I think the best way of describing Keith’s amazing rhythmic feel is this quote from Charles Mingus about his drummer, Dannie Richmond. “[Y]ou don't play the beat where it is. You draw a picture away from the beat right up to its core with different notes of different sounds of the drum instruments so continuously that the core is always there for an open mind. While you make it live now and then you go inside the beat, dead center, and split the core to the sides and shatter the illusion so there is no shakiness ever. If one tries to stay inside dead center or directly on top of the beat or on the bottom the beat is too rigid on the outside where it is heard. The stiffness should only be felt inside the imaginary center of the exact tempo's core. The top, the bottom, the sides, the back are where my favorite drummers, Dannie and Elvin, play, though differently. They tease the mind by not telling you exactly what everyone knows - where one, two, three, and four are.”
Lots of this is why I actually very much enjoy the rhythm guitar role- there's way more to it than time and playing the right chords, as many people assume. Side note, Keith Richards Live in Boston 1993 (look it up here on YT) is a MUST watch for fans of Keith or just good ol rock n roll. All the things Claude talked about in this vid will be very apparent.
Love this. I think you just broke down something I’ve always heard but could never quite understand or explain. And it’s why I love the Stones. And why no one ever quite sounds like them when trying to cover them.
Keith Richards Timing and phrasing is fantastic. With Charlie watts, who understands his superb guitar playing it's the perfect groove. I am rythm guitarist Songwriter with my own beat and the Drummers they follow me if they are aible to that. If not....forget it.
Yes of course, let's avoid AI-manufactured stuff but let's also not forget some ultra-precise rhythm guitarists from 1970s like Rick Parfitt from Status Quo - they were just a little different in being naturally metronomic rather than loose, but definitely not inferior in that capacity. In a similar way, George Michael has been proven to be incredibly precise in singing notes (in terms of frequencies accuracy - like auto-tuned, only he achieved that through his ear and talent) and still was a tremendous singer which cannot be said of those who can only achieve accuracy via auto-tuning.
@@greg-warsaw4708 There is a difference between a human with heightened precision and 'music' lined up to be perfect on a grid. Corey Wong freely states that he is 'a child of the grid', and to me he sounds like it. Yes, he's precise. But he sure as hell isn't funky. Give me James Brown, Status Quo or George Michael / Wham! any day over modern grid-organised 'music'.
Idk if you’ll see this or if or anyone has already said but at the start when you’re talking about rocks off, Keith plays the lower bpm guitar you’re talking about that you said was Mick Taylor. I’ve read according to his book and other sources that he did all the guitar parts on rocks off besides the end when Mick Taylor adds some virtuoso to play it out while it fades away.
It’s all about feel, which is why the 70’s music and similar era’s were and still are the best music of all time! Great time to grow up! Also known as pushing and pulling the beat. And when you quantize it feels off, cause you lose that “feel”! I’ve been criticized for not playing to a set tempo, because I grew up with this! And I lose my feel on the drums playing to a click! I can do it, but it’s at the cost of that push/pull slight rush/drag ahead or just behind tempo! Talk to John Bonham about that, unfortunately we can’t! But he was the king of feel behind the drumkit! I cut my teeth on Stones, Zeppelin, Grand Funk, Chicago, CCR, etc!
The comparison with classical music is just right on the spot: the musicians are looking more at the conductor than at their paper sheets. This kind of "feel" can also be found in old blues guitar rythms, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin (especially the drummer)...
what an excellent video. Funny enough I've been told my whole life that I swing my rythym and/or rush beats. And I've worked hard at playing to a click track to the point where I can control it BUTTTTT... It rarely sounds as good for my songs as when I'm loose. I've even actually tried to record a demo of Beast of Burden before to test sounds and it was terrible and rigid, and this is exactly why. I'm a huge Keith Richards and John Lennon fan and I imagine that a lot of my feel was probably formatively brought on by these two... now with your other video you've really got me thinking that the drums being somewhere between the 'draggers' and the 'rushers' is the real key to keeping things together, Blah blah blah... my point is, this is a fantastic video
Keith has a perfect groove, quantizing playing to a click is the death of having a pocket... The best drummers that do have to play to a click for whatever reason always have spots where they're in front of the click and behind it From Jeff Porcaro, Jim Gordon, Kenny Arnoff, Gadd, keltner... All of em... That's soul and flesh of music.
Great video. What you are really doing is showing people through a computer what blues music is. The Stones are the ultimate among rock bands in mastering blues music. It's the art of rhythm and incantation. It's all about playing ahead and behind the beat and having rhythmic counterpoint although you don't think of it in those terms. It's an oral tradition. It is not clumsy at all. Striving to play on the beat is what is lazy if you are trying to play the music of the Stones.
The Stones are a rock n roll band you can dance to, but to dance you need to FEEL. That’s the magic right there. Just rock out, have fun and feel the music. Let it guide you. Don’t think too much, just groove!
This video is long overdue. Someone finally tried to explain the inexplicable groove The Stones brought to almost every song. If Stones music is quantized, it doesn't work.
How can he actually be good? He has only been playing guitar professionally over 50 years & written or co-written such masterpieces as Gimme Shelter, Honky Tonk Woman, Satisfaction, Start me Up, Wild Horses, Brown Sugar & so many more I cannot list. F- yeah he is good at rhythm & plays some cool leads occasionally too! For more of his brilliance check out his Xpensive Winos material. Do you think guys like Waddy Wachtel & the rest of the winos make music with him for shits & giggles?
his right hand is loose and he doesn't think about the way he uses it. so everything he does is just slightly ahead or behind the beat and feels improvised in a way. i would bet his right hand keeps moving along with the groove and he pulls his hand in and out from the strings just feeling it. lots of ghost strumming in different tracks and if you play that way you'll do that a lot. play off between a driving rush and a groovy dragging hesitation.
Music was better when it was less perfect. I agree with you about the Stones - they're a bar band at heart! Your Beast of Burden was quite good - is that in standard tuning?
Bar bands never have the same sound and swing the beat. Charlie was perfect to give Keith the space to fill as he wanted. Keith "Charlie is the musical bed that a lay down on"... or words to that affect.
Polyrhythm... write that down! I had to answer the question Keith Richards is arguably the greatest Rock n Roll Rhythm guitar player of all time. Sarcastic, syncopated, Polyrhythmic. I don't believe there's a single guitar player after hearing one bar of the Rhythm you can identify them. Keith Richards certainly is the one!
Music theory should be descriptive not prescriptive. Music notation has always had rhythm signature though. He basically plays around the rhythm like a juggler occasionally tossing a ball or stick etc higher in the air for a round or two for contrast... I've always thought of people need a guide whether it's a piano metronome or digital they're not really feeling or aware of the rhythm - it should be instinctive.
What are now, analyzed to death, and thought of as Mistakes by some. Due to tempo changes among players...that's known as FEEL, every musician used to be able to feel the song how it felt best to them. Not how it accurately aligned to a Click Track, or Metronome. Back in the day, if you had to make a professional musician play to a metronome in the studio, it meant they were shite ..
This analysis is a great example of why Robot like Computer recordings are rarely up to par with classic albums. Lots of great players and playing. But will you remember any of it in 10 or 20 years or like the rolling Stones in 50 years, or 200...
That used to be so, but for the longest time he's just a charcature of himself, Keith pretending to be Keef. And for the longest time - too long - it's been Chuck Leavell's Wedding & Bar Mitzvah Band, only featuring some famous musicians. "Let's make the live songs sound like the studio songs." The days of The Stones reinterpreting their songs, reinventing their songs, mutating their songs, those days of creativity onstage are long, long gone. In 1969 they revamped Satisfaction into a driving powerhouse of s song, with a blistering hot guitar solo and a really funkified jam-on-this groove for a long closer. In 1971, they changed everything, to a I-IV funkathon, letting the sting build to a slow and deliberate crescendo, full energy up at the end. In 2013 the song was back to its early '60s pop sound, "let's make it sound just like the record", just like any other wedding band would do, the bane and banality of new millenia live performance in tow. Yeah, it's Keith being a characiture of his former self, the image is king, all posed, all choreographed, all so staged, all so fake. Not one note matters because Chuck Leavell has the song. No thanks.
I love this video actually -- shows why we listen to a lot of older music. We're quantizing everything to death and ruining the feel a lot of times
That's right!
@@ClaudeRuelle And we do that to things other than music too.
I think the best way of describing Keith’s amazing rhythmic feel is this quote from Charles Mingus about his drummer, Dannie Richmond. “[Y]ou don't play the beat where it is. You draw a picture away from the beat right up to its core with different notes of different sounds of the drum instruments so continuously that the core is always there for an open mind. While you make it live now and then you go inside the beat, dead center, and split the core to the sides and shatter the illusion so there is no shakiness ever. If one tries to stay inside dead center or directly on top of the beat or on the bottom the beat is too rigid on the outside where it is heard. The stiffness should only be felt inside the imaginary center of the exact tempo's core. The top, the bottom, the sides, the back are where my favorite drummers, Dannie and Elvin, play, though differently. They tease the mind by not telling you exactly what everyone knows - where one, two, three, and four are.”
Man this is a brilliant quote! Thanks for sharing
@@ClaudeRuelle I had a feeling you would appreciate! Thank you for the great videos. Love your stuff.
Lots of this is why I actually very much enjoy the rhythm guitar role- there's way more to it than time and playing the right chords, as many people assume. Side note, Keith Richards Live in Boston 1993 (look it up here on YT) is a MUST watch for fans of Keith or just good ol rock n roll. All the things Claude talked about in this vid will be very apparent.
Thanks for your comment, I’ll go check this out!
Keith’s version of Eileen played in Boston deserves its own video
Love this. I think you just broke down something I’ve always heard but could never quite understand or explain. And it’s why I love the Stones. And why no one ever quite sounds like them when trying to cover them.
You are very original and SMART man! Bravo~~~~~~~!!!
Keith Richards Timing and phrasing is fantastic. With Charlie watts, who understands his superb guitar playing it's the perfect groove.
I am rythm guitarist Songwriter with my own beat and the Drummers they follow me if they are aible to that. If not....forget it.
Nice Work...This is a great analysis...I think you are onto something...
Fantastic analysis of Keith's magic rhythm voodoo. Thanks!!! I'm going to mess around with this too.
They have been around for more than 50 years now, proof enough why they are the biggest rock and roll band !!
I really enjoy your videos very informative
Thank you
Thanks a lot! I’m happy you’re enjoying the videos
Give me humans playing over quantised music tied to a grid any day.
Yes of course, let's avoid AI-manufactured stuff but let's also not forget some ultra-precise rhythm guitarists from 1970s like Rick Parfitt from Status Quo - they were just a little different in being naturally metronomic rather than loose, but definitely not inferior in that capacity. In a similar way, George Michael has been proven to be incredibly precise in singing notes (in terms of frequencies accuracy - like auto-tuned, only he achieved that through his ear and talent) and still was a tremendous singer which cannot be said of those who can only achieve accuracy via auto-tuning.
@@greg-warsaw4708 There is a difference between a human with heightened precision and 'music' lined up to be perfect on a grid. Corey Wong freely states that he is 'a child of the grid', and to me he sounds like it. Yes, he's precise. But he sure as hell isn't funky. Give me James Brown, Status Quo or George Michael / Wham! any day over modern grid-organised 'music'.
I love this video. Your content is brilliant.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for watching
Kieth talks about this blending concept. He calls it the “weaving”. Sometimes “ancient weaving”.
This is perhaps the best example of how people go through life half asleep - they would never take the time, energy and passion to do what you did.
Great video!
Idk if you’ll see this or if or anyone has already said but at the start when you’re talking about rocks off, Keith plays the lower bpm guitar you’re talking about that you said was Mick Taylor. I’ve read according to his book and other sources that he did all the guitar parts on rocks off besides the end when Mick Taylor adds some virtuoso to play it out while it fades away.
Great channel! Subscribed
Awesome, thank you!
awesome video! thanks
It’s all about feel, which is why the 70’s music and similar era’s were and still are the best music of all time! Great time to grow up! Also known as pushing and pulling the beat. And when you quantize it feels off, cause you lose that “feel”! I’ve been criticized for not playing to a set tempo, because I grew up with this! And I lose my feel on the drums playing to a click! I can do it, but it’s at the cost of that push/pull slight rush/drag ahead or just behind tempo! Talk to John Bonham about that, unfortunately we can’t! But he was the king of feel behind the drumkit! I cut my teeth on Stones, Zeppelin, Grand Funk, Chicago, CCR, etc!
The comparison with classical music is just right on the spot: the musicians are looking more at the conductor than at their paper sheets. This kind of "feel" can also be found in old blues guitar rythms, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin (especially the drummer)...
Very interesting!
Random appearance of Louis De Funes filled me with joy
Haha glad you noticed! I'm a big fan
Fantastic analysis. I've always wondered how the Stones got their "greasy" feel.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
what an excellent video. Funny enough I've been told my whole life that I swing my rythym and/or rush beats. And I've worked hard at playing to a click track to the point where I can control it BUTTTTT... It rarely sounds as good for my songs as when I'm loose. I've even actually tried to record a demo of Beast of Burden before to test sounds and it was terrible and rigid, and this is exactly why. I'm a huge Keith Richards and John Lennon fan and I imagine that a lot of my feel was probably formatively brought on by these two... now with your other video you've really got me thinking that the drums being somewhere between the 'draggers' and the 'rushers' is the real key to keeping things together, Blah blah blah... my point is, this is a fantastic video
Keith has a perfect groove, quantizing playing to a click is the death of having a pocket... The best drummers that do have to play to a click for whatever reason always have spots where they're in front of the click and behind it From Jeff Porcaro, Jim Gordon, Kenny Arnoff, Gadd, keltner... All of em... That's soul and flesh of music.
The in sync version has Grateful Dead feel to me.
Great video. What you are really doing is showing people through a computer what blues music is. The Stones are the ultimate among rock bands in mastering blues music. It's the art of rhythm and incantation. It's all about playing ahead and behind the beat and having rhythmic counterpoint although you don't think of it in those terms. It's an oral tradition. It is not clumsy at all. Striving to play on the beat is what is lazy if you are trying to play the music of the Stones.
The Stones are a rock n roll band you can dance to, but to dance you need to FEEL. That’s the magic right there. Just rock out, have fun and feel the music. Let it guide you. Don’t think too much, just groove!
This video is long overdue. Someone finally tried to explain the inexplicable groove The Stones brought to almost every song. If Stones music is quantized, it doesn't work.
Woah. That's really interesting. Its always cracked me up how low Jimmy Page plays. I tried it once and mannnn..I could feel it in my back.
Awesome! Definitely his loose sense of time reflects on the overall vibe of his music
Thanks, for sure!
You should play standing up! Thanks.
Very interesting 🎸🎶
How can he actually be good? He has only been playing guitar professionally over 50 years & written or co-written such masterpieces as Gimme Shelter, Honky Tonk Woman, Satisfaction, Start me Up, Wild Horses, Brown Sugar & so many more I cannot list. F- yeah he is good at rhythm & plays some cool leads occasionally too! For more of his brilliance check out his Xpensive Winos material. Do you think guys like Waddy Wachtel & the rest of the winos make music with him for shits & giggles?
his right hand is loose and he doesn't think about the way he uses it. so everything he does is just slightly ahead or behind the beat and feels improvised in a way. i would bet his right hand keeps moving along with the groove and he pulls his hand in and out from the strings just feeling it. lots of ghost strumming in different tracks and if you play that way you'll do that a lot. play off between a driving rush and a groovy dragging hesitation.
Music was better when it was less perfect. I agree with you about the Stones - they're a bar band at heart! Your Beast of Burden was quite good - is that in standard tuning?
Thank you! Yes it was standard tuning
Bar bands never have the same sound and swing the beat. Charlie was perfect to give Keith the space to fill as he wanted.
Keith "Charlie is the musical bed that a lay down on"... or words to that affect.
Not to repeat what others said here, but Charlie, RIP, used to say 🤟🤟🤟🎸🎸🎸Keef 🎸🎸🎸🤟🤟🤟 was his metronome.
Thanks for Charlie's halo. 😇
Thought it was Mick T who played the riff.
Yes. Next question.
Polyrhythm... write that down!
I had to answer the question Keith Richards is arguably the greatest Rock n Roll Rhythm guitar player of all time.
Sarcastic, syncopated, Polyrhythmic. I don't believe there's a single guitar player after hearing one bar of the Rhythm you can identify them. Keith Richards certainly is the one!
Spot on 🎯💯🤟🎸
It’s called feel and swing
Rhythm, after all, is a mystery. What we have here is human delay.
Music theory should be descriptive not prescriptive. Music notation has always had rhythm signature though. He basically plays around the rhythm like a juggler occasionally tossing a ball or stick etc higher in the air for a round or two for contrast... I've always thought of people need a guide whether it's a piano metronome or digital they're not really feeling or aware of the rhythm - it should be instinctive.
It's simple: straight beat on the grid doesnt sound as good as natural variability. That's the honest truth..
If it sounds good, it is good. Keith sounds good.
Mick Taylor? 🤔 Oh, the guy who plays the scales over Keith's Classic's. THAT Mick Taylor.
Yes there is always a pulse to the Stones..a grid in real RnR is dumb not needed..the feel is in the musicians, thats where the “ROLL” is !
I got as far as "today I conducted a bunch of experiments...". lol... My brother in Christ, you either feel it, or you don't.
What are now, analyzed to death, and thought of as Mistakes by some. Due to tempo changes among players...that's known as FEEL, every musician used to be able to feel the song how it felt best to them. Not how it accurately aligned to a Click Track, or Metronome. Back in the day, if you had to make a professional musician play to a metronome in the studio, it meant they were shite ..
This analysis is a great example of why Robot like Computer recordings are rarely up to par with classic albums. Lots of great players and playing. But will you remember any of it in 10 or 20 years or like the rolling Stones in 50 years, or 200...
It drives me crazy when people say you need to practice to a metronome. No. No you don’t.
You can. But it’s pointless if you're not playing with a band. And today, many people aren't.
Beast of burden MUCH better in your standing version 😊
Because he is drunk or stoned 😂😂😂
I've loved the Stones for over 50 years for this very reason. They are dirty and bad even in BPM.
Is Einstein actually good at science?
SCREW THAT CLICK..! Music should sound human.. humans don’t follow a click.. That’s my two cents..✌🏼
Keith doesn't have to try to look cool.
That's right
That used to be so, but for the longest time he's just a charcature of himself, Keith pretending to be Keef.
And for the longest time - too long - it's been Chuck Leavell's Wedding & Bar Mitzvah Band, only featuring some famous musicians. "Let's make the live songs sound like the studio songs." The days of The Stones reinterpreting their songs, reinventing their songs, mutating their songs, those days of creativity onstage are long, long gone.
In 1969 they revamped Satisfaction into a driving powerhouse of s song, with a blistering hot guitar solo and a really funkified jam-on-this groove for a long closer. In 1971, they changed everything, to a I-IV funkathon, letting the sting build to a slow and deliberate crescendo, full energy up at the end. In 2013 the song was back to its early '60s pop sound, "let's make it sound just like the record", just like any other wedding band would do, the bane and banality of new millenia live performance in tow.
Yeah, it's Keith being a characiture of his former self, the image is king, all posed, all choreographed, all so staged, all so fake. Not one note matters because Chuck Leavell has the song. No thanks.
Yes, since DAWs everyone is right on the grid, but you can lose the human feel.
That’s right!
NO
He is good on rhythm and nothing more. He is s bad lead guitarist and good with basic guitar. Stones are mediocre musicicians