Why Today's Music Is So BORING. The Regression of Musical Innovation

started streaming hey everyone welcome to our live stream today it's memorial day weekend for those of you that are out doing things have a great time and uh eat a lot of food because i'm gonna do that and uh today's discount code that goes through the weekend memorial day sale is rb531 it's only memorial day here in the united states but this is a great great weekend and my kids are out of school it's perfect right i don't have to get up in the morning anymore which is that's the best part of it anyways um so this has really come up this particular topic a lot and it comes up every time i do my top 10 countdowns there's a couple things that happen first of all in the comments section most of people hate the music it's people from this channel though it's not your general public there's 2.3 million people but you know out of the 300 000 people plus that have watched the video from yesterday or two days ago the comments were much more positive but one of the songs leave before you love me the jonas brothers and marshmallow track when i was playing the song i couldn't figure out what it was i was singing the melody and i just left it there i didn't try i called up a couple of my friends and and i called up my brother nobody answered the phone because i was going to sing the melody to them to see if they could think of what it was so i was like well people in the comment section will tell say who it was so there were five different songs that it reminded people of i put them in order of how accurate they were going back and listening to it the one and it was pretty even although this air supply sign it depends on what year people are born in to what they say they you know what songs are familiar with lost in in uh lost in love was one of the ones that one was pretty much a direct rip of the melody then uh last christmas wham that's the one that billy thought it was right off the bat because he didn't know the air supply song was 1989 uh then can't smile without you barry barry manilow i didn't think it sounded like that um uh instant crush daft punk recent song 2013. d i don't think it sounded that much like that there's a the chord progression was kind of like it and then circles by post malone which came out two years ago which i didn't think it sounded anything like that this though it was pretty much you know almost a direct rip same key too right billy was in the same key um i think it was same key when they copy the songs they don't even bother to change the key you know it's like with the justin bieber song that that uh borrowing from toto okay so why does this happen though why is music uh i called this why why today's music is so boring the regression of musical innovation and um and you guys hear me talk a lot about this a lot of people are like oh rick just like you know complex songs or whatever but that's well that is true actually but no if you go back historically okay we can go back through each decade i started write writing down songs uh that just kind of average songs that are com that are far more complicated than anything that you hear on today's radio with the exception of leave the door open okay so leave the door open is the bruno mars song [Music] right um and then the chorus then um the chorus [Music] now these are pretty standard kind of chord progressions you have the [Music] i mean it goes to e flat from f um and then there's a part where it goes now you rarely will hear a diminished chord anytime in pop music this is a rare thing you rarely hear dominant 11 chords like this like this f over g chord this is unusual but if we go back historically i said you know it sounds like earth wind and fire but if you think about like fantasy [Music] right [Music] da [Music] uh i'm um to think here [Music] the course there's your fantasy right there's your diminished chords so you have this dominant left you have major sevens you have minor sevens you have tons of key changes there we have e suspe you have this piece sus you've got i mean it changes keys all over the place even right here um not nothing that so so leave the door open is actually just kind of a uh in complexity it's like um out of ten it's it's it's a three compared to the uh to fantasy earth moon and fire that's not even one earth wind and fire's most complex songs okay let's go back and talk about 60s music right you guys guys know i like the 60 um [Music] so something by george harrison by the beatles f e flat g um to g major they already have modulated uh [Music] something in the way she moves c to c major seven to c seven secondary [Music] do [Music] bridge i mean it goes to so many different places right yet it was a number one song it's a song that gets played in the radio all the time we'll take any led zeppelin stairway to heaven or dave i'm gonna leave you do i'm usually a million things then [Music] experimenting all over the place right with these uh with these different chord progressions we don't have to go back that far we can go to i love to use this black hole sons i mean right in the intro is more complicated than anything on the radio today and that we haven't even gotten to the melody yet right that song turns around so many different ways it's actually hard to remember um you know you could take any nirvana song pretty much any grunge song is way more complicated than anything that's on the radio today far more complicated any nirvana song is more complicated than anything on the radio today so why is this happening though why um i'll give you another example of another sign i thought about if you guys know radiohead there's a song that they put on the benz [Music] [Applause] i mean already it's like c e flat key change key change key change key chains that's a that's a um a tritone [Music] it moves chromatically do it do you see [Music] i mean that's not even the whole song it changes there's other changes in the sign why is it that people you know 25 years ago when radio had put that song out i was like yeah that's cool or 40 years ago when fantasy was on the radio people just accepted songs like that or something or any beatles song or any uh you know you name it every song from the 70s that was a hit just about was way more complex than anything that's out today every song just about on the list [Music] uses one or you know four one six five or four one five or one five four six or one six five four i mean that's that's like it that is pretty much the vocabulary of popular music why well there's reasons that i've given that the nobody ever wants to take a chance writers don't want to take a chance and this started happening in the early 2000s when a r people that signed bands started to uh when when money started going down the music industry uh they started hiring producers like myself not me not being one that had big hit songs or anything to go in and write with artists because they didn't feel that the artists were good enough writers because you had to have a hit ever you have to have have a section that uh connects with people every seven seconds or so you start getting songs like since you've been gone right that has that has a six bar chorus and a four bar six bar phrase and a four bar phrase and of course like a ten bar chorus and you started getting these multi-hook songs right but they're still and that's complicated compared to most of the stuff today that is so dead simple um most songs today use the pentatonic scale for the melody they just do pentatonic scale is uh would be like you know in the key of g g a b [Music] you find most melodies are pentatonic melodies the way you get away from pentatonic melodies is by is by is by having chord progressions like that or like sound garden or like or like earth wind and fire that's a key change there [Music] i mean that you can tell where that that thing's just going all over the place right so you have to write a melody that's interesting if you're gonna actually follow along with the chords and there are some really basic rules for songwriting right most songs use what we call chord tones like i'm actually going to give you the reason why okay most songs are most melodies of hit songs are based on chord tones what are chord tones well if you have a c major chord that equals the note c e g right once again this is all in my beato book uh you want to support the channel rb51531 and it's my ear training course 60 off my beyond a book bundle 700 page pdf and then my ear training course people like how do you rick how do you figure out songs so quickly well they're so easy that's why if it was earth when in fire it would take me 10 seconds longer i'm not just joking with you that's actually true no uh these are the chord tones in a c major scale okay now and let's say that i took that radiohead song which went the pre-chorus goes from c to f sharp major to f major okay now if we uh so we're gonna so i'm gonna tell you that most songs the chord the notes of the chord are the notes of the melody with occasional passing tones or suspensions but for the most part most hit songs are based on the notes that are in the chords and triads have three notes okay when you get into um songs like fantasy though they're using a lot of seventh chords which have four notes in them so you have more choices for your melody f sharp major has f sharp a sharp c sharp in it there are no common tones between those two keys right no common tones right you can't go from c major to f sharp major and use any of the same notes none of those notes work and then you go to f major f major has these three notes so from this chord to this chord there's no common tones none so that gives you starts to give you chromatic melodies interesting melodies you have to go to different places this note c can't stay on that note right if i play the note c right i don't have a sustain pedal billy that's okay i'll play that for you i'll play the guitar it doesn't matter so if i have i have c major and i say no c although that note actually sounds good on that chord because that's the sharp 11. that note actually works between the two but the note c is the sharp four uh little little trick here right c equals the sharp four now the sharp four is a tension note it's an unusual note it's dissonance against this second chord think about this duh [Music] well that happens to be the note that tom york holds on right that's a dissonant note so it forces you into dissonance if you're going to even hold on an o otherwise you have to go you have to go you have to have a melody that is chromatic okay if i take the note e and the c chord it has to move somewhere that note is gonna have to move there because that's in the f sharp [Music] [Music] right it's kind of a weird movement you could do that gives you some interesting movement but you get my point here you know if you have a chord progression like this you have to make it you have to create an interesting melody anything that is chromatic or out of key that changes key forces you to come up with more a more interesting melody that doesn't sound like five other songs the reason that these songs like this jonas brother thing sounds like five other songs is because they're not doing anything that people weren't doing they're just writing the most basic nursery rhyme melodies i don't know how many people it took to write that song i have no idea probably nine though it probably took nine people to write that song right the whole reason i got on here to to talk to start my channel was to hopefully i was like i mean i didn't know no ideas that i was going to have a a channel with 2 million followers on it subscribers but it was like maybe i could teach some people about about music about how to think of things in a different way right simple things like this this is very simple what notes are in these three chords how are they related you know if if you're going to be if you're going to write a melody and you have have a chromatic chord progression you have to think of new things but if you still if you write the same diatonic when we say diatonic that means it doesn't change keys every song that was in the top ten all the country songs they were all pretty much one four five six occasionally you had a uh and i marvel people like rick you're too easy on these songs you're too easy on look if i find one's chord that's on a key i'm like thank god i mean i'll take one chord out of key we got to start somewhere to build this back up to build the innovation in popular music back up and i know a lot of people say oh well you know if you just listen to different music look a lot of the metal songs people complain about too they sound bad why well there's a number of reasons because they use the same a lot of the songs use the same drop riffs that people have mined over and over and over that's a whole nother discussion the the drop d tunings when i say drop d right [Music] most songs that use a drop tuning whether it's drop d drop d flat drop c whatever base their riffs off the open string very few songs don't when i think of nirvana on a plane [Music] on a plane is very sophisticated [Music] what should i do who does that do [Music] d g major seven sus two b flat major seven sus two hello keychain but all these drop riffs have been over mined too so in addition to playing riffs not all the bands do this but they've over mined these drop tunings so much and place so many of the same predictable pens [Music] these same patterns are just in so many songs right they need to try some different tunings what about drop c sharp i don't hear anybody using [Music] that [Music] uh yeah you can do uh [Music] you can't play that chord and drop that's all i did was turn the low string down another half step so it's it's [Music] and you come up with and you come up with a completely different vocabulary right to write music with just by doing that by just changing it up a little bit right this is why i harp on music theory it's just to try to give people new ideas okay that's that's you know that's why i wrote my book is to teach people things like how chord chord progressions are constructed what notes are in each chord you know how to improve what you do as a songwriter as a as a jazz guitar player as a blues player how do you go in some different places that other people haven't gone you know how do you create that excitement of like whoa what is that i never when i do these top 10 countdowns doesn't matter what list i'm doing the rockless the metal list the pop list i never go oh i can't oh wow give me a second let me figure that out oh hold on a minute hold on a second i don't do that why because i can pretty much predict where they all go it's like it starts at a major chord okay what's going to be next four one or five oh six okay well then five and four are coming after right or whatever five and one whatever they're going to come in some order and then once it goes like once it's pretty much gonna do that doesn't matter what it is be hip-hop whatever hip-hop has weird chromatic things like cardi b we talked about the uh the chromatic bass line on and i said that they should do alls and chains [Music] somebody needs to do that mashup of that of those two songs of them bones and cardi b have wob come on somebody please do that i kind of did it i tried to sing it with it um so this is really you know this is kind of where we're at and everything but for me to go there and criticize what people are doing i'm just trying to explain why it's so boring to people and typically the people that say it's boring are people that are older that have that have been fed a diet of of much much more a rich diet of nutritious songs okay and then we're just kind of eating fruit loops now right this is it we're eating cereal that's on the on the bottom shelf you know supermarkets they put all the sugar cereals on the bottom and then as you get to the top they got all the healthy cereals on the top because they don't want people be reaching up there to get it to get those so you get all your kellogg stuff is on the bottom and then your whatever's on the top you know all your granolas and things that that uh health foods that cost 10 times as much are on the top shelf they don't want you buying those things so this is really kind of a symptom of the society right of the of the food versus the nutrition of food or lack of nutrition versus the nutrition of musical food if you will okay i like spicy food you know i do i want us i want to have a zing when i eat something i'm italian i like spicy food so i want to hear things that are spicy that i'm like you know i want to hear black hole sun starts with a sus chord a sus chord right it's not a major chord then it goes to a six chord then it goes to power chord power chord then it goes back to a different sus you have this one you have this one then to that it's like who thinks of that well chris cornell did and pretty much all the guys of the grunge era thought of things like this and the beatles started but that's what they were in they're imitating the beatles you know [Music] and zeppelin and and you know i always will play my favorite who said keith richards was simple angie okay once again this is why i created things an ear training program and my my biato book is to teach people this is why you buy these things it's not this is for me to give you things here to that will help you right this is why i do a discount when i do these live streams and everything so people can can buy these things and follow along with my videos and know what i'm talking about when i'm talking about a sus chord you're like what's a sus4 chord just look it up in the book it's on page i don't know five it's right in the beginning billy right it's right in triads it just i tell you how they're how they're built what intervals are build them and everything you know it's how chord progressions get together work together you're always hearing me talk about secondary dominance or major three chords i explain this stuff in these live streams all the time all you do is open up the book what's rick talking about you go to the first chapter all the basic music theory is there that you need to know and you follow along you just look up the titles of the things i'm talking about okay if i talk about tritone sub let's go to the tritone sub c to f sharp because the baseline is moving a tritone and then down a half step right like what is a half step first thing in the book what is an interval intervals distance between two notes this is why it's important to know music at least to know a little bit of music theory because it will send you in directions as an artist as a writer in places that you wouldn't naturally go and it the ear training knowing what these intervals are when i hear [Music] c g i don't i don't have perfect pitch but i know a perfect fourth you know i know what a perfect fourth is you don't need perfect pitch to know what a perfect fourth is right that's the interval of a perfect fourth when i hear the bass do that i'm like i hear a major chord i hear it going down and fourth it could be f to c it could be e to a it could be c to g it doesn't matter i know what the thing is once i figure out what the first note is c okay a second is g then i got a minor i got f it's and you know you just do this stuff you repeat these things discount code rb531 this is why i wrote these things so that people can enrich their lives in their listening experiences it's not just so that you're it's to be a better musician but it's also for people that are non-musicians to understand what they're hearing and maybe start searching out things like okay well what's he talking about why is earth men in fire let me compare these things let me let me get a chord chart for this and or wait i don't even need a court chart because i can figure it out wow that's amazing right [Music] a lot of chords there e minor seven a minor seven uh d over uh c over d d eleven g major seven c major seven b flat diminished seven b sus four b [Music] now you have to have a good year for that right well done so that's perfect fifth down so i know and i know it's a minor that's a minor chord and i can hear the seventh on those d g c b flat b okay i got the baseline i know what those intervals are what are the chord qualities minor chord minor seven minor seven dominant eleven g major major seven major seven diminished seventh sus [Music] if you develop that vocabulary of recognized sounds which i i always am harping about and you can recognize the base motion that's why we drill intervals it's the first thing in the ear training course drilling intervals just basically one note to the next what is this note plays a note and then it goes down a double fit uh thank you billy uh so that's that's the deal there this is this is what because we are really living in the era of uh it's a regression of musical innovation and it doesn't have to be this should be the most uh the best time ever right now right we've got all these learning aids you've got youtube to teach people how to play everything the right way if you watch the right channels right i mean you got all these super virtuosos out there that have no gigs right because people are consuming the people that want to hear that super virtuoso music because because their ears are just attuned to four chords and a major key so you gotta broaden it out you gotta start adding these things anyways my that's my rant for today you want to support my channel buy something here in my store uh discount goes through monday through the weekend 60 off my 700 page pdf the autobook bundle and my ear training course 40 percent off my be out of your training course um enjoy your weekend sorry for the rant but you know i just read the comments on these things and just people like people act like it's me that's making up these laughs like hey this is the chart i'm not they're not my songs i just am you know showing you what did what the what the deal is with them you know i don't write the songs i'm not barry manilow anyways you guys are amazing thank you so much for supporting the channel uh have a great for those of you here uh watching the memorial day weekend have a great weekend for those of you that are elsewhere have a great weekend as well you guys are amazing thank you so much for supporting the channel and if you haven't subscribed hit the bell icon only 12 percent of people that follow my channel hit the bell icon that's it that's actually kind of common for youtube channels but that's it 12 i know people are like i always go back to rick's channel because i do the same thing i type in the channels that i like to go i just type in their names and just go there but it actually helps because youtube actually looks at when people subscribe they help move videos more so if you haven't subscribed subscribe thanks see ya

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 931,531

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, perfect pitch, ear training, music theory, music lessons, guitar lesson, how to learn music, music theory basics, guitar, ear training program, arpeggios, chords, chord progression, chord inversions, advanced chord progression, piano chords, jazz chords, music theory modes, beato book, music theory masterclass, relative pitch, music theory workshop, music harmony, Harmony, rant, why is pop music so boring, The Regression of musical innovation

Id: Ks4c_A0Ach8

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021