselves, so we're just gonna be a studio band." And maybe. because of... We have all these great late Beatles records, they're. from 1966 on, just because they had bad PA systems. And they had no monitors. You know, they're in Shea 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 crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence up until you're about, you know, in your late 20s, 30 years old, and then crystallized, so you're using... The crystallized is. you're using your life experience 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 Ninth Symphony, things like. that. So, they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this, and. there's not... They're not improvising, but things for improvising, writing pop. songs, and that... I think when your mind is really most active and your brain. processing speed is at its pinnacle, that... This is just my theory-.

... that people can come up with those kind of ideas. Same with. improvising. I think that most jazz improvisers, not all, but. most, do their best improvising before the age of 30. - Creating something new. - Yes. - Truly novel, that requires youth. It's just a theory though, but it seems to apply. What do you think about the. 27 Club? A bunch of the music greats died at 27. Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse.

- Kurt Cobain. - Kurt 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 Unplugged, Nirvana, Kurt Cobain is smoking every. second that he's not playing, he's smoking. Every singer. smoked. Every musician smoked. Nowadays, I asked. my son, Dylan, "Dylan, does anybody smoke" at his high school. He's like-. ..."Smoke? Nobody smokes." He's, he's... The- it was an absurd. question. And that was part of culture. - It was for everybody. I mean, that was, that was a big transformation over the past 20 years and. just everybody stopped smoking. But I don't think smoking has the kinda 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 smoking. distracts them from the hard... I mean, heroin and. coke, I mean, those, those things really, and alcohol, unfortunately-. ... can be easily abused, I think. It seems like it's a... The, the life of a. musician, this dopamine thing of getting on stage and be.

it, being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of. people, the high of that, and then the comedown after. is a really hard life, for just even neurobiologically, of like, how do you deal with that? You have to be able to control. the rollercoaster 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, you start to abuse those drugs. I don't know. I think the, I think it's really. interesting the role that drugs have played in the, in the history of music. They have. certainly been extremely destructive, but they have also certainly been productive. muses, inspirations for some of these folks.

- Oh, absolutely. Now, would we. want to, you know, advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity? - No. - Well, I wouldn't, but just like smoking, which I think improved people's voices-. ... I mean really, the raspiness of it-. ... this is the reason that the, that so many of these, virtually every famous singer-.

... no matter what genre of music, jazz, soul, rock, they all smoked. - Yeah, yeah. - Nat King Cole. - Miles Davis too? - Miles smoked, everybody smoked. Miles did... Well, Miles. was a heroin addict too. I mean-. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - ... so many jazz musicians. - Well, Miles had a sound to him. You're right. I mean, smoking. must, must play a gigantic role to that, adding some complexity to the voice. - Yes. - Yeah, some richness to the voice. - Nat King Cole, he smoked, I think, four packs a day. He died of lung cancer.

Lotta heavy smokers though, as singers. Frank Sinatra, heavy smoker. McCartney was a heavy smoker. Lennon, all. those guys smoked. - Yeah, it's hard to know, chicken or the egg. But I certainly wouldn't recommend doing. drugs as a way to get better at music. But, you know, it does seem to go hand-in-hand. And some of it. has to do with the period, with the time period, with the place,

'cause sometimes it's part of the culture. The drug is like you're saying, smoking. If you were smoking now, that's gonna be a very different experience than. smoking 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. There's a. different vibe. So, sometimes the drug is a deep. integrated part of the culture versus an actual chemical. substance. The '60s, right? They're... I don't know. They were on. everything in the '60s. - Yeah.... I mean, it has to account for something, Lex, you know?

- Uh, 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, um-. - Yeah, 'cause he was recording in a studio in Atlanta that I. was working with a band that I was producing. And he was in, I was in Studio B, he was. in Studio A. And this band that I was working. with, they were called Jump, Little Children. And so, he had his assistant come in and ask, "Hey, is.

this... Are you guys Jump, Little Children?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then all of a. sudden, I couldn't see out into the live room. Elton walked into the. thing, and we were getting ready to track, and I'm, I'm pressing the button. "Yo, where are you. guys? What's up? I thought we were gonna start this." And no one's responding. I can hear. talking, it's like, "What, what is going on? Where are they?" Then all of a sudden they come back in the. studio and they were stunned. I said, "Where were you guys?". "Elton John just walked into our session. And he said he's a big fan. He said to. come over when we're done and, and hang out in Studio A.".

So, so we did, and he was there with Bernie Taupin, and they. were working on a song. And he, we talked there for, 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'd just... "Okay, just record this." And Elton would sit there.

and, and play and come up with the song- ... in 15 minutes or so. - Yeah, that's crazy. - There's a great version of, I think, Tiny Dancer, where Elton is coming. up with it on, it's on YouTube. And he's just coming up with the. music right there. And then the band, "Okay, here's how it goes." And they record it right. then. Then move onto the next song. I see this. I mean, it's really incredible. That's it. Yeah. True. There's one there that I've sort of done the other day with 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-like, then a. chorus, and then back to the sort of verse sort of thing. It's, it's a very... It happens very quickly. It sounds long, but it's sort of, it sort of starts. off- << Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band. Pirates man, pretty.

eye, you marry >>. - Okay. - I mean, it's really amazing that he just-. - Yeah. He's looking at 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-.

- Yes. - ... thing. And then they figure out from there. Yeah, that's... I mean, I. don't know what skill that is exactly, but that's. incredible. I mean, in that process he makes it his own. - Yes. - Okay. You had an amazing interview with Kirk Hammett. I'm a huge Metallica fan. - Same here. - Uh, there is a lot of interesting stuff that came out of that, from that. conversation. One is the distinction between heavy metal and hard rock.

- Yes. - 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 down, the. downpicking, I used to be able to do that. I just can't do that anymore. It. hurts my thumb-.

... to, to do it. I think honestly, I thought a lot about it. It's like, why does it, 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, and, I'm sorry- No, I'm serious. - I love your theories. - Well, I think that that's actually right, 'cause I'm thinking like, "Why does that hurt so much to do that? All the downstrokes and stuff." It's gotta be something. It's like, yeah, it's from, 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 Hetfield 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 'cause they've, they, 'cause 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 of strings. - Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he? Yeah, that was really interesting. See, these are the things that I like to. learn from these interviews with these. people. I was like, "What? Why have I 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.

Apple was really good at this, right? Like, 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 surprise is, Hans Zimmer said God Only Knows by the Beach 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 the.

perfect song?" And he said A Whiter Shade of Pale. And I was like, "Ooh, that's a great song." And I then I thought, "I'm gonna 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 a limb and say it. 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. Knopfler. And I would probably go... Is it, is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing? I would go. Sultans of Swing. Even though like I'm tempted to say Europa, but then like... - Sultans of Swing hits on so many levels-.

... 'cause it's got a great melody, great lyrics, and then multiple great guitar. solos. And has such a unique sound to it. The other thing is that it. sounds very different from other Dire Straits songs. I mean, this is like early-. ... Dire Straits Strat tone. And then you think of like Money for Nothing is a Les. Paul, and it's a totally different kind of vibe than him playing it on. Sultans of Swing. But that song's amazing. - Plus it, it's about music. So it's like there's a, there's a meta.

aspect to it. But then there's also like, we're talking about this guitar stuff, but Leonard. Cohen, Hallelujah. I mean, Leonard Cohen in general. Like these. songwriters, they go super simple on guitar. And there, it's just what's that called? Singer-songwriter type. Uh, I told you off. my one of my, maybe the music guest that's a. dream guest is 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 where I've given up on it a little bit. And I. was trying-. - That's when it's gonna happen. That's-. - Okay. - Once you give up on it, it's gonna happen. - Yeah. Yeah. - Why Tom Waits won't be on your podcast. - Exactly. Exactly, dude. This is, this is my, this is my moment. - Tom, come, come here. Let's do it. I wanna see it.

- I'm such a fan of, like the Zappa. artistry on the musical front, which Tom Waits has, but I'm a sucker for great lyrics. Lyrics to me. is such a big part of great songs. And, and he's. another example. He has a song called Martha. It's about. a love story that didn't work out, and it's an older man calling. the woman that he was in love with, and basically reminiscing. about like, you know, thinking about like, "What would've happened if.

it worked out?" That kinda thing. And then, you know, I loved that. song for a long time, and you know. at some point I found out that he wrote that when he was in his early. 20s. And you realize, it's similar with the Beatles, like- ... these. guys somehow were able to capture the human condition. so masterfully, and they're kids. 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. It's not like, not like kids today. - Now you're on a porch. You also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan, of. Smashing Pumpkins. Uh, 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. Um, 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. 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 we're talking...

No, all these people that we're talking about use these notes, and this is why. their songs... When I interviewed Sting, I called them surprise. tones, and Sting's 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 then that creates. emotion. Dissonance equals emotion. And. that's what I like. I want music to be... to depress me. - Yeah. What is that? I don't know. They, the, but melancholy, and I think you.

articulate it in areas, it's not actually that depressing. There's something. about that melancholy feeling. that is somehow the other side of the coin of happiness. It's a kind of longing. Or 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. There's, I think there's a social way of listening to music when maybe a concert and. so on, but there's this, there's nothing like you're alone in a car.

driving, listening to, like, whatever it is, Bruce. Springsteen. Well, I think Louis CK has a bit about. that. And was it Bruce Springsteen? But he's, sometimes he has to pull. over to the side of the road and just weep, or something like this. It's just. the, 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. It... You think about, like, maybe things you regret or how life could've worked out. And sometimes it's not.

even about, like... It's not even real. It 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, and it just connects with that. I don't know what that is. - There's a Kurt Cobain lyric. It was on the In Utero record, from the song Frances Farmer. The chorus part is, "I miss the. comfort of being sad." And I was like, "Yes." I miss the comfort in being.

sad>> I was like, "Yeah, that's it right there.". - In terms of love songs, I somehow I find powerful. that kind of desperation. So like I've always connected with Pearl Jam's Black. - Oh, amazing. - Like that line is... A friend of mine was going through a breakup, so I was. listening and he, he's the one that introduced me to Pearl Jam during that whole. period when Pearl Jam was huge with Ten. 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 can't it be mine?" Oh my God, that—. ... blows me away. That's an amazing line. - Well, yeah, I mean-. - The delivery is incredible on it too. - Yeah. Eddie Vedder, one of the great frontmen of all time. - Yes. - And that whole period, that whole moment in history. of Kurt 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, who do you think are the great. frontmen in history of music? - Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant. - Freddie Mercury number one, probably. - Steven Tyler. - Jim Morrison. - Jim Morrison? - ... - Yeah. Roger Daltrey. Um-. - Well, we have to say, I have to say, we have to say James Hetfield.

- James Hetfield? - I mean, there's nothing... I mean, I have to talk to you about this. I have... I mean, it's just 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 AC/DC 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. There's somewhere I've seen statements like that. That's a. ridiculously inaccurate statement. So it's a free concert, so any official counts. don't count. It's, it's definitely over a million. It's, 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, the... all of it. There was also a political, social, cultural moment meeting. the musical moment, and the set list, I was just... I was li-. I listened to it several times over the past few days, just taking myself.

back into that moment in time. Listen to this set list. Enter. Sandman, Creeping Death, Harvester of Sorrow, Fade to. Black, Sad but True, Master of Puppets, Seek and. Destroy, For Whom the Bell Tolls, One, and Whiplash. Look at that. How is that-. - That's- just- That's my kind of set. - ... get the fuck out of here. - That's-. - This is amazing. This is-. - That's my kind of set right there. - I don't know if you can 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, at their peak. The Black Album had just come out then, and. that must have been so, so exciting. - I mean, Woodstock was big. There's certain moments in time that really, really meet the moment. Are you a fan of live, live like big? - I used to be, but at this point-. ... I can't you know... I'd much rather see people play in small clubs-.

... and, or go to the... I'd like to listen in the studio. Go to the studio, even. - I generally almost entirely agree with you. I just think that there's these. historic moments, but you don't know-. ... which are gonna be which, but you're making the concert. free, it's just all of it, you get plus Pantera and AC/DC. The. other, which actually is a legitimate thing you mentioned, is. as one of the greatest concerts of all time.

is Beethoven's world premiere of Ninth Symphony. You know, I. didn't really know the personal side of Beethoven until I. saw this movie called Immortal Beloved. It's an excellent movie with, uh-. - Gary Oldman. - ... Gary Oldman. Just a really... it's a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an. interesting kind of way through the perspective of a love letter that he's. written. But then I realized like... and this is early, this is many, many... this is a couple decades ago now, that, you know, he went deaf. before he even started writing the Ninth Symphony, which is why they consider it 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 just 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 a- I guess a call for that, a reaching for that, for. that peace. And it's a... and there's a tragic element to it, again, connected to.

history, which is it was post Napoleonic Wars-. ... and before the American Civil War. So like, you're in this, 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 the, of course, the two. World Wars coming. So this, all of it together, and the. fact that he's conducting deaf, and he wrote this whole thing deaf. I was reading a lot about his process, and he just edits and edits and edits and.

edits. So the fact that he had to edit in his head is just insane. - I mean, it— Beethoven was sick all the time too. I mean, a lot of people were sick all the time. It was very common. What would motivate you to write. music, this beautiful music that you can never actually hear. except for in your head? Right? Like, why... The amount of time it takes to write,

to write a 35-minute, 40-minute piece, all the. parts, you 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? One, and people would say, "Well, he's. hears in his head." But what kind of enjoyment is it? You. wanna hear the orchestra... I mean, it's really profound that he was.

inspired to do this. There's a thing called the Heiligenstadt. Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers in, 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? Where hearing played. such an important part. Another person that would have had. to have had perfect pitch, 'cause you could never do this-. ... if you didn't have perfect pitch, which I think all of these great composers, for the most part. Brahms didn't, from what I know, but all the rest of them, for sure, had. perfect pitch. So they could hear these things in their head, and that's how. they composed. - I mean, you love sound and music.

What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven? - It must have been terrible. I mean, I, 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 that. - Yeah, desperately 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, Ode to Joy. Like, not a cynical thing—. ... but a call for the positive. - Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's— 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. Uh, becoming an authoritarian. And Beethoven, sort of. famously was critical of that. Nevertheless, I think maintained a fascination with.

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, that dreams get. shattered. And through that, is able to still do this call for the hopeful future. All right, so okay. So Beethoven, one of the greats, for.

sure. Like basically everybody, I know how to. play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata, but I always avoided the third. movement 'cause I was like, "I'll never be good enough.". Never, never, but I need to-. - Never say never, Lex. - One of these days, maybe. You know what would be great? If Tom Waits. writes me an email that says, "I only talk to people that can. play-" "... the third movement.". - Play the third movement. - That'd be, that'd be a dream come true. - There you go. - I'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 of Moonlight Sonata. Okay. You often highlight the importance of Bach. In fact, so many of your guests... - Every famous songwriter is influenced by Bach. They. are. The greatest composer of all time, the greatest musician of all time. - Even 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, the 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 premier of the Saint 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, and he, I think he was 20 years old, and, 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 Bach wrote 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. 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. - And extremely productive. Also. I, yeah, I think from all. the music teachers I've ever had, I understood the importance of studying Bach. - He didn't write Master of Puppets, but he wrote some great powerful-. - Well put. - ... music. - Well put. I tried to educate the aforementioned.

music teachers of the brilliance of the Master of Puppets. Sometimes a. good riff is greater than any musical composition. So—. - 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, like, so the stereotypical, like, guitar store. when you come in you're playing Master of 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'll. go and I'll do drop D something or play Tool. I usually would do something, do some drop tuning thing. And it's always gotta. be some some type of metal that I'll test to see if the, if the bottom. end's 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 was a moment in time, it still goes on, but there was a moment where really. people were freaking out about the use of AI in music. Uh, so there's these, I would say, incredible apps like. Suno, Udio. ElevenLabs Music is also. great. They can generate basically text to song, full song from a text prompt. And a lot of people started freaking out just based on how good it is.

And so you start to immediately imagine how this is going to transform music, and you're. going to 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, made a bunch of videos on this. I made up a.

fake artist, Eli Mercer, in this video. Then I did a thing for CBS. News, I made up this fake artist, Sadie Winters, and came up. with this song, Walking Away. Well, the computer, the program came up with it. - There is some creativity in a process. So in this particular thing, the. process is you generate an image. - I did it in ChatGPT, the image. Then I went to Claude and I wrote the lyrics, 'cause Claude's way better at lyrics-. ... than Suno is. Suno's bad at lyrics, at least right now. So I. so I did, I created the lyrics in Claude and then I imported the.

lyrics into Suno, and I had great results with the. songs that I came up, that it came up with. I always have to qualify that. But then I started thinking about this. People freak out about this, "Oh, this is bad, this is. bad." And then I thought, I was like, "No, who are gonna be the ones that are gonna. benefit from AI?" Well, the people that are already great songwriters, because you have to. be able to recognize when it spits out something good. versus when it spits out something that's not that good.

And every other song, I've probably created. 130 song ideas, out of which there's three good ones. - And there's 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. 50 Cent's Many Men, and I think it is super impressive. And there's a different.

pipeline actually. - Yes. - It's a tricky pipeline to how to pull that off, and I think a lot of the. creativity in that, even that kind of remixing, is. in the pipeline of how you actually do that, because there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline. Uh, 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 an AI B.B. King, I want the real B.B. King. And, and I, if I know, if any AI is involved. in the B.B. King process, I'm tuning out. - Yes. - And the, I don't think I'm being curmudgeonly 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'd play a. song, and then my youngest and Dylan... My youngest, Layla, and I have three kids, and my oldest, Dylan, as soon as I. played it, "Why are you listening to AI?" And it's like, oh my God, instantly. It's 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 out, "Okay, what are they 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 sound- 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. bitrate 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 multitracks, and they'll get high-quality. WAV 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 the. royalties from it. I'm not saying that any of them are doing it. 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 in my phone. just to see if they'll be like, "Why are you listening to AI?" They can instantly tell. Then it eventually started getting better. 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? 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, and I created.

a song with a fake artist. And the song was called Neon. Ghosts, and I played it for Layla in the car. She's. like, "Can you separate the tracks?" I said, "Yeah, I have them. separated back home." "Okay, I want to go down to hear it." So, we go down to the studio, and I play it for her, and she listens to the soloed vocal. She said, "Wow, this is really realistic.". "This is very hard to tell, even with the 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. - Yes. - And that's- I don't know the words correctly. I mean, they can be incredibly sophisticated, but there's so- something, the. edge is not there. Some kind of edge that you-. we want in our lyrics. Some kind of surprise, but not cringe or not cliché. Or. something truly novel in the lyrics.

But that- if that's the case, it's kind of sad that. that's where the creativity has 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, they could 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 redoes stuff and changes. things and adds parts, and then they actually do music production, and maybe they re-sing the parts, and they change the stuff. And then then it's just. basically like an idea generator, and I think that that's a great use of. AI, is for that. - But 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 can just hum parts. You know? And then and then do A, B kind of thing. Just kind of. rhythm this kind of, and stitch them together. And never actually have. your fingers on a guitar or- or fingers on a drumstick. - That's why I'm not gonna use AI, Lex, is for that reason, because.

to me, it's just boring. And I-. - Yeah, it is. - ... when I use it, it's just like, "Eh." But I used it for. about a month or so, just because I was making videos. And I was trying to see how it's advancing. Every- every three or four months, I'll-. 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- to use. - I hear you. You're a bit old school.

- I'm old school. - As am I. 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-. - I agree. - ... fundamentally boring about it, and I've been trying to figure it out. For- so for example, I use it a lot for- more and more and more for programming. So, for. building stuff. And there, it's not about the... The final. output is not the code. The output is what the code creates. And there, it's.

extremely useful, not... It doesn't matter if it's boring or not, it's useful. But when the. final output is the thing that AI creates, which it would be in- in. music, then there's something about 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 a song, "Generate a top 10. hit," we- we- we'll quickly lose value for that, I think. And so, we'll want.

raw, like raw. Whatever- whatever shape that. raw takes, I want to say raw talent, but that raw. talent of any kind. And per- 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.

Uh, but that also... Creating TikToks is also talent. - It's a- it is a talent. Absolutely. When I see anything that's AI. generated, I instantly recognize it. Any video, I'm like, "Ugh, boring, boring, boring." And my kids do the same thing. They just have no interest in. engaging with it. As soon as they recognize it, and they can spot it a mile away-. ... and they're just like boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. And then they kind of dis- then they don't even wanna engage with the.

social media platforms, which is a danger. Which. I think they need to crack down on the AI slop. YouTube's done a pretty good job. on it, but it's hard to stay on this. It'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 a-. - Yeah, it's fundamentally like, it's fundamentally boring. I think boring is a really.

good-. - Yes, boring. - And it's, and it's annoying to have to flip through the AI slop. But I think actually, as a civilization, it's just inspiring for authenticity. 'cause you wanna be real. And being raw, which I, you know, one of. the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting shit and just being. themselves in, in the long form versus overproduced. 'Cause I. think AI is making people realize that AI is good at being overproduced. So there'll be more.

- Let's get that covered. - Yeah. Even artists, 'cause you're saying like, yeah, they'll use it as tools. Part of. me thinks like not really. Like, I think they'll quickly, this. kind of process of generating a bunch of different options, And choosing the one you like the most, I think is a really. frustrating process for artists. And it, I think it, 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 kinda editing that Photoshop. is increasingly integrated in. Uh, I'll mention to you offline, so the. whole uh, iZotope RX group of software that does a lot of the de-noising, All the D, removing the wind, all the, they integrate machine learning. extremely effectively-.

... for working with audio in different kinds of ways. There's a bunch of different other. programs that do that. Maybe for like B-roll footage. and a, same thing on the audio, if you just need a little audio to. create a feeling of a scene, the AI might be used. there in that kinda way. But truly original stuff, eh. - I've saved videos where I'm doing, speaking over music, for. example, in an interview. Somebody's playing and, and we have two. dialogue- two people speaking in lavs, but it's, 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 in. 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. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go. to lexfridman.com/sponsors. We. got UPLIFT Desk for my favorite office desks, BetterHelp for mental.

health, Element for electrolytes, Fin for customer service AI. agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and. Perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And. now, back to my conversation with Rick Beato. So. you have this video breaking down Sabrina Carpenter's song Manchild. And you use that as an example of. building up people's intuition about the music business.

and how the music production for these. popular songs is being done these days. Who's doing the songwriting, how's it being done and all that kind of stuff. I was wondering if you could. speak to that. - In that particular song, Jack Antonoff, who 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 in the song. It's 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 does Song of the. Year have songs that are interpolations, meaning that they.

have melodies from other songs in their interpolation? They. used to call it stealing. And then you. have songs that used samples for the whole thing. Like the Doechii song that's. out right now. And I said, "Look, she took a Gotye song and. basically took off his melody and she created her own melody over. it." It's like, well, it's, I mean, it saves time for her. You don't have to actually create. a track, you just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful. - Yeah, you pointing that out, the song Anxiety, it broke my brain.

- I mean, it's so absurd. - It, yeah, it just 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 Luiz Bonfá 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. And Doechii has some really good songs- ... on her record.

- Yeah, but why are these the ones that are coming to the top, right? - Well, you know. - This is interesting. Hey, that might be just a criticism of the machinery. of the business-. - Absolutely. - ... that drives them. It's not necessarily, like, a. lot of these folks are really good musicians. First of all, I think a lot of them are also good, like the actual songs they. make at the top are good. I'm a big fan of Bruno.

Mars. He's a great songwriter.... and is a great musician all around. - Absolutely. - You know, is a Michael Jackson, eh, reincarnated. I mean, he's-. - Super, super talented guy. - Incredible, right? - Yes. - Um, you mentioned Billie Eilish 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 a fundamentally, at least originally, a singer-songwriter. - Yes. - So that's a, I mean, that, I mean, I'm sorry, but that, that is a, like,

of the kind of music that Rick Beato 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. - Wanna take a quick bathroom break? Okay. I have to ask you about this complexity that you're facing on a. basically daily basis. I think it's a challenge a lot of. YouTube folks experience, but you're just so viscerally experiencing.

it because a lot of what you do in your channel is celebrate music, broadly. And so, as part of that process, you have to sometimes show. clips of music, and I think all of that falls under fair use, quite. obviously. And so you get all these YouTube copyright. claims, and for folks who don't know, if you get three, three of those, it's each one of those can be a strike on the. channel and could take down your channel. And you get some insane.

amount. You said you got, like I think I had a similar thing. on my Rick Rubin episode, like, I think you said 13. 13. So, what, can you just speak to this whole thing? You've been in a constant. battle, WMG, UMG, all the, all, all-. - All the, all the three-letter name-. - All the-. - ... record labels, right? - The, 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'd play music. in a video, YouTubers were not playing music in videos because they. didn't, because of the Content ID things and the take-downs and stuff. So, I would play music, and I'd just see what happens, and then you get a content. ID claim, or you— or you realize the 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 N' Roses, which is still the case, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, I mean, many bands, Fleetwood Mac, um, Led Zeppelin, and then, and then something happened. There was a guy on the. skateboard on TikTok that had the ocean spray thing and, and he was listening to-. ... Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. And that blew up and became a number one song again. And the labels then.

realized, I mean, I'd made many videos about, about why this is wrong, and it should be fair use and everything. Well, because of that, the label's like, "Ooh, maybe we should rethink this." And then they just started. demonetizing videos. - Demonetized means they get all the money that you make. - They get all the money. In a one-hour video, if they, if you use 20 seconds. of a clip- ... they get all the money. Okay? So, I hired a lawyer finally after the Rick Rubin.

video, 'cause I thought it was ridiculous. I go over to, to Tuscany, I interview Rick at his house, and. I hired a— hired a lawyer to fight this, who I'm gonna have on my channel. I don't wanna say who. it is, but he's another YouTuber. And he had approached me a couple years ago, and and it's not cheap to do. - Oh, you, you're gonna do, like, a public interview with him? - I'm gonna do an interview- ... with him, yes. - Awesome. Okay. - I talked to him today about it, actually. - I can't wait. That'd be great.

- So he said, "You should fight these 'cause every single one of them. is fair use." And he went through my entire. catalog. I have 2,100 videos, and he's fought 4,000 Content ID claims and. won every single one of them. 4,000. That's a lot— I mean, when I do top 20 guitar solos, there's 20. Content ID claims, you know? It's, and it's either, it. can be either from the sound recording, if I used that, or if I just play.

it, it can be from the publisher. - That's amazing. So is there, I mean, that's- it's still, he'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, and, 'cause 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, 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-. - ... you know. - ... obvious one, but even reaction videos, right? Where those-. - Yeah. Even reaction videos, yes, absolutely. - Uh those are more borderline. But I don't know. I love those videos. - Absolutely. - Like, when a person's just sitting there and listening to it, and they're like, you know, like, a, like, a voice teacher is listening to a vocal performance, and like-. - Yeah, but those are breakdowns.

- Yeah, those are breakdowns, yeah. - I think that the Content ID stuff that was happening with these major. labels, they would hire third parties- ... that 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, makes. sense and stuff. - Yeah. Yeah. - And, and they would claim everything that they could, and historically, YouTubers never. would fight back. They were like, "Oh, this is easy money.". YouTubers never fight back and, at these. things, because they're afraid to have their channels taken down. So-.

- Right, you gotta say, "Hold my beer.". - There you go. - So, I mean, it's important. So, you-. - I mean, it took me years though, Lex. I didn't... I've been doing this... So, I've been. doing it for one year now, and I'm nine year- almost 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. Um, how has Spotify changed music? Sometimes we highlight the fact.

that they changed the nature of music and that it's the scarcity is. not there. But also, a lot of it's like every. kind of music is available and so fast and it's so easy. It's easy to explore. - It's a commodity. It's like turning on a water faucet. - Do you think-. - Once you get going-. - ... that there's some good to... I mean, there's a lot of good to that, right? Uh, well, have you... Did you go through that whole pro- I still remember. where I had to basically throw away the albums.

- I never did that. When, after you uploaded them into your computer? - Yeah. So, there's that two-step process. One, there's. like the hard albums, CDs for me. And then, and then you upload them into your computer. And you save them. And then you, how do you put it? Allegedly, a friend of yours pirates some extra songs. And puts them on the computer. So, you have your stash on the.

computer. You're like, "This is my finely selected. stash of greatness." Uh, 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. Bec- and switch to Spotify. Switch to streaming, and basically, rebuild the stash of. playlists and all this kind of stuff. And that, it was heartbreaking. 'cause so much love and effort went into that. Both the.

CD, the stashing of the CD, and the. stashing of the MP3s in the computer. And then in. Spotify, it just seems just effortless. But. it helped me discover all kinds of artists I never would have discovered otherwise. And Pandora, I used a lot. Pandora is more uh, prioritizing on the. discovery part versus organization part. And that was really wonderful.

- So, one of the things I... I'll start with a positive that I like about Spotify, is. that they show view count, they show play counts. Whether they're real. or not, that's another question. 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, that it's a popular song. Well, that's a massive hit. There's very few. songs that have a billion, billion plays. Now, the. downside of Spotify is the way that they pay their artists. Now they've lumped in.

podcasts with that are getting a cut of this streaming with the music. Um, and. you know, the search and discovery. I mean, there's benefits of. algorithms and there's negative things of algorithms. Algorithms happen to. kind of a lot, 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. Where. 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 Soundgarden record," or so- you know, like, "Whoa, I. like that. I'm gonna go by- 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.

Meaning, like, you have a few... It's similar to Pandora, like you can... Okay, this is gonna reveal a little too much about myself. But usually. when I go work out, I'll listen to something like Rage Against the Machine radio. I'm sorry, I need-. - What else would you listen to? - I need motivation. Classical music? I don't know. But yeah, it's pretty good 'cause 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 Machine-y 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. Um, but that experience was fundamentally more. vibrant than I had previously with my stash. That I would just. keep a stash, and I would listen to the same record over and over and over and over. But yeah, this, what's lost is the. I'm sure you love this, but listening through the Led.

Zeppelin records, just driving in a car and listening to the. whole thing all the way through. Yeah, that's lost. - So, I have my old iTunes libraries from 2005-. - Oh, nice. - ... that I list- that I, that I've saved. The CDs that I uploaded into my computer. Anytime I play songs on my... When I'm doing interview, I always play WAV. 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, that song sounded amazing.". song sounded amazing." And you go, "Well, not only are they great mixes that he did, but I'm using WAV files in there." And people notice. the, and these are WAV 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. That these are the-.

- Oh, I see. - ... these are actually the original WAV files from. off the CD that I ripped-... 20 years ago. - What's your current... And people are really curious about that, so what's your current. stack? What are the tools you use? What's your DAW? What's the audio interface? What. are the mics? - So I use Pro Tools. - Pro Tools stuff. - 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 a Mac. - I'm only the opposite.

- Although we have multiple PCs, 'cause my kids use PCs. - Yeah, just to rebel. - They do it for gaming. They like to game. - Right, that's true. I, but like in terms of editing, I hate how how good Mac is-. - So good. - ... at just integrating. The hardware and the software just work well together. Both on the video en-. - If I didn't have a Mac on, honestly, I wouldn't be talking to you right. now. Because I got a G3 that's... So the only good thing that a. major label did for me is when, when my band was on.

UMG and they bought me a G3 and an SM7 and Pro. Tools Digi 001, 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 gotta give it, give it to Mac for that. - So Pro Tools, I mean, that's still the standard. - That's kinda the industry standard, yeah. - I gotta ask you 'cause I know... I've never used Pro Tools. I've.

used... Again, I'm a caveman. I've. used REAPER, I've used Studio One, that's the most recent that 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 the... It, I mean, it's designed for people that are. doing like all kinds of MIDI stuff, and like looping.

and the, what is it? The push buttons with. the, with the beats. And the, it's, it's... I mean, I sound, I. sound 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. 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 use anything. - ... using it, yeah. And-. ... you have to become a master at the things. If you wanna be a recording engineer or. producer, you, you become an expert. A lot of the... You know, Finneas and Billie. Eilish, I think that they use Logic, that's their DAW that they like to use. And. Logic, you know, a lot of pros use Logic. You know, I fire up. Logic every couple days and I use it for things. I have it on. my laptop here and I 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? - Oh, yeah. I'm an expert in Pro Tools. - Are you using any emulation? Any amp sims or it's all real amps? - No, I use amp sims. 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 their CEO, Doug Castro, is a friend of mine. I actually talked to him today as a matter of fact. And I have a Kemper.

amp sim, you know, a modeler. I have an. Axe-Fx, 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 mics set up all the time, and cabinets, and stuff. - Oh, what do you mean? - I have 100 amplifiers. Real amplifiers. - Real? Wait, sorry, 100? - I have 100, yeah. About 100, maybe 95. - How does one go get to that level?

- Collecting and being... I'll be 64 in April, so-. - So you just don't let go? - I don't let go, no. - Why would you get to 100? Like is it, is it tone difference, the-. - Yes, so everything-. - You know the tone difference? - ... does one thing really well. And so it'd be like, okay, so I have this. Marshall JCM800 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 sound.

that's more like Metallica or Dream Theater or something, so, oh, I'm gonna pull. out my Mesa Boogie. Or I need something that's chimey that's more like Brian May or. like The Edge, I'm gonna pull out my Vox AC30. 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 it well, I get rid of. it. And I'm down to 100.

- Down to 100. It's only 100. Uh, but it-. - I can get by with probably 75. - Come on, but you, then you're really running the risk of not having just the right. amps. But you're using emulation, so that's great. I. mean, and 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. No, nobody agrees with me on this. I only have like one... I do have. some side pieces but one main... The greatest gi-.

- The Strat? What do you play? - The Strat, yeah. - The Strat, yeah. - American Strat. I said I would never do this, but I was in a guitar store. I live 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, and I don't really know why exactly, just to. be in the aura of these great instruments. And I—. they brought in this American Strat that had these. different shades of... It was like a silver.

And I just... I've never had this feeling. They talk about. love at first sight. I just fell in love with the. guitar. Can you just speak to the kind of guitars you have and you love? - I pretty much have... mainly old school guitars, right? So I have. Gibsons, I have Fenders, I have PRS guitars. And then I have... I have.

two Gibson acoustics. I have a 1957 Country. 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, 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 Gilmour plays on Comfortably.

Numb in my video. He plays a Nashville tuning, 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, like, the different feels that the. guitars, the acoustics have? Like, what, 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, 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 like, you know, mid-range. It 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, what kind of sound I'm looking for. If I'm-. - So 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. Um, 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 P-90 pickups. - I don't know what double cut means, but it sounds impressive. - That means two cut, cut. Two, um-. 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- That's the... All right, nice. - Yeah. When you play this, you're gonna be like, "Oh my God, this is butter.". - Now, I'm 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, like a-. - This is gonna be embar... Yeah. I use BIAS FX. I'm sorry. - Lex, I use amp sims too, so... I just got the new John. Mayer Neural DSP plugin today that I have not tried out. He did a modeling of all his amplifiers that, that-.

... that Neural DSP did. And it sounds great. John played it, it. sounds just like his amps. - Yeah, John is incredible. - John's great. - I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with him two. times. And outside of being an incredible musician, he's also conversationally just-. - Yes. I've known John since he lived in Atlanta but, when he got signed, and I knew John from way back then, right in the early 2000s. - I think he doesn't get enough credit. Like, he's one of the greatest living.

guitarists-. - He's a fantastic guitar player. - ... in the world. - 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 gotta be successful, so why can't it be you? That was, that was... That's, that was my... When I started my channel, I mean, I didn't start it to... It started by. accident with the Dylan video. And and really, so many people. reached out to me. I started it six months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, "Can you teach me this?" Pro musicians, well-known ones that you 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 ear that. way. But then that, I had conservatories writing. to me about this stuff from all over the world. "How did you teach. Dylan this?" 'Cause we made about four different videos, and they got more and more. sophisticated. And so I thought, "Okay, I'll. make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff." This is, that's really why I started, so. I didn't have to keep... I couldn't answer the emails. There were 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, few, 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 kinda wanna be famous. They wanna 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 spent 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 you're that ends up. happening. It's still, like, getting good at one thing, kind of. somehow relates to getting good at another thing. Somehow they'll lead you to get.

better at getting better at the next thing, at the next thing, and the next thing. But if you're just chasing fame and trying to figure out, "How do I do the viral. thing?" Or so on, it just seems to... You might actually get there, but. it'll be unfulfilling and not long- lasting. - My theory of my channel has always been, make videos on things. I'm interested in. And. at first, I thought, "Oh, nobody's going to watch an old white-haired guy on YouTube.". That was kind of my thing. Well, that was not correct. Um, and.

then it's like, "Well, just make videos on stuff I'm interested in." It just so happens that other. people are interested in the same things I'm interested in. And keep learning. And I, when I produced bands, I never let them take my picture, ever. I. 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. - ... meaning, like, no... - No. No pictures. 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 the again, the thing you're leaving unstated there. is like you spent a lot of years, you know, teaching music. Like, really exploring.

music. Trying a music career of like, trying to create, trying to. produce, trying to be a musician, and all these... Not just. trying. Like, being a, getting extremely good at. it. I just, I think in modern culture. there's a sense you want to sk- skip that part. "I wanna be famous. I wanna..." You know. this. And that is a thing that's not going to be in most cases effective as. a primary thing to chase.

- So I have an undergrad in classical bass. I have a master's from New. England Conservatory in 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 how to edit videos. - And then you taught yourself how to interview.

- And I taught myself how to interview. I'd never done an interview before. I never was like, "An interviewer? What?". - You haven't just done that. You've taught yourself. not how to do just YouTube, but YouTube Shorts. Different-. - Totally different thing. - ... totally different thing. - Totally different skill. - And then not just YouTube, but like, how to be like a, there's a, 'cause you're both a YouTuber. and like a musician who posts stuff on YouTube. YouTuber. means like you're thinking about stuff like thumbnails and...

- 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. 'Cause you, this is a big part of YouTube, where. people have a 30-minute introduction to, to a five-minute. video. You just go straight in. That's really. wonderful. That's, I mean, on, on, on all fronts. I mean, I suppose that has to do with the. production skills that you have, of understanding, cutting, cutting the fluff.

- To make a song. - Yep. Yeah, cutting, 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 a friendship. Can you elaborate on that? - Yeah. That's one of my things is that I really value the time. I've spent with people, friendships and keeping in touch with people. I. talk to each one of my siblings multiple times a week. I talk to. my sisters probably every night, my two sisters.

Um, I have friends from college, I got friends from. growing up, I have friends from, you know, both colleges I went to. I have friends from all different eras in my life. that I keep in touch with and visit whenever I can, and... - And you must have met some incredible humans, and incredibly weird, and. interesting humans throughout your life. So it's worth it, the effort to connect and reconnect. - I mean, it's pretty much everything in life. Nothing means anything more.

than the friendships that you make in your family. - Yeah, what's the point of this whole thing, right? - That's right. - What's the role of music in in the human experience? - Well, hopefully to enlighten people and to create the soundtrack of their life. - It is, right? Music, 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 relistening to the set. that they played in, in Moscow, just. hyped. Like truly hyped. I 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 through 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 to me. - Thanks, I appreciate it. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Rick Beato. To support this podcast, please check. out our sponsors in the description where you can also. find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so. on. And now, let me leave you with some words from. Friedrich Nietzsche, as I often do. "Without music, life would be a.

mistake." Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.