After reading about the first 500 comments on this video, I've realized one major thing... There's some people saying I missed Rick's point (which, hey, maybe I did). But those same people have followed up by saying "I think the point he was trying to make was...", and then explain what THEY think he was saying, and everyone has had different answers. If every single person has a different answer of what Rick's point actually was, then either: A) Rick didn't articulate the point well enough. B) The point was so vague that everyone came up with their own version of it. I will say, though, some of you have had some great comments and have actually brought some good conversation to the table, regardless of whether you mostly agreed with me or mostly agreed with Rick. There's been a lot of cool insight and viewpoints to a lot of this and I appreciate the good conversation and making me think in a different way. To everyone else just getting hostile, be more like the good conversation people. 😘
People can be creative regardless of the their tools digital or analog , plug in or rack gear. Understanding that the plug-ins and Daws are homages to the analog days and the old school studios. The fact that the digital gear is allowing more availability for people to be musically creative is great. In the end regardless of how music is created there will be some that is awful and others that will rock. I enjoy music by Prince who alot of the time used a drum machine and or played his own parts and mixed them but also love the feel and playing of the jams of the Allman Brothers or the drive and technicalities of Iron Maiden ,Mr. BIG or Nightwish for example. Music accepts all comers , the good the bad the digital the analog and I think we are lucky for the variety.
Rick Beato is like certain political figures these days. Always needing someone to explain to everyone what he meant when he said _____ and what the context about _______ thing he said is. In other words, his mouth moves a lot but not a lot of real value ever comes out of it
Big Rick fan here. I think you made fair points. I do think when he talked about Sinatra, he was including the professional skills of everyone involved in the production and not just Sinatra himself. Also - the Boys Like Girls song drums are definitely what he was railing against! But, he wasn't the producer, and if he did write the song then he still deserves that song credit - the song was probably written before the production was made, likely not a topline. Just thought I'd chuck that out there! Rock on. - Glenn
@@glennandadriansrocktalk Yeah, fair point and that's why we did bring up "maybe he's not proud of being a part of some of those songs". But he DID produce "Carolina", to be fair.
Let's not forget the fact that "back in the day" a label would advance you $100k+ to make an album in a pro studio with the best gear, but today labels aren't doing shit unless you've done all the work yourself ahead of time building an online presence. Therefore, artists are using what they can access and afford. HUGE oversight on Rick's part.
I also find it funny that so many of the bands he listed had to fight to get control and ownership of their catalog because record labels were fronting large sums of money in exchange for ownership of the catalog of music. Modern technology has made it possible to bypass this process all together. He lately has been giving off gatekeeper vibes and it comes off very elitist.
@@bassman87 The average music that the average person listens to on Spotify is still the same way. The people that created the music still don't keep the rights and the record labels do less than they used to and still get control of catalogs. Very few people retain the rights to their music unless they are 100% independent. You can bypass the gatekeepers but the odds of gaining a fanbase larger than friends and family is essentially zero. Nothing has really changed.
As someone with a physical disability. I lost my ability to play instruments overtime. When I learned to use midi and virtual instruments I was able to get back into something I love. Had I been born before such technology. I would’ve essentially lost the one thing I passionately enjoy. So that ease of use is a gift to people like me who physically can’t perform. This is just my experience from a different perspective.
I'm a 62 yo 45 yr guitarist. I waited for years for software to catch up in capabilities other than midi. I was never good enough as a guitarist to play at a "performance" level due to physical limitations (severe motor control issues). I had Steinberg and Cubase which was great for my keyboard, BUT once software like Sonic Foundry (Sony) Acid became available, I was able to assemble my recorded guitar segments into a real song with drum loops/one shots and all. I even now have a couple credits on a documentary. Good enough for me! Software gave me the satisfaction of accomplishment in spite of my limiting handicaps. SOFTWARE ROCKS AND HAS IT'S PLACE. WITHOUT IT, I WAS SCREWED FROM EVER DOING ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.
And actually, from what I can tell, this kind of thing makes people like Rick Beato and his fan base incredibly upset. I have literally watched an entire comment section of his devolve into "that's what we get for letting EVERYBODY participate in music" type commentary. Because in people like Rick Beato's world, if you're not Eddie Van Halen or John Bonham, no one should even know who you are
That's true! But It is even worse. You just could listen to the music the industry wanted you to listen as underground bands or kids that were beggining un the industry Will not be played in the radio. Now you can upload your album in TH-cam, Spotify or any other Channel and let your music have the chance to be listened.
@@darkmesere Exactly. Rick thinks it's a bad thing that 100,000 songs get uploaded a day, but it really doesn't matter. 99,980 of those songs get largely ignored. They barely have a listen, let alone multiple listens. He worries about physical media because young music fans don't sit and read the liner notes, but ignores the fact that music fans get a direct line with the artist via social media.
I saw 100 bands live last year. 66 of them I had never seen live before! I would never have heard about almost any of them without things like Spotify. I would probably never have even become a metalhead or been so ethusiastic about it if wasn't for it being easy and readily availble. I would never go to unknown bands at festivals, because I would never have been able to listen to them beforehand without buying a CD. So while he might think listening to a CD or LP at home is pure experience, I would argue spotify has made me see more bands live in the last 10 years than Rick probably has seen in any given period. I probably saw more bands last year than the average person sees in their whole life. All thanks to Spotify and TH-cam
@@RebouzThey absolutely would have. Every group that was being played on the radio made a local impact and then acquired the ear of a disc jockey. Or in rarer instances lucked their way onto the radio.
It feels gatekeepy. like, if you aren't spending tens of thousands of dollars to record analog, with professional session drummers, producers, technicians, etc., it can't possibly be better than the music that is done with all of that. It feels like he only wants "professionals" to make music, if that makes sense.
PLUS labels aren't going to advance you the $100K you need these days unless you've already built up a fanbase yourself. He totally skipped that point.
This. I mean, I'm sorry, but is it so bad that I have access to VST orchestras nowadays? Because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to write orchestral music - which I occasionally do and I have received praise for it. There is no way I'd be able to hire a real orchestra to perform my pieces, though.
It is gatekeepy. Dude is basically saying that the way he is making and consuming music (though he apparently is not making it the way he wants it to be done) is the real / right way of doing it. And this is the most common "old man sees young people ruining stuff" situation. This has also been happening forever...
Not to mention, these bands who recorded the old fashioned way, guess what a majority of them are using on tours, amp modelers. There are still some who have the wall of amps and maybe just use two amps, a clean and a high gain amp, but a lot of session players have kempers, axe fx or now quad cortexes.
Now imagine Beethoven, Vivaldi or any one of those composers talking down on Rick because he uses a guitar amp instead of having 50 guitars to make it sound louder.
I'm a (real) boomer, born in 63. I played bass in hard rock and metal bands from the late 70s to the late 80s and this get-off-my-lawn mindset that Rick (and most of my generation) has reminds me of when my mom used to tell me that back in her day she could go to a movie, have popcorn, and a soda for a dime. Hey Rick, you probably heard that the music that we grew up with was just noise back in the day, don't be that guy. Time marches on, get over it.
I always say Boomer isn't an age. Its a state of mind. All generations have boomers. You might have some years behind you but you don't sound like a boomer at all.
Rick, like everyone, is just feeling nostalgic. He also wants to keep pushing out a video every week. The ragebait is also a strong draw for the numbers. Rake in a little money while you can because volatility of platform.
I'm 66 years old , been playing and listening to music for over 50 years , played in bands , paid stupid amounts for studio time , 2" tape , drum hire because they would not let us use our own kit , suffered at the hands of engineers and sound men that did not give two shits and treated the bands who paid their wages like garbage etc etc etc . Now I have a little set up at home that I use , some of the local kids come round and record for free just for fun , none of this could happen even a few years ago , technology is a blessing for musicians nowadays . If I ever start to think or sound like Rick Beato just lock me up and throw away the key !!
I'm 51. I've been listening to Japanese Vocaloid music. A Vocaloid is prerecorded vocals that are manipulated by a computer program. It's the most creative music in the world. A good example is 'Aishite Aishite Aishite' by Kikuo. But Vocaloid has tons of variety too.
What i was saying in my post, his entire rant was about how much better things were because the recording industry was behind it all, which by the way is his industry, and now you don't need NEED them anymore so music sucks now...
@BushcraftJunkee I saw his previous video. It was an angry response to someone comparing Taylor Swift to The Beatles. He went off on a similar rant about how all modern music was trash. He was talking all sorts of nonsense. Like that nobody knows how to play instruments anymore. Excuse me? The Beatles weren't particularly good at playing instruments. They were a boy band. Band-Maid plays every instrument much better than the Beatles and sings better too. So does The Warning. So do tons of modern bands. The Warning was better at playing instruments than the Beatles when they were still in middle school.
@neilsherer1766 Nearly every Beatles song is bad by today's standards. And you're the one comparing them to modern bands? They'd get laughed at. And not in a good way.
Has he forgotten that while music can be streamed, going to see a concert is putting your hard earned money toward the band you love. You have a band shirt? Guess what, spending hard earned money on music. Just because you aren't buying albums doesn't mean you don't love a band. Having physical media isn't always easy if you only have so much room, just like you said with your vinyl wall. You ran out of room and can't display them all. Maybe some of these kids don't have as much room for stuff so things like band shirts take priority because it's a physical item that has a daily purpose of being worn.
I live in a very rural area. To see a band it's no less than a 500 mile round trip. So yeh. The music is taking a hit because I stream for free and its literally to big of a headaches to see a live show.
Not only that, your access to finding more and new bands is so much better now. Back before streaming and really before MP3 players were commonplace, it was so hard to find new music if you didn't have a huge group of friends who shared it with. If you liked metal and it wasn't on the radio, it was a huge and expensive chore to try and find recommendations and then spend good money on a CD you have no idea if you'd like them. Now you can hear about a band, go listen to them on a streaming source and now have a new favorite band whom you then go see live. There's next to zero chance I would have ever discovered any of the metal bands I follow from Northern Europe without the much easier access to music we have today.
@@IkLms11 I remember in high school the only ways I found out about bands were from my older brothers, or the radio *shudder*... I can look at what my "local" rock station has been playing and guess what? IT'S THE SAME SHIT FROM 20 YEARS AGO! If it wasn't for "algorithms" and social media, I don't know how I'd know half the bands I listen to.
I commented on his video that a low threshold to entry for the music industry, which he is railing against, is a good thing. Giving artists control over their music by giving them the ability to edit and distribute digitally is superior to suits at a record label controlling what is produced. Rick’s video is the music equivalent of an elderly man yelling from their front porch, “get off my lawn”.
@@Name-vu1kn just because technology has advanced to a point where we can quantize drums and guitars and vocals doesn’t mean it’s bad. If those same artists who he said had to be good to get a record, had access to what we have today, they’d do the same thing.
@@Name-vu1kn and there’s is absolutely nothing wrong with bands who still record analog, or use tune amps. A lot of bands I listen to blend real amps with kempers or axe fx while recording, then there are bands who exclusively use plugins. Also let’s not forget he’s had Tosin Abasi, Tim Henson, and Devin Townsend not too long ago, talking about how they revolutionized modern music and have inspired new musicians to make music from home, the very thing he’s getting mad about in this new video.
actually, I disagree. the old days, there were major barriers to overcome to get signed. most bands never made it. You had to rehearse, maybe prune a bandmember who couldn't keep up, play in front of people, deal with hostile/apathetic audiences, get on tours, get better at your instruments, your song writing, your performing before labels would start sniffing around. They might sign you, get a producer to work with you, hone your songwriting, work with each musician to get the best out of them. And you end up a better musician/songwriter/performer. yeah, you might still suck, you might be great but get unlucky and get ignored, or maybe you suck but somehow you catch on, but overall, you survived the meatgrinder and you are better for it. now, no meatgrinder. I can sit in my basement, make music, odds are, it would suck, you don't bounce ideas off other band members, no producers, no hostile/apathetic audiences to sway, I'd imagine there's a whole lot of crap out there today because there's no real filter/meatgrinder to toughen you up, make you better.
I’m a 16 year old and in 8th grade my buddy introduced me to Megadeth and it changed my life. It’s stayed with me literally everyday since and has positively influenced my life in more ways than nearly anything else. I hate to see someone think that music doesn’t matter to my generation from someone like Rick. It’s not true at all.
At this point I have been playing folklore music for 20+ years and I think people keep forgetting, that there was music before the 20th century and it had very different functions. Let’s say you were born in an Eastern European village in 1930s. First of all, while you do have professional musicians, everybody would sing. It was an inherent part of everyday life and when a relevant situation would come up you would sing a song - either appropriate for the situation (work, wedding, funeral…) or you would sing how you feel. Often slightly changing the lyrics to fit your situation better. Many of the “professional“ musicians also did not know sheet music and purely learned by ear. Here are some of the complaints I have heard about the “good old music” Rick is talking about: People today can’t feel music, they must record it and they don’t sing anymore when they meet! How can you exist without singing with friends when you meet? Nowadays musicians always have sheet music! What is the point in that? Where is the skill of playing stuff by ear? The true musicianship is getting lost. Today people listen to records and only know 20-30 songs. How can you know so few? I know hundreds! You can’t go through life like that! How can you express yourself with so little? The concerts today are so much pre-planned. Once upon a time people would just shout what song they want you to play and the band would play it! And sometimes you would not know the song so you would learn it as the person was singing it. So yeah, you just need to go one generation back to find somebody complaining about the quality of musicians. If we want “better” music, then music education needs to be accessible so that kids can listen to and learn what is possible in music. Only then you can make the stuff Rick complains about understandable. You definitely don’t want to do it by going back and effectively restricting music and turning it into a precious commodity for a select few.
This. The bubble that Beato lives in has only existed for about 100 years. Before recording tech appeared and centralized control of music consumption took over, everyone pretty much had to make their own music or at least know someone in their family or local community who could. I think all these tools are democratizing that process again. No, we arn't all going to sound like Taylor Swift. But we are damn sure going to have a lot of fun not sounding like her.
You should go the metal concerts and/or metal festivals. I see kids singing all the lyrics. They do feel the music and btw I never seen a metal or punkband with sheet music on stage. I get what you are saying but I go to a lot of concerts (metal/punk) and see fans of all ages having a good time enyoing the livemusic and singing the songs. Don't know the folklore scene. Don't know if there are any new bands in that genre, but in the metal/punk scene there are a lot of good new and young bands playing there socks off. Ooh and I am 60 years old and I still enjoy seeing new bands live. 🤘😎
@@JanStuivenberg2810 I just got back from Masters of Rock 😊 I was referring to music Rick talks about. I personally am also not saying using sheet music is bad and while metal bands do not use sheet music on stage, many do use tabs and other forms of notation. I am 100% sure progmetal written down because you can’t just memorize it on the spot. Most music is probably written down at some point in metal. If a random nonprofessional metal musician wants to learn a metal song, they will most likely find some kind of tabs and learn from that. In the past everybody would learn folk songs exclusively by listening to them without writing them down in any form. These are songs by peasant rural cultures that survived only because of the oral tradition, one generation learning from the other. Luckily they survived long enough and people who did have musical education wrote them down at some point. This is different from classical music, that was being always written down even while it was being composed. However, just singing the lyrics in a separate event like a concert is still a very different way of participating in music than how it used to work in the past. It is a complicated subject from an ethnomusicological point of view. You also can’t really have new bands. Folklore is different from what is usually called folk music. Folk is about mixing old things with new influences - like folkmetal. At this point folklore is about taking the cultural heritage from your ancestors and preserving it for the next generations.
I'm sure other comments have mentioned this, but one major problem with Rick's viewpoints is his assumption that the amount of effort he and his friends put into consuming music back in the day was the same for his entire generation. Which it wasn't. This is almost like a version of survivorship bias, where Rick is failing to realize that his experiences with music growing up were not because of the way you had to consume music, but because he and his friends are/were naturally inclined to that behaviour. Hell, one of the most common memes about music in the 90s, and which people point to as leading to the rise of P2P file sharing (e.g., Napster) was buying a CD based on one or more singles from the radio, then realizing that you didn't like the rest of the album. Which, I would suggest, is how a large portion of the population engaged with music when it had to be owned physically - radio or music video channels notwithstanding. In way, the almost complete removal of the effort required to listen to music has made it *easier* to identify people who are passionate about music, because they will do things like purchase music in physical forms, buy merchandise from their favourite artists, attend concerts, etc. This is another spot where Rick is off - there are still people passionate about music who place a great value on it, and those people have, interestingly enough, become easier to spot.
This is very well put. From my own experience myself and a good friend were both VERY into our music growing up, completely different tastes but we both went on to music schools, and even then neither of us 'sat down and listened to albums' like this. We'd throw a new album on while we gamed but we just didn't behave like that.
I would disagree. it's one thing to like the popular stuff, be it what was on the radio, the video plays on youtube, etc. what suffers is the deeper cuts. the songs that aren't played on the radio, didn't have a video specifically made for it. Look at concerts today. Lots of 'fans' talk through most of a concert until the popular songs play. they jam out, and when the song is done and a deeper cut is played, they go back to talking. I've been going to concerts for over 30 years. It seems much worse today than it was when I was a kid. People used to buy the record/cd/cassette tape, and they would play the entire thing, maybe out of laziness (the hit was played, let me stop and dig around for the next disk... naw, I'll just listen to the next song, maybe after repeated playing, one starts to appreciate the deeper cuts. Like I said, go to a concert. do more people talk through a deeper cut, a song that wasn't a hit?
@@marctowersap8018 yeah you're remembering concerts back then a lot differently than I do. Yeah maybe there were more fans at the concert that liked the deep cuts. But concerts were also a lot cheaper and easier to get to, so a lot of times you'd go to see an artist you didn't know or llke all that much just to have something to do on a Friday night. (This is why I went to see MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice,) Just like now there were a few people who knew the words to every song but most just kind of danced and partied and only sang along to the hits. I've actually found that the people I've seen at recent concerts are generally more into the artists because why else would they pay $100+ to sit in mediocre seats?
@@marctowersap8018 I've also been going to concerts 30 years and remember things slightly differently. The 90s was the prime era of bands deliberately leaving popular songs out, and then being hammered by press and fans for it. Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth gigs pretty much came with a warning you weren't going to be hearing many of the well known songs. Nirvana dropped Teen Spirit, REM Shiny Happy People and the Beastie Boys Fight For Your Right.
@@marctowersap8018 I can't talk about back in the day of cassettes, because I was to young to go to concerts, but I can promise you than many, if not most, newer bands own their own success to streaming. Would I ever have seen Avatar live the first time if we couldn't listen to it beforehand? No. We might have discovered them around now, 12 years later, as something that is recommended in a store for being similar to other stuff I listen to. Same with so many other bands. I saw 100 bands last year. 66 of them I had never seen live before. Without streaming I would probably never have heard about 80 of them. Especially since almost none of them are really radio bands, even though almost all are internationally touring bands. And I don't see the thing you are talking about either, but that might be because I don't go to all those radio bands with 1 popular song. Sold out arenas, sold out pubs, sold out concert venues. It just seems to vary from band to band, and also time to time. But it doesn't seem to be a very common thing when people have bought tickets to any of the bands I see.
Good stuff man! The idea that technology LIMITS musical creativity is absurd, and I we should be happy that more people now have the ability to make music than ever before.
The one bit of context that requires watching a lot of Rick's other videos is that for the most part, he's not talking about "bands"... he's talking about crappy pop music. He doesn't really seem to be too cognizant of the modern hard rock and metal scene, particularly those bands that aren't from the US.
It's no secret that music made in a good studio with competent producers/engineers tend to sound better though. Most people do listen casually on bad audio equipment though so it's not in high demand. Such people tend to like overly compressed sound.
I just hope nobody is buying his music lessons. That is the opposite of helpful. Look at Fami. She started doing bass covers of Vocaloid on TH-cam and now she's in a badass metal band.
Rick Beato is a man who I respect enough to always listen to what he says, while simultaneously having enough self-awareness to know when he's just blowing hot air for the sake of it. It sucks that his content over the last couple of years has taken a much more pessimistic and jaded tone, because at one point I did watch ALL of his uploads and now that I think about it I don't think I've watched a single video of his in the last year and a half for this exact reason. It's a bunch of dated takes of "my way took more work so that means it's better" which is the producers version of "my song has more notes and they're played faster so my song is better." and what I really think this is at the end of the day of Rick Beato's existential dread of realizing "nobody makes music for ME or MY GENERATION anymore." I think what he fails to realize is that IF Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Deep Purple, The eagles etc what ever boomer music you want to plug in, HAD today's technology THEY WOULD USE IT, who wouldn't??? Rick is just a guy who comes off as a bitter old man who refuses to keep up with the times. He did say some things I agree with, but most of this video is just insufferable bs.
YOu are right, they would use the new tech. The amp emulators I disagree with Rick (just like you!), if I can play these notes, does it matter if I tweaked a few knobs or adjusted some 'level' in software? nope, still my notes my feel. There RIck was an old man shouting at clouds...
I want to see Rick Beato last one album cycle or tour cycle with Jinjer. Then he can talk all he wants about things being harder back in his day. This rich old man doesn't understand difficulty whatsoever.
I will say, in regards to his statement about how young people don’t appreciate music anymore, that, from a live show perspective, I’ve been seeing more and more young people going to the same shows I am, over the past few years.
I'm 46 and have the same experience at shows. It makes me feel optimistic about the future of music in general I think a lot of the kids are actually sick (bored)of their phones and want bigger, real life experiences like live shows if they are given the opportunity to see them.
but, are they enjoying all songs? or are they only enjoying the hits (and talking through the non-hits)? my experience is the latter. major annoyance because i like a lot of deeper cuts of acts I'm a fan of
@@marctowersap8018 honestly for where I go to see shows most of the time, about a 2000 capacity venue, they enjoy, jam out to, and stay for all the songs. But at bigger arena and stadium venues, yeah it’s mostly the hits that they are into. But I will say that, that’s the case for most people that attend those stadium and arena concerts, not just the young people. But that’s just what I’ve noticed personally at the shows I’ve been going to c
Or another question: are they able to enjoy concerts unfiltered and pure, just watching actually the show and listening to the music? Or solely through the lenses of their phones?
Technology has lowered the barrier of entry. Millions of people who had songs to give the world lived and died without ever doing so because the barrier to entry meant they never got a chance. How can you argue that was a good thing?
I always hate this notion of “amp modelers-bad, tube amps-good!” Because it is inherently a gatekeeper mentality when it comes to making music. I can’t afford to buy racks of tube amps, nor do I have the space or the ability to play them at their full potential. But what I can afford is a Line 6 helix, which has 100s of amps that I can mess around with and find my own unique sound. I’m doing the same thing guys like EVH and others did in studios, blending amps, experimenting with mics and mic placements on cabs, adding EQ and compressors, but now I’m doing it from one rig as opposed to several different rigs.
Yup, I also have a Helix and the stuff you can do with it is exactly the same you could do with an amp, even as far as choosing speakers and mic placements.
@@TankTheTech and correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t a lot of producers plugging tube amps into load boxes now, like OX Box or two notes captor x, and using IRs to experiment with mics and speaker placements?
@@mikesmoviemadness24 No, you're VERY right. Especially as more audio engineers have been coming up as freelancers in their apartments and making great records. In addition to needing a room that sounds good for amps, let's not forget about noise complains. Might as well use the technology available with IRs to get your guitar sounds from a capture of an actually good room--and a LOT of top producers/engineers like Jens Bogren have been leading the charge in making them sound more realistic (which at this point is starting to split hairs, but it does make a difference). And the fact that stuff is so accessible now is pretty awesome.
@@mikesmoviemadness24 Even in concert, they might have speaker cabinets on stage, but they are not using them, it is better to just take the clean signal before it hits the cabinet into the mixers.
I don't think that Rick's point was to demonize the amp sims, but rather the fact that when certain plugins became popular, it has caused several albums to have the same tone, and if so, I slightly agree with him, because since neural dsp became popular for its practicity and sound, I have seen several bands with the same tone, and when I see the q/a talking about their rig turns out that they use the same plugin or amp modeller, if you use real amps, even if you have the same model that another artist, the environmental conditions, the microphone, and the manufacturer's own inconsistency will make it sound different, I am not going to say that it is better or worse, because it is relative, but I think we can all agree that today the records sound very similar one to another
I get both sides of this argument , dont just expect technology to fix everything develop YOUR skill and use the equipment to augment YOUR mastery of music. Its a balance like everything....
You know what really caught me unawares? I was legit thinking the first point was addressing generative AI and how music can be made with with prompts in a machine ... which would actually talk about skill being devolved ... but no it was about technology which he himself uses.
I like the comment on his video from someone that met a guy who was an engineer for Led Zeppelin and talked to him about music production. The guy quite accurately stated "as engineers and producers we used to capture performances, now we create them". I think that's very true, and I think that is in part what Rick is talking about. Luckily I don't think the metal scene is as affected by this as pop music, but it's still certainly there. I think it's telling that something like an Ayreon live album has better audio quality than tons of bands in studio. I'm quite sure he doesn't throw auto-tune on all of his great singers either, even in studio. There's proper craftsmanship going on in that studio and it's audible.
I about lost it when he said that music isn’t as important/has no value to people because of streaming services. Like I’m sorry, I’m 19, music is a critical piece of my life. Music is so important to me, and I know I’m not alone in that. It’s crazy to say music doesn’t have value to younger people because it’s more accessible
My “boomer” take on this is how streaming services create a shortcut between consumer and a timeframe, and the relationship you create with the process of acquisition. Every object, models an experience, sometimes so intense, that culturally can be experienced as a fetish. Like the music cassette, the clicks, the manual rewinds, the act of recording music from the radio and all of those efforts to possess music. The importance of this is the timeframe and the experiences deposited between each event. Those things are so so important, and relevant… most of the modern experience is modeled around those experiences. The haptic experiences, the sounds, most of them as a reminder of how things used to be before everything became flat. Rick is not talking about those who can enjoy music, is talking about the masses who are missing the experience of building memories around music, but instead, they are consuming music just to prove the kind of consumer they are. The music falls on a secondary or tertiary level below “how am I as a consumer”, reproducing a thousand times, exposing myself on tiktok consuming, falling so deeply in love because a critic said so. Until the next release two weeks later! Because the artist cannot allow themselves to fall of the conversation and the hashtag relevance. Think about it as those people who swear and over-expose on social media they are so in love as long as it gives them likes. Then, two weeks later they are so deeply in love with someone else… it can devaluate the experience for those who witness those expositions.
@@cabezademuppetI don’t think the physicality or ease of access has any meaningful effect on someone’s enjoyment of music. It can be supplemental but I don’t think the connection is to the music but rather to the nostalgia of it all. For example, I remember my first playboy back when getting access to adult material was difficult. I had the same playboy for years because finding new stuff was tough for a minor. But that doesn’t mean I love playboy or have a connection to it. I just have nostalgia for the days when I had to keep a playboy hidden between my bed and my nightstand. I also have two meaningful songs in my life. One from my first album I ever bought and one I first heard on an animated video on TH-cam. Like 20 years apart. The first one just has nostalgia attached to it but the second one is just as meaningful for me. And I would say the second one has a deeper connection to me because now that I’m older I also understand why it’s meaningful for me. Thinking about it now actually, I think most of the music that I personally have deeper connections to came from the post-streaming era (napster) ironically enough, napster is probably what I’d credit as bringing me closer to music than anything else. But again, it’s not the medium, a lot of that is just nostalgia.
his point is, in the old days, we made an investment. We bought the music. Because we bought the disk/tape, we had to put it on to listen to it, and often listened to the entire disk, sometimes out of laziness (crap, I don't want to get up and change the media), and gained appreciation for deeper cuts, in part because well, I bought it. Today, I didn't buy it, music is more disposable. I listen to the songs I like, I can make playlists of those songs, and never actually have to listen to non-hits, the deeper cuts. that's his point. there's no investment in the album. You hear of artists complaining about that, I play a deeper cut, fans get up, go to the bathroom, get a refill, talk. They can see what's going on. Sometimes, a song has to grow on you and if you only listen to it once, it never grows.
I'm 54 and think that the truth is somewhere in the middle as far as the way we value music now versus then. When I was young in the 70s and 80s, I could only listen to what I had in my collection, most of which I bought with money that was hard to come by. I do feel that I valued my music more back then than I do now. It's not that we CAN buy music now, it's that we don't have to. And if something doesn't click right away, instead of listening a few times to give it a chance, we can just move on with a click to the next song or artist without losing anything. Some of the growers are some of my favorite albums and I'm less likely now to let an album sink in. It's too easy to move on. So, I get what Rick was saying there. As far as these days are concerned though, it's easier to find music now, especially from other parts of the world. We aren't nearly as limited. Also, I have a 20-year-old Niece and she definitely values music. When she likes something (Taylor Swift), she's all in and buys records and merch. It's a different time with different technology, but there's still music out there for everyone. That's what matters.
To say the youth dont value the music anymore because they dont buy physical medium is insane. Just look at the shift in the music industry where bands are finding success putting out behind the scenes or tour vlogs and seeing massive views. kids and even adults are getting excited to consume anything an artist they love puts out.
Ever wonder why? back in the old days, bands could survive on residuals from sales of their music. today, that's not true. They have to do extra stuff so people will keep streaming their songs, as streaming pays fractions of pennies per stream. I'm sure some of them would rather just relax after a show, sleep on the bus, read, watch stuff, 'enjoy' fans, etc.
the funniest part is rick saying kids don’t value music anymore. i feel like more people than ever are absolutely feral for artists, especially with stan/fan culture on social media. I’ve never seen people understand and love music like some of the younger people online. And as for him arguing that there is less value because we didn’t have to buy a physical copy- i can guarantee you (at least true for any mcr fan i know lmfao) we spend SO much on supporting our favorite artists and buying merch, it’s insane. Rick’s entire argument is essentially just what he thinks kids today think of music, which is wrong lmfao
I agree with Rick. Have you ever been to a concert in the last 5 years or so? More and more 'fans' talk through the non-hits, the deeper cuts, the songs they don't recognize. They only listen for the hits. I now wish bands would play the hits right off the bat. These 'fans' would leave once they no longer recognize the song, and the rest of us can enjoy the band play those deeper cuts without having to yell at people to STFU. Me yelling takes me out of enjoying the concert. People having a lot of choice, why waste time listening to a deeper cut that I might not like when I can just pick songs I already like? Before, I bought the disk, I listened to every track, grew an appreciation for songs that weren't singles. Is that the case now with younger fans? and are you really only talking about a subset of younger fans?
@@marctowersap8018 I have to say that I've never had the experience you have at concerts. Not sure who you're going to see. I have not seen a significant change. Bands almost always (at least dating back to the 90s when I started going to concerts) save the hits for the end of the set, especially the big one. I've seen NIN probably 6 or 7 times, "Head Like a Hole" was the last song at every single one of them. During the glam days, people would go get a beer during the drum solo. No one does drum solos anymore, so they either go during the ballad or during a song they're not familiar with. Make no mistake, even back in the day, people were still using the bathroom, getting a drink, or just getting out of the swamp of the audience periodically during the show, regardless of who it is.
@@travisspaulding2222 at old and new acts. Nine Inch Nails, Styx, Spiritbox, the Cure, Tool... I think only the metal bands get good behavior, Lamb of God, Meshuggah, people don't really talk during those bands. I am happy to not see many drum solos anymore (was like OMG a drum solo when watching Foreigner!) but then again, most artists I've recently seen probably never did a drum solo. Not saying people didn't go for drinks/bathroom. And honestly, I didn't care if they did, I mentioned the artists noticed it (I think Tom Petty said something about that, others too, likely wondering why tour for new albums when no one wants to hear those new songs, why even release albums, but like I said, artists mentioning it, not me) I care about talking. You want to talk during a concert? get up, go back into the hallways, the places where they sell food and go to the bathroom, you can talk without yelling. Otherwise, stfu. I know the behavior of artists, saving the big hits for last. I said because of talking i WISH they'd play the big hits first so the talkers can leave. they're happy, they leave so I'm happy. key word: WISH
@@travisspaulding2222A modern concert is practically unrecognizable from before. There’s a pretty talented sister trio group called The Warning, and I saw a video of one of their live shows. It is physically impossible to have less energy in a crowd.
@@marctowersap8018 i go to concerts all the time and I have had absolutely no problem. in fact, when I go to concerts for bands that are older, I usually only see the older people acting bothered/talking when the bands play anything other than the hits. obviously there are exceptions but in my experience, it's always the younger ones who are bringing the energy and are the most passionate. I do agree, some people only are there for the hits that they know and love, but that's not a thing that's exclusive to age, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because they don't know a song doesn't mean they don't deserve to be there. I went to a Thursday concert last year knowing only a few songs and I left the biggest fan and they've been one of my favorite bands ever since. And yes, it is easier for people to skip over songs when we use apps like spotify and apple music instead of physical media, but in my opinion, I think that makes it easier to listen to other music by the same artist+ discover similar artists based on that.
Also: Rick has always come across as a bitter old guy to me who is depressed because no one is as awesome as he is. I think the ACTUAL problem with all the music being pumped out due to accessible technology is that a looooot of the time lately it's not the good stuff getting famous, somehow some utterly bad sh** is topping the charts. It's actually very comparable to TH-cam: making videos has become soooo much more accessible than it used to be. Which means that TH-cam is full of tooooons of really bad stuff. But it also means that there is (absolutely, maybe not relatively) much more good stuff available. And if you find the good stuff, you will also never find lack of creativity in videomaking overall to be a thing. It's just that there used to be a (financial) hurdle for people who weren't reeeeeaaaallly passionate about music/videos to start doing it, whereas nowadays everyone can try it in a whim and put it out there.
I think the more music is out there the more GOOD music is out there as well. "Good" Music might *feel* harder to find. But that's also because we're spoiled for choice. We don't have to listen to an album over and over until we like it because we already bought it. We can find what speaks to us the first time. Think about all the probable musical virtuosos in history that never got the chance to release their genius because they never had the means to record it or even develop their skill.
On the point you made of one person usually making the whole album on their computer often times in modern bands, I'll add that someone making a whole album by themselves on their computer is really cool and I'm glad people have that capability nowadays.. at the same time, its EXTREMELY badass when 3,4 or 5 people can come together to make something really awesome as a collaborative unit, hence the term, band. I just find it really cool when a band has chemistry and like multiple unique pillars that come together to make a band truly awesome. One shouldn't take away for the other.
Along with increased access to music itself, there is also increased access to discussion/analysis of music. I personally have no talent, background or particular knowledge of music. For decades I just listened to radio and thought "I like this!" or "I don't like this." Any genius composition, impressive technique or extra effort went right over my head. Hardly Beato-approved levels of music appreciation. Now I have access to professional musicians, composers, professors, producers, and the occasional roadie. They can break down a song I've heard hundreds of times and pick out elements I've never noticed before (or even knew to listen for) and explain their significance. And now that I'm aware of how much more there can be to music, I find myself trying to find those elements myself, to understand the true effort that went into a particular performance. So contrary to Mr. Beato's second point, ease of consumption (and especially social media) has only increased my ability to appreciate and value the music I listen to.
I am 44 years old. I spent my time buying albums, cassettes and cds. I love how music is so much more accessible these days. I feel more comfortable going on Spotify or amazon music or whatever to test out new music than I would have spending my hard earned money to buy an entire album I may not like. I disagree with most of Rick's video, and I am a subscriber of his. Love his videos but don't always agree with him. Love your videos too, thanks for a good watch.
I am a little older, I used to spend time buying cd's. getting harder now though, cd's seem to be going the way of the dodo! Not a fan of albums, love the size, but hate that it's not portable and I have to get up to flip it over. Loved going to record stores, putting on headphones and checking out new music. I do like that I can youtube new music, new acts, go to concerts, go to dance clubs, see opening acts, soundhound songs I don't recognize that I find I like, then go buy the digital downloads of those new artists, and also seek out artists I missed when they were popular (life gets in the way of that, kids took away 10 years of music from newer artists!). I don't spotify or even amazon. I want to buy music I like so the artists earn more money so they can keep writing new songs and earn a living being a musician/songwriter. and yeah, I setlist.fm so I can see what songs the new acts are playing live so I can learn and love them too. I picked up music from swans, big joe turner, sleep token, big fan of amyl & the sniffers, drain, turnstile, and spiritbox (all new to me!), as well as the older acts (cure, ministry, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, cramps, joy division, accept, etc.)
@@marctowersap8018I do a little of both. I order physical CD’s and merch directly from the bands shops or buy them at shows so that I’m sure they’re getting my support but I do listen to the majority of it on TH-cam music because it’s easier than carting it around.
If you dig real deep, you can find the point I think he's actually trying to make, which is that when things are easy, it ends up stifling innovation and experimentation, which isn't entirely true either. Rick is usually well-spoken, but the points he made in this video were so muddled in "old man yells at cloud" energy that they didn't come through at all. The only point he made I agree with is that people don't simply sit down to listen to music anymore (me included, unfortunately). I'm old enough to remember sitting down with my friends to show them a dope new song or album I found, vibing with the music along with them, talking about the music as we listened to it, etc. That I don't see happening anymore and I agree with him that it's a net loss for all of us as music enjoyers.
Yes, but he doesn’t want to think outside the box. He is stuck in classic rock times. I grew up on that, and classic metal we all know. But Rock, and Metal are, and have been alive all along. 2000s Metal shifted moreso to Europe. Now it’s Japan. I don’t care I don’t speak Japanese. Music is universal. When a band reduces me to tears, and I feel emotion, yet I don’t know the words, it tells me all I need to know of the band. Nemophila song Life, Mayus vocal, and Hazuki, and Sakis guitars literally crying out, reduce me to tears. My EP of the year is Hagane Life goes on. Nagis vocal in chorus of Life goes on, gives me a warm feeling. The EP has given me inspiration, drive, after I dealt with heavy loss in Feburary. Beato doesn’t want to go find rock music, metal music. He’s still stuck here in the states, classic rock times. Those are called Aidirondack chairs. They are usually made with wood. Very sturdy.
I am a young person, I have seen my favourite band Blackbriar 6 times live. I owned 2 Blackbriar shirts, Fairy Of The Bog single and I have A Dark Euphony on vinyl. The implication that young people do not value as much is really hurtful to me as music has always been my escape. Well not always it took a bit to get there but here I am now wearing a battle jacket that has 2 band patches cut out from old band shirts, my back patch is Blackbriar btw. I went to Nena with my dad, Epica, Blind Guardian, Apocalyptica, Nightwish, Blackbriar, Lord of the Lost, Blind Channel and much much more. I show my support and love for music by going to concerts and I do have a growing album collection it is not much but I adore seeing my small collection inbetween my dad's larger collection. And among our vinyl collection there is my Universal Migrator part 2: Flight Of The Migrator by Ayreon resting against 01011001, Plan Nine and more from my dad's collection. That I value music this much is largely because of my father and my age has nothing to do with it.
There's something to say here though and I hope you get to read this. Yeah, it is generally better and nicer, on a surface level, for more and more creative people to gain access to easier ways to create and record music. It's nice that tech has evolved and we now have drum programming and amp simulations and virtual orchestras, digital tools translating from midi to reality all sorts of sonic adventures one may dream. Rick is likely not aiming at those kids - the "tortured" artists with a real voice and a real drive to make something worthy of listening. If I guessed it correctly, Rick's point is that creation is no longer neccesarily a labour of love but a product subjected more and more to shortcuts and uniformity. I can choose a chord progression premade from a midi pack I bought online, the likes of Unison literally have AI tools that generate bass, melody and effect chains for you so one can build a 2 minute track in 30 minutes or less as well. You can use free online tools to make a basic mix and master if you want to trouble yourself and it takes 15 min more to sign with a distributer and have "your" music on Spotify. From firing up the PC to getting a song up and released, it can literally be a journey of 2-3 hours, without any real creative input but your financial investment. I know this is not how you see music - this is not how I see music and the creative process either...but it's a pretty scary reality that may somewhat diminish in the eyes of a lot of decisionmakers what an artist is and how much their work should be valued at. A lot of kids misunderstand this power too and I fear wrong lessons are learned in the process. Sure, everyone can make music now... but that also means the value of a finished song is different. Yeah, when used right, all these digital tools are excellent helpers to bring a vision and an original sound to life... and we all assume they will always only be used the right way - the truth, however - as evidenced by Modern Radio, Spotify playlists and co - is that most often they are not.
Music is a product of the time. The tech did not exist "back in the day", but it does today and artists/producers are are using it to their advantage . Artists are also getting bigger these days due to the social media landscape and it's become more about the IMAGE and BRAND than the MUSIC. Huge oversight on his end.
"Artists are also getting bigger these days due to the social media landscape and it's become more about the IMAGE and BRAND than the MUSIC." You don't consider this a problem? This is literally what the terms "poser" and "sellout" were coined for.
I am close to Rick's age. And I could not disagree with him, more. I left being a regularly active musician, out of frustration back in 1989. If I was at that age and that point in my musical "Career" right now. I would not leave music. I would be producing my music at home and putting it out there myself. I love discovering new music. It was at the beginning of You Tube when my love for music came back. I started playing my guitars again and going to concerts with my daughter. Because I found all of the great bands that we would had never gotten to listen to with this technology, back in the 80s. There is so much out there and anyone can get thier music out there. And do it all at home. My son in law does it all of the time. And even wrote and recorded at a very high quality, music for my channel. As for this old guy and music today. It's the best it's ever been. If you looked at my favorite songs list on my Spotify. You would think it was a 20 year old's list. I've got 2 concerts in October that I am going to. My 6 year old grandson's favorite band Iron Maiden. And the other is one of my current favorite bands. Architects. Today's Metal is the best it's ever been. That's my "Old Man Yelling At Cloud" rant. Love the channel.
A long time ago many people listened to music on the radio. But not everybody purchased the music they enjoyed (on vinyl, tape, cd, whatever) on the radio. Music fans did, fans of specific artists did, music enthusiasts did, etc. But some just kept listening to the radio mix, without buying anything, except the device itself. The vast majority of people actually did it like that. Today it's streaming services, instead of the radio. And fans still buy vinyl, cds, digital copies - all of that stuff. Some still don't - just like before. So where is the problem? Only the media changed.
Don't forget the mix tape. Shitty copies of our favourite songs taped off the radio so we had a copy to listen to when we wanted. Especially if it was top 40 pop that was going to disappear in 6 months.
Love the Trent Reznor reference, Trent is the reason I ever opened up a DAW and wanted to make music. I write all the music in my band because I have all the tools at home, I do everything in the box with plugins...I do agree that music is over saturated due to how easy it is to release music, but I think its great for the diy artists.
Technical advances in the music industry do not automatically lead to worse music. Technology makes it easier to create music, even for people who have no classical musical training. But the results do not necessarily have to be worse just because they were created with the help of technology. At a certain point, despite all the technology, you cannot get any further without talent, creativity and musical feeling. Autotune is indeed something I dont like if its used to much but you can separate the crap quickly from the good stuff if you go to live concerts. No autotune can safe a bad singer in real life settings in the end. Easy check up: go and check out some accoustic stuff from your fav band and you will now.
A friend of mine is a rather great pop/rock singer - and he is pretty popular where we live. I've heard him sing live numerous times, I know he can belt it out. He is also a very old-school kind of a rock musician, so when I asked him about Autotune, I half-expected him to start ranting about modern singers using it. He just said he'd use it when needed - because it saved him time and money. Just mentioning.
Idk, maybe it's nostalgia in me talking, but I kinda agree to the point Rick makes that going to the store, standing in line and buying a record you were looking forward to meant more than it does today, when you can just click a button at 12AM, listen to 10 minutes of it, get distracted by a TH-cam notification about another video Rick made, click away and literally forget about the record. I'm gonna be the first to admit this has happened to me on multiple occasions, and, believe it or not, I have a REALLY good attention span. When I was a kid, I would check the music store almost daily after school to see if the CD I wanted but couldn't get was back in stock. The same story with video games. In-store midnight releases were a thing, an event. Now we just pre-add them and get to start playing the minute it gets released. Is it convenient? Of course it is. Are we just as emotionally attached to something we can easily get? I don't think so. This kind of also reminds me of when Columbia House was a thing and you were able to get CDs that were $10 for like 1ç. I ordered a whole bunch, but barely played any of them...
As I wrote as a response to someone else in the comments here, I feel like the reason for Beato's perspective is simply that he conflates his past experiences as a music afficionado with his recent impressions of pop music mainstream. He was always super passionate about music, and that's the bubble where he pulls his experience from, but at least since the invention of the radio, music has always been used by some people as background white noise or simply a commercialized product to be mindlessly consumed. He just isn't thinking about that, because "back in his day" he and his crowd were preoccupied with their own love and dedication for the thing. Now he looks at a music culture that he's not really part of anymore and only sees the surface level of it which is, to nobody's surprise, commercialized mainstream stuff being consumed mindlessly, and projects that onto everyone and everything music nowadays. There are people being as passionate and meticulous as he and the people he idolizes were back then, both on the producer and the consumer side, he's just not seeing them... and I'm kinda thinking he doesn't really want to see them.
I'm on the fence about this. On the one hand, I fully disagree with any sentiment about 'Young kids are not as emotionally invested in music as we were'. Just look at the way people discuss music. People get very invested in the stuff they like and, sometimes to a fault, will passionately argue about it. On the other hand, I do find it harder to find music I connect with, myself, because there is so much music out there. Its a similar problem to buying a game on steam - There is so much stuff constantly being added, its hard to find the gems that you will love. But that is not an argument for 'Music is worse now'. Theres just alot more of it - if anything its less an issue with the music and more an issue with discoverability (at least for me). Its why I love reaction channels - Its a good way to see new artists that are getting more popular. I have a long list of bands that I got into because I was exposed to them through youtube. Same goes for spotify - I find artists by just listing to random playlists or the 'radio' playlists all the time and when I hear something cool, I check out the artists other stuff. I agree with alot of people that this feels a bit like 'Old man yells at cloud'. Maybe its specifically a rage bait video for clicks, or maybe its a bit of rose tinted glasses and he just hasn't adapted to the way the music industry has changed and he doesn't like it. I dunno, but I find it sad that somebody as respected as Rick is making such negative content when there is so much good artists out there.
Man, I'm still catching up on music that was unavailable to me as a teenager, and the only reason I'm able to do that now is because of streaming! I didn't appreciate my music more when I had to defraud Columbia House to get my hands on it; I just didn't listen to as much music. That is such a wild take to me.
I agree with your point about the guitar amps particularly. Currently in the process of self-producing and recording an album with a band I'm in (in a shared practice room with not-so fantastic acoustics), and using cabinet sims for the bass and guitars has made life a million times easier. We're tracking the guitars and bass gradually over the course of weeks, months even, and it would be a nightmare trying to mic up the cabinets exactly the same way every single time, especially given how micro-adjustments can cause massive tonal changes. We're still using real amp heads for the core of the sound, and playing through the cabinets while we're tracking (can't make guitars feed back otherwise), but using the cabinet sims in the mixes has made getting consistent tones quick and easy rather than an uphill battle.
Im 25 so a kid in Ricks eyes. I have 23 band patches on the headliner of my truck and 6 more to go on soon, probably about 15 different band shirts and a few sweaters, and I drove 8 hours from Winnipeg to see Blind Guardian in Minneapolis. I have created about 25 playlists with up to 900 songs in 1 of them, totaling about 9500 songs. The younger generation does care about music, its just different. Also a band you should check out: Opal in Sky from 🇨🇦, positive metalcore/deathcore.
I'm a twenty year old guy that listens to mostly Metalcore, with a few additions in there like Skillet, Foo Fighters and Muse. When the record collections argument came up, I just could not resist the urge to look to my right and stare at my collection of around 60 albums, existing of bands I love and even video game soundtracks. Maybe for the mainstream listener music is not as valuable anymore, but even those people can get either emotionally attached to certain songs or decide to buy an artist's vinyl. I think Mr. Beato is underestimating the modern listener way too much. Methods might have changed, but people born 50 years later than him can still think the same.
@@davidpinney4091 That's exactly it. I feel like the reason for Beato's perspective is simply that he conflates his past experiences as a music afficionado with his recent impressions of pop music mainstream. He was always super passionate about music, and that's the bubble where he pulls his experience from, but at least since the invention of the radio, music has always been used by some people as background white noise or simply a commercialized product to be mindlessly consumed. He just isn't thinking about that, because "back in his day" he and his crowd were preoccupied with their own love and dedication for the thing. Now he looks at a music culture that he's not really part of anymore and only sees the surface level of it which is, to nobody's surprise, commercialized mainstream stuff being consumed mindlessly, and projects that onto everyone and everything music nowadays. There are people being as passionate and meticulous as he and the people he idolizes were back then, both on the producer and the consumer side, he's just not seeing them... and I'm kinda thinking he doesn't really want to see them.
@@rarazalproductions519 yeah, that’s pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to. He just doesn’t want to see it. It’s a shame too since he could really be helpful in promoting some of the great modern bands out there.
the "Music Is Too Easy To Consume" part makes me... emotional!! Music means so much to me and as you said... it helped me through my darkest times and still does so. Those moments, when you cry tears and put on your favourite song, cause it helps you to calm down and stop crying... Those moments at concerts, when the lights go out and you just know you can forget all your problems and all the pain for the next 1-2 hours... It makes me really angry and kinda hurt me if people of older generations like Rick claim that music doesn't have the same value on us as younger generations anymore. cause it f*cking does!! also... the point about buying music... yea... of course it's super easy to put all your favourite songs in a playlist on spotify to listen to it, but that doesn't mean, that people don't buy stuff... I've got (nearly) the whole Electric Callboy collection in my showcase + some more bands... actually... not to listen to it, cause I've got nothing to play them, but to have it and to support the band. At work I was already asked, if I still got something else than band merch in my wardrobe cause I've got so many. This passion to talk about your favourite bands and music is still there. I do it everyday. This passion to just listen to music, to the instruments, to the lyrics and to forget everything around you is still there. I do it everyday!
but, here's where I agree with Rick. Many people only like the hits. before, when you bought the music, it was an investment. You played that disk, first for the hits, but you gained an appreciation for the non-hits, the deeper cuts. Today, going to concerts, it can be frustrating when people just talk over the songs they don't recognize. I don't remember that back in the 80s and 90s. Seems every concert today, I'm having to tell people the STFU, I paid money to hear the artist, not you. I think that's a symptom of the disposable music. That deeper cut? never heard it before, it means nothing to those 'fans', so much that it's not worth listening to.
@marctowersap8018 cannot confirm this, to be honest... yea of course, there are bands / artists you know / like only the hits, but I would not necessarily call them fans of these artists then. imo you are a fan and buy CDs and merch and go to concerts of bands you like more than only the hits. That's at least the way I would define a fan or at what point I would call myself a fan. And as I said... this still exists a lot in the younger generations. I don't wanna say that those... I don't know how to call them... "hit-fans" don't exist either, but imo it's wrong to say that this is the only way the younger generations experience music. Same with the concert experience you talked about... I (gladly) never experienced something like that by myself, but it's totally disrespectful to talk while the band is playing, especially in a way that is disturbing other fans. But maybe it soothes you when I tell you that there are many many fans in the younger generations that would never ever do something like that 🙇🏻♀️
I saw what Rick was really in about recently when he managed to get John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend for an interview and the question of amps vs plugins came about. Each gave their opinion and Rick kept bringing the same question back numerous times because their answers were not what he wanted to hear.
I'm a boomer (born in '61), and I did all the same things he did back in the day. However, I haven't bought a CD in years. I rely on Spotify and TH-cam to find new music. I do occasionally listen to my old favorite bands, like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but TBH, I could live the rest of my life without listening to Stairway to Heaven ever again. But in the past few years I've been listening to bands that are new to me and loving the experience: Lorna Shore, Slaughter to Prevail, Sleep Token, Avatar, etc. I don't care what they use to create their music. I've subscribed to Rick's channel for a long time and I do agree with him that a lot (if not most) of pop music is pretty inane and mindless, with forgettable lyrics. But I was never a pop music fan. Thanks to an older brother, I've been a metalhead since I was 10 years old. But I'm also a fan of the blues, jazz, world music, goth, folk, etc. I think that's one of Rick's problems, that he focuses too much on the pop charts when he discusses new music on his channel. He needs to remember that there is lots of new jazz artists, creating new jazz music, for example. His video just plays into the stereotype of us boomers being stuck in the past, believing that our old ways of doing things were the best and that we have nothing in common with the younger generations. Attitudes like his will never bridge the generation gap.
I think he forgot that everything is easier because of technology. Everything accessible is better because some are digital nowadays. I support the artists that I love by buying subscriptions to any platforms so I can listen to their music whenever I can.
I've been a musician since I was a kid, mainly singing, trying to follow in my parent's footsteps. But I didn't have access to all the instruments and time to learn them. I used whatever I could at the time to write everything from scratch. As tech got better my songs did too. I still long to play live in a band but I haven't found the opportunity or time now that I'm a dad in my later 30's. I play enough piano to get me by and everything else is programmed. I still wrote it. I still chopped and moved all the pieces, placed all the notes, played as much as I could with a midi keyboard. And then of course I sang over it all, without autotune because I don't know how to even use it. I wish I could make it all more polished, but in the end the music is just for me anyway. Some people have some mad talent but they just don't have access to all the pieces so they need to fill them in how they can. Without that we would miss out on hearing that talent. I can't speak for every genre but I'm sure 90% of the rock/metal guys digitally writing entire songs would rather be in a band playing shows. Are we supposed to gatekeep that creativity because they just didn't have enough connections to get a real band together at the start? Fucking shame. And I do respect Beato a lot but he needs to aim more accurately at the trash music and not this entire generation as a whole.
When I was studying at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, in the early 1990's there were people saying the same thing about midi and early ProTools. Now midi and ProTools are a mainstay in music production. 30+ years from now, some old timer will be complaining about how digital music modeling, needs to go back, to the way it was done in 2024. Old people always complain about, how things used to be better. 9 times out of 10 things weren't better, they were just different.
Boomers say there’s no good music today when all they have to do is spend a minimal amount of time sifting through music streaming platforms the same way they used to sift through physical albums at a record shop. Eventually you’ll find something great. If you only listen to the radio, don’t expect to hear anything mind blowing.
@@shawnbell6392Yeah, the no good music narrative is infuriating. I’m almost 50 and have found so much great new music out there. If people would just spend a little time looking they’d be amazed…of course they also have to stop listening to all the old stuff long enough to do the looking.
20:50 It doesn't matter if you disagree, it's damn near an objective fact. Music - and entertainment in general - is far more disposable and fleeting than it ever has been. Artists, songs, and albums cycle through the Top 40 much quicker than they did in the 90's, 80's, or 70's. People jump much quicker from one album or hit single to the next, and the algorithms are definitely helping this by always pushing for a New Big Thing. You cannot deny that this is the reality we are currently in.
Am getting a definite 'man shouting at cloud' vibe from this, think Rick was going for ragebait but conflated some vague idea around modern music with doomscrolling and put this out for a reaction. Completely agree with Tank's comments about music consumption and appreciation - let the listener choose for themselves.
I’ll give you an example of an artist who has a stripped down setup, but yet gets massive results-Brand of Sacrifice (they’ve been featured here) Leo, who is their songwriter, lives in Connecticut, and does all the guitars, synths, and samples. Kyle, their singer, lives in Toronto. Neither member has studio monitors (they use headphones) and I don’t believe Leo has an amp. He also does all the mixing and mastering. I don’t believe the drums are programmed, but I but I could be wrong. When they play live they have a live drummer. The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t need a lot to make professional sounding music, and you don’t even have to live in the same country, and that’s pretty cool. It’s why The Record Plant a big recording studio in California just shut their doors after being in business for a couple of decades.
Dude, You came into this with an attitude. He has a point. You are on a rant. I watched that video. Watch the Music Mafia video. At the end, you'll hear the context of this video. His concerns are mostly about the music industry and artists' ability to make a living. And the ability for any musician or non-musician to crank out stuff that the music industry can sell and pay squat for-- not working for is a problem. You are on a kids vs boomers rant. He's talking about the music industry.
Rick do have an interesting and valuable perspective, not as a gatekeeper but as a witness of how valuable aspects or creativity get lost, specially once every aspect of production is just so fast and homogenized. With Analog equipment you can intervene in a granular way, but digital has a closed system where everything is tied to fixed results, algorithms, no micro-tonalities. I don’t think Rick is saying that music is reserved for rich sybarites. It’s important to remember who he is talking to. Not to producers but to consumers. Once the consumer gets a glimpse about how music is done, how different things sound, they can differentiate what is done with a deeper level for those who want it. As a producer, or aspiring one, Rick’s message can entice to try and build using different resources, avoiding this FOMO that is killing creativity, pushing a lot of people into the same boxes, because music is not about talent no more (mainstream), but about likes, industry malpractices, and cult. Under this ugly circumstances, a lot of resources from a limited ecosystem, are focused on reiteration until the next viral trend is imposed.
If that’s his goal, wouldn’t it be more effective to spend time highlighting the artist that aren’t shoehorned into those mainstream boxes? Those that still innovate and work hard to create quality albums full of diversity. There’s a lot of them out there if people just put in a little effort to look for them. Spend some time highlighting the new artists that are not doing the things he complains about instead of completely ignoring them or just dismissing them at best. He could actually give the consumers that glimpse you talked about instead of focusing on negativity and the cookie cutter stuff that makes up most of the charts now.
@@davidpinney4091 Rick usually do that. He interviews a lot of talented individuals. While at the same time they talk about music and other talented musicians, projects, etc. Even at the cringiest Rick’s videos about spotify top 10, Rick, guitar on hands, listen and deconstructs music for his audience to learn a bit more. Sometimes it’s just to technical, but at the end, he just don’t randomly hate all tracks. Sometimes he even praises those that are good or the bits within a song (which can be bad) that are relevant. Hating Rick’s arguments at this moment is just like hating pineapple on Pizza 😂
The greatest music in western music "ba ba ba bom". Four notes. Smoke on the water. Four notes. What is a song in rock or pop? "I dont like hypnotics...rock is an obsession with the mama heartbeat....I'm trying to break up the hypnotics". - Captain Beefheart, 1978 I've heard fantastic music, its just not on the RADIO anymore. Its not 'corporate' and it doesn't unify the entire country the way the 'american top 40' used to, which scarily enough, in my rural area with shit radio STILL plays on weekends. I live in a rural canadian province and during covid watched a group of 60 plus geezers who made up a steel drum band and it was better than 90% of most of hte music I grew up listening to. RADIO has always been a plague. The old man disease is thinking that we WERENT suckered by the music industry. Everybody SHOULD know that usually the 'hit single' on most albums was the least interesting song on the album. But blaming KIDS is the most elitist thing I can think of. Kids now are getting music from ALL generations. I'm blown away by how much great music AMATEURS are producing. THANK GOD the music industry is dead. If only we could get control of radio to stop playing shit then maybe more amateurs could at least buy lunch.
Some time ago I moderated the Twitch channel of a friend who wrote songs on stream. He used amp modellers, drum machines etc. Did the vocals and guitars himself. And even if he did none of those things he still wrote the songs himself. Sounds to me the only real threat to music is if people lose the ability to write good songs/riffs/vocal lines/etc. And somehow I doubt that will happen.
Actually if you lived in a city there were on some corners up to 5 record stores within a minute's walk. Plus the electronics stores had record sections and all department stores had record sections. If you lived in a smaller town there'd be at least two within five minutes walk of each other. Not to mentioned used record stores. Finding records was easy, paying for records was hard.
Yeah, Rick probably doesn't even interact with kids today outside of his own family. I worked as a voice and piano teacher for a couple years and talking to teenagers that love Paramore, MCR, or other artists that were first getting noticed when I was in high school is awesome. If you treat the younger generation like intelligent, and with respect you can have great conversations. When kids get nostalgic with me about the early 2000's and I tell them about burning CD's or before then when you'd record songs from the radio onto a tape they just think it's fascinating.There's more interest and respect there than a lot of Millennials, Gen X, or Boomers give Gen Z or Gen Alpha.
Back in the day we could only listen to music when it was played live. We had no easy record players that could play music on demand! Multiple takes? Back in the day every take was a final take for the audience. No room for mistakes! Kids like Beato just do not understand.
I had only watched his "Old man yells at cloud" video, which was his response to comments. Funny, since the clips you played really come off as that. I get some of his lament that the specialness of buying a record and listening to it has gone away, but I think the tradeoff has been immensely better. The Internet really opened up the amount of bands that I'm exposed to. One of his favorite bands is Karnivool. That's a band I never would have heard about without the Internet, because they are Australian, and unless you became huge, it was highly unlikely you'd get much exposure outside of your own country. As for, do kids value music, I can say mine does. She's always listening to music, and occasionally exposing me to what she's listening to. I've in fact gotten her to go to ProgPower USA with me a couple of times, since our tastes do cross over a bit.
Just to add to that, if it weren't for the internet, we wouldn't have the success of Bloodywood or The Hu, cause there's no way a band from New Dehli or Ulaanbaatar would get THAT famous otherwise. Now you have The Hu opening for Iron Maiden in the US in the coming months! There's no way any of us would know of them otherwise.
Well, that was an embarrassing hot mess, the very definition of "OK Boomer". I couldn't agree with you more strongly Tank. I'm seeing the exact same thing happening in the film industry as well - the Old Guard talking about how people aren't creative anymore because technology, bla bla bla, while the technology IS the innovation. We use what we have at hand: you can't tell me these guys wouldn't have used these technologies had they grown up today. The ACTUAL crux of the problem is, all these men who have traditionally controlled these *very* exclusive industries are becoming irrelevant because they don't understand modern music, but ESPECIALLY, they are losing control over who gets to access to this space. They can no longer decide who gets to work with them, compete with them, who gets to succeed. They are losing control. It's not about "music back in the day was better", it's about control and money. For the film industry, phone cameras were a huge equalizer (which is why Netflix now has stupid requirements for which camera the films they'll accept need to be shot on, except they'll still happily buy Steven Soderbergh's films shot on iPhones and tout it as something revolutionary, it's pure exclusion), and it sounds like all these technologies in the music industry are kind of functioning the same way. So him talking about whether or not people are less creative, innovative, etc is irrelevant. He is basically showing his fears: he's feeling increasingly powerless and irrelevant and confused because he can't keep up. A lot of people who traditionally didn't have access to making music (or film), i.e. marginalized folks, poor folks, non-nepo babies, people outside of the big cities etc, are getting access to these industries - we are living in a VERY exciting time because we get to experience so many more sounds and ideas that were previously being gatekept by dudes like him. He needs to focus on mentoring and passing the stick rather than punch down and complain. And maybe he should try talking to young people some time, because he clearly hasn't engaged with any gen z or alpha fanbases - holy fuck, K-Pop much?!
I worked for the company that made these chairs. Tue quality control was all OVER the place. Most of them are supposed to support 250 lbs minimum, and they barely can hold 200.
20:20 Beethoven, Bach, Mozart ... remember when you had to put in the effort of working in the mines, riding to town on your horse just to buy a piano and mail the artists for a copy of the notes so you could play their works at home?
What he's talking about with quantizing making sterile, crappy music ... The last time I was in the studio, no one in the band is quite sure what happened but we were doing live tracks and we caught a MAJOR groove. The sound and the performance were absolutely "top of the world, Ma".... The timing was a bit fluid- not majorly, but not to metronome... kinda how Zeppelin would sound occasionally. We came out of the session high-fiving and walkung three feet off the floor. When we did a listen the next day, he had moved the drums around until it was exactly on time and with zero variation. That meant he had to move everything else to be dead on right to click, set your watch to it. The track lost the groove. It didn't have the vibe it did the day before. I have no hassle with technology. It makes stars of people who have no business being in the industry, but used properly, technology can be useful. Putting everything to exact beats and taking out the performance sucks.
@@TankTheTech I just choose to not be part of this criticism culture, he did what he wants and people are just reactivand not stating their own original thoughts. I gave the video a like but I ain’t watching, I’m just tired of the “responding to the out of touch boomer”. Gonna enjoy ricks and your next video!
Dude, another thing. Yeah, it is very important to pay attention to the albums that you get, is like reading a book while you watch a series in Netflix, you can not do both. The people who make an album, they hope you pay attention, that you analyze it, that you think with it.
Rick was a big inspiration for me years ago but now i look at him as a cautionary tale. In a few years he went from excitedly training about the greatness of music to complaining about how it's all terrible. Negativity gets clicks and Rick is sure making sure he gets them
Imagine if the Olympics wasn't the best athletes, it was the most popular athletes. Not the fastest, the best looking. Not the strongest, the best at posing for pictures. I think that is the issue that I have. I'm fine with some small time indy artist using auto-tune or drum machines. But seeing someone winning Grammys that does bothers me.
But why? Music isn't a sport or something where you test the best of people's abilities. It's creating art that people can connect to. Unless I'm mistaken, your analogy basically says you wouldn't mind if amateur athletes were juicing steroids, but the Olympic level athletes shouldn't.
@@TankTheTech I'm an old punk rocker, so that may be my issue. I just don't think someone should be considered a master class musician, if they can't play an instrument at a master class level. Someone shouldn't be considered one of the best singers of their generation if they use auto-tune to sound good. When I was writing my analogy I was picturing a rich kid on a Segway, winning gold in a marathon. Passing by the athletes who actually trained for years to run. I'm all for kids beating the shit out of a guitar, or computer, to make noises go rrrrrrrrwwwrrrrr and throwing shitty poetry on top. I eat that up, it's punk as fuck. But let's not pretend they're skilled musicians. If that makes sense?
@@JuniperHedge This got a little long, sorry for that, but either way, here goes: I will not comment about any sort of award shows. I hate those, almost all of them are subjective and it shouldn't matter what those have to say in my opinion. But! As Tank said, it's not a sport or contest or whatever. If you do want to look at contests then yes, auto tune might not be ok when you want to look at who sings best. And yes, when you want to find out who plays the guitar best you may not want someone with a computer to show up. But I believe that's not what matters here at all. It's about music, about art, about whether the creator spent their time and love on the project trying to make something of high quality and maybe even about whether that resulted in something that others want to listen to because they enjoy it. And personally when I can enjoy a song as a whole I don't care if it includes a bit of auto tune or a sample or if a computer was used for the drums. If someone isn't playing the guitar very well, then yes, that person isn't a skilled guitar players, but that is entirely unrelated to whether that person is a skilled musician or not. In my book, if they can create music that entertains people they're good musicians and using computers to create music is an entire skill of its own that I wouldn't dare to talk down on.
@@johannes.kielmann you don't think using computers to make music is like using AI to "paint" a picture? Is someone good at plugging prompts into MidJourney, who has a big fan base, as good an artist as Monet or Picasso?
@@JuniperHedge Using a computer program to create the drums and using AI to create the drums are two different things. If you want a computer example for drawing then perhaps using a program and a drawing tablet instead of a good old oil painting. I 100% believe that someone using a program to build their beat is just as much a musician as someone who is recording what they play at the drums. I wouldn't call the person using the computer a drummer, but I don't think anyone wants to. With AI it gets a little more dicey. Sure it may not be the same kind of effort, maybe also not the same amount of effort, but in the end, yes, I think it's just another tool whether I like what it produces or not. Now whether AI is a morally correct tool is a different topic, let's not go into that one. Also you mentioned Monet and Picasso. Do you think their art is good? Monet I can agree with, Picasso not so much. It's subjective after all. I don't have to like what artists do, they still are artists.
The comment about this being a dumbed down version of a complex conversation seems to me to be spot on. My feeling on the video was that it was a summarised version of a lot of topics that came up in many of the interviews and discussion videos he's done in the last few years. All of those videos had more context, nuance and and historical progression of the ideas.
Technology and ability to create music freely from home gave me a literal life purpose. I am 22 years old and I've been recording/mixing/writing music for over 6 years by now and the thing that I personally enjoy the most is helping people make their ideas and dreams come true. I've lost count of how many of my friends had their own songs and just couldn't figure out how to bring them to life, so I helped them. And oh boy, that fire that ignites in their eyes when they first hear their own song fully recorded and mixed is the greatest joy I've ever experienced. I honestly think that if recording and making music wasn't that easy now a lot of these people would just quit and never record or do anything with their art, me included. Not everything has to be made in a professional studio and I firmly believe that some things simply doesn't need to. And I'm not even talking about how people could easily start to learn stuff with modern technologies and become a qualified professionals later helping make music better
On the whiskey community they have a phrase that says: "The best whiskey is the whiskey you like to drink, the way you like to drink it." and i think this applies to music as well, the best music is the music you like to hear, the way you like to hear it. SO, to a guy like Rick, saying this is just forcing his views, beliefs and opinions down the throat of the audience, just because of his influence, in my opinion.
I understand some of your points and some of Rick’s points. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. :-) What has really changed for me as a listener is the “just sit down and listen” approach to an album... I’m much more distracted today, like most people i think, and I miss that way of listening to full albums. I know that’s up to me how I listen to music, but it’s easier said than done. It just takes one “less good” song for me to skip to the next track or switch to another band on Spotify. It’s just one click away, so you don’t even think about it. When you listened to a vinyl, you listened to the full album, one “bad” song wasn’t enough to make you change the album. But that’s up to me, and I can live with this “problem.” It’s just easier to get distracted today, and this just happens.
I've been making music for 50 years and I'm increasingly tired of hearing the same complaints from musicians in my age group. Be it about modern music, equipment or playing techniques. "Oh, everything used to be so much better..." Shit NO man, it wasn't! Everything is whining at a high level. After two herniated discs, I am grateful that there are usable AMP modelers on the market and that I don't have to carry heavy equipment around like I used to. We can compose, arrange and practice over the internet without me having to travel hundreds of kilometers each time. I have a small home studio at home that produces very good results for demos. Where was that possible before without spending a lot of money and mostly getting junk in return? I can only think of one piece of advice for Rick. If you don't move with the times, then you move with the times.
'Music is too easy to make' boils down to excessive reliance on technology. Basically you no longer need to be able to play any instrument in order to make music, you just need to know how to use the various recording software available well and you can produce all the music you want. The problem is that there's only so much you can create without the actual instruments, so all of modern music(regardless of genre btw) starts to sound the same because they all use the same tools and in very similar ways. Than you add auto tuning, quantizing, etc, to 'fix' mistakes and you lose the last portion of the soul music used to have. After all us human beings are imperfect creatures, we can't truly achieve perfection. Thus we find beauty in the flaws and imperfections. Modern technology allows us to 'fix' these flaws and imperfections but in the process loses what makes it human made. Perfect is well, boring, and also very linear so actually achieving perfection removes a lot of variety from the music, as the variety mostly came from ways of dealing with/compensating for the imperfections. So yes, making music is much more accessible today, and that's absolutely wonderful for hobbyists. However when the professionals, as in those that make a living from making music, rely on these technological tools as crutches too than that's where the problems begin. To put it bluntly, the gap between amateurly made music and professionally made music is ever shrinking and it's not because the amateur music reaches professional levels but rather because the professional music drops to amateur levels. Now that's not to say that all uses of technology are bad, far from it. Using technology as a crutch is bad. Using technology to enhance actual creative music is good. Trent Rezner that you mentioned is a perfect example of the later. The 2 songs you showed with Rick's credits on is a perfect example of the former. You called Rick a hypocrite because of it but I strongly disagree. Rick may have worked on those songs but that doesn't mean he was happy about the way things were done. After all most people, not just Rick, aren't always happy with what they have to do at work, in fact I dare say most people are unhappy about the things they're forced to do at work and only do it because it earns them a paycheck... So yes, Rick has a lot of song credits in utterly generic garbage music, which he himself hates, but it paid his bills at the time so he did it... Doesn't make him a hypocrite, just a person dissatisfied with his job(at the time) and with the way his industry(the music industry) has evolved and the direction it's headed towards.
Hey Tank, I had to drop a quick comment here to support this video. I was to a concert where a band lost their backing track and could not get it working. After trying to get it working, they finished the concert without it. They still sounded great. Was the music a little less full sounding, maybe, but the songs sounded great to me. Technology helps make music, but it takes more then tech make a song great. Technology is just another tool. Different music speaks to different people. If we all liked exactly the same kind of music, i think it would be boring lol.
One thing I agree with, and I started to feel this way for a long time now, is that the ease with which we can create music these days has great benefits and also some downsides. I think him mentioning all the tools, samples, autotune, etc. wasn't him trying to say that we shouldn't use them or that it's frowned upon. I think he's talking about listening to music these days and going "oh yeah, those are Superior Drummer samples blended with some GDD" or just listening to people using presets. Like from a production standpoint, which is where I think he also factors in with the entire package of "music", there's a laziness to just get the thing out there. "Let's not bother getting the best take we can, we can just fix it in the box" is something I've heard SO many times and you wonder if there is some potentially great stuff that just gets lost because of convenience whereas a band paying thousands for studio time, for getting records distributed, etc. would be thinking "Fuck I need to make this the best thing ever or I've just wasted everyone's time and money". There's also the innovation thing where back in the day, the Beatles would be like "I want this snare drum to sound like a cornflake in Apple Minor" and they'd experiment and find that particular sound with that particular technique, whereas these days it's all in the box and you're limited to what the software allows you to do. I agree that it's a "dumbed down" version of his points and it does give off boomer vibes because all the things I mentioned above are totally fixable if people truly wanted to. I mean, back then the reason they needed to innovate was because of the limitations of the tech they were using, so I mean, I don't see how this is any different today. The big question really is "do artists/producers want to?" and that's an entirely different discussion. What I do think is creating shit music is this obsession with the next "viral" thing and sometimes it feels like people are just throwing shit at a wall and hoping something sticks and it's over saturating the market. There's TONS of great music being made these days, and just like producers and bands wanting to be innovative in the creative process, listeners just need to actually do some work and find it.
If there's one thing that i kinda agreed with 50% is its easier to consume makes it less valuable, im in my early 20s, i had that feeling slightly last year for about maybe a week. Why? Overabundance of choice. But that was connected to just the whole concept as a whole I contemplated during the time. Then, when i just sat down and listened to records front to back on streaming, that's now just my main way of listening to things i haven't heard. Digital or physical, its all down to how the individual chooses their methods to listen, discover, and appreciate music.
As someone who isn’t in Rick’s similar age group (I’m 31), I still agreed with a lot of what he was saying. Re: the drums, this has been part of my biggest gripe with modern music. I understand why bands have to do it, but it just sounds less ‘soulful,’ for lack of a less corny term, when the drums are too perfect. It’s like how the videos of Eloy playing drum covers with essentially raw audio are much more interesting to watch than these drums videos that have been heavily edited. In my opinion, music sounds better when it sounds like a bunch of guys jamming in a room together. It’s an intangible. As far as music being devalued in today’s era, I think there’s some value to it. Because the lack of sales via physical media, and because music is cheaper to make, labels are more focused on pumping up streaming numbers as opposed to bands needing to put together a full album that justified the cost for a fan to purchase the whole thing. I’m not going to buy a $35 vinyl record that has 3 good hits on it and then a bunch of duds. But if streaming is the focus, I think it’s more about throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what fits. And with music being easier to make, it’s great to help talented artists get their music out there, but it also means there will be endless amounts of mediocre, copycat musicians trying out hop on the current wave and put out something that’s already been made a thousand times. It’s not to say that music today isn’t great - there are plenty of current bands I could name that are. But it’s muddled in a sea of a lot of music that a) sounds way to similar b) is kinda surface level c) sounds too sterile and d) is just not that interesting to listen to. It’s a big reason why a band like Knocked Loose is killing it - they have a raw sound that’s produced well (and doesn’t have that INK overly perfect production to it). Just my take as a millennial who loves 70s/80s music as much as the current stuff
My first solo single where I did all of the instruments was me with a midi drum plugin played via a midi piano, a guitar, a bass, vocals, and the Helix Native plugin from Line 6 doing a very NIN inspired song. I've since learned how to actually program drums and released a couple of other singles, and in my full band, my bassist and I both send in tracks complete with drums, bass, and guitars, ready to get into the practice spot for everybody to put their own spin on it. The tech makes all that really easy these days. Also, I listen to music on streaming all the time, and have over 750 albums on vinyl in my collection right now.
Thinking about this, only part I could agree with is that top charts stuff tends to sound very look-a-like generic. That is probably enabled by things like samples and lining up everything on the grid etc., but it's not like that's mandatory. As tank said in the country example, it all kinda being the same is the point in that case because that's what vibes with their audience. Idk who really is at fault here then, people listening to it if they like it? Like sure if we did not have the tech it would be way more complicated to have all the top songs use same 4 notes and have same tempo and whatever but I suppose if people could, they would. With that in mind, just because chart topping song are done that way for broadest appeal, does not mean very cool unique stuff cannot get made using same techniques. The reality I think is that "generic" sound just has the broadest appeal. When you make unique stuff, just because it's very complex and "good" music does not meat it will appeal to everyone since that feeling is very subjective. The only thing that startles creativity IMO is that this "generic" sound was found, so the pattern exists and if you want to target the largest mainstream audience, it's gonna be hard to avoid it. But that's more of a "product" thinking than making music isn't it, your expression is being replaced by target audience. Likely this is just jab at super mainstream. Like damn it people why are you fine with listening to this generic stuff and not getting offended about it, lol. Anyway that's like the only argument of his I see to stick. All the other stuff makes no sense, technology enables greater creativity if anything, and music streaming allows you to explore more music without needing to buy/rent millions of records a year. And it's not like I'm not gonna have feelings when listening to the Black Album just because I play it on Spotify.
I'm glad you talked about the advances of the plugins. I lived through the changes and I remember the warm sound of my tube based analog radio compared to my first solid state radio. Even with missing some of that older technology I still don't think music is worse or less innovative (FIR), but there's a difference. Maybe it's just nostalgia, because memory is very imperfect. I miss drive-in theaters but I remember those crappy corded speakers you hung on your window before they started broadcasting audio to your FM radio. Now we have 3d, Imax, Dolby Digital Surround... Objectively better, but I still miss the drive-in.
I'm 52 and have experienced a second life when it comes to being a fan of music as I've discovered SO MANY fantastic new groups and artists in the last few years. Beato's video and those who are from my generation and agree with that mindset drive me absolutely insane.
Man, ever since singers started using microphones all the feeling, emotion and skill has gone out the window. Technology makes everyone into amazing singers. They don’t even have to learn how to project across ravines anymore. Back in my day we had to summon the gods with blood sacrifice and drugs - uh I mean *herbs* - to fully unlock our potential... And people listened with intent! Because there way scared the gods would strike them down otherwise!! I do wish people would appreciate music the way we used to. Sigh.
Did Rick expect anybody at home to go "Ah fair point, I will stop recording and releasing my own music as long as I don't have access to real amps and drums." Seriously, his generalizations make no sense. Why should I, a bedroom musician, stop using these tools just because a stifled, money hungry pop music industry uses them for a quick buck? Is it the tools that make me lazy and greedy? Or is it maybe that profit-driven corporations don't even try to make art while I do?
After reading about the first 500 comments on this video, I've realized one major thing...
There's some people saying I missed Rick's point (which, hey, maybe I did). But those same people have followed up by saying "I think the point he was trying to make was...", and then explain what THEY think he was saying, and everyone has had different answers.
If every single person has a different answer of what Rick's point actually was, then either:
A) Rick didn't articulate the point well enough.
B) The point was so vague that everyone came up with their own version of it.
I will say, though, some of you have had some great comments and have actually brought some good conversation to the table, regardless of whether you mostly agreed with me or mostly agreed with Rick. There's been a lot of cool insight and viewpoints to a lot of this and I appreciate the good conversation and making me think in a different way. To everyone else just getting hostile, be more like the good conversation people. 😘
I guess the best thing to do is get a hold of Rick and do a crossover video to try and clear up the point.
People can be creative regardless of the their tools digital or analog , plug in or rack gear. Understanding that the plug-ins and Daws are homages to the analog days and the old school studios. The fact that the digital gear is allowing more availability for people to be musically creative is great. In the end regardless of how music is created there will be some that is awful and others that will rock. I enjoy music by Prince who alot of the time used a drum machine and or played his own parts and mixed them but also love the feel and playing of the jams of the Allman Brothers or the drive and technicalities of Iron Maiden ,Mr. BIG or Nightwish for example. Music accepts all comers , the good the bad the digital the analog and I think we are lucky for the variety.
Rick Beato is like certain political figures these days. Always needing someone to explain to everyone what he meant when he said _____ and what the context about _______ thing he said is. In other words, his mouth moves a lot but not a lot of real value ever comes out of it
Big Rick fan here. I think you made fair points. I do think when he talked about Sinatra, he was including the professional skills of everyone involved in the production and not just Sinatra himself. Also - the Boys Like Girls song drums are definitely what he was railing against! But, he wasn't the producer, and if he did write the song then he still deserves that song credit - the song was probably written before the production was made, likely not a topline. Just thought I'd chuck that out there! Rock on. - Glenn
@@glennandadriansrocktalk Yeah, fair point and that's why we did bring up "maybe he's not proud of being a part of some of those songs". But he DID produce "Carolina", to be fair.
Let's not forget the fact that "back in the day" a label would advance you $100k+ to make an album in a pro studio with the best gear, but today labels aren't doing shit unless you've done all the work yourself ahead of time building an online presence. Therefore, artists are using what they can access and afford. HUGE oversight on Rick's part.
Excellent point!
I also find it funny that so many of the bands he listed had to fight to get control and ownership of their catalog because record labels were fronting large sums of money in exchange for ownership of the catalog of music. Modern technology has made it possible to bypass this process all together. He lately has been giving off gatekeeper vibes and it comes off very elitist.
Rick the Dick...he needs someone there to counterpoint him.
But you still have 5 songwriters and 11 producers.
@@bassman87 The average music that the average person listens to on Spotify is still the same way. The people that created the music still don't keep the rights and the record labels do less than they used to and still get control of catalogs. Very few people retain the rights to their music unless they are 100% independent.
You can bypass the gatekeepers but the odds of gaining a fanbase larger than friends and family is essentially zero.
Nothing has really changed.
As someone with a physical disability. I lost my ability to play instruments overtime. When I learned to use midi and virtual instruments I was able to get back into something I love. Had I been born before such technology. I would’ve essentially lost the one thing I passionately enjoy. So that ease of use is a gift to people like me who physically can’t perform. This is just my experience from a different perspective.
This is such a good point! So many of these complaints come from very exclusionary places.
I'm a 62 yo 45 yr guitarist. I waited for years for software to catch up in capabilities other than midi. I was never good enough as a guitarist to play at a "performance" level due to physical limitations (severe motor control issues). I had Steinberg and Cubase which was great for my keyboard, BUT once software like Sonic Foundry (Sony) Acid became available, I was able to assemble my recorded guitar segments into a real song with drum loops/one shots and all. I even now have a couple credits on a documentary. Good enough for me! Software gave me the satisfaction of accomplishment in spite of my limiting handicaps. SOFTWARE ROCKS AND HAS IT'S PLACE. WITHOUT IT, I WAS SCREWED FROM EVER DOING ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.
You are so full of shit dude
And actually, from what I can tell, this kind of thing makes people like Rick Beato and his fan base incredibly upset. I have literally watched an entire comment section of his devolve into "that's what we get for letting EVERYBODY participate in music" type commentary. Because in people like Rick Beato's world, if you're not Eddie Van Halen or John Bonham, no one should even know who you are
"you still have to sing semi-correctly"
Yeah, not the argument you think it is.
The average music listener doesn't give a fuck what gear is used or how it's recorded. They listen because it sounds good to them.
Before the turn of the century, the vast majority of music heard by people was heard for free on the radio.
That's true! But It is even worse. You just could listen to the music the industry wanted you to listen as underground bands or kids that were beggining un the industry Will not be played in the radio. Now you can upload your album in TH-cam, Spotify or any other Channel and let your music have the chance to be listened.
@@darkmesere bands like Polyphia would have never gotten the attention they deserve.
@@darkmesere Exactly. Rick thinks it's a bad thing that 100,000 songs get uploaded a day, but it really doesn't matter. 99,980 of those songs get largely ignored. They barely have a listen, let alone multiple listens. He worries about physical media because young music fans don't sit and read the liner notes, but ignores the fact that music fans get a direct line with the artist via social media.
I saw 100 bands live last year. 66 of them I had never seen live before! I would never have heard about almost any of them without things like Spotify. I would probably never have even become a metalhead or been so ethusiastic about it if wasn't for it being easy and readily availble. I would never go to unknown bands at festivals, because I would never have been able to listen to them beforehand without buying a CD. So while he might think listening to a CD or LP at home is pure experience, I would argue spotify has made me see more bands live in the last 10 years than Rick probably has seen in any given period. I probably saw more bands last year than the average person sees in their whole life. All thanks to Spotify and TH-cam
@@RebouzThey absolutely would have. Every group that was being played on the radio made a local impact and then acquired the ear of a disc jockey. Or in rarer instances lucked their way onto the radio.
It feels gatekeepy. like, if you aren't spending tens of thousands of dollars to record analog, with professional session drummers, producers, technicians, etc., it can't possibly be better than the music that is done with all of that. It feels like he only wants "professionals" to make music, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
PLUS labels aren't going to advance you the $100K you need these days unless you've already built up a fanbase yourself. He totally skipped that point.
This.
I mean, I'm sorry, but is it so bad that I have access to VST orchestras nowadays? Because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to write orchestral music - which I occasionally do and I have received praise for it.
There is no way I'd be able to hire a real orchestra to perform my pieces, though.
It is gatekeepy. Dude is basically saying that the way he is making and consuming music (though he apparently is not making it the way he wants it to be done) is the real / right way of doing it. And this is the most common "old man sees young people ruining stuff" situation. This has also been happening forever...
Not to mention, these bands who recorded the old fashioned way, guess what a majority of them are using on tours, amp modelers. There are still some who have the wall of amps and maybe just use two amps, a clean and a high gain amp, but a lot of session players have kempers, axe fx or now quad cortexes.
Now imagine Beethoven, Vivaldi or any one of those composers talking down on Rick because he uses a guitar amp instead of having 50 guitars to make it sound louder.
or only use distortion or using electric guitars
I'm a (real) boomer, born in 63. I played bass in hard rock and metal bands from the late 70s to the late 80s and this get-off-my-lawn mindset that Rick (and most of my generation) has reminds me of when my mom used to tell me that back in her day she could go to a movie, have popcorn, and a soda for a dime. Hey Rick, you probably heard that the music that we grew up with was just noise back in the day, don't be that guy. Time marches on, get over it.
Not all thankfully. There are a lot of us old guys that listen to Japanese metal now.
@@Jordan-Ramses I'm one of the old guys. And I say, If it CHUGGES...🤘😂
I always say Boomer isn't an age. Its a state of mind. All generations have boomers. You might have some years behind you but you don't sound like a boomer at all.
Rick, like everyone, is just feeling nostalgic. He also wants to keep pushing out a video every week. The ragebait is also a strong draw for the numbers. Rake in a little money while you can because volatility of platform.
@FearsomeWarrior Nostalgia doesn't mean he gets to trash every other type of music. So I just make fun of him for being a Boomer.
I'm 66 years old , been playing and listening to music for over 50 years , played in bands , paid stupid amounts for studio time , 2" tape , drum hire because they would not let us use our own kit , suffered at the hands of engineers and sound men that did not give two shits and treated the bands who paid their wages like garbage etc etc etc . Now I have a little set up at home that I use , some of the local kids come round and record for free just for fun , none of this could happen even a few years ago , technology is a blessing for musicians nowadays . If I ever start to think or sound like Rick Beato just lock me up and throw away the key !!
I'm 51. I've been listening to Japanese Vocaloid music. A Vocaloid is prerecorded vocals that are manipulated by a computer program. It's the most creative music in the world. A good example is 'Aishite Aishite Aishite' by Kikuo. But Vocaloid has tons of variety too.
What i was saying in my post, his entire rant was about how much better things were because the recording industry was behind it all, which by the way is his industry, and now you don't need NEED them anymore so music sucks now...
@BushcraftJunkee I saw his previous video. It was an angry response to someone comparing Taylor Swift to The Beatles. He went off on a similar rant about how all modern music was trash.
He was talking all sorts of nonsense. Like that nobody knows how to play instruments anymore. Excuse me? The Beatles weren't particularly good at playing instruments. They were a boy band. Band-Maid plays every instrument much better than the Beatles and sings better too. So does The Warning. So do tons of modern bands. The Warning was better at playing instruments than the Beatles when they were still in middle school.
@@Jordan-RamsesNeither Band Maid nor The Warning could write songs like the Beatles and that's the bottom line.
@neilsherer1766 Nearly every Beatles song is bad by today's standards. And you're the one comparing them to modern bands? They'd get laughed at. And not in a good way.
Has he forgotten that while music can be streamed, going to see a concert is putting your hard earned money toward the band you love. You have a band shirt? Guess what, spending hard earned money on music. Just because you aren't buying albums doesn't mean you don't love a band. Having physical media isn't always easy if you only have so much room, just like you said with your vinyl wall. You ran out of room and can't display them all. Maybe some of these kids don't have as much room for stuff so things like band shirts take priority because it's a physical item that has a daily purpose of being worn.
I live in a very rural area. To see a band it's no less than a 500 mile round trip. So yeh. The music is taking a hit because I stream for free and its literally to big of a headaches to see a live show.
Not only that, your access to finding more and new bands is so much better now.
Back before streaming and really before MP3 players were commonplace, it was so hard to find new music if you didn't have a huge group of friends who shared it with. If you liked metal and it wasn't on the radio, it was a huge and expensive chore to try and find recommendations and then spend good money on a CD you have no idea if you'd like them.
Now you can hear about a band, go listen to them on a streaming source and now have a new favorite band whom you then go see live.
There's next to zero chance I would have ever discovered any of the metal bands I follow from Northern Europe without the much easier access to music we have today.
@@IkLms11 I remember in high school the only ways I found out about bands were from my older brothers, or the radio *shudder*... I can look at what my "local" rock station has been playing and guess what? IT'S THE SAME SHIT FROM 20 YEARS AGO! If it wasn't for "algorithms" and social media, I don't know how I'd know half the bands I listen to.
And concerts have become silly expensive…
I commented on his video that a low threshold to entry for the music industry, which he is railing against, is a good thing. Giving artists control over their music by giving them the ability to edit and distribute digitally is superior to suits at a record label controlling what is produced. Rick’s video is the music equivalent of an elderly man yelling from their front porch, “get off my lawn”.
@@Name-vu1kn just because technology has advanced to a point where we can quantize drums and guitars and vocals doesn’t mean it’s bad. If those same artists who he said had to be good to get a record, had access to what we have today, they’d do the same thing.
@@mikesmoviemadness24 I agree. Tank said it best, Rick’s video is him saying music is bad now because it’s not how he does it.
@@Name-vu1kn and there’s is absolutely nothing wrong with bands who still record analog, or use tune amps. A lot of bands I listen to blend real amps with kempers or axe fx while recording, then there are bands who exclusively use plugins. Also let’s not forget he’s had Tosin Abasi, Tim Henson, and Devin Townsend not too long ago, talking about how they revolutionized modern music and have inspired new musicians to make music from home, the very thing he’s getting mad about in this new video.
actually, I disagree. the old days, there were major barriers to overcome to get signed. most bands never made it. You had to rehearse, maybe prune a bandmember who couldn't keep up, play in front of people, deal with hostile/apathetic audiences, get on tours, get better at your instruments, your song writing, your performing before labels would start sniffing around. They might sign you, get a producer to work with you, hone your songwriting, work with each musician to get the best out of them. And you end up a better musician/songwriter/performer. yeah, you might still suck, you might be great but get unlucky and get ignored, or maybe you suck but somehow you catch on, but overall, you survived the meatgrinder and you are better for it. now, no meatgrinder. I can sit in my basement, make music, odds are, it would suck, you don't bounce ideas off other band members, no producers, no hostile/apathetic audiences to sway, I'd imagine there's a whole lot of crap out there today because there's no real filter/meatgrinder to toughen you up, make you better.
"previous generations suffered, so everyone has to suffer"@@marctowersap8018
Did Beato use a digital camera to create that video? Why not use a 8mm camera from the 70s the way we used to...
Back in the day the Egyptians built the pyramids and didn't use machines, so why should we use them
Yes, and Pyramide are demonstrably better. Or have you ever seen one modern building that stood for 4k years?
@Skyldyel if it's stood for 4k years then it is no longer modern 😂
That's a myth😂
@@Skyldyel no one could've seen any modern building stand for 4k years because modern era is only approximately 500 years old 😂
@@Skyldyel Pyramids have almost nothing inside them. A building that can't be used for anything is objectively worse.
I’m a 16 year old and in 8th grade my buddy introduced me to Megadeth and it changed my life. It’s stayed with me literally everyday since and has positively influenced my life in more ways than nearly anything else. I hate to see someone think that music doesn’t matter to my generation from someone like Rick. It’s not true at all.
Just because you are the exception doesn’t mean Beato is wrong
At this point I have been playing folklore music for 20+ years and I think people keep forgetting, that there was music before the 20th century and it had very different functions. Let’s say you were born in an Eastern European village in 1930s. First of all, while you do have professional musicians, everybody would sing. It was an inherent part of everyday life and when a relevant situation would come up you would sing a song - either appropriate for the situation (work, wedding, funeral…) or you would sing how you feel. Often slightly changing the lyrics to fit your situation better. Many of the “professional“ musicians also did not know sheet music and purely learned by ear. Here are some of the complaints I have heard about the “good old music” Rick is talking about:
People today can’t feel music, they must record it and they don’t sing anymore when they meet! How can you exist without singing with friends when you meet?
Nowadays musicians always have sheet music! What is the point in that? Where is the skill of playing stuff by ear? The true musicianship is getting lost.
Today people listen to records and only know 20-30 songs. How can you know so few? I know hundreds! You can’t go through life like that! How can you express yourself with so little?
The concerts today are so much pre-planned. Once upon a time people would just shout what song they want you to play and the band would play it! And sometimes you would not know the song so you would learn it as the person was singing it.
So yeah, you just need to go one generation back to find somebody complaining about the quality of musicians. If we want “better” music, then music education needs to be accessible so that kids can listen to and learn what is possible in music. Only then you can make the stuff Rick complains about understandable. You definitely don’t want to do it by going back and effectively restricting music and turning it into a precious commodity for a select few.
This. The bubble that Beato lives in has only existed for about 100 years. Before recording tech appeared and centralized control of music consumption took over, everyone pretty much had to make their own music or at least know someone in their family or local community who could. I think all these tools are democratizing that process again. No, we arn't all going to sound like Taylor Swift. But we are damn sure going to have a lot of fun not sounding like her.
Let me guess, you're from Slovácko?
@@richardaubrecht2822 Very good guess, but nope 😀I am half Czech and half Slovak but from different regions.
You should go the metal concerts and/or metal festivals. I see kids singing all the lyrics. They do feel the music and btw I never seen a metal or punkband with sheet music on stage. I get what you are saying but I go to a lot of concerts (metal/punk) and see fans of all ages having a good time enyoing the livemusic and singing the songs. Don't know the folklore scene. Don't know if there are any new bands in that genre, but in the metal/punk scene there are a lot of good new and young bands playing there socks off. Ooh and I am 60 years old and I still enjoy seeing new bands live. 🤘😎
@@JanStuivenberg2810 I just got back from Masters of Rock 😊 I was referring to music Rick talks about. I personally am also not saying using sheet music is bad and while metal bands do not use sheet music on stage, many do use tabs and other forms of notation. I am 100% sure progmetal written down because you can’t just memorize it on the spot. Most music is probably written down at some point in metal. If a random nonprofessional metal musician wants to learn a metal song, they will most likely find some kind of tabs and learn from that. In the past everybody would learn folk songs exclusively by listening to them without writing them down in any form. These are songs by peasant rural cultures that survived only because of the oral tradition, one generation learning from the other. Luckily they survived long enough and people who did have musical education wrote them down at some point. This is different from classical music, that was being always written down even while it was being composed.
However, just singing the lyrics in a separate event like a concert is still a very different way of participating in music than how it used to work in the past. It is a complicated subject from an ethnomusicological point of view.
You also can’t really have new bands. Folklore is different from what is usually called folk music. Folk is about mixing old things with new influences - like folkmetal. At this point folklore is about taking the cultural heritage from your ancestors and preserving it for the next generations.
I'm sure other comments have mentioned this, but one major problem with Rick's viewpoints is his assumption that the amount of effort he and his friends put into consuming music back in the day was the same for his entire generation. Which it wasn't. This is almost like a version of survivorship bias, where Rick is failing to realize that his experiences with music growing up were not because of the way you had to consume music, but because he and his friends are/were naturally inclined to that behaviour. Hell, one of the most common memes about music in the 90s, and which people point to as leading to the rise of P2P file sharing (e.g., Napster) was buying a CD based on one or more singles from the radio, then realizing that you didn't like the rest of the album. Which, I would suggest, is how a large portion of the population engaged with music when it had to be owned physically - radio or music video channels notwithstanding.
In way, the almost complete removal of the effort required to listen to music has made it *easier* to identify people who are passionate about music, because they will do things like purchase music in physical forms, buy merchandise from their favourite artists, attend concerts, etc. This is another spot where Rick is off - there are still people passionate about music who place a great value on it, and those people have, interestingly enough, become easier to spot.
This is very well put. From my own experience myself and a good friend were both VERY into our music growing up, completely different tastes but we both went on to music schools, and even then neither of us 'sat down and listened to albums' like this. We'd throw a new album on while we gamed but we just didn't behave like that.
I would disagree. it's one thing to like the popular stuff, be it what was on the radio, the video plays on youtube, etc. what suffers is the deeper cuts. the songs that aren't played on the radio, didn't have a video specifically made for it. Look at concerts today. Lots of 'fans' talk through most of a concert until the popular songs play. they jam out, and when the song is done and a deeper cut is played, they go back to talking. I've been going to concerts for over 30 years. It seems much worse today than it was when I was a kid. People used to buy the record/cd/cassette tape, and they would play the entire thing, maybe out of laziness (the hit was played, let me stop and dig around for the next disk... naw, I'll just listen to the next song, maybe after repeated playing, one starts to appreciate the deeper cuts. Like I said, go to a concert. do more people talk through a deeper cut, a song that wasn't a hit?
@@marctowersap8018 yeah you're remembering concerts back then a lot differently than I do. Yeah maybe there were more fans at the concert that liked the deep cuts.
But concerts were also a lot cheaper and easier to get to, so a lot of times you'd go to see an artist you didn't know or llke all that much just to have something to do on a Friday night. (This is why I went to see MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice,) Just like now there were a few people who knew the words to every song but most just kind of danced and partied and only sang along to the hits.
I've actually found that the people I've seen at recent concerts are generally more into the artists because why else would they pay $100+ to sit in mediocre seats?
@@marctowersap8018 I've also been going to concerts 30 years and remember things slightly differently. The 90s was the prime era of bands deliberately leaving popular songs out, and then being hammered by press and fans for it. Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth gigs pretty much came with a warning you weren't going to be hearing many of the well known songs. Nirvana dropped Teen Spirit, REM Shiny Happy People and the Beastie Boys Fight For Your Right.
@@marctowersap8018 I can't talk about back in the day of cassettes, because I was to young to go to concerts, but I can promise you than many, if not most, newer bands own their own success to streaming. Would I ever have seen Avatar live the first time if we couldn't listen to it beforehand? No. We might have discovered them around now, 12 years later, as something that is recommended in a store for being similar to other stuff I listen to. Same with so many other bands. I saw 100 bands last year. 66 of them I had never seen live before. Without streaming I would probably never have heard about 80 of them. Especially since almost none of them are really radio bands, even though almost all are internationally touring bands. And I don't see the thing you are talking about either, but that might be because I don't go to all those radio bands with 1 popular song. Sold out arenas, sold out pubs, sold out concert venues. It just seems to vary from band to band, and also time to time. But it doesn't seem to be a very common thing when people have bought tickets to any of the bands I see.
Good stuff man! The idea that technology LIMITS musical creativity is absurd, and I we should be happy that more people now have the ability to make music than ever before.
it's all about how you use the tools.
I'm gonna grab my popcorn in anticipation for your whole video on Rick's abysmal recent opinions.
The one bit of context that requires watching a lot of Rick's other videos is that for the most part, he's not talking about "bands"... he's talking about crappy pop music. He doesn't really seem to be too cognizant of the modern hard rock and metal scene, particularly those bands that aren't from the US.
So the guy he runs a studio is against music that might not need a full studio and crew to create
Hmm
You almost make it sound... Too easy. 😂
It's no secret that music made in a good studio with competent producers/engineers tend to sound better though.
Most people do listen casually on bad audio equipment though so it's not in high demand. Such people tend to like overly compressed sound.
I just hope nobody is buying his music lessons. That is the opposite of helpful. Look at Fami. She started doing bass covers of Vocaloid on TH-cam and now she's in a badass metal band.
And the session musician is against musicians not needing his services anymore because they can just do it himself, lol.
Yes, as that music is terrible.
Rick Beato is a man who I respect enough to always listen to what he says, while simultaneously having enough self-awareness to know when he's just blowing hot air for the sake of it. It sucks that his content over the last couple of years has taken a much more pessimistic and jaded tone, because at one point I did watch ALL of his uploads and now that I think about it I don't think I've watched a single video of his in the last year and a half for this exact reason. It's a bunch of dated takes of "my way took more work so that means it's better" which is the producers version of "my song has more notes and they're played faster so my song is better." and what I really think this is at the end of the day of Rick Beato's existential dread of realizing "nobody makes music for ME or MY GENERATION anymore." I think what he fails to realize is that IF Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Deep Purple, The eagles etc what ever boomer music you want to plug in, HAD today's technology THEY WOULD USE IT, who wouldn't??? Rick is just a guy who comes off as a bitter old man who refuses to keep up with the times. He did say some things I agree with, but most of this video is just insufferable bs.
Amen.
YOu are right, they would use the new tech. The amp emulators I disagree with Rick (just like you!), if I can play these notes, does it matter if I tweaked a few knobs or adjusted some 'level' in software? nope, still my notes my feel. There RIck was an old man shouting at clouds...
I want to see Rick Beato last one album cycle or tour cycle with Jinjer. Then he can talk all he wants about things being harder back in his day. This rich old man doesn't understand difficulty whatsoever.
I will say, in regards to his statement about how young people don’t appreciate music anymore, that, from a live show perspective, I’ve been seeing more and more young people going to the same shows I am, over the past few years.
I'm 46 and have the same experience at shows.
It makes me feel optimistic about the future of music in general
I think a lot of the kids are actually sick (bored)of their phones and want bigger, real life experiences like live shows if they are given the opportunity to see them.
but, are they enjoying all songs? or are they only enjoying the hits (and talking through the non-hits)? my experience is the latter. major annoyance because i like a lot of deeper cuts of acts I'm a fan of
@@marctowersap8018 honestly for where I go to see shows most of the time, about a 2000 capacity venue, they enjoy, jam out to, and stay for all the songs. But at bigger arena and stadium venues, yeah it’s mostly the hits that they are into. But I will say that, that’s the case for most people that attend those stadium and arena concerts, not just the young people. But that’s just what I’ve noticed personally at the shows I’ve been going to c
Or another question: are they able to enjoy concerts unfiltered and pure, just watching actually the show and listening to the music? Or solely through the lenses of their phones?
Technology has lowered the barrier of entry. Millions of people who had songs to give the world lived and died without ever doing so because the barrier to entry meant they never got a chance. How can you argue that was a good thing?
I always hate this notion of “amp modelers-bad, tube amps-good!” Because it is inherently a gatekeeper mentality when it comes to making music.
I can’t afford to buy racks of tube amps, nor do I have the space or the ability to play them at their full potential. But what I can afford is a Line 6 helix, which has 100s of amps that I can mess around with and find my own unique sound.
I’m doing the same thing guys like EVH and others did in studios, blending amps, experimenting with mics and mic placements on cabs, adding EQ and compressors, but now I’m doing it from one rig as opposed to several different rigs.
Yup, I also have a Helix and the stuff you can do with it is exactly the same you could do with an amp, even as far as choosing speakers and mic placements.
@@TankTheTech and correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t a lot of producers plugging tube amps into load boxes now, like OX Box or two notes captor x, and using IRs to experiment with mics and speaker placements?
@@mikesmoviemadness24 No, you're VERY right. Especially as more audio engineers have been coming up as freelancers in their apartments and making great records. In addition to needing a room that sounds good for amps, let's not forget about noise complains. Might as well use the technology available with IRs to get your guitar sounds from a capture of an actually good room--and a LOT of top producers/engineers like Jens Bogren have been leading the charge in making them sound more realistic (which at this point is starting to split hairs, but it does make a difference). And the fact that stuff is so accessible now is pretty awesome.
@@mikesmoviemadness24 Even in concert, they might have speaker cabinets on stage, but they are not using them, it is better to just take the clean signal before it hits the cabinet into the mixers.
I don't think that Rick's point was to demonize the amp sims, but rather the fact that when certain plugins became popular, it has caused several albums to have the same tone, and if so, I slightly agree with him, because since neural dsp became popular for its practicity and sound, I have seen several bands with the same tone, and when I see the q/a talking about their rig turns out that they use the same plugin or amp modeller, if you use real amps, even if you have the same model that another artist, the environmental conditions, the microphone, and the manufacturer's own inconsistency will make it sound different, I am not going to say that it is better or worse, because it is relative, but I think we can all agree that today the records sound very similar one to another
I get both sides of this argument , dont just expect technology to fix everything develop YOUR skill and use the equipment to augment YOUR mastery of music. Its a balance like everything....
You know what really caught me unawares? I was legit thinking the first point was addressing generative AI and how music can be made with with prompts in a machine ... which would actually talk about skill being devolved ... but no it was about technology which he himself uses.
I like the comment on his video from someone that met a guy who was an engineer for Led Zeppelin and talked to him about music production. The guy quite accurately stated "as engineers and producers we used to capture performances, now we create them". I think that's very true, and I think that is in part what Rick is talking about.
Luckily I don't think the metal scene is as affected by this as pop music, but it's still certainly there. I think it's telling that something like an Ayreon live album has better audio quality than tons of bands in studio. I'm quite sure he doesn't throw auto-tune on all of his great singers either, even in studio. There's proper craftsmanship going on in that studio and it's audible.
I about lost it when he said that music isn’t as important/has no value to people because of streaming services. Like I’m sorry, I’m 19, music is a critical piece of my life. Music is so important to me, and I know I’m not alone in that. It’s crazy to say music doesn’t have value to younger people because it’s more accessible
My “boomer” take on this is how streaming services create a shortcut between consumer and a timeframe, and the relationship you create with the process of acquisition.
Every object, models an experience, sometimes so intense, that culturally can be experienced as a fetish. Like the music cassette, the clicks, the manual rewinds, the act of recording music from the radio and all of those efforts to possess music. The importance of this is the timeframe and the experiences deposited between each event. Those things are so so important, and relevant… most of the modern experience is modeled around those experiences. The haptic experiences, the sounds, most of them as a reminder of how things used to be before everything became flat.
Rick is not talking about those who can enjoy music, is talking about the masses who are missing the experience of building memories around music, but instead, they are consuming music just to prove the kind of consumer they are. The music falls on a secondary or tertiary level below “how am I as a consumer”, reproducing a thousand times, exposing myself on tiktok consuming, falling so deeply in love because a critic said so. Until the next release two weeks later! Because the artist cannot allow themselves to fall of the conversation and the hashtag relevance.
Think about it as those people who swear and over-expose on social media they are so in love as long as it gives them likes. Then, two weeks later they are so deeply in love with someone else… it can devaluate the experience for those who witness those expositions.
@@cabezademuppetI don’t think the physicality or ease of access has any meaningful effect on someone’s enjoyment of music. It can be supplemental but I don’t think the connection is to the music but rather to the nostalgia of it all.
For example, I remember my first playboy back when getting access to adult material was difficult. I had the same playboy for years because finding new stuff was tough for a minor. But that doesn’t mean I love playboy or have a connection to it. I just have nostalgia for the days when I had to keep a playboy hidden between my bed and my nightstand.
I also have two meaningful songs in my life. One from my first album I ever bought and one I first heard on an animated video on TH-cam. Like 20 years apart. The first one just has nostalgia attached to it but the second one is just as meaningful for me. And I would say the second one has a deeper connection to me because now that I’m older I also understand why it’s meaningful for me.
Thinking about it now actually, I think most of the music that I personally have deeper connections to came from the post-streaming era (napster) ironically enough, napster is probably what I’d credit as bringing me closer to music than anything else. But again, it’s not the medium, a lot of that is just nostalgia.
@cabezademuppet you miss your childhood, and for some reason, you're taking it out on the younger generations.
his point is, in the old days, we made an investment. We bought the music. Because we bought the disk/tape, we had to put it on to listen to it, and often listened to the entire disk, sometimes out of laziness (crap, I don't want to get up and change the media), and gained appreciation for deeper cuts, in part because well, I bought it. Today, I didn't buy it, music is more disposable. I listen to the songs I like, I can make playlists of those songs, and never actually have to listen to non-hits, the deeper cuts. that's his point. there's no investment in the album. You hear of artists complaining about that, I play a deeper cut, fans get up, go to the bathroom, get a refill, talk. They can see what's going on. Sometimes, a song has to grow on you and if you only listen to it once, it never grows.
@@marctowersap8018 wait, people at shows like hearing the hit songs?? I'm shocked.
I'm 54 and think that the truth is somewhere in the middle as far as the way we value music now versus then. When I was young in the 70s and 80s, I could only listen to what I had in my collection, most of which I bought with money that was hard to come by. I do feel that I valued my music more back then than I do now. It's not that we CAN buy music now, it's that we don't have to. And if something doesn't click right away, instead of listening a few times to give it a chance, we can just move on with a click to the next song or artist without losing anything. Some of the growers are some of my favorite albums and I'm less likely now to let an album sink in. It's too easy to move on. So, I get what Rick was saying there. As far as these days are concerned though, it's easier to find music now, especially from other parts of the world. We aren't nearly as limited. Also, I have a 20-year-old Niece and she definitely values music. When she likes something (Taylor Swift), she's all in and buys records and merch. It's a different time with different technology, but there's still music out there for everyone. That's what matters.
To say the youth dont value the music anymore because they dont buy physical medium is insane. Just look at the shift in the music industry where bands are finding success putting out behind the scenes or tour vlogs and seeing massive views. kids and even adults are getting excited to consume anything an artist they love puts out.
Ever wonder why? back in the old days, bands could survive on residuals from sales of their music. today, that's not true. They have to do extra stuff so people will keep streaming their songs, as streaming pays fractions of pennies per stream. I'm sure some of them would rather just relax after a show, sleep on the bus, read, watch stuff, 'enjoy' fans, etc.
the funniest part is rick saying kids don’t value music anymore. i feel like more people than ever are absolutely feral for artists, especially with stan/fan culture on social media. I’ve never seen people understand and love music like some of the younger people online. And as for him arguing that there is less value because we didn’t have to buy a physical copy- i can guarantee you (at least true for any mcr fan i know lmfao) we spend SO much on supporting our favorite artists and buying merch, it’s insane. Rick’s entire argument is essentially just what he thinks kids today think of music, which is wrong lmfao
I agree with Rick. Have you ever been to a concert in the last 5 years or so? More and more 'fans' talk through the non-hits, the deeper cuts, the songs they don't recognize. They only listen for the hits. I now wish bands would play the hits right off the bat. These 'fans' would leave once they no longer recognize the song, and the rest of us can enjoy the band play those deeper cuts without having to yell at people to STFU. Me yelling takes me out of enjoying the concert. People having a lot of choice, why waste time listening to a deeper cut that I might not like when I can just pick songs I already like? Before, I bought the disk, I listened to every track, grew an appreciation for songs that weren't singles. Is that the case now with younger fans? and are you really only talking about a subset of younger fans?
@@marctowersap8018 I have to say that I've never had the experience you have at concerts. Not sure who you're going to see. I have not seen a significant change. Bands almost always (at least dating back to the 90s when I started going to concerts) save the hits for the end of the set, especially the big one. I've seen NIN probably 6 or 7 times, "Head Like a Hole" was the last song at every single one of them. During the glam days, people would go get a beer during the drum solo. No one does drum solos anymore, so they either go during the ballad or during a song they're not familiar with. Make no mistake, even back in the day, people were still using the bathroom, getting a drink, or just getting out of the swamp of the audience periodically during the show, regardless of who it is.
@@travisspaulding2222 at old and new acts. Nine Inch Nails, Styx, Spiritbox, the Cure, Tool... I think only the metal bands get good behavior, Lamb of God, Meshuggah, people don't really talk during those bands. I am happy to not see many drum solos anymore (was like OMG a drum solo when watching Foreigner!) but then again, most artists I've recently seen probably never did a drum solo. Not saying people didn't go for drinks/bathroom. And honestly, I didn't care if they did, I mentioned the artists noticed it (I think Tom Petty said something about that, others too, likely wondering why tour for new albums when no one wants to hear those new songs, why even release albums, but like I said, artists mentioning it, not me) I care about talking. You want to talk during a concert? get up, go back into the hallways, the places where they sell food and go to the bathroom, you can talk without yelling. Otherwise, stfu. I know the behavior of artists, saving the big hits for last. I said because of talking i WISH they'd play the big hits first so the talkers can leave. they're happy, they leave so I'm happy. key word: WISH
@@travisspaulding2222A modern concert is practically unrecognizable from before. There’s a pretty talented sister trio group called The Warning, and I saw a video of one of their live shows. It is physically impossible to have less energy in a crowd.
@@marctowersap8018 i go to concerts all the time and I have had absolutely no problem. in fact, when I go to concerts for bands that are older, I usually only see the older people acting bothered/talking when the bands play anything other than the hits. obviously there are exceptions but in my experience, it's always the younger ones who are bringing the energy and are the most passionate. I do agree, some people only are there for the hits that they know and love, but that's not a thing that's exclusive to age, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because they don't know a song doesn't mean they don't deserve to be there. I went to a Thursday concert last year knowing only a few songs and I left the biggest fan and they've been one of my favorite bands ever since. And yes, it is easier for people to skip over songs when we use apps like spotify and apple music instead of physical media, but in my opinion, I think that makes it easier to listen to other music by the same artist+ discover similar artists based on that.
Tank actually acknowledging indirectly that his humble self is now a somebody in the music industry
Also: Rick has always come across as a bitter old guy to me who is depressed because no one is as awesome as he is.
I think the ACTUAL problem with all the music being pumped out due to accessible technology is that a looooot of the time lately it's not the good stuff getting famous, somehow some utterly bad sh** is topping the charts.
It's actually very comparable to TH-cam: making videos has become soooo much more accessible than it used to be. Which means that TH-cam is full of tooooons of really bad stuff. But it also means that there is (absolutely, maybe not relatively) much more good stuff available. And if you find the good stuff, you will also never find lack of creativity in videomaking overall to be a thing. It's just that there used to be a (financial) hurdle for people who weren't reeeeeaaaallly passionate about music/videos to start doing it, whereas nowadays everyone can try it in a whim and put it out there.
he's a narcissist like you.
I think the more music is out there the more GOOD music is out there as well. "Good" Music might *feel* harder to find. But that's also because we're spoiled for choice. We don't have to listen to an album over and over until we like it because we already bought it. We can find what speaks to us the first time.
Think about all the probable musical virtuosos in history that never got the chance to release their genius because they never had the means to record it or even develop their skill.
On the point you made of one person usually making the whole album on their computer often times in modern bands, I'll add that someone making a whole album by themselves on their computer is really cool and I'm glad people have that capability nowadays.. at the same time, its EXTREMELY badass when 3,4 or 5 people can come together to make something really awesome as a collaborative unit, hence the term, band. I just find it really cool when a band has chemistry and like multiple unique pillars that come together to make a band truly awesome. One shouldn't take away for the other.
Along with increased access to music itself, there is also increased access to discussion/analysis of music. I personally have no talent, background or particular knowledge of music. For decades I just listened to radio and thought "I like this!" or "I don't like this." Any genius composition, impressive technique or extra effort went right over my head. Hardly Beato-approved levels of music appreciation. Now I have access to professional musicians, composers, professors, producers, and the occasional roadie. They can break down a song I've heard hundreds of times and pick out elements I've never noticed before (or even knew to listen for) and explain their significance. And now that I'm aware of how much more there can be to music, I find myself trying to find those elements myself, to understand the true effort that went into a particular performance. So contrary to Mr. Beato's second point, ease of consumption (and especially social media) has only increased my ability to appreciate and value the music I listen to.
I am 44 years old. I spent my time buying albums, cassettes and cds. I love how music is so much more accessible these days. I feel more comfortable going on Spotify or amazon music or whatever to test out new music than I would have spending my hard earned money to buy an entire album I may not like. I disagree with most of Rick's video, and I am a subscriber of his. Love his videos but don't always agree with him. Love your videos too, thanks for a good watch.
I am a little older, I used to spend time buying cd's. getting harder now though, cd's seem to be going the way of the dodo! Not a fan of albums, love the size, but hate that it's not portable and I have to get up to flip it over. Loved going to record stores, putting on headphones and checking out new music. I do like that I can youtube new music, new acts, go to concerts, go to dance clubs, see opening acts, soundhound songs I don't recognize that I find I like, then go buy the digital downloads of those new artists, and also seek out artists I missed when they were popular (life gets in the way of that, kids took away 10 years of music from newer artists!). I don't spotify or even amazon. I want to buy music I like so the artists earn more money so they can keep writing new songs and earn a living being a musician/songwriter. and yeah, I setlist.fm so I can see what songs the new acts are playing live so I can learn and love them too. I picked up music from swans, big joe turner, sleep token, big fan of amyl & the sniffers, drain, turnstile, and spiritbox (all new to me!), as well as the older acts (cure, ministry, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, cramps, joy division, accept, etc.)
@@marctowersap8018I do a little of both. I order physical CD’s and merch directly from the bands shops or buy them at shows so that I’m sure they’re getting my support but I do listen to the majority of it on TH-cam music because it’s easier than carting it around.
If you dig real deep, you can find the point I think he's actually trying to make, which is that when things are easy, it ends up stifling innovation and experimentation, which isn't entirely true either. Rick is usually well-spoken, but the points he made in this video were so muddled in "old man yells at cloud" energy that they didn't come through at all.
The only point he made I agree with is that people don't simply sit down to listen to music anymore (me included, unfortunately). I'm old enough to remember sitting down with my friends to show them a dope new song or album I found, vibing with the music along with them, talking about the music as we listened to it, etc. That I don't see happening anymore and I agree with him that it's a net loss for all of us as music enjoyers.
Yes, but he doesn’t want to think outside the box. He is stuck in classic rock times. I grew up on that, and classic metal we all know. But Rock, and Metal are, and have been alive all along. 2000s Metal shifted moreso to Europe. Now it’s Japan. I don’t care I don’t speak Japanese. Music is universal. When a band reduces me to tears, and I feel emotion, yet I don’t know the words, it tells me all I need to know of the band. Nemophila song Life, Mayus vocal, and Hazuki, and Sakis guitars literally crying out, reduce me to tears. My EP of the year is Hagane Life goes on. Nagis vocal in chorus of Life goes on, gives me a warm feeling. The EP has given me inspiration, drive, after I dealt with heavy loss in Feburary. Beato doesn’t want to go find rock music, metal music. He’s still stuck here in the states, classic rock times.
Those are called Aidirondack chairs. They are usually made with wood. Very sturdy.
The angle of those chairs wont be much comfy for me. I fear.
I am a young person, I have seen my favourite band Blackbriar 6 times live. I owned 2 Blackbriar shirts, Fairy Of The Bog single and I have A Dark Euphony on vinyl. The implication that young people do not value as much is really hurtful to me as music has always been my escape. Well not always it took a bit to get there but here I am now wearing a battle jacket that has 2 band patches cut out from old band shirts, my back patch is Blackbriar btw. I went to Nena with my dad, Epica, Blind Guardian, Apocalyptica, Nightwish, Blackbriar, Lord of the Lost, Blind Channel and much much more. I show my support and love for music by going to concerts and I do have a growing album collection it is not much but I adore seeing my small collection inbetween my dad's larger collection. And among our vinyl collection there is my Universal Migrator part 2: Flight Of The Migrator by Ayreon resting against 01011001, Plan Nine and more from my dad's collection. That I value music this much is largely because of my father and my age has nothing to do with it.
There's something to say here though and I hope you get to read this.
Yeah, it is generally better and nicer, on a surface level, for more and more creative people to gain access to easier ways to create and record music. It's nice that tech has evolved and we now have drum programming and amp simulations and virtual orchestras, digital tools translating from midi to reality all sorts of sonic adventures one may dream.
Rick is likely not aiming at those kids - the "tortured" artists with a real voice and a real drive to make something worthy of listening.
If I guessed it correctly, Rick's point is that creation is no longer neccesarily a labour of love but a product subjected more and more to shortcuts and uniformity. I can choose a chord progression premade from a midi pack I bought online, the likes of Unison literally have AI tools that generate bass, melody and effect chains for you so one can build a 2 minute track in 30 minutes or less as well.
You can use free online tools to make a basic mix and master if you want to trouble yourself and it takes 15 min more to sign with a distributer and have "your" music on Spotify. From firing up the PC to getting a song up and released, it can literally be a journey of 2-3 hours, without any real creative input but your financial investment.
I know this is not how you see music - this is not how I see music and the creative process either...but it's a pretty scary reality that may somewhat diminish in the eyes of a lot of decisionmakers what an artist is and how much their work should be valued at. A lot of kids misunderstand this power too and I fear wrong lessons are learned in the process. Sure, everyone can make music now... but that also means the value of a finished song is different.
Yeah, when used right, all these digital tools are excellent helpers to bring a vision and an original sound to life... and we all assume they will always only be used the right way - the truth, however - as evidenced by Modern Radio, Spotify playlists and co - is that most often they are not.
Music is a product of the time. The tech did not exist "back in the day", but it does today and artists/producers are are using it to their advantage . Artists are also getting bigger these days due to the social media landscape and it's become more about the IMAGE and BRAND than the MUSIC. Huge oversight on his end.
The lack of tech forced musicians and producers to be more creative to get the sounds they are looking for.
"Artists are also getting bigger these days due to the social media landscape and it's become more about the IMAGE and BRAND than the MUSIC." You don't consider this a problem? This is literally what the terms "poser" and "sellout" were coined for.
I am close to Rick's age. And I could not disagree with him, more. I left being a regularly active musician, out of frustration back in 1989.
If I was at that age and that point in my musical "Career" right now. I would not leave music. I would be producing my music at home and putting it out there myself.
I love discovering new music. It was at the beginning of You Tube when my love for music came back. I started playing my guitars again and going to concerts with my daughter. Because I found all of the great bands that we would had never gotten to listen to with this technology, back in the 80s. There is so much out there and anyone can get thier music out there. And do it all at home. My son in law does it all of the time. And even wrote and recorded at a very high quality, music for my channel.
As for this old guy and music today. It's the best it's ever been. If you looked at my favorite songs list on my Spotify. You would think it was a 20 year old's list.
I've got 2 concerts in October that I am going to. My 6 year old grandson's favorite band Iron Maiden. And the other is one of my current favorite bands. Architects. Today's Metal is the best it's ever been. That's my "Old Man Yelling At Cloud" rant.
Love the channel.
A long time ago many people listened to music on the radio. But not everybody purchased the music they enjoyed (on vinyl, tape, cd, whatever) on the radio. Music fans did, fans of specific artists did, music enthusiasts did, etc. But some just kept listening to the radio mix, without buying anything, except the device itself. The vast majority of people actually did it like that.
Today it's streaming services, instead of the radio. And fans still buy vinyl, cds, digital copies - all of that stuff. Some still don't - just like before. So where is the problem? Only the media changed.
Don't forget the mix tape. Shitty copies of our favourite songs taped off the radio so we had a copy to listen to when we wanted. Especially if it was top 40 pop that was going to disappear in 6 months.
Love the Trent Reznor reference, Trent is the reason I ever opened up a DAW and wanted to make music. I write all the music in my band because I have all the tools at home, I do everything in the box with plugins...I do agree that music is over saturated due to how easy it is to release music, but I think its great for the diy artists.
Technical advances in the music industry do not automatically lead to worse music. Technology makes it easier to create music, even for people who have no classical musical training. But the results do not necessarily have to be worse just because they were created with the help of technology. At a certain point, despite all the technology, you cannot get any further without talent, creativity and musical feeling. Autotune is indeed something I dont like if its used to much but you can separate the crap quickly from the good stuff if you go to live concerts. No autotune can safe a bad singer in real life settings in the end. Easy check up: go and check out some accoustic stuff from your fav band and you will now.
A friend of mine is a rather great pop/rock singer - and he is pretty popular where we live. I've heard him sing live numerous times, I know he can belt it out. He is also a very old-school kind of a rock musician, so when I asked him about Autotune, I half-expected him to start ranting about modern singers using it. He just said he'd use it when needed - because it saved him time and money.
Just mentioning.
talentless and fake
Idk, maybe it's nostalgia in me talking, but I kinda agree to the point Rick makes that going to the store, standing in line and buying a record you were looking forward to meant more than it does today, when you can just click a button at 12AM, listen to 10 minutes of it, get distracted by a TH-cam notification about another video Rick made, click away and literally forget about the record. I'm gonna be the first to admit this has happened to me on multiple occasions, and, believe it or not, I have a REALLY good attention span.
When I was a kid, I would check the music store almost daily after school to see if the CD I wanted but couldn't get was back in stock. The same story with video games. In-store midnight releases were a thing, an event. Now we just pre-add them and get to start playing the minute it gets released. Is it convenient? Of course it is. Are we just as emotionally attached to something we can easily get? I don't think so.
This kind of also reminds me of when Columbia House was a thing and you were able to get CDs that were $10 for like 1ç. I ordered a whole bunch, but barely played any of them...
As I wrote as a response to someone else in the comments here, I feel like the reason for Beato's perspective is simply that he conflates his past experiences as a music afficionado with his recent impressions of pop music mainstream. He was always super passionate about music, and that's the bubble where he pulls his experience from, but at least since the invention of the radio, music has always been used by some people as background white noise or simply a commercialized product to be mindlessly consumed. He just isn't thinking about that, because "back in his day" he and his crowd were preoccupied with their own love and dedication for the thing. Now he looks at a music culture that he's not really part of anymore and only sees the surface level of it which is, to nobody's surprise, commercialized mainstream stuff being consumed mindlessly, and projects that onto everyone and everything music nowadays. There are people being as passionate and meticulous as he and the people he idolizes were back then, both on the producer and the consumer side, he's just not seeing them... and I'm kinda thinking he doesn't really want to see them.
I'm on the fence about this.
On the one hand, I fully disagree with any sentiment about 'Young kids are not as emotionally invested in music as we were'.
Just look at the way people discuss music. People get very invested in the stuff they like and, sometimes to a fault, will passionately argue about it.
On the other hand, I do find it harder to find music I connect with, myself, because there is so much music out there. Its a similar problem to buying a game on steam - There is so much stuff constantly being added, its hard to find the gems that you will love.
But that is not an argument for 'Music is worse now'. Theres just alot more of it - if anything its less an issue with the music and more an issue with discoverability (at least for me).
Its why I love reaction channels - Its a good way to see new artists that are getting more popular. I have a long list of bands that I got into because I was exposed to them through youtube. Same goes for spotify - I find artists by just listing to random playlists or the 'radio' playlists all the time and when I hear something cool, I check out the artists other stuff.
I agree with alot of people that this feels a bit like 'Old man yells at cloud'. Maybe its specifically a rage bait video for clicks, or maybe its a bit of rose tinted glasses and he just hasn't adapted to the way the music industry has changed and he doesn't like it. I dunno, but I find it sad that somebody as respected as Rick is making such negative content when there is so much good artists out there.
Man, I'm still catching up on music that was unavailable to me as a teenager, and the only reason I'm able to do that now is because of streaming! I didn't appreciate my music more when I had to defraud Columbia House to get my hands on it; I just didn't listen to as much music. That is such a wild take to me.
I think Columbia House was doing their share of defrauding.
I agree with your point about the guitar amps particularly. Currently in the process of self-producing and recording an album with a band I'm in (in a shared practice room with not-so fantastic acoustics), and using cabinet sims for the bass and guitars has made life a million times easier. We're tracking the guitars and bass gradually over the course of weeks, months even, and it would be a nightmare trying to mic up the cabinets exactly the same way every single time, especially given how micro-adjustments can cause massive tonal changes. We're still using real amp heads for the core of the sound, and playing through the cabinets while we're tracking (can't make guitars feed back otherwise), but using the cabinet sims in the mixes has made getting consistent tones quick and easy rather than an uphill battle.
Im 25 so a kid in Ricks eyes. I have 23 band patches on the headliner of my truck and 6 more to go on soon, probably about 15 different band shirts and a few sweaters, and I drove 8 hours from Winnipeg to see Blind Guardian in Minneapolis. I have created about 25 playlists with up to 900 songs in 1 of them, totaling about 9500 songs. The younger generation does care about music, its just different.
Also a band you should check out: Opal in Sky from 🇨🇦, positive metalcore/deathcore.
I'm a twenty year old guy that listens to mostly Metalcore, with a few additions in there like Skillet, Foo Fighters and Muse. When the record collections argument came up, I just could not resist the urge to look to my right and stare at my collection of around 60 albums, existing of bands I love and even video game soundtracks. Maybe for the mainstream listener music is not as valuable anymore, but even those people can get either emotionally attached to certain songs or decide to buy an artist's vinyl. I think Mr. Beato is underestimating the modern listener way too much. Methods might have changed, but people born 50 years later than him can still think the same.
I’m almost 50 and don’t think music has ever been valued by the mainstream or casual listener the way he’s describing.
@@davidpinney4091 That's exactly it. I feel like the reason for Beato's perspective is simply that he conflates his past experiences as a music afficionado with his recent impressions of pop music mainstream. He was always super passionate about music, and that's the bubble where he pulls his experience from, but at least since the invention of the radio, music has always been used by some people as background white noise or simply a commercialized product to be mindlessly consumed. He just isn't thinking about that, because "back in his day" he and his crowd were preoccupied with their own love and dedication for the thing. Now he looks at a music culture that he's not really part of anymore and only sees the surface level of it which is, to nobody's surprise, commercialized mainstream stuff being consumed mindlessly, and projects that onto everyone and everything music nowadays. There are people being as passionate and meticulous as he and the people he idolizes were back then, both on the producer and the consumer side, he's just not seeing them... and I'm kinda thinking he doesn't really want to see them.
@@rarazalproductions519 yeah, that’s pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to. He just doesn’t want to see it. It’s a shame too since he could really be helpful in promoting some of the great modern bands out there.
the "Music Is Too Easy To Consume" part makes me... emotional!! Music means so much to me and as you said... it helped me through my darkest times and still does so. Those moments, when you cry tears and put on your favourite song, cause it helps you to calm down and stop crying... Those moments at concerts, when the lights go out and you just know you can forget all your problems and all the pain for the next 1-2 hours... It makes me really angry and kinda hurt me if people of older generations like Rick claim that music doesn't have the same value on us as younger generations anymore. cause it f*cking does!! also... the point about buying music... yea... of course it's super easy to put all your favourite songs in a playlist on spotify to listen to it, but that doesn't mean, that people don't buy stuff... I've got (nearly) the whole Electric Callboy collection in my showcase + some more bands... actually... not to listen to it, cause I've got nothing to play them, but to have it and to support the band. At work I was already asked, if I still got something else than band merch in my wardrobe cause I've got so many. This passion to talk about your favourite bands and music is still there. I do it everyday. This passion to just listen to music, to the instruments, to the lyrics and to forget everything around you is still there. I do it everyday!
but, here's where I agree with Rick. Many people only like the hits. before, when you bought the music, it was an investment. You played that disk, first for the hits, but you gained an appreciation for the non-hits, the deeper cuts. Today, going to concerts, it can be frustrating when people just talk over the songs they don't recognize. I don't remember that back in the 80s and 90s. Seems every concert today, I'm having to tell people the STFU, I paid money to hear the artist, not you. I think that's a symptom of the disposable music. That deeper cut? never heard it before, it means nothing to those 'fans', so much that it's not worth listening to.
@marctowersap8018 cannot confirm this, to be honest... yea of course, there are bands / artists you know / like only the hits, but I would not necessarily call them fans of these artists then. imo you are a fan and buy CDs and merch and go to concerts of bands you like more than only the hits. That's at least the way I would define a fan or at what point I would call myself a fan. And as I said... this still exists a lot in the younger generations. I don't wanna say that those... I don't know how to call them... "hit-fans" don't exist either, but imo it's wrong to say that this is the only way the younger generations experience music.
Same with the concert experience you talked about... I (gladly) never experienced something like that by myself, but it's totally disrespectful to talk while the band is playing, especially in a way that is disturbing other fans. But maybe it soothes you when I tell you that there are many many fans in the younger generations that would never ever do something like that 🙇🏻♀️
I saw what Rick was really in about recently when he managed to get John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend for an interview and the question of amps vs plugins came about. Each gave their opinion and Rick kept bringing the same question back numerous times because their answers were not what he wanted to hear.
I'm a boomer (born in '61), and I did all the same things he did back in the day. However, I haven't bought a CD in years. I rely on Spotify and TH-cam to find new music. I do occasionally listen to my old favorite bands, like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but TBH, I could live the rest of my life without listening to Stairway to Heaven ever again. But in the past few years I've been listening to bands that are new to me and loving the experience: Lorna Shore, Slaughter to Prevail, Sleep Token, Avatar, etc. I don't care what they use to create their music. I've subscribed to Rick's channel for a long time and I do agree with him that a lot (if not most) of pop music is pretty inane and mindless, with forgettable lyrics. But I was never a pop music fan. Thanks to an older brother, I've been a metalhead since I was 10 years old. But I'm also a fan of the blues, jazz, world music, goth, folk, etc. I think that's one of Rick's problems, that he focuses too much on the pop charts when he discusses new music on his channel. He needs to remember that there is lots of new jazz artists, creating new jazz music, for example. His video just plays into the stereotype of us boomers being stuck in the past, believing that our old ways of doing things were the best and that we have nothing in common with the younger generations. Attitudes like his will never bridge the generation gap.
I think he forgot that everything is easier because of technology. Everything accessible is better because some are digital nowadays. I support the artists that I love by buying subscriptions to any platforms so I can listen to their music whenever I can.
It's almost like the studio and live versions of songs are different for a reason!
I've been a musician since I was a kid, mainly singing, trying to follow in my parent's footsteps. But I didn't have access to all the instruments and time to learn them. I used whatever I could at the time to write everything from scratch. As tech got better my songs did too. I still long to play live in a band but I haven't found the opportunity or time now that I'm a dad in my later 30's. I play enough piano to get me by and everything else is programmed. I still wrote it. I still chopped and moved all the pieces, placed all the notes, played as much as I could with a midi keyboard. And then of course I sang over it all, without autotune because I don't know how to even use it. I wish I could make it all more polished, but in the end the music is just for me anyway. Some people have some mad talent but they just don't have access to all the pieces so they need to fill them in how they can. Without that we would miss out on hearing that talent. I can't speak for every genre but I'm sure 90% of the rock/metal guys digitally writing entire songs would rather be in a band playing shows. Are we supposed to gatekeep that creativity because they just didn't have enough connections to get a real band together at the start? Fucking shame. And I do respect Beato a lot but he needs to aim more accurately at the trash music and not this entire generation as a whole.
When I was studying at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, in the early 1990's there were people saying the same thing about midi and early ProTools. Now midi and ProTools are a mainstay in music production. 30+ years from now, some old timer will be complaining about how digital music modeling, needs to go back, to the way it was done in 2024. Old people always complain about, how things used to be better. 9 times out of 10 things weren't better, they were just different.
Boomers say there’s no good music today when all they have to do is spend a minimal amount of time sifting through music streaming platforms the same way they used to sift through physical albums at a record shop. Eventually you’ll find something great. If you only listen to the radio, don’t expect to hear anything mind blowing.
The no-good-music today purity test thing is really annoying, and not true.
@@shawnbell6392Yeah, the no good music narrative is infuriating. I’m almost 50 and have found so much great new music out there. If people would just spend a little time looking they’d be amazed…of course they also have to stop listening to all the old stuff long enough to do the looking.
there is no good music, its 99% garbage
@@shawnbell6392 its true, most music these days is garbage
@@MetalDeathHead prove it.
20:50 It doesn't matter if you disagree, it's damn near an objective fact. Music - and entertainment in general - is far more disposable and fleeting than it ever has been. Artists, songs, and albums cycle through the Top 40 much quicker than they did in the 90's, 80's, or 70's. People jump much quicker from one album or hit single to the next, and the algorithms are definitely helping this by always pushing for a New Big Thing.
You cannot deny that this is the reality we are currently in.
Am getting a definite 'man shouting at cloud' vibe from this, think Rick was going for ragebait but conflated some vague idea around modern music with doomscrolling and put this out for a reaction. Completely agree with Tank's comments about music consumption and appreciation - let the listener choose for themselves.
I’ll give you an example of an artist who has a stripped down setup, but yet gets massive results-Brand of Sacrifice (they’ve been featured here) Leo, who is their songwriter, lives in Connecticut, and does all the guitars, synths, and samples. Kyle, their singer, lives in Toronto. Neither member has studio monitors (they use headphones) and I don’t believe Leo has an amp. He also does all the mixing and mastering. I don’t believe the drums are programmed, but I but I could be wrong. When they play live they have a live drummer. The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t need a lot to make professional sounding music, and you don’t even have to live in the same country, and that’s pretty cool. It’s why The Record Plant a big recording studio in California just shut their doors after being in business for a couple of decades.
Dude, You came into this with an attitude. He has a point. You are on a rant. I watched that video. Watch the Music Mafia video. At the end, you'll hear the context of this video. His concerns are mostly about the music industry and artists' ability to make a living. And the ability for any musician or non-musician to crank out stuff that the music industry can sell and pay squat for-- not working for is a problem.
You are on a kids vs boomers rant. He's talking about the music industry.
There’s no way you watched this entire video if you think I came in with an attitude, and didn’t even pick up that I’m also in the music industry.
@@TankTheTech I did watch the entire video.
Rick do have an interesting and valuable perspective, not as a gatekeeper but as a witness of how valuable aspects or creativity get lost, specially once every aspect of production is just so fast and homogenized. With Analog equipment you can intervene in a granular way, but digital has a closed system where everything is tied to fixed results, algorithms, no micro-tonalities. I don’t think Rick is saying that music is reserved for rich sybarites. It’s important to remember who he is talking to. Not to producers but to consumers. Once the consumer gets a glimpse about how music is done, how different things sound, they can differentiate what is done with a deeper level for those who want it.
As a producer, or aspiring one, Rick’s message can entice to try and build using different resources, avoiding this FOMO that is killing creativity, pushing a lot of people into the same boxes, because music is not about talent no more (mainstream), but about likes, industry malpractices, and cult. Under this ugly circumstances, a lot of resources from a limited ecosystem, are focused on reiteration until the next viral trend is imposed.
If that’s his goal, wouldn’t it be more effective to spend time highlighting the artist that aren’t shoehorned into those mainstream boxes? Those that still innovate and work hard to create quality albums full of diversity. There’s a lot of them out there if people just put in a little effort to look for them. Spend some time highlighting the new artists that are not doing the things he complains about instead of completely ignoring them or just dismissing them at best. He could actually give the consumers that glimpse you talked about instead of focusing on negativity and the cookie cutter stuff that makes up most of the charts now.
@@davidpinney4091 Rick usually do that. He interviews a lot of talented individuals. While at the same time they talk about music and other talented musicians, projects, etc. Even at the cringiest Rick’s videos about spotify top 10, Rick, guitar on hands, listen and deconstructs music for his audience to learn a bit more. Sometimes it’s just to technical, but at the end, he just don’t randomly hate all tracks. Sometimes he even praises those that are good or the bits within a song (which can be bad) that are relevant.
Hating Rick’s arguments at this moment is just like hating pineapple on Pizza 😂
The greatest music in western music "ba ba ba bom". Four notes. Smoke on the water. Four notes. What is a song in rock or pop? "I dont like hypnotics...rock is an obsession with the mama heartbeat....I'm trying to break up the hypnotics". - Captain Beefheart, 1978
I've heard fantastic music, its just not on the RADIO anymore. Its not 'corporate' and it doesn't unify the entire country the way the 'american top 40' used to, which scarily enough, in my rural area with shit radio STILL plays on weekends.
I live in a rural canadian province and during covid watched a group of 60 plus geezers who made up a steel drum band and it was better than 90% of most of hte music I grew up listening to. RADIO has always been a plague. The old man disease is thinking that we WERENT suckered by the music industry. Everybody SHOULD know that usually the 'hit single' on most albums was the least interesting song on the album.
But blaming KIDS is the most elitist thing I can think of. Kids now are getting music from ALL generations. I'm blown away by how much great music AMATEURS are producing. THANK GOD the music industry is dead. If only we could get control of radio to stop playing shit then maybe more amateurs could at least buy lunch.
Some time ago I moderated the Twitch channel of a friend who wrote songs on stream. He used amp modellers, drum machines etc. Did the vocals and guitars himself. And even if he did none of those things he still wrote the songs himself.
Sounds to me the only real threat to music is if people lose the ability to write good songs/riffs/vocal lines/etc. And somehow I doubt that will happen.
I saw his video before. He's dead on. I think he is talking more pop than metal.
"Back in my days we had to walk three hours uphill though the snow to get to a record store!" Okay, granpa, go take your nap
And three hours uphill again to go home, and then the record had a scratch and you had to do the same journey again to change it.
@@MarcGrafZahl Very funny! I had to return quite a few back in the day for that reason.
Actually if you lived in a city there were on some corners up to 5 record stores within a minute's walk. Plus the electronics stores had record sections and all department stores had record sections. If you lived in a smaller town there'd be at least two within five minutes walk of each other. Not to mentioned used record stores. Finding records was easy, paying for records was hard.
Yeah, Rick probably doesn't even interact with kids today outside of his own family. I worked as a voice and piano teacher for a couple years and talking to teenagers that love Paramore, MCR, or other artists that were first getting noticed when I was in high school is awesome. If you treat the younger generation like intelligent, and with respect you can have great conversations. When kids get nostalgic with me about the early 2000's and I tell them about burning CD's or before then when you'd record songs from the radio onto a tape they just think it's fascinating.There's more interest and respect there than a lot of Millennials, Gen X, or Boomers give Gen Z or Gen Alpha.
Back in the day we could only listen to music when it was played live. We had no easy record players that could play music on demand! Multiple takes? Back in the day every take was a final take for the audience. No room for mistakes! Kids like Beato just do not understand.
I had only watched his "Old man yells at cloud" video, which was his response to comments. Funny, since the clips you played really come off as that. I get some of his lament that the specialness of buying a record and listening to it has gone away, but I think the tradeoff has been immensely better. The Internet really opened up the amount of bands that I'm exposed to. One of his favorite bands is Karnivool. That's a band I never would have heard about without the Internet, because they are Australian, and unless you became huge, it was highly unlikely you'd get much exposure outside of your own country.
As for, do kids value music, I can say mine does. She's always listening to music, and occasionally exposing me to what she's listening to. I've in fact gotten her to go to ProgPower USA with me a couple of times, since our tastes do cross over a bit.
I didn't even know he had another video in response to this. I'll have to check it out.
@@TankTheTech It is called "I know you're angry, so am I..."
Just to add to that, if it weren't for the internet, we wouldn't have the success of Bloodywood or The Hu, cause there's no way a band from New Dehli or Ulaanbaatar would get THAT famous otherwise. Now you have The Hu opening for Iron Maiden in the US in the coming months! There's no way any of us would know of them otherwise.
Well, that was an embarrassing hot mess, the very definition of "OK Boomer". I couldn't agree with you more strongly Tank. I'm seeing the exact same thing happening in the film industry as well - the Old Guard talking about how people aren't creative anymore because technology, bla bla bla, while the technology IS the innovation. We use what we have at hand: you can't tell me these guys wouldn't have used these technologies had they grown up today. The ACTUAL crux of the problem is, all these men who have traditionally controlled these *very* exclusive industries are becoming irrelevant because they don't understand modern music, but ESPECIALLY, they are losing control over who gets to access to this space. They can no longer decide who gets to work with them, compete with them, who gets to succeed. They are losing control. It's not about "music back in the day was better", it's about control and money. For the film industry, phone cameras were a huge equalizer (which is why Netflix now has stupid requirements for which camera the films they'll accept need to be shot on, except they'll still happily buy Steven Soderbergh's films shot on iPhones and tout it as something revolutionary, it's pure exclusion), and it sounds like all these technologies in the music industry are kind of functioning the same way. So him talking about whether or not people are less creative, innovative, etc is irrelevant. He is basically showing his fears: he's feeling increasingly powerless and irrelevant and confused because he can't keep up. A lot of people who traditionally didn't have access to making music (or film), i.e. marginalized folks, poor folks, non-nepo babies, people outside of the big cities etc, are getting access to these industries - we are living in a VERY exciting time because we get to experience so many more sounds and ideas that were previously being gatekept by dudes like him. He needs to focus on mentoring and passing the stick rather than punch down and complain. And maybe he should try talking to young people some time, because he clearly hasn't engaged with any gen z or alpha fanbases - holy fuck, K-Pop much?!
I worked for the company that made these chairs. Tue quality control was all OVER the place. Most of them are supposed to support 250 lbs minimum, and they barely can hold 200.
Hahahahaha. Yeah, I've broken quite a few of those.
20:20 Beethoven, Bach, Mozart ... remember when you had to put in the effort of working in the mines, riding to town on your horse just to buy a piano and mail the artists for a copy of the notes so you could play their works at home?
What he's talking about with quantizing making sterile, crappy music ...
The last time I was in the studio, no one in the band is quite sure what happened but we were doing live tracks and we caught a MAJOR groove. The sound and the performance were absolutely "top of the world, Ma"....
The timing was a bit fluid- not majorly, but not to metronome... kinda how Zeppelin would sound occasionally.
We came out of the session high-fiving and walkung three feet off the floor.
When we did a listen the next day, he had moved the drums around until it was exactly on time and with zero variation. That meant he had to move everything else to be dead on right to click, set your watch to it.
The track lost the groove. It didn't have the vibe it did the day before.
I have no hassle with technology. It makes stars of people who have no business being in the industry, but used properly, technology can be useful.
Putting everything to exact beats and taking out the performance sucks.
Fair point. In that case you tell the producer you don't want it done like that, and if they're any good, they have the old version saved.
Ah oh well, I’ll still enjoy Rick beato videos
I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I still enjoy the majority of his stuff too.
@@TankTheTech I just choose to not be part of this criticism culture, he did what he wants and people are just reactivand not stating their own original thoughts.
I gave the video a like but I ain’t watching, I’m just tired of the “responding to the out of touch boomer”.
Gonna enjoy ricks and your next video!
Dude, another thing. Yeah, it is very important to pay attention to the albums that you get, is like reading a book while you watch a series in Netflix, you can not do both. The people who make an album, they hope you pay attention, that you analyze it, that you think with it.
Rick was a big inspiration for me years ago but now i look at him as a cautionary tale. In a few years he went from excitedly training about the greatness of music to complaining about how it's all terrible. Negativity gets clicks and Rick is sure making sure he gets them
Imagine if the Olympics wasn't the best athletes, it was the most popular athletes. Not the fastest, the best looking. Not the strongest, the best at posing for pictures.
I think that is the issue that I have. I'm fine with some small time indy artist using auto-tune or drum machines. But seeing someone winning Grammys that does bothers me.
But why? Music isn't a sport or something where you test the best of people's abilities. It's creating art that people can connect to. Unless I'm mistaken, your analogy basically says you wouldn't mind if amateur athletes were juicing steroids, but the Olympic level athletes shouldn't.
@@TankTheTech I'm an old punk rocker, so that may be my issue. I just don't think someone should be considered a master class musician, if they can't play an instrument at a master class level. Someone shouldn't be considered one of the best singers of their generation if they use auto-tune to sound good.
When I was writing my analogy I was picturing a rich kid on a Segway, winning gold in a marathon. Passing by the athletes who actually trained for years to run.
I'm all for kids beating the shit out of a guitar, or computer, to make noises go rrrrrrrrwwwrrrrr and throwing shitty poetry on top. I eat that up, it's punk as fuck. But let's not pretend they're skilled musicians. If that makes sense?
@@JuniperHedge This got a little long, sorry for that, but either way, here goes:
I will not comment about any sort of award shows. I hate those, almost all of them are subjective and it shouldn't matter what those have to say in my opinion.
But! As Tank said, it's not a sport or contest or whatever.
If you do want to look at contests then yes, auto tune might not be ok when you want to look at who sings best. And yes, when you want to find out who plays the guitar best you may not want someone with a computer to show up.
But I believe that's not what matters here at all. It's about music, about art, about whether the creator spent their time and love on the project trying to make something of high quality and maybe even about whether that resulted in something that others want to listen to because they enjoy it. And personally when I can enjoy a song as a whole I don't care if it includes a bit of auto tune or a sample or if a computer was used for the drums.
If someone isn't playing the guitar very well, then yes, that person isn't a skilled guitar players, but that is entirely unrelated to whether that person is a skilled musician or not. In my book, if they can create music that entertains people they're good musicians and using computers to create music is an entire skill of its own that I wouldn't dare to talk down on.
@@johannes.kielmann you don't think using computers to make music is like using AI to "paint" a picture? Is someone good at plugging prompts into MidJourney, who has a big fan base, as good an artist as Monet or Picasso?
@@JuniperHedge Using a computer program to create the drums and using AI to create the drums are two different things. If you want a computer example for drawing then perhaps using a program and a drawing tablet instead of a good old oil painting.
I 100% believe that someone using a program to build their beat is just as much a musician as someone who is recording what they play at the drums. I wouldn't call the person using the computer a drummer, but I don't think anyone wants to.
With AI it gets a little more dicey. Sure it may not be the same kind of effort, maybe also not the same amount of effort, but in the end, yes, I think it's just another tool whether I like what it produces or not. Now whether AI is a morally correct tool is a different topic, let's not go into that one.
Also you mentioned Monet and Picasso. Do you think their art is good? Monet I can agree with, Picasso not so much. It's subjective after all. I don't have to like what artists do, they still are artists.
Rick is right
The comment about this being a dumbed down version of a complex conversation seems to me to be spot on. My feeling on the video was that it was a summarised version of a lot of topics that came up in many of the interviews and discussion videos he's done in the last few years. All of those videos had more context, nuance and and historical progression of the ideas.
Its giving I had to walk to school uphill both ways in 10ft of snow 365 days a year
Technology and ability to create music freely from home gave me a literal life purpose. I am 22 years old and I've been recording/mixing/writing music for over 6 years by now and the thing that I personally enjoy the most is helping people make their ideas and dreams come true.
I've lost count of how many of my friends had their own songs and just couldn't figure out how to bring them to life, so I helped them. And oh boy, that fire that ignites in their eyes when they first hear their own song fully recorded and mixed is the greatest joy I've ever experienced.
I honestly think that if recording and making music wasn't that easy now a lot of these people would just quit and never record or do anything with their art, me included.
Not everything has to be made in a professional studio and I firmly believe that some things simply doesn't need to.
And I'm not even talking about how people could easily start to learn stuff with modern technologies and become a qualified professionals later helping make music better
It doesn't really matter if he is right or not. What matters is that alot of people resonate with what he says, wrong or not.
On the whiskey community they have a phrase that says: "The best whiskey is the whiskey you like to drink, the way you like to drink it." and i think this applies to music as well, the best music is the music you like to hear, the way you like to hear it. SO, to a guy like Rick, saying this is just forcing his views, beliefs and opinions down the throat of the audience, just because of his influence, in my opinion.
I understand some of your points and some of Rick’s points. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. :-) What has really changed for me as a listener is the “just sit down and listen” approach to an album...
I’m much more distracted today, like most people i think, and I miss that way of listening to full albums. I know that’s up to me how I listen to music, but it’s easier said than done.
It just takes one “less good” song for me to skip to the next track or switch to another band on Spotify. It’s just one click away, so you don’t even think about it. When you listened to a vinyl, you listened to the full album, one “bad” song wasn’t enough to make you change the album. But that’s up to me, and I can live with this “problem.” It’s just easier to get distracted today, and this just happens.
I've been making music for 50 years and I'm increasingly tired of hearing the same complaints from musicians in my age group. Be it about modern music, equipment or playing techniques.
"Oh, everything used to be so much better..."
Shit NO man, it wasn't!
Everything is whining at a high level.
After two herniated discs, I am grateful that there are usable AMP modelers on the market and that I don't have to carry heavy equipment around like I used to.
We can compose, arrange and practice over the internet without me having to travel hundreds of kilometers each time.
I have a small home studio at home that produces very good results for demos.
Where was that possible before without spending a lot of money and mostly getting junk in return?
I can only think of one piece of advice for Rick.
If you don't move with the times, then you move with the times.
'Music is too easy to make' boils down to excessive reliance on technology. Basically you no longer need to be able to play any instrument in order to make music, you just need to know how to use the various recording software available well and you can produce all the music you want. The problem is that there's only so much you can create without the actual instruments, so all of modern music(regardless of genre btw) starts to sound the same because they all use the same tools and in very similar ways. Than you add auto tuning, quantizing, etc, to 'fix' mistakes and you lose the last portion of the soul music used to have. After all us human beings are imperfect creatures, we can't truly achieve perfection. Thus we find beauty in the flaws and imperfections. Modern technology allows us to 'fix' these flaws and imperfections but in the process loses what makes it human made.
Perfect is well, boring, and also very linear so actually achieving perfection removes a lot of variety from the music, as the variety mostly came from ways of dealing with/compensating for the imperfections. So yes, making music is much more accessible today, and that's absolutely wonderful for hobbyists. However when the professionals, as in those that make a living from making music, rely on these technological tools as crutches too than that's where the problems begin. To put it bluntly, the gap between amateurly made music and professionally made music is ever shrinking and it's not because the amateur music reaches professional levels but rather because the professional music drops to amateur levels.
Now that's not to say that all uses of technology are bad, far from it. Using technology as a crutch is bad. Using technology to enhance actual creative music is good. Trent Rezner that you mentioned is a perfect example of the later. The 2 songs you showed with Rick's credits on is a perfect example of the former. You called Rick a hypocrite because of it but I strongly disagree. Rick may have worked on those songs but that doesn't mean he was happy about the way things were done. After all most people, not just Rick, aren't always happy with what they have to do at work, in fact I dare say most people are unhappy about the things they're forced to do at work and only do it because it earns them a paycheck... So yes, Rick has a lot of song credits in utterly generic garbage music, which he himself hates, but it paid his bills at the time so he did it... Doesn't make him a hypocrite, just a person dissatisfied with his job(at the time) and with the way his industry(the music industry) has evolved and the direction it's headed towards.
Hey Tank, I had to drop a quick comment here to support this video. I was to a concert where a band lost their backing track and could not get it working. After trying to get it working, they finished the concert without it. They still sounded great. Was the music a little less full sounding, maybe, but the songs sounded great to me. Technology helps make music, but it takes more then tech make a song great. Technology is just another tool. Different music speaks to different people. If we all liked exactly the same kind of music, i think it would be boring lol.
One thing I agree with, and I started to feel this way for a long time now, is that the ease with which we can create music these days has great benefits and also some downsides. I think him mentioning all the tools, samples, autotune, etc. wasn't him trying to say that we shouldn't use them or that it's frowned upon. I think he's talking about listening to music these days and going "oh yeah, those are Superior Drummer samples blended with some GDD" or just listening to people using presets. Like from a production standpoint, which is where I think he also factors in with the entire package of "music", there's a laziness to just get the thing out there. "Let's not bother getting the best take we can, we can just fix it in the box" is something I've heard SO many times and you wonder if there is some potentially great stuff that just gets lost because of convenience whereas a band paying thousands for studio time, for getting records distributed, etc. would be thinking "Fuck I need to make this the best thing ever or I've just wasted everyone's time and money". There's also the innovation thing where back in the day, the Beatles would be like "I want this snare drum to sound like a cornflake in Apple Minor" and they'd experiment and find that particular sound with that particular technique, whereas these days it's all in the box and you're limited to what the software allows you to do.
I agree that it's a "dumbed down" version of his points and it does give off boomer vibes because all the things I mentioned above are totally fixable if people truly wanted to. I mean, back then the reason they needed to innovate was because of the limitations of the tech they were using, so I mean, I don't see how this is any different today. The big question really is "do artists/producers want to?" and that's an entirely different discussion.
What I do think is creating shit music is this obsession with the next "viral" thing and sometimes it feels like people are just throwing shit at a wall and hoping something sticks and it's over saturating the market. There's TONS of great music being made these days, and just like producers and bands wanting to be innovative in the creative process, listeners just need to actually do some work and find it.
If there's one thing that i kinda agreed with 50% is its easier to consume makes it less valuable, im in my early 20s, i had that feeling slightly last year for about maybe a week. Why? Overabundance of choice. But that was connected to just the whole concept as a whole I contemplated during the time. Then, when i just sat down and listened to records front to back on streaming, that's now just my main way of listening to things i haven't heard. Digital or physical, its all down to how the individual chooses their methods to listen, discover, and appreciate music.
As someone who isn’t in Rick’s similar age group (I’m 31), I still agreed with a lot of what he was saying. Re: the drums, this has been part of my biggest gripe with modern music. I understand why bands have to do it, but it just sounds less ‘soulful,’ for lack of a less corny term, when the drums are too perfect. It’s like how the videos of Eloy playing drum covers with essentially raw audio are much more interesting to watch than these drums videos that have been heavily edited. In my opinion, music sounds better when it sounds like a bunch of guys jamming in a room together. It’s an intangible. As far as music being devalued in today’s era, I think there’s some value to it. Because the lack of sales via physical media, and because music is cheaper to make, labels are more focused on pumping up streaming numbers as opposed to bands needing to put together a full album that justified the cost for a fan to purchase the whole thing. I’m not going to buy a $35 vinyl record that has 3 good hits on it and then a bunch of duds. But if streaming is the focus, I think it’s more about throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what fits. And with music being easier to make, it’s great to help talented artists get their music out there, but it also means there will be endless amounts of mediocre, copycat musicians trying out hop on the current wave and put out something that’s already been made a thousand times.
It’s not to say that music today isn’t great - there are plenty of current bands I could name that are. But it’s muddled in a sea of a lot of music that a) sounds way to similar b) is kinda surface level c) sounds too sterile and d) is just not that interesting to listen to. It’s a big reason why a band like Knocked Loose is killing it - they have a raw sound that’s produced well (and doesn’t have that INK overly perfect production to it). Just my take as a millennial who loves 70s/80s music as much as the current stuff
My first solo single where I did all of the instruments was me with a midi drum plugin played via a midi piano, a guitar, a bass, vocals, and the Helix Native plugin from Line 6 doing a very NIN inspired song. I've since learned how to actually program drums and released a couple of other singles, and in my full band, my bassist and I both send in tracks complete with drums, bass, and guitars, ready to get into the practice spot for everybody to put their own spin on it. The tech makes all that really easy these days.
Also, I listen to music on streaming all the time, and have over 750 albums on vinyl in my collection right now.
Thinking about this, only part I could agree with is that top charts stuff tends to sound very look-a-like generic. That is probably enabled by things like samples and lining up everything on the grid etc., but it's not like that's mandatory. As tank said in the country example, it all kinda being the same is the point in that case because that's what vibes with their audience. Idk who really is at fault here then, people listening to it if they like it? Like sure if we did not have the tech it would be way more complicated to have all the top songs use same 4 notes and have same tempo and whatever but I suppose if people could, they would.
With that in mind, just because chart topping song are done that way for broadest appeal, does not mean very cool unique stuff cannot get made using same techniques. The reality I think is that "generic" sound just has the broadest appeal. When you make unique stuff, just because it's very complex and "good" music does not meat it will appeal to everyone since that feeling is very subjective.
The only thing that startles creativity IMO is that this "generic" sound was found, so the pattern exists and if you want to target the largest mainstream audience, it's gonna be hard to avoid it. But that's more of a "product" thinking than making music isn't it, your expression is being replaced by target audience. Likely this is just jab at super mainstream. Like damn it people why are you fine with listening to this generic stuff and not getting offended about it, lol.
Anyway that's like the only argument of his I see to stick. All the other stuff makes no sense, technology enables greater creativity if anything, and music streaming allows you to explore more music without needing to buy/rent millions of records a year. And it's not like I'm not gonna have feelings when listening to the Black Album just because I play it on Spotify.
I'm glad you talked about the advances of the plugins. I lived through the changes and I remember the warm sound of my tube based analog radio compared to my first solid state radio. Even with missing some of that older technology I still don't think music is worse or less innovative (FIR), but there's a difference. Maybe it's just nostalgia, because memory is very imperfect. I miss drive-in theaters but I remember those crappy corded speakers you hung on your window before they started broadcasting audio to your FM radio. Now we have 3d, Imax, Dolby Digital Surround... Objectively better, but I still miss the drive-in.
I'm 52 and have experienced a second life when it comes to being a fan of music as I've discovered SO MANY fantastic new groups and artists in the last few years. Beato's video and those who are from my generation and agree with that mindset drive me absolutely insane.
Man, ever since singers started using microphones all the feeling, emotion and skill has gone out the window.
Technology makes everyone into amazing singers. They don’t even have to learn how to project across ravines anymore.
Back in my day we had to summon the gods with blood sacrifice and drugs - uh I mean *herbs* - to fully unlock our potential...
And people listened with intent! Because there way scared the gods would strike them down otherwise!!
I do wish people would appreciate music the way we used to. Sigh.
Did Rick expect anybody at home to go "Ah fair point, I will stop recording and releasing my own music as long as I don't have access to real amps and drums."
Seriously, his generalizations make no sense. Why should I, a bedroom musician, stop using these tools just because a stifled, money hungry pop music industry uses them for a quick buck? Is it the tools that make me lazy and greedy? Or is it maybe that profit-driven corporations don't even try to make art while I do?