← Lex Fridman Podcast
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- [00:00]
Lex Fridman
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. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or@lexfriedman.com Sponsors it is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got Uplift Desk for my favorite office desk, BetterHelp for mental health, Element for electrolytes, Fin for customer service, AI agents Shopify for selling stuff online and our friend Perplexity for curiosity driven knowledge exploration. The number of things that Perplexity ships at the rated ships is freaking incredible. Choose wise my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. I try to make them interesting but if you skip, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. To get in touch with me for whatever reason go to likestreemin.com contact all right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by Uplift Desk, my go to for all office and podcast studio furniture. I'm sitting behind one right now. The podcast you're about to watch or listen to was filmed behind three Uplift desks. It was upgraded from two because I had to expand and guess there's four people on the podcast to make it a little bit roomier in that room there's four Uplift Desk because one of them I have, I don't know how many, four monitors. Four monitors and a computer on which I do a lot of the editing and now a lot of the agentic stuff. Every machine, every compute surface in my place is doing some kind of agentic work. There's agents running all the time. There's an agent running right now on this very computer I'm recording this with. Anyway, that's on the software front. On the hardware front. The desks just make me feel happy. Long, long, long before Uplift was a sponsor, I was using their desk and the fact that they're now a sponsor just brings joy to my heart. I recommend it highly without question. The greatest standing desks of all time. Customizable 200,000 desk combinations. Makes me more productive, brings me more happiness. An incredible product, incredible people, incredible desks. Cannot recommend it enough. Go to upliftdesk.com lex use code lex to get four free accessories free same day shipping, free returns, a 15 year warranty and an extra discount off your entire order that's upliftd Esk. This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H E L P. Help with an incredible episode coming up on Psychiatry. What an episode. What a mind blowing, no pun intended episode. The human mind, as I'm sure we'll get to in that episode, is an incredibly complex machine. And each individual mind has its own intricate complexities. And the history of psychiatry, which is the focus of that episode, is a history of people trying to figure out how to be a kind of mechanic to that machine. I personally think that talk therapy is one of the most powerful ways to at least elucidate, bring to the surface the issues that need to be resolved. And that's what BetterHelp is about. They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist in under 48 hours. It's easy, discreet, affordable, available everywhere. Check them out@betterhelp.com lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com lex this episode is also brought to you by Element. My daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. I gave Element actually a shout out in a recent video training video with Khabib Nurmagomedov. What an incredible experience that was. And it was a funny moment because when we hung out, Islam Ahmedov was there too and I had Element with me and Islam came up to me. He got really excited when he saw Element. He's like, oh, can I have one of these? It was like an infomercial. It was almost like a kind of funny Dagestan version of a commercial for Element, but it was real. And I was like, sure. It was two people who love Element kind of exchanging the goods. I guess he was all out. So I'm always happy to share. And in that case I had a giant stash. So it's not like I was letting go. I still had a stash. All right. Anyway, get a free 8 count sample pack with any purchase. Try it a drink. Element.com lex this episode is also brought to you by Finn, the number one AI agent for customer service. Like I said, I have agents running everywhere all the time. This particular agent specializes in customer service, 65% average resolution rate. It's trusted by over 6,000 customers, including AI companies, the engineers of some of which I've already interviewed and will interview in the future. It's built to handle complex multi step queries like returns, exchanges and disputes. Obviously, customer service, a deep care for the concerns of the individual customer is extremely important to the degree AI can help facilitate that. That's really important. I'm a huge believer of what Jeff Bezos talked about in my conversation with him, as he's always talked about an extreme focus on the customer. A company that focuses on the customer is a company that's going to succeed. And don't get comfortable just because you're making a lot of money, just because there's a lot of revenue, a lot of profit. And don't get lazy. Don't forget what brought you to the dance. It's an extreme obsession of making the customer happy. Anyway, go to Fin AI Lex to learn more about transforming your customer service and scaling your support team. That's Fin AI Lex. This episode finally is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Shopify's CEO that I always talk about, Toby, is now going wild programming. His GitHub is on fire. He's obviously building a lot of cool stuff and it's always really inspiring and I think really important for the engineers at the company to see that the leadership is building. Leadership is down ground level. Understanding the state of the art technologies that are involved in engineering the product in this case of Shopify, but also just products in general, how to build. I think a builder is what makes for a great leader of other builders. And so I'm always a fan of following along of all the incredible engineering that Shopify is doing behind the scenes to deliver all the products that are delivering. So you know, to have the infrastructure for a huge amount of people connecting and selling stuff, plus the thousands of integrations that they have to handle seamlessly, all of that at your fingertips. If you just want to sell some T shirts like I do or actually run a legitimate large scale business, all of that is supported by Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com lex that's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com lex to take your business to the next level today. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Rick Beato. You had, I think, an incredibly fun and diverse beginning to your music journey. I heard somewhere that one of the things that made you fall in love with music was listening to guitar 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.
- [09:41]
Rick Beato
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. It's this pentatonic scale. E minor, pentatonic scale. 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 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 are the chords? And I was like, okay. It's like E, C, G, D, A. And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play.
- [10:59]
Lex Fridman
Hashtag parenting.
- [11:00]
Rick Beato
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.
- [11:09]
Lex Fridman
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
- [11:22]
Rick Beato
really cool chord fragments, riffs, and things like that. That's just part of his. That's the Hendrix style.
- [11:28]
Lex Fridman
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?
- [11:34]
Rick Beato
You know, I. I make lists.
- [11:35]
Lex Fridman
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 song. It's fun.
- [11:58]
Rick Beato
Opinions are fun, but they do change, Lex, from day to day. You know, like, I. But when. Anytime I. I do a list, if I do 20, I like to do 20, because that gives me Some leeway to, to throw in. I have to throw in something that is so weird that people, you know, something that a lot of people won't know just to have it on there. So I can at least introduce a pretty, you know, I'll put somebody like a Alan Holdsworth, who's a famous fusion guitar player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something. 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.
- [12:38]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, a lot of variety. But, Hendricks, did you show up here today? Rick tried to tell me that Hendrix is not up there. I just am getting that vibe right now.
- [12:50]
Rick Beato
No, I'm not.
- [12:50]
Lex Fridman
I, I.
- [12:51]
Rick Beato
But I don't want him to say greatest. You know, you, you can say, well, there are people that inspire Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Christian, older guitar players. Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt were the first two really big. And Andre Segovia were three of the giants of the 20th century as far as guitar influences for most of the players that were to follow.
- [13:17]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [13:28]
Rick Beato
So Django was. Well, there's a huge movement right now, gypsy jazz movement, as they call it, that is kind of built around the style of music that he played back in the early 20th century. One of the things about Django is that he was in a fire and he had two of his third and fourth finger, so his ring finger and pinky were essentially melted together. He had no use of them, although he could use them while he was chording. But a lot of these incredibly fast lines, he's just playing with two fingers, and it's amazing.
- [14:18]
Lex Fridman
That. What is that? So that's gypsy jazz?
- [14:22]
Rick Beato
That's gypsy jazz, yeah. Him, Stefan Grappelli is a violinist that played with him a lot.
- [14:32]
Lex Fridman
How much of this is improvisation?
- [14:34]
Rick Beato
Everything he's doing there is improvised.
- [14:41]
Lex Fridman
Feels so free.
- [14:42]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [14:45]
Lex Fridman
And fun, like swing. And then that leads to. You said pre bebop. So bebop was the kind of jazz that was also influential on you and your own life journey. And it's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz. I was very influential on the music that followed. So what was bebop?
- [15:02]
Rick Beato
Well, after this, 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 AABA 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.
- [15:58]
Lex Fridman
Chromatic notes are just notes next to each other on the fretboard.
- [16:02]
Rick Beato
I like to think of as connecting notes.
- [16:03]
Lex Fridman
Connecting. You're putting in more notes than are supposed to be there and so doing. Creating some interesting texture.
- [16:10]
Rick Beato
Yeah. So that is one of the most difficult styles to master because all these things are a language.
- [16:17]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [16:18]
Rick Beato
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. I think it's very similar to learning languages, which kind of is like my theory on perfect pitch, that every child is born with perfect pitch, and they start to lose the ability around nine months. When people become culturally bound listeners. When babies do, they start out as citizens of the world. You know, they have the phone, the neural pathways to hear the sounds, the phonemes of all 6,500 languages spoken on Earth. But then around nine months, they begin to lose that ability. And 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 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.
- [19:01]
Lex Fridman
We're going to return to Joe Pass. We got to go to Dylan. You mentioned Dylan. I guess it's in part. One of the origin stories of you putting out videos into the world is the early videos you did with Dylan. Set of videos on his perfect pitch. And for people who don't know, maybe you can speak to what perfect pitch means.
- [19:19]
Rick Beato
It's ability to identify any note without a reference tone. So you can play it doesn't matter how quickly they are that they can. A person with perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately identify it or a collection of notes.
- [19:36]
Lex Fridman
And taking a tangent upon a tangent. You also have a course on ear training.
- [19:40]
Rick Beato
Yes, but my course is for relative pitch, not to be confused with perfect pitch.
- [19:44]
Lex Fridman
Is it fair to say that relative pitch, as far as the thing you would learn, is more useful for musicians?
- [19:49]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [19:49]
Lex Fridman
Can you explain the difference between the two?
- [19:51]
Rick Beato
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.
- [20:20]
Lex Fridman
And of course, intervals make up scales and intervals make up chords. And so that if you develop to any degree relative pitch you can understand, you can hear the music better.
- [20:35]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [20:36]
Lex Fridman
So what, what does it take, since we're taking attention on tangent? What's. What does it take to train your ear? What's a TLDR in the course before people go out and sign up?
- [20:47]
Rick Beato
It's just practice. Basically you start with intervals, typically with small intervals like minor second, major second. So minor second would be half step, major second would be whole step.
- [20:57]
Lex Fridman
Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together, both.
- [21:01]
Rick Beato
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.
- [21:11]
Lex Fridman
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?
- [21:18]
Rick Beato
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.
- [21:36]
Lex Fridman
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?
- [21:56]
Rick Beato
I think you do it pretty quickly within, you know, if you practice within a couple months, you can, you can really make a lot of progress on it.
- [22:05]
Lex Fridman
If you practice daily, what benefit does it have to. To you as a musician in general?
- [22:10]
Rick Beato
Well, it's great if you want to hear a chord progression. If you're trying to figure out a song and you can say, oh, that's going from the 6 minor chord to the 4 major to the 5 major to 1 major, you can just identify it immediately. And then you figure out what the first chord is. Then you know what the rest of the chords are because they're in relation to whatever that first chord is. And for learning solos, for example, or learning melodies, being able to sound something out.
- [22:35]
Lex Fridman
Now, do you recommend people couple that with music theory in terms of education, the education journey, they have to be
- [22:43]
Rick Beato
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. You learn them both melodically and harmonically. So played together and separate, then you learn chords. And so then you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended chords, things like that. Well, you're basically learning music theory at the same time with that. Because learning music theory is just the name of things in music.
- [23:22]
Lex Fridman
So there's the sound of things, there's the name of things, and then there's the haptic, like playing the thing, probably. So playing chords, playing scales. You have, I believe, a course on scales and on chords.
- [23:35]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [23:36]
Lex Fridman
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, 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?
- [23:56]
Rick Beato
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.
- [24:12]
Lex Fridman
So learning a few chords and with an eye towards maybe playing a song.
- [24:17]
Rick Beato
Yeah, with an eye towards. You learn. You learn the chord shapes and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing for learning guitar is actually how to position your fingers so that you. You don't mute strings that you don't want to mute. Yeah, 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 and your index fingers 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, micro adjustments. You take it for granted like you've been playing guitar for I don't know how many years. Forever, right?
- [24:55]
Lex Fridman
Forever. Yeah.
- [24:56]
Rick Beato
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 midair, strike the string that your finger's on to play the note. And these are all fine adjustments that you're doing.
- [25:13]
Lex Fridman
I'm. I'm just a hobbyist recreational player, but wow, you're taking me all the way back. You're right. It's the haptic. The physical aspect of it is really tricky. Comfortably Numb is a good example, though. If you do lead, you have to get a super clean sound. Now, that's both. When you're playing fast, you. 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.
- [25:39]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [25:40]
Lex Fridman
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 the finger. Where does it fall? Like, how much do you bend the finger?
- [25:58]
Rick Beato
You have to have enough of flesh on it to actually raise the. Raise the String and pitch.
- [26:04]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [26:04]
Rick Beato
Otherwise it.
- [26:05]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, because you're lifting it with part of a flesh. And of course you have to decide, depends how OCD you are. Do you want to be like the perfect. The proper musician or do you want to do a Hendrix? So the thumb over the top.
- [26:20]
Rick Beato
Way over the top, yes.
- [26:21]
Lex Fridman
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. The fingertips to the fretboard versus, like Hendrix is like 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.
- [26:56]
Rick Beato
Yes. Super clean.
- [26:57]
Lex Fridman
So like, that teaches you that maybe any position can converge towards the super clean tone. You just have to figure it out.
- [27:03]
Rick Beato
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.
- [27:11]
Lex Fridman
That's true.
- [27:11]
Rick Beato
If you're wearing it lower. Lower. Then you. So you can't get your fingers on top of it like that. And the thumb acts as a way to mute the lower strings from ringing if you're playing through a loud amplifier. So there's so many other micro adjustments when you're playing leads because you have to kind of mute the other strings that are. So they don't ring out. If you're playing the first note and Comfortably Numb 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.
- [27:51]
Lex Fridman
To mute.
- [27:52]
Rick Beato
To mute that. So all these micro adjustments that you don't even think about. I mean, you're not thinking about that, Lex, when you're playing it. You've done it so many times that these things are just part of your. Of your brain. That's why this is such a great brain developer for kids to learn instruments.
- [28:10]
Lex Fridman
And of course you have to solve that puzzle. It must be really frustrating in the beginning. Like holding a chord.
- [28:16]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [28:17]
Lex Fridman
Like all of them. It hurts too. Right? It does. An acoustic guitar.
- [28:21]
Rick Beato
Not for that long, though. For like a week.
- [28:24]
Lex Fridman
A couple. Yeah, A couple weeks. Couple.
- [28:28]
Rick Beato
I don't want to discourage anyone. You know, it's. It's actually pretty easy to learn basic stuff. Right.
- [28:33]
Lex Fridman
But the. The pain is temporary, I guess, is the Point I'm trying to make it is, so. 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
- [28:46]
Rick Beato
like if you play electric guitar, then you get into single note playing and stuff like that. That's where it gets to me, where it gets really fun. You know, you have single note playing that with riffs. If you think of Back in Black, right, that has a riff embedded in the. 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 want to. What styles you want to play.
- [29:18]
Lex Fridman
So you're thinking about song learning. So different components of song learning. So riffs in songs lead in songs.
- [29:26]
Rick Beato
And then you have finger picking. If you have Stairway to Heaven, songs like that, how about wanting to learn that? That involves finger picking because you have to isolate certain notes of the chord and play two together, you know, and multiple times.
- [29:40]
Lex Fridman
There's a few crossroads. You get to select things. So I guess you're speaking to the fact there's the. If you're a righty, there's a right hand. You can use your fingers or you can use a pick.
- [29:52]
Rick Beato
Correct.
- [29:52]
Lex Fridman
And it's a choice you make.
- [29:54]
Rick Beato
And sometimes you use both. Because 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.
- [30:08]
Lex Fridman
On the music theory front, do you recommend people learn scales and chords and
- [30:12]
Rick Beato
like the theory of it later on? I would say. I wouldn't say necessarily write it right off the bat. I think. I think learning songs is the. Is the first thing that you should do because you want to keep people motivated.
- [30:25]
Lex Fridman
So you get them to like, fall in love with music and playing. All right. And that takes a couple months, three months.
- [30:33]
Rick Beato
Depends on how motivated they are.
- [30:35]
Lex Fridman
So you recommend practicing, what, every day?
- [30:38]
Rick Beato
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.
- [30:53]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [31:06]
Rick Beato
Which is why I leave my guitar on a stand all the time. So that if I walk by it, I'm like, okay, I'll just pick it up for a second. And then that second turns into 10 minutes and an hour. Two hours.
- [31:17]
Lex Fridman
All right, we gotta talk about this Dylan video. So this might be one of the earliest.
- [31:21]
Rick Beato
That's the first one.
- [31:22]
Lex Fridman
That's the first video on the channel.
- [31:24]
Rick Beato
Was. It was actually before the channel, because this actually blew up on Facebook. And then I put it on YouTube after.
- [31:33]
Lex Fridman
So if it's okay.
- [31:34]
Rick Beato
Yeah. Okay, Dylan, we're gonna do the hardest ear training test of all time. Are you ready?
- [31:40]
Lex Fridman
Right. Oh,
- [31:44]
Rick Beato
Now, I just. A quick backstory on this. I made this for my friend Shane's wife, who wanted to see because Shane was a friend that I was producing, and he was there, and Dylan had come down the day in the day, and I said, oh, check this out. And I played this stuff. He's like, that's amazing. Can you make a video so I can show my wife? And I was on the way to a school board meeting because I was on the school board at Dylan's school. And I said, hey, Dylan, come downstairs. I want to make this video. Take one minute. Just need to do this thing for my friend Shane. And he's like, I don't want to. And I said, come on, this will 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. Take one minute. She's like, dylan, go downstairs. And he has a mouthful of candy there, because he was eating candy. So if you look at him, he's. He's literally has a mouthful of candy while he's doing this.
- [32:37]
Lex Fridman
And we should say on Facebook, it went quite viral.
- [32:42]
Rick Beato
Yeah. Like at, I don't know, 80 million views. Something like. It had, like 250,000 comments. Something like that. Insane.
- [32:49]
Lex Fridman
How old is Dylan here?
- [32:50]
Rick Beato
He's eight.
- [32:51]
Lex Fridman
Eight years old?
- [32:52]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [32:52]
Lex Fridman
Can you actually give some more backstory about, like, how you discover that Dylan has perfect pitch?
- [32:56]
Rick Beato
So when Dylan was about 2, he. I was doing a FaceTime with my brother John, and I was like, check this out. John and I played the Stone in Love. Neil Jones solo from Journey. And I was like, check this out. And Dylan would sing along, and my brother John was like, wow, Dylan can sing all the notes. And I was like, yeah. And then I played Black Dog Zeppelin, and Dylan would sing that. And it's like, dylan's got a good Ear. And then John and I were like, well, we have good ears, too, so maybe we could have done that when we were that age. So a couple more years goes by. Well, he was about three and a half. And I'm in the car, I was like, dylan, sing the Star wars theme. And he sings it. And I'm like, that's in the right key. And I checked. I play it on my phone. I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I asked him, sing the Superman theme because we had been listening to John Williams soundtracks the week before. And he sings that. And that was in the right key. And I asked him another song. So I turned the car around, I go back to the studio, I go to the piano, I hit the note B flat. And Dylan says, star Wars. Star wars starts on a big B flat major chord, but it's the note B flat is the main one that you hear. And then I played the note G, and he goes, superman. And that's the first note in the trumpet part of the Superman theme. And then I realized that he had perfect pitch. And then in five minutes, I taught him the name of the 12 notes, which he already knew, but he just didn't know the names.
- [34:19]
Lex Fridman
Oh, so you just associate the names to the thing he know. What do you think is this in his mind? Because it's not just individual notes. He can, like, hear everything.
- [34:28]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [34:29]
Lex Fridman
What is that?
- [34:30]
Rick Beato
He doesn't see colors. He just says every note sounds completely different.
- [34:35]
Lex Fridman
Wow. Like you said. Maybe it's a language thing. Yeah, there really is a. He just learned the language.
- [34:43]
Rick Beato
Yeah, the language, it's like. It's like, perfect. It's like native music fluency, if you think of it like that.
- [34:50]
Lex Fridman
So let's. Let's listen to some of this. Turn around.
- [34:52]
Rick Beato
Here we go. As fast as you can. We're gonna start with single notes, and we're gonna do some intervals then chords. Okay, here we go.
- [34:58]
Lex Fridman
A C sharp. B flat. C, A flat.
- [35:04]
Rick Beato
Okay, good. Two notes at once. Here we go.
- [35:07]
Lex Fridman
C flat.
- [35:08]
Rick Beato
Great. How about this? Great. What about this?
- [35:14]
Lex Fridman
E flat. A flat. This is incredible. CB flat.
- [35:21]
Rick Beato
And then how about this?
- [35:23]
Lex Fridman
E flat.
- [35:25]
Rick Beato
What is it?
- [35:25]
Lex Fridman
E flat.
- [35:26]
Rick Beato
Correct. He's annoyed. He's annoyed. Yeah. The part of this, when I play these next chords, that's really, I think, why the video went so viral. The next part of this where I play these super complex poly chords. Okay, I'm going to do some poly chords for you. These are really going to be hard. You ready? What's this?
- [35:47]
Lex Fridman
C augmento for D flat. Augmented.
- [35:49]
Rick Beato
Okay, Sing a B flat. Very good. What's this chord?
- [36:05]
Lex Fridman
Oh, a flat major over a major.
- [36:07]
Rick Beato
Great. Sing an f sharp. Excellent. Up. What's this chord? Great. What's this chord? He had nine over F major. So I had to look at my hand to make sure that that's what it was because they're all in inversions. So I think the reason that this went so viral is that the more that someone knew about music, the more that they shared the video because these polychords. So the people that were the best musicians were like, were would looked at it was like, oh my God, you know, C augmented over D flat, augmented. And the second chord was A flat major over A major. But they were both in inversion. Right. So it was like a first inversion, A flat major chord, first inversion, A major chord and then A minor over D flat major and Then E add 9 over F major. And for an 8 year old, I mean for anyone. Plus they're all close voiced. They're all just right next to each other. 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, he has to dissect each one. Like what are the notes being played there and, and what is like what's the theory? Because he's actually using music theory to dissect them.
- [37:34]
Lex Fridman
It must be in his brain. Those components of the chords all sound different, like very clearly different.
- [37:41]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [37:42]
Lex Fridman
It's truly incredible. The human mind is incredible. And so you're saying like some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life.
- [37:51]
Rick Beato
I did a thing where I played what I call high information music. High information music would be Bach, well Tempered Clavier, fugues, anything Bach. And I would play the well Tempered Clavier and I would play. I have a friend, Turkish pianist, who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard. His name Aydin Essen. 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, you're. When a baby is looking at you, they're looking at your mouth, and they're getting social cues from. From that. And this is also another component of saying. This is where this word stops or starts and stops. These are how the phonemes are separated from one another. These are how they're connected. So I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch. And then around nine months, they begin to lose it if you don't engage their social brain making these pitches. No, 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 for him and played with them.
- [39:41]
Lex Fridman
And that applies maybe even more generally to high information language.
- [39:45]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [39:47]
Lex Fridman
And it starts before they're born. I think I. I saw some. Some of the. These incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience and neurobiology, the psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is in the mother's stomach. You're listening to the mother speak.
- [40:07]
Rick Beato
Yes, that's right.
- [40:08]
Lex Fridman
So, like, that's. That's how on the language side, you're picking up the language already.
- [40:13]
Rick Beato
That's right. And you're picking up the music. Musical language. So native music fluency, you could call it.
- [40:19]
Lex Fridman
So if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some bebop jazz, you have a pretty good chance.
- [40:28]
Rick Beato
Much better chance.
- [40:29]
Lex Fridman
Okay. All right. So that as we unwind our way back, Joe Pass and bebop, you were, funny enough, talking about what is bebop jazz, and people like Joe Pass. And in your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and sophisticated music, but wasn't
- [40:50]
Rick Beato
a musician, which isn't a musician. I have six siblings. And we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz.
- [41:00]
Lex Fridman
We just took it for granted at that time.
- [41:02]
Rick Beato
Yeah, we 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.
- [41:26]
Lex Fridman
And so the first time you impressed your dad was with the Joe Pass song. Right. And by the Way we have to go to this song because people must have forgot. People just think you're like a good communicator or something. They. They don't realize how good you are at guitar, how good you are. 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?
- [42:03]
Rick Beato
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 record state was unopened until about March after Christmas. And one day I was like, okay, I'll open it up and I put it on, I start listening to it. And I was like, whoa, this is kind of cool. And so I said, I think I can figure out some of this stuff. So I figured out this thing.
- [42:57]
Lex Fridman
Is it by by ear mostly?
- [42:59]
Rick Beato
Yeah, just by ear. I didn't know any of the chords or anything.
- [43:01]
Lex Fridman
If you can listen to a little bit here.
- [43:03]
Rick Beato
If you go back to that brother, brother to brother Gino Vanelli thing with Carlos Rios playing, that stuff is incredibly hard. This. I'm starting. I don't know any of these chords. So I start out. I don't even know what that chord is. But I figured it out. I. I just. And it's weird. I mean, look at that weird bar.
- [43:20]
Lex Fridman
So you're just finding, like playing around with putting your fingers on the various positions.
- [43:26]
Rick Beato
Right. Trying every combination of fingers. I'd never played that chord. It's a weird looking chord.
- [43:30]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [43:31]
Rick Beato
And. But I kept. I moved my fingers around till I heard to where it sounded like, oh, that's it. Definitely. And I looked at my hand, I was like, what is that? Had no idea what it was.
- [43:42]
Lex Fridman
So you were connected to this. You were really connected to the music. Yeah. And so that. That's why you can hear. It's not necessarily. Did you even. You didn't have perfect pitch and not even relative pitch?
- [43:53]
Rick Beato
No, I did not.
- [43:54]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. No.
- [43:55]
Rick Beato
I didn't know anything about intervals. I didn't know anything about music theory, anything. This Is all just.
- [43:59]
Lex Fridman
He's just, like playing around with different shapes. That's amazing.
- [44:01]
Rick Beato
I mean, look at that weird bar there. But then you get into these things. So that stuff there I could figure
- [44:15]
Lex Fridman
out,
- [44:17]
Rick Beato
and then this. That stuff I could figure out. And then these things here. Those are just inversions of it. But I didn't know that. I'd heard Joe play that on the record. This is the last song on there I listened to a bunch of times, and I started.
- [44:35]
Lex Fridman
So you just replay over and over and over and over, and you're, like, trying to replicate it?
- [44:40]
Rick Beato
Yes, and I'm memorizing every different chord shape. All chord shapes that I had never played before.
- [44:46]
Lex Fridman
Would you recommend people do something like that on a really complicated song?
- [44:50]
Rick Beato
Yeah, but there's so many YouTube videos that you can go and just learn it without having to. Yes, I would recommend.
- [44:57]
Lex Fridman
I feel like the struggle.
- [44:59]
Rick Beato
The struggle is where it's at.
- [45:00]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [45:15]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [45:15]
Lex Fridman
But, yeah, let's start hearing.
- [45:17]
Rick Beato
There's
- [45:20]
Lex Fridman
nuts.
- [45:23]
Rick Beato
I heard licks like that all over this. So I knew that that was.
- [45:29]
Lex Fridman
And then
- [45:31]
Rick Beato
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. 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.
- [46:10]
Lex Fridman
So this.
- [46:10]
Rick Beato
This intro part, you make it sound
- [46:12]
Lex Fridman
so simple when you break it down. And by the way, Joe Bass, incredible guitar player. Like this is obvious.
- [46:19]
Rick Beato
And he improvised all this. He could have played a lot like this.
- [46:21]
Lex Fridman
But, you know, the first was the individual nose.
- [46:28]
Rick Beato
That's hard. Maybe explain like that. That sounds more. More realistic.
- [46:43]
Lex Fridman
The amount of different genres that you're able to replicate is just incredible.
- [46:47]
Rick Beato
This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little. Oh, there. And then by the end, the 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, pretty good.
- [47:08]
Lex Fridman
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 one. It's a great conversation. One of the things that surprised me is just how many musical genres influence Flea. And the guy showed up in a Miles Davis T shirt, bebop.
- [47:30]
Rick Beato
Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker when he was 18 years old, and that's his. Charlie Parker was really his mentor.
- [47:37]
Lex Fridman
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?
- [47:51]
Rick Beato
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 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. I mean, it had different piano players, could Winton Kelly, but Paul Chambers in the bass, Philly Joe Jones and the drums. And that particular group 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.
- [48:59]
Lex Fridman
I forget who said it in an interview with you, but they talked about, like, Miles Davis, his music feeling like. I think. 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. The aliveness of the music. Like, can you speak to that? Just the creating in the music, the feeling like you're on the edge, like you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen, and it all can go to shit. And because of that, it feels alive.
- [49:43]
Rick Beato
Well, when I interviewed Ron Carter, that played in Miles's 60s quintet, I asked Ron because Ron did records. He played bass on two 2200 recording famous records. And I said, did you guys ever rehearse with Miles? No, never. I said, so what would you do? He goes, we just show up at the studio and he'd have the charts, put them on the stand, and we just roll. And I said, would you listen to it after? No. And I said, well, what about the live records that you did when you'd record at clubs and things like that? He goes, we never knew that we were recording. He goes, maybe I'd see a microphone, a different kind of microphone in my bass amp. He goes, Then months later, a record would come out, and I'd see and I was on it. And I would take it down to the union and say, I played on this record so you can get paid for it. But he said, we didn't even know we were recording.
- [50:40]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [50:40]
Rick Beato
So Miles was always about, you know, don't think about it. Just. Just play.
- [50:47]
Lex Fridman
That's crazy. That was on purpose. That was done on purpose. Not to. Not to do the rehearsals, not. None of that.
- [50:53]
Rick Beato
Yeah. He wanted people to just feel it, play it. Thought is the enemy of flow. As Vinny Kaliuda told me, thought is
- [51:04]
Lex Fridman
the enemy of flow. Heidi makes sense that Flea, the basis for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is influenced by bebop jazz.
- [51:12]
Rick Beato
So his stepfather was a jazz bass player, and when his parents got divorced, he was born in Australia, and then they moved to New York. Then his parents got divorced and his mom married his stepfather, who was a jazz. Jazz musicians. And then they used to have jam sessions at their place, and Flea loved it. It was kind of like my upbringing with my dad playing jazz all the time. And once it gets inside you, it's just there. And. And so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians.
- [51:52]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. His impression, which is hilarious. I mean, he's a character. His whole physical way of being. As a character and his impression of just upright bass is just fun to watch. This whole.
- [52:01]
Rick Beato
His intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview, it. He's an intense guy and funny and, you know, really emotional and. And he picks up his base, and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel. And he starts. He talks about how he practices, and then when he starts doing slapping stuff, he gets. Is so into it, and I'm just sitting there going, whoa. Wow. Yeah.
- [52:29]
Lex Fridman
He talked about his practicing routine with you, and one of the things he's like, I have to practice the slap.
- [52:34]
Rick Beato
And.
- [52:34]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, no, there's differences in the structure of the different bands, but usually, like, the bassist has a vibe to them. I don't know if we can put words to exactly what that is. There's a kind of energy that drives the band.
- [52:47]
Rick Beato
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.
- [52:57]
Lex Fridman
Oh, interesting.
- [52:58]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [52:58]
Lex Fridman
But you also play drums. You also play.
- [53:00]
Rick Beato
Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in third grade, and then I switched to the bass in sixth grade, and my. I majored My undergrad degree is in classical bass, so I. I always think of myself as a bass player first. And I always think the bass is the most important instrument because.
- [53:19]
Lex Fridman
Strong words.
- [53:20]
Rick Beato
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, because you can put the root in there, you can put the third of the chord in the bass, you can put the fifth in there, you can play a lot of notes, and whatever you play in the bass kind of defines. Defines what kind of chord it is. So the bass player has a lot of power.
- [53:42]
Lex Fridman
I have to go back to the beginning of our conversation. What. What do you think are some of the great solos of all time? Can we. Can we put a few into consideration? You have a great list on top 20 rock guitar solos of all time.
- [53:56]
Rick Beato
Yeah, so I put Comfortably Numb as my favorite. Is my top one.
- [53:59]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. On that day. Right.
- [54:01]
Rick Beato
On that day.
- [54:01]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [54:02]
Rick Beato
Right now. The day later, I would have said it's the second solo.
- [54:08]
Lex Fridman
Okay.
- [54:08]
Rick Beato
But I did the first solo because. Because nobody talks about that solo. And that solo is equally great. And when David Gilmore, when I played it for him and we talked about it in my interview with him, it was just. To watch his face when he listened to it was incredible. I mean, I'm thinking to myself, it's like I'm sitting with David Gilmore and he's listening to Comfortably Numb, and. 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.
- [54:43]
Lex Fridman
He's like, ooh, maybe you just don't look back. When you do great things, you don't look back.
- [54:48]
Rick Beato
Miles never looked back. He never wanted to hear the old stuff. He always moved on.
- [54:51]
Lex Fridman
There's this funny moment where you. We made a video why David Gilmore Will Never be on the Channel. And then you ended up, of course, interviewing him twice. He's one of the greatest guitar players of all time. What do you think is at the core of his genius?
- [55:07]
Rick Beato
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.
- [55:30]
Lex Fridman
That's why I read about Miles Davis, is he was very good at understanding tempo and the value of Silence.
- [55:38]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [55:39]
Lex Fridman
And I think. I think David Gilmore doesn't always play fast.
- [55:45]
Rick Beato
Right.
- [55:45]
Lex Fridman
But he does a lot with less.
- [55:48]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [55:49]
Lex Fridman
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 music.
- [55:59]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [56:00]
Lex Fridman
What do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Copeland?
- [56:04]
Rick Beato
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, and I asked his tech, Phil, I said, these are the same ones he used on the records. He's like, yeah, his tech has been with him for like 50 years. And I mean, the exact ones. Yes. It's hard to imagine that those things still. Of course, though, he's just kept it. Yeah. This is his Vincent Echo that he played through. And this is this. You know, these are all the same effects pedals. And wait, is this the same high watt amp? Yeah. Is this the same? Yes. Yeah, you get some new stuff, but. But they keep all their own gear. And that's. I mean, he's. Did. 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 exact copy of his old one. So to him it sounds exactly the same, plays the same.
- [57:12]
Lex Fridman
Well, of course they converge towards that kind of hardware, but there's so many tiny details over the years. You see the final result of it, but there's a. There's a journey there of. Of exploring. And of course, he's not. I guess he's not doing any soft, like, no emulation, no ammo.
- [57:30]
Rick Beato
He does do emulation, actually. He does. He has this thing and this is. I asked him in the first interview about this. There's a little rack thing that I had heard that he used, but I asked him for sure. It's called the Zoom 9030. I put out a short where he talks about it. I said, so that Zoom 93, is that a real thing? Because I've read about it. He's like, yeah. And he talks about how when he's sitting there recording on his own and he runs pro tools himself, and so he'll be sitting there, there's no one there to help him. He's like, I'll just plug into this Thing. And then he'll play a solo with this model. It's like a kind of 90s modeling, early modeling thing. And he'll play a solo, and then after a while you hear the solo and it's like, well, I'm not going to replay that. That sounds great. You get used to the sound of it, and that's what it is. So people always talk about, oh, well, he couldn't have used that. He's recording through an amp and. Because it sounds great. And. And then he's like, yeah, yeah. So that's what I use. And then I have. I have the video of it right there. And it has his presets, DG1 and DG2, and, you know, whatever.
- [58:36]
Lex Fridman
What's your process for preparing for interviews like that? You've done a few legendary people.
- [58:42]
Rick Beato
I never prepare for interviews because I ask people things that I'm interested in knowing.
- [58:51]
Lex Fridman
So just letting your curiosity just pull.
- [58:53]
Rick Beato
Yes. And I can think of a hundred questions to ask David Gilmore, and. But I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. Yeah. So. But I do make a playlist of songs that I want to talk about. So that kind of guides me. Is that. Because I want to make sure that there's specific things that I need to play. So that you can jog his memory. Because anytime you play something that somebody recorded even 50 years ago, they'll remember, if they don't remember the exact specifics 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.
- [59:46]
Lex Fridman
So there's a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song, whether it's on the production or how it's played or how it's composed, all that kind of stuff. And you don't know what those are ahead of time. No, you just know the song and you just are looking to jog their memory. And maybe your own curiosity of, like, how did you do this? Or how did 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.
- [60:12]
Rick Beato
I have an incredibly good memory.
- [60:15]
Lex Fridman
Exactly.
- [60:15]
Rick Beato
That's what it is, is that I can remember when records came out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the engineer, what songs are on it. And not only that, but the people I'm interviewing know that I can play all the parts of all the instruments because I'VE done breakdowns of their songs, which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place, really.
- [60:39]
Lex Fridman
But the actual, like, the skill of the interview, the thing you're not saying, the preparation is the. You young listening to bebop. That's right. It's the background now. It's the soul carrying with you. Being able to radiate the love of the soul of music.
- [60:58]
Rick Beato
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 the first time I interviewed David in New York, my brother John came along and he is a massive David Gilmore fan. That's his biggest influence as a guitar player. And so he said, you're interviewing David Gilmore, I'm coming. I was like, all right, come on, come on down. So, so my brother John standed about five feet away, and John is a sales guy, but he. Great guitar players at 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, downs, like, it's. So he's a sales guy. And, and so during the interview, I. I was like, hey, John, what was I gonna ask David? Oh, ask him about the Gilmore effect. Oh, yeah, that's right. And the Gilmore effect is my thing that I say in the comments. Sect say anytime anybody plays anything technical, oh, yeah, that's great. But I much prefer David Gilmore. And so I always call it the Gilmore effect. Anytime I have like, YNG Malmsteen. Anybody that played that has chops that I interview, the. The, the negative comments are always, well, I prefer David Gilmore. And I. I said that. I told David that. He's like, well, maybe they should keep their opinions to themselves.
- [62:17]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, a lot of these folks have really wonderful personalities 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?
- [62:27]
Rick Beato
Stairway to Heaven. Hey Joe.
- [62:30]
Lex Fridman
What in that list, your top Hendrix solo was hey Joe.
- [62:35]
Rick Beato
It's the first guitar solo I ever learned, so I had to put it on there. So I don't. I don't necessarily do these by. I do those in kind of how. How important they are to me and. And my development. So there, there's always a biographical component to these lists. Number three was Kid Charlemagne, A Steely dance. So 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 Neil Shawn. Neil Sean is very hard to play. Some licks. The. There's a song, there's a solo by a guitarist, Carlos Rios, that people don't know. It's brother to brother Gino Vanelli song. But it's very hard to play and figure out and that people don't know the solo. So I put it on my list because I knew a lot of people are going to watch it and they're going to know what this solo is.
- [63:34]
Lex Fridman
For me, the sentimental one. My first solo is Mr. Crowley, Randy Rhodes. I like the musicality, Mr. Crowley, that there is a melodic component to it. You're playing really fast, but there's a melody to it. And also there's like a legendary nature to the. The. The brief time we had to. We had radios. This is probably one of the greatest guitarists ever.
- [63:57]
Rick Beato
56 to 82, I think. Terrible. He was absolute brilliant guitarist. Had his own style.
- [64:08]
Lex Fridman
We should say he's the guitarist for Ozzy Osborne, the band.
- [64:11]
Rick Beato
Yeah. And that Mr. Crowley Solo is a. Is a great solo. Great solo. And he's incredibly influential as a guitar player for metal guitar players. And I love Randy Rhodes, another guy.
- [64:30]
Lex Fridman
So one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler.
- [64:33]
Rick Beato
Yes. And I did have Mark Knopfler on my list. Salt and Swing.
- [64:37]
Lex Fridman
That's right, you did.
- [64:38]
Rick Beato
Now I had it high in the list and I'll tell you why I would have had it, had it lower, because it's one of the early ones, because I want people to be like, okay, oh, this is a serious list. So Rick's going to talk about serious stuff. So. And Rick's going to play along with all these things. So I wanted to. 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. I played the video of. And I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the Ice Cream Man Van Halen solo. So I called 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. And I called my friend Phil X, who's amazing guitar player and that, and he's like, no, I'd have to practice that. I was like, come on, man, kids, let play Ice Cream Man. The opening lick of Ice Cream man that he plays is very hard to play because it's an incredibly long stretch, and it hurt my fingers to do. And Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to. To play. And plus, it's a tricky. It's just. It's a tricky rhythm. And. And it's such a big stretch. It's like, man, I can't. That hurts my hand.
- [66:02]
Lex Fridman
I just love that. That's the Van Halen solo. You have the top 20.
- [66:07]
Rick Beato
See, I have to do some.
- [66:09]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah.
- [66:10]
Rick Beato
There's so many Van Halen. My God, it could be. I can pick 25 different Van Halen solos.
- [66:16]
Lex Fridman
But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler. I mean, there's this unique guitarist. There's something about his tone. Speaking of Gilmore. There's just the tone, the care, the timing of the notes, his improvisation. Like the live performances of Salt in the Swing, that's been actually going somewhat viral around recently. His pretty old live performance of Sultans of Swing for Me, Brothers in Arms, These kind of soulful, mournful type of solos he does really, really well. Also, the interesting instrumentation of Romeo and Juliet. Just so. So many. Truly one of the greats.
- [67:05]
Rick Beato
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.
- [67:20]
Lex Fridman
There's certain songs, like Europa by Santana. Santana can have that tone, too.
- [67:25]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [67:26]
Lex Fridman
That Mark Knopfler makes me really just how clean it is. I think he beats BB King in my book, in terms of the cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note. Like a power of a single note. I don't know anybody who beats Mark Knopfler.
- [67:43]
Rick Beato
Well, that thing about being able to recognize somebody from a note. Yeah. You know, when I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize it's Brian May. Incredibly melodic. The tone that he has. Gilmore, Hendrick, 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.
- [68:08]
Lex Fridman
That'd be funny. That'd be a good video. B.B.
- [68:10]
Rick Beato
king, you hear one note as a
- [68:12]
Lex Fridman
test of, like, how quickly can you recognize just a solo starts playing.
- [68:18]
Rick Beato
That's a great. I'm gonna make that tomorrow, Lex. The day after tomorrow. You'll see it.
- [68:25]
Lex Fridman
I would love to see.
- [68:26]
Rick Beato
Can you say, can you recognize these players by one note?
- [68:29]
Lex Fridman
By one note?
- [68:30]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [68:30]
Lex Fridman
I think it's I think we're being a little too aggressive with that. I think you need like two or
- [68:35]
Rick Beato
three or four, I guarantee you. So I. 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 making. I said, yeah. It's so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter. You know it is.
- [69:01]
Lex Fridman
Okay, so it's about the tone.
- [69:03]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [69:03]
Lex Fridman
How could you possibly know from a single note? It's I guess Van Halen. You can.
- [69:09]
Rick Beato
One note of B.B. king's vibrato, you could know. I'm gonna. What I'll do is I would separate the guitars. I'll use. I. I can actually separate the tracks and I'll just play one note.
- [69:21]
Lex Fridman
You think from a single vibrato you can know it's B.B.
- [69:24]
Rick Beato
king? Yes. Well, we'll see.
- [69:26]
Lex Fridman
Put it on record. I'm skeptical.
- [69:28]
Rick Beato
I'm gonna do. I'll do 20, 20 of them. Can you recognize these guitarists from a single note?
- [69:33]
Lex Fridman
Could you recognize Stevie Ray Vaughan?
- [69:34]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [69:35]
Lex Fridman
Versus Eric Clapton?
- [69:39]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [69:41]
Lex Fridman
All right. You might be right. You might be right. Quick 30 second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfreedman.com sponsors. We've 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. What do you think is the best Eric Clapton song? One of the things we haven't mentioned so far is the importance of lyrics and maybe meaning of the song and what represents so in that sense, tears in heaven.
- [70:33]
Rick Beato
Well, the story behind that is heartbreaking.
- [70:36]
Lex Fridman
And then I personally really love the sound of Wonderful Tonight.
- [70:41]
Rick Beato
That's a great song. That's one of my favorite Clapton songs.
- [70:44]
Lex Fridman
And as I was listening to it, just doing a whole personal journey, introspection, knowing that I'm going to talk to Rick Beatos, 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 a decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to, and that this woman was the muse, the inspiration for so many of the legendary songs of rock, including Wonderful Tonight, Including Layla, and including George Harrison's Something. Yeah, Legendary song. Also the same woman. Is she the greatest muse in rock history?
- [71:38]
Rick Beato
Probably, yes.
- [71:39]
Lex Fridman
This is great. So in your interviews of musicians and producers, I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole. The process, the recording, the production, the songwriting, the different elements of the process. So are there examples of different things that stand out to you from all the interviews you've done and by the way, all the recording and production you've done yourself? So on the recording front, on the production front, on the songwriting process front, just things that pop into memory when
- [72:16]
Rick Beato
I've interviewed the guys that are the producers, like Rick Rubin, Daniel Anwar, Brendan o', Brien, Butch Vig. The thing about producers, as opposed to people that are musicians, if you're in a musician, even if you're David Gilmore, you're. You do a record and then you tour and then you do another record, maybe years go by, but producers are working on multiple records. You know, sometimes at a time, Rick Rubin could be working on multiple records and. And the variety of things that they do. You can talk to. I mean, I can talk to Rick about the Chili Peppers and I can talk to him about Johnny Cash, I can talk to him about Tom Petty and all these records that I love. And there's just so many interesting stories that. I mean, these interviews could go on for days with Rick and the 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, hearing, is something that is not well documented, especially since there's no. There's so few studios nowadays where there used to be a mentorship thing where you'd go, and you work as an assistant engineer and you work your way up. I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the Beatles. I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios is just two months ago. And he started as a tape op when he was 16. He started on the Hard Days Night record with the Beatles and he worked his way up. And he said the first time he ever recorded an orchestra was he recorded I Am the Walrus, the orchestra part. He set up the mics and I asked him, 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, I mean, I just can't. I can't even fathom that. They have a little cafe in the basement of Abbey Road. And I said, did the Beatles come in here? He goes, oh, yeah, they come in here and get coffee. And I remember when they got two microwaves that. Like the first microwaves in 1965, and they were amazed by them. And it's hard to imagine that I'm talking to people that worked on these historic records, but, you know, they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive, and then you've eventually filled them up with this music that you can't. You can never imagine it not existing. Like Stairway to Heaven or whatever it is.
- [74:57]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. It's funny, like, looking back, even probably for them just to realize they've created that. Magic is hard to believe.
- [75:04]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [75:05]
Lex Fridman
Because you're looking at a blank thing and then magic comes out and you don't even. You don't even understand. You don't understand. Probably a lot of these artists don't understand where that came from. They're channeling some deeper thing.
- [75:19]
Rick Beato
When I interviewed Brian May, he told me. I can't remember if this was. If we talked about it on camera or not, but we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody at the very end. There was a thing where he was depressing his whammy bar a little bit, and it sounds like the piano is out of tune. I never noticed it before. He mentioned this to me and he said it always bothered him. And there's always something about these songs that bothers people. Even these songs.
- [75:50]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [75:50]
Rick Beato
Right. There's always little things and they sit and they hear it and they're like, oh, man, I wish I bent up a little higher on that. Or whatever.
- [75:57]
Lex Fridman
I mean that. But there's certain moments in songs that are just unlike anything else. And Bohemian Rhapsody, when Freddie Mercury is. Sometimes wish I've never been born at all. And then guitar comes in. I mean, there's just nothing like that. Yeah, that was that. I don't even know. I mean, that. That whole thing. You've done videos on it. It's an incredibly complicated composition. It's. 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. Yeah. And what is that? I kills it.
- [76:45]
Rick Beato
I don't.
- [76:46]
Lex Fridman
I don't understand how you can create that. What is that? Why is that so magical? Why is it so singular inside a particular song and in rock history, period. Like these moments, I don't know. Musically, I don't understand how you create them because it might be bigger than musical, it might be cultural. All a bunch of different elements. And plus it's him filled with like, I've seen live performance. He has like a headset. He does something. He's like a telemarketer or something. Like this whole vibe and look to him. He doesn't look like a rock star, but he is.
- [77:21]
Rick Beato
Those are hooks when you think about it. Right. It's as much of a hook as the chorus of the song or any song. That drum thing is something that people wait and they air drum to it. Everybody air drums to it and it is a hook. And those are hard to create. Those moments are really hard to create. And usually they're done by accident.
- [77:43]
Lex Fridman
Yes, it's hard. If you chase it, you're not going to get it.
- [77:46]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [77:47]
Lex Fridman
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. Yes. It's like a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse right before the chorus comes in. It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose the therapeutic nature of it. At least lyrically, you think he's onto something. The value of the bridge.
- [78:21]
Rick Beato
The bridge is a place, I think, where you can kind of change the frame of reference of a song.
- [78:28]
Lex Fridman
You could probably do anything, I guess Lennon used to.
- [78:31]
Rick Beato
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 Lenin. Life is very short and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend. I've always thought that it's a crime. So I'll ask you once again. I mean, it's very, you know, very Lenin esque. This is. That was really a kind of a real collaboration between the two of those.
- [79:03]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [79:15]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [79:16]
Lex Fridman
How were the Beatles able to create some of the greatest songs of all time, all before they turned 30 years old?
- [79:24]
Rick Beato
I have never been able to figure that out. But I have a theory that. Because I have a theory because PA systems were so bad back then and The Beatles people screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, okay, we don't, we don't need, we can't tour anymore because we can't even hear ourselves. So we're just going to be a studio band. And maybe because of, we have all these great late Beatles records are from 1966 on. Just because they had bad PA systems and they had no monitors, you know, they're in 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, then August 5th, they put out Revolver. So within 365 days they put out 3:14, 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.
- [81:25]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [81:43]
Rick Beato
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 twenties, thirty years old, and then crystallized. So you're using the crystallizes, 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 Quartet, that's the Ninth Symphony, things like that. So they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this. And they're not improvising, but things for improvising writing pop songs and that. I think when your mind is really most active and your brain processing speed is at its pinnacle, that this is my theory that people can Come up with those kind of ideas. Same with improvising. I think that most jazz improvisers, not all, but most do their best improvising
- [82:45]
Lex Fridman
before age 30, creating something new. Yes, truly novel. That requires youth. It's just a theory, though, but it seems to apply. What do you think about the 27 Club? A bunch of the music 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.
- [83:24]
Rick Beato
I think about this a lot. If you go back and you watch videos, the Beatles, any of their movies, they're smoking all the time. The Get Back documentary, they're smoking constantly. Go watch any of the MTV Unplugs, Nirvana. 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. It was an absurd question. And that was part of culture.
- [83:58]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, it was for everybody. I mean, that was a big transformation over the past 20 years and just everybody stopped smoking. But I don't think smoking has the kind of hard, negative effect that we're talking about. I mean, I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs. Maybe smoking distracts them from the hard. I mean, heroin and coke, I mean, those things really. And alcohol, unfortunately, can be easily abused. I think it seems like it's the life of a musician, this dopamine thing of getting on stage and being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. The high of that and then the come down after is really hard life for just even neurobiologically of like, how do you deal with that? You have to. To be able to control the roller coaster, your mind. And of course, drugs will be a part of that. And you think everything is allowed and everything is possible. And then there's also culture, depending on who you hang out with, that certain kinds of categories of drugs are good for your creativity and so naturally start to abuse those drugs. I don't know. I think it's really interesting the role that drugs have played in the history of music. They have certainly been extremely destructive, but they have also certainly been productive muses, inspirations for some of these folks.
- [85:36]
Rick Beato
Oh, absolutely. Now, would we want to advocate people to doing things like that to boost their creativity?
- [85:46]
Lex Fridman
No.
- [85:47]
Rick Beato
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. That so many of these, virtually every famous singer, no matter what genre of music, jazz, soul, rock, they all smoked. Nat King Cole.
- [86:12]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Miles Davis, too.
- [86:13]
Rick Beato
Miles smoked. Everybody smoked. Miles didn't. Well, Miles was a heroin addict, too.
- [86:18]
Lex Fridman
I mean.
- [86:18]
Rick Beato
Yeah, so many jazz musicians.
- [86:20]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [86:30]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [86:30]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Some richness to the voice.
- [86:32]
Rick Beato
Nat King Cole, he's. He smoked, I think, four packs a day. He died of lung cancer. A lot of heavy smokers, those singers. Frank sinatra, heavy smoker. McCartney was a heavy smoker. Lennon, all those guys smoked.
- [86:46]
Lex Fridman
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. With the place. Because sometimes it's part of the culture. The drug is like, you're saying, smoking. If you're smoking now, that's going to be a very different experience than smoking 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago. It's a different. Different vibe. So sometimes the drug is a deep, integrated part of the culture versus an actual chemical substance. The 60s, right there. I don't know. They were on everything in the 60s.
- [87:29]
Rick Beato
Yeah. I mean, it has to account for something.
- [87:36]
Lex Fridman
Lex, you know, on the songwriting front, you mentioned a story about Elton John recording. So he's one of the legendary songwriters, but, yeah, you've met him and you know something about the process of his.
- [87:50]
Rick Beato
Yeah, because he was recording in a studio in Atlanta that I was working with, the band that I was producing, and he was in. I was in Studio B, he was in Studio A. And this band that I was working with, they were called Jump Little Children. And so he had his assistant come in and ask, hey, is this. Are you guys Jump Little Children? Yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden, I couldn't see out into the live room. Elton walked into the thing, and we were getting ready to track, and I'm pressing the button. Yo, where are you guys? What's up? I thought, we're going to start this, and no one's responding. I can hear talking. I was like, what's going on? Where are they? Then all of a sudden, they come back in the studio and they were stunned. I said, where were you guys? Elton John just walked into our session and he said he's a big fan. He said to come over when we're done and hang out in Studio A. So we did, and he was there with Bernie Toppin. They were working on a song, and we talked there for an hour. And he was talking about recording two records a year. And then they'd go out, tour, and they'd write and record the whole record in two weeks. So Bernie would give him lyrics. Elton would go out and spend 15 minutes writing all the melody. He'd look at his lyrics, and he was doing that that day. Bernie was there, and they had a lyric sheet up on the piano, and Elton would go on and they just. Okay, just record this. And Elton would sit there and play and come up with the song in 15 minutes or so. There's a great version of, I think, Tiny Dancer where Elton is coming up with it. 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 there, then they move on to the next song. It's really incredible. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
- [89:29]
Lex Fridman
There's one 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 put two verses together, then a midlife, then a chorus, and then back to the verse sort of thing. It's. It's very. It happens very quickly. It sounds long, but it sort of. It sort of starts off. Blue jean baby la la Seamstress for the ban. You marry okay.
- [90:09]
Rick Beato
It's really amazing that he just.
- [90:11]
Lex Fridman
He's looking at just the lyrics.
- [90:13]
Rick Beato
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.
- [90:31]
Lex Fridman
And maybe they write, like, lyrics. They write, like, nonsense words kind of thing. And then they figure out from there. Yeah, that's. I mean, I don't know what skill that is exactly. That's incredible. I mean, in that process, he makes it his own.
- [90:49]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [90:50]
Lex Fridman
Okay. You had an amazing interview with Kirk Hammett. I'm a huge Metallica fan.
- [90:56]
Rick Beato
Same here.
- [91:00]
Lex Fridman
There's a lot of interesting stuff that came out of that from that conversation. One is the distinction between heavy metal and hard rock, which is very interesting. Of course, Metallica went through their own evolution. They had many periods. I mean, they've been around 40 years.
- [91:17]
Rick Beato
Over 40 years, yeah. Crazy.
- [91:19]
Lex Fridman
The other thing is the down picking, which was interesting, which is creating that really distinct sound.
- [91:25]
Rick Beato
James and Kirk's the down. The down picking. I used to be able to do that. I just can't do that anymore. It hurts my thumb to do it, I think. Honestly, I thought a lot about it. It's like, why is it so painful? Why is it so hard? It's from swiping with your thumb on phones. And I think it affects that basal joint there. And I'm just like, no, I think that that's actually right, because I'm thinking, like, why does that hurt so much to do that? All the downstrokes and stuff. It's got to be something. It's like, yeah, it's from. From swiping with a phone.
- [91:57]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [92:18]
Rick Beato
The improvisation part of it you don't think of because they. They. Because you have the finished songs that you listen to. But those songs are born out of improvisations, of jams, of little fragments of ideas, and then they craft them into these masterpieces.
- [92:37]
Lex Fridman
Also, you mentioned that this is weird that I didn't know that Hendrix was. Used different gauges, strings.
- [92:44]
Rick Beato
Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he?
- [92:46]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [92:47]
Rick Beato
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?
- [92:57]
Lex Fridman
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 Zappo is really good at this, right?
- [93:06]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [93:06]
Lex Fridman
It's completely breaking out of what you're supposed to do, the ways you're supposed to do them, and doing it completely differently. You often ask musicians what their perfect song is. First of all, it's a interesting question.
- [93:19]
Rick Beato
What is a perfect song?
- [93:21]
Lex Fridman
Like, one surprised me is Hans Zimmer said God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.
- [93:25]
Rick Beato
I was surprised by that, too, but I thought it was like, yeah, okay, that's a perfect song for sure. The first interview I ever did was with Peter Frampton in 2018, and I asked him in that interview, what's a perfect song? And he said, Whiter Shade of Pale. And I was like, ooh, that's a great song. And then I thought, I'm going to ask that to people just to see what they. Now people are prepared if I ask
- [93:48]
Lex Fridman
that, but it's like they're willing to go out on a limb and say it.
- [93:51]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [93:51]
Lex Fridman
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 really cheesy to say the obvious things? I would go Sultans of Swing, even though, like, I'm tempted to say Europa,
- [94:30]
Rick Beato
but then, like, Sultans of Swing hits on so many levels because it's got a great melody, great lyrics, and then multiple great guitar solos. And it has such a unique sound to it. The other thing is that it sounds very different from other Dire Straits songs. I mean, it's like early Dire Straits, Strat tone. And then you think of, like, Money for Nothing is Les Paul. And it's a. A totally different kind of vibe than him playing on Salons of Swing. But that song's amazing.
- [95:00]
Lex Fridman
Plus, it's about music.
- [95:03]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [95:03]
Lex Fridman
So it's like, there's a meta aspect to it, but then there's also, like, we're talking about this guitar stuff, but Leonard Cohen. Hallelujah. I mean, Leonard Cohen in general. Like, these songwriters that go super simple on guitar. And there is just. What's that called? Singer, songwriter type. I told you off my. One of my. Maybe the music 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.
- [95:45]
Rick Beato
That's when it's going to happen. Once you give up on it, it. It's gonna happen. Yeah.
- [95:51]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [95:53]
Rick Beato
Why Tom Waits won't be on your podcast.
- [95:56]
Lex Fridman
Exactly. Exactly.
- [95:58]
Rick Beato
Dude. This is.
- [95:59]
Lex Fridman
This is my. This is my moment.
- [96:00]
Rick Beato
Tom, come. Come here. Let's do it. I want to see it.
- [96:05]
Lex Fridman
I'm such a. A fan of, like, the Zappa, like, artistry on the. On the musical front, which Tom Wes has. But I'm a. I'm a sucker for great lyrics. Lyrics, to me, is such a Big part of great songs. And he's another example. He has a song called Martha. It's about a love story that didn't work out. And it's an older man calling the woman that he was in love with and basically reminiscing about, like, you know, thinking about, like, what would have happened if it worked out, that kind of 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, similar with the Beatles, like, these guys somehow are able to capture the human condition so masterfully. And they're kids.
- [96:59]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [97:00]
Lex Fridman
This. I don't get it. I don't understand it.
- [97:02]
Rick Beato
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.
- [97:13]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, they've lived.
- [97:14]
Rick Beato
They lived life.
- [97:15]
Lex Fridman
Yeah.
- [97:16]
Rick Beato
It's not like kids today.
- [97:19]
Lex Fridman
Now you're on a porch. You also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan, the Smash of Pumpkins. He is definitively one of my favorite musicians.
- [97:32]
Rick Beato
I love Billy.
- [97:33]
Lex Fridman
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 7th and the 9th. So, like, musically, chord wise, what do you think about that? You think he's onto something?
- [97:52]
Rick Beato
He's talking a little music theory there.
- [97:54]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah.
- [97:54]
Rick Beato
7th and 9th 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 there's songs. And 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. And that creates emotion. Dissonance equals emotion. And that's what I like. I want music to be. To depress me.
- [98:32]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. What is that? I don't know. But melancholy. And I think you articulated in the interviews, it's not actually that depressing. There's something about that melancholy feeling that is somehow. The other side of the coin of happiness is a kind of longing.
- [98:48]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [98:50]
Lex Fridman
There's a hopefulness to it. That aloneness that you feel. I mean, that's actually One of the intimate connections you have with music is when you're alone. I think there's a social way of listening to music when maybe at a concert and so on. But there's this. There's nothing like you're alone in the car driving, listening to like whatever it is. Bruce Springsteen. I think Louis CK has a bit about that. It was a Bruce Springsteen. Please. Sometimes has to pull over to the side of the road, just weep or something like this. It's just. There's some. There's something about that. Sometimes the song just connects with you and I don't know it.
- [99:25]
Rick Beato
Mel.
- [99:26]
Lex Fridman
Nothing like a melancholy song could do that. That it. You think about like maybe things you regret or how life could have worked out. And sometimes it's not even about, like it's not even real. It's just connects something to the. In the soul. The. The uneasiness that we all feel, maybe the loneliness we all feel that underpins so much of the human condition. It just connects with that. I don't know what that is.
- [99:50]
Rick Beato
There's a Kurt Cobain lyric. It was on the In Utero record from the song Francis Farmer. The chorus part is, I miss the comfort of being sad. And I was like, yes, I miss the comfort in being sad. I was like, yeah, that's it right there.
- [100:09]
Lex Fridman
In terms of love songs, somehow I find powerful, a kind of desperation. So I've always connected with Pearl Jams Black.
- [100:18]
Rick Beato
Oh, amazing.
- [100:20]
Lex Fridman
That line. A friend of mine was going through a breakup, so I was listening, and he's the one that introduced me to Pearl Jam during that whole period when Pearl Jam was huge with 10. Is that line, someday, Someday you'll have
- [100:37]
Rick Beato
a beautiful life Someday you'll be a star in somebody else's sky. Why, why, why can't it be? Can it be mine? Oh, my God. That's. That blows me away. That's an amazing line. The delivery is incredible on it too.
- [100:55]
Lex Fridman
Eddie Vedder, one of the great frontmen of all time.
- [100:58]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [100:58]
Lex Fridman
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 do you think are the greatest frontmen in history of music?
- [101:18]
Rick Beato
Freddie Mercury. Robert Plant.
- [101:20]
Lex Fridman
Freddie Mercury, Number one, probably.
- [101:22]
Rick Beato
Steven Tyler.
- [101:23]
Lex Fridman
Jim Morrison.
- [101:24]
Rick Beato
Jim Morrison. Yeah. Roger Daltrey.
- [101:29]
Lex Fridman
Well, we have to say. I have to say. We have to say James Hetfield.
- [101:34]
Rick Beato
James Hetfield.
- [101:35]
Lex Fridman
I mean, there's nothing I have. I mean, I have to talk to you about this. I have. I mean, this is the greatest. I think the greatest concert of all time. This is their historic performance in Moscow in September of 91. This is shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed. Plus, we should mention AC DC and Pantera were there too. And about 1.6 million people were there. Now, by the way, there's some kind of reporting that there was a half a million people, 500,000 people. That's somewhere I've seen statements like that. That's a ridiculously inaccurate statement. So it's a free concert. So any official counts don't count. It's definitely over a million. It's very likely to be 1.5, 1.6 million people. And this moment in history that I think they channeled. It's like whenever great music, the Metallica was firing on all cylinders at the very top of their game. And they meet this moment in history and this place in history that was a defining part of the 20th century collapsing. And you have these people who are, for a moment, through music, are able to escape the fear, the anger they feel, all of it. There's also a political, social, cultural moment meeting the musical moment. And the set list. I listened to it several times over the past few days, just. Just taking myself back into that moment in time. Listen to this set list. Enter Sandman, Creeping Death, Harvester of Sorrow, Fate to Black, Sad But True, Master of Puppets, Seek and Destroy, For Whom the Bell Tolls Won and Whiplash. Look at that. How's that? That just.
- [103:25]
Rick Beato
That's my kind of set of here. This is amazing. That's my kind of set right there.
- [103:30]
Lex Fridman
I don't know if you could think of anything that could beat that.
- [103:33]
Rick Beato
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.
- [103:46]
Lex Fridman
I mean, Woodstock was big. There's certain moments in time when I really, really meet the moment. Are you a fan of live? Live, like big.
- [103:55]
Rick Beato
I used to be, but at this point, I can't. You know, I'd much rather see people play in small clubs and. Or go to the. I'd like to listen to the studio. Go to the studio, even.
- [104:11]
Lex Fridman
I generally almost entirely agree with you. I just think that there's these historic moments, but you don't know which are going to be which. But you're making the concert free. It's just. Just all of it to get. Plus Pantera and AC DC the other. Which actually is a legitimate thing. You've 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 Gary Oldman. Yeah, just that really is a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an interesting kind of way through the perspective of a love letter that he's written. But then I realized, like this is early as many, many couple decades ago now, that he went deaf before he even started writing. In the ninth Symphony, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest compositions of all time, one of 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 I guess a call for that, a reaching for that peace. 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 you're in this middle, this respite from war, calling for peace, not knowing that truly horrific wars are coming. So you have the American Civil War and you have of course, the two world wars coming. So this, all of it together and the fact that he's conducting death and you 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.
- [106:41]
Rick Beato
I mean, Beethoven was sick all the time too. I mean, a lot of people were sick all the time. It was very common. What would motivate you to write music, this beautiful music that you can never actually hear except for in your head, Right. Like why? The amount of time it takes to write, to write a 35 minute 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? And people would say, well, he's ears in his head, but what kind of enjoyment is it? You want to hear the orchestra? I Mean, it's really profound that he, that he was inspired to do this. There's a thing called the Healerstadt Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers from 1802. I think they found it in his desk after Beethoven died, and he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss. And he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him, of all people, that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear or a shepherd singing in the field, and he could not hear this. And of all the people, why him? Where hearing played such an important part, another person that would had to have had perfect pitch, because you could never do this if you didn't have perfect pitch, which I think all these great composers, for the most 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.
- [108:31]
Lex Fridman
I mean, you love sound and music. What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven?
- [108:42]
Rick Beato
It must have been terrible. I mean, just terrible. I mean, I've heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth and, and put it on the soundboard of the piano and you could feel the vibrations in his skull and things like that.
- [109:00]
Lex Fridman
Desperately trying to.
- [109:01]
Rick Beato
Yeah, I just.
- [109:04]
Lex Fridman
But also, there's. What is, what is that? That he's able to write, like, one of the greatest symphonies ever, while deaf. So there's something about that we mentioned darkness, but torment that he's going through and ultimately owed to joy. Like, not a cynical thing to call for the positive.
- [109:29]
Rick Beato
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's. I, I, I have devoted many, many hours thinking about that.
- [109:37]
Lex Fridman
And plus, Napoleon broke his heart because he was a supporter of Napoleon, because Napoleon was supposed to represent the French Revolution. This, this hopeful future of no more kings, no more monarchs, no more authoritarian regimes, and Napoleon ended up becoming essentially king. Right, Becoming an authoritarian. And 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, so becoming more cynical, like, seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you, the dreams get shattered, and through that is able to still do this, call for the hopeful future. All right, so, okay, so Beethoven, one of the greats, for sure. Like, basically everybody. I know how to play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata, but I always avoided the third movement because I was like, I'll never be good Enough. Never, never, Never say never. One of these days, maybe, you know, it'd be great if Tom Waits writes me an email that says, I only talk to people that can play the third movie. That'd be, that'd be a dream come true. There you go.
- [111:01]
Rick Beato
Like for this, that's motivation.
- [111:02]
Lex Fridman
That's my dragon. Or whatever you do. You have to have a prince and rescue the princess. My dragon is the third movement, the Moonlight Sonata. Okay. You often highlight the importance of Bach. In fact, so many of your guests,
- [111:16]
Rick Beato
every famous songwriter is influenced by Bach. They are the greatest composer of all time, the greatest musician of all time.
- [111:23]
Lex Fridman
Even Sting and Dominic Miller said they go to Bach even for like practice every day.
- [111:29]
Rick Beato
People talk about. Bach was not known other than in his places. He lived Eisenach. He was born in Leipzig. He spent many years. But Bach was known to great musicians. It was difficult to find manuscripts, but there was a premiere of the St. Matthew Passion that Mendelssohn had done in 1829. It was on March 11, I believe he had a manuscript because his father and mother collected manuscripts. And he got a manuscript of this piece and I think he was 20 years old. And they had a performance of it in Berlin. And Beethoven, Mozart, they studied the well Tempered Clavier, the two books of the well Tempered Clavier. But Bach written profoundly beautiful music and some of the most complex contrapuntal music that, 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.
- [112:45]
Lex Fridman
Extremely productive.
- [112:46]
Rick Beato
Yes, I saw.
- [112:48]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. I think from all the music teachers I've ever had, I understood the importance of studying Bach.
- [112:56]
Rick Beato
He didn't write Master of Puppets, but he wrote some great powerful music.
- [113:02]
Lex Fridman
Well put. I, I, I try to educate the aforementioned music teachers of the brilliance of the Master of the Puppets. Sometimes a good riff is greater than any, any musical composition.
- [113:18]
Rick Beato
I, 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.
- [113:26]
Lex Fridman
That's your go to. So like, so the stereotypical like guitar store, when you come in, you're playing Master of Puppets.
- [113:34]
Rick Beato
I'll play Master of Pups. 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 type of metal that I'll test to see if the, if the bottom end's tight on the amp and stuff. So yes.
- [114:02]
Lex Fridman
All right, we have to talk about this a little bit. You made a bunch of videos about it. There's a moment in time. It still goes on, but there's a moment where really people are freaking out about the use of AI in music. So there's these, I would say incredible apps like Suno, Udo 11 Labs. Music is also great. They can generate basically text to song, full song from a text prompt and a lot of people start freaking out just based on how good it is. So you start to immediately imagine how this is going to transform music and you'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.
- [114:57]
Rick Beato
So if you write us a prompt in SUNO and it spits out a song, which I've did, I've done made a bunch of videos in this. I made up a fake artist, Eli Mercer in this video. Then I did a thing for CBS News, I made up this fake artist Sadie Winters and came up with this song walking away. Well, the computer, the program came up with it.
- [115:15]
Lex Fridman
There is some creativity in a process. So in this particular thing, the process is you generate an image.
- [115:22]
Rick Beato
I did it in chatgpt, the image. Then I went to, then I went to Claude and I wrote the lyrics because Claude's way better at lyrics than Suno is. Suno'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 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 going to be the ones that are going to benefit from AI? Well, the people that are already great songwriters because you have to be able to recognize when it spits out something good versus when it spits out something that's not that good. And every other song I've probably created 130 song ideas out of which there's three good ones.
- [116:11]
Lex Fridman
And there's a thing that's happening where people's ear very quickly is becoming attuned to AI Slop.
- [116:19]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [116:20]
Lex Fridman
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 Cents Many Men. And I think it is super impressive. And that's a different pipeline, actually. It's a tricky pipeline, how to pull that off. And I think a lot of the creativity in that, even that kind of remixing is in the pipeline that of how you actually do that. Because there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline. But I think ironically it's very cool at first, but when you listen to it for a while you understand that this is AI slob.
- [117:01]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [117:01]
Lex Fridman
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 BB King. I want the real BB King. And if I know if any AI is involved in the BB King process, I'm tuning out.
- [117:27]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [117:28]
Lex Fridman
And I don't think I'm being curmudgingly old dude in that. I think we humans want authenticity.
- [117:37]
Rick Beato
So when, 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 my. My youngest and Dylan, my youngest Layla and I have three kids and my oldest Dylan. As soon as I played why you listening to AI And I was like, oh my God. Instantly I was like, how do you know? Oh, it has this ringing sound in the thing. So it took me probably about four or five days to figure 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 sent that were that made incomplete. It just couldn't do the ambiences correctly. Right. Because it's trained on. A lot of these AI programs are trained on very low bit rate MP3s. Right. So they feed all this stuff in there. So they're getting really inferior information on the TR in the training process. Whereas now when they make these deals with the major labels, they'll get the multi track, 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 their royalties from it. I'm not saying that any. Any of them are doing. I'm just giving an example. But every time that I would do it, I could be down the hall and I would play something on my phone just to see if they'll like, why you listen to AI they could instantly tell, then eventually started getting better. And then it'd be like, is this AI? I'd be in the car with Layla coming back from taekwondo practice, and she's like, is this AI? Why does it sound like AI? Sounds like it could be AI. And I'd be like, yeah, it's AI. She's like, oh, it's getting better. And then I did this song for. It was an NPR interview. I created a song with a fake artist, and the song was called Neon Ghosts. And I played it for Layla in the car. She's like, can you separate the tracks? I said, yeah, I have them separated back home. Okay, I want to go down here. So we go down 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 a soloed vocal.
- [120:01]
Lex Fridman
I think the room for creativity right now for humans is lyrics. It seems like the lyrics that are being generated, they lacks soul somehow. I don't know the words correctly. Yeah, I mean, they can be incredibly sophisticated. But there's something. The edge. Is not there some kind of edge that you. We want in our lyrics. Some kind of surprise, but not cringe or not cliche. Something truly novel in the lyrics. But if that's the case, it's kind of sad that. That. 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?
- [120:54]
Rick Beato
I think the role of the musician is that in. In actually if they use AI to assist them in coming up with ideas, like as a creation tool, then the musicians. Some of this 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 it's just basically like an idea generator. And I think that that's a great use of AI is for that.
- [121:27]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [121:46]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [121:47]
Lex Fridman
You know, and then, and then do a B kind of thing, this kind of rhythm, this kind of. And stitch them together and never actually have your fingers on a guitar or, or fingers.
- [121:59]
Rick Beato
That's why I'm not going to use AI Lex is for that reason because to me it's just boring and when I use it it's like eh. 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. I'll sit down and I'll see whatever new versions they have and I'll write some songs, write some songs, I'll prompt some songs and see what they come up with and see if they're improving on the things. But ultimately I don't find it interesting to use.
- [122:32]
Lex Fridman
I hear you. You're a bit old school. How so am I?
- [122:36]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [122:37]
Lex Fridman
I'm trying to think about the future and I think it's still, even in the future also going to be boring. I think there's something fundamentally boring about it and I've been trying to figure it out. So for example, I use it a lot for more and more and more for programming, so for building stuff. And there it's not about the final output is not the code. The output is what the code creates. And there it's extremely useful. 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 music, then there's something about us that just like we know there is something boring about it.
- [123:19]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [123:20]
Lex Fridman
We want to celebrate and see the thing that's hard to create. And if AI can just text the song, generate a top 10 hit, we will quickly lose value for that, I think. And so we'll want raw. Like raw. Whatever shape that raw takes. I want to say raw talent, but that raw talent of any kind. And perhaps it would make me a little bit sad, but that's also awesome. Perhaps the new kind of raw talent that civilization is asking for is how to make great TikToks. Maybe that's what raw talent looks like. It makes me a little bit sad because I'm a huge fan of long form, but that. That also creating TikToks is also talent.
- [124:12]
Rick Beato
It is a talent. Absolutely. When I see anything that's AI generated, I instantly recognize it. Any video, I'm like, boring, boring, boring. And my kids do the same thing. They just have no interest in engaging with it. As soon as they recognize it and they can spot it a mile away and they're just like, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. And then they kind of dis, then they, they don't even want to engage with the social media platforms, which is, which is a danger, which I think they need to crack down on the AI slop. YouTube's done a pretty good job on it, but it's hard to stay on this. It gets flooded with so much of this stuff. It's so easy to create and put up there and to just be in the whack a mole thing where you're just trying to get rid of it
- [125:00]
Lex Fridman
all is, yeah, fundamentally, like it's fundamentally boring. I think boring is a really good boring and it's annoying to have to flip through the AI slots.
- [125:11]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [125:11]
Lex Fridman
But I think actually as a civilization is just inspiring for authenticity because you want to be real and being raw, which I, you know, one of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting and just being themselves in, in the long form versus overproduced. Because I think AI is making people realize that AI is good at being overproduced.
- [125:32]
Rick Beato
Right.
- [125:32]
Lex Fridman
So there'll be more.
- [125:34]
Rick Beato
Let's get that covered.
- [125:35]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, even artists, because you're saying like, yeah, they'll use it as tools. Part of me thinks like, like, not really like, I think, I think, 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, I think it, I think AI will, will definitely be used extremely effectively as a very fine grained tool in the image domain. It's editing images, but not like macro editing, but very specific kind of editing that Photoshop is increasingly integrated and I mentioned to you offline, so the whole Izotope RX group of software that does a lot of the denoising, all the removing the wind, they integrate machine learning extremely effectively for working with audio in different kinds of ways. There's a bunch of different other programs that do that maybe for like B roll footage and same thing on the audio. If you just need a little audio to create a feeling of a scene. Yeah, it might be used there in that kind of way, but truly original stuff.
- [126:54]
Rick Beato
I've saved videos where I'm speaking over music, for example, in an interview, somebody's playing and we have two dialogue, two people speaking in laughs. 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. And so it's really helpful for things like that.
- [127:19]
Lex Fridman
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 lexfreeman.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 the music business and how the music production for these popular songs is being done these days. Who's doing the songwriting, how is it being done and all that kind of stuff. I was wondering if you could speak
- [128:17]
Rick Beato
to that in that particular song. Jack Antonoff, who was one of the writers, Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter said in some awards thing that there's an old guy on YouTube that says that Sabrina had very little to do with the song. And so he said in this clip,
- [128:34]
Lex Fridman
you being the old guy, me being
- [128:35]
Rick Beato
the old guy, that, well, Sabrina really was the, she's amazing and she's the one that wrote everything in the song. So my response is like, well, why are you guys even included on the songwriting then?
- [128:48]
Lex Fridman
So one of the things you highlight is a lot of people are, are included on the list of songwriters.
- [128:55]
Rick Beato
Yeah, 10 people, 11 people. I mean, you know, like, why are the song. Why does Song of the Year have songs that are interpolation, meaning that they have melodies from other songs in their interpolation. They used to call it stealing. And then you have songs that are used samples for the whole thing, like the Dochi song that's out right now. And I said, look, she took a Gaultier 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 you don't have to actually create a track. You just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful.
- [129:33]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, you pointing that out, the song Anxiety broke my brain.
- [129:37]
Rick Beato
I mean, it's so absurd.
- [129:39]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. That feels unfair. It feels it's a good song, but it was. It was also a good song before and it was before that it was also a good song.
- [129:48]
Rick Beato
Right. 2011 or Luis Monfa 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.
- [130:05]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [130:06]
Rick Beato
And doi has some really good songs on a record. Record.
- [130:09]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. But why are these the ones that are coming to the top?
- [130:12]
Rick Beato
Right.
- [130:12]
Lex Fridman
This is interesting that, that, that might be just a criticism of the machinery of the business.
- [130:17]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [130:18]
Lex Fridman
That drives them. It's not necessarily like a lot of these folks are really good musicians, first of all. I think a lot of them are also good. Like the actual songs that make it to the top are good. I'm. I'm a big fan of Bruno Mars. He's a great songwriter and he's a great musician all around.
- [130:38]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [130:38]
Lex Fridman
You know, this is a Michael Jackson
- [130:40]
Rick Beato
and reincarnated super, super talented guy.
- [130:43]
Lex Fridman
Incredible. Right?
- [130:43]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [130:45]
Lex Fridman
You mentioned Billie Eilish and her brother. Right. A lot of the.
- [130:48]
Rick Beato
So good. Yeah. Super talented.
- [130:50]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [131:01]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [131:01]
Lex Fridman
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 be gives props to. She's the. She carries the flame forward.
- [131:15]
Rick Beato
She works on her own songs. Absolutely. And she. But she never has more than two co writers on things.
- [131:21]
Lex Fridman
You take a quick bathroom break.
- [131:22]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [131:22]
Lex Fridman
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 can take down your channel and you get some insane amounts out. You said you got like. I think I had a similar thing on my Rick Rubin episode. Like 30. I think you said 13. Yeah, 13. So what? Can you just speak to this whole thing you've been in A constant battle. Wmg, umg, all the, all the three
- [132:22]
Rick Beato
letter name record labels.
- [132:24]
Lex Fridman
Right. The, the music business people. So what, what's the story there?
- [132:28]
Rick Beato
Well, this has been going on since the beginning of my channel and I've made videos periodically. When I first started it was just instant blocks. So you never knew back in. I started it'll be 10 years in June. So when I play music in a video. YouTubers were not playing music in videos because they didn't because of the content ID things and the takedowns and stuff. So I would play music and I'd just see what happens. And then you get a content ID claim or you realize that people were quote, unquote blockers. And I came up with that term that they would block your video. 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, Led Zeppelin. And then, and then something happened. There was that guy in 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. Again. And the labels then realized, I mean, I had made many videos about, about why this is wrong and it should be fair use and everything. Well, because of that, the label is like, oh, maybe we should rethink this. And then they just started demonetizing videos.
- [133:49]
Lex Fridman
Demonetized means they get all the money.
- [133:51]
Rick Beato
They get all the money in a one hour video. If they, if you use 20 seconds of a clip, they get all the money. Okay, So I hired a lawyer finally after the Rick Rubin video, because I thought it was ridiculous. I go over to Tuscany, I interview Rick at his house, and I hired a lawyer to fight this, who I'm going to have on my channel. I don't want to say who it is, but he's another YouTuber and he had approached me a couple years ago and, and it's not cheap to do.
- [134:27]
Lex Fridman
You're going to do like a public interview with them?
- [134:28]
Rick Beato
I'm going to do an interview with him, Yes. I talked to him today about it.
- [134:32]
Lex Fridman
I can't wait. Yeah, that would be great.
- [134:34]
Rick Beato
So he said you should fight these because every single one of them is fair use. And he went through my entire catalog. I have 2100 videos. And he's fought 4000 content ID claims and won every single one of them. 4000. That's a lot. I mean, when I do top 20 guitar solos, there's 20 content ID claims, you know, and it's either. It can be either from the sound recording, if I use that, or if I just play. Can be from the publisher.
- [135:10]
Lex Fridman
That's amazing.
- [135:10]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [135:11]
Lex Fridman
So is there. I mean, that's. It's still. A lawyer still works. Does that. Is there a hopeful thing you can say about the future of.
- [135:23]
Rick Beato
Yeah. Fight these content ID claims, if it's fair use, if you're not just playing the song and listening to it and. Because a lot of stuff that are reaction videos or whatever that are not where they play the whole song. I mean, I'm using these things and I'm talking. A lot of the times it's in interviews or it's in. I'm breaking down a solo and there's
- [135:41]
Lex Fridman
a. Yeah, see, that's an obvious one. But even reaction videos, right?
- [135:46]
Rick Beato
Yeah, even reaction videos. Yes, absolutely.
- [135:48]
Lex Fridman
Those are more borderline. Yeah, but I don't know, I love those videos.
- [135:54]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [135:55]
Lex Fridman
Like when a person is 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.
- [136:03]
Rick Beato
Yeah, but those are breakdowns.
- [136:04]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, those are breakdowns. Yeah.
- [136:06]
Rick Beato
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. It makes sense and stuff. 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 at these things because they're afraid to have their channels taken down.
- [136:35]
Lex Fridman
Yep. Rick Beato said, hold my dear year.
- [136:39]
Rick Beato
There you go.
- [136:39]
Lex Fridman
So, I mean. I mean, it's important.
- [136:41]
Rick Beato
It took me years, though, Lex. I didn't. I've been doing this, so I. So I've been doing it for one year now, and I'm nine years, 10 years into my channel, so it took me that long.
- [136:51]
Lex Fridman
I mean, hopefully it. There's a ripple effect also. It's not just your situation. Hopefully you don't have to deal with this for much longer. Right. How has Spotify changed music? Sometimes we highlight the fact that they change the nature of music and that it's. The scarcity is not there, but also allows. It's like every kind of music is available and so fast and it's so easy. It's easy to explore.
- [137:17]
Rick Beato
It's a commodity. It's like turning on a water faucet.
- [137:21]
Lex Fridman
Do you think there's some good to. I mean, there's a Lot of good to that. Right. Have you, did you go through that whole pro. I still remember where I had to basically throw away the album.
- [137:34]
Rick Beato
I never did that. After you uploaded them into your computer.
- [137:39]
Lex Fridman
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. Yep. And you save them. And then you, how do you put it? Allegedly a friend of yours pirates some extra songs. Yep. And then put some on the computer. But you have your stash on the computer. You're like, this is my finely selected stash of greatness. Sometimes organized by album, sometimes not. And then the big moment for me that was really difficult to do, really difficult to do is throw away that stash and switch to Spotify, switch to streaming and basically revolution, build the stash of playlists and all this kind of stuff. And it was heartbreaking because so much love and effort went into that. Both the CD, the stashing of the CD and the stashing of the MP3s in the computer. And then in Spotify, it just seems just effortless. But it helped me discover all kinds of artists I never would have discovered otherwise. And Pandora, I use a lot of. Pandora is more prioritizing on the discovery part versus organization part. And that was really wonderful.
- [139:04]
Rick Beato
So one of the things I, I, I'll start with the positive that I like about Spotify is that they show view count, they show play counts. Whether they're real or not, that's another question. But, but they show how many plays songs have and that's how the charts are based.
- [139:18]
Lex Fridman
Does that give you signal that something is listened to a billion times. Does that mean something to you? You?
- [139:23]
Rick Beato
Yeah, it means that, that it's a popular song. Well, that's a massive hit. That's very few songs that have a billion billion plays. Now the downside of Spotify is the way that they pay their artists. Now they've lumped in podcasts with that that are getting a cut of this. The streaming with the, with the music and you know, the search and discovery. I mean there's, there's a, there's benefits of algorithms and there's negative things of algorithms. Algorithms happen to kind of many times pigeonhole people into listening to the same genre of music all the time and not expanding their, you know, the discovery of new music that you might hear on the radio back in the day where program directors would play things that they liked. Right. And you might hear something. Oh, what is that? Oh, that's a new Soundgarden record or something, you know, like, whoa, I like that. I'm gonna go check that out. You know, something you might not have heard or something odd.
- [140:29]
Lex Fridman
Like, one thing I really love doing on Spotify is you can. You can have radio.
- [140:33]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [140:34]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [140:50]
Rick Beato
I'm sorry, what else would you listen to?
- [140:53]
Lex Fridman
I need motivation. Classical music, I don't know. But yeah, it's pretty good because it recommends a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn't even know some of it I know, obviously, but akin to the. Similar to the Rage against the Machine type thing, it recommends a bunch of artists and it's like, oh, holy shit, that's awesome. So I don't know that that discovery works really well. So this is. Some of it is a technology thing, but that experience is fundamentally more vibrant than I had previously with my stash. That 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. The. I'm sure you love. You love this. But listening through the Led Zeppelin records, just driving in a car and listening to the whole thing all the way through. Yeah, that's lost.
- [141:44]
Rick Beato
So I have my old itunes libraries from 2005 that I list that I. That I have saved the CDs that I uploaded into my computer. Yeah, anytime I do that, I play songs on my. When I'm doing an interview, I always play WAV files. I put them in. And it's funny they. That when I interview a mixer, I interviewed this mixing engineer, Andy Wallace, and people comment, wow, that the song sounded amazing. I hear. Well, not only are they great mixes that he did, but I'm using WAV files in there and people notice. And these are WAV files from original encoding, not remastered things that Spotify keeps doing and adding a bunch more top end and things like that. That. These are the. These are actually the. The original WAV files from off the CD that I ripped 20 years ago.
- [142:42]
Lex Fridman
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?
- [142:51]
Rick Beato
So I use Pro Tools for the most part, but I also use Logic and Ableton. I've got all those.
- [142:59]
Lex Fridman
So you're Mostly on a Mac.
- [143:00]
Rick Beato
I'm only on a Mac.
- [143:02]
Lex Fridman
Only on a Mac.
- [143:02]
Rick Beato
Only on a Mac.
- [143:03]
Lex Fridman
I'm only the opposite.
- [143:04]
Rick Beato
Although we have multiple PCs. Because my kids use PCs.
- [143:09]
Lex Fridman
Yeah, just throw a bell.
- [143:10]
Rick Beato
They do it for gaming. They like to game.
- [143:13]
Lex Fridman
That's true. But like, in terms of editing, I hate how. How good Mac is so good at just integrating the. The hardware and the software just work well together both on.
- [143:23]
Rick Beato
If I didn't have a Mac, honestly, I wouldn't be talking to you right now because I got a G3. That's the only good thing that a major label did for me is when. When my ban umg and they bought a. They bought me a G3 and a. And an SM7 and Pro Tools Digio One, 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 Max for that.
- [143:56]
Lex Fridman
So Pro Tools, I mean, that's still the standard.
- [143:59]
Rick Beato
That's kind of the industry standard. Yeah.
- [144:00]
Lex Fridman
I gotta ask you, because I know I've never used Pro Tools. I've used. Again, I'm a caveman. I've used Reaper, I've used Studio One. That's. Recently, I've used that. And for the most time, I've used Ableton Live. I feel like I'm using 1% of the power of the tool. Like Ableton Live makes me feel like I'm literally just pressing the record button.
- [144:24]
Rick Beato
Ableton's amazing. It really is.
- [144:26]
Lex Fridman
It is.
- [144:27]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [144:27]
Lex Fridman
But I feel like that. I mean, it's designed for people that. Doing like all kinds of meaty stuff and like looping and the. What is it? The push buttons with the. With the beats and 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.
- [144:52]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [144:53]
Lex Fridman
So this is why Studio One has been a little bit nicer for me, because it's simpler, made for recording more.
- [145:01]
Rick Beato
So any daw that you get used to, Lex, that's just use anything using it. Yeah. And. And you have to become a master at the things. If you want to be a recording engineer or producer, you. You become an expert. A lot of the, you know, Phineas and 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 Use it for things. I have it on my laptop here and I. I have Pro Tools and Logic on my laptop. I use both. I use Pro Tools mostly though.
- [145:33]
Lex Fridman
But Pro Tools, that's where you feel like at home.
- [145:36]
Rick Beato
I'm an. I'm an expert in Pro Tools.
- [145:39]
Lex Fridman
Are you using any emulation, any amp sims or it's all real amps?
- [145:46]
Rick Beato
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 headquarters in Helsinki and the CEO, Doug Castro is a friend of mine. I actually talked to him today, as a matter of fact. And I have a Kemper Ampsim, you know, modeler. I have an Axe Effects. I've got a Helix. I pretty much have all these things. But for me, I have 100amps in my studio, so. And I have mics set up all the time on cabinets and stuff. Stuff. I have a hundred amplifiers. Real amplifiers.
- [146:23]
Lex Fridman
Real.
- [146:24]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [146:24]
Lex Fridman
Wait, sorry.
- [146:25]
Rick Beato
A hundred? I have a hundred. Yeah, about 100, maybe 95.
- [146:30]
Lex Fridman
How do. How does one go get to that level?
- [146:34]
Rick Beato
Collecting and being. I'll be 64 in. In April, so.
- [146:38]
Lex Fridman
So you just don't let go?
- [146:40]
Rick Beato
I don't let go, no.
- [146:41]
Lex Fridman
Why would you get to 100? Like, is it is a tone difference?
- [146:45]
Rick Beato
Yes. So everything does one thing really well. And so it'd be like, okay, so I have this Marshall GCM800 that's modded that. That does this one thing. It's got great mids and it's good for this kind of a tune. So I will pull that out. Then it's like, no, I need more of like a scooped metal tune sound that's more like Metallica or Dream Theater or something. So. Oh, I'm going to pull out my. My Mesa. Mesa Boogie or. I need a. I need something that's chimy, that's more like Brian May or like the Ed. I'm going to pull out my Vox AC30, so everything. And 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.
- [147:34]
Lex Fridman
Down to 100. This is only 100.
- [147:37]
Rick Beato
I can get by with probably 75.
- [147:40]
Lex Fridman
Come on. But then you're really running the risk of not having just the right amp. But you're using emulation, so that's. That's great. I mean, on that. But there's the other side of it, which is the guitar. I Told you offline. I think having multiple guitars is cheating, but whatever. Nobody agrees with me on this. I only have like one. I do have some side pieces, but one main. The greatest Strat.
- [148:07]
Rick Beato
What do you play?
- [148:08]
Lex Fridman
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 look at the guitars like. I don't really know why exactly. Just to be in the aura of these great instruments. And they brought in this American Strat that had these different shades of. It was like a silver. And I just. I've never had this feeling. They talk about love at first sight. I just fell in love with the guitar.
- [148:43]
Rick Beato
Are.
- [148:43]
Lex Fridman
Can you just speak to the kind of guitars you have and you love?
- [148:47]
Rick Beato
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 and Western that I've had for probably 30 some odd years. It's a great guitar. And I have a J45 Gibson and I have a Martin D28. So I only have three nice acoustics and I have a Guild 12 string and I have a Guild. Nashville tuned guitars. The low strings are up up the octave. So the E, A and D and G are up the octave. That's Nashville tuning. Six string though. Like basically what David Gilmore plays Uncomfortably Numb in my video. He plays a Nashville tune, but with one variation. The low E is up two octaves. So he demonstrates actually the. This is how he wrote Comfortably Numb. The chorus part of it was with this particular guitar that he's playing in the video.
- [149:55]
Lex Fridman
What can you say about the different feels that the guitarists, the acoustics have? How do you know which one to pull out?
- [150:05]
Rick Beato
It depends on the kind of part that I'm playing. If I want something with really tight mid range with not that doesn't have a lot of low, low bass. This particular old Gibson that I have, the 57, I will pull that out. It's got very balanced strings and you know, mid range doesn't have a lot. It doesn't have a booming bottom end, booming low E string or anything or a string. So it depends on what. What kind of sound I'm looking for. If I.
- [150:32]
Lex Fridman
It's more about sound versus feel.
- [150:34]
Rick Beato
Yeah. All my guitars play equally well. Okay. I have them all set up to where they play well. I have a signature Gibson guitar that I've had for five years.
- [150:46]
Lex Fridman
Now when you say Gibson, Gibson, Les Paul Gibson.
- [150:49]
Rick Beato
It's a double cut Les Paul special. Yeah. With P90 pickups.
- [150:54]
Lex Fridman
I don't know what double cut means,
- [150:55]
Rick Beato
but that means two cut. Two.
- [150:58]
Lex Fridman
Oh, yeah.
- [150:59]
Rick Beato
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.
- [151:06]
Lex Fridman
That's the. All right, nice.
- [151:08]
Rick Beato
When you play this, you're going to be like, oh, my God, this is butter.
- [151:11]
Lex Fridman
No, I'm. Again, I said it's cheating. I don't.
- [151:14]
Rick Beato
And what amp do you play through? Do you play through an amp sim or do you have. What do you have like a.
- [151:19]
Lex Fridman
This is going to be. Yeah, yeah. I use bias effects. I'm sorry, Lex.
- [151:24]
Rick Beato
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 Neural DSP did and it sounds great. John played it. It sounds just like his amps.
- [151:40]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. John is incredible.
- [151:41]
Rick Beato
John's great.
- [151:42]
Lex Fridman
I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with him two times. And outside of being an incredible musician, he's also conversationally just.
- [151:51]
Rick Beato
Yes. I've known John since he lived in Atlanta, but when he got signed and I knew John from way back then, probably in the early 2000s, I think
- [152:00]
Lex Fridman
he doesn't get enough credit. He's one of the greatest living guitarists.
- [152:05]
Rick Beato
He's a fantastic guitar player. Absolutely.
- [152:08]
Lex Fridman
And a celebrator, if that's a word, of great guitar players.
- [152:12]
Rick Beato
Absolutely.
- [152:14]
Lex Fridman
By way of advice, you started your YouTube channel in your mid-50s and found incredible success. You. You've had essentially multiple careers. Is there some wisdom you can extract from that?
- [152:30]
Rick Beato
So my. My theory is that somebody's got to be successful, so why can't it be you? That was, that was.
- [152:42]
Lex Fridman
That's.
- [152:43]
Rick Beato
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 at six months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, can you teach me this? Pro musicians, well known ones that you would. Who you'd know. Can you teach me this? I can't teach you what Dylan did, but I can. I can teach you relative pitch, develop your ear that way. But then I had conservatories writing to me about this stuff from all over the world. How did you teach Dylan this? Because we made about four different videos and they got more and more Sophisticated. And so I thought, okay, I'll make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff. This is, that's really why I started, so I didn't have to keep, I couldn't answer the emails, there's so many of them. So I just started making videos on how to train your ear and music theory. And that's really how I started my channel. And, and my wife was like, what are you doing? I said I'm making YouTube videos. Why? So I don't have to keep telling people how I did this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you know, few. I had 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.
- [153:57]
Lex Fridman
And so I think there one thing that should be said that in modern culture for young people, a lot of them will see YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and they kind of want to be famous. They want to get the clicks and the views and so on. And that's the thing they chase and optimize. I think the thing that you're leaving unstated perhaps is that you spend many years pursuing the mastery of a craft and there's a lot of value to getting good at something absolutely awful offline. You can actually reveal your journey online, but the thing you're chasing is not fame, it's getting good at something. And I think actually what happens is even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for, if that's the thing that ends up happening, it's still like getting good at one thing 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.
- [155:20]
Rick Beato
My theory of my channel has always been make videos on things I'm interested in. And, and at first I thought, oh, nobody's going to watch an old white haired guy on YouTube. Yeah, that was kind of my thing. Well, that was not correct. And then it's like we'll just make videos on stuff I'm interested in. Just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I'm interested in and keep learning. And I, when I produce bands, I never let them take my picture ever. I never let them record Me in the studio video. 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.
- [156:07]
Lex Fridman
You're fully behind the camera kind of guy being like, no, no, no pictures.
- [156:12]
Rick Beato
No, no pictures with people. Hey, can we take a picture? Said no pictures with people.
- [156:18]
Lex Fridman
And now you're like, you're the talent. Talent. You're the face. No, I mean. But again, the thing you're leaving unstated there is like you spent a lot of years, you're teaching music, like really exploring music, trying a music career of like trying to create, trying to produce, trying to be a musician and all these. Not just trying, like being, getting extremely good at it. I just, I think in modern culture there's a sense you want to skip that part. I want to be famous. I want to, you know, this. And that is a thing that's not going to be in most cases effective as a primary thing to chase.
- [157:05]
Rick Beato
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.
- [157:32]
Lex Fridman
And then you taught yourself how to interview.
- [157:34]
Rick Beato
And I taught myself an interview. I'd never done an interview before. And it was like an interviewer.
- [157:38]
Lex Fridman
What you haven't just done that you've taught yourself not how to do just YouTube but YouTube shorts.
- [157:44]
Rick Beato
Yes.
- [157:45]
Lex Fridman
Different.
- [157:46]
Rick Beato
Totally different thing, totally different skill.
- [157:48]
Lex Fridman
And then not just YouTube but like how to be like a. There's a. Because you're both a YouTuber and, and like a musician who posts stuff on YouTube. YouTuber means like you're thinking about stuff like thumbnails and which.
- [158:05]
Rick Beato
I make my own thumbnails. I've always made my own thumbnails.
- [158:08]
Lex Fridman
By the way, before I forget, get. I think I, I speak for the entirety of the Internet, thanking you for how you introduce your videos and how you close them. Because you. This, 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. It's. I mean, and on all fronts, I mean, I suppose that has to do with the Production skill that you have of understanding, cutting.
- [158:35]
Rick Beato
Cutting to make a song. Yep.
- [158:37]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. Cutting the fluff, cutting the bullshit. I'll just get straight to the core of the thing. I've heard you talk about maintaining friendships for a long time. You said never waste a friendship. Can you elaborate on that?
- [158:49]
Rick Beato
Yeah. That's one of my things, is that I really value the time I've spent with people, friendships and keeping in touch with people. I talk to each one of my siblings multiple times a week. I talk to my sisters probably every night, my two sisters. I have friends from college. I get friends from growing up. I have friends from both colleges I went to. I have friends from all different eras in my life that I keep in touch with and visit whenever I can.
- [159:20]
Lex Fridman
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. To connect and reconnect.
- [159:32]
Rick Beato
I mean, it's pretty much everything in life. Nothing means anything more than the friendships that you make in your. In your family.
- [159:39]
Lex Fridman
Yeah. What's the point of this whole thing?
- [159:41]
Rick Beato
That's right.
- [159:43]
Lex Fridman
What's the role of music in. In the human experience?
- [159:48]
Rick Beato
Well, hopefully to enlighten people and to create the soundtrack of their life.
- [159:53]
Lex Fridman
It is, right?
- [159:54]
Rick Beato
Yeah.
- [159:56]
Lex Fridman
Music does something. Thing I'll get. Sometimes when I'm alone, I'll listen to a song and there's nothing quite like a song that makes me truly feel like, feel alive. And whatever that is, sadness or hope or excitement or when I'm working out, listening to Rage against the Machine like protest, or as I was listening to the Metallica, I was re. Listening to the set that they played in Moscow. Just hyped, like truly hyped. I was like pacing, listening to it and there's nothing like that.
- [160:38]
Rick Beato
I've never found anything.
- [160:40]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [161:01]
Rick Beato
It's one of the greatest things that humans ever did, creating music.
- [161:05]
Lex Fridman
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.
- [161:22]
Rick Beato
Same.
- [161:22]
Lex Fridman
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 over the decade, over the centuries. Thank you for being who you are and thank you for talking today.
- [161:40]
Rick Beato
Thanks. I appreciate it.
- [161:42]
Lex Fridman
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Rick Beato. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now let me leave you with some words from Friedrich Nietzsche. As I often do, without music, life would be a mistake. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
- [162:14]
Rick Beato
Sa.