Rick Beato on what makes music great

Anyone following Rick Beato's youtubes? What do you think?

This guy gives some great insight from the producers perspective. Mostly rock music, but interesting nevertheless.

Here's one on Nine Inch Nails. Perhaps not the best example, but probably closest to what people here listen to.

Don't think Nine Inch Nails is a particularly interesting though. Compare it to Stevie Wonders Superstition. I love it when he goes into the chords progressions and how various layers work together. The drums bass section, melodies.

Plenty more stuff on his channel. Also love his explanation of why rock is dead: quantisation. Bit of an irony given this is a forum about electronic music, but whatever. ;D  

don't forget to check the dissection of pearl jams jeremy

i've seen a few of them, they're hit and miss depending on the song, some of the songs just aren't that interesting really lol

hadn't seen that one about Jeremy tho, good track. did a decent breakdown of it but would rather hear the guy from the Strong Songs podcast really tear it apart piece by piece. he gets much more thorough

Sure! Post it here if you've got a link. Not familiar with the strong songs podcast.

Rarely very insightful beyond showing the chords, he mostly just makes a rock face and plays along. 

Youtube kept recommending me the John Bonham quantized one constantly for months so I finally watched it back in maybe February, and I went into it reall sympathetic to the idea (not that "rock is dead" but that major label radio rock got bland after heavy Pro Tools editing became the norm). But honestly he came off like a salty old Gearslutz poster complaining about kids these days, and I actually thought the quantized Bonham sounded pretty great in its own way.  Obviously it didn't sound like Bonham, but it had this unsettling, uncanny valley thing going on that I could definitely see working well in some kinds of music.

I got about halfway through it and Youtube is STILL recommending it to me all the time.

Yeah, he is opinionated in a very annoying way. 

couldn't care less about those but i used to watch his music theory videos, his youtube channel was great to discover exotic scales/modes and what you can do with them. the film scoring ones were cool too.

really not into what he does with his channel these days though, i'd recommend watching adam neely instead for music-related stuff

  On 4/26/2020 at 4:10 PM, TubularCorporation said:

Youtube kept recommending me the John Bonham quantized one constantly for months so I finally watched it back in maybe February, and I went into it reall sympathetic to the idea (not that "rock is dead" but that major label radio rock got bland after heavy Pro Tools editing became the norm). But honestly he came off like a salty old Gearslutz poster complaining about kids these days, and I actually thought the quantized Bonham sounded pretty great in its own way.  Obviously it didn't sound like Bonham, but it had this unsettling, uncanny valley thing going on that I could definitely see working well in some kinds of music.

 

I got about halfway through it and Youtube is STILL recommending it to me all the time.

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The problem with the Bonham video is that he doesn't know how to extract a tempo or quantize. It's all mucked up. It's not that quantizing is that great but it can be done in way less egregious ways.

Yeah, it was more his attitude that got to me.  He reminded me of a far more skilled, successful version of the live-in building manager at a big rehearsal space I used to use, who had a really nice project studio in the basement made from equipment that had been traded to him and abandoned over the years, and was always talking about the time in 1982 that he auditioned to be Iggy Pop's drummer.

Although to be honest I never actually heard him drum and never heard anything he produced, so the "more skilled" is just speculation - skill is far from the only factor that decides whether you're Rick Beato or the guy who lives in a pile of gear in the basement.

I'm exaggerating to make a point, I've looked at a couple of his other videos and they're not bad he just has the aura of one of those people who gets exposed to the most conservative examples of a lot of different kinds of music because of his job, because it's unlikely many people who are doing anything very far off he well trod commercial genre paths are going to be working in the contexts where he does.  Which is fine if you're humble, but he doesn't seem that humble about his opinions in the handful of videos I've seen.

As far as mainstream-pro-studio-dude channels go, I like Warren Huart's stuff even though 99% of the music he works on doesn't do a thing for me.

  On 4/26/2020 at 3:25 PM, goDel said:

Sure! Post it here if you've got a link. Not familiar with the strong songs podcast.

probably just easiest to search for "strong songs" on whatever you use to listen to podcasts

  On 4/26/2020 at 4:16 PM, brian trageskin said:

couldn't care less about those but i used to watch his music theory videos, his youtube channel was great to discover exotic scales/modes and what you can do with them. the film scoring ones were cool too.

pretty sure i saw some of those theory videos of his before too but i'm entirely theory ignorant so i only glean some bits and pieces from stuff like that

  On 4/26/2020 at 4:03 PM, psn said:

Rarely very insightful beyond showing the chords, he mostly just makes a rock face and plays along. 

Yes. He is very knowledgeable in music theory but the episodes of What Makes This Song Great that I have watched have consisted of:
- about about 5 seconds of analysis of what makes the song great from music theory perspective
- about 10 minutes filler content of him playing different parts of the song and listing the names of the chords

Enjoyed this one. Some interesting stuff in there.

understand the response to his persona though. He immediately reminds you of that classic rock stereotype. 

pretty chords 

Had to dig this thread up. He just posted a long interview with Billy Corgan. Interesting stuff, imo. And 1 hour 5 mins in, Billy says he loves to look at his videos! LOL

Grumpy old rockers these days ;D

  On 12/13/2022 at 9:44 PM, Satans Little Helper said:

Had to dig this thread up. He just posted a long interview with Billy Corgan. Interesting stuff, imo. And 1 hour 5 mins in, Billy says he loves to look at his videos! LOL

Grumpy old rockers these days ;D

 

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been a long time since i've heard Corgan speaking and didn't cringe the entire time (only a moment or two in here). surprisingly decent interview, probably in part because they talked only about stuff in the 90s. i don't think i remember Corgan talking about him sort of teaching Butch Vig how to layer guitars, i wonder how much truth there is to that.

  On 4/26/2020 at 4:03 PM, psn said:

Rarely very insightful beyond showing the chords, he mostly just makes a rock face and plays along. 

this

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