Charlie Puth Is OUT OF HIS MIND

[00:00:02]Hey, this is Cameron and welcome to the reaction log. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Welcome back to the dedicated Rick Biato commentary channel. The only thing we love more than Rick Biato is Charlie Puth. And why is that? Well, I feel like in the last episode that we watched, we listened to him say a bunch of interesting stuff [music] that we could kind of draw some like practice ideas from. We're just talking about music here, you know, and Charlie Puth is a good jumping [music] off point for just generally talking about a lot of different kinds of music. So, that's what we're going to be doing here today.

[00:00:29]It's basically like Jacob Collier except it's a little more fresh. By the way, let me go ahead and introduce myself. I am a classical guitarist here on YouTube. And what does it mean to be a classical [music] guitarist? Really?

[00:00:40]Well, in case this is your first time, this is really what it means. [music] It means that it might look like my hair is wet from like recently taking a shower.

[00:00:47]But it's actually just greasy because my last shower was not [music] even remotely recently. And that's really what it means deep down. A few things to know about him. He's a pop producer. He has perfect pitch. She makes internet videos sometimes. You've seen them on your shorts, like especially [music] 5 years ago. Oh, something that I learned recently. I watched all of the Fast and [music] Furious movies. Uh, spectacular series, by the way. One of the main actors, Paul Walker, dies like in real life, not in the movie, around like movie 7 or so. I think it's at the end of six or [music] seven. Uh, either one of those. And Fast and Furious, they address this in a very interesting way.

[00:01:23]First, they show you this [music] like pretty tasteful and classy scene of Paul Walker and Vin Diesel like racing, [music] which like in the movie, it's not their last race, but it's like very whitewashed and like it's like it's their last race. That's sort of the idea. And it actually when I watched it for the first time, I watched it alone.

[00:01:39]I usually don't cry in movies, but I was like it's getting a little misty for that, especially knowing the context.

[00:01:44]And then as the movies go on, they could just let the [music] character fade cuz we all know what happened to him. We don't have to bring him up anymore. we can just let [music] this series die with Vin Diesel and uh The Rock and just the writing gets [music] worse and worse and the action gets worse and worse. But no, we don't do that. We we have to keep addressing [music] Paul Walker. It's like, "Oh, he can't be here right now. He's uh taking care of the kids." He said that he wishes you all well, though. He wants you all to know that he hopes you're all happy in today's mission. And it's like, why bring him up? But anyways, the very uh tasteful like whitewashed scene that I was talking about actually features one of Charlie Puth's songs, say something I'm giving up on you. That was Charlie Puth. Apparently, that song's music video is also the Fast and Furious scene. [singing and music] >> Wait, what song am I thinking of? Oh, there you go. Okay, so God, I was like thinking of this just like is this just totally wrong? Uh, but all right. So, the song during Paul Walker's final driving scene and is See You Again, Whiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth.

[00:02:43][laughter] Okay. I thought I thought Charlie Puth wrote the Say Something I'm Giving Up on You song. Wait, no, he didn't. Or he might have. I I don't know. I I don't even know what's going on anymore. But yeah, [music] >> he goes off to a different way. That That way goes to heaven or I can make all the jokes I want. When I watched this for the first time like two months ago, I was like, "Oh god." And then they just ruined the whole thing. They they made it seven movies. Like the first seven movies, they made it pretty far without it being too bad. The first movie is classic though. There you go.

[00:03:14]Whiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth.

[00:03:16]Hey, have you ever been featured by Whiz Khalifa before? We trust Charlie Puth here. That being said, let's go ahead and jump into this, shall we? Rick actually left off with a question. Can you have pop music that's too complex?

[00:03:26]Like softball question. I I did a cliffhanger on it, but uh let's see what Charlie has to say. Do you think that uh the average listener that listens to pop music that there's only a certain level of complexity that they can um accept for pop music?

[00:03:43]>> I mean, oh, I don't know, Rick. That's a really tough one. The average person who doesn't give a flying flip about music, do you think there's a certain amount of avantgard like weirdness in their music they can handle before they're like, "What is this?" Ew.

[00:03:57]>> She loves you. Yeah. [singing] Yeah. Yeah. She loves you. that doesn't have complex harmony. But if you did uh [laughter] >> Rick just shut that down. Wait, what was the context?

[00:04:08]>> Except for pop music.

[00:04:10]>> I mean, if you listen to She Loves You.

[00:04:12][singing and music] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:14]She loves you.

[00:04:15]>> Well, that doesn't have complex harmony.

[00:04:17][laughter] >> Let him finish. He was like about to play something, right?

[00:04:22]>> But but when you >> That's [singing] right.

[00:04:26]>> Yes. Yes. That's I mean it's not complex, but that's for for a song of that lyrical like she loves you. Yeah.

[00:04:33]Yeah. Yeah. She loves you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:34]Yeah. She loves you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:36]To have that little twist in there, that little almost beach voice.

[00:04:42]So, you're saying that people can handle complex harmony because they can handle melodies moving with chords being played. Unless your melody is just arpeggiating through a chord progression, you're going to have seconds. And the most beautiful parts of music is when those seconds resolve.

[00:04:57]That's kind of the fundamentals of like movement and harmony in music. You have a note that's on a chord tone and then it drops down and then that's the tension and then it finally resolves back to another chord tone. What is the average pop listener listening to? Happy birthday only using one, four, and five chords. Like I think even Happy Birthday is going to have some dissonance in it.

[00:05:16]I feel like we're calling dissonance and resolving dissonances complex harmony, which is not really true and not really what Rick is getting to. Let's see.

[00:05:24]>> Resolve is that's the I think that's a No, I don't think I I think in pop popular music always begs to have like some little twist in it.

[00:05:33]>> Yeah, it has to have something in it or else it's like a children's song. Like what boring person just wants nothing in their pop music whatsoever? Nothing. I'm going to listen to my boring nothing pop music. Then I'm going to go eat some boiled chicken with rice. It's going to have broccoli in there, but that's too much flavor. I'll sub it out for cooked celery. Actually, no salt. I think what Rick is more getting at with complex harmony is excessive tonicization where you're using dominant chords and like leading tones to lead to a bunch of different places temporarily and also excessive modulation like when you listen to Bach. Do I need to give any examples of this? Do you guys know what those things are? You guys know what modulation is? It's when you just change key. And I think it's up to the composer uh because this is possible. You can change key in a very seamless way and the average pop listener will have no idea that you even modulated. I remember like when I was a kid listening to Bach and even like Mozart and stuff for the first time, I didn't know that it was modulating. And you will be hardressed to find any classical music that doesn't modulate at some point because the form of classical music is kind of defined by modulations. like you always go to the key of the five or the key of the four or the relative minor or relative major or whatever. And when it's really well composed, you don't even hear it. It's more of like an effect. It's more something that you feel than you hear like when you don't know what's going on. So yeah, if you want to call like complex harmony random block chords modulating by just like sort of throwing them in, that might be jarring to the average pop listener, but anything is possible if you're slick enough. I believe >> you used to do a lot of Tik Tok. Ah, I'll get my guitar. I I need to This is going to be a really crappy example of tonicization just using like open chords. Like say that you just have a 1 145 chord progression in C [music] C F G7.

[00:07:17]Why not [music] C? A way you can add complexity to your music is by tonicizing the next chord you're going to. An easy way to do it is if you just play the dominant of the chord that you're going to. If you're playing C and going to F, play C7.

[00:07:31]And then if you're going to G, maybe play D7 [music] and then and that's not modulation because we're still hearing C as the root, right?

[00:07:47][music] For modulation, you have to actually more permanently change over.

[00:07:50]So, if I played a 1 145 and C and then I'm going to go to F, [music] I should probably do some stuff in F as well, which is a more permanent modulation. That was a really crappy halfbaked explanation. And there's more to it than that. But if you want to just play open chords, uh, there you go. And by the way, that's like bare bones. That's not even complex harmony that Rick might be talking about because that's like the most palatable way of doing those things that I mentioned.

[00:08:19]There are very unpalatable ways to do those things, too. But again, I feel like a lot of classical music is doing things in the most subtle way possible.

[00:08:27]So, you more feel the effect rather than like hearing, oh, like something happened there. It's just like a little something happened and now we're in a whole new place somehow. It's like throwing in a little piece of information and now everything changes.

[00:08:38]>> Used to do a lot of >> All right. So, Rick is just moving on past that question. He's not he's Rick doesn't challenge like anything Charlie is saying. That's why I was surprised when Rick was like, "Well, that's not complex harmony." And then Charlie just kind of gives us we have a melody that goes stepwise through a chord and there's like, you know, dissonance and resolution there. I don't know, Rick. I feel like there's stuff to talk about there. You're kind of just throwing questions at him and just seeing how he takes it. There's no further analysis.

[00:09:02]>> Used to do a lot of >> Tik Tok things and Well, I mean, not I guess you'd post them to all different things, but you would show kind of your production process.

[00:09:10]>> Yeah. And when I was first starting to post on Instagram and stuff, I'd look at what you did and I thought that I was like, "Oh, Charlie really knows how to do something and present an idea in >> 30 seconds. You you produce like you would you would do a production idea or something. You're working out a song. I wonder if I did this >> and then I did and then maybe I I used to sound like this and I did this."

[00:09:35]>> Yeah. Kind of the reverse engineering uh visual engineering at the time. Um, yeah, some of some of those were um some of them were pre-planned, but not too like not spent hours beforehand. It was when I say pre-planned, it meant me getting a soda at Conway where I was basically living at the time and thinking, okay, I have if I do that, I have a mental checklist. Okay, let's just so we let's just record this that that so we have it in our back pocket.

[00:10:07]Okay, record. Here we go.

[00:10:10]take one and then I just and I like I do the claps and I line up everything.

[00:10:14]There's some there's some pre- stuff that goes into it, but for the most part it was really like happen stance. Like >> what are you talking about, Charlie? I like I don't think you're answering Rick's question at all. I think all three of us are in different universes right now. What?

[00:10:27]>> Let's like and then on take four I'm like wait I don't whenever you do that I'm going to do I'm going to use a different sound or something. I kind of go >> I think Rick's talking about your like Tik Toks how you like record a sound hold on let me finish I let me >> the flow a little bit >> tell me about about >> what we're just moving on from that tell me about Rick is talking about how he used to do this he would be like oh what if I record this sound and do this like listen to this song [music] why does everybody wants to rule the world make you feel inspired and emotional it's because the song is pitched up with a tape machine back in the day they call is sweetening the audio.

[00:11:04]>> Oh wow, we're still talking about that now. Dang, dude. Is that why it makes you feel that way? I can see why people hate him. He seems like a douchebag in these I made with some Do I seem like a douchebag in my videos? Oh my god.

[00:11:17][singing and music] >> That actually comes from this keyboard right over here. The Roland Juno synthesizer from 1982. I use patch number 27 on the piano part.

[00:11:24]>> The piano part. I swear to God, he has shorts where he's like, I'm going to record this sound. How will it fit in this song? And then he like makes a song out of it. And it's >> there's a song that started off like [music] and there would be very big guitars like and I want the snare to sound like boink. [clears throat and music] No.

[00:11:45]>> Oh, that's good.

[00:11:47]That's hilarious.

[00:11:50][music] >> Okay. So, here's what it sounds [singing] like.

[00:11:55][music] >> Yeah. So, there you go. Yeah, dude.

[00:11:58]That's some uh pop production right there. That's what Rick is talking about. You displayed your songwriting or production or whatever and it was and we know what's going on now and you explained it well and then at the same time you're also displaying your music and now that's going to be in our head and now we might be like, "Oh, I want to hear the whole song now." Yeah. I think Charlie Puth was talking about the actual process of making music and Rick's talking about So, how do you make a Tik Tok short like that? How how do you go about do you do you write a script for that? asked chatbt for a script. How how do you go about that?

[00:12:30]That's what Rick's talking about, I think, >> about about the relationship of social media uh and how you actually promote your music.

[00:12:39]>> There we go. All right. So, Rick's digging in >> you. I mean, just artists in general nowadays, contemporary artists, and how they use social media to promote their music. And if it's changed even in the last three years or so, is it any different than it was?

[00:12:50]>> There was a point in time where I was given a list. you're going to go to this radio station, you're going to go to this person, you're going to shake, you're going to make sure you say hello to this person because they're going to give you all the spins.

[00:13:00]>> And that doesn't really it exists, but it comes a little bit later in the cycle. Now, um, radio's still like a really important thing for every artist. It's just like >> it can come in the beginning, it can come in the middle, it can come in the end, whereas it needed to come in the very beginning. you know, listening to him talk, he's a very interesting like kind of artist because at least from what I can tell, he's very big into social media and promoting himself, but he is also like a songwriter and artist writing for himself. Like he writes his own music. I wonder if he's written music for other people. Like what is his job exactly? What is Charlie Puth's job?

[00:13:42]Songwriter, composer, record producer.

[00:13:44]Who does he work for? He writes, records, and produces his music himself and also serves as chief music officer at the music tech company Moses. So he's the So he has a job. He has a real freaking job. He's not some schlub like you and me. A graduate of Berkeley College of Music. There you go. That's how you get that chief music officer job. You got to get a Berkeley degree.

[00:14:05]Oh, in 2026, Puth took on a corporate role at an AI powered music platform.

[00:14:11]It's AI music, too. Look at that. I don't know what it is you do there, but that is the death of you because you make hyperprocessed pop music that like I listen to a bit of his album. It's very just like hyperprocessed pop music.

[00:14:25]Let's actually I'm just going to do a quick quick time here. We're going to listen to this and we're going to decide if AI could take this over first because I I think it could. So, his album's called What's Clever? Song one. This is how it this is how it opens.

[00:14:40]I'm not going to play much for copyright.

[00:14:46]I'm just going through them. It's very funky like kind of. [music] >> It's almost like 80s like influence, too.

[00:14:57]>> He has a ton of guest artists and one of them is Kenny G. Let's hear the solo.

[00:15:03]God, like Charlie Poot's the sound of this album is perfect for Kenny G. He should have just hired Kenny G to shred over the whole thing. Just some like ambient reverby just like 80s.

[00:15:21]That elevator is going to be so hyped up. Oh my god.

[00:15:25]The song is called Cry. You know, everybody cries. Uh that's pop music. It It's just so uninteresting. Sounds great. It's like pretty boring, I think.

[00:15:37]Like if you're hearing that lyric and being like, [snorts] "Oh yes, I feel you, Charlie." Like I don't know. It's just not It's not that like great, I guess. Yeah, that's that's interesting.

[00:15:47]That that kind of that definitely puts him in a worse light. Is Charlie Puth that good? Yeah, I think he's that good.

[00:15:52]Is he cool, though? And I'll know about all that after working with an AI company.

[00:15:56]>> I don't know. I remember making music for MySpace and getting excited when 10,000 people would go in my Soundclick that was linked to it and I would go to Ustream.tv TV and blog TV and like >> yeah, we get it. Your old boomer, >> you know, document the process of making that song live. It's it's all the same stuff.

[00:16:13]>> And what makes a song resonate with people?

[00:16:16]>> I think a push and pull constantly, >> for example, >> like you listen to [music] [music] voice leading.

[00:16:36]I love how he's playing it like it's his first time ever playing it. I'm sorry.

[00:16:39]So, he made such a big deal about the first two chords.

[00:16:48][music] There's no push and pull in that as the one chord going to the three chord. Both of which are considered tonic chords because they are so similar to each other. They share two of their three notes. You would not consider that like push and that is that push and pull.

[00:17:06]That just feels like meandering lazily.

[00:17:09]What's the least amount of movement we can do harmonically while it's still technically movement. [music] [laughter] You need push and pull. By that like the chords need to like change like the key doesn't need to change.

[00:17:22]Just the chords do like Yeah, you do need to change chords. People do like that. All right.

[00:17:27]>> [music] >> That's like especially on this brilliantly >> I'm sorry he was about [music] to call this like basic chord progression like it's going to be brilliant sub voice leading [music] that's like especially on this brilliantly tuned piano F# minor >> okay the piano all right [singing] [music] >> like that even the most unmusical person they can feel energetically that something is holding you and then releasing [music] you. Holding releasing you and when you >> barely barely though it's basically the same notes like I'm hearing the same stuff in there. I don't know. I feel no tension in either of those chords whatsoever. Feel that pulling.

[00:18:14]Oh wow.

[00:18:16]Wow. To a plagal cadence. The most like limp of cadences, right? [music] It just resets. It almost feels random when it starts over again. Like if you weren't so accustomed to that exact chord progression cuz it's in 10 bajillion songs.

[00:18:32]There's no push and pull. It's like a specifically designed chord progression to have no tension in it whatsoever.

[00:18:37]You're always moving around in thirds with this chord progression. And then you go to [music] the most nothing chord change ever to the minor 3. You do have a fifth leap down, but it's from a minor chord. [music] So you don't even get a leading tone. It's not That would be something. [music] And then from there, you're going you have to go up a six on guitar or you can It sounded like he went down a third. So, it's almost like you're playing the upper uh three notes of like the major 7 chord you're going to. [music] They're either shifting together and most of the notes are overlapping or we are doing a big like dominant tonic leap down, but it's without a leading tone.

[00:19:16]So, it feels like just so open and there's no real like push to get there.

[00:19:22]We're just kind [music] of getting there because we were told to go there. It's not like it has to go there. You know what I mean? This [music] has to go here. The push and pull in that chord progression is like laughably small and it's a really interesting example for push and pull cuz it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

[00:19:41]>> It's it's almost like a controlled explosion. Like a car engine is just a series of controlled explosions under the hood or wherever they are now.

[00:19:50][laughter] Um, that's a rich people joke right there. Rick laughed at that one. He's like, "My car engine ain't under the hood. When I drive my kids to school, it's in the Lamborghini and I blast a playlist that consists only of boach and deaf tones. They have to listen to it."

[00:20:05]>> That packaged in a really nice song. And then, oh, then you add lyrics that are part of a conversation that >> without lyrics that song has nothing. I mean, you're the pop producer. I don't know anything, right? It's just that I deal in playing music that has no lyrics a lot. And I feel like I know what it takes for music to be good, at least in my own opinion. And Adele's song with no lyrics is a nothing song. It It's like nothing.

[00:20:31]>> Oh, and then you have a melody that does like the the dissonance and resolve.

[00:20:36]Dissonance and resolve too with the relatable lyric. I believe that could be what a hit song is. Is it easier to go back and say, "Well, this is probably why it's a hit as opposed to before where you're like, h, should this be a single?" I don't know.

[00:20:50]>> I get that they're talking in a very pop context right now. That's also part of the show. I try to relate it with my music. All right, last question and then we're wrapping.

[00:20:57]>> I don't think anybody knows what it is.

[00:20:59]I don't think >> Hey, there we go. Nobody knows what a pop song is. What makes stuff good? I don't know. I don't know either. But, uh, that was a pretty fun episode. I feel like we covered some interesting things. We are 13 minutes and 33 seconds into this video. Next one's not going to be Charlie Puth, but I am going to keep going through this video because I feel like we're uncovering a lot of interesting things here. But yeah, that being said, what time is it? It's 10:23.

[00:21:21]I have my recital class coming up pretty soon. Um, let's see how many people are actually in it. Hey, there's seven people signed up for it right now. Well, you know what? Registration is now closed for that class. Sign up the day before if you want to actually be in it because once I see the number the day of, I kind of like need it to be that number or else I'll kind of freak out a little bit. So, seven people. Pretty light day for me today. I like that though. It means that I can talk longer and the people in it get more of an opportunity to like maybe like play some stuff over like see if nerves are like affecting them and stuff. Yeah, there should be a new link to that. Uh maybe by the next episode it'll be posted. I don't know if I'll have it out by today because this episode is coming out after I actually do my recital class. Uh, so that means I have to edit it. So I'll probably be uploading this around four o'clock or so. So it'll be a little while. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up here so I can prepare for that. Of course, if you made it this far, be sure to subscribe and leave a like. Recital class. Root Delight merch. Get some merch. I'll see you in the next one.