Do It NOW Or You’re FIRED! w/ Tim Pierce

hey everybody I'm Rick biotto you know that because you're on my channel and this is Tim Pierce hey everybody who's been on my channel a million times Tim hey welcome to your studio welcome to my home I'm in Los Angeles here I'm out here and my first thing that I always do when I come here is to come to Tim's house and make a video together I want to ask you about your Bob Dylan session that you did it's been probably two years now right yeah it was so glorious in the middle of the pandemic this amazing thing happened Don was called and said hey you want to go over to Bob Dylan's and run some songs and my heart started beating really really fast and I went yeah even though I was scared a little bit because you know he's an intense guy and so we worked up 12 Songs We went down and ran him he loved it we all sat in a circle tight just like this I was this close to him I asked him about this stuff uh every day I would call Tim and we'd we'd talk and I said my thing was did you make any mistakes and of course no one makes mistakes because it's all pro session players that's true and but it's a lot of pressure though because Bob's changing chords wherever right he'd change the array change if if it was six bars maybe he'd play Four Bars maybe play eight bars right it's always a moving Target he's changing everything all the time the original records he just laughed wait a minute didn't didn't you say that that he would um that you'd be listening the song trying to work them out and then he starts playing them at the same time oh it's it's even hairier than that so the first 12 songs we did we we did those like we we blasted them down on our first you know time together on our first it wasn't really a rehearsal we were getting ready to record live off the floor for a live stream right that's what this was all about so we did 12 Songs it was great it was glorious and then we came back to do six more he wiped away the six that he had chosen so we were prepped you know and he said I want to do these and you're learning the song while he's playing it you have Spotify in one earplug on your phone and you're learning it off the Record and he's already playing it and you're catching up with him I mean it's it's amazing and then once you do the song there are different tempos different keys different arrangements so you're you're constantly how how focused were you on this it's 100 focus and everybody's like everybody's like that so me Don was and Greg Lee's and my my thing was very unique Don was always hired me at a certain point to be a timekeeper on acoustic guitar so my role on a bunch of Records I did for Don was just to go and be the time keeper with the drummer because he somehow he liked my pocket and so when he got this thing with Bob Dylan he automatically thought of me to be actually Bob Dylan from the 60s because we weren't doing new songs we were redoing his greatest songs for this live stream so he wanted me to be the early Bob Dylan Strummer so Bob wouldn't have to do that so my role was acoustic and then Greg Elise was playing mandolin pedal steel electric guitar everything under the sun slide everything but yeah there are no mistakes and there's no patience either Bob's so you're literally you've got like one shot and you know he would throw away everything we prepared and try new stuff all the time and you're literally learning it off of spotify and he's already playing it and you catch up and you do the song maybe you do it one more time then you move on they brought in a team from the village recorder a Pro Tools system and T-Bone Burnett's uh you know calling main guy to record us and we recorded everything off the floor we did like 30 songs and they eventually did the live stream with actors so Tim okay so I want to get back to the studio thing this is what's always this is why I loved him so much is because he's such a phenomenal player I always revered session players like Tim and because me being a producer uh I would have I wouldn't have the luxury of hiring session players because when I start producing there were no budgets anymore really I mean by the time 2005 hit there were no budgets for people like me that were making records with rock bands You couldn't really hire session guys so I would have to be the session guy to play stuff well because you could play everything you wouldn't bring people in there I'm sure there were some local people you could have brought in but you actually could play all those parts yeah but I but I didn't like to do it it was it was um yeah dude necessity for the budgets and everything I understand correct and they would expect the thing is that the record labels didn't care who played it they just expected it to be right that's right and unfortunately a lot of the guys at that time or girls whatever the guy it was guys actually uh couldn't play their own songs properly and so you had to replay their parts that's not out all the time but you did that was the period we're talking about the 90s right the late 90s and the early 2000s there was a period and Howard Benson used to talk about this where the bands they would sign couldn't play they had maybe some songs and they would just sign these bands one after the other but they couldn't necessarily they couldn't play they almost everyone would have their drummer replaced right so they have a session drummer yeah and the session drummer's name would not appear it would appear as a thank you usually yeah or additional you know additional production but that's how you knew that it got someone else other than the drummer from the band did uh played on the record is that you would see see this other person Josh freeze thanked or whoever it might be Kenny Aronoff they would be on there it's like oh they obviously played drums they're both their names additional I got a lot of additional guitars right yeah additional meaning all but it's way off to the side I under you know underwear now this is an interesting thing too Tim because I would never credited myself as playing in any records and not realizing that people got paid by being a player on this I didn't know this yeah you're right and there were royalties you know every country in the world changes and things like that yeah and PPL every country in the world except for the United States North Korea and I think it's Iraq okay pays royalties on performances so radio AirPlay all over the world pays the musicians who play on the records and you're right you missed out on that by not filing Union sessions and putting your name on it because all you really need to get those royalties is to show that you actually played played on the record so my thing about that was that I never wanted to take credit away from the band because I was the producer so I figured it's my name on the record I so I don't need to to I don't I don't want people to think it's someone else doing it other than the band well I did the same thing with Shinedown when I did all the guitars on two of their records I waited a decade before I started telling people yeah out of respect and courtesy and real love for these guys in the band and that's that's just you respected them you wanted them to have their own identity and so you did that it was the right thing yeah good on you so uh this thing though about Precision Tim having this is the thing that I love about your playing so much is your your precision and heart you have this you have great feel you have great pocket Soul everything and yet you don't make mistakes either you don't have rushed things you don't have things you don't hit bum notes You'll Play these you play in every video every one of your videos and you'll play long passages You'll Play really complex You'll Play simple things complex things there's never a note that's bent sharp there's never a run that's that's that has a wrong note in it there's never anything that is no matter how what you play you execute it perfectly well my schooling was La in 1980 when I moved here La was Mecca it was this giant Campus of amazing musicians so I got to hear right away when I got here and started doing stuff guys like Luca thur and Dan huff and Paul Jackson and Michael Landau these guys were doing all the records and you would hear the sessions and they were they were first take players yeah and so you realized oh this is a whole different level than I thought because what happens when you uh you know grow up in the midwest or whatever I grew up in New Mexico you'd listen to a record you go oh I could do that part whatever on you know on Rosanna I could do that part sure but you don't realize it's any part they want at any time and it's delivered instantly that they imp that they're improvising truly like Luke walks into a Don Henley session and he throws that stuff down immediately and then leaves and it's the greatest thing you've ever heard and you don't realize it's just like that and it's all across town these guys were showing up doing this stuff instantly and I was just I was you know it wiped me out you know I was like a deer in the headlights okay so the pressure to do that so immediately you realize oh you can't make any mistakes and you've got to come up with your best stuff on the first take or the second take and worse than that when they ask you to do something that's the opposite of what you just did you go oh yeah I can do this and they go we'd like the opposite of that give us that now it was clean we want it dirty you know it was syncopated we want it straight you know it was swung we want it not swung you know what I'm saying so it's thinking on your feet and just and just pivoting instantly with no and you can't be dejected about it right Tim you have to be you are dejected but you hide it and you I said this before your ego gets obliterated and you bring your ego back to a horse immediately constantly like you get slapped in the face and you come back like well I'm the greatest thing you know you you have to bring it back full force every time you get cut to Pieces that's the job so were there things were there times I know that the answer to this but I'll just ask it anyways times when you know you played a part that's way better that they've asked you to play something else that's completely different you knew the part that you did was far better though right that's true it happens so many times though that you get used to it and you you really give up the expectation that your great part uh is and then what would happen is in the session the mix is glorious the guitars are loud you do one guitar and another guitar another guitar and it's just filling the room right and then you hear the record and they're like where are they they're they're and an electric guitar there's a threshold if it gets below a certain threshold it loses what's the point of having it exactly right so that that I gave up all my expectations I felt like whatever I got that day in the room was the peak of the experience and then whatever I heard on the record later you know if I was lucky you got to hear a part you know Tim you can have really really simple parts that are that can make a song though if I play this Tim [Music] that's just one chord four notes but that conjures up so much doesn't it I felt in the studio because I had no music school no training that my actual shot what was going to keep me in the game was executing the best version of the simplest part or the simplest version of the best part and luckily when Kurt Cobain and Nirvana showed up music got simple so I was here in the 80s just getting my ass handed to me by guys like Luca thur and Dan Huffman like that because they were so great at what they did I was learning the whole time by 1990 I had sort of a game going I could sort of do the this Rhythm and the sounds and everything 1993 was it when Nirvana showed up 91 91 okay end of 91 end of 91 and they became huge no matter the World opened for me because they wanted a studio player who could sound like the bad guy and I was that guy I had no schooling no training but I could show up and deliver Parts simple parts that felt like I had written them I owned them like my life depended on them so if you play a part and it's simple and you go and you're condescending about it or you're not really committing to it or you're not authoritative about it they know that yeah when I played a simple part I it was the best you know it was like my life right you own yeah exactly so that's actually what kept me working all the time 1990 I started working constantly and when Nirvana showed up and what I did became what people needed it was just I was working seven days a week I mean I would work with clients you know during the week and then people would wait for me on the weekend and I'd fill them in on the weekend and that that went for like 20 years so it was the best version of the simplest part and you just have to remember everything in short bursts read the room find out what people wanted find out what their favorite band was maybe what their favorite band was right try and Chase those sounds those parts and basically if it's a new person then you want to win them over in the first 15 minutes the key is to give them something in the first 15 minutes that makes them go ah yeah he can make our dreams come true with the guitar so for me it was orchestrating guitar parts and that's never shredding and it's never complex it's basically simple things that all fit together in different frequencies and so by the time you know I kind of finished my busiest part of my session career I had no chops [Laughter] how much is because he actually gets to play the guitar now totally so you have a whole new life as as a guitar player who gets to play solos and you get to play whatever you want as an artist these days I play more guitar than I did than in some ways because I'm actually working up lead parts and solos and performances so it's it's really been a nice chapter we're actually both in that same thing even though I don't play the very often on my YouTube channel but I play on Instagram on Instagram yeah yeah and I I warm up every day and I film my little quick lessons or every other day or so and that's the most playing that I've done in 25 years or more 30 I don't know at least 20 years yeah I think we're like teenagers now I I worked so hard as a session musician that I would come home and just try and recover from it and I wouldn't necessarily practice because I was under the gun trying to come up with stuff and you let alone the acoustic guitar approach you had to come up with you would do electrics and they go okay now we're doing Acoustics you have to come up with all this stuff bent over like like that and get different sections and orchestrate Acoustics and high strungs and 12 strings and so by the end of the day I'd be driving home like oh I'm not going to practice because I got to get up tomorrow morning and do it again I would just try to eat well exercise a little bit keep my marriage good and do the job so now I'm like a teenager again and I'm actually practicing guitar I take lessons from people online it's it's really it's really fun so Tim this the thing about being a YouTuber though right I released a video earlier today on Wes Montgomery and people on my channel don't really care about jazz Unfortunately they just I don't know why uh when I started my channel I had my content was mainly Jazz I talked about music theory ear training and things like that but film scoring but I did a lot of jazz videos and Now jazz just doesn't work anymore and the further that we get away from that if if I think back to people like Larry Carlton or lucather guys in the 70s that were doing session and and earlier The Wrecking Crew they were all Jazz musicians they were historically uh session players were Jazz musicians they all had Jazz backgrounds bad Jazz background that meant they could improvise come up with stuff on the fly yeah and the ones that were that had good pocket ended up in all the studios you know they had great pocket it's like Louis Shelton these guys then they would end up in the rooms with Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys it's because they could improvise so they could come up with cards so improvising yeah is part of being a jazz musician is improvising or being a rock musician or Blues musician back then in the 70s when we grew up everybody improvised yeah that was just part of the gig that's what you wanted to do you wanted to take solos and and play different stuff every time and that would extend to playing rhythm guitar parts and and coming up with these things that make you a session player well and with regards to The Wrecking Crew they talk about this in the film at a certain point almost on a particular day the same with you know Kurt Cobain changed everybody's life in one day in L.A with bringing this new style well The Wrecking Crew apparently rock bands became kind of what they wanted to hear in studios at just at a certain point and The Wrecking Crew kind of all at once was done and there was like Crosby Stills and Nash and bands were being recorded in studio in the same way that Nirvana changed it exactly so then the session musician became the the it became a rock animal and that's the only reason I started to work I moved here in 1980 and the you know by then it was already well established Luca there was a rock animal and he was doing all the sessions Landau was a rock animal doing all the sessions okay with each other let's talk about we uh I just did a video on Wichita alignment which I I didn't know was one of your favorites one of my all-time favorites it is my favorite I have no problem saying this it's my favorite record of all time it's absolutely beautiful the the string Arrangement the melody the chord progression everything about that Glenn Campbell's uh uh vocal is astoundingly good and everything about the track every part is so perfectly played they probably played it down one time too you know whatever you're right one or two times now my love of music comes from top 40 radio in the 60s and that song came out in 1968. and it's evocative and it's not about the guitar the guitar is a flavor and a seasoning there's a gut string in there that's amazing if you really focus on it yeah and then Glenn plays the solo yeah I learned this he borrowed Carol K's Dan Electro yep six string bass you'll see Glenn in TV shows playing the fender base six when he plays that solo yep and he does it live it's like one of those uh minus vocal tracks he's playing against he's singing live and playing that solo live and it's phenomenal gives you another window into how good these people were but so he borrowed Carol K's base down Electro bass for this but I know what really really brings it home for me is the orchestra oh my God it sounds and then that vocal I need you more than watch you and I want you for all time well Jimmy Webb one of the best lyricists and Melody writers and they they kind of you probably explained I didn't look at your video but the the chord changes are so inventive and so beautiful yeah when I say a record it's my favorite record of all time you know he means let's talk about that that when people talk about records now I didn't when I when people talked about records session players to me when I first started out I thought they meant album but they said record they mean song well it's the realization of the song it's not the writing of the song it's not the melody it's not the lyrics it's the record it's listening to red rain and hearing that build at the beginning it's listening to All Along the Watchtower and hearing his voice and the the acoustic guitar records it's the actual production because rarely does your dream come true when you sit and write something I mean you don't get Stairway to Heaven when you get Stairway to Heaven it's one of your favorite records of all time Wichita Lineman red rain you know uh Along the Watchtower these are records yes it's the culmination the realization in the studio of an idea what's another song like Wichita Lineman that and there's very few songs like Wichita Lineman it has such a deep lyric and such a an unusual Melody but what's another song from that era that that is is a song that you love well to me it was bands like The Fifth Dimension it was Burt Bachrach and Hal David all their songs yeah and there's maybe a half a dozen of them that we could pick I mean it's the look of love it's California's Soul uh it's Aquarius you know this is where we go with this stuff it really is yeah yeah great songs and those songwriters they were coming out of the tradition of the songwriters from the 30s and 40s really well it's also the Beatles too they were all actually grabbing from every genre and so you know the songs had interesting chord changes borrowed chords and dissonance and tension yeah and risk key changes yes so there's not a lot of that going on right not many key changes today I made a video about that recently uh uh four 25 of songs from 1965 to 2009 had had a key change in it 25 a quarter and then since 2009 no songs there was one rap song that had a key change but it was it was just a different sample that was in a different key that was uh that they changed to well I feel really lucky that I was born in 58 and I grew up listening to an amazing era of Music the 60s and the 70s and I I'm not shy about saying I think it's the greatest I mean Stevie Wonder you know that's right his songs My Sharia Moore oh my God you know it's that's a song that I would have named of that era that is is a perfect song yeah so I feel very lucky to be this age and and have that be my DNA what what raised me in music and then being able to move here in 1980 and really be humbled by the realization that I I was barely good enough to exist compared to these other guys and I spent a decade going to school in La doing records touring I did well but I spent a decade going to school so that I could around 1990. so that Kurt Cobain could change your life it was it's just kind of perfect I would make that video how Kurt Cobain changed my life you're right you're right I should I mean I should that's you yeah and it's interesting that you credit him I think that you got everybody knows I'm a massive Nirvana fan yeah uh and Kurt Cobain was a great orchestrator for the Rhythm parts that he wrote behind his vocals were were incredibly great the riffs right come as you are uh All Apologies um Heart-Shaped Box these parts that were just really unique worked perfectly with the vocals but were actual orchestrated guitar parts well and there were two things happened that opened all the doors for me one was I played on a crowd as houses Don't Dream It's Over and one of the best songs ever that that's another one right that's another one a perfect song for songwriters it was like get this guy even though I was a small part of that Neil Finn played the original part but I did all the color Parts on it songwriters gravitated towards me because they they found out I played on it but the other thing that happened was when Nirvana showed up it was get the studio guy that sounds like the bad guy and I was that guy and there were a few others too rusty Anderson was another one people went to he was brilliant at that until he got scooped up by McCartney but I was the studio guy that could sound like a band guy and and I was also really willing to say yes to everybody that's the other thing in the studio you get your feelings hurt a lot you get you know Torn to Pieces when you you know and you have to come right here who says this always with a smile though well it's it's the job but I was always the guy who could take it and come back with a smile and stay an hour later and do my best to try and give people what they wanted not every musician could do that I don't know that I could do that today you know it's just at a certain point you you know and you know I never faulted anybody for going no you know but I always said yes Tim why you've known me a long time now why could I never do a recording as a producer anymore what um is do I just not have the patience for that or is that or is that is it that I just never worked with the right people no I think you earned that as a certain point but it's it's to your point earlier in this video you are an artist in what you do on YouTube and Instagram You Do Your Own Thing Once you get a taste of doing your own thing you can't go back you can't go back right and it's that more than anything you know it's it's you're an artist now okay so what are the advantages of us being in our 60s there's no we're not ashamed of being in our 60s that's a fact of life not at all but being on social media although I don't consider YouTube social media YouTube is not really social media but being on this platform in your 60s what do we have an advantage over people that that are not in their 60s I think in some ways because we don't expect as much because we we've been through a career we've run the gauntlet in one career already so when you do a second career I mean I used to study psychology and Carl Jung always wanted to hire people who had already come from another career to go to school and be therapists and I remember that caught my year at one point so because it's our second chapter and our second career it's my fourth career but yeah okay yeah then more power to you you're not as attached to it I mean you know what it is you do it but you've kind of Seen It All Before and the other thing is it's like you just don't you don't worry as much about stuff so I did a record back in 2003 I'm not going to say what it is and I've never played this record on my on my channel I've never talked about a record record uh I worked with a solo artist and uh that uh a friend of mine uh connected me with and I did his record and it was just me and him and a drummer and I pretty much played everything he played the acoustic guitar parts but I did all the overdubs and I had some little keyboard Parts string parts and stuff like that and I mixed the record and he got a record deal and his a r guy was I'm sorry to say kind of a knucklehead and uh and the artist because he'd been trying to get a record deal for years and years he uh when they said why don't you uh take these parts and we'll some of these string parts and we'll get a string arranger to do to do it and I was thinking why don't we just put out the record like it is because the record sounds great so not only did we add these orchestral parts that that in La orchestrator that I won't name he did honestly a terrible job orchestrating this thing and and they were they didn't blend with the tracks that were recorded and then they hired somebody to mix the record who ruined the record and um I was I was so mad about this and one of my best friends my buddy Jake said to me at the time Jake is um he's still an a r guy Jake works for RCA records and Jake said to me don't burn a relationship over a record meaning don't get attached to this thing oh gosh there's nothing that you can do about this this guy's going to make a knucklehead decision and he knew the version that I turned in that got this kid the record deal and then he heard the record that was finished and it was awful because it had terrible mixes and had all these extra orchestral parts that ruin the songs I mean I crafted this thing and mixed as I went and it was a really powerful record and I don't talk about it anymore because the record that's out there is this crappy record okay so back to a couple couple of things we've said so when I said the only expectation I had was on the day I did the session after that I had to give up all expectations because it was never allowed in the mix I don't know if they'd even use the parts the parts got erased yeah the other thing is now that you actually call the shots you you're not in a system where other people have to take ownership and push you down that's right so all of these people had to take ownership and take it away from you in order when you talk to all these people a r people the the and over the mixer the NRP mixer yeah and all their decisions had to be yeah affirmed yeah I mean oh I picked this mixing engineer for this I got this orchestrator to do this thing I made the record oh yeah forget about the producer he doesn't count well and that's the entertainment business like I listened to a podcast called armchair expert right now and it's Dax Shepard and he was an actor that worked in the system his whole life and the podcast is so successful he would laugh if NBC or even spot if he he's on Spotify so but he would laugh and you and I've talked about this if an entertainment company gives you an offer no no no no the the autonomy that I have on YouTube to make whatever I want this video that we're making can be any length that we decide yeah we'll talk until we're done yeah and there is no format that we follow once you make a living as an artist you can decide tomorrow morning to release a video or not you can decide to do the opposite the thing I love most about being a YouTuber right now I can wake up tomorrow morning and decide to do the opposite of what I planned right the exact opposite I'll talk with Tim about making a video and come up with ideas and then when I go to make the video it'll be something completely different exactly and you can't do that with a hierarchy and a corporation and a company because you have to do what what you have to brainstorm it make all these plans and then that's what you do you can never change on a dime what you're gonna do and say you know what I'm not inspired by that I'm gonna do something completely different well and Partnerships are always restrictive as much as I like you if you and I were Partners it would last like three days right that's not true actually that's not true okay but um the thing about don't burn a relationship me but really what Jake was saying is that the you're not the artist you're the producer and if the artist wants to screw it up that you just have to let them screw it up well and the artist is always getting whispered in the ear by people who have agenda so right more than the artist manager we didn't mention that the artist manager might be going you know you need to do this this and this yeah and forget that and of course what happened to this guy put out his record it flopped and he got dropped usually what happens yeah and all the people that were interested in him when they heard the record they all said to me what happened to the record why does it sound terrible said hey I had nothing to do with it yeah it's just great to be out of the entertainment industry it was great to work in it was wonderful to be part of it and now at this point I think that's what's great about being in your 60s and having your own you know kind of immediate thing it's it's you you know what it you know what it was like to be part of the system and you don't have to cater to it anymore it's wonderful so Tim what's uh we're in a new year now anything that you're going to do different this year any new things is there any overarching thing that you're gonna do with your channel this year I'm gonna try and bring more joy to every video I'm going to try and play better guitar in every video I'm gonna try and get better sounds right of course that means get new gear yeah I'm Gonna Keep It Coming uh and I'm going to try not to burn any bridges in the new realm with the new people right and I'm gonna try and stay healthy I feel 27 you know it's amazing um and I'm trying to keep my hearing and and play better guitar basically we're trying to play better guitar and keep keep making videos that get views but also make videos that people like I mean what I've really learned this year the thing is when you mature on YouTube it it's not no longer about necessarily constant growth although you're the exception to that but for me it's about having like the best restaurant maybe not having 60 restaurants but having the best restaurant that the people that come to me my people my master class members I want to give them the best experience possible even if it's a smaller business than some businesses so okay so I'm going to give this uh do a shout out here for people to subscribe to our channels when you hear us do this in our videos we don't really spend that much time on it and some people say oh why do you even have to say that well subscribing to the channels to some people that I'm for me for my channel to get to interview people in the old school media when you try and interview these people that are that are older that are well known that have established PR people they just look at the numbers and that that's it that's the only thing that they understand basically your subscribers are your circulation like the circulation of a magazine so please subscribe to both of our channels and um And subscribe subscribe because the home page a lot of people look at the homepage and think oh that's YouTube why haven't I seen a video by Tim and it's because maybe some stuff has crowded it out but if you subscribe then it'll be in there it'll be in there because a lot of times people don't realize that they're not subscribed because our videos end up on their home page all the time exactly so anyways

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 345,103

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, tim pierce, kurt cobain, Nirvana, Music Talk, Music Industry, Guitar, Discussion, Studio, Music Studio, Music Recording, Session Musicians, Guitar Solo, Recording Studio, Tracking Guitar, Jazz, Rock, Classic Rock, Gibson Guitars, Les Paul, Cort Guitars, PRS Guitars, tim pierce guitar, tim pierce rick beato

Id: FELFryqmhaE

Length: 34min 37sec (2077 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023