The Nirvana Hit That Uses All 12 Notes 

We need a "Beato UnPlugged" No auto-tune No hackery Just an (perhaps up and coming) artist and your mics

I thought there was a song on def leppards hysteria that had not just all 12 but every note on the fretboard. Don't tell my ex but...nirvana was good..

Saying that the last E note, the b9 sang in harmony over an Eb Maj chord is applicable and should count as a valid melody note in your "All 12 Notes" claim is pretty dubious, in my opinion. I'm not sold on the idea. That D chord before the chorus is really wild, though.

Rick!!!!! Can I send you a DM about the course?

Is it for one year of access?

Brazilian bossa nova is full of fancy chords. Really nice

Them Bones by Alice In Chains does too. Took me a while to check and make sure but it's true. One of the notes is only contained in the backing vocals. Does Bohemian Rhapsody use all 12? It seems like it must

I'm pretty sure Girl From Ipanema uses MORE than 12 notes! LOL

Yoko made up some new notes..

Also "Les Lacs du Connemara" by Michel Sardou

only took 30 years for everyone to realize it.

@@MrBriankjeld What are you talking about? We all knew he was a genius when the music was coming out.

Did he, though? What if the first 11 notes were intuitive, then he realised and threw in that D to complete the 12? Then maybe he thought he wouldn't make it obvious and put it in a part where the vocals could easily obscure it, and it's like an Easter egg, waiting for people to find it.

@@VaultBoy13this

@@MrBriankjeld Everyone exept most likely millions of people.

Great descript👍

That is why the recent Nirvana revisionists are sorely mistaken. Cobain, although he was not a musician trained in the traditional sense, his musical instincts were amazing.

​@jonlohrenz5446 Indeed. You cannot find a single, successful musician that would call either the Beatles or Nirvana over-rated.

I am a lifelong Nirvana fan and Kurt Cobain copied everyone he liked, from a little bit to near completely.

He did copy

Good way to put it. I think Rick has said something similar: he employs sophisticated jazz techniques despite not having formal music training.

@@Alex-js5lg As geniuses seem able to do.

Luke Skywalker threading the photon torpedo through that exhaust port.

folk punk Jimi Hendrix id say.

@@benjamink7105photon torpedoes are from Star Trek 😅

Hey sonny want a Werther's original? Lol we're old 🤣

Jesus that's my age. And I grew up loving this song, it was the first song I asked my instructor to teach me when I moved onto barre chords.

Yeah, because our knees hurt lol.

You actually got up?

Still trying too.

Knives Out is the only Radiohead song featuring all 12 notes.

@@AlexDainese nope, "Knives Out" is not the only one. rome8180 is correct about "Just." The guitar parts alone use all 12 notes, without even adding melody notes

I think Paranoid Android as well! It has too! It has like 20 different chords

​@@akeithing1841 that makes sense- I thought of and checked "Just" first. "Paranoid Android" to my memory doesn't use any kind of F#/Gb, C#/Db, or B root chord, but those notes APPEAR in vocal parts (and the bass line is super chromatic), which Rick was counting here

Great song, very complex songs in Radioheads library

Lolol

I just had to look it up. That is the most 60s sounding song ever. And only like two mins. All over the road but fun!

What a song! Seriously that was like a perfect two minutes wow.

Oh man one of my favorite songs ever!

Yo estaba esperando este comentario xD

great sense of melody* melodicism would’ve been underlined red, no? his melodies are also more prominent in the vocal, whereas guitar is more harmony

Listen… I’m going to say Aneurysm is #1. Would love to see Rick cover this song. Only he could explain to me why I’m so impressed by it (I’m not a musician, I have no clue).

Aneurysm live especially at Reading is fucking dope

​@Marleystrummer my very favorite Nirvana song. I like the studio version too but it's sooo much better live imo

Aneurysm wasn't even remotely a hit so figured it wasn't even a choice.

This and Dive.

Düsseldorf?

I couldn't agree more. I went through the same thing... I was 17 in 1994. I didn't listen to the radio very often, let alone TV, and I'm a little French boy (Daft Punk idiot haha) so I wasn't aware of what was happening at the end of 1991 and a friend (who had introduced me to Blodd Sugar Sex Magic) told me : « you absolutely have to listen to Nirvana, it's huge… » And because he was mostly a fan of gansta rap, I was seriously blasted. I said « okay, I'll see when I’ll got time… » Then I bumped into a guy I introduced to metal culture few years before, a pretty simple guy... And I mentioned it to him, like : « Have you heard of it ? » And he said : « Well, all the songs sound aslike the same… » So I left it at that, several months... Until I suddenly heard Smells Like Teen Spirit at a party (in the summer 1992) very amplified... I was literally hallucinating ! I was in, immediatly, understanding what happenned really. Then I discovered an extremely varied and well-written album. Later, I was the only one around me who understood what this pure musical instinct it was. And I listened to In Utero over and over again… Some guys near to me appreciated a bit, but few understood the immensity of the phenomenon. Finally, since I'm strongly a musician, I think it’s in my deeply in my mind, in my sensitivity. Very later one of my psychiatrists diagnosed me as « being a potential genius and not just HIP/HEP » and I laught and tried to explain to her a long that genius did not really exist and this is more complex (personnal history and immersive works) but she said in order to conclude « sorry but I did not understand a word of your explanation » LOL… But notice that : I have the same pathology as the concerned guy today (Kurt Cobain), so it brought us closer together in terms of sensitivity, I think. You are maybe « someone like that » too I guess, to understand really this, I mean... And it is quite rare even if many people were touched by this great music. 😉

Its not just about anyone, it's about Kurt's friend Dylan, the frontman of the band Earth.

@Overlorddz was just going to post the exact some thing. Kurt finished in bloom in April 1990 at Butch Vigs studio in Wisconsin. He had been working on the tune for a while before that so yeah, the misconception that its about the "fans" that came later as the OP claimed is wrong. Funny that so many people think they know what KC was inferring in his lyrics but most of the time he didn't even HAVE lyrics until right before the song was finished in the studio. Some of them written in the LAST HOUR OR SO!!!

But hey, your friends learned what a suspended triple sus7 chord is 🧐 (who cares).

@@Overlorddz That’s interesting, I’d never read about that reference. I guess I just made up that story myself or someone else told me. I just remember being blown away by Kurt’s lyrics back in the day. Still am. He was brilliant in throwing together stories and little burns in his lyrics. Personally I’m not much of a lyric person either. I write, and I usually come up with melody and try to figure out some words to fit more as an afterthought. Son when I first got Nevermind I hummed along to songs and picked out words where I could. I would read the lyric page later on. And i had this moment when I first read in Bloom’s lyrics when I was listening and singing Along when I realized what he was saying about “sing along to all our pretty sounds” and “knows not what it means” and I just though You Brilliant motherfucker!! Haha. Here I am, a big dope singing along to a catchy tune, and he’s taking about someone singing along to his catchy tune. It blew my mind how smart that was

So did Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, The Offspring, Metallica, Pantera, Marylin Manson, White Zombie, I mean, I could go on and on and on. Being a kid in the 90s was to be musically spoiled like the kids in the 60s.

Truth I was born in 80 and I don't think kids these days will ever experience what we had back in the 90's. Remember buying a CD and putting it in just to listen from start to finish..the internet instant gratification ruined that experience for kids getting into music these days, the internet has its pros and cons but music in that decade is unmatched

Yeah man. Such a good point. I remember Rick saying on another video he did on Nirvana (may have been a WMTSG). "People say Kurt didn't know what he was playing, bur I know what he is playing and it's genius."

Exactly

The bass line mixed with the guitar is intricately gorgeous

No Nirvana song is sophisticated. That’s like saying a circle can be a square. Kurt was a good poet; terrible musician.

@@Nmdixon-cu7vmthey do exist. The majority was pretty simple. To say he was a terrible musician is so beyond naive it’s unbelievable.

​@stanclips8227 it's just a lazy take. This stream is by someone who knows music and theory inside and out, and he gushes about Kurt's musicianship the whole time.

@@Nmdixon-cu7vm Nah, you're wrong

Wow, multi million bands have intelligent songwriting? We have Sherlock Holmes here

@@amsluNews flash: many very famous songs only use 2-3 chords and the melodies are super basic. Welcome To pop music!

MELVINS.

@@shruggzdastr8-facedclown The Shins are from Albuquerque, Sleater-Kinney are from Olympia, and Iron & Wine is from SC.

Don’t forget Hendrix, Heart, Sunny Day Real Estate, (and Death Cab for Cutie pretty much counts)

How come if Rick knows all these secret melody recipes, he hasn’t written one timeless melody, like nirvana did. Not one.

​@@GovernmentalCtrlBecause skills, knowledge, and writing good songs are three different things.

​​@@GovernmentalCtrlhe's on a different level. The creator may not even know what he's doing but Rick will lay it out there plain and simple for dudes like me to "get it" in detail and with enthusiasm, intellect and total fascination. Example, I can do some tricky stuff on a guitar but have no clue how to write it out, what it's called, how to explain my actions or demonstrate it either. The man has this.. We need Rick Beato.

He was a producer and now a youtuber. He probably has no desire to be a writer, a lot of people dont but can still understand and appreciate art. This kind of argument boggles my mind.

Beato would get the dave grohl's treatment on unplugged: oh just shut up

In Utero is my favorite Nirvana album. Heart Shaped Box and Rake Me are standouts IMO.

Right? I wish I could find something that got me as excited as he gets about this stuff. Beautiful to see.

👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻

Been playing 30 years, 10 of them semi professional circuit.....and the more I learned the more I realized these so called amazing talents aren't any better then bar band players that got lucky and in cases like his we held a junkie on a pedestal by teenagers.

Kurt knew.

Lucky basssstud

Like a 90s Jimmy Page

​@@weezadamRight, as in "Rain Song", "Kashmir", "Over the Hills and Far Away", for example.

He did finger tapping in teen spirit video! 🤓

Elliott Smith had similarly complex chord progressions

How gay

Do it!

Yup. Do it ! Today ! 😁

Do it! Greetings from Colombia :)

I’d love to hear how The Beatles didn’t accomplish anything new

@@eliastristan1831 you'd have to ask ted. i'm sure he had it figured out.he gave out way more information than i could absorb in one sitting. it's out there somewhere.

@@eliastristan1831they weren’t American perhaps? Though they did take strongly from Motown.

@@danielhoskins4690 You are absolutely right! Myb for not reading the comment properly lol

@@danielhoskins4690 Yk now that I think about it I definitely subconsciously think of many English musicians as Americans just because of how well I know them. We don’t have the Beatles, Pink Floyd, 2/3 of The Police, The smiths, the cure, Genesis, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Clash, Yes, ELO, etc(these aren’t bands specifically named because of their harmonic content they’re just my favorites). Like dang the Brits have us beat by miles🤕

Same

He had a good ear

(Kurt knew music theory)

That's a good point. It's almost as if, in the midst of all this chaos, Kurt said, "Wait! F note over an A major chord? _Let's not get crazy here!_ "

@@sagittated I said 'if'. But there's a very good chance that his whole 'DGAF' image was put on. There's proof that his journals were filled with the tiniest details of the recording process of In Utero, which mics were used to record drums, which mics were used for which amp, the settings on the amp, how far the mic should have been etc etc.

Cobain didn’t need to know a lot of music theory to be able to pick out the notes of each chord on his guitar and find a chord that contained the note he felt like singing. Or vice versa: to write a chord sequence and pick out notes to go with it. He definitely did not do these things purely by instinct.

Its super interesting there's this surprises about the D chord. For me and probably a lot of others that grew up on 80s punk that was super riffy, this is really intuitive choice for me. At one point I even tried to stop using this "trick" because I felt I relied on it too much. If you listen to bands along the lines of Minor Threat, CroMags, Agnostic Front, Misfits (danzig era), and even Melvins; they did this all the time- albeit not in the middle of a song that already had all other 11 notes! but still; i think his choice to go to D there was coming from that influence. I noticed someone in the streamed comments mentioned Fang as an influence; I had totally forgot about them but they were also huge on riffs.

Ha! Awesome.

This game should be played in a composition studies class😂

Same here! Well, ten or 15 years... I would mess around with the chords quite a bit, having no bass player, so I'm sure I've hinted at it "by mistake," but I've never acknowledged the full chord before. Astonishing that we can learn so much from such a "simple" tune. That's what was so great about songs written before the internet age.

Great song! One of my favorites off of Pinkerton 😁😁

It has a keychange mid guitar solo, amazing

10:28 But does Weezer have 31 million listeners like Nirvana?

​@luke5100 maybe he's too immature to talk about artistic values

Guys read the users profile name. It's probably Dave G trolling us. It could also be Rivers Como.​@@amx1820

A real shame he’s gone. I think we would have seen some great stuff from him. He was working on more folk type stuff, aside from Nirvana

All that kind of stuff kurt don't care about 😂

I've heard a few newly released songs on the radio recently. I'm sure there's more to come.

​@@wiseguy9202LOL no you havent. Why lie.

@@douglasdog1w

You could say the same about Aneurysm with the lead up hahaha.

yeah except he was very basic and power chords...some of the chords Rick threw in there Kurt never played, those are jazz chords...thing is, if you write melodies and songs this good using only 5ths you ARE A GENIUS...music is not a competition for who knows more is about moving people...

I'm sure that those people have no idea what is real music. They think that mumbling over virtual instruments is called "music". In fact, there's one broad that got mad about being called a musician and said she wasn't a musician because she doesn't do magic. But I do agree with her that she isn't a musician bc she doesn't play an instrument. And of course, she doesn't do magic. Lol

He has? I only hear Dave throwing backhanded compliments. Dave is jealous bc FF will never rise to the level of Nirvana.

I loved how one of his exes described how he looked. I forget which one it was. But she said that everyone sees him on Unplugged and he looks like a little angel boy up there. All perfect and stuff. But she said he had horrible acne, terrible posture, and I forget what else she used to describe him but she did use the word "sloth" somewhere in there. Lol it was hilarious

Rick's exclusively talking about the notes contained within the chords that are progressing--which, to be fair, he fails to specify in his video description. Using all 12 notes is actually very common, if we're not exclusively talking about the actual underlying chords. For example; how many chromatic lead runs have you heard? Ya follow me...?

Excellent song!

I’ve been hoping for a while that Rick would cover Goldfinger. The change-up near the end of the verse is particularly unusual for a popular song, but very satisfying. The fact that Tim Wheeler was virtually a kid at the time, is amazing.

Yes! The key change in the last part of the verses is just genius.

That cover is so sick. Their whole Nirvana EP kicks ass. So well done

@@morphaybrothers3642 right???

It’s not that deep. He just had a great ear and listened to a lot of music

@@BigTimeBruh I disagree, and a lot of bebop players didn't read music, they learned by ear and feel

​@@abuharamso you think bebop is good to learn to write like Cobain?

@@artistaccount lol did I SAY that? Ffs

And now put that amazing vocal melody on top of all that. So good

@@jeffreyshaw3512 absolutely!

That chord progression alone is from another planet! He has another one sort of similar, Verse Chorus Verse (aka In His Hands), but I don’t think it’s quite as bonkers as Lithium. But it’s still great and I love the structure. The bass on the Nirvana songs is very melodic, if Krist wrote his own parts he has a little bit of genius as well. Really filled out the chords between the 1st and 5th and 8th of the power chord and then whatever Kurt was singing (3rd a lot the time) and then Krist is like here’s the 9th note or here’s the 2nd, you know what I mean? Just really stacking the notes which is a neat trick to use to expand the sonic range of a three piece group. Add a drummer who can sing harmony and you have Nirvana! (Note: am novice so make corrections as needed)

Lol

His unwashed hair, potent stench and incessant screaming acting much like Clark Kent’s sunglasses.

The idea that you need to know theory to put your hands in a certain position or think that the sound from playing them sounds good is very ridiculous. Theory is no replacement for taste or talent.

Wtf you mean?

I've played with some great players that just play by ear and no no theory but they know theory without knowing what theory is. Do you get me?

I was going to comment the same but was sure someone would have beat me to it. I wonder if Chad had come up with the backing vocals as well, though, or if that part is Dave.

@@oliver9089 ah yeah, I wonder.

If it sounds good, but you think it shouldn’t, the problem clearly isn’t with reality. It’s simply yr misperception

Mozart symphony 40 last movement uses all 12, 1788

Yeah, the list could go on... I'm not sure why this is even a conversation, honesty? I think Rick could've articulated the description a little better, by specifying that we're talking about a piece's chord changes, and the notes contained within all those chords that are changing through the progressions. Even then, I'd still argue that it's not that big of a deal, as there are plenty of examples. But think specifically "pop music", and such music that is *not* atonal... It might take a while, but I'm sure there's plenty that cover all 12 notes in a "pop piece", based on just their chords.

Here we are now entertain us!