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Make the best out of every generation
Having been lurking on this forum for more than 10 years, I can imagine that many members are probably admiring Rick Beato's content. And in a way for good reasons. He released plenty of interesting content about recording techniques and guitar techniques. Some might also like his plethora of music theory videos, which i personnaly don't due to their old fashioned unfriendly academic style, but that's just a personal opinion.
But i have to admit that after watching this video this morning (Sorry if someone already shared it), i am only hearing valid points as to why people probably shouldn't trust Beato's views when it comes to
1- current state of pop music
2- how gen Z is interacting with music
Thanks to this video, i can now clearly pinpoint why I started to have weird feelings about some of his recent content and gradually disengaged. It is clear that he probably stopped digging for new musical content long ago and therefore lost touch with what is really happening (i am not claiming to be in either). His passeist association of music and stardom probably doesn't help him discovering all the raw diamonds ever emerging in the underground.
I am not here to start an inter generation pugilistic fight. I am not genZ. Demographically, I was born at the end of the genX but would describe myself culturally as a genX genY hybrid though i knew a world without computers and internet in my young age.
I am not here to scorch a personal hero of yours either. If you like Beato's content i am perfectly fine with it, he clearly has plenty of good points as well, and is probably full of good Intentions.
To summarize my point, I think there's nothing better than this Tsunetomo Yamamoto's quote from Hagakure : the Book of the Samurai:
It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.
With this in mind, I would be curious to hear people thoughts but please refrain from any "it was better before" type of comment, because it clearly wasn't. It was just different.
Comments
I haven't watched the video but I have observed in my own two children (aged 15 and 18) and in their friends too, that music doesn't seem to have the same cultural importance to them as it did when I was their age.
When I was in sixth form (the last two years of school in the UK) you could tell what music kids were into by the way they dressed: almost every kind belonged to one tribe or another. There were indie kids, goths, metal heads, dance music kids, hippies etc... Even the indie kid tribe had subdivisions: people who liked Madchester dressed differently to those who liked The Smiths or The Jesus and Mary Chain.
And if you think back to the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s there were numerous musical subcultures emerging all the time. Punk, Reggae, Ska, Disco, Funk, New Romantics, Post-Punk, Goth, Grunge, Acid, Techno, Britpop etc...
I don't think there have been any new emergent and culturally important musical subcultures in the last 10 to 15 years. Subcultures now emerge via the internet, not via recorded music. My kids get their cultural cues from YouTube and Instagram. They still listen to music, but not in the tribal way that Gen Xers did, and music does not have the same kind of cultural relevance that it used to have, from my observations at least.
@richardyot , I understand your points. You should take the time to watch the video because some of Rick Beato's points debunked in this video are interesting and a bit disturbing (at least to me). Especially the way Beato regularly look down on genz and the music made today. As if what he lived was more meaningful than what younger generations live.
Do you mean that because your kids don't listen to music in a "tribal" way, means music is less important to them? I am just asking as I don't have kids myself.
Another question, does the fact of not having any major new subculture appearing, means that music made by young bands nowadays is less interesting ? I mean bands like Fountains DC or Idles don't make anything really new, but do what they do so well...
I am not making any value judgements, I am just observing that youth culture has changed. What was important to us when growing up is much less relevant to Gen Z - and of course that's not surprising, every generation has its own distinct culture.
My children, and all of their friends, are very much steeped in internet culture. Youtube in particular is very important. They like music, but to them music is something you listen to and enjoy, it's not a central part of their identity like it was for kids growing up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.
There are some kids who are still really into music, but they listen to a wide range of artists and don't stick to just one niche or genre. There are also some artists who are culturally important, like Billie Eilish, or Ethel Cain, or Lil Nas, but there are no musical subcultures that I know of that are equivalent in terms of cultural influence to the ones that existed when I was in my teens.
That's not to say there is no musical underground, or that nothing is happening. But there does appear to have been a major cultural shift away from music, and especially from niche musical identities.
Yes and no? The music is totally not my thing, but Grime, invented in the UK, has had world wide influence. Equally, in another way, K-Pop. I don’t like either of these genres, but if you measure significance by numbers of listeners and fans world wide, both have cultural ‘significance.’ Hey, the Met Police are even arresting people who make Drill, which I believe, m’lud, is a spin off from Grime, in some cases just for making it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_drill#:~:text=7 References-,Characteristics,that "without grime...
How rebel do you wanna get?
Could it just be, I wonder, in my own case, that I am too old, and perhaps, too white, to get what the kids, uh ‘dig’ these days?
@Svetlovska Grime emerged around 20 years ago. Dizzee Rascal won the Mercury Prize in 2003.
One way of gauging where the kids are at is to see the moral panics that the tabloid press whip up. In the eighties and nineties there were moral panics about Rave Music (in the UK a law was passed banning "repetitive beats" in public places), about Heavy Metal (with secret messages encoded in the records if you played them backwards), about bad language in rock music (Tipper Gore and the warning stickers) etc...
Now the moral panics seem to mostly centre around different cultural issues, with trans issues being the most prominent. My kids are very in tune and sympatico with anything LGBTQ+ related, and there are a number of trans people in their friend groups, particularly my older boy.
Drill, Mumble Rap etc would probably be considered by their fans as important recent subcultures.
@richardyot : Funny you should say that. Drill (emerged c. 2012) is a source of ongoing moral panic here in the UK
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-moral-panic-against-uk-drill-is-deeply-misguided/
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/03/is-drill-music-chronicling-violence-or-exploiting-it/
https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/d/february-2022/music-videos-removed-from-youtube-september2020/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11713415/Shocked-fans-swarm-rapper-Digga-D-films-new-music-video-Londons-Piccadilly-Circus.html
From the article:
“Digga D, whose birth name is Rhys Herbert, has caused significant controversy in recent years.
He holds convictions for gang-related crime and is subject to a police order that controls his musical output…” (my emphasis)
Sure looks like something significant to young people happening in the real world here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/1WqfEorcR6A?feature=share
And the police are ‘controlling his output’ ? It sounds like he might be the source of some kind of - moral panic?
And the adulation of this many young people? Might almost call that, oh, I dunno… a subculture?
Sure, but I still stand by my observation that music isn't as central to the identity of the average teenager now compared to previous generations.
But yeah, for sure I think it is in general harder to tell what kind of music young people like from the way they dress today than it was 30 or 40 years ago. And most people do seem to define themselves less by musical taste - I think a major reason being that they are generally not paying for music or are paying very low monthly subs, so tend to listen to a wide range of stuff, but don’t grow attached to bought tapes / CDs / records in the way that our generations did. So sometimes I might ask a student ‘What do you listen to?’ And they say Jazz. But when you ask them which jazz artists they like, they don’t even know sometimes, because when they want to listen to jazz they just call up some jazz playlist on Spotify or whatever. The way people listen to music has changed.
And yes @JanKun I think Rick Beato is very out of touch and would personally pay little attention to his opinions on what makes a good song or piece of music. He’s not someone I’m very interested in, in general, but I would certainly have more time for anything of his related to theory or technique or whatever than his vids about taste.
I mean Dril, Mumble Rap, and even Grime have nowhere near the cultural importance of say Punk or Disco had in the 1970s.
There was a very rich and varied counter-culture based around music, with many different and concurrent genres all around at the same time: from Punk, to Reggae, Disco, Funk, Hard Rock, Prog Rock etc... There is no equivalent today to that kind of variety with that level of tribal following.
Rick Beato does a lot of clickbait videos. I treat videos like these the same way I treat an opinion editorial in a newspaper. It's really just his opinion based on his tastes (which skews heavily towards 90s music). Even when he points out objective things like music being quantized on a grid, etc, it doesn't mean that those things are objectively bad. They're just not to his taste.
This is why I prefer other smaller music theorists online, some of whom are actually trained in conservatories and yet don't constantly rant about new music. When they address a debate, they don't take sides and limit themselves to actual music theory analysis which is a lot more illuminating than yelling at clouds.
I actually would have liked to grow up in an era where people weren't drawing sub-cultural lines around what music they liked. It sucked to like something and then have someone who's just as much of a nerd as you try to make you feel uncool because you also like some bands they don't consider 'cool' or whatever.
Maybe kids these days just tend to have more have eclectic tastes because there's an actual long tail of music available to them. I would have loved to have that when growing up.
I agree. It was definitely better in my day.
Beato’s take is clearly subjective to his age and taste. He’s not the only one affected and to some degree we all are or will be.
He’s likely being honest but probably also trying to be controversial so his vids get more views.
There’s clearly deferences between generations but arguably the massive development in technology is amplifying this. I wonder what social commentators were saying on the edge of the industrial revolution.
The old fart is trying to keep afloat, give him some slack 😜
Yeah there was a lot of snobbery within the tribes, and people could be judged for liking the "wrong" type of music. It took me (and a lot of my friends) a few years to warm to dance music because we were so fixated with guitars.
I had friends from school who were into Acid House in the Summer of Love in 87 but I hated it at the time (to be fair the early stuff was pretty primitive sounding), I didn't warm to it until around 93-94, by which time it had been around for years.
I don't think it was better - it's just that culture changes and moves on. My kids have their own culture, which is as different from mine as I was from my own parents.
Same! I missed out on the whole rave thing because I looked down on dance music at the time. Stupid
I have not watched Beato's video and don't really care about his or anybody else's opinion in this area.
It seems that in history there are fertile times of great creative invention and progress (like the Renaissance) followed by fallow times, cycles of assimilation, reassessment, regression. Who knows why. But clearly the late 60s/early 70s was one of those times like the Renaissance where there was an incredible concentration of genius happening at once. The explosion of Chuck Berry-Little Richard, to Elvis and the early Beatles, through the progressive chain reaction to the mid 70s saw continual, bold, creative development of whole new concepts and genres in just a very few short years, giving rise to the birth of acid rock, hard rock, heavy metal, folk rock, country rock, funk, soul, Motown, progressive rock, jazz/rock fusion... and it just seemed like the sky was the limit and it would go on forever. Then by the late 70s it seemed there was nowhere left to go but back to the basics. Simplified styles such as punk, new wave, and disco emerged. These were largely rooted in a retro or overtly simplistic aesthetic -- more of a reaction to the recent trends than an attempt to move forward. Then came the 80s and the repurposing of actual audio content from the past with sampling. This was coupled with digital and general advances in production precision and clarity, so there were new sounds, a lot of it driven by new technology like samplers, drum machines, digital effects and editing. But you had stuff like Phil Colins covering Supreme hits from 20 years ago, but seemingly new to a new generation largely accomplished by new instrument sounds, drum machines and synths. There was still progress and innovation in these years, and lots of classics for sure, but production was starting to eclipse raw creative content. By the end of the 90s things were fully in decline culminating in what I like to call the Great Talent Crash of 2000. Sort of like the 1929 stock market crash followed by the great depression only for music. Which is where we've been for the last 20+ years. Even the artists still around from the classic era can't seem to write anything today that sounds as good. And this is not just a matter of tastes or generations, the music itself became objectively shittier by every measure --- rhythm, melody, harmony, lyrics ... The melodies jump up and down at intervals that resemble children's nursery rhymes, the lyrics are the most banal cliches, sometimes even stealing former classic titles like Katy Perry's California Girls, etc. The formulas, the focus-group-driven marketing, the algorithms... And the earworm factor! OMG! God help you if you get stuck in line at a checkout and one of these "hits" of today comes on.
This is not to say that there isn't still great new music to be found out there. There HAS been progress in other areas -- it's easier than ever to produce music, post-scarcity access for the listener to more music than can be heard in a lifetime. It just seems a fallow time for ideas. No one realized it at the time, but history just happened to spit out The Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, etc. at the same time, leaving the world basking in the cosmic background radiation of that big bang for generations.. And here we are in a world of reality-TV, 15-minutes-of-fame "stars" born of "idol" competitions regurgitating hits from 50 years ago.. Because this is just the way it unfolded at this point.
Better minds than mine have philosophized about the subjectivity of aesthetic judgements so I will let that speak for itself
https://iep.utm.edu/aesthetic-taste/
@Gavinski @supadom @AlexY
It is really annoying to have R. Beato look at you in the eye, and tell you that all this new generation of young vituosi guitarist (I am not into shredding at all but honestly some of them are just incredible to watch) have a lot less merit than people from his generation because nowadays there are plethora of tutorials on YouTube. I mean, hmmm, what do you do for a living lately, Rick? The guy is shooting his own feet...
^ absolutely
I think he knows his audience is older so he preaches to the peanut gallery
I don’t personally subscribe to the view that modern music is worse than what came before. There are a lot of artists who emerged after 2000 that I love: The White Stripes, The Shins, The Strokes, The Decemberists, Iron and Wine, MGMT, Portugal The Man, Lykke Li, Destroyer, Future Islands, Sufjan Stevens, Father John Misty, The Black Keys, Wolf Alice, Alvvays.
In Pop Music as well there have been some great artists: Billie Eilish, Lana del Rey, Lady Gaga. And Max Martin has written some amazing mainstream music.
So to me the fact that music has lost some of its cultural importance is not to do with subjective assessments of quality, it’s just a change in the culture.
@richardyot @Svetlovska @Gavinski
You're talking about subgenres that a generation can identify to. But basically a sub genre is just a small evolution of an existing genre not a revolution. For exemple, a hip hop producer starts programming his Hit Hats in an usual way, place his kick in a way that creates unusual syncopation etc. Or while a band is working on dream pop song the crazy guitarists comes and put 39 overdrive pedals in series and start doing some strange glides with his jazzmaster whammy bar while watching his feet 😉
I am really going off topic, but I am wondering if there is still a new genre waiting to be created? @Lady_App_titude mentioned about the big creative bang in the 60s 70s. I don't think at that time there were more genius than nowadays. Actually I even tend to think there are more nowadays. But around that time, They had access to new technology, new amplification and effects, development of recording technique that didn't exist until then. New tools, new ideas. It was fresh.
I am not an expert but we haven't invented extremely new and revolutionary instruments for the last 50 years. Add to this fact that we still mostly compose with 12 pitches (actually very often reduced to 7) and mostly in 4/4, is there space for a new genre?
Yeah, Rick Beato used to have substance in his older videos, but lately, this is how I feel about Rick Beato...
😂 No really, all he ever does these days is complain about modern music. I tried to stay put as I was a fan of his, but honestly he's just tiresome and lame these days. Probably for the clickbait. Sorry dusty old bones, but it isn't working.
To me, a lot of popular modern music isn't necessarily to my taste, but I don't fault those who enjoy it. School Zone has gained a subscriber, and Rick Beato has just lost one.
My final opinion towards people like Rick Beato...just let people be to make and enjoy what they want. You're not in control of who likes what. Concentrate and focus on making what you like and listening to what you like. Your audience will soon follow. It's really that simple.
@JanKun I think it’s partly linked to the disappearance of mass media, the death of live television and magazines.
Kids used to watch TV. Would the Beatles have become as big as they did in the US if millions of kids hadn’t seen them on The Ed Sullivan Show? Would David Bowie have become a megastar without that appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1972? Would Oasis have conquered the world without the NME coverage in 1994?
No kid reads magazines or watches TV anymore. It’s much harder for artists to break through.
One of the reasons for the thriving indie scene in the UK in the eighties was the fact that John Peel used to play obscure music on BBC radio. There’s no equivalent to that today.
^ I was going to mention this. There really aren’t many monolithic tastemakers left that can influence what is ‘cool’ the way, say MTV, could.
The closest such outlets are YouTube and Spotify. Edit: Maybe “must see” streaming/tv like Stranger Things
I suspect that music is much more personal now and less of a signifier for mass identity (edit: though still like minded people will find each other online— and often geographically dispersed). Though I could be wrong because somehow it seems to me that hip hop is the dominant culture determining dress and speech, and within that there are hip hop subcultures.
In a popular discord I follow, a majority of the young folks doing art.are very trap focused.
Good conversation with the fragmentation of available culture at its heart I think.
Are you giving up? Time for seppuku ? 😉
Wondering if he would have the gut to claim that music is not what it used to be after watching something like this: