The Modern Guitar Discussion w/ Tosin Abasi, Tim Henson & Misha Mansoor

on my most recent trip to la i got together with three friends of mine that happened to be the leaders of the modern guitar movement tosan abbasi from animals as leaders misha menser from periphery and tim henson from polyfia here's our discussion it is pathological individualism because in germany they know not to hog the left lane why it's not necessarily a law but it's just this unspoken understanding and you just don't do it it doesn't matter if there's another car that's like up there right you go right back into the right lane and then you go back in the left said the left lane is always open so people can pass and now on the no speed limit sections you know their cars are going real fast like i am and and then like you're not going to get into an accident when misha was on a couple years ago who's on my channel he got a lot of flack for just talking about particular gear right that he i mean now now i think it's just commonplace that people have guitar companies they have signature signature stuff they they make their own pedals they make all you know all types of things pickups guitars you guys have your own signature guitars when did that become okay to do when was it why was it not okay two years ago i've had very interesting conversations about this i think there's there's something about genres of music so music is extremely personal and there's a standard i don't know what creates this standard it's probably just you know the lineage that led up to this but let's let's look at like say the the rock metal artist versus say the soundcloud rapper right okay you're expected to be a starving artist in rock and metal it's romanticized and and there's this weird there's this weird paradox in the fan where the you know and i experienced this when i was on the forums and people like how's he not signed how come he doesn't have how come he doesn't have a signature guitar whatever like so talented blah blah blah and i'm like yeah man you know i'm just i'm just here just trying to make it work and i am i was a starving artist and then finally i got the things they wanted and they're like oh you [ __ ] sold out oh look at that you know i missed him back and it's like there there's this romantic notion of like you have to be like just on the cusp of like you know jumping off a building to like make the best music when you when you said oh we don't even when we go to europe we don't even make any money yeah and that was and and then well i got a lot of flack for that because you know you have these publications that don't have news stories and like to take whatever out of context exactly they write a click an actual clickbait headline yeah and to this day i get shipped for it because people are like misha complains about not making any money he says and he says periphery doesn't make any money how does he have those cars it's like because i have the business the point of the thing was you're not going to make money diversify look how well it's worked out for me you could do it too just start early right right well they like look at these guys they've also diversified guess what they're living pretty good lives too you know i'm still starving but it's so interesting it's so interesting how like that success is now sort of it makes me a worse person for having success right and meanwhile like the soundcloud rapper who just you know just overnight becomes huge that's celebrated and the excess is celebrated the success is celebrated everything okay why i don't know it is cultural difference yeah i think yeah i think i'm jealous you could speak you could speak otherwise i mean i would say like you know like the obviously the soundcloud rap like originates from hip-hop you know like it's just a different thing like like you were saying like the the starving artist thing is like romanticized in rock because now there's not you know like for the longest time there was not guitars and [ __ ] on the radio you know and like that's like part of you know like the hip-hop culture is to like flex and [ __ ] like the nice things that you own and like [ __ ] like you know like oh i made it out of here like look where we are now and then in rock it's just not like that it's just the starving artist thing is like what they want you to be so i don't know although didn't used to be like that yeah yeah like in the 80s like glam rock and [ __ ] like that was just like cool like that was the hip-hop private jet yeah exactly yeah and you actually see zeppelin with their own jet with their with led zeppelin on the side well you see you see hip-hop now emulating the rock stars there's a lot of look at metallica remember like you know when when they finally got big and like the black album they cut their hair and they sold out and like you know they had mansions and whatever and it was like like so many people were just like oh yeah [ __ ] that well here's the thing about selling out i remember having a favorite band that was underground and then if they changed their music to be more popular i would feel betrayed yeah because it seemed obvious that they wanted to be more popular and they compromised their music to do so on purpose yeah and that that is where i connected with this sort of okay wait did metallica do that on the black album though i don't think so i don't think so either never heard it yeah yo you should dance with larnell lewis never hears it once that's amazing yeah completely different generation right yeah that's can i keep him yeah well do you experience this like your age like since your age and and it being 20 you sit in this interesting period where like you've seen a lot of we were just talking about the birth of the compact disc or like it could be everything from like college right or the birth of new metal or the depth of alternative all these i've seen like when you talk about all this stuff i was born when the beatles put out the first record right and you you can speak upon joni mitchell's first album as well as like you know meshuggah and i think there's this interesting span of like music history that you you can kind of witness like there's a lot of change that occurred almost in a con not a concentrated period but in a 50-year period yeah it's not always like that the rate of change isn't isn't linear actually like and so um when you hear someone like tim be like yo i haven't heard the blackout like how often do you have these likes where you're like yo you don't know i don't know anybody i don't know if i've ever heard anyone say that i've never heard anyone say that but i can't know lewis i didn't believe it you've probably shown your kids the black album right because my dad wasn't a metallic fan so like that's why i've never heard well there's certain stuff that and whether you wanted to hear it or not you will not escape vanilla ice like yeah okay my kids know the lies but they would know alan holdsworth if i played the secrets they would i wish my eight-year-old layla would say oh that's alan holdsworth i instantly well that's because you're like a cool dad but like yeah i think it used to what i'm getting at is like i feel like as i'm getting older i make assumptions about what people know yeah and i'm hating these i'm having these moments where i'm like you don't know what that is i thought everyone knew what the teenage mutant ninja turtles oh my god he needs to do a reaction video yeah i would watch i actually secretly love reaction videos so good going youtube right didn't know that i love them that's uh i'm gonna i'm gonna maybe we can do it together yeah i think because i'm literally not gonna so wait wait just to be clear you know just to be clear you've never heard you've heard anderson man yeah i think so that's the one that's like yeah play it yes i heard that one my favorite metallica song is all right wait about [Music] what i know everyone hates it wow no that's actually not not everybody hates it there's there's there are people that there are people that secretly love the saint angry can't tell me how disappointed by that that was actually when that album was being put together i was so stoked and that was like i think the first example i ever saw of a vlog like do you remember they were doing these like video updates from the studio yeah and like you get to hear little clips of songs i was like man this thing sounds like it's gonna be great i was so stoked and like you know they had walls of amps like diesels and like you know all this all the crazy stuff i couldn't afford and i was like man this is probably going to be like the new benchmark for metal recordings right i had it in my head and they were like you know in the million dollar studio just taking their time i was like this surely will just be like that next level of recording quality right and i remember hearing i think they put out what cena or the one that they like did in the prison or whatever uh but before before that video came out they put out the song or maybe like i'd gotten a leak of it or something i forget what it was but i was like oh this is definitely like a joke like this is like someone doing a metallica impression and like i was so i was so just distraught because i was like there's there's no way someone would have signed off on that drum tone i i heard the clips in the studio it sounded great like what is this is this like is this like an april fool's joke is this like i actually thought that it was them protesting like uh downloading because like you could download you know illegal i was like they just put do you ever do that thing like back in the day you have no idea where you don't know no you download like a death tones i'm sorry deftones and it would be like another new metal band it would like it would say deftone but they would be like i think like 40 below summer or something like that yeah it's to discourage people from pirating no no no no no it was like these they would do it do it so you would right they would so they could get their music out to you they would put deftones on oh hey here's the new sugar album but it's actually secretly periphery right because maybe you'll like it you know and i discovered it so this is how misha did it now right now i see yeah yeah yeah i did some illegal stuff back in the day nope post malone in the weekend song or something and like i'm because i was like when did they do no it was jaden smith and post malone and i was like when did they do this and then i click on it and it's not jaden smith or postman it's just some like you know somebody doing that same [ __ ] yeah and it's got hella views got like two million views on it like a lot of people really like the song and so it worked yeah it worked but yeah but my point was i thought that it was i thought it was a prank i thought that they had put it up as like this is you know [ __ ] you this is what happens when you try to download our songs illegally because that was that that was a big point of contention back then so they were at the heart of that i said in a video recently that i there's some records i like to listen to for the sounds where i don't necessarily like the songs yeah and somebody said in the comments you mean like and they they brought up that record and i was like oh no not that one they say like you know it's all it's all been done before and now everyone has access to the ability to create music so and it's easier than ever to get what's uh what's in here in here out there not only is it can everyone create it but you can put it out in five seconds yeah the touch of a button anything as a as a producer who's worked in front of huge you know ssl boards and like i mean a lot like did you feel that once the laptop could produce a record that rivaled even i mean you normally would have to come into it like and have the skill set and like and the and the gear you know now it's like people with laptops and fruity loops are making like hit you know what i mean okay so i have i have a kind of a different spin on that even though i did grow up going to recording studios working on consoles and everything i never could intern in a studio to learn how to engineer and produce i had to learn on my own and i learned because pro tools they came out with the digi001 and i was 37 years old when that happened i taught myself to produce an engineer and i just looked at magazines and how do you record things right so i if it wasn't for pro tools making that and daws i would never been able to learn how to edit videos and have a youtube channel so so it's uh so i'm glad that we have this ability because i you know my i would wouldn't have my youtube channel or anything like that if uh if that weren't so you benefited from democracy well the democratization of this technology opening up for totally well when i first heard you i don't even know who to i think javier told me about bulb and you had a myspace and i was like good oh my it's like i know this is one guy i know he doesn't own a studio why does it sound like this it sounded like a super polished it sounded like an amazing drummer amazing and and then beyond that was the songwriting and creativity but i remember just being like for me that was a moment of being like stuff is different i have to find this guy who lived in the same city yeah but somehow the internet's the reason we like knew about each other so we manipulate stringed instruments right and it's the reason like we call ourselves musicians but there are people who don't play anything like that are making music that's infinitely more popular than anything i would make and the categorization of a musician is i mean it's getting diffuse to the point where it's like do you have an idea and can you actualize it well what did you use i used a macbook and some code and here i am and it used to be like you apprenticed on the violin for you know what i mean you know most most songwriters that i talk to now they don't even use um they don't even use keyboards to do beats everything's done on the keyboard yeah that they actually just open their laptop because they like to be able to work anywhere and they'll just sit and and they tap out they'll do drums i mean even for me i never i just click everything yeah they just click everything um you can play the keyboard like yeah exactly that's what they're doing like i've seen people just straight up [ __ ] just so they can know that that's how mr bill doesn't make it like your ideas they they that's the path the quickest path to getting their ideas out and recorded do you think there will be interfaces that further eliminate the barrier of like ideas right yeah i mean is that the elon thing yeah i mean yeah but but if it's not that it'll be something like that i mean one has to believe that that's the next step right i mean they're starting to map this stuff out and figure it out and you hear the music in your head you have dreams with music it's like you can imagine just oh just record whatever music i dream about tonight yeah no big deal dude yeah and i mean this is this is a it was a pretty contentious thing i i love it but like you know a lot of people who studied their instrument and spent a lot of time hours practicing mastering their instrument and being a session guy or writing like that then they see some kid with a laptop like make an edm song that's the biggest thing ever you know it pissed off every jazz musician in the world right but like i love it because you know the limitation was was their inability and not everyone has access to an instrument not everyone can even like famously allen a saxophone player but his dad couldn't afford a sex right so he became the best guitarist in the world but right that sounds exactly exactly but like you know some people don't have you know my mom always wanted to learn piano and violin and they were they were poor they just didn't have access to instruments and now like if you have access to a laptop you could start creating music so now we get to hear music from people who might not have ever had the opportunity to learn an instrument but they're not limited by it i don't have the the ability to play any orchestral instrument but i compose it because i can do that now and i i really actually and and your tracks your orchestral tracks sound really good that you do thanks man i'm still just having fun i don't know what i'm doing but i know you do know what you're doing actually you're really good any of your orchestral uh sounds that you've done sound really good thanks i'm bad at compliments i am but uh well what's interesting about composing orchestral music i mean didn't the first composers just kind of sit with yeah they just write it out so it's almost like a full circle thing which is but that's but that's what i'm saying it's like to to think that that's cool but then be mad at some kid who's just making edm on a laptop and like being huge is like that's hypocritical it's the same thing too like you know you can apprentice on a violin for however many years and you can know all the scales and you can know all the chords and you can know like everything there is to know about music and then there's you know a kid who like just can hear something just simple and good in his head and like he just immediately goes to that versus you're dancing around [ __ ] like a billion circles trying to find out what's good and he just hears it because there's nothing else that he knows you know and then that like that's a perfect my friend nick mira he makes like half the [ __ ] on the top you know ten you know and like he just he does it so quickly he does like five beats in like one hour you know and they're all just very very good melodies that are like that's exactly what the song is you know and they all get placed with huge artists and they blow up and he gets plaques on plaques on plaques on plaques and like he's just a [ __ ] like i think he's like 18 or 19 now you know like he's just been doing that for years like of just simple that's what he's tuned into what people want to hear and so or maybe that's just his taste yes is what people want to hear no but that's what i'm saying it's like it wasn't by design it's just like it just happened to resonate with with people and so he can draw from it all he wants and he'll just act on instinct doesn't need to know you know like really at the end of the day the the and this is why maybe i feel less connected with the guitar these days this is just a way to get the ideas from here yeah it's a means to an end it's really a tool if i listen to any of your songs i can explain what you guys are doing even if you don't know what you're doing and you guys know what you're doing but i'm i don't know what it is what i'm doing because it's like it makes it sound like like there was purpose there or i mean but it does and it doesn't matter if you know what you're doing yeah it's just all basic instinct on instinct and taste yeah but it's good if there's somebody that can actually explain i think it is if you actually explain what you're doing because other people might want to take something from that and a lot of times it's players that are maybe accomplished players that want to learn something and they they want to just a kernel of an idea that they can run with you know and you and i were talking about this the other day about about concepts like if i present if i do an instagram post and i just talk about a particular concept whereas if people don't have to play what i played they can take the idea and kind of develop their own thing with it because yeah the kernel of the concept but i still this is interesting to me because like music school i think for a lot of guitar players is like the place where originality goes to die because they're like you know what i'm saying like the way you play it wouldn't have there's no school on the planet that would have been that would have produced you there's actually get into berkeley and they said no they never rejected them yeah all right so there's institutions of knowledge right and like i always found this interesting when it came to say like you're learning shakespeare and you're and they're telling you about alliteration and onomatopoeia and all this stuff you can deconstruct his approach to language into these ideas but that doesn't produce pro like whatever like percentage that was shakespeare's transcendent use of language is actually the hardest part to actually teach right no matter and i think i think it's what makes humans beautiful because we are our brains our processors we are using interfaces and there's a coherence to all that's happening but then there's this part of it that's right beyond explanation like do you ever get i consider you a songwriter like primarily and i'm sure people without you with me oh really primarily primarily songwriter second yeah but if people are do people ask you how do you write like how did you write this yeah i i i tried to break it down as simple as possible like even writing a periphery record but that's the level of trust that we're at and i found a group of people that operate the same way that i do it's like does it sound good yes it's like a flow chart does it sound good yes okay keep working on it no can you fix it yes fix it if you can't move on to the next thing peripheral but that's a periphery album even within that flow chart is a decision-making process would good yeah and fix it of course and what's guiding that of course it's impossible it's impossible yeah yeah and and what's interesting is you could probably break down and deconstruct my tendencies and where my ear tends to lead me like i'll notice patterns and the things that your ear likes to reach for and i i consider them to be like distinctly you uh and and but i don't know why you choose those things and like i s you know i've worked with you in intimately on a bunch of ideas and there's so many things which still this i'm like how how did you hear that how did you put that together it fascinates me and like you think with this much exposure maybe i would understand it you know i'm there recording it we're like tweaking it we're taking it apart and i'm still just like i'm just enjoying it because i'm like wow this is amazing i never would have thought of those choices and and i don't know that you could explain that it's so abstract and it is really just instinct and tosin's the perfect example of a guy who does understand theory and nollie's another guy like this like you guys understand theory you can break down what's going on theoretically but that's not what you're drawing from you know the funny thing about it is yeah i understand it but i i to a degree and i actually really like that there's stills like when i listen to you i'm like all right i feel like you can decode any any music you hear it you can understand what's going on systematically i had that fear of going to music school that if i if i made the fretboard finite then like it would my ideas would actually be limited if i was always like if there was no gray area then i felt like there would be no discovery and like i don't know if that's like happened with you i don't i don't sense it but like i kind of resonate with that fear and i like that like there's times i'm just like i'm doing this i'm like whoa that's really cool and then from there i will deliberately take a happy accident and like start applying some theory to it but like that gray area is like really interesting if you don't ever listen to any new music then that would happen but i mean i always am listening to new music i'm checking out new new artists constantly and talking about you know whatever contemporary things are out there tim was playing earlier before you guys got here and i'm watching him play from up close and everything and it's um his approach to playing is very unique to him and i can kind of understand i can explain how the notes work together and everything but but where the ideas come from that to me is the most interesting word to the breakdown video he's gonna tell me what i'm doing and i'm like yeah i've been wanting to know for so long well your playing is cool because i feel like you reject a lot of the standard like guitar heroes stuff but i can tell that like at some point there was some oh absolutely yeah i started on you know like playing the things that my dad like showed me because that's that's what i fell in love with like hendrickson like black sabbath you know so i just like learned like everybody just starts with henderson i started with hendrix and black's yeah i started with hendrix that's the greatest thing to learn you know because it's easy to pick out by ear and like you know then you're like it's very instant gratification you know and then from there like just finding your own [ __ ] to apply all those things to and then you can still see those traces of like stereotypical guitar tropes you know like standard stuff but like you know yeah a lot of it was like rejecting it you know it's like oh i don't i don't think i should do like a like big bends like that because it's gonna sound like that era you know like the boomer-ish sound of like a yeah i think everyone on in these chairs right now feels a sense of like a need to contribute something new to the canon of music like we're like you don't it's weird because like i know you and i have similar influences like yeah bandwise but then there's definitely this push to do something that hasn't been done even though we're we're referencing i'll disagree with you there i don't care about being original i don't care about doing anything no no no no no i'm chasing something much more selfish which is abstract but i know when i when i reach it it's just something that feels a certain way so the originality is originality is a byproduct and it was never a concern i was ripping off meshuggah before it was cool so like you know by the way but like in case you were one day but but yeah originality never really concerned me it was it was always a personal journey because you know i had the the setup and i just got to make music on my own there was never a goal i never thought that would be a musician i thought i'd be a musician like making music after i got home from work that was that was the goal and that was enough it was like i can make music on my computer i don't need to go to a studio that's amazing this is a whole world for me to explore for the rest of my life and i'm very happy doing that and i was you know i was working at radio shack just doing that like like doing sales all day making commission which i i pretty i enjoyed that job and i got to go home and make music i was like this isn't so bad you know like i could do this so everything else has been icing on the cake and it was just more exploration for myself i don't consider myself a good musician i don't consider myself a good composer or anything and i always give the same analogy because people are always like oh you know i think you're a good user it's like it doesn't matter because i'm not good at video games either but i love playing video games it's the same thing but it's just a personal exploit and it's like okay uh how does this make me feel ah don't really feel like working on this oh this is fun let's see where this goes you know but there's never this i think with you there's a lot more of this sense of originality but you've always been like one of the most original musicians i've ever known and i don't know if that's been sort of reinforced by the fact that other people recognize that because everyone knows that you're one of the most original musicians on the planet so then you know it sort of becomes your goal to sort of feed that and like explore it further and you're very good at it you know it comes to you very naturally i've decided it's of a value so it's like a a driving force behind how i play but what i think what's interesting is like as a person i don't i also don't like being like other people yeah i've noticed like the only stuff that i like like i won't buy a porsche because so many people even though it's like even the most one which like i don't like you're very original i don't know if you feel like i'll use i don't know do you feel that like you could but you won't because so many other people do is that like a thing that happens i i mostly feel that there's nothing for me you know like anywhere i go like it's like tailored to other people you know like if you go shopping for clothes anywhere it's like there's nothing for me here you know like in any section that i'm looking for if i go like just shopping anywhere for anything i feel there's nothing for me so it's like okay this doesn't exist like the music that i make when you know my goal is is a selfish one too it's like well i just want to hear what all the things that i like in one thing you know so then i have to make that that i can release the crazy thing too is that like you know like you you that's the goal is to make the thing that like you want that doesn't exist and like sometimes you never get there but it's just like everything that you have to show in the process is like people think like oh that's that's perfect that's everything that i've wanted to hear and you're like no that's that's just a [ __ ] like demo of like what it's i'm still working on it you know like it gets weird though when you have a very distinct sound and then you have a fan base that consumes your output yes because then you're now you're in a relationship all these animals i'm hearing all the thumping that's going on like yeah or i mean you're kind of credited with the birth of a genre that was incorrect but i mean it kind of or like bro like i'll go like the amount of players trying to sound exactly yeah you're the new wave of that man everyone just wants to sound like so there's like a weird i've actually thought about this because all my favorite players are kind of distinct meaning so you mentioned hendrix there's a lot of blues players but like what if hendrix did a thing that just kind of like for some reason stands out as hendrix and like to say he's a blues player doesn't represent no the hendrix party i don't i never hear people say that hendricks is a blues like yeah weird things players it's like it's just it's just hendrix or holdsworth or i mean honestly metallica did a thing with anything that was heavy or heavy before it they were like yeah let's do it like this so like there's an irony with the fact that i feel all these players were highly individual and then they span emulation and none of it's original it's all it's all emulating someone who was original and then so now there's people who want to sound like you and there are people you wanted to sound like but then you pushed it a few steps further now you have a distinct original sound it creates a whole movement of people emulating that sound and then out of that there would be a small percentage of people who take what you did and pull you out of the water no i see it already the kids are just making [ __ ] that it's just like i never could have thought but you're that you're that to me because i remember seeing you guys come up and like you were more metal and like whatever and i was like okay like this this is cool it's not really what i listen to uh but then the stuff you're doing now i'm like wow i've never i've never heard this before this is sick and you're showing me some stuff where you're doing that you're like it's such a subversion of like guitar and metal because you're doing your style of guitar over like hip-hop beats and rap beats i'm like that is unreal that's sick and i've never even thought of that before so to me like that was the most impressive thing i was like wow like and it's weird because you're in a unique position because you have to have proficiency you're an incredible guitarist you couldn't just be like i want to make this style of music in the same way that you can't just be like i want to start thumping it will take years of just focusing on this or something focusing on your style just to begin to start emulating you and then you also have the production side and all that stuff down so it's like i was hearing this whole package i was like wow this is some new [ __ ] and that's really cool so you do get these things out of out of the the the sort of next generation that are also yeah which is which is so you ever look outside of music for this phenomena like watch skateboarding from 1982 yeah and then watch a 12 year old do a double backflip book and you're like you're just like there's this weird or watch it flip a basketball game from i mean yeah there's this i don't understand how or why this happens but like it's not just in music there's this sort of like sometimes it's called standing on the shoulders of giants but there's this expansion of like the perimeter of like human ability or achievement or the idea that you can you know because i mean but it's weird what's in physical domains like like people gotten faster is the fastest thing is youtube has accelerated people this is i think this is some ways unique to the guitar or the some stranger i agree with those it's with everything it's the awareness that the bar has been raised you know like when we were when we were coming up like rock disciplined by petrucci that was the bar like and like holdsworth was just a freak and no one understands him and nobody played like that so it doesn't matter you don't have to count him but there were people who could play rock discipline so that was the bar can you play that stuff or not you know and then you know there's there'd be a kid i remember uh uh there'd be people on the petrucci forum like 16 year old kids like playing like you know um under a glass moon perfectly right the solar front under glassman perfect and you're like i have no i have no chance like this kid's got years on me and he's already out playing me right and that was like the bar but then youtube just changed all that because then you're getting all these insane displays of talent from younger and younger people it's because the awareness was there and even seeing it in my brother like was younger than me i exposed him to a lot of progressive music so he was advancing a lot faster at guitar than his friends who were just the same to say like green day and stuff like that okay so so the thing youtube has accelerated what people can learn but they're learning things by watching they're not learning by struggling through the learning things by ear when i was growing up and i don't mean to sound like the grandpa or anything but when i was growing up you had an lp and you put on the thing and you'd have to try and figure out where the people were playing stuff you couldn't slow it down you couldn't do anything and half the time you play the stuff you get the right notes be playing at the wrong position and these are the things that help you start developing your own style because you play these lines and they wouldn't be like those people then you'd be like well that's kind of weird and and your style starts to develop from from learning these little pieces as opposed to this is exactly how you play it we're going to do a close-up on tim's hands and you're going to tap here you're going to do this and you can play it just like that and then all you're doing is just copying i think there's kind of a double-edged sword of having the ability to learn anything perfect through emulation where that whereas where you're not really developing if you don't have to struggle to figure this stuff out or if you're writing stuff or coming up with your own style and you're trying to and you're using your own creativity to do this that's a totally different thing but youtube has definitely brought the level of players up of being able to copy things perfectly but i think it also raises the bar and i i don't disagree with you i would i would i would say that you also had a strong ear you know i had a strong ear that's all i get right that's all and that's all that's all that that that's all that i really have and all i had you know and that's what i rely on uh and that's just as far back as as i can remember that's not any anything of my own doing so i can hone it i could and yeah i would learn stuff by ear and and whatever but what i'm saying is if i'd seen you know guys like him when i was you know nine or ten years old i'm like oh that's the bar that i could aspire to you know and you know let's say you're playing the way you are at like 16 or whatever i'm like oh well then by the time i'm 16 i should be playing like that not like these relatively lower levels of technique and it's like oh the guy's like 30. so you know i have plenty of time it just the the the context of everything would just change how you set the bar relative to yourself and the bar of expectation and i think that's why you're seeing like you're saying like people are getting faster more time it's not just guitar it's everything it's not just guitar yeah i mean i think when you look at sports it almost it's like there's something about human ability that is in interaction with what other humans have done exactly and it's like and then you you insert technology as like a point of reference and like so quantizing drums right yeah having perfect time is an inhuman it's an inhuman thing yeah humans have obviously you know human time but there's like rudy or mike malion yeah so we know a few drummers who because they grew up listening to recordings that were quantized like perfectly they sound like the velocity doesn't sound like they're singing with autotune yeah their voices sound like i don't like because that's how they train themselves because they thought a guy was in the room playing like that and when they didn't know shortly yeah no they didn't know that it was gritted program drums and like it's an inhuman it's performance completely and now a human is like humanly as a result or with no humanity no no because because especially malian can groove he can groove but like it's just you don't see guys playing fills like that where everything if you look at the transients they're all the same like and you see double kicks you would swear it was gritted you would swear that there's triggers on it but there's not you know so they've elevated just because of the level expectation from a misunderstanding you know like that to me is fascinating it sort of that sort of proves what what or it's a it's a point in the quarterback yeah before digital recordings you had a conversation with someone who understood you know music you'd be like yeah well humans you know their time fluctuates and so does the velocity of their snare strokes and that would be true yeah until you started editing recordings and you have well people started adding samples on snare drums because they were inconsistent in the 80s bob clear mountain people like that realized that oh the drum sound a lot better if i had a snare and podeta put triggers in even though it would only trigger one velocity yep the you'd have a nice a great snare sound when they add it to the to the real snacks because real drummers don't hit the snare drum the same every time and then you know every metallica you know if you listen to black album those are really carefully created samples kick and snare samples that are on every drum head and they just are that's not how the drums actually say his snare didn't sound like that his kick drum didn't sound like that those are samples that are laid on it so i mean like anyone who was practicing for that would be like oh man i'm inconsistent compared to this i need to be more consistent it probably did that misunderstanding probably did lead to the advancement of of drumming and guitar playing well but it's a double-edged sword because there's a sterility feel that's right right like they're drummers you can because of their feel you can identify them yep and if there was an objective standard of time and dynamic they would lose points because yeah technically right but it's nice to counter this let me offer your drummer the perfect delta of that and having watched gospel chops on on youtube and it's like if those two things hadn't existed in those videos he would not be playing drums the way that he does he has this perfect mastery of being able to be consistent when he needs to be and knowing how to hit a drum but also having phenomenal feel and and and knowing how to take his ideas in more in one direction more berkeley or more gospel chops you know depending on what the song needs how many guitar riffs you know how many hours a day do you probably yeah it's your favorite like i'm not are we gonna play are we gonna jam i was like no we're not gonna jump ready no i hate i hate i can't improvise i can't improvise hanging with you guys are you kidding me that's all for now don't forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the biato book if you want to learn about music theory that's how you do it and check out my biato ear training course at beautiertraining.com and don't forget if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 888,454

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, music, music theory, music production, education, Tim Henson, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor, Periphery, Animals As Leaders, Polyphia, thew6rst, Guitar, Virtuoso, Abasi Concepts, Abasi Guitars, Ibanez, Jackson Guitars, Tim Henson Signature Guitar, Ibanez Guitars, Modern Guitar, Home Recording, Musical Influence, Metal Guitar, Prog Guitar, Prog Metal, Pop Music, Guitar Techniques, Allan Holdsworth, Jimi Hendrix, Music School, Bulb, Interview, Podcast

Id: 6wb4AcfXSyo

Length: 40min 25sec (2425 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Rick putting out some great content

[u/[deleted]]

My 3 favourite guitarists in a room. Sick