‘News / Article’ Articles

Neil’s studio prowess- more than meets the ear

“Over the course of 50 years as a recording artist, Young has quietly proven himself one of rock’s most underrated studio masters.”

Neil Young, Dave Howard and Daniel Lanois recording LeNoise at Silverlake Studio, LA (picture Sound on Sound)

Variety’s senior features writer Andrew Barker examines Neil Young’s forays into the recording studio through the years.

Neil Young, the gearhead audiophile or studio perfectionist….

Barker writes: “The media worship of Neil Young doesn’t really give enough kudos to the technical facilities and engineers that have aided him,” says longtime L.A rock journalist Harvey Kubernik, whose book ‘Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and Music of Laurel Canyon’ explored the scene that informed Young’s early career. “Reprise Records let him make the kind of records he wanted to make. He had management that enforced that. And he got to use the best studios in town. It’s a huge component of his durability.”

Young’s memoir, “Waging Heavy Peace,” is filled with his appreciation for machines and engineering, be it cars, guitars, model trains or recording studios. Young speaks of such haunts as Los Angeles’ Gold Star Studios and Sunset Studios; producers Jack Nitzsche, David Briggs and Elliot Mazer; and Wally Heider Studios’ prized “Green Board” console — used to record Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” and the Monterey Pop Festival — with an awe that borders on the spiritual.

Other great quotes about Neil  in this story from David Briggs, Ryan Bingham, Los Angeles New York Times music critic Robert Hilburn.

Read more at:  http://variety.com/2013/music/features/neil-young-audiophile-1200586875/

Tags: david briggs, Harvey Kubernik, Jack Nitzsche, Variety, Waging Heavy Peace
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40 years ago- Tonights the Night

“I have no idea where the fuck it came from..”

~Neil Young

The website “Drowned in Sound” takes a look back 40 years at the making of the infamous “Tonight’s The Night” album.

Andrew Wallace Chamings writes: “Forty years ago this week, Neil Young entered a makeshift studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in a state of deep depression and alcoholism and, in that single session, recorded the majority of the darkest album of his (or possibly anyone’s) career.

“Coping with the recent deaths of roadie Bruce Berry and Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, Neil had seen heroin kill his closest friends, and he wanted to sing about it. That gloriously messy collection of songs about death would eventually be released as Tonight’s The Night two years later. Neil’s own father Scott once described the album as ‘a man on a binge at a wake,’ but that doesn’t quite do it justice.”

The album is a favorite to many die-hard Young fans who soak up the raw emotion of a man “real as the day is long.”

Chamings aptly observes: “But of course, desperation can not only be expressed through ethereal arpeggios and precisely arranged fifty-piece orchestras, it’s often released through singing what’s on your mind, in any key you want, and bending guitar strings until they break.”

Drummer Ralph Molina explained the band’s preparation; “We’d just get to a point where you get a glow, just a glow. When you do blow and drink, that’s when you get that glow. No one said ‘Let’s go play,’ we all just knew it was time. We never talked about what anyone was playing, who’s playing what part or any of that kinda shit. It was so fucking emotional.”

Read the well-thought out review and then pull out the album and take another listen, for old time’s sake.

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4146783-%E2%80%9Ci-have-no-idea-where-the-fuck-it-came-from%E2%80%9D-neil-young%E2%80%99s-tonight%E2%80%99s-the-night-at-forty

Tags: Tonight's the Night
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Lightfoot stomps Neil elephant at Greenbelt

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes to our fans or the festivals where we were scheduled to appear,” … “As you must be, we too are disappointed at this unfortunate turn of events.”

~Neil Young

“It took Gordon Lightfoot, the dean of Canadian songwriters and as close to a living legend as it gets, to knock the elephant off the stage of the third annual Greenbelt Harvest Picnic,” writes thespec.com.

Cathie Coward, The Hamilton Spectator

According to the Hamilton Spectator, False rumors, fueled by the presence of Young’s wife Pegi in the Picnic lineup, persisted throughout the park, even into Saturday evening, that Neil would make a surprise visit. It didn’t happen, never was in the cards.

Instead, on Saturday, the 10,000 Picnic goers got Lightfoot. Normally a bucket-list item for any lover of Canadian music, Lightfoot was stepping into potentially hostile terrain. Let’s face it, at 74, his voice doesn’t even come close to what it was in its heyday. And Lightfoot’s understated delivery is light years away from the fiery garage guitar jams currently being served up by Crazy Horse.

“I would like to thank Mr. Lanois and Mr. Young for inviting us on this show,” he humbly told the crowd from the stage. “Thank you very much for having us.”

It didn’t satisfy all those angry Neil Young fans. Early in the day, one woman heckled Lanois, demanding he “come clean” and provide a full refund. She was quickly shouted down by those in the crowd around her.

Read more at: http://www.thespec.com/whatson-story/4058761-greenbelt-harvest-picnic-bigger-than-the-elephant-in-the-room/

Tags: daniel lanois, Gordon Lightfoot, Greenbelt Harvest Picnic
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LincVolt breakdown

TRUCKEE, Calif. — It’s not every day you come across a rock music legend stranded in the Sierra.

But that’s what happened on Friday, Aug. 23, when singer-songwriter Neil Young’s one-of-a-kind, $1 million electric vehicle broke down on Interstate 80 near Donner Summit.

Officers with the Truckee branch of the California Highway Patrol came upon the stranded Young and helped him get off the highway.

After posing for a few photos and signing autographs, Young repaired his custom-built car and was back on the road, said CHP Public Information Officer Pete Mann.

The Canadian-born rock star told CHP he drives the car across North America promoting green, sustainable living and encouraging less dependency on oil. He was on his way to a green festival in Canada, he told officers.

The Toronto native — whose full name is Neil Percival Young — is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer both as a solo artist (inducted in 1995) and as a member of Buffalo Springfield (inducted in 1997).

He is best-known for the songs “Heart of Gold,” Down by the River,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Ohio” and “Rockin’ In The Free World,” among several other major hits.

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/northshore/7928624-113/neil-officers-rock-stranded

Tags: Lincvolt
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more on PONO: technical dissection

for the audiophiles, Xiph.Org writes about the flaws of PONO:

“24/192 Music Downloads …and why they make no sense

***

Articles last month [i.e. March 2012] revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple’s Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of ‘uncompromised studio quality’. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young’s group several months ago.

Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

There are a few real problems with the audio quality and ‘experience’ of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. While everyone fixates on 24/192 as a magic bullet, we’re not going to see any actual improvement.

First, the bad news… “

>>> read the whole article::
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

(—Monty (monty@xiph.org) March 1, 2012; last revised March 25, 2012 to add improvements suggested by readers.)

see also: Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem (on Wikipedia)

What it actually says it that the human ear can’t hear frequencies up to the maximum frequency that PONO allows, i.e. 96 kHz, with a sampling frequency of 192 kHz (double the f_max_audible), but the higher frequencies might get transformed down in the audible range by non-linear effects, giving rise to deteriorating audio sound experience (or maybe another audio experience like the warm non-linear sound of tube amplifiers versus the metallic treble-loaded sound of transistor amps) . It can’t physically do any good to augment audio experience, but we suspect it might have psycho-acoustic effects.

And, the dynamic range of 24-bit of sampling also is not audible compared to a classic 16-bit dynamic sampling range. Here we have the problem of changing audio experience with the “loudness war” due to excessive dynamic compression in nowadays audio carriers, be it CD or Vinyl, like in audio ads on radio or TV who blare so loud.

In essence there must be more mystery about why Neil Young can hear it but not yet anyone else.

Tags: digital audio, pono
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