What Is Wrong with Everyone?

Beato seems to think that people should just "feel" or know that, but I think he might be blind to how little people play instruments or how little the average person has "trained" to pick up when something is out of tune. People that play instruments can usually pick it out pretty quickly, especially in a band setting. People that pick up a guitar can't just immediately tune it. Over time, however, you get a very intuitive sense for what "in tune" means (which is really just like a set amount of harmonic 'steps' between the strings) and can tune by ear very quickly - whether that in tune guitar has actually been tuned to E standard, however, is more about a common reference point for that note. Beato seems to be thinking that common reference point is a kind of general knowledge, but it's definitely not.

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).

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.

I’m so amazed such a musically-inclined guy (he’s clearly been passing it on to his kids, at least!) evidently had zero close family members who got what he meant, that I’m wondering if the story is exaggerated for effect and this was actually audience feedback. If not, I’m flabbergasted. That’s not obscure or deep knowledge.

Or maybe they were trolling him?

[edit] or is… language changing? I’ve never known “out of tune” to mean anything but what he was trying to communicate: you do not say a guitar is “out of tune” if it’s a half-step down or in an alternate tuning or something. Instruments accompanying a poorly-tuned piano are “out of tune” if they’re not exactly as wrong as the piano is. That’s just what it means. But maybe that’s changing?

[edit2] for context, I play some instruments to about the same level as people who only sing in the shower or in the car alone sing, am by far the most-musical person in my immediate family, and half-assed my way through some band classes in school—I’m entirely with him in being surprised this isn’t usage that anyone who’s looked at an instrument is familiar with.

When you are pointing out someone has misused a word, that's superficial. The word is wrong, but every one understood the actual meaning. I would only do this if I think it may interest the people around and could lead to an interesting discussion, but would remain silent about this otherwise. Unless, of course, there's a real (risk of) misunderstanding (then, people are thankful you lifted the misunderstanding, instead of being annoyed). If you just say "what he actually meant" when everybody got what he actually meant (even you, since you were able to suggest the right word), that probably just feels pedantic indeed.

While he is pointing out the difference between being out of tune with itself, or with another instrument, and out of tune in general because he means different things, different actual concepts, and needs the other musicians to understand the difference when using these terms, because their meaning is indeed widely different. He is clarifying what he, himself, means when he says out of tune, trying to fix an actual misunderstanding.

tl;dr: in one situation, the actual intended meaning is likely going through correctly even if the words are incorrect. In the other, the meaning is lost because of imprecise understanding of the term. The first one is not really problematic. The second one is critically problematic.

Now, of course, he could probably have clarified this thing in a 5 times shorter video (this is no rocket science) without making a mountain out of a molehill, and him pointing out out of tune things to people who don't care would probably feel equally pedantic.

Your example about word misuse is probably the closest to what's going on here. Here we have someone who cares about some topic, sees other people who don't know something, hopes to educate them, and then finds out that they just don't care about the topic as much as he does. People use words all the time that don't mean what they think they mean, and they don't care. It doesn't make them feel good or bad when you correct them, it's just that using the right word has never occurred to them and doesn't really matter to them.

The latest word misuse that grinds my gears I've seen with my daughter and her friends is "on read". As in "He left my text message on read." Don't you mean "unread"?? "Whatever!" I'm thinking to myself: NOT WHATEVER. THOSE WORDS MEAN TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS!!! ARGH!

I attended a baroque music performance, and the viola da gamba player had double frets on some notes. I asked him what's up with that, and he played some chords in different keys. It had to do with the instruments being tuned in non-equal temperament.

And if you're a musician, you will pick up on it very quickly in real time, in general.

The key is most people will automatically filter it out until actually being asked unless it's egregiously bad.

I would argue part of the issue comes down to guitar itself - 1) it's not a well tempered instrument. It's always kinda out of tune a bit 2) it can often go out of tune within the course of a song in live performances and 3) add some distortion on top, it kinda blurs things.

So my take is people are just preconditioned to listen more to what is being played - in the context of a song - rather than whether it sounds a bit off or not. In short it's an attention thing, not an ability thing.