Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin: John Mayer

"I just knew that your ability to understand things would allow me to explain them with more sort of bandwidth."

I’m not, or I should say I wasn’t, anything that resembled a fan of John Mayer. I still don’t love his music, but damn, now I totally respect him as an artist and a creative. This is such a weird one because I would have never listened to this if it hadn’t started auto-playing. I got sucked in. However, Mayer is deeply self-aware and can articulate a lot of what makes him really good at what he does, which I found super fascinating. This podcast is an absolute masterclass in creativity, and I gleaned a ton of value from it.

This is why music is so magical to me. I can’t play a lick of or visualize anything.

What's so fascinating about the Grateful Dead, but moreover Jerry's playing, is that I cannot visualize it. Now I'm a good enough guitar player that I could close my eyes or not close my eyes and see what most guitar players are doing. And then pick, I don't even need to have a guitar in my hand. I could just pick it up and do it because I can see where you're going. And I've learned that the music I love the most is music I cannot visualize. So I hear Althea and I couldn't play it for you if you just handed me the guitar. And for the first time in years, I hear a thing on the guitar that I can't place. But it's like I don't play the guitar and now I want to.

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What jungle gyms would I like to play on?

I got to be honest, I wanted to play on that jungle jam. Yeah. I just wanted to swing from those bars. Yes. Where else can you do it? This is why people have Grateful Dead cover bands. Not because they want anything else out of it, but to experience what it feels like to play that music. It is not a commercial endeavor. It's I got to know what that wind feels like blowing through my hair.

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Riffing on, or spoofing on, or in the spirit of, your style is the essence of being creative, of being an artist.

That doesn't mean copy. It just means in the spirit of that thing, in the spirit of. And again, like almost the way that my career worked as a guitar player, where I took so, I copied so many times from so many people that I forgot what I was copying. So I just started being myself.

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The critical voice is necessary but needs to be silenced after the correction is made. The critical voice should not pull the trigger to use the sniper analogy.

The way there's always the scout next to the sniper who writes down the windage and stuff. Just your windage up two clicks to the left. It's a little more like that. There you go. There you go. There you go. And then it goes away.

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Straight lines that can be coaxed into circles is an interesting mental model.

If you didn't ever see the instrument, you'd think it looked different than it does because of how they're able to coax it. They're taking straight lines and making circles out of it. That's how I see great guitar players, great pianists. When I hear Bill Evans play the piano, if I'd never seen a piano, I would think it was circular or that it was like a spiral or something, not straight lines.

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Being willing to suck at something you are a master at is likely an underappreciated skill/ability.

It's more fun than ever to pick up a guitar at home and play because I'm playing from a different place now. Like so cool. I'm playing from a different play. I don't have set stuff I play on the guitar. I don't have I think most guitar players like have a thing they do. I have none. I have no if I went to NAM the music conference or something and I sat down and there were a hundred people watching me pick up a guitar. I could suck for five straight minutes before I picked something up that was like all the sudden like oh he flipped a switch.

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The simplest thing you could (insert verb) that would communicate the most out of this (insert noun) is another broadly applicable mental model.

Now it is about what is the simplest thing you could play that would communicate the most out of this guitar and sometimes it's I mean really really basic but with so much depth or the attempt At adding depth into it and when you do that I almost want to get other guitar players around and go just try this.

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This sentiment really resonates with me—consistency compounds.

Now my commitment is to, it's hard to explain it, just consistency. Just consistency. And getting out of your head the idea that there's, how do I say this? You've got to depend on magic to be good at something.

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It was comforting to know even prolific creatives need the magic to enter the room.

It's not how you're doing when, you know, the spirits in the room. How do you live off of crumbs for a long enough period of time that you can wait for the magic. You wait for the magic. Because you have to.

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Spirited and resilient

You're a great writer in my book if you can drive home with the radio off, knowing you didn't get it today and showered off like a great basketball player who didn't win the game and Wake up the next day and go, let's hit it. Let's go again.

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Must be nice. Lol. It is the goal, though.

I can live between the kills pretty well.

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I very much struggle with the “cancel-everything” aspect of creative work, especially if there is no external deadline. Once I’m able to lock in, I have the “craftsman” in me, and I can produce good creative work. For me, I think it’s about cultivating a lifestyle that supports this type of commitment.

the other thing that I think young writers need to figure out is like, it's always going to be code cracking after you have your fun of bringing the song to life. Bringing a song to life is always the fun part. It's the best. But it doesn't finish the song. No. Now you have to put on a lab coat. Yeah, it's work to do. Absolutely. And you cannot go to dinner. The craftsman comes into the room and cancel everything. Yeah, there's work to do. There's work to do. And that is my favorite moment when you know that I got something. Yeah. And you know that what I just came up with in 15 minutes has inside of it all the information for the verses, codes, cracks, we know what it is.

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This rant inspired a lot of this essay.

Making the Abstract Material

And when it's over, you never have to write it again. No. But you will always have it for the rest of your life. And I see young artists sometimes with a hard drive full of minute and a half ideas that were just the spark. Yeah. And they move on to another spark and they move on to another spark and they move on to another spot. And I'm like day two and three and four. Yeah, you don't leave the room. You put sweatpants on. You're in a hoodie. You're in a hoodie. You're not going out tonight. Your friends are going out and you're not. Why? Because the biggest thing is about to happen to you. And all these songs that I play on stage now represent a night. I went shut it down. We got work to do. It's my favorite and least favorite. It's just this wonderful torture you know you're in for.

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Systemization or algorithmic approaches to building a body of creative work are highly appealing. However, I do think throwing away the system from time to time has value as well.

There's a way to write songs now for me that's very mathematical in terms of making it easier on yourself to understand what's left to write in the song. So I go okay if you have a verse you have a rhyme scheme. You have syllables. You have the spirit of what the song is. That's 15% of the song. If you have a chorus that's 50% of the song. You've got three times. As soon as you have a rhyme scheme you now know exactly what your second verse has to do or not do.

So everything you come up with is just take it off of what remains that you have to do. Yeah and the less you have to do the easier it feels. The easier it feels. Because you feel like you have momentum.

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I love this technique for getting un-stuck

You know, like there's just tricks of momentum. There are tricks of momentum. You're absolutely right. The combination here didn't work. Wait till a new combination falls into place. That's actually the secret to life now is if something's not working just wait until the sequence changes and it'll open the door. It'll open a different door or open the same door a different way.

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This is why I neurotically carry a notebook or my phone around with me at all times. If I don’t capture the genesis of an idea the second I have it, it's as good as gone. Something else I experience is an idea that seems really exciting at a specific moment, but when I return to it later, it’s lost some or all of its genius. The more I can write in the moment, the better.

Don't let that moment pass because you will never come back to that. You'll never come back to that. So again, I don't know if you have to refine it but you have to really get as close as you can to a great first draft where then maybe it's like, oh, I'll change this word. That's right. Maybe this line's not as good as it could be. That's right. But get to where it's like, I see this whole song. I couldn't agree more.

It just just get a circuit going. Yeah. Get the light bulb to light up because all the wiring is in there. Yes. And then it's so much easier to change it. Yeah. And then you realize most of it didn't need to be changed.

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I like this approach to re-positioning something that evolves to such a point it no longer resembles the historical/expected form.

I call it split the stock. If you think that something's gone so downhill, then split it and call it something else. So if I were to say, I don't get today's music, I don't want to say that. So what I say is, well, a lot of what I'm hearing is social media soundtrack. And if I say that, now I can say that's really good social media soundtrack. Instead of that's bad music. And I do that with a lot of stuff so that if I redefine it, I give it the dignity of calling it something a little bit different.

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I have actually adopted this same approach to being critical/discerning without being too much of a snob. “Oh, cool, thanks for sharing. It's not really my cup of tea.. but I understand the appeal.”

Rubin in response to Mayer’s point above

I just think about it. It's not for me.

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This is so fascinating to me, not having any musical background. Vowel sounds that work for your voice? Shape of the larynx? Shaping the note? Tonal color? 🤯 I had no clue this was going on when someone is singing.

We write the vowel sounds that work for our voice. So all of a sudden, it's not that I can't do it. I would never write it for myself…

That's what I would do for the shape of my larynx. So to squeeze it into, it's not a very automatically pleasant thing. I know this. I have an ear. I can hear it as I go. My job is to find a way as best I can to shape the note. That sounds as close to what the spirit of the song, I can do that on the guitar way easier. Yeah. And there are times where I know that I'm not quite the exact tonal color that I'd want to be for the song, but I can't swap a vocal chord like I can a guitar. So that's an interesting lesson in embracing my limits. Hey, man, I'm just John. I know I try, man.

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I’d like to be able to pick up on this level of musical nuance.

There's a couple of things. I mean, a couple, just magic nights. I've even thought to myself, is everyone perfectly slept and freshly showered on this version? Everyone just take a nap for the same length of time and woke up and had the same meal. They're playing perfectly. And really what it is is musical aquarium. You just stare at the fish. Once you learn the form, it all makes sense. It all makes sense.

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I think this idea of isolating music and then not being able to hear the “ball” is super fascinating. Equally fascinating is Mayer’s claim to be able to take his ears out of focus.

everyone starts hearing it as a ball when they're a kid. Yeah. And as they get into the life of music, they start to isolate and they can't go back to hearing it as a ball. This is a brilliant conversation right here, this little nugget. Because I still have the ability to what I call like take my ears out of focus. Like crossing your eyes, just cross your ears. Yeah. And check it. Yeah. You know? And even I was in Berkeley College of Music months into it, weeks into it before I could isolate a kick drum. Which is funny because then I go back to these songs I loved as a kid and I go, oh my God, this is the recording. Yeah. But that's great. That's great ignorance.

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I'm really interested in this concept of “jags” or “jagging”. I suspect there is some magic in improving one’s ability to “jag” in whatever capacity their modality allows. I also love the self-talk.

And you're right. And the longer your jags can be, the better you are. Yeah. You can sit behind the microphone for an hour and then get up. You're good. Yeah. Lately, sometimes I go 25 minutes and I go, John, you got to get your numbers up.

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In regard to Mayer comparing himself to other musicians.

No. No, I'm not competing with anyone. Why would I do that? I don't want to compete. I want context.

Rubin:

I want to know less.

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This reminds me of Taleb mentioning hard work is only a modern pre-requisite for genius.

Seriously, I'm happy to help in whatever way they are. That's the most honest thing. It's real. Yeah. I don't want to do it. I don't, I don't. Yeah. And the thing being as good as it could be and the less we have to kill ourselves for that to be the case, great. If we have to kill ourselves, we do, but...

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The importance of noticing and tuning into parts of your life that are “lined up” with your creative pursuits.

Just sometimes you just feel tuned in with your tastes and what you know it takes and especially what little you know it takes. Right now I get my hometown by Bruce Springsteen. I get how you could write it. I get how I could write something that simple because I'm lined up with it. Whatever that thing is by playing these shows, I'm lined up with it. That's why I want to go right as soon as I can.

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Rick Rubin inspires people to communicate with more bandwidth and resonance. It’s special. I’m tuned in, and I’m loving it.

I just knew that your ability to understand things would allow me to explain them with more sort of bandwidth.