Just finished Season 2. What a satisfying experience. Will now go back and dig into Season 1 on To Pimp a Butterfly. Cool.
I will check it out. I listened to MBDTF non-stop for about a year, so I think I’m really going to enjoy this. I love the podcast Song Exploder too where musicians come on and go though the process of how one of their songs was made.
Thanks for the tip. I have downloaded a couple of Song Exploder episodes to check out.
Oh, song exploder is fun. As is the (now defunct I think) podcast Pitch.
Has anyone checked out the Watch the Throne podcast he recommended in the Hell of a Life episode?
There was an excellent BBC series from a few years back by Howard Goodall called How Music Works. Goodall is very well known for his film and TV composing work - if you’ve seen Blackadder, Red Dwarf or QI - you’ve heard his work - and his background is classical composition, but his tastes are catholic and he’s excellent at explaining the nuts and bolts to dunces like me who love music but have no idea how it’s made. Episode Three, “Rhythm”, has an excellent section {from about 30.00} on just how hip-hop works. I can’t recommend the entire series enough: he’s one of those people who are great at communicating their passion.
Ah, I have not heard of this. I will check it out. Thanks! I associate that title, How Music Works, with the book by David Byrne, where he uses his career examples to explain how various parts of being a professional musician actually function. It’s a great book with Byrne’s unique Byrne-ness.
I am halfway into Season 1 - so far, so good. I probably need to take a break and listen to some other stuff. I feel like I am getting geek fatigue! 
While we’re on the general topic of song dissections, I’m enjoying the current series called “What Makes This Song Great?” by Rick Beato on YouTube. Rick Beato is a multi-instrumental jazz and classical cat turned rock producer who has an excellent series on music composition and theory on Youtube, but over the past couple of weeks he has been dissecting rock songs. He’s got eight episodes so far:
Episode 1: “All the Small Things” by Blink 182
Episode 2: “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” by the Police
Episode 3: “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan
Episode 4: “On a Plain” by Nirvana
Episode 5: “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam
Episode 6: “Numb” by Linkin Park
Episode 7: “Freefalling” by Tom Petty
Episode 8: “Judith” by A Perfect Circle
They’re about 10-15 minute episodes, usually with access to the isolated tracks, and focus very much on the musical side of things, with some theory thrown in (but this stuff isn’t nearly as technical as his other programs.)
What I enjoy about it is him highlighting little background subtleties and showing me new life in music I may not have paid much attention to or even somewhat dismissed.
That sounds great! I will check them out. Yeah, I am hoping to hear about other strong music-breakdown recommendations like How Music Works and Song Exploder so this is good stuff. Thanks.
I’m loving these new Rick Beato videos. I subscribed to him a while ago and a lot of his stuff goes over my head, but this new series is great.
I’ve watched the intro. Good! I enjoyed his overview of the universality of the pentatonic notes.
I’m liking season 1, but less than I liked season 2. I think this is partially because of how much I love TPAB, and partially because the episodes clearly haven’t been given as much time as season 2 was. The time thing makes sense. He’s doing this in his free time as a passion project and when season 1 starts he has no idea if it’s going to work out. He’s not holding back in season 2.
For the first reason, there is nothing he can do there. I’ve already done my own deep dive into TPAB and a simple lyrical analysis isn’t doing much for me. I just finished “for free?” and while the lyrical analysis was fine, there is so much more to that track than just the words. The way Kendrick plays with meter and the use of free jazz in the musical accompaniment. I was looking forward to a breakdown of how kendrick uses rhythm and music to create the building sense of tension and speed going faster and faster until you hit the end of the song and get dropped into King Kunta, but all of that was absent.
Kendrick is an extremely technically gifted rapper in a way that Kanye just isn’t. I do wonder a little if Cole is really as well equipped for that kind of analysis. Kanye is much more musical and seems to fit Cole’s wheelhouse a bit better.
I’m going to keep listening, it’s still pretty neat. But I was hoping for… Deeper? TPAB has so many layers that I feel are just not being touched.
For an example of what I mean and what I was hoping for see this article.
(that whole site is pretty cool actually)
That is a great summary of S1 and I could not agree more. S2 on Kanye was better because Cole the Podcaster was getting much better, and the production on Kanye’s album was more in line with what Cole can unpack. Having said that, I enjoy S1, it is just a “cool, worthy podcast” not “OMGF you gotta hear this” which led to this thread in the first place.
I have no idea what Cole is planning for S3 - wouldn’t it be great if he learns from this and builds on his success? If he stays modern-era, I would love him to go after Beyonce’s Lemonade.. So freakin much to unpack - music, production, videos, cultural moments, all set to huge drama behind the scenes.
I’m loving these! Especially, so far:
Episode 1: “All the Small Things” by Blink 182
Episode 2: “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” by the Police (favorite so far)
Episode 4: “On a Plain” by Nirvana (despite interruptions from online chats, and his getting-over-a-cold hoarseness)
…and his earlier episode on Toto’s “Rosanna.” (Beato casually imitates Steve Friggin’ Lukeather — dayum!)
Wow! These are great! I just saw the ones on Blink 182 and Rosanna by Toto. What great breakdowns! The one that impressed me more was Blink 182 - shows how such a simple, simple song with simple chords can build and release tension through use of simple passing notes*, changes in dynamics, and by layering very simple parts that move against each other just so.
*he uses Theory, but I haven’t found that to be limiting - I get the gist. He uses the term “suss” a lot - as in “there’s a sus4” or “hear this sus2 passing chord”. I know what he means - when you play a standard D chord and add your pinky to the High E at the 3rd fret, then take it off. It’s one of those small things that your ear hears - if you add that note, you aren’t done until you take your pinky off back to the home chord. The fact that he isolates on those features is excellent - but gotta be careful for non-muso civilians.
The one on Rosanna is more straight up - an excellent studio recording that he can pick apart. Man, do I really not like that song (victim of my High School biases) but I respect the heck out of it. Hearing him isolate the drums especially. And yeah JKelly - the host, Rick Beato, has amazing control over his bends. Combined with his theory and studio production expertise and comfort with breaking them down, he clearly is a longtime journeyman player. Really good. And yeah, I respect how he isolates Luke’s guitar solo. Those weird chromatic bits that are a signature of Lukather’s playing are fun to isolate. Lukather is a sax player holding a guitar.
Thanks - this is exactly the type of thing I was hoping other folks would bring to this thread. I wish What Makes This Song Great? was a podcast not YouTube so I could listen to it during my commute. Will binge on these. Thanks pulykamell!!
WordMan, I agree the Blink182 analysis was more revelatory — finding a few nuggets of harmonic production in what sounds so superficially simple. Also it’s cool how he credits the mixer (studio engineer in charge of mixing) — in the Nirvana piece, he expounds at length about different approaches by specific 80s-90s hard rock mixers.
I was able to fit in Soundgarden’s Spoonman: What Makes This Song Great? Ep.10 SOUNDGARDEN - YouTube
Excellent:
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Nice job relating Spoonman to Black Dog - both have that “call and response with a heavy riff” feel - wish he had mentioned both were in off times!
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isolating the fuzz bass on the chorus and explaining why it is so important to filling in the sound.
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Relating Kim Thayil’s lead-break riff to George Harrison. Shit - I never thought of that, but I totally hear. Insight!
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The respect for Chris Cornell. “Kids, this was all done live to tape. You have no idea.”
Metallica’s Enter Sandman - What Makes This Song Great? Ep.11 METALLICA - YouTube
Another straightforward breakdown.
- Love how he shows how Bob Rock, the producer, got their sound by simpling down their normally-busy parts, especially Lars on drums.
- Man, I have never liked Hetfield’s tone. I just don’t like scooped-mids, triple-rectifier tones in general. To me they sound caustic, not warm and rich.
- THE stand out insight from this video: No discussion of Hammett’s playing, even the lead, at all. Nothing. A mention of his wah swells at points, and yes, we hear the solo. But Beato never picks up a guitar, never shows how to play those lead bits, never breaks them down for insight. Man, he fawned (deservedly!!!) over Lukather’s work on Rosanna, and focused on Kim Thayil’s work on Spoonman with nice compliments. But Hammett? Nothing. That speaks volumes to me
Yay! Glad you liked it. “All the Small Things” is one of my favorite episodes, too, and that’s exactly the song I was alluding to when I said the series was “showing me new life in music I may not have paid much attention to or even somewhat dismissed.” I did always like the harmonies in it, but I never really concentrated on figuring out what was going on there.
But the Police one is my favorite, partly because I just love the Police, but also because, god damn that song is such a beautiful and intricate arrangement that just keep evolving, and even being so familiar with it, there’s so much I missed about it.
I haven’t seen the Enter Sandman one yet, so I’ll cue that up soon.
(And yeah, as for sus chords, it’s like you said, if you play your basic open D in regular tuning, if you take the highest string and fret it one fret higher, you get a sus4 that wants to pull you back to your D major chord. If you take your finger off the high E string, you get a sus2, that also kind of wants to pull you back to the open D chord. But they are also often used in modern pop songs by their lonesome, with no resolution. [Like in Tom Petty’s “Freefalling” he plays an E shape to an Asus2, back to an E, then to a Bsus4–I say “shape” because it’s capoed.] They’re kind of cool used this way, because by omitting the 3rd, you get a bit of a tense and ambiguous, neither-major-nor-minor sound to it.)