This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Before the days of earbuds and streaming, listening to music was a communal experience. You’d invite friends over, carefully remove a record from its dust jacket and crank up the hi-fi as loud as mom would allow. You’d play your air guitars, mouth a slow-motion “wow,” shake your head incredulously at the really good parts and share a respectful moment of silence when the song ended.
If you were really lucky, you might have had an older sibling who knew things you didn’t and, what’s more, would patiently teach you to appreciate what you heard more deeply.
Rick Beato’s own musical mentorship began in his family of nine, all of whom enjoyed a variety of music genres. His earliest experience of really loving a song was when his older sisters played their Beatles records. “Help” had him dancing around the living room. He was intrigued by the note of melancholy in John Lennon’s compositions — even those with upbeat tempos.
His middle school music teacher encouraged him to play the upright bass cello, and he still remembers the transcendent experience of playing Bach’s third Brandenburg Concerto in G major.
“I think it changed me forever,” Beato said. “I’ve never heard anything like that or so beautiful or playing and being part of an ensemble. I took music more seriously and got engaged in music on a much deeper level. I heard music differently after that.”
In the years since, Beato has been a professional musician, record producer, author and music professor. Now living in the Atlanta area, he has more than 3.5 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. He uses the channel to wax eloquent about music, from detailed song analyses to guitar lessons to interviews with musicians such as Pat Metheny and Peter Frampton.
Credit: Courtesy of Rick Beato
Credit: Courtesy of Rick Beato
He also famously calls out artists, including Don Henley of the Eagles, The Rolling Stones and King Crimson, who try to block him for using snippets of their music for his “What Makes This Song Great?” series. And that led Beato to testify three years ago before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about fair use of music on social media.
Beato has become so renowned through his channel that Gibson has issued a guitar based on his favorite guitar: It’s called the Rick Beato Les Paul Special Double Cut.
Beato will do a live version of his YouTube show on Thursday night at the Variety Playhouse. He will teach, perform, answer audience questions and talk with some of his regular guests. The show also will feature a reunion concert of Billionaire, the band he helped form that originally brought him to Atlanta.
His YouTube channel echoes his deep engagement with music. After Bach and the Beatles, Beato was introduced by his father to jazz and Joe Pass’ “Virtuoso” album.
“That was a profoundly influential record on me,” he said. “I think it connected me and my dad together. He loved the record, I loved it and we’d listen to it together a lot.”
Beato had a gift to hear music and replicate what he heard with his guitar, and he learned to play jazz from listening to that record. “My dad just couldn’t believe it — a 15-year-old kid who could do that,” he said.
With the help of his older brothers and friends, he came to appreciate rock artists Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones.
“It was a whole different thing than listening through your earbuds, and that was something that could really bind people together,” said Beato. “If you heard the song the same way or you both loved a song, you heard it different ways and you talked about it. That was really some kind of community there.”
He found melodies and harmonies in music of all genres that not only touched him emotionally but also intrigued him. The feelings evoked by the unique chord structures of The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” was one of those songs — the band blocked a video Beato made explaining the song’s greatness — and Boston’s first album made an especially big impact on him.
Credit: Courtesy of Rick Beato
Credit: Courtesy of Rick Beato
“The record just didn’t sound like anything that had come before,” Beato said. “One of my older brothers bought it, and I remember listening to him playing it in his room. I said, ‘What is that?’”
Beato found himself compelled to understand not just the “how” but the “why” of what he was hearing and feeling. He earned two degrees in music and became a professor at his alma mater while still just in his 20s. He eventually left his position as an academic and formed a band of his own, Billionaire, which brought him to the Atlanta area a few decades ago.
He also began to ask questions and to think about how elements of the music composition might sound even better, which led him to become a producer.
“In a way, I see producing very much like teaching,” Beato said. “It’s kind of like imagining it in your own way or helping the artist realize their songs and to make them as interesting as they can be.”
He plans to return to producing in the near future, but this time for the purpose of teaching others how he does it through a new series of videos.
His experiences as a producer taught him how songs are constructed from the ground up and was one catalyst for creating the “What Makes This Song Great?” videos that he is perhaps best known for. He sees the videos as an opportunity to talk to friends about music, and he doesn’t get tired of hearing the same songs over and over.
Some songs, Beato believes, are works of art, and every time you return to them you notice something new.
“I still hear things on these records that I’ve never heard before,” he said. “That’s the beauty of it. That’s why I do the great song breakdowns. I wanted to isolate the tracks for people so that they can really hear how these songs are constructed because it’s so brilliant.”
So, what does make a song or album great? Beato said that “perfect records” like Boston’s self-titled first album and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” all have a “sonic signature” to them.
“All these songs sound like they belong on the same record,” he said. “There’s just a way that they’re recorded and mixed and everything. It’s really hard to do — to create a certain mood that is unbroken. It keeps you in this suspended state for the whole album.”
But he also points out that albums like the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” are kind of the opposite. “All the songs are very different on them, but those are perfect records, too,” he said.
Beato doesn’t see much difference between his college teaching days and the videos he produces now. “I use a lot of the same concepts that I used back then in the same way,” he said. “I’m the same person. I feel compelled to do it. I don’t have to do it, but it’s fascinating to me.”
He doesn’t know why people like his videos so much, but he thinks maybe that it’s because he’s genuine in his emotional reaction to music. People tease him about the air guitar he can’t help but play sometimes, despite the fact that he is a highly accomplished guitarist.
He defies what might be an impersonal and isolative nature of the internet by allowing viewers to weigh in using the chat function on his frequent YouTube livestreams. It’s a 21st century version of people sitting around the record player, only now thousands of people may gather from anywhere in the world to listen closely to a single song together.
The upcoming show will be like a chronicle of Beato’s lifework. He will do some teaching, play songs with Billionaire, discuss music with people he’s had on his video channel and provide opportunities for the audience to ask questions. This will be one of his last few in-person shows, due to the heavy travel commitment that takes him away from his family.
No matter what his next ventures are, however, one thing is clear: Diving into the complexities of music and resurfacing to teach others to hear what he hears will remain a constant.
Although our old music-listening buddies may have come and gone, it’s more than a feeling when we hear those old songs. It’s a reminder of our initiation into the club of those who have been forever changed by music because someone cared enough to invite them in. Maybe things look a little different now, but the ritual has stayed the same. And Beato, via YouTube, has become that cool, older brother who plays us his records and shows us how to listen.
EVENT PREVIEW
Rick Beato
8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28. $35. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta. 404-524-7354, variety-playhouse.com.
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Shannon Marie Tovey is a freelance music journalist and educator.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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