Rick Beato playlist

General Music Discussion Songwriting
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I think most of us here are already familiar with Rick Beato’s youtube videos, but I think he bears mentioning in this category for those who haven’t stumbled across his work before.

His channel has a playlist for his “What makes this song great?” series:

One of my favorite nuggets from that series is discussion of the incredibly effective use of a subtle backing synth part in Blink 182’s “All the Small Things”:

Edit: I feel like a dork for calling out the first episode. Another favorite is the one on Boston’s “More Than a Feeling”:

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It’s a highly entertaining and really info packed series. Rick’s love of music is contagious, and he picks these songs apart exposing stuff most of us probably never even heard (though, I bet I’d hear a lot more on my own if I had the same access to multi tracks he’s privileged to lol!)

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This guy is the reason I recently decided that I actually do like Nirvana – I didn’t realize how cool the melody of Smells Like Teen Spirit was until I watched his video on the song.

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Yeah, I know what you mean. Kurt’s sense of melody and harmony was pretty advanced. Same with lots of the grunge bands, particularly Soundgarden and Alice in Chains (though the latter is more blues based).

I was bitten by the music snob bug when I was younger. I only wanted to listen to or play stuff that was challenging. It was actually in the early 2000’s when I started teaching guitar for a living that I realized how high quality the songwriting is in a lot music played and written by non-virtuoso musicians is though. The way I taught was to find stuff my students (mostly teens) liked, and I’d figure it out and show them how to play it on guitar. Most of it was stuff they could do on day 1 with no experience. So…really easy stuff. But I was surprised how ‘smart’ the songwriting was in a lot of these tunes. There were some 3 Days Grace songs featuring motivic development that would make Beethoven crack a slight smile.

Rick really focuses on all the small things (pun totally intended) that make songs great. Stellar musicianship isn’t a requirement (though it’s cool when that happens too of course).

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Absolutely. Plus, you can sometimes come up with cool, difficult guitar lines just from trying to replicate the keyboard lines in synthy pop songs :laughing:

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Watch the video about “At the drive in’s” song “one armed scissors “. The guitars are so far out of tune when you hear them in isolation haha

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Nirvana was the first band I ever got into. Still throw them on occasionally!

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He’s been doing a lot of high profile interviews lately including one with Sting. I think they get into an interesting discussion about how modern music has changed - structurally etc.

He also did one with Al Di Meola recently and Al plays for more than half of it.

He also did one with Pat Metheny and Tony Macalpine as well as Joe Satriani and others. Some people have been encouraging him to do one with Yngwie.

His son is a perfect pitch virtuoso.

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I loved At The Drive in and part of me doesn’t understand why lol. Its very screamy which I don’t usually go for, but the soundscapes they made just grabbed me…

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I did too. I loved the energy and… chaos, for lack of a better word haha

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Sometimes I think Relationship of Command was the last genuinely great rock album

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They had another album after this, although I think it was many years later, and I couldn’t get into it unfortunately.