Rick Beato
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2022
30:13 · 456K views · Mar 25, 2018
Rick Beato analyzes the music and production of Max Martin through Ariana Grande's Into You, breaking down its layering and songwriting craft.
HN points to it as an explanation of how Max Martin builds hit songs.
4 comments from Hacker News
Rick Beato is great. My favourite video of his is about the most accomplished songwriter most people have never heard of - Max Martin (producer and co-writer of this Ariana Grande song and a ton of other pop songs you've heard) [0] Also worth checking out is this 12Tone analysis of Tiny Dancer [1] [0] this video [1] [LINK]
I recently stumbled across some videos where a producer breaks down how some very good songs are produced. Here's one he does for a Max Martin track where you get screenshots of the track in Pro Tools: this video > From there, it should be possible to mangle it into a tabulature? A produced pop track might be a little extreme, but there's a lot going on in these tracks. Even if you know the chord progression, it's hard to tell if a note played by a guitar is played by the rhythm guitar, lead guitar, an overdub, something with double tracking, or even an overtone from the bass, especially when the note makes the chord an add4. The same goes for walking basslines played by the guitar. You also arrange things differently for solo performances, live performances with a band, and produced performances, so even if you could extract a rhythm guitar tab from a recording, that might not be how you'd want to play it solo.
yeah, but sometimes the effect is completely opposite for me it was these pop songs you hear on the radio i used to hate them universally, but once i've started listening more to the tone/melody rather that just the song i found myself hooked all these great pop songs, and i mean all of them are made by a group of people around the Swedish producer Max Martin Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, the list goes on and nobody even knows the man behind the show (which i find quite fascinating) Rick Beato has a video on him: this video
It's interesting that you mentioned Max Martin. I immediately thought of the new Adele single Easy on Me as a counterexample to people wanting 150-200 production tracks on a single song like you'll find on Max Martin songs. What's interesting is that Max Martin worked on the album 30 but is not listed as a producer on that song, and I think it shows. It's stripped down and you can hear the rawness, squeaks, and rasp of Adele's voice. Contrast that with something like a Max Martin produced Ariana Grande song ( this video ) or Katy Perry, both who can sing extremely well on their own, and there's a stark difference in production taste. Something like Rihanna's (ft. Kanye West and Paul McCartney) FourFiveSeconds would be impossible for Max Martin to produce (yes it has vocal and instrumental processing and tuning on it but it is very stripped down). Max Martin certainly has a nose for hits, but it's almost self-fulfilling. When he's producing everything, he sort of dictates what people "like" and other producers follow. I quote like because what's played on the radio is not necessarily what people actually like, it's what they're made to like through various marketing schemes. So I sort of balk at the notion that people want Max Martin style music. It's just what they're given. It's also a bit misleading that people have been recording this way since the beginning of pop music. Yes, lots of takes and doubles, but these Max Martin and similar production style DAW sessions have liter