What Makes This Song Great? Ep. 3 Steely Dan

Hey everybody, I'm Rick Beato and today's "Everything Music" it's episode 3 of "What Makes This Song Great" The song we're going to be looking at today is the 1976 classic from Steely Dan's "Royal Scam" record, "Kid Charlemagne" Let's get started Let me begin by talking about the players that are playing on the track Many of you know that Steely Dan is comprised of two people: Donald Fagen and Walter Becker Donald Fagen sings lead vocal and plays organ on this tune and Walter Becker plays rhythm guitar There's also some of the greatest studio musicians of all time playing on this You have Bernard Purdie on the drums Chuck Rainey on the bass Larry Carlton on lead guitar Don Grolnick on the Fender Rhodes and Paul Griffin on the clavinet There's a whole host of vocalists there singing background vocals Including Michael McDonald who is a lead singer of the Doobie Brothers Let's check out the track One thing to notice are the keyboard and clavinet parts together Incredible pocket: Bernard Purdie Listen this opening fill here Listen to the tom tracks by themselves Again Here's the snare and toms That's just the snare track All the ghost notes This is on tape 25 years before Pro Tools -- 20 years at least Here's a fill going into the... Check it out from the verse And your guitar Bass It's your bass and drums together: bass and drums from the verse Chuck Rainey That is so in the pocket! I'll hit the keys in it Let's talk about the guitar part that happens in the verse So it's pretty much made up of either three or four note chords on the top strings Starts with this little A minor triad here at the fifth fret Check it out Then to an E minor here But the bass note is G so it's really... ...a G6 chord, so it's going from A minor to G6 Then it goes to to a B flat... ...13 with a 9th on top but only playing the top strings There, so you've got here: A minor to E minor, then to this... D - G - C chordal voicing Then to... ...to the Bb13/9 chord. Listen here... The next section is the pre-chorus which is a really signature part And here's the guitar part Starts with G triad here at the third fret And it goes to a C triad Now it goes So it does an E minor triad here in the inner strings To D minor, ok? Then it goes to Em7 And then C and then... So it's doing: C - E.. ...B - D... ...to D-E, like a sus chord Then the second time through you're into the chorus after that line, so here we go All that is is going between An F triad to a G triad on the top string, listen Now you have the Larry Carlton guitar enter, listen So it comes in with an F7 slides into F7 to G7 Then a new C7 chord Basically just playing the E string A string G string And B string Rake Right there, check it out Then So we got... Then Then quickly goes back up that Here And then he goes slides it again Into the same thing he did before and then we're into the solo There's a little chordal lick that happens in the rhythm guitar just before the solo Emin7b5 to... ...A7 But it's only playing the... ...note E - C# and G And then the solo begins Now let's talk about the solo This is one of the greatest solos of all time It's... uhm... ...I can't think of a solo that actually has the... ...harmonic and linear complexity in a pop tune - a tune that was a huge hit like this This Larry Carlton solo is... ...is really one of a kind I... I don't honestly... don't know of a tune... that's... that's this complex... ...that has this complex of a solo, check it out Right? Then the second line is here He slides in So... Now the really interesting part comes in Then here's another cool lick So it's really... Then the next lick Then... Then this one is amazing He slides in like this... Another great lick, so it's 5th fret And then... Like down an Emin7 Right And then the... This is a killer lick So he uses a pedal point up the C And then... Comes down over the Bb7 chord Once again Great lick He's using a C major triad over here to give this #11 the dom7#11 sound Mix#11 or Lydian b7 So he's got two pedal point licks in a row It's all A minor pentatonic, then... Then he's using the pedal point up here Which is really killer and it climbs down to the root on it Okay, then we're into A minor pentatonic at the 5th fret Like this He's using a G major triad here Let's do it over the chords Let me go back a little bit and play along with that Right here Then he goes into this one And then the next line Then he does the coolest [unintelligible] ever here Right here It goes like this So you're on, like an Em pentatonic Then... Slide Then... Then he goes So he does a bend With his first finger and then he goes That's one of the best solos that you'll ever hear Not my performance, Larry Carlton's... For those of you that know the tune, you know that there's another solo at the end that's also amazing It's a super bluesy, out chorus guitar solo Play a little bit solo here Larry Carlton OK, now let's check out the vocals No autotune All done on tape Great harmonies It's about, like, six vocals right there No autotune That's some broad singing right there OK, let's do a little point of comparison Now, this is kind of apples and oranges, but... I'll play the Bruno Mars' drum groove from "24K Magic" And I'm gonna put it next to Bernard Purdy's real drum playing Check'em out Now... When I was talking about the Bruno Mars tune, I said the tune would've been much better... ...had he used a real drummer instead of the drum program And you can really see how silly it sounds next to somebody, really, that can play a groove I'm not saying you shouldn't use electronic drums But if you got the choice between a real person and programming a groove You can hear that flow versus the stiffness of a program groove That's all for now, please subscribe here to my Everything Music YouTube channel Hit the notification buttons to let you know when I have a new video or I'm going live And also, if you're interested in the Beato Book... ...which will show you strategies to solo like Larry Carlton does in this tune... ...you can go to my website at www.rickbeato.com Thanks for watching.

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 1,589,015

Rating: 4.9393716 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Beato, Everything Music, What Makes This Song Great?, Steely Dan, Kid Charlemange, The Royal Scam, Donald Fagan, Walter Becker, Music Hits, Music Analysis, Hit Songs, Pop Song Arranging, 70's Pop Hits, How To Write A Song, Music Theory, Guitar Lesson, Guitar Solo, Larry Carlton, Larry Carlton Kid Charlemange, Guitar Lead, Blues Licks, Bernard Purdie, Music Production, Bruno Mars, How To Write a Hit Song, steely, dan, jazz, hit song analysis

Id: xKIC9zbSJoE

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/shimmyk26]

Larry Carlton is a god

[u/comeau1337]

Cool breakdown and clearly well versed. This same guy ear trained his kid from the womb and can do some insane stuff! Here's the video I was referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI

[u/letsgetmolecular]

Where does he get the individual tracks?

[u/dromeciomimus]

Awesome! Just watched 5-6 other vids from the same series, this was far and away the best