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Tangentially Speaking

452 – Rick Beato Returns (Music Producer and Host of What Makes This Song Great?)

By December 2, 2020June 22nd, 20224 Comments

For my money, Rick Beato is the most knowledgeable, most enthusiastic, most open-hearted guide to the world of music. Dude can break a song down to its essence without draining its magic and beauty. Quite the opposite, in fact. After a few episodes of What Makes This Song Great?, you’ll understand music — and hear it — in a whole new way. Here’s a link to our previous conversation.

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Intro music: “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range,“Pygmy Lullaby,” by Jan Garbarek; “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” by Blue Oyster Cult.  

4 Comments

  • Awesome chat. Hopefully one day the two of you will be sitting together in front of a piano so you can record a few tunes for us to enjoy 🙂

    Rick’s anecdote about his dad struck a chord. My dad has never been the most communicative man with me, and he very rarely praises me or my work, and yet like Rick I know he shows his love in other ways. But it also reminded me of the movie Shine (1996) which launched Geoffrey Rush into stardom: there you do see a paternal figure that wants to live vicariously through his son’s incredible musical talent –a talent he knows fully well he lacks, which throws the whole relationship into a strange vortex of jealousy and resentment.

  • jandojando says:

    Good to hear Rick Beato on the show again to talk about my favorite subject, music!

    You’ve mentioned a few times you dislike ‘music made by machines’. When you talk about about the party in Goa you were probably hearing Goa or Psy trance music. Now I’ve got to say that this is not my favorite type of electronic music, but still there is a lot to it. There are tons of genres and subgenres in the type of music you could hear at a ‘rave’, and it is mostly not simple music at all. There’s so much amazing stuff out there!

    In electronic music, it’s a lot about the design of the sound and creating an atmosphere. Without knowledge of music theory, you could actually create a track, but it just takes another skillset. It’s never easy, if you want to create something good, and it takes hours and hours and hours of learning. Still you would do better if you would have knowledge of music theory, or if you could play instruments, or know how to compose or build a song. Today there are LOTS of ways to express yourself in electronic music, while using the endless variety of sounds you can use or create by yourself, and devices to get your hands on. You are not bound to the sound of a guitar, for example. If you prefer to hear something more organic like you said, then you could use your imagination and create organic type sounds. Or just use samples. In the end, even though created by machines, what you are hearing are sounds. Waves moving through the air, entering your brain.

    Dive into the rabbit hole of music ‘created by machines’ and be amazed! Just wanted to point that out 🙂

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