Rick, write a simple song that is missing most of your rules.  Show us how you analyze, then apply some of your rules, slowly, step by step, showing how they make it better.  Could be a whole training course!

There needs to be a “Beato Book For Dummies” lol.

Can someone please give this man an award for being so sharing, caring and lovely?...Rick, your service to us music types is unreal...i hope you get some recognition for all of your hard work x

This is like a "What Makes Most Great Songs Great" video.

Best lesson ever: Took one of my crap melodies and improved it big time!

When writing a melody, sing it instead of figuring it out on an instrument.  That way, unless you have perfect pitch (or great relative pitch like Rick), you will focus on what sounds good.  My hunch is most of the songs we love were written by the composer working out the melody with his/her voice while accompanying themselves on guitar or piano.

Flashback 1984 ... my Berklee songwriting teacher having me transcribe the #1 songs on the charts...and answer 20 questions about each song.  You just summed up in 30 minutes, 80% of what I learned over 3 months of that process.  Rick, I hope people realize and appreciate what a freakin' gold mine of knowledge you're sharing.

"you don't wanna have parallel octaves" metal musicians and me who uses an octaver sweating profusely

Im in bed with a high fever and a Covid-19 positive test watching this. Might as well use the next  weeks wisely and immerse myself in quality Biato tutorials!

NEVER DOUBLE THE BASS.

MJ: Smooth Criminal

As far as the 6th is concerned, they are actually very useful as passing tones in old blues, boogie-woogie and swing. Use them deliberately in the right genre and they fit like they belong.

Laughed when, just after the "No 6th on major chords!!" section, he played Eleanor Rigby, where the melody pauses on an [A] note  ("...floor where a wedding has [BEEN]") over top of a C chord.  It's the forbidden 6th!  Anyway, there are exceptions to everything, and the Beatles rule, so does Rick, and this vid was awesome.  I am pretty uncreative with melodies and this is helpful.

Rick is amazing and his content is always top notch, but it seems odd to have "rules" for melodies. "Still Crazy After All These Years" is one of my favorites, and the fourth note of the song is a sustained E over a G major chord (when he sings "old"); which is a sixth (or thirteenth) over a major chord. Also, "Something" by the Beatles is widely acclaimed, but there are several points in that song where Harrison's melody is literally just the root, and Paul's bass plays the root as well (albeit different rhythms and octaves), but nevertheless it "breaks" these rules of melody in one way or another. Pat Metheny said in his interview with Rick that melody is the one pillar of music (as opposed to rhythm and harmony) that can't be taught in 4 years at music school. All my favorite composers all say things along the lines of melody being a magical entity, and it all ultimately coming down to what sounds good or not. It seems the rules can easily be broken as long as it works. What makes it work is unquantifiable in my mind, though.

Considering people are always complaining that all popular music sounds the same, wouldn't it make sense to be a bit less prescriptive with these 'rules'? There's only so many times millions of people can follow the same 'rules' and come up with something unique.

Hey Rick -  64 year old who used to play in a serious garage band.  I stopped playing 30 years ago but picked up an acoustic a few months ago.  I just want to play pretty things, and I don't want a lot of influences anymore.  Your videos about chords and scales have been a huge help to me.  Thank you and God bless you!

Great tips, Rick! I'd use these maybe to review a melody that doesn't sound good enough when writing a song, but maybe not from the start, because inspiration sometimes just strikes you and the feeling is right, even though is not perfect theory-wise. A really important part of songwriting to me is to develop a taste, an ear to recognize what you like, what works for the music you make. Internalizing these principles and applying them by ear, by using your musical taste, to me just sounds like a much better way to use them than starting with a blank page and trying to write "perfectly", just by theory. Feeling is the most important part of music, in my opinion.

Small-but-important point for your producers:  "We can't hear the 'echo' that you were talking about."  (By the time it makes it it through to us, such nuances have been utterly compressed-away.) But, it is MUCH easier for us to see intervals on the keyboard-display, especially if we don't play guitar.  We only care about the material, not how good it sounds.  [WHICH LEADS ME TO ...]

P.S.:  An idea for a new video ... "the 'jargon' of music theory."   Things like, "tension note," "borrowed chord," even a refresher of what exactly we mean when we refer to "11ths" when there are only 8 (7?) notes in the octave.  All of these technical terms, while easily explained, are a potential obstacle to understanding – yet, while conducting a video of course you can't necessarily "stop and explain" without entirely disrupting your narrative.  Hence the notion of new episode(s), which you can thereafter refer-to and encourage folks to bookmark.

The "trade vernacular" of any "trade" necessarily includes "certain terms," the implicit understanding of which are essential to "fluid understanding" of the presentation or the text.  But, if you don't know them already, any of them can throw you entirely off the track.  There might only be a few dozen terms (if that many) which would qualify in a discussion of music-theory topics.  The replies to "your first pitch" would very quickly point out the rest of them, as seen by your actual worldwide audience.

HTH!

Jazz is the only style of music that can't be played the same way once.

I hope I will be able to speak this foreign language one day :D

Rick must hate Light My Fire by The Doors. It violates nearly every one of these rules. The verse bass on the Am chord plays a C note when Morrison sings C. Not using Rick's color notes. Then the chorus is the best. I imagine Rick has a panic attack when he hears it. The G chord he is singing the Root note, G. The A chord, he's singing the 6th, F#, then he's resolving into the D chord on a D note. And on the G and D chords he's doubling the bass using the root, and he's not using Rule 2 whatsoever. Hilarious. Same thing with Touch Me. LMAO I'd love to see a What Makes This Song Great by The Doors.