The Captain Meets @RickBeato!

foreign welcome back to Anderson's TV now the fact that you are watching this on YouTube means that my next guest needs no introduction whatsoever as Rick's uh YouTube stats are somewhat phenomenal with uh over 3 million subscribers now on YouTube and hundreds and hundreds of millions of views over the last six or seven years so welcome to Guilford I appreciate it it is I've been here before so I just want to say this that I sent Lee a picture that I've found for me visiting here I don't know how many years ago it was but I was going through my pictures and I was like under tins oh my gosh I've been there before it was 30 years ago 30 years ago and I sent it to you yeah just happened to notice it in the background of a photo of a couple couple friends of mine that brought me here that's Matt thank you well thank you for having me no honestly it's it's a pleasure um I feel like you know I feel like even though we probably started making YouTube videos slightly before you your your your success has been meteoric and so I'm constantly uh watching your videos super jealous about some of the guests that you get on um but it's a it's a pleasure to have you on but I kind of feel the Rick piatto that we see on uh YouTube doesn't talk too much about life you know before the YouTube days you know you're you're very current in what you talk about and I think you've really had a vein with you know looking at the songs that you break down and talk about but um you know you had a reasonably successful career just in music before you discovered YouTube so let's go back to let's go back to you know the Young Rick biato maybe even let's go back to you you know your really early childhood and talk about you know what music you grow up listening to and what inspired you to get into the music industry so I'm the second youngest of seven and my older sister my two oldest are my sisters and uh there's there's five boys and two girls and so I grew up in the 60s and my sisters listen to The Beatles and the stones and that was the first music I remember hearing and uh all of my siblings have different tastes in music and we would constantly hear different stuff going from room to room so I was exposed to everything that came out in that era into the 70s when I was in grade school and then you know Junior High in high school and I started playing the cello when I was in in 69 so I was seven years old and uh I played that until seventh grade so it was I was 13 I went to the acoustic base and then I picked up the guitar in eighth grade so when I was 14 for the first time and um and I loved music on my mom's side of the family two of her sisters were music teachers her one of her brothers is an excellent bass player her dad my grandfather played guitar they weren't uh my grandfather was not a professional guitarist but we always had music going on and I took a guitar and my younger brother took a guitar right in the same time and we just were obsessed with it still my brother plays it plays in a band and and I just was obsessed with music ever since then so you you obviously have a you know an exceptional understanding of Music um so a kind of where did you study and but you know I would say the minority of guitar players or musicians particularly guitar players choose to follow that path you know most guitar players will end up just you know getting the rough idea of playing by ear so what what how did that happen so well I started playing by ear I learned by ear and then I was uh when I was 16 or so there's a guy in my neighborhood I got on this list of doing odd jobs for people and I was mowing lawns and there's this guy that lived a few streets away named Tom Rizzo and I was mowing his lawn I went in to get paid and he he had all these guitars and amps in his house and I said well you're a guitar player he goes well I own a music store right I said where is it he said it's over in Pittsford T Rizzo music and and uh and he's like do you play guitar I said yeah he's like play me something I played then I said then he picked up the guitar play and he was amazing and he said I was like Wow and he was playing all this Jazz stuff and I said I'd love to learn that he said come take lessons at my store so I started taking lessons and uh and then I did that but I was still playing my ear and I ended up getting you know I was a terrible student in school and I was like what am I going to go to school for and I couldn't really get into school college for because my grades were so bad and uh I decided to go to school for music or I went one semester on a track scholarship and then I change schools and went into music where was that which school was that it was a school called Ithaca College so I got a degree in In classical base my undergrad degree and then I did a master's degree at New England Conservatory in jazz guitar and then you know I got when you go into music school you have to do all these things so you become a good a very good reader and you're playing an ensemble so I played an orchestra all the time I hardly did any guitar in my undergrad it was really all bass and playing other instruments that you had to play to be a music Ed major to get a music teaching degree so um but I played in all I always played different styles starting in high school you know started out as a rock guitar player and then I learned Jazz and fusion and and all different types of things so it's interesting because I kind of I I see the Jazz influence when you talk about the guitar you can see that jazz influence that comes across and And yet when you look at perhaps some of your career within music um it wasn't it didn't seem to be terribly Jazzy and as the artists you were working with definitely weren't from that sort of genre but so when you when you graduated from school was there a sense that you might try and make it as a as a player I thought about it for about a month or so and I went back to visit I went to visit some friends in Ithaca where I'd done my undergrad and my old uh guitar teacher or the head of the Jazz department offered me a position teaching there in the in the fall and I thought about it for a couple weeks and I was like I'll try it out and I ended up teaching Jazz studies there for five years I conducted the big band I did improv I taught ear training all these different things and then I was like well I don't want to do this for the rest of my life and I I started writing songs with a buddy of mine I got signed to a publishing deal as a songwriter cool and then I embarked I finally I moved to Atlanta in 94. I got signed in a major label band that ended up nothing really happened with that except I got really into music production then which I thought was a perfect blend of my skills of being a teacher and communicating with you know with students and then working on songs which I love the most of and then because of that the era that I started in full time really 99 until 2016 when I started my YouTube channel it was I did mostly metal bands and it started out new metal bands I mean I did a lot of singer-songwriters I did all you know Americana type bands but it was a lot of metal which is funny for a guy that grew up in the you know loosening the stones and the Beatles and all that and Zeppelin and and uh Black Sabbath whatever but then to do just doing new metal bands that were all down tuned everybody's playing you know drop C drop B drop B flat drop a flat and then you get the eight string guitars in there and and learning how to record those things was really fascinating were you able to draw on um were you able to draw on this greater understanding of music to help produce those records or was it really just a new learning experience I think because the if I work you know if I work with a progressive metal band for example I understood the drumming Parts the odd time signatures I knew what counterparts would work together I'd know how to the the things from the ear training part of it would be well how do you get these guitars to differentiate themselves if you do overdubs maybe do a hard panned set of guitars then you have some other overdub guitars that need a completely different type of range different types of distortion and you want everything with Clarity and punch and power and what types of bait you know a lot of times you have Bass with distortion on it and getting everything to fit in the mix that to me is the most fascinating part of it I loved the engineering and mixing part of it too so this was all part of my training is you know is learning how to do that and I absolutely loved the technical part of it as much as the music part do you I mean I'm guessing you don't have time to but you ever do you ever do any engineering or mixing for people sort of nowadays so so I haven't done anything since I started my YouTube channel but I just got my Pro Tools rig back up and running uh which has been a real nightmare because it's difficult nowadays to have a because Pro Tools rigs runs with these pcie cards and unless you have a Mac that has like a Mac Pro that has the slots for them you have to buy an expansion chassis and there's all these problems that are inherent with that that's why people use logic and I mean I use logic and Ableton as well but but I prefer to use Pro Tools for editing anyways I have my studio back up and running I'm going to start making some recording videos again finally that would be cool and presumably videos of you making yes yes and and and I'm looking forward to that because I miss the recording part of it so you had uh let me get my brain you had about 15 no more than that I need 20 years than of of engineering yeah um what what was you know what was your life like you know were you were you was that just going to be what you would do maybe you know one or two of the records will be absolutely huge and you know that'll be your pension I don't know what what's in your head at this point so I um when I started at that time people still sold records but around 2005 you know after Napster happened the budgets the major label budgets that I was doing one of the early bands that I had success with I produced a band called Shinedown and I wrote a few songs on their first record and had sold a couple million copies I had a few other gold records as a producer and but the sales really started to drop off and the budgets for major Label records started to drop off around 2005 or so and the money that you would make from the back end of it just would disappear and now with streaming it's really you know as a producer since you're only making three percentage points it would uh it was difficult to uh really to do that kind of um that kind of work especially as as uh as rock music started to change and and the the things became fragmented because of this because of streaming and everybody's getting fed music through algorithms so there you get these real niche right kind of artists so it's really interesting so was the was the the sort of decision to to do the YouTube thing drawn of uh necessity uh or just curiosity no it's it's uh I just started doing it on a whim and I started making some videos and uh I'd make him at night when I was doing sessions and sometimes I'd upload a video and then one of my friends would call me said you know there's a there's five minutes in the middle of the video where you're just not even on screen look like you walked out of things like oh I'd take the video and I fix the edit because I fell asleep while I was editing it and uh and then I put it back up that I mean that happened many times you have like 10 typos in your video oh take it down put it back up again so that was kind of the beginning of it but my channel caught on pretty fast uh because of the stuff because it was real I did really Advanced you know music theory composition ear training stuff at the beginning it was nothing about recording or song breakdowns or anything like that it was really more of a stuff that I hadn't thought about in you know since I stopped being a music professor in 1992 so the was it that sense when I mean it seems mad looking back on it now because they often say sometimes the simplest ideas are the best ones but when you started just doing those breakdowns of you know best 10 rock guitar intros or whatever like that and all of a sudden you get your first video that hits whatever it is hundred thousand million whatever the views is that it hits was that did you feel like by that time you know that you were expecting to to see that kind of growth and success or was it did it still come as a big surprise I think it's almost it's it's a surprise I think it's still a surprise uh you know you make a video uh I think my biggest videos as almost 18 million it's a video on the top 20 Acoustic Guitar intros a list that I make with my friends that you know what's the best guitar intros you know what's the best this or that I think most people when they're just I'm sure you do too with your friends you talk about all your favorite you know guitar things or Bass things or drum things and I play all these different instruments so I I make lists up for all different kinds of instruments and and but the the success you know the success of a video I don't eat I I never know if anything's going to do well or not I just make videos that I am interested in when was the first um when was the first time an artist got in touch with you that was perhaps a hero of yours and said uh do you want to interview me or you know through a publicist or something um because that's like that's the bit where you go hang on a second the first pinch myself yeah well the first person I interviewed was Steve Vai and I I um Steve reached out to me um he saw a video of my son Dylan and he reached out to me hasn't everyone seen that video I guess everyone with an internet connection he said I've never seen anything like that can you tell me about that and we did it we did a video chat and um and he want he was like can I meet Dylan so I remember going upstairs I I don't know if I ever told the story I remember going upstairs to my wife and saying can you tell Dylan to come downstairs Dylan wouldn't come downstairs he was eight or nine and stuff and it's like this guy this guitar player Steve Vai my wife doesn't know Steve by this I was like world famous contemporary wants to meet Dylan and and uh and she's like don't just go downstairs she's like all right and he goes downstairs and he had like a Pokemon shirt on or something and Steve's like Steve starts hey Dylan how are you and Steve was so great and and engaging and uh and talked to Dylan he was talking to him about video games and things and then Steve and I were talking and I said I was thinking about doing an interview some interviews I think my channel had um probably about 80 000 subscribers or so at the time and he said well I can be your first guest if you like it's like great so that's that's uh so I started with Steve I I can see Steve I don't know when we had the first time Steve was on here I remember him he was fascinating I was asking him about you know what artists he listened to and he said Jacob Collier yeah so I can see that sense of of just he's very very interested in what's new you know how are people thinking as a you know you're sort of thinking he's going to cite um I don't know Eddie Van Halen or whoever is his kind of you know Idol type thing but he does want to talk about you know I I think it came down to I thought about that actually when when you were saying that I think it that because Steve started doing transcriptions for Frank Zappa so his thing about ear training and doing transcriptions he's fascinated by people with great ears that are able to take down things you know like here you know Dylan can hear a 12 note chord and name all the notes and that to Steve was fascinating right so it's it goes right back to his beginning of kind of getting the Zappa gig yeah because of that you said I mean you must be Pro I mean I know you were saying that you know your kids are going through a bit of a they're not really showing any signs of being super interested in music at the moment and you know we all have had that or we are all going through that experience with our children sadly um but you you Dylan must have grown up that's obviously a heavy influence from you somehow even if you whether you even consciously realized that you did it you can't just have that innate ability to you've got to know what the notes are called for a start let alone what pitch they are well it's it's interesting because I didn't I never mentioned note names to him I just noticed that when he was three um we're driving the car window it was about three and a half or so and he and I'd ask him to sing songs and he would sing him and it just hit me that some that these were in the right keys I mean he's singing them not singing along he's just singing I was like hey Don sing the intro to Star Wars and you'd sing it and I'd go sing this we're listening to John Williams things and then he's then I was like saying the Superman intro and he's like and I was like that's in the right key it just starts in G goes between G and c I think it's three yeah I check on my phone and then I asked him a third song this thing that called the excavator song they like this little kids thing so I was like there's no way you could sing three songs in the right keys back to back that are in different Keys Turn the car around I go home I go over to the piano and hit the no B flat and I said what note is that he goes Superman and it starts on Big B flat I mean you say Star Wars and it starts on a big B-flat major chord Star Wars does it's mainly you hear B flat because there's 22 B Flats there's three uh there's three d's and two F's in the chords so it the way it's weighted the first chord is waited to make it sound like the no B flat and then I played the note G and he goes Superman instantly and I hit C and he was the excavator song and I hit a flat and he goes third note of the excavator song and I said oh my God he's got perfect pitch and I had my assistant GL come in I was like try these notes and he did it he's like oh my God so over the next so over the next like 10 minutes or so I taught him the names of all the 12 notes I said when you hear this note Star Wars is called B-flat okay you hear this note uh the uh Superman's called G okay excavator song is called C and then this one's C sharp this one's E flat this is Bubba and that was it he already had Perfect Pitch and now he just likes sneakers like like all 15 year olds exactly oh never mind it's like he'll work it out he will work it out so but the perfect pitch thing is interesting though because I think a lot of people thought oh I'm I'm teaching Dylan note names or anything they they just he had Perfect Pitch and then it's just a matter of learning what the names of the notes are well it's probably in the jeans somewhere from somewhere yeah so look let's so Steve I you know again it's always how did and how did you feel you know like you know it's I mean it's not like you've had a career not working you know you've been in the music industry you've obviously met some well-known artists but it kind of Steve bites like you know he's the sort of royalty level guitar player so what are you you know how are you feeling inside at this point it's nervous well it's you know it's funny because I never really got nervous with any of the players that I've met um because most of the people are no every person I've ever met interviewed are really nice and whether it's Brian May or sting or whoever they've just been nice people and they're really relatable when when I meet them they're you know very conversational and and uh no one I've never interviewed anybody that or met anyone that had any kind of attitude or anything like that so which is really cool um it's so so yeah that part of it but I don't I don't get nervous at things typically I don't know why but um I I think I'm just I have a um uh I was going I did this show here uh in London a few days ago and I was getting ready to go on stage and and uh my daughter Layla lose 10 she was like are you nervous and I said no I don't get nervous at these and she's like how come you don't get nervous I said I don't know I because I know about what I'm going to talk about and so there's nothing expensive nervous all the time but that was I thought I was like why don't I get nervous because I know what I'm gonna I know what I want to talk about yeah so and that's really the you know and when I'm talking to someone if I'm interviewing somebody I I interviewed pretty I only interview people that I whose music I like and I'm really familiar with and so that's that's I think I think we've both shared the experience of um finding that if you just want to talk about music and guitars or pedals yeah every single guitar player it wants to talk about that yeah whether you're Brian May or someone that's been playing for five minutes I think the attitude or the or the defenses that artists build up is because they're ready for the question about their girlfriend or their boyfriend or their or their um the clothes they wear or their drugs they used to take you know it's like I think if you're just going I'm really not interested in anything like that well I I only stick I only talk about music but I love gear any it's funny because I don't talk about gear very often but I love coming to shops that's why I came here 30 years ago that's why I came here again and I love gear you can tell from looking in the background of my studio yeah you know I'm uh I'm not a collector I play I buy things that I like the sound of and that I would use as a producer but I have a lot of guitars I have a lot of amplifiers I've got 10 drum sets I've got bass amps and everything and and um I'm very I love recording these things as well and when I sit here and I look at everything I mean I pretty much know what everything is in here and I'm always looking for new things we talked about a pedal today that I had never seen before and I'd heard about it I just heard about it in a video today and that and I'm interested well I've never heard about this you know and it's fun to hear about new stuff and try out new new gear I think we'll cycle back to the Gear thing because I think it'd be remiss not to try and do some sort of desert island rig thing with you or whatever maybe there's some stuff in here you want to plug in and see what it sounds like but so your channel now it I mean it's gone crazy really you you know you can go to your channel you can you're still doing the sort of the the top 10 Style videos which are always popular I call countdown videos yep you've got you know there's always an artist that you know that has recently appeared on you know and the interviews are they're very different again to the kind of interview that you'll get if you go and watch your Saturday night TV style interview with that artist you know they're much longer format much more interesting a musician as a musician the Steve Luke is the one by the way is that's my favorite I I like not only is he probably my favorite musician that you've had on he's just he's so relatable too you must in fact tell us about because he just appears a guy that might sold countless millions of albums played on all the biggest hits in the 80s and you know it's like and yet he's just a regular dude sitting there Steve is is great so I've known Steve for probably about six years or so but only through email and uh and chatting and things like that and on video and then the first time I ever met him in person was actually the day I interviewed him and he we went out to breakfast and um and then we did the interview and then we had dinner but in the in between time we found out Jeff Beck died right so right after the interview and then we had dinner together that night and Steve is is just a phenomenal guitar player but just has come up with some of the most creative rhythm guitar parts like everything about it you know about his he's just so brilliant and he just comes up with the stuff in the spot he did that solo thing I I um I thought well I want to get him to play on something so I was talking to my younger brother John he's like why don't you even playing running with the Knight like he did and I said what do you mean he goes there was a line on Lionel Richie if you go to Spotify there's an instrumental version of the song I said no way he said yeah he goes you can just Loop a couple sections together and that was over it um at Tim Pierce's house I was doing a video with Tim and uh Nigel Tim's stepson edited together the sections for me so I added on a thing I was like okay Steve I want you to solo on something and he didn't he just had his Guitar Rig set up and they had a monitor right next to him and I was like well let's check it out and we're rolling the cameras and the guy hit play in the control room he had no idea what it was and he immediately started playing that's the solo he played didn't say what key is it and he only did one take on the running with the Knight Lionel Richie solo back in 1983 and there was a completely other improvised solo with no wrong notes right off the cuff without even saying what key is it in you know it's unbelievable amen but this you know we the joke that Jay Grayden used to say who was a big you know really dear friend of Steve's and and a great guitar player and musician producer he said you know before there were Pro Tools there were Pros that is a great quote Yeah I don't know if that's I think that's his quote though but um Luke can play a guitar part perfectly making it up on the spot that become then they become these songs that you hear on the radio forever and he plays them I mean he just you know the Rhythm Parts he comes up with and everything in human nature whatever he just comes up with it and plays them flawlessly and it's just so beautiful uh he's another level isn't he yeah so anyway so that I mean we'll talk again a little bit more about maybe who you know who's your sort of who's who haven't you interviewed yet that you really want to but but tell me about this um I'm sorry I couldn't make it by the way but tell me about the show in London because I'm just like this is that's how YouTube thing's just gone to some whole crazy other level now you've been booked to to do you know sort of an evening with Rick piato things in big theaters around the world I mean it's just well I did um I had some guys from Live Nation reach out to me in the New York office last year in January and there's about five guys or so we got on a zoom call and they all follow my channel and um and they uh and they said would you be interested in doing some live shows we do these with with podcasters and they do really well and I said what would I do you know come out talk to the audience uh do a song breakdown do q a and I said I don't know it seems kind of weird well I guess okay I'll try one out so they booked this place in New York and um it's funny because the uh Adam who's one of the guys that did he was one of the guys that booked the show he's like um if you need back line uh my father-in-law can provide it and I was thinking like who's his father well it's Mitch Colby right is his father-in-law who owns who own Park amps he sold Park amps now but I had I have a couple of Mitch's parks that um that are fantastic amplifiers and uh so our back line was were these uh Park Park amps and and uh so I just started I've only done five of them I did New York and Chicago La Seattle and now London that's it it's still cool yeah I mean it's is there a sense that the channel will just keep evolving and new ideas will come on or do you think you can I hope so yeah geez I mean because I think that's I think with andertons we kind of we what's the right word we have these conversations around should it evolve or does it need to stay as what it is because it naturally it not there's no there's never an end of content for us to shoot because as long as manufacturers bring out new guitars and pedals and amplifiers it's like there's always something you need to talk about but there's also a sense of like well at what point does that just become boring and do we need to just change it up for the sake of changing it up but how does you you know tell me how you feel you're well I you know I've started doing more interviews lately just because it's this year is kind of a thing that I'm I'm doing more of uh so every year I do I did a couple years where I did a lot of what makes us sound great so I did the I always do I've done the countdown videos and and now I'm doing more interviews and I think I just keep finding things that that are interesting and will keep evolving those but I will say this that when I came in today I saw some Final Cut Pro editing tricks that I had never seen before so I either I went to school and I didn't even realize these things uh that you can do in Final Cut for editing and I love that that's the thing is that people don't don't realize this I love the editing part of making the videos even though I'm not very good at it um and and there's just always so much stuff to learn whether it's with guitar whether it's with gear recording or video making it's it's there's so many things to learn we should give a shout out to the editors out there including the Andersons guys as well because it's you know yes you trust me you know you can see the same video edited well or badly or maybe not even badly but just not as creatively as it could have been edited and it's just it's like 50 of that's what the whole video is that is so true you know the edit the first thing I did when I came in is I started asking questions and I'm seeing these different uh uh shortcuts to do and I was like what wait where do these lines go well this is so that things don't interfere with things on your social media things like is that in Final Cut Pro yeah so I'm gonna take away all these new ideas for the next 15 uh next 1200 videos that I make and hopefully it'll be far better than my other ones but yeah that's a thing that we don't talk about that much is that there's so much production work to do especially in music YouTube videos the top 10 best edited videos you know what that would actually be great top 10 best edited music YouTube videos will we get into the top ten but there's there's so many things to think about right so you have if you play music and you're talking you have to balance it out so you try not to talk well the music's playing but sometimes you have to talk When the Music's playing so then you have to duck the music down and it has to sound natural and then you have to be able to hear the your voice clearly then you have to put a limiter on The Voice so it's not jumping all around but it can't sound like it's getting so squished that it's that it's got all this background noise in it so there's so many this is like the engineer part of of my brain that goes right to that you know how do you do this what's the best way to do you take the audio out and put it in logic or Final Cut Pro and fix it first put it back in then start editing the video so but I love that stuff it's I've never I can honestly say I've never edited a single video wow i i lee that's amazing from day Rocky yeah I've always had the the good fortunes have good people but I I'm interested as well because one of the things I've always liked with the Anderson's videos is that the the Dual yes presenter thing yeah you know and and not scripting it and just sort of seeing what happens and all the best videos that we have are the magic where just to presenters are just really on fire one day so which is your favorite I mean you don't really have like a wingman as such do you have guests but you know what what's the um what's the favorite kind of video to make yeah um I think my favorite kind of videos are um when I'm either talking about a song or a player or when I'm just doing a talking about a topic that's something that's interesting to me whether it's uh I'm trying to think of I just talked about this new no better board solo that that people have been talking talking about did a video on that and or um uh just anything that that my friends are talking about I like making videos on but with your videos when I when I when I'm watching them I I'm always thinking about this what goes into making them and you have two people talking you have two people playing guitar a lot of the time and then you have the amps close mic'd you have the labs lavalier microphones on you have you know room mics and everything it's my first thing I did when I came in here is I took pictures of everything because I'm absolutely fascinated by how people make their videos your videos look so good and and uh and they sound great and when people are talking over one another you know you know you have to have labs to isolate the things but this goes back it's like music production it's so similar yeah I think that we get told off for talking over each other all the time and I think it's because YouTube tries to subtitle what we're saying so people who where English isn't their first language yeah and so of course as soon as we talk over each other it's just import so I apologize we will try harder in the future um I need let's talk about gear yeah I mean that we're I love talking about gear half of me just thinks myself I I yeah it's like these guys will know you know everything there is to know about your channel so let's talk about gear so I'm going to Quick fire you some questions and then we can go a bit deeper so first electric guitar you ever owned was a um a black Les Paul Custom what yeah used I got it well there was you know this is 1978 and uh Tom Rizzo the guy who's who I took lessons from the my he got up through his music store for 400 bucks used 325 bucks used um I don't know what year it was I think it was early 70s or so um it was really beat up and I worked my mom helped me out with it and I worked bagging groceries uh to say good company for it so um it's like learning to drive in a Porsche 911 yeah well I had I started my first guitar was a 12 string a Penco 12 string wow that had a a three piece back on it was 120 dollars I got that in in 76 I think it was and then uh so I learned on 12 string which is very weird yeah and then um and then my I got my Les Paul maybe it was 77 I got the Les Paul but I think it was early 70s or so then I gave it to my brother John and I bought a new or a newer white Les Paul Custom uh that uh that I got through the same store again and that was about I want to say 600 bucks or something everything but I worked all the time and uh was saving money working grocery stores and that's that's that's the pull Reed Smith response to um whenever anyone says I can't afford one of your guitars Paul just says well you're not working hard enough for it that's that was it I mean my dad worked for the railroad you know he and my mom worked in this canning Factory yeah and uh so we're you know we didn't have money for for things like that so you just go out and that's what you do you go out and work and you earn it and but I mean I it's weird to say what was your first electric guitar and I'm like uh like Les ball custom so your first gigging rig what was your first what was the rig you had to do your first gig with um my first gigs I I would borrow get uh gear from people and stuff so you know like fenders uh uh you know and have have distortion pedals and stuff like that mxr is based in Rochester New York where I'm from so everybody had my first uh effects pedal was a mxr flanger and everybody kind of had the Distortion plus the flanger and uh and the the phase 90. so those were kind of the three first effects I got and uh then I I got a then I got a delay pedal after that I mean I pretty much have all the same things too I still have the flanger I got in 78 because you heard Van Allen and yeah had to have that flanger and I loved Frampton you used the phase 90 and and uh so the thing is that I think people don't realize that there I mean we didn't have that many options it wasn't you had Fender and Gibson and yeah and then you have knockoff brands that that were made very good good copies of these guitars and stuff and and you had Gretch and you'd uh uh I mean there were things univox guitars and things like that that were out but but having a Gibson most of my friends that played instruments they played you know Ludwig Drums they played Fender bases and they played Gibson guitars or Fender guitars and that was it you know the choice was was much more limited yeah sure that's right so what is let me just think are we gonna go most valuable or sentimental I might even do both it wasn't the most sentimental guitar the one that if the house was burning down you'd run back in and get well the the most sentimental guitar I don't know if I'd go back in and get but that's kind of a weird answer so I have this classical guitar that I got in 1977 a guild classical that I that I love playing just I've rarely played it I don't know if I've ever played in any of my videos um but I like just playing on it it's a good it's a um it's a good signing guitar and then I've got a 1957 country western Gibson right that I've had for about 30 years or so and that guitar is um I mean it's it's been refinished and stuff and and you know it has new tuners on everything it's not valuable in in the way that yeah you know but it's it's an amazing sounding guitar and it's an in my biggest video so and is that the one that you would run back in and yeah grab that's probably the only one I'd run back in and grab so I don't even know if I'd run back in and grab an instrument to be honest with you I'd be like get the kids and the my wife and the dogs and the cats out that's an interesting one so yeah so what how do you even view do you view a guitar as something beyond the tool or or is it it's just a tool yeah yeah and there's ones that are more comfortable it's funny because I've people like Rick you play eights and I was like yeah I play Eights on some guitars and nines on sums and uh and my my acoustic guitars have 13s on them and like what kind of picks do you use oh I use like whatever pick I pick up I have all different gauges but I use these Max grips um dunlops and I've as I've gotten older it's harder I need more grip I can't play a tortex pick or anything like that I can't play a fender you know mediums or Fender thins anymore they just don't have enough grip on them so I use those uh those those uh I think they're called Max grips they have the the they're like sandpaper almost I don't know I had a real plectrum Epiphany a few years ago I'd gone through the whole buying expensive plectrums and having the wooden ones and the acrylic ones and the stone ones yeah and uh you know like 20 plectrums and all this kind of stuff and a real sense of like if I haven't got the 20 Plex from my cut and then I I just I don't even know what it was one day but one day I just picked up whatever the plect from was that was closest it was the cheapest plasticist you know and I just forgot about what the plectrum was and played better and I've really sorry expensive Plex from manufacturers but I've just I literally now I almost make a conscious decision never to to not you know to to not even feel like there's a kind of plectrum I need to to play right so I can't use like really really Flappy ones I can't really use but just anything that isn't that I feel and then and just don't think about it because I I don't know although Pete's Pete is Pete you know who's obviously you know been a professional guitar player all his life absolutely has a type of material plectrum to use depending on the sound that he thinks the producer would want to try and get so and I'm guessing with your producer on you probably have you know said to guitar players I know try to play well usually I say just give me the guitar and I'll just play the cards if they if they can't get it to sound right that's I hate to say that but that's that's what uh you've done that is that is that what happens oh yeah in the real world yes so wow that's been happening since the beginning of time this is no Epiphany or anything that that uh honestly you know up through the 90s until Pro Tools until they had beat detective drummers got on major Label records would always get replaced by session drummers they would I mean I You Know Rarity you know it's Dave Grohl played on never mind and I'm not saying that the drummers of you know in the you know Matt Cameron played on uh uh on the sound garden records okay not that but on a lot of rock records uh drummers would come in uh the the drummers for the bands would come in and the producers would say no they can't be on the record and then they'd usually quit and they'd get a session get it come in Josh freeze Kenny Aaron off whoever it was that would come in and play all the drums on it the drummer would quit and then there'd be a new Drummer that would come in and play the drum parts that run the record I mean that's just the way it's on so if I uh produce the history of producers fixing people's Parts if I needed to a part done where the person couldn't play it in tune or something and then be like I said let me give me the guitar I tuned up he'd be perfectly into and I hand it back to them they play It's All Out Of Tune it's like a touch of a blacksmith right and so um I would say all right just give me the guitar and I play and they'd be relieved it was amazing they would be relieved if I if I fix their parts do you get an extra point on the record no I never I never would credit myself or anything like that I was I never wanted to be be that guy or anything but I you know I wanted to sound good and I want the band to sound good so if they couldn't play the parts well if they couldn't play them in time or in tune I would fix some red punches parts that they would have trouble with and they would be I said just let me let me see your guitar let's play it like this and then then they'd be like oh let's just keep that okay fine so what's the best guitar you own I know it's a subjective um the best guitar I own is probably my signature guitar no no no no no I don't I mean that I mean no it's it's um my favorite guitar to play is my signature guitar I like Les Paul specials uh double cuts and I've like and this has changed with age because uh as I'm gonna be 61 here pretty soon this month and um Les Paul's are very hard to I don't play standing up anymore whereas you know I used to Gig and always play standing up but I sit down all the time and the Les Paul is just hard to hold especially when I'm doing um a lot of videos that I have to do for Instagram and you have to get in a 9x16 frame right and I did this thing for a couple years I held my guitar up like this and I played it was like I can't play with vibrato like this my playing really is not good trying to do that so I went back to playing normally and I just learned to edit it better and just move the camera around and stuff my my assistant Billy will do that but um uh I like I have a yellow uh Les Paul double cut that I like and I love Les Paul's I've got um um I have an SG a 1965 SG that's a great playing guitar and um I've got a couple custom strats that I play I've got a I've got a couple telecasters that I love so I pretty much every guitar in my studio is something that I've had for a long time that have been on many records I I think you'll comment about Fender need to design the insta Strat which is a guitar that works in portrait mode when the camera's still really close to you there you go Fender you can have that for next year's NAMM Show or you won't be there so let's not what do you think about portrait mode about making about when you do things like short form yeah I don't like it right I don't I like I don't I don't like shooting videos in portrait mode because like you say you want you know I mean I I do stuff in my office where I just balance my phone on my desk and just and I'm this is kind of locked into certain angles I feel awful I I feel like I'm very conscious that I haven't managed to include the headstock right in the in the so I'm not getting any branding across for them but not I'm paid to whatever but my guitar salesman brain can't help myself right you know so I'll do this thing where I'll kind of play like Hank Marvin down at the campus just to try and get the headstock in camera but even then that's unnatural yeah so yeah I I it's like yeah landscape is is designed design for guitar yeah but there are certain angles that you can do with uh in in that mode when you're doing uh when you're doing the vertical mode that that will get the whole guitar in but you really can't see stuff that's played up there so what I've done now is I just film in landscape and then we just key gate or whatever it's called keyframe The Thing move it around I don't even know what that means but I will find out so that I'll do that in mind it but I'm I loved you know all these things I love playing different guitars and um and I find that if I play guitars with light strings for a few days and then I want a guitar that's got some stiffer action to play because I feel like I play different things on different guitars that's why I use different picks as well electrums I'm sorry well pick some plectrums and what's a pic yeah pick and danish is something completely different isn't it Pete yes I thought so yes um you didn't ask me about amps no on your Studios now let's we we we're I mean we are Kinder Kindred Spirits here and as are you know everybody in in the room here um the whole amp thing is is it irrelevant now like no so tell you know why why you know I am constantly abused and tormented on YouTube that uh plugins are amazing because they all sound the same they all sound perfect and they're cheap and blah blah blah blah so why okay so I have all the plugins pretty much I've got all the foot modelers so I've got all the rack things and I have the real amplifiers now I'm lucky because I have enough room and I've uh I have Neve Mike Breeze I've got you know professional microphones and I have 19 412 cabinets and I can put them up and I've recorded guitars professionally for on major Label records for decades and so I know how to get a good guitar sound in 20 seconds right I if I put up my my you know 71 Marshall JMP with my 71 cabinet with greenbacks in it it's going to sound great pretty much wherever I've you know I find the best speaker or the two speakers because you would if if I double mic something most of the time I'll mic different speakers unless I'm using Royer in a 57 but I'll you know for phasing I'll put the 57 on the dust cover between that and the and the and the cone and then the other one 421 I'll put on a adjacent speaker maybe on the bottom and but put it on the you know in between the two edges and I'll blend that to get the mid-range and you get the bite of the 57 or I'll use like a condenser mic and do a similar thing like that I mean sometimes I'll mic the same speaker but it's just very quick but I know exactly where this where the things go on every single of the 19 cabinets I have I know what speakers are in if it's 65 watt selections if it's fans if it's whatever it is I know what where the best speaker is and how to mic it or best speakers how to do it and so I don't need to use the pla it's faster than going through menus for me honestly but the menus and the the digital uh uh amps are great for convenience so it's like you know if you have the room to have the stuff set up you have your you have amps in here that are already miked up they're already going in to be recorded all you got to do is hit play in logic or record in logic and you can do it instant good guitar sound so it's what it's it's I've I find it's the excitement of it that not the excitement of setting it up but the excitement of the volume and the excitement of this feeling that your guitars kind of you can find the feedback spot and I know it's possible to do with um plugins especially and if you've got some decent we changed out our monitors uh to we had some more affordable studio monitors and we changed them for the genelec ones and I know we could go way higher than that if we wanted to but the genelec ones were relatively expensive and it it did it was quite a transformative moment because I was just like wow all of our plugins now sound way better yeah and now I'm maybe a bit more into it but I I still you know you can see the Joy on our faces when we're playing it's like when that decibel meter hits you know 105 110 DB and it's you know it's like you've got a little bit of sustain going on like that it's just like and then I accept that people will go tonally speaking maybe it's indistinguishable once it's mixed into a track but what you can't replace is my excitement as a player at that noise and then maybe I'll play one percent better well you put where you play based on I'm I'm I know this I'll ask you this but the your sound makes you play what you play and the better your you think your sound is the better you play that's just a fact I mean every guitar player that I know will say the thing if I have a great sound I can play but I can win great if I have a bad sound I can't and and that's just a thing now when I would work with an artist and I'd be in the studio I want to get a feedback note now there's a couple ways you can get feedback you put it in front of the guitar or you can put it in front of your monitor speakers my ns10s if they're loud enough and the guitar player puts his puts his guitar up to it it'll feed back through the monitors and but that the play of that I'm not sure how that works necessarily I don't play with plugins loud enough to where I get feedback you probably can get feedback through the speakers I'm not sure if you can but but there's something about taming a loud amplifier that uh is part of rock music that makes it exciting and that those players that learn to do that the Eddie Van Halen's you know that learn to tame a 100 watt Marshall just blasting or Angus Young or whoever it is or Jimmy Page that can control the Beast of of that 100 Watts pushing the air out that's there's something to that I'm I'm sort of conscious of sort of trying to think of that sort of killer closing question as the sort of interview feels like it'll sort of beginning to get to its sort of Natural end and I know when we were talking over lunch we were talking quite a bit about how our children as yet don't seem as interested in the kind of music that that we like and I don't mean as in they don't like music from the 70s I just mean they're not really listening to they're not um they're not as excited about music generally than we seems to be so there's I you know and this is this this can have a long expansive answer it doesn't really matter but it's like what do you does it matter do you worry do you do you think somehow music needs to evolve or it's interesting go you know so my 10 year old Layla uh she was wearing her Nirvana T-shirt at my show the other night and she came out I did an intermission and she's and I said Layla you want to come out I asked my three kids I knew that my youngest was the only one that would say yes but you want to come on introduce me for the second half she's like sure and she goes out there she got her Nirvana T-shirt on and and kids love Nirvana this is a thing you know teenagers they they Nirvana hasn't put out a record since I mean Kurt Cobain has been gone since 1994 but they haven't put out a record since 1993 yet go to Spotify Nirvana is massively big but you know he's the biggest band out there from those you know queen as far as the Queen's got 50 60 million monthly listeners my kids know every Queen song they do they know Nirvana songs I mean so it's it's really and they want to wear those those t-shirts my son Dylan was wearing the swerve driver t-shirt which is a band from from here that I love this guitar player and singer Adam Franklin's amazing their shoegaze band great rock band from the from the early 90s uh they I mean still put out records and uh one of my all-time favorite bands but my Dylan was wearing the swerve driver t-shirt now I don't know if he knows any swerve driver music but but he loves band T-shirts we've all got a t-shirt where we don't know any other songs that's okay I know the songs I was like don't swerve to her t-shirt and then he goes could never fit in this and he was right he was right I can't fit in any of my old band T-shirts so so do you you know that's why I wear a black perhaps the the conversation we were having over lunch was maybe we were talking about guitar players yeah um you know we were sort of saying that you know when was the last time you really felt that you saw a guitar player like Angus Young and I'm not talking about as a player boy that's players out there now who are on another level but Angus is on another level but I mean as a as a what do you even call that kind of no not as an icon I mean that that energy and Persona and the characterization of kind of you know as opposed to just standing there playing the guitar so I okay I didn't mean to interrupt but the uh I think one of the things and I I harp on this on my channel is that the gritting of music of rock music has has been really detrimental to it you know fixing everything to the uh to a grid basically quantizing the music starting with the drums because it's typically done with the drums once the drums are quantized meaning everything is lined up per beat usually on the 16th note or anything in there you know people can move stuff around and give it feel but once you've edited the first note or the first phrase once you start chopping it down into eighth notes or stuff it starts sound like a metronome it sounds like program drums and I always say if you're going to edit the drums like that just program the drums to be perfect and there's plenty of of classic records that have program drums from Tom Petty to Tears for Fears to that are some of my favorite songs of all time no problem with that but in rock music when I think of Angus Young And The Back in Black or you know For Those About to Rock or Hell's Bells or Highway to Hell those things the the variation in tempos you know Back in Black starts at 91 then the first course is at 93 then the second verse is 92 second course is not 94. the guitar still look slows back I mean it's just amazing the give and take of that the breathing of that is what makes the music have Swagger Vibe energy and to me that connection along with the BackBeat makes people want to move and metronomic music you know people will dance to it you know EDM music whatever uh we'll dance to it but rock music needs to to me needs to have um that it needs to have variation like that and that be all you know monodynamic mono you know uh rhythmic whatever it is if that's even a word if it isn't I just made it yeah so but I I guess I always feel slightly I always feel slightly I I realize I become sort of a parody of of myself sounding like my dad probably sounded when I was a kid and all this kind of stuff because I kind of feel like yeah I don't I don't genuinely believe that that music in any form or guitar music or any music is in danger of becoming extinct and and I think it will just reinvent itself over and over and over again and and actually it doesn't really matter what the music is as long as people are still listening to it and experiencing how I felt when I first listened to music um then I guess it doesn't really matter but it's it's always an interesting you know it was always better back in our day you know because it was exactly and you'll be saying exactly the same to your Museum and stuff and music is I mean I have a blast I love listening to contemporary music and uh and make it a point to listen to new try to listen to new music every day so yeah oh well so look I mean it's been a pleasure coming in yeah I was going to say was there is there anything that you wanna you know we can we can stop the cameras or leave the cameras rolling is there anything that you whenever you see in Anderson's video you're going oh I wonder what that thing is you've probably tried all this kind of stuff over the years haven't you what's the craziest looking thing I love the pink Friedman though I have to say the the I love the color pink there it looks looks great well what other color you're going to get a pink taco in other than pink that's right um that's one of the things I I think about when in the background of my videos is that you know do I have enough color variants in the uh this is so that's the only reason why it's because it you know there was a point I think at one point I'm looking at a video that's just like this is this black wall of right thing and I was like we got we have to just get everything in a different color that's all it is it's super vain isn't it and then we just wear Blackness because it's it's uh I used to only wear black t-shirts because then it then uh uh if I would go in and edit you know if I came in the next day and I was like oh I you know I want to add something to a video I can just punch in on it that was like well I my my videos were so dark I couldn't see myself and so then I started wearing like a just a a gene sure over it and everything so then you could see me differentiated from the background which is way back then instead it's like I should just light the background more and then you can see yourself but then you start then you see the ABS back there it's like oh I need a little more color variance back there so I was thinking about these things well like it's been a pleasure having you on I kind of feel like I'm half tempted to just grab a guitar turn my back to you play a chord and ask you to tell me what the chord anyway look man it's been amazing having you on thank you so much thank you guys for watching you already know where Rick's channel is you've probably subscribed already but if you're not go check it out it's awesome to watch anyway thank you guys for watching here and we shall see you in another video soon

Channel: Andertons Music Co

Views: 259,565

Keywords: Andertons, Andertons Music, Andertons TV, captain meets, guitar, electric guitar, interview, rick beato, Rick Beato, Beato, BeatoBook, beato book, YouTube, youtube, music, musician, production, music producer, music production, music theory, jazz, rock, metal, nu metal, guitars, gibson, bass

Id: my1fdy6JiDA

Length: 62min 26sec (3746 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023