The following letter was written during the summer of 2024 in response to one of Rick Beato's perennial videos about the artistic decline of popular music. I sent this letter to Rick shortly after finishing it but did not recieve a reponse. I figure there's no harm in making the contents of the letter open to the public, but if Rick or anyone at his team would prefer I take this down, do let me know.

Dear Rick Beato,

Hey Rick, I just saw your recent videos on modern music and its problems and have a few thoughts I'd like to share. My name is Janet Tzara and I’m a relatively young musician and avid music listener from Rochester, New York. My father plays lead guitar in the Fairport-based blues-rock band The Fornieri Brothers, and as such I grew up surrounded by music, particularly rock music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I’m primarily writing because I find your message about the problems with modern music compelling and emphatically agree that there is an issue with a lot of today's popular music. Where I disagree, however, is on the root of this issue. In my view, rather than technology itself hindering innovation, what's holding modern pop music back is a lack of musical commitment which has been exacerbated by an uncritical over-reliance on technology. 

I'm sure that through your interviews with the session musicians and engineers that worked on Steely Dan's Aja, you're familiar with the story of Wendel, the (rather primitive) drum machine invented by Roger Nichols and used on Steely Dan's subsequent release, Gaucho. I think Wendel is a testament to the fact that technological innovations need not impede artistic merit. It gave Gaucho a unique sound unable to be achieved by a human drummer. Clearly though, there’s further nuances to discuss.

In the past commitment was born of necessity. One was limited by the gear one had in the studio, the producers one worked with, and the instruments one could play—not to mention one's technical ability. These elements ‘locked you in’, as it were, to a given sound. In this configuration, a single, consistent, artistic vision was in some sense difficult not to achieve. Fast forward to today, when one has unlimited access to any tool they could possibly want, and by comparison developing a single consistent and musically compelling sound is made more difficult due to a sort of option paralysis.

Perhaps I'm being too vague, let's limit the scope a bit and just look at production. Today, when I open up my DAW, I have to choose one of several different equalizers, synthesizers, compressors, samplers, and effects, all of which can be swapped out or altered on a dime. I have two options here: I can either think about what I want and how to best achieve it, or I can get lost in my tinkering, aimlessly fiddling with different plug-ins and settings with no real goal. That's not to dismiss the power of happy accidents, nor is it to say that musicianship is always a process of linear problem solving. I do, however, think that this is the problem with most modern pop music I dislike. It lacks a sense of clear intentionality and artistic discretion. 

In your video there’s quite a bit of emphasis on things being made ‘too easy’. And while I’ve thus far focused on the technological aspect, I think it’s worth mentioning individual technical virtuosity. There is certainly a relationship between musical quality and technical ability, but I find overwhelmingly that this relationship is non-linear. If we take The Beatles, and swap in Jaco Pastorius for Paul and Steve Gaad for Ringo, are we truly left with a better band? No offense meant to Mr. Starkey, but I doubt most would be willing to argue that Ringo is equal or superior to Gaad in terms of raw technical ability. Despite this, Ringo was undeniably a great drummer: the exact drummer The Beatles needed. What makes a great drummer, a great producer, a great guitarist, etc. is not technical ability, but one’s contribution to an artistic vision. Technical virtuosity is useful precisely insofar as it allows one to make musical and intentional contributions to a project.

Which brings me back to Wendel. Why did Donald Fagen and Walter Becker decide to use a drum machine on several of Gaucho's tracks? Because they wanted that sound. The sound of Wendel contributed significantly to the overarching artistic vision that became Gaucho. That's what separates the use of a drum machine on Hey Nineteen from the drums on your average Drake or Taylor Swift tune. In the former, the drum machine was part of a holistic vision of how the record should sound, whereas in the latter it seems as though drum machines are used without much forethought.

To sum all this up, I'm not so naïve as to think that technology is always a mere tool, clearly technological innovations have made a substantial qualitative impact on the sphere of contemporary popular music. The problem, however, is not that the technology makes it too easy to make music, but that it makes it too easy to not make meaningful artistic decisions. 

Wishing you the best,