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Comment by Jupe | Hacker News Reader

Nick Beato (bee'-ah-tow) is great. He has some awesome interviews with old-school rockers. Really fun. And he certainly has an engaging way of teaching music theory.

I'm no pro musician, as he is, though I do dabble. I can detect the out-of-tune chords, but he can tell which string is out of tune on the guitar. To me, that's just amazing.

But, here, I'm not sure what he's saying in this video. On the one hand, everyone he talks to about his son's "A" string being out of tune is saying: How would I know, I've never heard the song before. Then, he ends with all of us being inundated with precisely tuned (and precisely timed) music these days. Given that, I would guess people are more sensitive to slight out-of-tune with itself instruments?

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I'm not a musician and I'm a Rick Beato fan as well. I especially like his "What Makes This Song Great?" series of videos breaking down how well-known songs are put together.

I think he explains what he's saying in the video, but it takes about 3/4 of the video to get there. When he de-tunes his C-string and plays the chord, it very obviously sounds dissonant. Even to my untrained ear, it sounds bad. When people say, "I've never heard this song before?" what they really mean is that they don't know if the bad sound they are hearing is intentional or not. If you watch a lot of Rick's other videos, you know he has not only a trained ear but also an understanding of chord sequences. Even if he hadn't heard the song before, he would know that a chord sounded bad based on what notes were played before it.

To your last point, Rick's thought is that people /should/ be more sensitive to out-of-tune-with-themselves instruments given how perfectly tuned most commercial music is these days, and that's why he's surprised that people don't hear it (or think that it might be intentional).

> what they really mean is that they don't know if the bad sound they are hearing is intentional or not.

His whole point was his son's guitar was out of tune with itself, just like the example he showed with his C-string. Meaning every chord his son played that used the A string, sounded "just bad" in the same way. There aren't published songs where one string in a guitar is out of tune in that way, or where the piano is out of tune with the bass.

I think the giveaway was when he isolated the chord and played it for people everyone noticed, but when it's just part of a song, the non-musicians don't notice. Not everyone listens to music the same way, and it seems Mr. Beato listens for and appreciates things like key, meter, chord progressions, and so on, and it instantly sticks out when something is wrong. But maybe his "layman" family just vibe along and the only thoughts in their head are "well music is playing and I like/recognize this song." That's as deep as most people appreciate music.

>>> But, here, I'm not sure what he's saying in this video.

To paraphrase his point with editorial license: Laypeople don't seem to have an innate sense of "in tune," which is surprising to him because as a musician he just takes it for granted.

I'm a seasoned jazz musician with a classical background, and watching Beato's videos has given me a new and deeper appreciation of the creative process of making popular music.

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