I believe that digitized music does not have the "warmth", that is not quite what I mean but it will have to do, of vinyl.
I have had vinyl records of which I knew the order of the playlist inside and out like the cut # and on which side of the platter. I can tell the difference between then and now versions often. I will listen to something remastered and digitized, maybe unknowingly, on Prime and know something was not right or missing about it, not words so much. Maybe the remasters stick a pop radio version on the album even.
I think I know what Young means though. We could relate it to the old VHS tape and the quality is best when using the most tape or fastest speed, when you compact information and richness suffer.
2
Mr. Samuels, the piece is supposed to be about Neil Young, not you.
Jon Pareles, where are you when we need you??
5
That picture of Neil is just a droopy hat away from being a Rembrandt. Hey hey, my my, Old Man Neil will never die.
2
Vinyl, shmynl. A pristine new album was priceless. But, after a dozen or so plays, you started hearing small scratches, which only got worse and worse. I’ll take cds any day.
2
'Stragglers are incinerated in their cars.' Good metaphor for what will be the global outcome of our too-little-much-too-late responses to climate change.
The stuff about Neil and music is good, too!
I have most of his stuff pre-1990. Love everything he has ever done, and I've seen him live a few times. I'll sign off with a cheer: listen to Trans again, it's superb! :)
Obviously, experiencing music live, or through a quality system is wonderful. However, I've listened to music through cheap tape players while working in remote camps in Alaska and was transported away as well. As a kid in Montana, I listened to far away rock stations through the radio at night..fading in and out..and the music sounded great. It's all relative, but I'm sure Neil is correct.
2
I found the linkage between senses and our humanity very powerful in this article -- thank you David & Neil. Even if the engineering details trouble some of the readers, the role of emotion in our lives comes through powerfully. Damasio has an explanation for what is going on for those interested in the neuroscience, in The Strange Order of Things - which I have tried to summarize (http://www.robsstrategystudio.org/awfcaseof.htm), and Daniel Levitin links those ideas to music in This Is Your Brain On Music.
1
[Expletive] whippersnappers!
How can you write a long article about Neil Young and not mention that he has the worst voice in the history of rock?
Love Neil. BUT to protect Mr Nash (put in 4th place by the author), I would suggest listening to "Better Days" by Mr Nash.
Maybe even with the Dylan Rieder skate video (which is how I found that song and I'm 55 and had never heard it ). I think art and talent shouldn't be ranked like a team sport. Like skateboarding- it's all art .
I’m not sure if I would call Buffalo Springfield a “super group”; maybe CSNY, but not the Springfield.
1
Neil Young. Steven Stills. Richie Furay. Jim Messina (before Logins). Not bad.
1
Neil Young is right. Music, real music, has been destroyed by digitization.
So has photography, letter writing, and high quality conversational phone calls.
How could a man who claims to love music create a file and data base system that dissembles the multiple parts of classical recordings and guts it of its physical sound waves?
That’s not respect for Beethoven, that’s avarice and greed at the expense of art and culture.
I have come to hate Silicon Valley and the destruction that it is bringing to our culture.
Children with unrestrained ego rule our world and they don’t what they are doing.
4
Such gorgeous writing about such important issues: the perfect organization of sound (Mozart) and the frightening disorganization of sound (streaming). But, mostly, the curative miracle of music and the cranky loons who create it. Thank you writer David Samuels, Neil Young and bless your kids: you found a way to “Teach Your Children” how to heal.
3
I loved this article. It is beautiful writing. Who's to say that our brains aren't changed by what we hear and don't hear. Makes perfect sense to me that filtering out the chaos reduces our sensitivity to anything that's not considered the norm. Somehow I can hear Neil Young shouting out William Wordsworth's words from more than 200 years ago:
Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
3
Must say I'm a little shocked by the fandom of this writer, mixed with his tendency to disparage Young (his appearance, his crankiness) and dismiss Young's views in a tepid bath of hmm, maybe/maybe not qualification. This writer, fan that he is, doesn't know enough on almost any count except his son. His son's treatment is heartwarming and truly interesting.But wow, his assessments of rock n'roll (Hendrix is but one example) are so wrong. Young is truly interesting and way too profound for this kind of middling writing. Do better NYT, do better than this.
4
After watching me heartbroken over the scratchy ruined Harvest album over 40 years old, my husband bought me a new, recently-pressed Harvest from a company in Kansas. The album was now on 2 pressings - I think it is 45 RPM vs. 33. I am in heaven again. I can't say I'm an audiophile, but listening to the vinyl makes me cry.
4
Mr. Young got it exactly right in a guitar magazine interview back in the early nineties, claiming digital recording and reproduction wouldn’t approach analog methods until the standard was increased to at least 24 bits per track / 192 kHz.
CDs are still mainly 16 bits stereo / 44 kHz; compressed versions of that are rarely as good as the CD source when subjected to critical listening on better equipment. (‘Better equipment’ does not mean an expensive cell phone and good earphones; ear snob level equipment isn’t necessary, either. What is required is equipment that lives in a natural environment, good enough to hear the differences between direct reproduction and the processed, compressed alternatives.)
Studio recording standards surpassed Neil’s spec by the early oughts, about the same time that the drive to compress the result began take off. Now, there’s a whole generation of ears that never had the opportunity to learn the difference.
—TR
7
When Elijah entered the story Neil faded to the background. Then back. Then together. Beautiful article. Thank you.
3
As a lifelong fan it pains me to say that I can hardly listen to him anymore. Over the course of my life I've seen Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, Neil Young solo and just a few years ago, CS&N. Both Neil Young and Graham Nash turned their backs on their longtime wives. Neil's wife, Pegi, died then. The music just doesn't sound the same since. The highbrow quest to "save" music rings hollow to me now.
3
I completely agree. I've been a Neil Young fan for 35 years. I still listen to his music, but much less often and it doesn't mean nearly as much. I have a very disabled son, as does Neil. To break up a marriage, to leave the mother of his adult disabled son for Daryl Hannah strikes me as remarkably selfish.
I do agree with Neil's view on current sound quality of most streaming services. However, I have found that the music quality of hi res streaming services like Tidal and Qobuz is very very good.
1
Neil’s crusade presupposes that most people listen to music on high quality equipment to begin with. Yes, a $10K vinyl system (I own one) sounds really good, and on one, you can make a definite negative comparison with Spotify (worst sounding of the lot, IMO). But most people have always gotten pleasure from music played back on all kinds of modest systems — 8-tracks in cars, cheap vinyl systems (which sound much, much worse than any streaming product), cassette Walkman, etc. Whether or not one “gets” music has less to do with the quality of playback than the attitude and focus of the listener — and every person is entitled to listen in the way they like. Streaming has many issues, but it certainly gives more people more chances to hear more music, and that is overall good.
Also, Neil has been playing live rock onstage for five decades. I strongly doubt that his hearing is good enough to distinguish 24/192 WAV from a high quality MP3....
4
My buddy has an original song that is available on both Apple and Spotify.
There is a clear difference in the audio quality of both streaming services. Listening to his song(in the car)on Apple streaming has a better quality low end, while listening on Spotify the low end is weaker. While I pay for Apple and not Spotify, maybe the Spotify subscription is better than their free service? If so, that is bad business anyway. I grew up late baby-boom and still have all my vinyl.I miss the analog-age but didgital streaming can approach CD quality given the quality of the service provided. Technology and popular music has always dictated the evolution of the art-form. I, like Neil, am nostalgic for the vinyl-vintage Neil.
2
Neil Young is an unrepentant hippie. He had a talent for making hooky songs, some of which sold well, and then railed against the world of commercialism. He retreated to the Hollywood Hills with all his hippie friends and then bought up a huge chunk of those hills. He complains about the digital turn but still takes his royalty checks. . . . What were we talking about?
2
I don't know, Neil, Rock N Roll has seldom been about hi fidelity or precision. Punk and grunge are some examples.
2
I have friends who say Neil has lost it on this topic (and we all love him), like Linus Paulung out on his Vitamin C trip. But the truth on this is much bigger and more complex. Yeh, streaming is what it is, but people DO still go to clubs and concerts, and others play their own instruments. And those that do, KNOW that no two venues, or events, or even the same seat sound the same. Neil wants and cherishes what he heard on those tapes and good for him. But what is "real" sound? You listen to the same musicians with the same instruments with the same equipment live in 5 different clubs and each time the sound is different, and even within the club you hear different depending on where you are standing. Streaming is what it is, and for me, its not live, nor vinal, nor an old cassette, but its also not warping my mind. We just have to insure that this generation gets out enough to here live music and the technology of everyday listening will change with time, again and again as it always has. Perhaps one day we will push a button and "think" we are in a bar listing to Neil Young live on his guitar.
4
The problem goes beyond the technology...it is the ego that has forged a "right-now", immediate gratification (as cheap as possible, by the way), and out gullibility to be swayed by PR and marketing. Neither Taylor Swift nor Britney Spears could be even considered in the class of great singers, yet Taylor Swift is actually re-recording her "greatest hits" before their covers can even collect dust.
I am all with Mr. Young...if one wants purity, listen to Patsy Cline singing Amazing Grace acapella, or Streisand belting out with a voice that makes the instrumentation insignificant, or Kate Smith's "God Bless America".
But then the US is a market, not a hotbed of true culture.
Neil Young is partly right, but mostly wrong. Yes, a high-end audiophile analog master tape or high-bitrate, uncompressed digital recording played over pristine audio gear has nuance that is lost in the current popular compressed digital formats.
What he’s wrong about is the idea that consumer audio is getting worse. Most consumers don’t have access to audiophile gear, and they never had it. Compare Spotify or Apple Music instead to what most consumers have actually used over the years, and it’s a different story. Dusty records on all-in-one players, cheap K-mart stereo racks, 8-track tapes, boom boxes, cassette Walkmans, etc., that’s how people used to listen to music. Compared to that, an iPhone with stock earbuds playing Apple Music is orders of magnitude better, and was even famously shown in testing to be indistinguishable to most consumers from the audio coming out of Young’s own Pono player. Also, Spotify and Apple Music give regular people access to libraries of what seems like the entire world’s music, instead of a few dozen or a few hundred tapes, LPs or CDs in a personal collection. A curios kid in Boise can now discover anything, instead of only what’s in the bins at a local record store.
Finally, the cognitive dissonance of Mr. Young going on about quality sound reproduction and then declaring that his favorite place to listen is in his car is just goofy. That’s like going to the opera at Carnegie Hall, but bringing a leaf blower along for the zen of it.
7
I have a huge vinyl collection (a lot of CDs too), never listen with headphones or buds, do not subscribe to any streaming service, and try to listen to music (and play it; electric guitars with Marshall and Fender amps and acoustic guitars; no amps) as it was intended. God bless Neil Young and others like Jack White who are trying to preserve music. I can't speak with any authority as to the possible beneficial effects of listening to music in a certain way, but it certainly makes me feel better.
1
Digital isn’t Vinyl for sure but digital has made it possible for so many to listen to so many types of music inexpensively.
1
Both the writer and the subject (David Samuels and Neil Young) obviously have been very successful because of their talent and ability and they also have had significant challenges in their lives. In regards to how language and music is internalized by people I reference a line from "The Boxer" written by Paul Simon. "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
1
I am a Young fan. It's the instrumentation and melodies that get me. I have never been able to understand many lyrics. Sometimes I can't hear what the words are because the "music" drowns them out. I think it's called "hidden hearing loss". I have met many with the problem. You'll relate to this if you can't enjoy a restaurant conversation because the place was designed to create a "vibe" with pounding music and voices rattling around a huge echo chamber. I am not alone.
So I love his tunes. And I love Mozart, Bach, Bob Marley and Brubeck. The melodies, the structure. Who needs words?
I was also stirred - no, chilled to the bone by the references of falling to polio at age 5. What Young and Mitchell experienced happened to me. No, Young was not going to play hockey! What's weirdly wonderful about life is that I do not regret for a moment having had all that pain and fear. It hardened me. I toughed it out and I became tougher. I also developed an early and powerful sense of empathy for others who were "different" or suffered any difficulty. Seeing someone walk or act oddly reminded me, humbled me.... The disease that could have killed me created me.
Glad to be here. Glad to listen to Neil. I use Pandora. It's good enough for me.
2
Neil Young has written and performed and recorded some wonderful music. However, at his age, and with all the loud rock music he's been surrounded with performing live gigs, I highly doubt that his hearing is anything to write home about. Years ago, I purchased his archives in high-resolution audio on Blu-Ray DVD that he swore by. Today I listen to CSN or CSNY on Tidal in hi-resolution audio encoded with MQA and I swear these albums sound just as good. To be sure, I'm listening to them on a first-rate home stereo system. Oh, and I recently had my ears tested by an audiologist and was told I had the hearing of a 16 year-old.
2
The hearing of a 16 year old?!? Cool! Could I borrow it, at least until he wants it back?
I always play right ear to the amp, but a lot of it always leaks into the left anyway. Bummer. —TR
By the way, any readers interested in the sonic version of Neil’s rant should listen to his “Driftin’ Back” on Psychedelic Pill...on careful listening, you will immediately understand why Steve Jobs wasn’t fond of Neil.
Neil wants us to get out into the world and move on the concert floor to a sonic wave; listening to an iPod just isn’t the same.
I am swirling. Stop the words. I want off.
He loves me. He hates me.
Music is wrong but yet it is right.
Neil is Neil, plain and simple, a gifted artist, but still, an old man that wants to tell you that you are wrong and you are stupid for the way you think, or work, or listen, or play.
I got it Pops... but I gotta go...take it easy.
1
I have always liked and admired Neil Young. He's one of the few people alive who you know, with 100% certainty, will never sell-out - ever. The kind of guy who'd throw a suitcase full of money into the garbage, if it was offered by the wrong person for the wrong thing. The man simply wreaks of integrity. And in this day an age, I consider that a real miracle. A testament to what "standing for something" used to mean.
3
Shouldn’t miss the point that the guy can play the dickens out of a guitar, too. It might sound simple, or unsophisticated, or even amateurish to those who don’t understand, or can’t do it, never tried, or imagine it should be easy to play that note there differently, and better.
We would direct these doubters to any of the zillions of flat, buzzy, even flatulent notes from the muted bell of Miles’ horn. Figure out how to analyze those notes, then come back to whatever you might find lacking in Neil’s playing.
The guy can play the dickens out of a guitar, and he almost never looks at his hands doing it. His stuff speaks to the listener, just like Miles’ stuff does.
—TR
Streaming audio can be very good and Spotify does it well.
Very simply, the difference between vinyl and streamed/digital sound is that vinyl delivers a continuous “signal” or musical note, with all the variance along the way. Digital sound takes little points along the length of that sound note and only delivers the distinct “points”. That is digitization. I think most people do not understand that is why digital sound loses the full quality and depth of the sound. Oh and rock on, Neil!
1
The conjecture about the similarities between Neil Young and Joni Mitchell... there are no words to describe how ridiculous that is. Their songwriting styles could not be more different, and to propose that having polio at a young age made them similar... I'm just scratching my head. I love both artists, but Neil is a simpleton musically compared to Joni. There's very little that's similar other than the fact that both play guitar and have written some enduring songs that speak to many of us.
2
No wonder hes cranky. I would be too. Hes right. all these things, spotify, evil facebook, and other such online junk has put us into crisis. And after all the messages he sent throughout the years no one gets the message. Well like most humans they have to learn the hard way. Its frustrating when its always the hard way.
"He hates Spotify. He hates Facebook. He hates Apple..."
And I hate his recent music.
2
Stipulation! Dylan, Jagger and McCartney are skeletal holograms of their former selves---compared to Neil Young?? In 2019 Paul released his most successful lp in what 30 years?--it went #1 this past spring and he's a busy as he's ever been. And Dylan--while he sounds like a frog when he sings--continues to be just a vital onstage as he was 45 yrs ago. And Mick is still Mick--moves and all. They're old for gawd's sake but they're redefining what old age can be --much the same way the redefined what youth was 50 years ago. They are certainly not skeletal holograms.
6
I've long felt that Neil Young is one of the most under-appreciated songwriters of the past fifty years. When the Harvest album flung him into the public consciousness, a lot of listeners couldn't get past the sound of his voice. The guy is a terrible singer, they complained. They didn't give the words a chance to sink in.
I was oblivious to Neil Young until one day in 1975 when Prelude's a cappella cover of After The Gold Rush came over my FM radio. It was toward the end of a long day, and I was just tired enough to allow the lyrics to sink in. It played like a movie in my head. The DJ gave Neil credit for writing it, and I was stunned. Who is this guy, I wondered? I proceeded straight to an all-night record store and bought everything with Neil Young's name on it.
For years, Neil Young's words and music have provided guideposts to make sense of the twists and turns in my life. I still marvel at his vision of the future in After The Gold Rush, a vision that is turning out to be prophetic.
3
If Young thinks that he is Mozart then streaming is definitely hurting us but considering that he is just doodle-maker, Spotify or Amazon music are just fine for me.
1
This is why I've always loved Neil Young and named one of my sons after him.
"One of the messages of Neil Young’s music has always been that flat spaces are lonely, and the people who inhabit them feel small," states the author.
Very interesting, but can anyone, including the author, point me to some specific Neil Young lyrics that say something to that effect? The only obvious thing I can think of is "Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain," but "flat spaces"? Like Florida?
1
@JP
“Signals curling on an open plain, rolling round the tracks again, see the sky about to rain” closest I can come up with...from “On the Beach”
I still play vinyl time to time, but at my age it's very hard to tell the difference and frankly I'm not sure Neil Young can in reality either. I would be surprised if he can hear anything above 10,000 Hz. Yes, when something is streamed at a very low bit rate, it can be noticeable, but even a decent quality .wav file can sound really good when it is processed properly and played on good equipment.
6
Yeah well, this is a little all over the place. No mention of the connection between Neil and Joni, a digression in sound therapy that is not fully integrated into the story, critiques of technological "advances" and the sub-par fidelity people have become inured to, other aspects.
It might have been interesting to connect Neil's archivism with the Universal City fire. His "control freak" tendencies might have done him well in that instance. I don't know for sure he didn't lose any masters in the fire, but for him or anyone that did, PONO or any later-generational alternative to current-state of the art digital technology, will never really be able to benefit from the improvement, since the master sources of the recordings are now destroyed, and only "clones" of that music, with their inherent limitations, are available to inform and animate any new technologies.
That's a real tragedy, and very much limits the "discography" of the human race as we move forward.
I will compliment the writer for insisting that high-fidelity sound reproducion is not simply a matter of aesthtics, but of aural and therefore mental purity. Perhaps, spiritual as well.
As they say, "Play It Loud"!
2
There’s over 70 dB of unchecked dynamic range (the difference between the softest and loudest sounds) available to the classical music composer. By unchecked I mean every move up and down in volume, communicated by the conductor to the musicians in concert, is presented to the listener. The volume markings that communicate these small changes exist in the music score because for centuries musicians have recognized the compelling nature of nuance. The compact disc may have 90 dB dynamic range, but it forces music to shift volume by leaps and bounds when compared to analog formats like LP records and open reel tape. It’s unnatural sounding and at turns, fatiguing. Ever try to take a picture indoors, in low light, with a modest digital camera or phone? It’s a quick lesson in how much more resolution your vision possesses. The same thing’s going on with your hearing - it’s much more capable than the recording.
2
“Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster” - Mr. Soul
I have stuck with this clown for much of my adult life, through triumph and disaster, and no other artist makes me smile and cry like he can.
He has given so much more than almost any other rock artist, nobody knows how to crank it up - literally and figuratively - like Neil.
2
...some have argued that Mr. Young simply cannot sing, so my concern about his crusade is amplified by the fact that his music is much less than widely cared for. In other words, it's like the blind man complaining about the staff at the Louvre because they have the lighting on the Mona Lisa set to 'dim.' How seriously are we supposed to take this?
1
All of these comments regarding what is "better" are no more than the parable of the Five Blind Men and the Elephant. (google it if need be).
I am a musician with decades of experience. Each human ear receives sound a bit differently. I know people, (even some musicians) who are only able to *HEAR music. Then there are those blessed with the ability to *FEEL music.
The difference between these two states is greater than the difference between B&W film on a 10" screen and the IMAX
theater experience.
When I have the flu, or am otherwise "out of tune", then *I experience what it is like to only be able to *HEAR music. When that happens, I just turn off the tunes until I am well again.
I will not have my cells even "record" the experience into memory of music when I am only able to *HEAR it. When I am
recovered from illness, I am back to being able to *FEEL music.
All of this endless yammering about analog/digital, yadda yadda
is hilarious when we realize that we can never know how *another human being processes sound. We *assume everyone experiences music *exactly as we do. Hi Quality sound reproduction contributes to the ability to *FEEL music, and also enhances the ability to HEAR music. But the two experiences themselves are like comparing apples to oranges. This is also why neither reproduction compares to Live music, but it *is kinda tough to cram a 22 piece Symphony Orchestra into your car with you. :-D
5
Thank you, Neil Young, for the list of passionate objections--it's my list too--and for pointing out to a generation that will actually never know what music used to be, that what passes for music today, and I'm speaking especially of the music made by a generation gone by, is some sort of percussion heavy tinny electronic abomination that infuriates and deeply saddens those who remember the real thing.
2
I like what Neil thinks. Originals are always the best. Handmade mechanical watches, hand cut glass and original rock.
3
Neil is right, we should only hear exactly what the musicians intended. His lonely quest is not so lonely after all; there are plenty of listeners who feel the same way.Listeners including me. Thanks Neil I appreciate that.
1
Pros & geeks have always gone crazy over technical details. It was already like that when I bought my first "hi-fi" system in the '50s. But argue all you or Young want over that, what he's really saying that's important is about our dumbing down, musically, linguistically, artistically, and in every other possible way. That's why we got to where we are politically.
America has exchanged nuance for noise, quality for quantity, fine tuning for deafness - and in every field imaginable . The worst thing we've changed is reality for fantasy - and Young's rants are about all of thos exchanges that have brought us down. Call it rant or old age or anything you want - he's right on!
4
If you wish to go back to commercial free old times FM radio with truly excellent audio quality, IMHO the best I’ve found, is Radio Paradise.
1
I guess it was inevitable that sooner or later the talent and impact of various musicians would start being revised in favor of newer such performers and players but I can't let it pass to see Jimi Hendrix being dissed in this article. Those who dismiss his talent clearly never experienced him live nor have they experienced his music except on recordings....a paltry sampling of his power as instrumentalist, songwriter, singer AND performer. There is of course a reason he is still considered the greatest guitarist ever! And it should be quickly added that only Chuck Berry is second and close to Jimi in America's pantheon of musical and cultural influence. Those who think otherwise simply have no grasp of musicology and history in this country, let alone the rest of the world. To this day (and for the last 50 years) when I travel abroad and when locals learn that I am from Seattle the usual response is......"Oh, Jimi Hendrix!"
I disagree that streaming is low quality. It depends on which service you are talking about. Apple Music for example streams at 256k AAC which actually sounds very close to what a CD sounds like. This whole "high resolution" thing is a myth. You can't hear anything above CD resolution. Where high-resolution makes a difference is in mastering because it's a better quality source. You can also make high-resolution sound like total garbage. So mastering is ultimately what matters, not so much the resolution to a certain point.
5
Even an old geezer at 65, me, can hear the difference. It is a shame that you have to be wealthy to be able to hear music the way it should be heard.
One thing not mentioned is how bad the live music experience can be. Much of the time its WAY TOO LOUD. You have to bring earplugs to many concerts which deadens the sound. Sometimes its the venue but sometimes you have to wonder if the guys running the sound board are deaf.
In the '90s I saw CSN&Y at the Igloo in Pittsburgh. It was horrible and my wife had to leave due to the confused LOUD sound. Though I will say it was fun to see Neil hijack every song with a near never ending solo!
I've always liked Neil Young's music.
Maybe it's time he talk to his old friend Richie Furay again . . .
http://jeffcramer.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-very-candid-conversation-with-richie.html
1
Maybe it's the music and not the medium??? Just sayin'....
As regards recorded sound quality: Mr. Young's a crank--a well-meaning, naive crank, but a crank nonetheless. For those of us who grew up without money (or practical justification) to purchase the highest quality sound systems--a resounding majority of music lovers, I suspect--our first encounters with songs from the "classic" rock era were courtesy of cheap speakers. How then to explain the earth-shaking emotional and sensory effect of hearing The Beatles or The Rollings Stones or David Bowie or Elton John on bargain-basement Sears mini-cabinet speakers, or on a portable radio circa 1975? If, like Mr. Young, you'd contend that my experience was debased, then good luck with grading its subjectivity. At 12, I remember recording directly from FM radio stations onto cassette tape and listening to songs over and over, enraptured. I KNEW these songs, loved them beyond any words to express my delight. I still wouldn't mistake them for imitations, no matter what format I hear them on. Sure, I've always wanted the best speakers, the best possible sound (and STILL can't afford them), but ultimately...the songs remain the same. (How, then, to explain the undiluted power and influence of those scratchy recordings of Robert Johnson and early Louis Armstrong?) And WITH streaming, I can now hear many, many more recordings, discover more artists (including Mr. Young) than I could ever have afforded in vinyl or CD format. Am I better or worse for that? Sniff if you want; I'll pay the price.
8
What a great study in Neil and in being human. Thanks.
1
I am a admirer of Neil and was an employee 24 years ago in his " Car Barn " on Broken Arrow ranch, I did interact with him enough to regard him as a really good Human being, hard working , extremely intelligent, as far as sounds go I am more into vinyl and a season ticket holder for the Santa Cruz symphony and regular at the Carmel Bach festival. If you go with the view developed in the ' Geneaolgy of the Gods ' by Bocccaccio, which promotes the insight that ' Artists ' are the forerunners of our culture, the ones who are ahead of the rest of us, I think Neil Young fits. I do find exception with the Writer calling him an old man, I don't think he will ever be an old man, he is a remarkable man and great artist, we may catch up with over time.
5
When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, “because it sounds like God.”
While I would not have said it like Neil, I understand what he's getting at here. It happened to me during a grade school assembly where all of the fifth-graders sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and I was chosen to solo on the fifth repetition, "Five golden rings." With perhaps 100 young singers accompanying, my still unchanged voice soared, creating a vibration that spread from my chest into a transcendent space that was unlimited. Nothing else seemed to exist but the inner experience of harmonic frequency filling everything. From that day forward, singing for me has always been about filling harmonic space moment-to-moment. Now nearing 80 years old, few life experiences have compared to this transcendence.
God bless Neil in his dedication to share this intimacy with others.
4
I am an old geezer too. Neil is right, what little music is being produced today lacks the real structure of music, lyrics that paint a visual picture from the theme of the song. The Music of the baby boomers has complex rhythms, complete use of major and minor keys in composition allowing mood and tone changes. These bands were made up of musicians also projected a presence. Today we can produce a song from 3 chords and one sentence for the lyrics and it gets accepted as a great work. I don't think the love of music is present, I could be wrong but I feel the motive is money not the love of music. I want people young and old to be able to form memories around the songs, Memories that you can recall accurately as you age. That is the mark of a solid composition that is able to stand the test of time. Take time to learn from music, it is one of the easiest and enjoyable forms of communication ever created.
1
Unfortunately, Young is a crackpot on the subject of digital audio, and the interviewer understands the technology too poorly to help. The Compact Disc was the first music distribution format that could reliably and consistently deliver to the listener sound audibly indistinguishable from the master from which it originated (whether that master was analog or digital). The artist or producer can make the sound exactly the way he wants it. None of this is or ever was true for vinyl records, which restrict dynamic range and introduce other clearly audible distortions. The saving grace for vinyl is that many of these distortions are fairly innocuous, and people may even like some of them. But of course, if its a distortion that's liked, it could be introduced in production and carried through to the CD. (Or if you have an LP you love, just record it to CD or a high-quality digital file, which will sound exactly like the LP.) The situation is more complicated for compressed (technically, data-reduced or perceptually-coded) digital files. A poor compression algorithm, or even a good one pushed too far, will harm the sound, potentially drastically. A good codec (AAC, for example, as used for iTunes files) operated at an adequate data rate will deliver more accurate reproduction than you could ever hope to get from vinyl. Finally, dynamic-range compression is not applied to cover up flaws in digital formats. Mainly, it's used to keep soft parts of music audible in noisy environments.
11
@Lisa Thanks. This is the most cogent and complete summary ever likely to see publication in conjunction with the notion "vinyl". That's what I call compression!
1
I so enjoyed this interview!! I have been a fan of Neil's since I was 15 - over 47 years ago!!! One can certainly say obsessed. I threw myself into music as a teen - The Allman Bros., James Taylor, Grand Funk Railroad, etc., I have seen Neil in concert too many times to count. Very good article!!!
1
Neil Young is right He is right to feel the way he does. He is not cranky,despite what the writer may think. His concern for maintaining the quality of his work and that of others is to be lauded. The writer needs to be less impressed with the heat,and the sound of his own words.
2
I designed audio amplifiers back in the 1970s as a hobby, and one of mine, subsequently stolen when my house was broken into, i could listen all day long, without any sense of fatigue. At the time in my professional life i was designing high accuracy instrumentation and I applied these techniques to amplifier design. To the untrained ear it sounded no different, but here is the key: you can listen all day long to well reproduced sound without fatigue .It is now known that the brain is working to fill the missing information. Streaming and compression depend on the brain filling, invariably by simplifying, the missing information. We now know that the human ear can distinguish between 16 bit (CD quality) sound and 24 bit (high definition) sound, even though what are known as "A/B" comparisons "which do you prefer, this or that?" to most people they will sound the same. It is the subtlety of missing information, which has been measured by differences in brain activity and by the onset of listener fatigue, that tells.
3
@PeterC you are 100% correct, sir. Just as one can read type with missing or jumbled letters, or with the upper and lower 10% of the font removed, the human brain will quickly grow tired of replacing the missing information. There are many examples available on the Internet. The difference is this - when reading the print, one can easily identify the missing information. When listening to music, it's not so obvious to many. Nevertheless, the missing information puts a strain on the brain. 'Nuff said!
2
Bob Dylan is a, "skeletal hologram(s) of their former selves..". I don't think so, but Neil Young, maybe. If you want to say something profound about the state music, you just have to make the music and let it speak for itself. Bob Dylan does this over and over again. Neil Young can do this, has done it, but maybe now he can't. I can see how this can be frustrating, but no one cares how an artist feels, or what they think, outside of a song. They just want to hear some good music. Sorry Neil.
1
...particularly salient forms of music — including Gregorian chants and the music of Mozart, which is perhaps the most perfectly structured and at the same time most effortlessly fluid sound that human beings have ever made (at once the most human and the most perfect music on the planet)."
A bit North-world centric, perhaps? There is perfect music created all over the world.
1
Enough hero worship. Anyone who has seen this guy in concert knows he can be moody and recalcitrant. His music is great, but his ego is beyond huge.
103
@Jim A natural course and a lesson on aging. Usually, if one "pays attention" they learn...and older people have learned a lot. Once you reach his age, try and constrain your ego...
(Excuse me if you are a practicing Buddhist)
"Mais, que sais-je?" - Michel de Montaigne
(But what do I know?)
3
@Jim
I have seen him twice and he was unbelievably rude. At one concert he only played songs from Le Noise which is a horrible electric guitar solo album. He stood on stage screaming at the audience while he played an electric guitar with no band.
4
@Jim
His ego may be huge, but it is matched by his talent. How many artists have taken the chances he has? Most stick with a predictable formula. Neil Young is anything but predictable.
21
The headline for this article should be: Old Geezer Complains Things Aren't as Good as They Used to Be
175
@buster
I'm gonna have to call you on that, Buster. The writer got it right: Neil Young is one of our prophets—in the Old Testament sense of a voice howling doom in the wilderness. Listen to the song "Revolution Blues" (1974; remastered 2016).
53
@C Wolfe I love NY and am not commenting on his power as a musician or song writer. The guy's music is a national treasure. But his rants about recording technology and sound quality are mostly nostalgic rants. There is no perfect recording or playback technology and there never has been. Streaming is not optimal; neither was the AM radio frequency. And the bottom line is: 99.99 percent of people don't care.
27
@buster
Maybe most don't care, but I do. And there are plenty like me.
Give me quality.
49
You would think someone so serious about music would take a guitar lesson or two!
1
@trumpetsax
He didn't need to.
3
@trumpetsax
I'll bet Neil Young could teach you a music lesson.
2
Unlike music compression technology that Young is concerned about, regards this article, less would have been more. Claiming that Hendrix is "the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever" is a tell, that you really don't know anything about rock music, and a bit of an insult to that revolutionary junkie & counter culture audio icon.
That Samuels does not really understand technology is clear too, "... a DAC, which is a digital-to-analog converter device that approximates the sound of good vinyl ...." No it does not necessarily do that, in fact a DAC is just an essential circuit without which you cannot play digital files at all, ie every single device that plays digitized music into speakers has a DAC, even the cheapest hand held voice recorder.
The poor insights into the Neil mythology aside, I wish he'd asked if he still has any hearing left, and how lossless digitization is necessary when your favorite listening post is a car with the top down.
148
@CK
In fact, if a DAC actually approximated the sound of good vinyl, it would be a good reason to avoid it at all costs. Fortunately most dacs - even the one in your smartphone - are not nearly as bad as even the best vinyl.
Digital music - particularly CDs and even good quality Mp3s - has been a huge improvement over anything analog sound reproduction has to offer. Mr Young's ranting is mildly amusing but even he cannot change the basic physics.
16
@TristanKlingsor There will always be a debate about loss of fidelity (even chopped up in 24-bit, 96kHz chunks) in digital format vs. pure analog waveform, but then again less dynamic range of vinyl vs. digital etc.
I’m an engineer and to me voices and instruments on fresh quality vinyl played on a high end record player sound more natural than even most high end DAC with high precision crystal, linear power supply, etc.
I think the sensitivity of the human ear to pick up subtle differences is underestimated.
45
@TristanKlingsor
Exactly, digital recordings are better and hold more information.the Nyquist Theorem proves that all of the "analog" information is perfectly preserved in the digital recording.
Regardless some will continue to disagree with math and science.
13
Yes, and No :-|
Yes, pre-recorded music that is sampled digitally is, my nature, reduced in some fashion.
No, Apple, and others, are opening the gates to a broader range of digital mastering--something that I think ol' Stevo (Jobs) knew he could bring to the table some day.
I'm old school, listen to records, love film, but I know the future holds improvements, they just come in waves--wax rolls, analine dye film, vinyls records, polaroids, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, AAC, MP3/4 . . .
:-)
1
I am well versed in the ideas of high-res audio vs compressed audio, and recording technology over the last century.
This article, though, was nearly incomprehensible. In between all the celebrity worship, I could hardly make out the author's, let alone Young's, thesis.
5
About 40 years ago I purchased Aretha Franklin's Golden Decade. Its first spin on my turntable showed me what I'd been missing, listening to "Respect," "Chain of Fools," and "Think" on AM car radios. They were good songs, but an evening with "Spanish Harlem, "Natural Woman," "Til You Come Back to Me," and "Angel" would bring me to tears, without the help of a dooby, thank you.
Years later, my turntable gathering dust and me wanting to hear some of these songs in my car, I purchased a CD compilation of these same songs. Yes, I was glad to have it in my car, and the fidelity sure was better than I remember from 1967. But something was missing. The sound wasn't filling up the room like my memory of the old LP.
So it was time to tune up the old turntable and do some A-B testing. And basically, compression and filtering is what I found. The crescendos were flat, the quiet parts were cranked up and the swells were tamped down, and the undertones were missing. The feeling of moving air, of sticks hitting a drum kit and the swirl of the B-3 through Leslie cabinets was gone.
So, yeah, I cherish live performance and my vinyl. But digital reproduction has value. It has preserved old music worth listening to and made it easier for new artists to find audiences and be heard. But when I want to really listen, it's time to spin up the turntable.
2
Neil Young may know music, but precious little about anything else. The guy sings like a sick cat on its 9th life. An old crank who should keep his crazy ideas to himself. Canada's gift to the world...not so much.
He is 100% correct about music quality to the end user.
If Neil is a cranky loon then so am I. Proudly. He is 100 percent accurate about everything he says regarding music and sound.
Very few are at his level of sonic genius
Keep on Listening. The promise of the real is not going to last much longer. Think of a forest with plastic trees and the curious child who knew of nothing else Beforehand. We are creating the plastic forest - compression , GMO seeds and much more.
No ghost in the machine. The machine is in the ghost.
And this article is brilliant and heartwarming. That music resonates with you son is a beacon of light. And of course Neil Young.
1
Harvest Moon is my favorite song of all time. 63 years young...
3
Great article. So thoughtful and thorough. A true Neil Young fan -Samuels clearly has his specific fave Neil Young LPs like all Neil Young fans. Fascinating and poignant about Tomasita method plus a wonderful outcome for his so Elijah.
It’s so easy to hear the difference in quality of sound by just listening to any music on vinyl or tape then listen to same song on digital anything. When I go from listening to Aretha on the full sound on vinyl to the listening to same song on YouTube or iTunes Aretha sounds like she’s suddenly got too skinny.....like the music lost its weight...that is to say on digital you lose the fullness, the base, the ambiance etc its all gone.
3
I found this piece unendurable. Samuels’s self-regard is exhausting. My big issue is this: “[Young’s] magnificent control over his art, is what makes him such a uniquely vital and generative artist, at an age when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves.” Funny that Samuels doesn’t seriously discuss a record Young has made in the last 25 years, and yet dismisses Dylan, who has been on a hot streak since 1995, releasing one great record after another. Greendale, a great Young record from that period, could have been used to make the case for Young as an artist who continues to produce meaningful work, but to call him “a uniquely generative artist” is literally wrong. The these-guys-are-fogeys-but-Young-is-solitarily vital argument is just lazy and dumb. Samuels is ultimately just writing about himself, and tediously, and with very little interest in or insight into Young’s excellent work.
4
I think Mr. Young is grappling with two separate problems: the fidelity of music playback technology and the impact digital systems have had on the way we make music.
To my mind, the second issue is more worrysome. Playback technology will come and go, and the boomer generation's music (my music) has no greater right to be heard perfectly than the music any generation before it--most of which has been lost forever.
But music, when made properly, involves the collaboration of--and communication between--musicians and audiences. Music is a form of communication, and an essential element of communication is the listener.
Jazz musicians in the 50's and 60's bemoaned the fact that they could not convey the feeling of a live performance on a recording--and that was even with all of the musicians together in a room, recording at the same time.
Now, with time shifted recording and overdubbing, not to mention autotuning and all sorts of digital manipulation, music does not very often even sound human anymore.
Even the greatest musicians make mistakes (what's a mistake to them would, to me, constitute a personal best). We need those mistakes to latch onto. Jazz musicians often used them to generate new ideas--their motto being 'if you make a mistake, do it twice.'
2
I wonder if Neil Young would buy my old Lionel trains.
1
Complaining about sound is silly. Sound it whatever it may be and the basic intention for many is to hear a particular sound or to happen on it by some randomish process. Sound nuts of all stripes seem to believe there is a gold standard that makes all the difference. There isn't. If I'm listening to Neil Young and there's static -- I have myriad options. Being a DIY human being is the best of them.
@Stephen C. Rose
Sound is ... not it
You don’t have to agree with everything Samuels says to appreciate that he has written something deeply true and moving. Thank you, David, for a great read. Thank you, Neil, for a lifetime of human connection through your music. Long may it run.
2
Listen to an analog recording of Oscar Peterson's Nigerian Marketplace and then a digital recording. You may notice a difference in the pauses.
In 1978 I was in attendance for the "Rust Never Sleeps" tour performance in the Boston Garden. Of the many things I remember, besides the Star Wars roadies and the oversized amps and microphones, was that the crowd cheered when the lyric "every junkie's like a setting sun" was sung, and then cheered again, louder, when the lyric "and I felt like getting high" was sung. Most unusual.
Look at mother nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at mother nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies....
My favorite artist, I have listened to him every day since 1969... I introduced my mom to "After The Gold Rush" and her reply was "why is he moaning, and why is the cover so depressing". I listened to Round & Round (It Won't Be Long) from "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere", the afternoon of my late wife's passing. I have the Neil Young Archives as a bookmark... I loved the article, the fact that it made the New York Times Magazine is amazing and hopefully will open other eyes to the genius of this man... I also would have to add that "Harvest Moon" is another gem...
2
A little before Neil Young became a name I listened to music on a three dollar battery powered radio with a 1 1/2 speaker. Not a premium stereo system for sure but the music still reached me. Even classical.
I never got the McIntosh system I dreamed of. I had to settle for Sansui with its black canvas compared to Sony's red. Yes, you can hear the difference between a tube amp and a digital or transistor one but it's the music that counts.
Still I have to admit listening to an Armstrong recording processed with modern equipment just sounds too fake to me. Sometimes producers try to hard.
Neil Young is a cranky, old, hypocrite...pretending to be current and remember “the garden”, while simply lining his pockets.
I’d been a life long fan, since before Woodstock ‘69.
In 2015, I went to see him at Bethel Woods (site of WS ‘69). Charging $300 for nose bleed seats(last row under the awning), Mr. Young was grossing far more, for a 2 hour show, than 10x the inflation adjusted price for a full day ticket to the original Woodstock festival. With this in mind, he continuously berated the venue, encouraging the audience to “tear the place down”, and “bulldoze this thing”.
Neil Young has a big, petulant mouth and an empty, greedy soul.
If the venue was so offensive, I’m sure he could have found an adjacent pasture to play in, and charged us all $42 to listen to his music. That certainly would have appealed more to me than listening to the false railings of a greedy old huckster, trying to rally his aging troops to rage against “the machine”, while lining his own pockets.
That show spoiled Young’s music for me, forever. That’s something I can’t buy back at any price.
Shame on you, Neil Young.
How Samuels can skip from #2, the great "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere," to #4 "Harvest," without mentioning #3 "After the Gold Rush" is unfathomable.
This long-form article covers two primary areas: Neil Young love and his concern about the effects of highly compressed music on the brain. As a decades-long sound researcher and music producer specializing in psychoacoustics, I believe Mr. Samuels and Young posit a serious issue quite worthy of consideration. They have both seen the positive effect of full sound spectrum therapy (the Tomatis Method) on their neurologically-challenged children. Like WiFi, mobile phones, ear buds, and possibly 5G, we are all auditory beta testers. Please do not consider this Luddite thinking; the increased numbers of auditory tumors correspond with cell phone adoption. As Dr. Alfred Tomatis said, “Sound is a nutrient for the nervous system.” The more we mess with the natural harmonic content of sound, the more it becomes like iceberg lettuce with no nutritional content. Music neuroscience tells us that music is a language of the brain. I fear Neil Young’s concern is correct. The digitization of music may end up being one more hefty insult to the nervous system. This is way beyond aesthetics or innovative technology, rather into the zone of diminution of healthy brain function.
7
What a beautiful piece. You captured the Yin
And Yang of Neil Young. He is such a soulful human with a lot to say.
I can see the connection between his music - raw, unfiltered, vulnerable, honest and soulful, to his view on the world. You gave us all a very
Intimate view into the soul of one of the greatest artists of our time.
Thank you.
6
As streamed from Neil Young's site the first 2 song suffered from quite loud 60 and 120 hz hum. I tend to favor classical music so that hum stands out as an unwanted artifact. No doubt the complex electronics required to produce the sounds of the performance and then record it provide a multiplicity of sources for that hum. So I wonder about the definition of "natural" sound, real sound. I guess that hum is heard over the speakers at the performance so it is integrated in the living event. For me however, the hum sounds are not a positive, gritty feature, only a distraction from the music.
1
Neil Young is not a “genius”. Most of his albums are terrible. Get real. He made a few good albums decades ago. Be realistic. He’s not a great artist. This writer should have his hyperbole license revoked. It’s so easy to just type “genius” and pretend you are making a profound observation. The writing in this article is full of cliches and repetition about Neil Young that’s been covered a thousand time before. Enough already.
Also, I constantly read music writers praising John Frusciante. Try listening to his music sometime. It’s awful. Really, really terrible, mediocre music. I’m not exaggerating. It’s unlistenable. Not to mention he was in one of the worst rock bands ever: the Red Hot Chile Peppers. He is not a great guitarist by any stretch of the imagination. He’s mediocre.
Why do music writers constantly prop these guys up? The music industry is over. Your killing us with your relentless worship of pop culture. Write about other artists. Go on Bandcamp and pick a few. There’s literally thousands out there as good as these guys.
3
Hi JR,
I’m going to guess you didn’t see much talent in Bob Dylan, either? While no artist would claim all their work belonged on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the Billboard Top 100, their art still speak to many in myriad ways.
Phil Griffin
2
Check out NYC's best-kept secret Mephiskapheles if you want to hear a real band making great original music with real instruments in 2019. Mephiskapheles is completely independent, has new music about to come out, and is currently on tour.
Bob Dylan’s music is more interesting than Neil Young’s- mainly because his lyrics are not sub-mental like Young’s lyrics. Dylan was also a far better acoustic guitarist and songwriter in general. Dylan also had a longer period of making good music than Young. Although Dylan also lost it eventually, around the time he dropped a bunch of IQ points, probably from smoking pot, became a born again Christian and began making total garbage music for the rest of his career.
Overall though, yes, they are both highly overrated. In a nutshell: they are pop stars, neither are great artists.
Also, Young’s whole streaming audio argument is absurd. The quality is actually excellent. Everyone knows that. Vinyl is fun- but it’s not all that unless you are playing it through some $3000 audiophile grade stereo. Personally, I find my iPhone streaming Spotify through Apple earbuds quite good and I have listened to music seriously for a very long time. I think the real story is Young was actually trying to launch a streaming service a while back and fell flat on his face and now he’s just cranky. He’s always been one to jump on the next band wagon that comes along in the pop music biz- punk, grunge, etc. He’s not interesting. He’s actually kind of a hack.
2
I wish Times journalists would get away from this Esquire-type "new journalism" (quite old by now, in fact) constant insertion of what THEY'RE thinking rather than the person being interviewed. The comments only detract from the article and feel like filler.
15
Great article. Truly great. I am a huge Neil Young fan so that's why I started reading it. But, there is some brilliant stuff in here, courtesy of Neil and the author.
4
I admit that I'm a bit stunned by the tone of so many of the comments. So Neil Young is a bit cranky and Jimi Hendrix may or may not be the greatest American artist EVER! Music is and has always been in the ear of the beholder.
I like rock, slow jazz, some country, blues.some classical - especially choral (Brahms German Requiem!), folk, some pop, but just can't wrap my head around rap and hiphop although I've heard musical people I respect speak of it as a complex and beautiful genre. The point is that the worst thing about music is the snobbery that it invokes in so many. Shut up and just listen! If you like what you're hearing keep listening and maybe even buy it. If you don't like it, move on. There's lots to choose from.
13
Neil Young is a talented artist, but he is no scientist or engineer. Nor is the author of this article. I scanned the whole thing looking for something, anything, to elaborate on his claim about the horribleness of digital music. No luck.
2
@Phil
This is a magazine article, not from their news section, or even Arts. That's just how they roll (and why I normally avoid the mag).
Neil Young has recorded some very good music and is a fairly big talent. However, as a musical talent, he was hardly a peer to Duane Allman, Jimmy Page, Stephen Stills and especially Jimi Hendrix. As far as not bending to what audiences want to hear, what are you talking about? Young is fairly commercial. Hendrix (over the course of only four albums) and the Allman Brothers Band (on their first 3 albums with Duane) broke far more new ground in a very brief period of time than Young has covered in his 50 something year musical career.
1
@Jim McNerney
Jimmy Page can't improvise, so I don't see a comparison. Neil young never struck me as a great guitarist but a brilliant musician.
@Jim McNerney
There are only a few artists who have absolutely mastered the acoustic and electric idioms of the guitar. Neil is near the top of that list. It is so interesting to contrast the finesse and subtlety of his acoustic work with the raw power and dynamism of the electric. Clapton belongs on that list, maybe Duane Allman, Jimi, not enough recordings to be certain but how not?...Jerry Garcia I think so, Jorma from the Airplane...I mean not that they KNOW how to play the different instruments but they have put their own unique individual stamp on each of them.. Jimmy Page maybe but he sore lacks in musicianship.
How does this article get written without a single mention of Young’s preposterous business failure, the Pono player? It was a product no one wanted or needed, with the possible exception of Young a couple of burnouts with too much money and too little brains.
2
Oh my. Couldn’t make it through this story. Really hoped to read about Young. Had to wade through too much about the thoughts and feelings of the writer. I don’t care about the writer. At all. So I’m left like young, on the porch, raving about the lack of quality writing.
6
Neil Young is painfully off target.
1) Multitrack recording came out of Silicon Valley. From Ampex (rest its soul) and Les Paul (the only person to be in both the inventor's hall of fame and the rock and roll hall of fame). Where would Neil be without an MM1100 or an ATR-124?
2) Compression has been around for decades and did NOT come from Silicon Valley. Optimod compressors on FM and a variety of devices for recording have crushed dynamic range. MP3 came out of Bell Labs via Fraunhofer (Ma Bell was not allowed to develop products). Apple has capitalized on this to compress music enough so that it plays well through earphones.
3) Tastes have changed. Music has changed. Program your synthesizers for a wall of sound. Phil Specter would be proud. Kids today just aren't interested in anything with melody other than in the vocals.
But if you get out of the mass market, there is still good music to be found.
10
I have one question, what about high quality streaming?
Many devices (eg latest gen AppleTV, etc) can stream full 4K high quality video and super high quality 7.1 high definition audio.
So, isn’t it incumbent on us, as media consumers, to consume their works as artists’ intentions dictate?
And, isn’t it also incumbent on artists to use the technology correctly, and only release digital rights protected streams of their work that conform to their fidelity requirements?
Many of us don’t want tinny sounding, AM radio quality music, or low resolution video, but we respect the rights of those who prefer that content. Especially those of us who need to save on bandwidth or data limits.
4
I've put off reading this, I didn't want to risk the disappointment. I'm very pleased to be wrong. This is the single best piece I've read in the NYTs this entire YEAR, and there are plenty of contenders. HE is my favorite musician/singer/writer, a lifelong condition. No treatment required.
More, More, MORE. Thank You.
6
This explains why Greendale was so bad, I listened to it on my iPhone.
It had nothing to do with the music or lyrics and everything to do with my listening device.
3
Love Neil's music, but this article has some easy checked factual errors.
I know almost all the comments relate to music quality, Neil, analog vs. digital, etc. But I feel some corrections are in order. Maybe they aren't crucial. but c'mon, this is the NYT.
Malibu Canyon is neither a desert nor north of Los Angeles. It cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains as a result of Malibu Creek. It's pretty green actually. Look at the opening scenes of any episode of MASH which, along with many other films and TV shows, was filmed there.
And sure, a lot of rich people live there. Whether they are all "corrupt" or suffer from "hubris" is a matter of opinion. But a lot of not-rich, not-corrupt people live there, too.
As a New York native who has lived in SoCal for 40 years, I get it: bashing LA has been a thing since at least Woody Allen and before. Just bash it factually, ok?
Now I'm going to go listen to some Neil.
3
@Michael And Neil's ranch was in Northern CA, not Malibu.
Yes that surprised me. As a former resident of Silicon Valley I was delighted to know that Neil lives just a few canyons away above Redwood City.
1
He has property everywhere. Smart guy, buys land.
Long time fan of Neil Young and his music.
I love the way this featured article covers all the bases and the outfield on his point of view on the art and craft of what we hear. The history of technology's incarnation, and the distillation, or rendering down of an art form can be compared to cheap knock-offs flooding the market.
It does make me wonder if sonograms could be a cause to worry about, if administered incorrectly that scramble brain development?
I worked with a aerospace company that built acoustic sound dampening enclosures for jet engines.
I would really like to sample the Pono Player to get the feel of how much difference there is compared to what is commercially normal available.
1
@Zig Zag vs. Bambú
The pono player stopped development in 2017. Neil Young is now working on a different way to stream higher resolution music, check out his web site for his archives and news.
I'm extremely biased, in that I revere Neil for his lasting dedication to his craft, and his near unique ability to be writing new music into his 70s. He's cranky, idiosyncratic and sometimes frustrating. He's a genius. So jealous of the author to get to spend real time with him.
2
Music streaming has brought Hip-Hop across the world and has grown into an international force against authoritarian regimes in countries like Thailand and Russia where people can do little to openly rebel against their governments. It has empowered the youth in particular to take political action. Just because there are bad pop songs and a few bad Hip-Hop on top-20 radio doesn’t mean that all the music we have today is bad. Maybe we can put aside the fact that “it just don’t sound like good ole fashioned vinyl” and appreciate some of the amazing things having a global music network brings.
I love 60-70s rock and I do like Neil Young, but for such a progressive minded guy I’m a bit ashamed to see him dismiss music today because he doesn’t like the technology.
1
Buffalo Springfield was not a "supergroup". Very few people had ever heard of Neil Young or Stephen Stills or Richie Furay when that band formed and released its first album in 1966. But they were terrific... far better than the Eagles, another group labeled that way in this piece.
1
I was a 15 yr.kid growing up in Ojai Ca. & had Springfield in my head constantly. people everywhere knew who those voices belonged to. harmonies never to repeated.
1
The late Chris Cornell counted Neil Young and Cat Stevens among his influences when he launched his solo career. I missed most Grunge as I was a tad older and was listening to jazz, dance music and classical by them. Rediscovered Cornell with his passing.
Cornell is a Continent where most others are City States. Repeated close listening is much rewarded. Soundgarden's Superunknown is one of the top 5 or 10 albums Ip have ever heard.
The author mentions the evocation of lonely open prairie roads in Young's singing and music. If you want desolaton, try "I am the Highway" by Cornell and Audioslave. Ann Wilson said when she heard it she new Chris "was on his way."
Great art breaks one heart. If Young's "Old Man" does not move you...
2
Very cool article. Thank you, sir.
1
Young has the whiniest voice I ever heard. I always found it unpleasant.
4
@Jenifer. Definition of being between he## and high water: Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
1
Soon after “Prairie Wind” came out, my son was in the hospital, yet again, for one of many ailments accompanying his cerebral palsy. When I first listened, I thought “Falling Off the Face of the Earth” was an ode to the America I felt was slipping away. As I listened more, I took it in my own context, in that hospital room, as memories having literally nowhere to go, no brain space.
I wanted to write a fan letter but assumed that Mr. Young would likely never see it anyway.
Now I have my chance. That album carried us through a long slog and I wasn’t the only one it affected. It soothed my young son, despite our cruddy digital player. (I do side with the audiophiles.)
So, albeit indirectly and belatedly, thank you, Mr. Young.
8
I do not care who you are or what type of music you listen to. This is simply the most marvelous piece on music and life I have ever read, beautifully written with emotion, insightfulness and love.
11
Not much on pop music ,which is all there is today. Youngs music is historical for the reason that real folk rock no longer exists.I've heard a few recordings many years ago that are kind of artistic but for these guys ,immensely wealthy and pushing 80 years of age to be out there is something that requires more thought.If I wanted to hear folk rock yet I don't a CD is the best all around sound replication ,expensive speakers make all the difference.
2
The problem isn't digitization or lossy compression. It's DYNAMIC compression: turning the music into a wall of noise to make it "louder." Everything I read about Young and Dylan and others complaining about sound quality today seems to indicate that they don't understand this.
It is a fact: All popular music mastered or "remastered" since the late '90s has been destroyed by dynamic compression. It's one of the biggest crimes against art, especially when the originals have been destroyed (see the linked article about the Universal fire).
3
I am a fan of Neil Young and have most of his albums, even a few on lp from the old days but most are digital. They don't sound bad to me. The best way to listen to them is over a good sound system in an acoustic treated room. People have a variety of ways to listen at both high and low end. Digital does seem to have destroyed the traditional music business and artistic decades-long careers that many of the 60's crowd enjoyed. Now it's about selling a few million downloads of something that is not great to begin with and retiring.
2
Neil gets it. Music is made to nourish the soul. I know that when I listen to digital music, I get "ear fatigue" more quickly than listening to it on vinyl. Try it sometime. Over compressed music can be brutal for long periods of time and, IMHO, it lacks the dynamic tonal range. But nothing is better than hearing the music live, especially classical and jazz, sans the ear splitting volume of enormous PAs.
7
Neil Young and others of his generation put more credibility into distortion and feedback than it means in the 21st century. Grunge was the last great hoodoo of feedback and buzz in the 20th century. It's been long gone for decades now.
I suppose the sound represented rebellion. It was inarticulate but effective at denouncing convention. Now the conventions are so numerous as to carry their own message without denouncing everything that came before.
50 year old music does not speak to our time. Same as music from 1921 failed to speak to the times in 1971.
I just put a record player in my office this week (coincidentally). I don't think listening to music in this way is quite the national emergency that Neil seems to think it is, but man the sound is truly amazing! I'm listening to Kind Of Blue as I write this and I can hear every note, every vibration, every rich tone. It's amazing! I will listen to Spotify in the car and when I want to hear something I don't have on LP, but everyone should listen to records now and then just for the reminder that we're missing a lot of tone when we listen to compressed music.
2
Articles like this, with personal passion for the subject complemented by research and technical details, are why I read the Times.
7
@Bob Agree! Head & shoulders above my near-local paper, the WaPo. Other than a few older Op ed writers most of their their stuff appears to have been written by media criticism majors 3 or 4 yrs out of college, with all the perspective one expects. What they lack in experience, perspective and depth they make up for in self-assurance.
See Neil Young's response to this article here:
https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Neil-Youngs-Lonely-Quest-To-Save-Music
2
@Phil28 Thanks for this!
1
@Phil28
Thanks for posting that link, very kind of you!
I enjoyed reading his comments, though brief.
1
Why do pre-amps, equalizers and sub-woofers exist?
@Michael McGuire Great questions. A preamp amplifies a "small" electrical signal, say from a phono cartridge that "reads" the music off a vinyl record, so that it can be fed into an amplifier. The amplifier amplifies the signal so that a speaker system can be driven to produce adequate sound levels. A subwoofer reproduces the lowest frequencies ("tones") in music/sound at loudness and accuracy levels that surpass the capability of most speaker systems. Large quantities of air must be moved to reproduce low frequencies at loud volume levels. If you've ever listened to a pipe organ in a church you may know that the lowest frequencies are produced by air columns vibrating in the biggest of the pipes. A key reason to be concerned with the acoustic power of low frequencies produced by a speaker is the human ear's relative lack of sensitivity to low frequency sounds. Ubiquitous small subwoofers or speakers often sound like they produce really low tones, but often they can be designed to fool the human ear and perception of what tones are actually in the pressure variations in the air. The human brain will "fill in" the missing fundamental frequency that is missing. It's the field of psychoacoustics. Pretty cool stuff.
2
I have much respect for Neil Young and his music. However, I don't believe compression and streaming are ruining music. I must say also, that, as a music lover I reside primarily in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. But I have much love for a lot of the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. I don't classify music into genres. If it sounds good it is good, as Peter Schickele says. Streaming music has been a boon for me, as a 71 year old on a limited budget. I simply would be unable to listen if it weren't for streaming music. With streaming, I can explore endlessly. For example, as I started to read this article, I was listening to the stupendous Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau / Gerald Moore recording of the complete Schubert lieder. Steaming music has allowed me to easily interweave a few Neil Young songs into my playlist. His songs stand up well to the perfection that is Schubert (not as great, but nothing is).
I do agree with several comments that have noted there is live and there is recorded, and that never the twain shall meet, regardless of the playback hardware. (In two days, my wife and I are going to hear David Crosby live -- we can't wait! We can only afford one or two concerts per year.)
One final thing, I want to see all musicians paid far better from their music being streamed. The streaming operations hog far too much of the revenue for themselves. I would happily pay more if it went to the artists.
5
I'm a classical musician. My guess is that Mr. Young's gripe has very little to do with sound quality, but he feels he needs to cover his real concern, actually much more valid, which is how difficult it is now with the internet for an artist to make a living from his music. He doesn't hate Spotify for the relatively minor losses in quality. He hates Spotify because they pay artists somewhere around 1 cent per click. Luckily for me, I have a day job.
3
@Colby Hawkins
Far worse than a cent per click... “The streaming music giant Spotify now reportedly pays $0.00437 per play.” I read that in this article: What Streaming Music Services Pay (Updated for 2019)
1
I fell in love with Neil Young's music when I was maybe 17 and I still love his music now and I'm 58.
Some of us aren't perfect but still have beauty inside us that is what I get from his music.
Keep it up Neil we love you!
1
Using a DAC is amazing. I have external DACs (no soundcards, even) on all my computers, and also use one on my phone when I am listening to music through it.
I believe the dac attached to my phone plus an android app that plays 24 bit music files is the same as what a pono is.
I no longer have a component stereo with a receiver/amp feeding speakers. If I did I'd have a standalone DAC in there too.
I am not so sure about hi-res audio files (24 bit, 192khz whatever...) though. Mostly what I can say is the marginal gain from moving up to those is much less than you get from using a DAC on any kind of audio file.
Rock on Neil!
1
Neil Young has lived long enough and created such a legacy that he's surely entitled to his irascibility, his thoughts and opinions about music. Music is and has been his life's all-consuming passion. Love him or hate him, we must give him that. I personally love his music and respect his relentlessness about the listening experience involved. I still have my original CSN first album. When CSNY's Deja Vu was released, one of my closest friends and I listened to it over and over again on a Sunday afternoon, marveling at its uniqueness and harmonies. We did the same thing when After the Gold Rush and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band were released. All on vinyl. Music both creates and then evokes emotional memories that remind us of our past, and of our own humanity. Rant on, Neil. We may not all agree, but there is no denying the power and timelessness of your creations.
2
My father-in-law always took his new vinyl and played it once on his Kenwood turntable to a TEAC reel-to-reel, and then only listened to the tapes. We have thus inherited a sizable library of mostly classical and Broadway original cast recordings that have been played once. Although we mostly spin vinyl in our house, I've largely left the "onesies" alone, out of respect for their strange status. They are available to anyone who wants to explore their near-virgin state.
2
I remember taking the time to do wonderful things like that. Thank you
The second paragraph sums it up:
"When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, 'because it sounds like God'."
Live music has this transcendental capacity. Recorded music can provide a good echo of it.
Likewise, live theater can move us deeply. Visual art, less often. The temporal aspect of music and theater contributes strongly to drawing us beyond our normal consciousness. But visual art sometimes, certainly. The Rothko Chapel in Houston is one.
We are deeply social animals, despite the corrupting influence of modern materialism. But where other social animals groom each other directly, we groom by speaking: by our voices do we nurture our social bonds and connections.
This essay is a perfect complement to an excellent book by Gilles Slade, "The Big Disconnect". If you were moved by the essay, the book will knock you out.
2
Visually I hear you with my fading eyes.
As I try to speak with my photographs.
My Bell rings in madness.
2
This is one of the best pieces of article writing I have ever read, period. Sumptuous. And I mean the art of the writing itself.
As for the content, full disclosure, I'm not particularly a music buff. However, I do have an appreciation for and HUMILITY around just how much we DON'T know about our own physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological existence. Every day we are learning more about how they are likely all are interconnected.
I also have an appreciation for and humility around the mystery of the artists genius and how an artists genius 'out-of-the-box' perspectives always have and always will help us all learn about what it is to be alive. Sometimes in life, and in music, it's best to quiet oneself and really listen in order to hear all that is being offered. Maybe that's the trick at play when Neil drives and listens to music, the driving quiets his thinking mind so that he can hear the music.
8
Honest music is like the Milky Way for a city dweller like myself. It is out there, it will always be out there. Waiting for us to find it again.
2
This is the finest article I have read for many years. Congratulations, and thanks to Mr Samuels. Good luck with your boy, he has hope with your help.
5
My son benefitted enormously from Tomatis therapy while still a pre-schooler. A high-functioning autistic adult now, he had severe challenges with auditory processing as a young child. He would stare at my lips, trying to decipher what I was saying to him, a lost look in his eyes. After several clinical Tomatis sessions along with repeated listening to the filtered Mozart referred to in this article, it was as if his ears had opened up. His brain was rewired somehow, and he could understand the spoken word. It was a kind of miracle.
2
This struck me “What he is after is not some ideal sound but the sound of what happened” - it’s the same evolution that has taken place with photography. From capturing the essence of a moment to a filtered, non-existent shadow of reality.
4
Love Neil Young! That said, Mr Young should understand that for some of us, streaming services like Spotify are a life-saver. I live in a country where hard copies of music have all but disappeared. If I want to get new music on hard copy, it is a very expensive and lengthy exercise. With Spotify (which I prefer to Apple Music) I can get pretty much any music I want almost instantly. I still have an extensive collection of CDs (accumulated over many years) and good stereo equipment and I still buy music on CD occasionally (which my sister brings out for me from London, where you can still find pretty much anything you want in hard copy). But given the volume of music I consume, it is simply not feasible to buy them all on CD. Bearing in mind my taste in music is varied and obscure (this morning I have listened to Gang Green, Dwarves, Crime and the City Solution and Steve Earle). The Spotify sub I have is absolutely heaven sent. It's all very well if you live in a Los Angeles or London, but there are many people the world over for whom an internet connection is their chief pipeline to all kinds of cultural artefacts.
5
@Mark Crozier Well, get a DAC and your streamed music will sound much better!
My first born suffered trauma at birth
and, thus, was not considered a normal child.
He was very overactive but when I was listening to music,
he would calm down and fall asleep in my arms.
As we listened to Thomas Tallis'
"If you love me"
he suffered an aneurysm and died at age five.
On his birthday I bring a recording of it to his little grave
and listen to the singers with him.
11
Agree in deploring compression. Personally I fight it by playing live music weekly with a group. It may not be my day job but I'm decent at it. Part of my contribution to the future--touching the ears, brains and hearts of humans decades younger than I. Who has ears to hear, let them hear the whole living sound.
A lot of people are passionate about music. However, just as some are happy with smart phone cameras, a lot of people just don't care that Spotify sounds flat. In the 1970's, most of my friends handled their vinyl albums by grabbing them with their grubby fingers and playing them on a cheap turntable. Even when I was twelve, my fingers never touched the playing surface and I calibrated my parent's turntable to less than a gram. It wasn't an expensive turntable, but the cartridge was the best we could afford. Fifty years later, my hearing may not be what it was, but I can still pick out the individual instruments in a quality recording. I can still visualize the sound stage.
The problem isn't vinyl versus digital. Neil Young is right on target. High resolution and high dynamic range are just as important to sound reproduction as to image reproduction. Listening to Spotify is like watching an old 25" TV. However, a poor-quality vinyl album or CD isn't much better. A well-mastered CD can sound incredible, but 16 bits isn't enough to capture both the quiet opening notes and the canon bursts of the 1812 Overture. Those who say otherwise don't understand how the ear modulates sound. Fortunately, there are many sites that sell or stream high-resolution, 24-bit digital audio, and quality DAC's are available for as little as $100. What's sad is that even those who realize that something's missing don't realize that quality recordings are close at hand, even on a smart phone.
4
@Steve In NYC
I am afraid 16 bits is actually an overkill even with the 1812 Overture. The cannon shots are loud, to be sure (I have the infamous Telarc version), but no music is recorded or performed in complete silence. This is the reason 96 db dynamic range provided by a 16 bit CD is more than enough.
Most people's stereos and ears would blow up in smoke with 96 dynamic range. Even in a very quiet room the loudest parts would have to reach over 130 db. This is why high resolution audio marketing is so pointless: big numbers without understanding what they mean in practice.
3
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think the # of bits has anything to do with dynamic range expressed in decibels. Instead, the number has to do with how much of the waveform is captured, via sampling rate, and reproduced. Picture a wave/curve that looks like it is made of a jagged set of stair steps versus a smooth line. And in those spaces between stair steps harmonics are lost. If I'm wrong, please explain, I want to know.
@Outdoors Guy
Number of bits has everything to do with dynamic range. 1 bit increases the available dynamic range by 6 db.
Sampling rate on the other hand defines the available bandwith (e.g. 0 - 20 Khz).
Contrary to a popular misconception an analog signal reconstructed from digital samples does not contain jagged stairsteps. It is just like the original smooth analog curve. No stairsteps, no guesswork involved, no information lost between the samples. Very counterintuitive, but all this follows directly from the famous sampling theorem.
What do we lose in sampling? We lose all the frequencies at and above half the sampling rate. A cd has a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. This is why a cd has an upper frequency limit of appr. 22 kHz. Whether this matters has been a hotly debated topic. Music has harmonics above 22 kHz, but are they audible to anyone?
1
We only buy CDs including the Decade album. And I feel the same about social media as a destructive force.
You have always been the real deal, Neil Young. Because of you, I have always been able to sing Old Man, Cinnamon Girl, etc. on the same key, so I feel I sing well! I am a female tenor.
You are a treasure.
2
You cannot make perfect sounding music unless you have such a source to make it from. Real instruments through an amplifier don't cut it. That is why a classical piece played in a finely acoustically tuned concert hall is so natural sounding. Give it up Neil and focus on that.
1
Neil is the "real deal". Always has been. He cannot/will not be bought! He speaks directly to our human souls. That's why his music resonates with many generations! Don't mess with him, or any of his devotees. We know better!
2
Hah!
Reading some of these comments means I shouldn't say anything at all.. if you know what I mean.
Having known a couple people who have worked intensively in the studio w/ Mr. Young, my informed observation is that he really does hear differently. The way he hears the overtone series is one of his principal elements of discernment. He hears far beyond the second and third harmonics, way beyond where most think the tone stops. Ears quite different than anyone else.
Neil's albums "Arc" and "Weld" are indeed challenging listening. But they reward close listening and give insight into how the musician interprets sound. The depth of control and virtuosity astound. (So does Lou Reed's "Metal Machine", another artist not always the sweetest guy in the room).
Perhaps because some people lack The Gift bestowed upon great musicians and certain lucky lovers of music with Golden Ears, they can never understand and appreciate the full range of listening pleasures great artists can create. Diversity is difficult for a lot of people, many artists need to stretch and explore.
There's a LOT of great music out there. May not be commercial or easy to understand, some of it is downright strange. Once the ear acclimates and the brain opens, a wealth of appreciation can be the reward.
Far far beyond any narrow Hendrix v Stones v Neil mentality.
4
My first experience of music as a personal experience was as a teen, playing 33s and 45s on my cheap record player with its little sound system. I laid on my bed my mind and senses totally immersed, like a diver under water.
I am slowly mailing out my late husband’s great vinyl collection he had gathered years ago while working in radio, going into the hands of young family members who appreciate its rich sound. My own collection was mostly lost.
Music is built into our DNA, it’s notes and beats come out of nature, out of the universe. Personally, and professionally as a therapist, I can affirm the benefits of music and sound (and also silence).
Music should reflect the complexity and richness of our experience, not merely streamlined robotic clarity, but full life that has its beauty and sweetness but also rawness, pain and confusion. In other words our humanity. This is my own interpretation of what I think he means.
I saw him live and it was indeed a wonderful experience. I currently get to listen periodically to my neighbors son and his friends joyously and loudly practice in their newly formed band, in their back yard. I think they get it.
4
Every home should have a proper audio playback system. A quality tube amplifier, disc player and speakers are not much more expensive than a proper radio and phonograph in 1962. The aural environment of a home is a real quality of life issue.
When you hear good sound, you know what Neil Young is talking about. His argument isn't with technology. He is lamenting that people aren't listening closely anymore. Is he right? People opt for portability over quality, but is it really true that people who listen to Spotify, mp3, etc, are less engaged with the music? I don't know, that's a stretch. My fondest memories are Thriller on cassette on a Walkman.
1
I was a teenager when Neil Young was making music in the late 60's and early 70's. And as a 65 year old now- I can relate to Neil Young's quest. Those who were not there, then, have no idea, (how could they?), of what the world was like compared to the world of today with social media and digital everything.
Reading about the difference in sound between digital and vinyl or tapes gives parallels to the difference between digital photography and older printing methods such as silver gelatin. It makes you think and consider which is best and why. Not everyone is going to have the same answer. But Neil Young is putting his money where is mouth is-
I, too, have had a child (now an adult) with special needs who responds to music, whom uses music to soothe anxiety, who has completed the Tomatis method to help clear out the static.
Thank you for a wonderful thoughtful article. There's no need for haters-
Music is powerful.
4
I wish the writer didn't meander around so much talking about Young's well-known personality quirks and then, awkwardly, about his son. That deserves a separate essay. And Neil Young's obsession about the quality of sound recordings is by no means unique. Any music lover or musician who grew up listening to vinyl and going to see live music can appreciate the difference in sound quality - I often hear it described as "warmer." But I appreciate Young's quest to save the original recordings on tape, and to bring awareness to the loss of the intricacy and personality that makes music the primal language of humanity. Music reaches beyond our intellect; it is our most personal, deepest expression. Listening on an iPod or streaming is fine, but it's missing richness and depth.
Also, have you seen Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney in concert in recent years? Really off the mark to compare them negatively to Young, who has faded - and shined - in his own way as he got older. So have they.
11
Neil is who Neil is. Never met the guy. Never will. I made the mistake of thinking because he sang things that resonated with me that I was like him, he was like me. It felt so personal. Perhaps I made it too personal. I think he has made an amazing contribution to our world and takes on issues that he regards as important. He has talent, lovely melodies and ok lyrics. We don’t get to see him in New Zealand that often to see him at his cantankerous best. Or worst. Can’t really imagine the world without him. I wish him well and thank him for sharing his world with us. Best though not to have expectations with Neil. My experience is they will not be met.
9
Psychologist here with background in neuroscience. True, Eric Kandel won a Nobel Prize in Physiology. But it is inaccurate to imply that he won the prize for neuroplasticity. From the Nobel Prize press release:
"With the nervous system of a sea slug as experimental model he has demonstrated how changes of synaptic function are central for learning and memory. Protein phosphorylation in synapses plays an important role for the generation of a form of short term memory. For the development of a long term memory a change in protein synthesis is also required, which can lead to alterations in shape and function of the synapse."
This has nothing to do with neuroplasticity in the colloquial or scientific sense of the term. Similarly, Doidge is a "popular" author with little scientific credibility. The concept of plasticity has inherent appeal, but inherently appealing ideas are rarely scientifically accurate.
Samuels has written an interesting article about an important musician and cultural figure. However, the article offers pseudoscientific explanations for phenomena that scientists do not yet understand. What a dis-service to patients and families struggling with mental illness.
11
It wasn't Spotify or Facebook that killed everything, it was MTV. As soon as music became a background sound track for a bunch of sexy girls dancing around, that was the end. What you were watching became more important than what you were listening to. Without the video, you had to listen. With the video, you didn't really hear what was going on, because the video was "the thing."
So now we have Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, a whole bunch of other dancing no-talent cuties, and a generation of empty headed teenagers who are permanently brain damaged as a result.
17
Neil Young is 100% correct. But we're all too comfortable with the easy life (hey, I can listen to him right now as I type) to change. You know, kids in college right now might not have ever heard a real note. If they haven't heard live or vinyl, then they actually don't know what the notes are and therefore, don't know what music is. That's just sad. And scary. Authenticity matters in all of its forms, because what happens when we live without it? What are we conditioned into?
And we also have water with plastic and food that doesn't smell and chemicals in our bodies and kids that don't play. E-gads.
10
Really really good sound reproduction does allow an intimate neurological connection with whatever music you love.
Music reaches into your most inner emotions. Our ears and our brain are capable of hearing the most exquisite differences in rhythm and harmony. To listen to compressed and tortured sound is just not the same as listening to free and flowing real music. Neil is right about music. My husband has taught music appreciation in Elder college for many years. He brings with him a very high-end music system capable of reproducing music very faithfully. His students are all music lovers. They tell him they never heard music so well before attending his classes.
Try really good listening. Go to a great high end Hi Fi store: listen to their reference system. It's a revelation. (( Don't go to rock concerts, their amplification systems are garbage and distort everything. Loud, Loud music will ruin your hearing over time. ))
2
scott young was also a well known columnist who used to be on between periods of Toronto maple leafs' home games more than 50 years. was outspoken for his time and I seem to remember he was fired.
his books were riveting when I was young and based on real players on those leafs' teams.
neil obviously inherited a way with words from him.
1
Neil Young couldn't carry a tune. His depressive approach to life and composition caught on with other depressives and he became a legend. Big deal.
2
@Michael I used to feel the same way. I don't anymore. Put on a pair of decent headphones and give a listen to Young's "On this Harvest Moon" or "This Old House of Ours" by CSNY. He knows a thing or two about imagery and melody and how to tug on your heart strings. He's the real thing.
3
I'm 67, and have listened as music technology has evolved over the last 50 years. I'm a bit of an audiophile having gone through vinyl, reel-to-reel, cassette and CD,s and my contribution to this discussion is when the younger crowd is exposed to a quality sound system with vinyl and CD's, their response is universal......" Gee, I've never heard those instruments before on this song."
10
I think Neil's a genius in that he has a skill set that allows him to excel as a composer, songwriter, guitarist, performer, producer, and activist. He is an evocative singer, though he is not blessed with a great voice. He is only called a "crank" because he's in his seventies. He has always been hard to please, whether as a member of Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, or as the leader of his own band, Crazy Horse. His insistence on making the music that his brain "hears" is what makes him unique, and, to my ears, an American treasure. Finally, he's right about the low fidelity music that has been foisted on us. Whether it has affected our brains, I don't know. But, it sure was a better aesthetic experience when we listened to albums or even reel-to-reel tapes played through amplifiers and speakers that had woofers, mid-ranges, and tweeters. We may not be able to change the way other people listen to music, but I can certainly listen with high quality components and gain a closer approximation of what the artist intended when the masters were pressed onto vinyl. Keep on rocking, indeed, Mr. Young...
12
Actually, he's a Canadian treasure :-).
3
@aeemrr Ha! Good point.
Less than a year ago I bought my first turntable and surround-sound stereo after a lifetime of boom boxes, CDs and .mp3 files. Sheer, matchless beauty.
At 50, I finally appreciate imperfection and trouble as sources of hope and beauty. I don’t agree with all of the author’s aesthetic judgments, but I know that our consciousness is shaped by sensory input, and I’m glad to see other people questioning the mindless party line that speed and efficiency are the only values.
4
This was an engaging article, but given the ample discussion about Young's distress over the quality of music as it is played back in the digital world, remarkably little is said about his PonoPlayer venture.
At the time, perhaps 2014, it may have been the biggest ever Kickstarter campaign and was wildly successful in raising nearly $6 million more than sought.
Why someone with access to capital and the means to finance such a venture would turn to Kickstarter always struck me as the ultimate in the expression of greed, as no equity was delivered to these early investors, unless you count T-shirts.
Long story short, the PonoPlayer died an ignominous death with promises unkept and damages done.
4
This piece is as poignant as it is brilliant and illuminating. It’s long, yes, but I have to read it again. Neil Young was the artist that took me across a line in 1969, and I have never looked back, but I’ve listened back. Samuels captures something I have probably never understood but have heard in my gut.
4
There is a difference between hearing and purposefully listening to music. Sound quality has changed, that is a fact. To disagree with Neil Young because of his personality, age, old school vs. new school...is missing the point. The man knows what he is talking about, have some respect for a true artist and musician and try to understand why he cares so much. Streaming files are not the same as analog re-mastered recording, they qualitatively sound different. Perhaps a trained, attuned ear is required. It's a Catch-22, if you have not been exposed to good quality sound, how would you even know what you are missing? You wouldn't... and that is the whole point.
6
Neil Young is an elitist, and Samuels his Sancho Panza. He misapprehends listening and hearing, he forgetting, even while driving in a car (or playing in a small hall or bar, or listening on FM or AM radio) how the experience of music, even his music, is tightly framed by the context, physical and intellectual, by attention paid, and by repeated listenings.
I could never afford the gear of perfection, but, if I could, it might be more like a taste of a rare wine, rarely tasted, than my real experience of live music, than my efforts to taste the synergy of word and sound over the radio static.
The GMO doctor makes delicious rice to cure vitamin A deficiency, makes a tomato taste good. The misanthrope rejects it because the greedy chemist just wants more corn and money, so all the progress is tossed with the bathwater. I will, tonight, instead, download a Neil Young song in MP4 and let myself bathe in its sound, its words, my memory of the many times I heard it, and I will still let it in.
3
One of my first concert experiences was Rust Never Sleeps, an album and stage show that perfectly exemplified Neil Young's two sides. From the thin acoustic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" to the crashing, loud, distorted "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" Neil Young has never been middle of the road.
4
You got a couple facts wrong. The bridge school was not founded in 2014. It's been around a lot longer than that. Why did it take so long to publish this? Talking about the release of the archives site? That's a couple years ago. This is kind of shoddy, man.
11
Lossy music gives me a headache. Full stop.
3
Spending thousands of dollars for audiophile stereo equipment is beyond the masses so most rarely experience music that doesn’t make you tired, wanting to turn it off. After spending thousands you now face the problem of poorly engineered recordings. The only artist whose every recording is perfect or near is Mark Knofler, everything crystal clear.
3
Eric Satie started "furniture music" in 1917, and he inadvertently started a war and won the battle. Forget fidelity of sound, people have no idea how to deal with quiet.
It was less than 150 years ago that if one wanted to listen to music, one had to either pay for it or make it oneself. Now, everyone has a a perpetual personal soundtrack, Autotuned to artificial pitch perfection, and the ubiquity of this sonic assault has made music as valued and special as paper napkins. Not sure what Neil Young is going to do about this cultural shift.
3
Neil Young is full of it. His ears must be so shot with his age and exposure to loud music that anything that relies on his auditory judgment is suspect. Streamed music (modern 320 kbs stuff) sounds identical to the original source. This has been proven many times in many ways, primarily by double-blind listening tests. His attempt to improve on it is just a big ripoff.
Yes, I am aware that conventional knowledge is that streamed music is "compressed". Well, duh, less data is required to be sent, so the data is really compressed. But when decoded on the other side, all the uncompressed dynamics are restored, so the music itself is not "compressed" - and crucially, the end audible content is indistinguishable from the uncompressed original. There is a difference between file compression (data) and dynamic range compression (music) that is misunderstood by just about everyone other than engineers.
Isn't it great that the vast majority of listeners are happy with streamed music, as they should be. After all, they are the young ones with still decent hearing.
7
You want cranky? All this controversy over analog and digital makes me head spin. My hearing is degraded enough that I probably can't tell the difference anyway. I've never understood someone paying thousands of dollars for "quality" in a stereo component when that same money could get an entire sound system that is just fine. I like a lot of Youngs music, and his political rantings dont bother me, after all, he has opinions, and unlike most of us, he has a platform. Rock on old man!
5
I take issue with the author's statement that Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney have become skeletal holograms of their former selves. (not sure about Jagger...)
1
Hurting music worse than his album 'Trans'?
1
Condensending and full of ageism. Not cleaver but boring.
2
I doubt you read the entire piece. I had the same impression a few 'graphs in but changed my tune by article's end. It's a wonderful article. One drawback to reading it on a smart phone as I did is having no context cues about its length.
this started out to be really interesting but somewhere around 20 million words in it became obvious that this piece was about the writer and not Neil. Point taken....our brains are being destroyed. Would love to read this piece after a ruthless edit.
7
Neil Young on his high horse - over and over again.
1
God bless you Neil for bringing us such a legacy of great lyrics and music. You should live and perform forever. However my man David great article but sometimes you lose me.
2
Neil Young is my man, always has been. Such a big influence. One funny note thou, the eye of a hurricane is calm. There is no harm in their eyes.
Neil Young is such a blessing. He has helped me understand myself better. Thanks Neil. Thanks again...and again.
5
The best way to hear music? Make your own, with friends. Next best? Support local groups who are out there doing it, in bars, on street corners, at the farmers market.
5
I use Apple’s lossless compression algorithm, and when I use high end headphones I hear sounds and words I had not heard before. So the quality can be pretty good, if you’re aware and willing to give up the space to large audio files.
Thank you Neil, for your seminal work through the years. I find I return to it often.
2
I think this is a great and helpful article. To visit a museum or to see live music is the one way we have to break out of our digital prisons and viscerally experience human creativity and talent at it's peak. To hear great recorded music on an excellent sound system is an epiphany to those used to earbud and digital recordings. Neil has it right, and the author of this column gets it too. I hope people listen.
2
As someone who's done radio for more than 40 years, I can relate to what Neil Young has to say. When artists send me music and say, "Here's the link to my mP3," or "Just download my music," I won't because it's not of high enough quality for airplay. But then again, I'm just a couple of years younger than Neil and clearly remember his early years, both as a solo act, as well as with CSNY and with Crazy Horse.
Not only are the streaming services doing damage to the quality of the sound, but artists are also receiving pittances in royalties. Some have even given up on making recordings becuase of it. And yet, how does one get his/her music heard without making recordings?
I appreciate this article both because of the detail about sound quality and Neil Young and also about the information about polio and cystic fibrosis and their impact on Neil (and Joni). Those of us who lived through the polio days remember them well. Thank you, David Samuels, for such a well-written piece.
4
I agree that compressed digital music is awful. But it is also easy to rectify - just don't buy and play compressed music. There are now several uncompressed CD-quality streaming services available, as well as CD-quality downloads and just plain old CD's.
What is much less well-known is the fact that most Digital to Analogue Converters (DACs), electronics used to convert the digital data to sound, have been optimized to the point where they ruin the musicality of the original recording. Most are based on a design called sigma-delta conversion, and are actually inferior to the original DACs from the early days. Look up R2R (also known as ladder DACs). Better yet, listen to them, and you will rediscover the musicality you remember from records and tape. Unfortunately, they are more expensive, but if they were more broadly adopted by manufacturers, it would restore a lot of the missing musicality, digital notwithstanding.
2
We have made things smaller, lighter, less expensive, but Neil is right, it is not better in quality than what we had 40 ~ 50 years ago. Hi-Fi is out, Wi-Fi is in.
6
No, he's not right. To the contrary, wildly wrong and nonsensical about the supposed degraded quality of digital audio. His opinions are unscientific, and the uniformed speculative ramblings of an old grump. Modern music might be bad (or at least to him), but it's not the digital medium that's the issue.
4
Music is unscientific.
5
@Harry Grimes But he's opining about technology he knows nothing about. And I'd bet major cash that he wouldn't be able to tell the difference in a blindfold test with one of his tunes in MP3 format, streamed, CD or vinyl. At his age, with the raging volume he's subjected himself to year after year, he probably can't hear past 5 kHz and most likely has tinnitus.
Comparing Young to other musical giants destroys this piece. OK, the author thinks Neil is better than anyone. I love much of Neil Young's music, but most of the names mentioned diminutively here I find to be much greater talents. It makes it hard to believe most of the author's take on his subject.
1
I get what you're saying. But here you are comparing NY's music to that of other musical giants.
2
I grew up in a small Midwestern farming community where you mostly heard the music that was playing on AM radio. Then I headed off to college, where a roommate handed me a set of Koss headlines and queued up an album on his turntable. "Everyone Knows This is Nowhere" is as spiritually relevent to me now as it was back in 1970.
8
My home audio system includes a turntable and the ability to stream digital files. Almost everyone wants to hear vinyl and comments on how great it is when I throw a record on. Then I let them know that because I don't have an analog pre-amp the record they think sounds so great is being digitized and fed through a DAC so what they are hearing is actually digital. I then play them the same track as a high res digital stream and pretty much uniformly they comment "wow" that sounds even better.
Yes low quality streams don't sound that great, but absolutely nothing has increased my musical enjoyment more than the huge array of lossless and high res streams available though services like Tidal. Moreover, more and more people are looking for better quality, thus the emergence of small, portable headphone dac's and the recent proliferation of high quality headphones.
3
Baloney.
He's always been full of baloney.
Digital "flattens out" nothing. Vinyl (which did get much better as digital came in) scratches.
& at that time, I recall, old young was railing against cds/ that the recorded sound would slowly fade away.
4
Clean your ears or get a better stereo. I can CLEARLY hear dynamics being squashed by lossy streaming services. To me it’s a problem of perspective: if you don’t know what good sound sounds like - you’re doomed Underdog.
2
@Harry Grimes
maybe so. I don't stream music. If I wanted to hear lousy sound, I'd use a lousy medium.
Think I'll pack it in and
Buy a pickup.
Take it down to L.A.
It was then that I knew I had had enough
Burn my credit card for fuel.
Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand.
Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself
when you're old enough to repay but young enough to sell?
We've got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man.
We've got a kinder gentler machine gun hand.
Thank you, Neil! Keep on rockin in the free world!!
11
@NB
He’d sing a song in a shaky voice
That real as the day is long.
This ol’ world keeps spinnin’ round
It’s a wonder tall trees ain’t layin’ down.
2
It is really nice to read an honest, touching article about one of the great poets of all time. His music makes a connection with the listener that doesn't happen with many other performers these days. His work is best on vinyl because a little scratchiness and popping makes his music even more real.
BTW, it isn't that hot in Malibu in the summer. They do get the morning coastal marine layer.
9
" “Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change its behavior as a result of experience.” In 2000, Kandel was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology." Kandel didn't get the prize for facile comments such as that..
4
Very interesting read and glad to see his sound engineers given some credit as well. It's inspired me to finally find a needle for my old turntable so I can again listen to my Neil Young records, if they haven't warped from years of less than ideal storage.
6
And then there was Owsley's wall of sound if you want to go there. But, I always loved the small club (village vanguard, the cabale) or coffee house but the Avalon and Fillmore were great too. Real sound, all sound and dancing too. The stuff that is downloaded just ain't the same, or even close to great music. Records and CDs are good but streaming is really missing the essence of great sound. By the way, Neil was never your Hot rock star, he sings real pretty though and still does.
4
yes, he’s right
4
Neil Young always refused to bend his life for the consideration those who questioned his work. Neil kept to his straight and narrow. Neil Young is the best because he worked tirelessly to give his version of music to us. Neil Young did not work to be the best. He always produced the exact music he wanted. It is the exact product I needed. Thank You Neil. Left us helpless, right where everyone always is.
10
Did this entire piece appear in the print edition? Or are we reading the draft version because there is infinite space on the internet? It cries out for a good editor to trim it down.
11
No need to trim. Is it hard for you to read or enjoy. What an odd thing to say ?
3
The author was obviously born a Ramblin' Man...
7
Don’t be so churlish. This is a fine piece, written from passion and love.
8
Another grumpy old rich man. But this time a Canadian.
2
Grumpy perhaps, but I dot assign that interpretation/ just passionate and we got older- what’s wrong with earning wealth creativity?
3
This is an interesting article because I enjoy reading about musicians that I have listened to for many years. It jumps all over the place and maybe you're trying to give an impression of what it's like to be in the company of Neil Young. I have never understood what it means that one musician would blow another off a stage as you have suggested in the hierarchy of Young, Frusciante, Allman. They are all uniquely talented. There's no need to rank musicians like this.
8
Almost 50 years ago, with my first real "payroll" job at $2.43/hour, 40 hr./week, I saved every penny I could to save up for my significant purchase with my own money: an audiophile-worthy stereo system. You could listen to every note in all its glory -- not the compressed crap you get today.
I was not alone--for my teen-age peers, spare cash (if any) went to good music systems, rock concerts, hot-rods, or sometimes even (for the lucky ones) steady girlfriends, in that order of priority (not to mention affordability)! Few of my kid's generation (all grown) seem to care about music that much. We had a soundtrack to our lives, and a darned good one at that, and it was worth devoted--nay, intense--listening. (Try Yes's "Close to the Edge" LP through studio headphones and a little --ahem-- 70s-quality cannabis enhancement.)
There are still some newer bands whose recordings are worth quality reproduction, but they are not as pervasive as before.
Rant on, Neill. When I am gone, put these words on my marker:
"We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion-year-old carbon,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden."
10
Those are Joni Mitchell’s words.
7
70's quality cannabis? Apparently you haven't tried what is legally being sold in shops all over Oregon, Colorado, etc. It makes everything from the 70's ditchweed by comparison.
wow. what a great essay. i haven't listened to much neal young made since the mid-70s, but i've always dug down by the river, cowgirl in the sand, hurricane, a man needs a maid and his earlier stuff. he's such an honest, interesting and important artist. reading about what he's into now just reminds me of what a joy it was to be exposed to all of that great music in the 60s and 70s. before music went to hell.
6
Recordings, and the popularization of "star quality" has ruined music. Nearly totally taken it out of the community domaine, stifled lots of creativity, and made it into one fad after another. It isn't better quality recording we need, but people making their own joyful noise, in concert with one another, in contact with one another, not for the sake of stardom, nor aping the same. There is nothing really communal about mass concerts, they suck attention from one another, from personal interaction, to created mass experience, or at best imitation. Generally, participation is passive even when it is frenzied. While this is not a true total picture, it become the more pervasive paradigm decade by decade. I grew up in the 50s when all this started to overwhelm. I was, and remain, deeply disturbed by it. I don't care if it is Neil Young, Snoop Dog, Placido Domingo, or Yoyo Ma, the homage to "top rate" dimities us all. Media has proven the enemy of individuals.
2
Is "dimities" anything like "covfefe"?
4
For decades I searched for and spent more money than my modest budget could realistically afford on both audio equipment and the music. When I adopted the CD format in 1984, I was thankful that the recording medium was not injecting sound that the artist did not intend to be there, like crackles, pops and factory provided scratches (vinyl) tape hiss (cassettes). Many early CDs suffered from the fact that audio engineers were not adept at mastering the medium, but overall CDs were a godsend to me. As I purchased more and more CDs, I ended up relegating my vinyl to the attic, where it stayed for almost 20 years. Digitizing technology eventually became user friendly enough that I spent a year ripping my vinyl collection to high bit mp3, freeing them from storage and listenable on my iPod. Now at 65 years old and after climbing the money alter to find appropriate earbuds to listen to these portable files, I would quite honestly fetch my Shure SE846 earbuds before any other object if my house were on fire.
I notice the author quickly skips over the compact disc in favor of the oh-so-trendy retrograde movement towards vinyl. But the unloved CD, particularly the latter day SACD is the ne plus ultra of sound reproduction. The "warmth" found in vinyl can very often become sheer aural muddiness depending on the pressing (or "de-pressing" as recording engineers in the original vinyl era called it). Issues of bad recording mixes aside (a problem with many pop CDs in the 90's) the CD is much more portable and less fragile than the LP, and a much closer reproduction of the music as it was played. Let the CD renaissance begin.
13
Audiophiles use Music to listen to their equipment.
Musicphiles use equipment to listen to their music.
The rest of us are somewhere in between.
Most “live” music is played through someone else’s speakers.
Vinyl luddites don’t realize there are streaming devices designed by some of the oldest names in audio that sound better than tube amps.
Jerry Garcia came to us and said that he so loved his JBL living room speakers that he wanted to hundred pair for a concert in Golden Gate Park.
We told him it doesn’t work that way.
He did it anyway.
3
@Jim Stetson Absolutely untrue, the whole idea of being an audiophile is to make the most of the music, bringing as close to the live experience as possible
Never heard his life story before. I think I understand "Sugar Mountain" at a deeper level now.
4
Thanks Neil for everything.
Long may you run.
4
There are two forms of compression that are impacting today's music and distribution. One is a loss of dynamic range caused by pushing levels to the maximum. This means there is less range between the loud and quiet parts of a song, which means you are using less dynamic range. There was an excellent article about this recently in this very paper (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/what-these-grammy-songs-tell-us-about-the-loudness-wars.html). Another is due to heavy mp3 compression.
I have over 700 CDs. When I rip them, I always encode to 224+ kbps w/ VBR (variable bit rate). My untrained ear cannot differentiate between the mp3 version and the original CD (it may also have to due with headphone and/or DAC quality). When I've listened to SiriusXM or some other satellite radio, I am amazed at how lousy the sound quality is. I guess it's because they are using something on the order of 32 kbps. I believe streaming services tend to provide 256 kbps when quality of service allows.
Note that CDs don't quite have the full range that we can hear. CDs sample at 44 kHz in order to reproduce (up to) 22 kHz sounds. Problem is that the high-pass filter used to block transient noises outside that range starts impacting the source signal at around 18 kHz. We really should have gone with 48 kHz sampling the way DAT (Digital Audio Tape) did to avoid this.
1
He's a purist, and one of the last men standing in popular music.
The other is Jimmy Buffett,
1
@ David Henry- Van and Bob and Joni and JT.
1
@Lynn Fitzgerald None have done creative work in quite some time.
So the title of this article suggests that Neil Young or the author will actually explain the impact on our brains of digital sound, which would have been interesting.
Instead it meanders between a hot afternoon on the porch with Neil Young and a very superficial discussion of the problems of digital sound.
Should have been titled, "An Afternoon on a Hot Porch in California with Neil Young and Something About Digital Music."
7
If digital music offends your senses, learn to play an acoustic instrument, join an ensemble or band, and find a beautiful space in which to create your art. If it does not, then enjoy the convenience of being able to find virtually any piece of recorded music within moments. Jeez, first world problems...
1
@Maury Woods
Why are you so offended because someone enjoys the sounds as they were created by the artists? I like to go to forests and enjoy the sounds of the birds and streams without interference from the external world, and see the birds and trees without the smog and pollution that humans create. Why do you care if I like that or not? It’s my business. If you prefer to stick your face inside a noisy and smoke blasting oil refinery chimney I’m not going to be the one who will stop you. Enjoy yourself!
A beautiful, moving and deeply personal story.
Thank you.
(PS: Perhaps the next time, the editors could alter or remove such condescending remarks as 'a show of old-school male competitive affection' or referring to Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney as 'skeletal holograms of their former selves' when they continue to produce vital and original work. )
6
@ Mantaa666- and Sir Van
@manta666
Yes indeed! Condescending and wrong. Bad combination!
Irked me NO END!
As the skeletal hologram once sang, “Well, my heart's in The Highlands, I can only get there one step at a time, I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound, Someone's always yellin' "Turn it down" !
5
Still have my Pono. Still plays music better than anything. He had the right idea, but he let it get the better of him. The mediocrity that drives this world's economies is truly doing to be the death of democracy.
Embracing imperfection vaccinates us from the likes of Trump. And I'm losing hope fast that people will ever realize that.
Tin Solders and Nixon's coming...
3
After the Gold Rush is still my favorite record of all time. Sure, there are other records that have some better songs, arguably.
But for me, nothing hits on such an emotional level.
I used to try to sing like Neil Young. Talk about horrible sounds!
4
I don't think Mr. Young invested in the PonoPlayer out of the goodness of his heart, and I don't think this crusade is altruistic.
1
Boo Jim in Columbia SC. He invested lots into that endeavor and it wasn’t about being altruistic. What did you not understand about his desire to hear a song without being packed down into a million bits and bites of almost nothingness tin sounds.
1
Here is a fantastic lecture given by Andrew Scheps on the various streaming formats used and what they do to the original sound. He was presenting the lecture to representatives from various streaming services including YouTube. I believe Google hosted it and it was a presentation that Andrew originally gave to the Recording Academy. He is on the same page as Neil Young on this one and even played examples for all of the reps to hear. Unfortunately for us, due to copyright laws the audio comparison part is muted out. But its a crash course on what digital does, and what exactly is being removed, how, etc. If you are into recording, its interesting. If not, it will more than likely go way over one's head pretty quickly.
http://www.spencerlee.audio/indexa5/VIDEO-TUTORIALS-ON-SOUND/Audio-Education-Links/Recording-General/Andrew-Scheps-Lost-in-Translation-Audio-Quality-in-Streaming-Media/306
2
I hate to be the party pooper here, but Neil's commitment to ultra high-def audio is utterly misguided. The case against 24/192 audio was thoroughly debunked by Chris Montgomery, audio engineer and creator of the Ogg Vorbis codec, years ago back when Neil first introduced Pono. It is long and fairly technical, but no so much that the interested layperson can not grasp the concepts.
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
This argument has been going on in audio circles on the web for years, and the bottom line is that all that high sample rates do is capture frequencies far far beyond anything any human can actually here, and none but the most highly specialized audio equipment could reproduce. Hi-res enthusiasts have for years been challenged to demonstrate that they can hear any difference between hi-res recordings and the same recording downsampled to CD audio quality using double-blind ABX listening tests. No one has ever shown they can can do so, and indeed, I have done many such tests myself which has convinced me that there is no perceptible quality difference.
Yes, the digital music era is rife with bad mastering and 'loudness war' dynamic compression. However, the solution is not bloating digital files to 6x the size of CD audio just to capture frequencies your equipment can't reproduce and would only be audible to bats and dolphins if it could.
5
All the masters to the recordings burned in the Universal Studios warehouse fire. Did anyone read the NYT feature a few months ago? So his quest is pointless.
4
Not pointless- Protect the storage
1
I like it that the photograph used with the headline of this article is, I believe, taken with a Polaroid Land Camera (perhaps with discontinued Fuji film). I use one every day and recognize the slight imperfections on the edges. Like Mr. Young's animosity towards the digitization of music, the film for this camera is no longer produced, meaning artists and photographers will no longer be ale to use this unique camera.
2
I saw Neil Young with Crazy Horse in Calgary many years ago. The worst concert we ever saw. People came to watch some new music, but mostly favorites, and all they got was lots of rambling noise of songs that I doubt 10 people in the arena were aware of. Neil was just impervious to the desire of the audience that paid big bucks to see him.
I like Neil Young's music, but I will pick and choose from the large volume of work he has produced, and skip what I don't want. To me, that music is just great. Sorry Neil.
While we can all debate the audio quality of streaming services ad nauseum, realize that they’re all better that the transistor radios we had when we were kids, and that most people have playback systems that make the data compression used for streaming irrelevant.
What Neil should be stomping up and down about is Spotify’s business model. The CEO of that company is worth billions but he pays microcents to the creators of the content that makes his company possible. Where’s the outrage about that?
Oh, and this line: “... portion of his unreleased songs in information-rich file formats and play them back through a DAC, which is a digital-to-analog converter device that approximates the sound of good vinyl.” That’s completely stupid and completely wrong.
2
I am seventy one and was very much a NY fan in his Crazy Horse days. Sadly he is living proof that too often one doesn't age well. What a sad, angry man who is uglier on the inside than the outside, if that is possible.
2
They got it now Robbie. I'm 81 and enjoyed Young over the years. I didn't think much about live music, but recently I went to a local jazz club, with some herbal assistance, and actually felt the music coming from the group as a single wave rather than individual instruments. It's been nice travelling along with him.
1
I get it, he's right but he's not righteous. The compression, the digitization, the LOUDNESS, is hard on the ears and the brain and does take away from the warmness and range of most music. But we have entered an era of access. So while the tone may be off-putting, having the ability to instantly access any song by almost any artist, almost anywhere in the world, is far more beneficial to the human soul than the warm fuzzy tone of a tube amp or needle skip...
@Adam. It isn't far more beneficial if the artist who created it isn't properly paid. With digital streaming, the artists are not adequately paid.
1
@Flaminia Historically speaking, the 40 years from 1960 -2000 were an anomaly for musicians and earnings . Those years are the only times in human history where musicians could be well paid. With so many musicians, offering so many options, today's artists are back to where it all started. You do it for love not for money and maybe, just maybe you'll make it. Modern pop stars are not musicians, they are entertainers. The money is in entertainment these days...
3
In the early 1970s, most college kids had a stereo system. A typical system was an AR Turntable, JBL speakers and a Yamaha receiver. We would have friends over, smoke some weed and spin a few records. Chit chat, laugh, it was all fun. Over the years my stereo has improved. I enjoy playing high resolution music files. I wish more music was available via high res music files. I have some vinyl records, but they are fragile and deteriorate with use. My son and daughter are now in their 30's. Neither one has a stereo. They can listen to music through their TV, but they don't. They listen to music through their Amazon Echo, or their phone. Both options provide a sound that is far inferior to the sound of the JBL speakers of yesteryear. They don't know what they are missing. They don't seem to care. My son said, "No one sits and listens to music anymore, Dad". It's a shame. Listening to music via high res music files on a quality high-end HiFi system is glorious. When produced well, the music sounds as if you are actually there in front of the band. Play a low res MP3 version of the same song and the difference is apparent. Tidal streams high resolution music files. I wish others, like spotify and apply music would do the same.
The writing style of the author could be much improved. Too many grammatical errors, compound sentences and so on. May I suggest The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
11
@IWC I have a nice sound system and sometimes I sit and listen. Other times I listen while cooking in the kitchen. But even when sitting and listening vlosely to a set of nice Aperion audio speakers and a good Denon amp i can not hear the difference between Tidal's high res streams and Apple Music's 256k AAC streams. and I certainly can't hear the difference between those AAC streams and 24bit 192kbps files. So all this hand wringing of Young and others seems like a lot of hot air.
What really seems to matter is playing music through good speakers and a good amp. Even Apple Music will blow you away when played on a system like that. Good speakers will get you 95% of the way there.
4
"All of my life, I had never rid myself of the preposterous idea that someday Young would vouchsafe to me some life-altering truth, until one day it happened..."
This paragraph, and the following two, made this completely worth reading. I didn't quite understand what this piece was really about until those words.
Great writing.
1
This is a fascinating article. I rarely read any thing "deep" about how sound has different meanings for different folks.
I do not like recorded music at all - much prefer to listen to a real violin (played well) or piano or whatever analogue. All digital sound sounds artificial, less complex to me - even at my friends' homes with hugely expensive sound systems. The recording is inevitably but a sketch of the actual performance sound.
But I do research on music I am not familiar with on the internet - or check out an artist that I am going to see/hear on my computer. This is to get an idea of what the music is going to be to see if it's promising/.interesting/unusual.
I have been to private events where Neal Young has played in an intimate party setting. It's fun, it's nice but I don't remember experiencing any of the complexities described in this article.
I prefer classical music (or indigenous music played by other cultures). I do not like or listen to mechanically/ digitallty produced sounds). I wonder why that is. Most of my friends are not big classical music fans. I am drawn enough to actual performance to play the piano myself.
There is no comparison in my experience between the complexity and richness of sound on a good piano - I have an older Steinway - and anything played on a digital system. Period. Half or maybe even all of the overtones and vibrato (? - words fail) are missing from digital sound. Digital sounds too "pure/simpistic."
3
The issue of analog and digital has been a topic of debate for some time. I had a large vinyl collection begun in the 60s. by 1980 I was married with children. I began converting my albums onto cassette. With children running around it was too often that albums were skipped, scratched and otherwise wrecked. Cassettes sounded awful. I converted to CD in the early 80s. Mastering of CDs was horrible. They sounded harsh and "bright". But as time went on, mastering of CDs improved greatly. I think today that CDs are usually relegated to cheap systems or boom box-type players. Music has never been a background for me. It's always been something that gets my full attention. I have invested considerable dollars in a stereo system that includes high-end disc players and DACs. I went to a local high-end vinyl retailer and went into their listening room. The sound from the vinyl was very, very good. I could not say it was better than the sound I get from my system. I think some audiophiles prefer vinyl while others digital because they have invested in their music systems. People who do not have this kind of investment may hear
a benefit in vinyl compared to digital but some of it may be their belief in the hype that is prevalent without really knowing. I have had people over for a listen. They always leave incredibly impressed. I always ask them to bring a favorite CD. Their remark is always the same. "Wow! It's like I'm really hearing it for the first time!"
Neil Young has a point about the deterioration in music playback platforms.
Bobby Vinton's 1962 hit, "Roses Are Red" sounds terrible as an mp3.
Mind you, it didn't sound that good on vinyl.
1
I have a suggestion for anyone concerned about the quality of the music we listen to: Don't listen to Neil Young.
@charles not even heart of gold?
2
There is no reason at all with today’s broadband and computer technology that I cannot get the sound of a master cut. Even streamed it’s doable. This idea if I got the studio cut it would cause piracy is preposterous as that is already being done. Technology has advanced. The recording industry CEO’s need to be educated. It’s time for MP3’s to go extinct.
Young is correct about sound. Siruis XM is horrifically compressed but so is Spotify--even when set at high quality--but which isn't as bad as Sirius XM.
Qobuz is the best app for streaming. They allow 24 bit files to be played or even purchased. I usually listen to them at CD quality. For special records, I purchase the 24 bit files and save them on a small hard drive for playback on a digital media player. You can find digital media players for under a hundred dollars. They plug into any sterio. The difference in sound is incredible.
I must say that in a similar way, what Neil says digital technology has done to music, it has done to too many articles in the NY Times. But instead of being diminished they are far too long. But really, as kid raised playing classical piano, I grew up in the 60's, and easily learned to teach myself basic guitar. I still consider Neil's first album (The Old Laughing Lady, The Loner, etc) one of my favorites of his haunting brand. But without a digital world, my kids would not have discovered so much of what they know. They are adults now but share a love of the Beatles and so much more all largely due to digital access. We'll always have the lyrics and melodies. And even if they do not sound quite so pure, they are still so much better than we can sing them. Not that that stops us from trying, over and over.
2
I'm with Neil. Two weeks ago, I made the switch to Tidal. Tidal offers FLAC and MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) audio formats for all songs in its catalogue.
I'm happy, hope you're happy too.
3
This is probably the most enjoyable, optimistic, and informative article I have read in a very long time. Good on you for not only reporting on a true genius but also sharing a little applied personal science that gives us all a reason to feel better about the day. I genuinely hope things continue to progress for you and your son and will look for your byline in the future. Its a pleasure to read someone who is easily literate.
8
I don't have anything profound to say, just that this article is wonderful and insightful on so many levels, just like Neil Young's music.
9
Paul McCartney a mere skeletal hologram of his former self?
McCartney continues to defy perceived limits of age and creativity with his live performances, in fact the energy he puts into his concerts would leave many performers half his age gasping for air and water. The sound he makes is truly music to my ears.
14
@Terry Small. Don't feel bad, Terry. The same writer had the nerve to list Graham Nash as the least talented member of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Y'know, the songwriter who actually gave them most of their hits.
8
I heard a Neil Young interview discussing GMO seeds. He was in the studio, I was in the tractor(terrible sound). He actually gets it.
Phil Rizzuto, Elvis, and Neil Young rockin in the free world cut through the din. Thanks man.
7
What a funny article. Until the author gets to the shared history of their somewhat troubled kids, he’s kind of nasty about Neil Young. There’s some thing vindictive in his writing. Shakespeare knew that music could calm the savage breast, and anyone who has been transported by live church, orchestral, or choral music knows its power. Since sounds come from vibration there can be little doubt that live music will have a different effect than does “canned” music. For those doubters in this column who denigrate the difference, I recommend live concerts.
2
Always lots of comments and complaints about sound quality. Here, on you tube, and elsewhere. as if everyone is an audio engineer. the method of amplification is often part of the total experience. Sure outdoor rock concerts often lack in sound quality. Because you are at an outdoor rock concert. The music sounds horrible while you travel from the 10th to the 20th floor. Guess what? You are in an elevator. I would seriously doubt that some one would listen to their favorite song on ear buds through their phone and then from the studio master tape (ok, going back in time a bit here) and say that is sounds the same.
But of course, live music does not always mean mega concert. How about a string quartet in an intimate setting?
Given the choice of a compressed mp3 of Neil Young's "Old Man" or hear it performed by Mr. Young sitting in a chair 5 feet in front of me? No comparison.
@John
And just how many people are given the choice described in your last paragraph? If the actual choice is a compressed mp3 versus nothing, what is your point?
"...at an age when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves." I just went to the Stones concert on 8/18/19 in Santa Clara. Neil Young couldn't come close today (or any day) to the kind of performance Mick Jagger is producing during this tour, even with a recently replaced heart valve. So careful with the comparisons (I did love Neil Young back before songs like "Tonight's the Night.")
5
Actually, inventor Scott de Martinville invented the first sound recording in France in 1857, not Edison as this author indicates. Further, to say that Hendrix was the greatest American popular musical talent ever, even maybe, is an overblown statement. I dislike ranking artists.
4
@Robert J. Bailey de Martinville's "phonautograph" merely recorded sounds in a graphic form and never was used to play back sounds until quite recently when modern computers were able to read the encoded scratchings that the phonautograph made and converted them into sounds once again. So as much as many historians dislike Edison (the man, inventor, and businessman), he does deserve his spot in history for creating the first apparatus to record AND playback sounds.
1
The author wrote “putting s screw into a bolt”, he probably meant to say “screwing a bolt into a nut”.
1
So many critics and god how tiresome you are. I love Neil Young. I've thought for longer than I knew that NY was concerned about it that all of this electronically perfected sound was bound to make people unable to appreciate music played by real instruments and actual musicians. Also, you only have to listen to Hendrix's Woodstock set to realize how truly great he was.
Here we get to be a fly on the wall watching Neil Young and Stephen Stills produce thrilling music while working on an idea for a new song, including some conversation, and I actually prefer what they do here over what became the actual recorded song! https://youtu.be/fWMGFnXHk44
Couldn't agree more with Neil about how preferable it is to have optimum sound quality. Perhaps our engineers will be able to work out a way to make that possible without losing the amazing new ways of listening to music we have all benefited from - go to it!
On the other hand, I would be remiss not to report how my late friend, pianist Don Shirley, was skeptical about those who insisted upon high-end audio equipment, finding that the most modest devises worked perfectly fine for him. There is at least a grain of truth here, as we tend to become accustomed to whatever set-ups we use on a regular basis, and sometimes even moving downward in quality reveals aspects of the music we haven't considered before.
That said, it was a major misstep when the music industry didn't allow DAT to become a universal standard following CDs because the difference between 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz is tremendous, the former sounding infinitely more lifelike. Now, if you make even an MP3 from a 48kHz file or higher, it arguably sounds better than a CD that uses 44.1 kHz, again depending on what devises you are using.
@Michael Robinson
One thing I would like to say regarding all this, and in all fairness, I have not specifically tested other products to date to compare, but I am thrilled by the audio quality of the computer, laptop and mobile phone I use all made by Apple. The quality of sound that have achieved here working within certain parameters one supposes are necessary, is astoundingly, elegantly, powerfully musical. And this comes from someone who was able to tell the difference between different brands of CDRs when conducting blindfold tests at the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology.
This is just too cliche. Old rocker who was well-compensated throwing up on current times. Streaming music is significantly more affordable than the albums his record companies sold. For Young, purity of sound* trumps access.
Neil Young was a product of his times. He should appreciate the fan base and music's economic model at the time that made his success possible.
*BTW, when you think of purity of sound, do you think Neil Young?
3
Beautiful writer. But he really is like a grumbly old man who doesn't like change. It's like my Grandmother who refuses to acknowledge PC's exist.
Listen to a lossless digital file and vinyl side by side on audiophile audio equipment and there will be slight nuances for each. However nothing to say one is better than the other.
If you are talking 320 kbps or less on that same equipment then yes it sounds like garbage.
I've spent countless thousands of dollars on equipment trying to get the sounds of the music right, going from 78s, to LPs, to stereo LPs, to tape, to CDs, to SACDs, and then to multi-channel SACDs. Ah, I had finally met nirvana. All those thousands of dollars had not gone to waste after all.
But eventually SACDs fell by the wayside followed by hi-res lossless music like Neil Young's Pono. Unfortunately, the costs associated with these formats just became too much for most people. And if you don't buy the expensive equipment you can't, for the most part, hear the difference between hi-res lossless and cheap streamed music.
But hi-res music refuses to die. Now there are sources like Qobuz, Primephonic, Tidal, and Apple that offer high quality hi-res sound. As for equipment, for a few hundred dollars one can now purchase multi-source hi-res players like those from BlueSound where with a good set of earphones you can hear fine sounding music at reasonable cost. And .. If you already have a full stereo system, it integrates nicely in with your current equipment.
Neil, don't fret, all is not lost - yet.
Neil Young is one of a kind genius. Sort of like the Quentin Tarantino of music. I only wish he'd be writing protest songs today as he did in the 1960s. We need that voice again.
2
Interesting piece with some nice writing. But it's unfortunate that he brings up Tomatis, whose pseudo-science ideas are really quite discredited today. There are many different types of treatments for auditory disorders (some more effective than others), and tons of important research on many aspects of brain plasticity, including rigorous studies of how music may influence brain function; but no serious scientist--and most certainly not Eric Kandel--would endorse the Tomatis concepts.
I know the pain, yearning and frustration of families with radically different children. We should know more about creative ways to help.
I saw Neil at Carnegie Hall a few years ago, and it's in my top 5 fave concerts ever. I do love the sound of older recordings much more than newer music, and compression absolutely changes the sound. But, you can't stop the future when it's already here.
Love Neil, don't love his style of delivery, but love his message.
I have spent quite a bit of time researching this issue -- I am something of an amateur expert -- and I can say with great assurance he is 100% correct. Regardless of whether you think you can hear the difference between extremely low-quality streaming music (Spotify very bad, XM the worst) there is an enormous difference.
While video has consistently improved (VHS to DVD to HD to 4K and beyond) audio has consistently degraded. As a store-and-forward technology vinyl was the pinnacle of mass market music distribution. CDs were a downgrade from vinyl, but still pretty good. MP3 was designed to deliver music through the then highly-limited Internet, so it cleverly erased frequencies to remove data (and fit in 56K dial up data connections). It was definitely not as good as CD, and, fiendishly, despite the increase in bandwidth, CODEC quality, processing speed, storage and much else, streaming music has just continued down the rabbit hole.
Young, and streaming services like Tidal and Deezer are trying to recover that quality. Also, there is a nifty product called SugarCube that allows you to "rip" vinyl to FLAC, WAV or ALAC format. Using this wonderful device, I have compared HI Def ripped albums to MP3 and streaming and they sound absolutely spectacular.
I understand the need of Luddites to pretend Hi Def music isn't better, But, Q.E.D. it is.
1
@Eric Warren There is no single 'mp3' quality. You (and content providers) can make mp3s with data bit rates ranging up to 320 kilobits/second...well beyond normal limits of detectability of artifacts. What providers *choose* to provide is a different issue. If Spotify , XM , etc *choose* use low data rates for lossy compression, and then choose to shrink dynamic range on top of that (making 'everything louder than everything else'), that's their commercial choice. It's not an inherent flaw of either data compression, or dynamic range compression, those are just tools to be used by artists and producers and providers, of widely varying aesthetic tastes and commercial imperatives. It's *their* fault if they make it sound bad, not the technology's fault.
4
@Steven Sullivan You are, of course, technically correct. I was using "MP3" as a kind of placeholder for a moment in time of the evolution of music store and forward technology. And, I didn't mean to blame technology. It is clearly up to the providers to use lwo, or high quality compression to either save money, or give the listener a better experience.
Thanks for the clarification.
Bizarrely in “Todays” digital world, try to find a digital streaming speaker or speaker with amplifier built-in and you can adjust the “Tone” the Treble, Mid-tones, or the Bass of the sound coming from the speakers or small amplifiers! They don't even have the knobs for it. Why not? I’m amazed on two counts: One is the arrogances of companies who producing the equipment, believe their set-up for sound is right for everyone of any age and any environment the spearker may be used in. Second that the “public/consumer” excepts this, why? I can only assume that the systemic long term listening to poor quality streaming has been experienced by a whole generation of young people who now know little else.
No wonder so many of the younger generation are joining the older generation and going back to older equipment, amps, tuners, equalizers, quality stereo speakers, vinyl LP, CD's, etc., equipment that "allows" you to control and modify the sound to fit the room and you for better sound experience.
1
I understand Neil Youg's concerns about recorded music. I contrasted that with my love of listening to my acoustical music friends play every Tuesday night. We've come to call it church. Recording serves a very large purpose. I believe it will never replace listening to a musician playing his creation which comes from their love of music and drive to create, from their heart. It is like church (for all I know about church), something to go to repeatedly for sharing, acceptance (Really! These givers are really accepting, encouraging people.), love. Don't forget, Neil Young, to go out to hear a musician. It may soothe your soul.
1
When I went to college in the 70s kids often brought large stereo systems with them that sounded pretty good.
When my step kids went to college they and their friends brought blue tooth speakers maybe the size of a kleenex box.
Compressed digital files, compressed further by bluetooth then sent to cheap speakers.
Yuk.
4
The writer refers to a digital to analog converter as if it's some sort of high-end piece of equipment. The truth is, every pc, mac, phone, cd player - really, any equipment that plays music from a file, has a digital to analog converter. I appreciate that the writer avoided endorsing Young's ideas on this subject, but it would have been nice to have included some intelligent discussion about it. By the way, vinyl, played on a cheap record player with cheap speakers, sounds far worse than a compressed MP3 file played on an iPhone through ear buds.
3
I completely agree. Great source material with impeccable production does don’t fare well played through substandard speakers or ear wearing devices. Unfortunately, the vast majority of music listeners have no idea what good sound sounds like.
Young is onto something with his criticism of digital music. But in science, there are two basic ways of looking into things, qualitatively and quantitatively.
Many audiophiles will tell you digital sound is inferior. Experts say that vinyl LPs are way better than CDs of the same music, nee information. Classical music has been devalued further in the digital age because its complexity and variety cannot be easily compressed in a file.
But then there is quantitative analysis. Things like Spotify and Sirius and YouTube bring you all music all the time. There is no time for reflection, digestion, and the silence that brought the transformative ability of music into relief.
There's simply too much music availability for the good of humanity. The sheer quantity of music negates its special purpose.
"When you see the beautiful organization of a fortunately composed work of art, you just say, "Aha!" Somehow it speaks to the order in your own life and leads to the realization of the very things that religions are concerned to render."
- Campbell
Pieces of music are works of art, also. Constant access to music dulls the senses and hippocampus of the brain. Steve Jobs made music a very fungible commodity.
It will be interesting to read what Young says about the sheer quantity of music in his book. The PonoPlayer for quality will not be enough. What is needed is a treatise to define Art in people's lives in relation to the rational and the transcendent.
1
Neil Young's passionate guitar was the star of the big Dylan tribute, even with Clapton et all sharing the stage.
As sure as mp3 streaming has been diluting revenue from artists who used to sell millions of albums (which is really at the heart of his concerns), nevertheless streaming,whether it be Spotify or global internet radio, has vastly expanded the artistic universe available for all to explore for enjoyment and inspiration.
1
OF COURSE analog sounds better than digital. Everyone who is into music knows this. However, I’m a broke college student. The only way I get to listen to music at all is through my $4.99 Spotify student plan. Let’s be realistic about the world now and realize that streaming music is the future; it takes up very little space, and it’s affordable.
2
@G
Well that's great. You know you can also save yourself a lot of time and trouble by reading the Cliffs' Notes or Sparknotes versions of the literature you're supposed to be reading. You can look at art online instead of in museums and galleries and watch documentaries instead of traveling.
A whole life from the couch!
1
@G
Wrong. Classical music engineers -- who 'knew music' -- were the first to embrace digital audio, and they never looked back.
1
Neil Young should know what he is talking about when it comes to quality music recordings. Listen to an album through a nice stereo system, then listen to the same song downloaded on your smartphone. There is no comparison.
5
@James
Comparing a 'nice' stereo system to a smartphone doesn't mean everything Neil says and believes about audio is true. It's a silly and incomplete comparison too. If you listen to well-recorded audio with 'nice' in-ear phones, over your smartphone, it may well sound better than that 'nice' stereo system.
Wait one minute! All "Prophet" Rock 'n Rollers always say, "The music is inside us" .. Does our inner soul recognize the difference between digital and phono? LP and CD?
I don't understand why Neil is so angry..
1
My sympathies to Ms. Hannah.
2
Thank God for Neil Young, still fighting to be, to teach us that the search for perfection is fraught with peril and the end product is just boring Man
1
I'm not a lawyer, but libel? Slander? I'm sure there's a lawyer here somewhere....”the same way that Monsanto is poisoning our food with genetically engineered seeds.”
I enjoyed Neil Young music back in the cassette era with a Sony Walkman(tm) and I’m sure inferior headsets. But it was fine for me. I have a bunch of “perfect sound forever” CD’s too, with similarly poor speakers or headsets to appreciate it all with, and I subscribe to Apple Music, for the streaming library (although you can download songs from there to your devices, at whatever bit rate they give you), all just fine for me.
I am a bit sorry I don't appreciate the music the same way Mr. Young does, he has a refined taste, but I don't enjoy wine either, I don't know what the fuss is about there. I am sure there is a market for him to find an audience with the billions of folks on our planet, they must be out there!
This was a fascinating story anyway, keep on keeping on Mr. Young!
3
As long as the listener is enjoying the musical experience it does not matter if they can’t realize audio nirvana. As a younger guy....say 45 years ago, I was in search of that level of listening. After climbing the ladder of aud
Half a century ago, I was a very confused 17 year old Columbia freshman, trying to live in Manhattan when it was pretty much unlivable, and with cops on horseback in full riot gear galloping onto campus every now and then and bonfires in the quad. Neil Young whispered in my ear: “I gotta get away from this day to day runnin’ around / Everybody knows this is nowhere.”
Next thing I knew, I was packing my stuff in the back of a cheap used car and headed to Portland... no, not Maine, think 3,000 miles further. Never looked back.
Thank you, Neil. I really needed that push.
205
@chambolle Indeed. Many of us had the same idea, and accomplished the move. Have a gander at the Portland-Seattle Metroplex today. Looking more like LA every day, with the 30-year clear cut rotations.
@chambolle Couldn't agree more ... the inspiration from those lyrics of the day propelled me from the "upper west side" to the Boise Front with many stops between!
2
@chambolle "I'll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island...." :)
2
I am a shameless ol' rocker and I love the music platforms of the day. No more hauling albums and CDs around. No more music 'furniture' of speakers, equalizers, amps, turntables, ect, hogging up space. I love making 'stations' based on one song. Tell Neil I'm going to make a "Down by the River" station on my Iphone, put on my bluetooth headphones, and go ride my expensive road bike down PCH near Malibu...just for him.
3
Just another very, very rich six-string philosopher, housed in a mansion somewhere protect from the common people, telling the rest of us how to live and what and how to listen to music - hey Neil, take a walk!
2
I've spent countless thousands of dollars on equipment trying to get the sounds of the music right, going from 78s, to LPs, to stereo LPs, to tape, to CDs, to SACDs, and then to multi-channel SACDs. Ah, I had finally met nirvana (i.e. San Francisco Symphony's SACD Mahler symphony series).
But eventually SACDs fell by the wayside followed by hi-res lossless music like Neil Young's Pono. Unfortunately, the costs associated with these formats just became too much for most people. And if you don't buy the expensive equipment you can't, for the most part, hear the difference between hi-res lossless and cheap streamed music.
But hi-res music refuses to die. Now there are sources like Qobuz, Primephonic, Tidal, and Apple that offer high quality hi-res sound. As for equipment, for a few hundred dollars one can now purchase multi-source hi-res players like those from BlueSound where with a good set of earphones you can hear fine sounding music at reasonable cost. And .. If you already have a full stereo system, it integrates nicely in with your current equipment.
Neil, don't fret, all is not yet lost.
1
I drive a '73 convertible with the original AM/FM radio - top of the line for listening to Mr. Young back in the day. Today, I'm lucky to get a couple of powerful FM stations to crackle through my original speakers. Yet, I cruise to an early 70s soundtrack by streaming Spotify to an external bluetooth speaker from my cellphone, allowing me to preserve the original interior. Best of both worlds.
2
I wished the writer was kinder to his subject. Was it necessary to describe Neil's looks as he did? Did it reveal some sort of bias on the writer's part? I don't know, but Neil's description seemed unnecessarily harsh and superfluous.
4
If anyone knows about brain damage, it's Neil Young.
He knows David Crosby.
3
I would like to offer a purely scientific perspective. The following article from 2012 mentions Neil Young and his efforts to promote the 24/192 digital music standard;
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
This article explains, in purely scientific terms, why Neil's opinion that the "improved" 24/192 CD standard was markedly superior to the original design using 16/44.1 had no basis in fact. The author certainly makes a strong case and has all the numbers to back up his claims. Having said that, I've never actually tried to confirm this myself as I lost my appetite for spending huge sums of money on esoteric music reproduction equipment many years ago. Could Neil's claims (in this case) just be a case of confirmation bias which would strain the credibility of future claims?
2
@Echis Ocellatus - I have done the double-blind ABX tests (using the foobar2000 audio player with an ABX plugin, in case anyone is interested in trying). The first time, on my home equipment, I was proven unable to discern any difference.
After relating my experience to an audio engineer friend who was convinced of the superiority of hi-res, he invited me to his studio to try the tests on pro audio equipment. Neither of us could demonstrate the ability to perceive a difference on the pro equipment either.
For anyone interested in actually trying to determine scientifically whether or not they can hear the difference, I suggest doing such tests for yourself. The article linked above contains some very good info on how to set up a listening test properly.
2
He's correct! Streaming music is garbage. It is terrible for your ears. Artists do not get properly compensated. Algorithms are not curators (indeed most humans who call themselves curators in 2019 are not curators, you need a PhD for that). The culture of background music everywhere is just pablum for constant empty consumerism or constant work. Thank you Neil Young.
2
Interesting, but lauding Young while deriding Dylan as a holograph of his old self indicates the writer is unaware of how prolific Dylan has been throughout his long career.
4
I love Neil Young, and am happy he's still around. I would think the passing of Pegi Young and Elliott Roberts, coupled with his home burning down might be weighing heavy on him. But maybe cranky suits him. Either way, author seems to have injected himself a bit too much into this piece.
Listen to live music so you know how it is supposed to sound instead of Silicon Valley's interpretation of music.
“God bless you, Neil,”
2
You mean "live" music amplified by speakers that are in a different stage location from the player/singer?
For a profile of Neil Young, this piece seems to spend a lot of time reflecting on David Samuels.
5
Nice to see him still kicking and making waves. Saw him with Crazy Horse outside by a river here in NH about 25 years ago and it was superb. His anthem "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World" is a fantastic ode to freedom - accompanied by his blistering lead guitar. His merging with Promise of the Real, led by Willie Nelson's gifted son Lukas, is just another wonderful facet of the diamond that is Neil Young. Long may he sing.
2
This is what happens when you are no longer relevant, the mind has slowed down, and you still think Kent State was last week!
At a Santana concert down at Shoreline one evening, I felt that, unlike at most other venues, the sound was just a bit too low to be truly impactful. My ears were actually straining to hear. It was frustrating.
Then, the fellow in front of us on the hill lit up some homegrown and I had a couple of samples.
All of a sudden, the band was playing just for me. I heard and savored every.single.note.
Yes, how you hear the music can make a world of difference.
1
If only more readers could take this as it was given -- as an exploration of what literally moves us in mind, body, and brain. And the things that are worth saving so that the unexplained can remain that way. Not to mention the music.
To those that only see this as excessive and off-the-mark, maybe you didn't really listen (to anything).
This essay is a hike up the mountain and there's Neil. Worth the trip.
5
Digital music isn't bad; it's what producers do to digital music that's bad. It gets bad when people subject it to excessive digital manipulation such as compression and clipping. And much of that applies to the poor quality streaming discussed in the article. But in the absence of that intentional mangling, a properly encoded lossless digital file is indistinguishable from an audio master.
Now granted, the early days of digital music were an auditory horror show; 96 kbps bit-rate songs, record companies rushing out CD versions of older albums without remastering them (leading to horrible sound and tape hiss), etc. But today, 99% of people cannot hear the difference between a properly encoded high quality MP3 and the original analog recording, and nobody can tell the difference between that original and a lossless digital version. Digital music itself isn't horrible; its biggest flaw is how easy it is to ruin. Any rant against digital music would be more properly directed against the recording and producing industry, not against digital music itself.
2
Great article, great writing, very entertaining to read, whether or not you concur with the good old days themes.
2
Neil is wrong about one element: There are many of us who understand that the social media metastasis in so many of us is a deadly societal cancer. Other than that underestimation, Neil is, as always, a prophet and, more importantly, a prophet who acts on what he sees.
1
Young has earned the right to say anything. He's not complaining; he'll illuminating.
Another "old man" still being creative is Jimmy Buffett.
Both are the last men standing.
Born in 1882, the legendary pianist, Artur Schnabel commented in his autobiography that sound recordings were devaluing music. In a TV interview with the great jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, Bill Boggs fetishizes Miles' recordings only to be admonished by Davis. Miles retorted that his records are just advertisements for the real thing: the live performance. Recorded music is the proverbial graven image. Artificial sound recordings have become a bane to music education as students of music typically mimic the recording without even the most basic understanding of the composition's structure, or language of the music they are playing. Music has become a mindless commodity. Form no longer follows function. Living breathing human performances are now peripheral to the commercial machine. It's an orchestra of technocrats.
2
We're talking Rock and Roll and Pop music here, right? Which was never more enjoyable to me than it was 55 years ago when I heard it on AM radio and on 45s played on a cheap record player. In mono.
1
@Thomas B
Mono doesn’t necessarily mean bad. The Beatles put tremendous effort into their mono recordings and the stereo versions were slapped together quickly.
Their mono recordings in general were far superior. And the best ones are the vinyl versions.
1
@Erik Frederiksen
Oh yeah, mono is fine. One of my favorite hi-fis used Fisher tube equipment and a single Altec 605 duplex speaker (Altec 605s were the monitors used for many Beatles recordings). It got the audiophile image and soundstage monkey off my back and let me listen while lying on the couch or a chair that wasn't in a sweetspot. Just hearing the music itself. Of course the Altec had excellent tone and clarity, dynamics too.
Quality matters far more than convenience. In the 1980s, the quality of life was rising higher than ever before, in all things, in the arts, entertainment, but it got derailed by the tech industry which brought things low once more.
Anyone who grew up with 78's, LPs, 8-track cartridges, Walkmans, etc. knows that this is hooey. I heard the music through the god-awful sound and fortunately, my music is played on acoustic instruments in a symphony hall or opera house. Those "Days on the Green" of my youth are memories of eardrum busting sound waves emanating at decibel levels where pitch was almost lost in the overdrive shrieks. Digital compression can work wonders in pop music and digital recordings of orchestral music and opera can reveal things lost even in the house live. I'll still go to concert hall but I'm happy to have Eugen Jochum's remastered set of Bruckner symphonies.
Neil is certainly a genius, possessed of a unique talent. He's also entitled to his opinion about the effects of digital technology on the essence of recorded music, and our relationship to it.
However, his opinion is wrong. It's one thing to find fault with the low bitrate, poorly encoded MP3 files that were common during the early years of online audio. They did indeed offer a substandard listening experience.
However, today's streaming audio experience is very different. Users of Spotify who care about good sound can - and often do - select their HiFi sound option, which is encoded at 320kbps using the Vorbis codec.
I guarantee that neither Neil nor any of those who join him in his obsession with pristine audio could distinguish between 320k Vorbis & the original source files in a true double-blind test - even if those sources were ultra-fidelity 24bit 196k files.
The idea that there is some missing bit of emotional impact in digital audio is an attractive one. It sounds like something that would be true. However, if it were then people would be able to pass double-blind tests, and they just don't.
Even the 160k Vorbis files that are used for normal Spotify streaming, or the 256k AAC files used by Apple Music are capable of providing a totally immersive, deeply emotional listening experience.
Don't let Neil tell you otherwise.
7
@Bill Goldsmith
My records sound better to me than 256, 320, cds, etc.
@Bill Goldsmith - Here is a nice talk by one of the most recognized engineers in music today. He goes into great detail about digital, the streaming services, and he even played examples for the representatives from various streaming services who the lecture was for. He is on the same page as Neil Young on this one.
http://www.spencerlee.audio/indexa5/VIDEO-TUTORIALS-ON-SOUND/Audio-Education-Links/Recording-General/Andrew-Scheps-Lost-in-Translation-Audio-Quality-in-Streaming-Media/306
What a fabulous piece of journalism. Lyrical and expansive with a depth seldom approached even in the best of literature. Mr. Samuels has crafted an interview reminiscent of James Agee. Words as enriching as Young's music. Thank you.
4
Neil may be speaking his truth, but my truth is that I fire up my [not to be named streaming service] and put on Andante cantabile and my never-stops-moving 7 year old listens with total focus. I put on Outkast and my toddler dances and laughs. I put on Gladys Knight and the Pips and my spouse and I sing together while we wash the dishes. I kinda think that's the point. Not whether the sound is audiophile quality.
8
No one over the age of 50 has hearing that extends deeply into the high frequencies. Double blind testing has consistently shown for well on 40 years now that you can transform (not compress) the analog output from microphones into digital format that is indistinguishable from the original. The combination of never having taken a single course in physics and being my age disqualifies Neil (who's music I play all the time) from having any view on this at all.
Rgrds-Ross
1
@Ross Salinger - You seem to be implying that the difference between low fidelity and high fidelity music resides only in the higher frequencies, and the inability to hear these frequencies renders someone unable to distinguish between the two. That's like suggesting that a colorblind person can't tell the difference between a stick figure and the Mona Lisa.
1
This article has many problems along with the insights. But the one I’d like to single out is that Bob Dylan retains his creative edge every bit as much as Uncle Neil, and the author’s diss is unwarranted. At 78, he tours relentlessly, challenging his audience with new and improvisational versions of his songs. Bob may not have the sheer energy of Young, but Neil would not be happy with this slight of his only creative peer among the rock gods of his generation.
9
Personally, I miss seeing Neil and his son Ben at San Jose Sharks games. It was just a parent and child taking in a hockey game, no celebrity stuff.
6
And he’d be up in the cheap seats in the upper bowl (at least the last time I saw him).
@Dewane Van Leuven I think Neil was in a seating area set aside for handicapped people with an assistant. I'm pretty sure that's what you're referring to - it is upper bowl, if I remember. I sit in the upper bowl when I go to a game, but I don't always look at the surroundings. But when I saw him, he was up there, not in the luxury suites.
"But Young hears something creepier and more insidious in the new music too. We are poisoning ourselves with degraded sound, he believes, the same way that Monsanto is poisoning our food with genetically engineered seeds."
Maybe, but Neil Young seems like an unlikely crusader against the poisoning of our brains. Having spent almost his entire life abusing drugs, and enabling a number of his bandmates to actually kill themselves in that endeavor, he has little room to preach to the world about the way music technology is affecting our neural pathways.
@Chuck French
For centuries people have ingested drugs for spiritual reasons, and creative people may be inspired by them. Whether that was Young's intention or not, it doesn't negate his statement about music or Monsanto, nor does his drug use matter in this regard.
His bandmates had the agency to decide themselves if they wanted to use.
4
@Chuck French he speaks from experience. and he's been sober for a while. nothing like a convert to press his religion on you.
@Chuck French
Someone who would write a song such as "The Needle and the Damage Done" is the exact opposite of an enabler.
3
Put the double disc "Weld" on a player. Turn it up to eleven.
Neil don't rust.
3
This is an article written by a journalist who just doesn't get it and makes a number of false claims. Sample:
"His peers talent-wise, at 19, included genius musicians like Stephen Stills, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, the last of whom was the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever. What set Young apart from that company was his sustained refusal to bend to anyone else’s idea of what audiences wanted to hear."
How did he draw the conclusion the others mentioned did bend? it's simply not true, particularly of Duane who died too young.
10
I agree completely. In fact, I’m kind of surprised at how many readers seem to think this is great journalism. The writer inserts himself into the story way too often for my taste
2
@Greg
Agree. None of them sold out. And if he was going to mention them he should have included Terry Kath of Chicago, who Hendrix claimed was a better guitar player than himself.
2
I'm generally a fan of Young and feel that sound quality is absolutely an issue when it comes to ideal sound reproduction. However to me more of the core issue, since sound reproduction is only and ever will be an approximation of the real thing, is the music itself. When the author says that Mozart is "perhaps the most perfectly structured and at the same time most effortlessly fluid sound that human being have ever made".....I think speaks more to the truth. And of course, one could easily add Bach, Brahms, etc. to this list. The music of Neil Young can be great too----and according to the author, it changed his life as he listened to it ON A SONY WALKMAN.....an unequivocally worse medium than any of the digital formats that are discussed in the piece. Once again, point being-----it's the quality of the composition that is MOST important.....then and only then should one start to get down into the weeds of sound reproduction fidelity issues!!
4
A Dual turntable with a Grado stylus into a Marantz Amp to Marantz floor speakers to get started. On the turntable clean the stylus, adjust the weight on the stylus, anti-skating and pitch, check. On the Amp set treble, bass and balance, check. Select the record. Vacuum clean the record of old cat hairs and dust on a Nitty Gritty. Place selected record on the antistatic mat, lift the tone arm, position the stylus and ease it down. Now you are connected to recording at its best. It is not convenient, portable or of the times but Eric Dolphy's "Limelight" sounds as good today as it did all those decades ago when I bought it. He died 27 days after after that performance. His last date plays again whenever it calls for me. It's called vinyl.
3
Two of my favourite things over morning coffee: NYT and Neil Young. A marriage made in heaven. Thank goodness there are news outlets around that still publish long and beautiful stories.
12
As a musician with an excellent day career who is about to enter my 5th decade of playing for fun and a bit of cash here and there over the decades, and who remembers the heydays of vinyl, and giant stereo systems, and reel to reel tape...
I don't miss vinyl one dang bit, and I'll never buy or collect anymore. I know what live music sounds like, I perform it all the time.
I loved CDs when they came out. I've never understood the fetishization of vinyl and demonization of digital. CDs, to my ears, sound a zillion times better than fresh vinyl ever did.
The only real "difference" is the use of giant speakers and a set up room for listening in the 60s and 70s vs. today's tiny earbuds. Of course, you're not going to get the same "sound experience" between the two setups. Reality is back in the day most of us never had the cash, or home space for those kind of audiophile setups.
Rather than spend time degrading the pap that many people moan about as constituting popular music now, a) a lot of pop music always been that way and b) the best thing you can do for music is GO SEE LIVE MUSICIANS. Period. Quit worrying about how music is packaged for listening at leisure - but as someone who has moved 100s of heavy records and CD cases more than once, I love having thousands of songs in solid state memory.
Neil Young should focus on what he does best - blasting away on a tortured Les Paul in whatever iteration of Crazy Horse he plays with these days.
9
I invited a friend who is a prominent classical violinist to listen to two versions of Sgt. Pepper. First we listened to a typical iTunes version, then I put on the vinyl record on a $800 turntable.
He shook his head in amazement. Said the digital version sounded horrible and wondered if his playing was different due to all the digital music he’d been listening to.
4
@Erik Frederiksen
How much for the speakers to go with that $800 turntable? The sound system gets pricey quick. If you appreciate it, that's all that matters. Just understand the folks who like music just fine at lower sample rates, lesser fidelity, and much lower cost.
I feel a little badly that the difference is lost on me but I enjoyed reading this article anyway and learning about the fine points. I would not be satisfied looking at pixellated art work in the museum, as the writer uses in comparison to digital music, that's why I’m happy people can appreciate the difference, and can afford to appreciate it. I’m paying about .32 a day to stream, and don’t listen everyday. At this rate it would take me 8 years approx. to afford the turntable!
2
@EAB
You make a salient point.
And there are those whose hearing isn't nuanced enough to tell the difference between something streamed and vinyl.
My brother prefers streamed music through earbuds whereas I prefer cds or vinyl through speakers. Earbuds just aren't as joyful as full open room sound.
3
@Erik Frederiksen - I used my own good turntable and a high quality PC soundcard to rip by own high rate MP3 files directly from the vinyl. The sound quality of the MP3 files is phenomenal and indistinguishable from the vinyl... and far better sounding than iTunes versions of those songs. This would suggest that digitization itself isn't the culprit; horrible hack producers are. They destroyed the songs when they digitally mastered them. The real crisis is that there is a lack of competent music producers and engineers in the music industry. Trust me, if you listen to the Led Zeppelin catalog that Jimmy Page personally remastered, it is higher fidelity than their vinyl albums; so much so that incidental sounds like a squeaking bass drum pedal can be heard... much to Jimmy's chagrin.
3
Young’s devotion to the richness of music is admirable, but did anyone else see the irony in spending millions to perfect his recordings only to prefer listening to them in his car over a car stereo system with car speakers and the thrum of tires and the rush of wind and whirring fans?
1
@Jay
Do you think his car has a typical car audio system? You can put pretty high end equipment in a car.
1
@JayWell, no. I don't see the irony. A lot of artists are deeply concerned about sound. One example (of many) of paying attention to the "car radio sound" is Ry Cooder. His album "I, Flathead" is an example of this. He paid a lot of attention getting the sound of the album to approximate the sound one heard on car radios back in the 1960s. He also did this with some songs on "Chavez Ravine."
If you don't get it, then your saying "Young's devotion to the richness of music is admirable" is sort of like a character on the Soprano's saying "with all due respect..." which actually meant "you're full of it."
1
@Erik Frederiksen
And you can put Versace on a pig, but it still won't look like Gisele.
Neil and I have a friend in common, Mike Grellman, who has one of the finest stereo setups imaginable. I cannot forget the beautiful sounds of the vinyl Mike played for me. So unlike digitized music. Neil is right. Let's not lose the quality of sounds music was meant to project.
2
The only thing that vinyl adds to audio is distortion. It can be lovely distortion, delightfully musical distortion, but it is not a purer communication of the essence of the music.
Vinyl can certainly sound beautiful. But that beauty fades rapidly as records are played. And it only emerges if you have really great - ie really expensive - gear.
To say that vinyl is inherently superior to digital is just silly. It's certainly not something that someone (like me) who spent decades professionally coaxing quality sound out of vinyl records would ever say.
1
A great and thoughtful article, hope inspiring.
Thank you Both!
2
Fifty years ago, my vinyl albums sounded great for the first few times I played them. Then they got scratched or worn out or dirty whatever else happened to them. They then sounded no better than what I can now listen to free over youtube. Being nostalgic for vinyl records is like being nostalgic for living in a cave.
The technology to reproduce good digital sound must exist. If LIGO can capture the sound of two black holes colliding, we all should be able to have decent home audio systems.
3
You obviously don’t know how to care for vinyl. I own thousands played many, many times and they still sound better than my CD’s or streaming.
4
@Steve W
LIGO cost $620 million dollars. My JBL bluetooth speaker cost $60. That's some range there.
A bit rambling but then so is Neil. Always good to hear about him.
4
He should put his money where his mouth is given he is so upset and our present day reality
3
I just invested $1300 dollars into sonic upgrades (subwoofer, AV receiver and HD Blu-Ray player) and another 2K in a new OLED tv monitor. My five matching surround sound speakers are still great after the $2,000 investment ten years ago. How many can afford a sound and video system like the one I've assembled in order to appreciate what high-end content is available?
2
@Jim Smith - Did you acoustically treat your room as well?
Wow...what a beautiful piece..!
3
"It’s strange to imagine that Young might be a prophet of sorts." Listen to After the Gold Rush, recorded nearly 50 years ago. There's some prophesy for our times.
10
I grew up listening to Mr Young I can honestly say the best part of the last two years has been when I went commercial free on Pandora and have listened to more music of different styles than the previous 20. I guess there is a Ying and a Yang.
3
Dylan is a skeletal hologram of his former self? Are you kidding me? I tuned out of this interview right there. No way can you compare Dylan with McCartney or Jagger like that, all icons from the sixties and seventies but Dylan has remained vital and engaging the whole time since. I’m sure Mr. Young would agree!
11
@Matthew S
Yup, I saw Paul McCartney at Coachella maybe 8-10 years ago and it was one of the best concerts I’d ever been to.
1
@Matthew S
So true! Ha! The skeletal hologram himself performed “Will the Circle be Unbroken” with Mr. Young at Ireland’s Nowlan Park in mid July 2019, at (what is for now) the last stop on the Neverending Tour. The first time they have performed together in 25 years. Let’s all hope not the last!
2
After blasting loud music through his ears for 60 years can he actually hear discriminating details in music?
5
@EGD - I studied recording engineering in college and we were taught that most people over the age of 30 can no longer hear the top 25% of frequencies. If humans can hear upwards of say, 20kHz then a 30 year old might already be down to only hearing 15kHz and below.
One famous engineer with a teaching site online talks about another famous engineer he knows who can no longer even hear a tambourine sound so the guy relies on his younger staff to fill in the blanks.
I'm grey haired and I'm down to around 13.5kHz.
1
Hmm, been wondering about the cd, mp3, and streaming music, but for the life of me, I can't hear much difference. My hearing is more limited in my 60s, I don't think is the recordings.
And listen to Pegi's records and her anger at Young for leaving her for Daryl Hannah. Not pretty.
Young is one of my all time favorites and the live stuff from the 70s he is releasing now is fantastic.
The biography I like of him was "Shakey". And he is strange dude.
6
I love all kinds of music, but like most of us, have no musical training. I am afraid the argument of digital vs. analog is largely lost on me. When I listen to Glenn Gould’s performance of The Goldberg Variations on my iphone through good headphones, it sounds glorious.
This piece tosses around terms like “genius” and “brilliant” way too much. And Jimi Hendrix stands at the summit of American popular music? Um, no.
I think the writer is too much of a Neil Young fanboy. As a result, this essay is overblown.
142
@Mark Siegel
I agree with you, but maybe the writer meant in that era. As our population grows, the most popular pop musician is likely to be within the most populated demographic! Not from fifty years ago.
3
I guess you don’t know how much better fresh Belgian chocolate is versus Hershey’s until you’ve had fresh Belgian chocolate. Enough said.
74
@Mark Siegel I've listened to the same passage of music in lossless and in compressed formats, and i cannot tell which is which. I've seen very acute listeners in similar quandaries online. When many instruments are playing simultaneously, some completely drown out the quieter notes of others. Including inaudible sounds in the music doesn't make it sound better.
3
Mark Zuckerberg said “Young people are just smarter.” In a creative sense, he’s right. You can’t blame these creative geniuses for not continuing to pump out trailblazing masterpieces in their 70s.
1
@Stephen
'Mark Zuckerberg said “Young people are just smarter.”'
...said the young guy without the wisdom to know the naïveté of his statement.
1
There’s a second big point missing with the overall commentary stuck on the technical of the music production.
Those of us who grew up in the era, Neil Young remains the most influential and defines the soul of our music essence. If you agree “recommend”
5
Nothing like having the soul of your musical essence defined! (Whatever that means...)
1
I think I learned more about Samuels in this article than about Young. I could only make it halfway through. It seems like Samuels failed to help Young be at ease and draw him out (probably a difficult task, I admit), and because of that, Samuels compensates for the lack of insights coming directly from Young, with his (Samuels') own ideas and tangents.
3
Neil Young's problem with digital music is hearing damage. MP3s really only sound right to people with normal hearing. They are optimized for normal hearing. He's spent years standing in front of a bank of amps at high volume: he has serious hearing loss compounded by age.
Other than that he's just a crabby old man getting a pass because he wrote a lot of good songs way back in the day.
2
@momalle3 - "MP3s really only sound right to people with normal hearing. They are optimized for normal hearing."
This is not what I was taught in college studying recording engineering but rather that mp3's have smaller file sizes than say a wav file because the mp3 will shave off the top frequencies of human hearing. Here is a crash course by a top engineer discussing this. He was presenting this to streaming services representatives. Unfortunately, due to copyright reasons, the audio comparison is cut out but Mr. Scheps goes into great detail about what exactly gets lost in streaming music. And he even discusses Neil Young's last album and his demands that Warner only stream his music at a certain rate.
http://www.spencerlee.audio/indexa5/VIDEO-TUTORIALS-ON-SOUND/Audio-Education-Links/Recording-General/Andrew-Scheps-Lost-in-Translation-Audio-Quality-in-Streaming-Media/306
I've loved Neil from the beginning and believe me, age has nothing to do with his crankiness! It's who he is and always has been. How refreshing in this age of phoniness that Neil is still around to carp and complain - with much validity, I might add. I've been to hear him with Crazy Horse three times and I'd go again in a heartbeat.
4
He hates Facebook but he has an account? Why?
As for digital music, CDs and lossless streaming (Tidal, Qobuz, etc.) all sound miles better than any of the vinyl, let alone cassettes, that I ever owned in the '70s-'80s. Even lossy streaming such as Spotify or Apple Music is acceptable in the car or through lower-fidelity devices such as Bluetooth headphones.
@Grafakos Ever heard the phrase, "it's a necessary evil?"
Wonderfully written! Thank you for this layered and alive piece, not compressed into simple ideas and tropes.
5
Stevie Wonders music, as far back as 'Talking Book,' always seemed to deliver better-recorded sound than that of other artists. Vinyl and CD anyway. Don't have a clue as to why that was. By the way, drugs were never needed to enjoy Neal. When word had spread about the upcoming release of 'After the Gold Rush,' we were wired. Not sure how many times we listened to the album the day it was released but it was numerous. Nary a joint on-site. Each new listening bringing out something better that we hadn't heard the time before and that we needed to share with one another. It was intimate. It was communal and it was generational.
The difference between then and now represents nothing more than societal changes. Nothing wrong with that. Just stack it on the heap.
2
Isn't it kind of elitist to advocate against "low-quality streaming"? I've never had such a wide variety of high quality music available to me for such little cost as I do today. How else, other than streaming, would I be able to find out about and listen to such fantastic musicians as Toumani Diabate, JDilla, Leon Thomas, Nightmares on Wax, Bohuslav Martinu, Jneiro Jarel, Girva Devi, Susana Baca... I used to prowl the traveling record vendors, but my friends didn't have adventurous tastes and it cost me a small fortune to buy albums by artists I had never even heard of before, taking the chance that the music might be great. I can't quite believe this "quest" is real.
8
Is advocating against low-quality food elitist? The reasons for accessing low-quality music have more to do with lack of effort and discernment. And I'm guilty of it sometimes, finding it just too convenient to switch on SomaFM.
1
@Larry McCallum Are you saying that by listening to SomaFM you are poisoning yourself? I love SomaFM too, and I don't think I'm poisoning myself when I tune in to tune out work distractions. To reiterate and extend my original point, the diversity of my musical options now is light years beyond what my choices were in the 70's. High quality music accessible to nearly everyone, compared to radio stations playing, basically, Eric Clapton and Neil Young. I'd say there's no contest there. Right now I'm playing Taj Mahal's eponymous album from 1968 on YouTube. Earlier today I streamed Pandora on my Bose Mini. A bit high cost, but nothing compared to the old fashioned stereo system. And the quality is fantastic, at least if you're intending to allow your neighbors to sleep in peace. It's all about the volume.
@Me
I think it is elitist too, ... but I made a cassette tape a long time ago with Southern Man followed directly by Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd so who am I to say?
With all due respect to Mr. Young, who gets to decide what is a good high quality reproduction? As soon as we get away from Live music to a recording music is already engineered by the quality and placement of mics, recording and mixing engineers and the recording device.
In the digital age, more engineering with Analog to Digital converters, digital to analog converters, their bit depths and how they were designed.
For him to complain about one small area of digital compression is to nitpick about one variable. Then comes the delicate subject of age and hearing. I would argue that a musician who has played concerts for decades has lost a significant part of his/her hearing and he probably started before musicians started wearing earplugs.
I worked at one of the companies that developed the compression algorithm and sold it to Apple. There was a time when Hollywood audio experts used to discount compression until we did A/B tests for them with compressed and uncompressed sound. More often than not they could not pick the right one.
I could go on and on about cheap earbuds, and the egregious bluetooth outputs but why bother? This technology is virtually indistinguishable from other playback technology for most people. Just enjoy it.
8
Well now. This all sounds quite interesting but how about background sound or living with tinnitus? How about the music we heard on the old radios? How about really poor music from mediocre musicians? So many questions and so few answers. I enjoy digital music very much over inexpensive speakers and appreciate it fully. I've been listening to Young since the 60s and don't think I've missed anything.
2
A double-blind test, with lots of examples of different types of music played in various environments including his car, would be a great revealer of whether Mr. Young's favored formats can be reliably differentiated from those he excoriates.
4
@Kim
Spoiler alert, the Nyquist Theorem says that the digital recording will have all of the information from the analog master perfectly preserved. Vinyl is not better. One could even record all of the "pops" and "imperfections" people seem to love from vinyl. These imperfections would then be perfectly preserved in digital format but why make the digital format worse?
3
@Kim " including his car," One has to wonder how he explains the inclusion of the variable constant of "road noise" as he listens to music in his car. Over what speakers? How loud? These are not quibbles.
3
@Slann I don't believe anyone would be able to tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio in a car, but it would be great to test the hypothesis. Neil Young probably has the resources to construct a test, and one would think he'd be curious as to the results.
2
As the bumper sticker says, "I may be old, but I heard all the great bands."
I saw Neil Young only once, but that was with the Buffalo Springfield who I still consider one of our greatest rock bands.
I have played in rock bands since I was 15 and while I enjoyed this piece on Mr. Young and the authors son I still hear that old adage in my head: Talking about music is a bit like dancing about architecture.
Carry on.
13
@Bob Laughlin You have the quote slightly askew-it should be "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture". Originally said by Martin Mull, and frequently incorrectly attributed to Frank Zappa.
2
There's commercial music and then there is music that musicians play. Commercial music is perfect, engineered to an inch of its life and homogenized to play in any format. Actual music is full of feeling, mistakes, awareness and joy. I get what Mr. Young is getting at. That's why live music is always better than a recording. Music captures a moment, and maybe that moment is fleeting and unrecordable.
We live in a wonderful world of digital music, where any song is available at any time for anyone to listen to. There are trade offs to that access. We owe it to ourselves to pick up an analog instrument and search for the joy that making music brings.
5
The writer's music knowledge is pitifully skinny. To confuse songwriters with musicians is common, but a mistake. A musician is conversationally competent with the 12 notes and as many combinations as his/her experience allows. A songwriter is conversationally competent with words, verse, rhythm and melody, sometimes harmony. A songwriter sometimes is a musician, and a musician is often a songwriter, but they are not the same thing.
3
"[I]magine walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Musée d’Orsay one morning and finding that all of the great canvases in those museums were gone and the only way to experience the work of Gustave Courbet or Vincent van Gogh was to click on pixelated thumbnails."
And yet that is exactly how many young people experience those works today! They stop in front of a great painting just long enough to raise up their mobile device and photograph it, then move on to the next one. They'd have a better-quality experience of the work if they simply bought the postcard of it that sells in the gift shop for one euro.
4
@Frank F
Allow me to play the devil’s advocate: If I took the postcard home and drew the work of art reproduced thereon, I might well have a better-quality experience of the work than if I had merely gazed at the original. As John Berger said, you really don’t see something until you draw it. I take pictures of art for that purpose, so that at home, with pencil and sketch pad, I can receive instruction from the masters.
I once fell down the high bit rate music rabbit hole in search of perfect sound. In the end I realized it really doesn't matter. And that the supposed "superiority" of high resolution lossless music files (or vinyl or whatever other old format is being fetishized) is only perceived because a given listener WANTS to believe it is superior.
Blind tests using a powerful amp, a good quality DAC and a set of quality speakers that cost almost two thousand dollars said something very different though. If my friends and I can't tell the difference between a 24 bit/192 kHz file and a 320kbps stream of the same recording on a system that costs that much what chance does the average listener have to hear a difference? It becomes an academic mathematical exercise... a distinction without a difference.
Most people simply don't spend anywhere near that much on equipment for listening to music (and the reality is they never have even in the supposed golden age of recordings). So all this hand wringing about the supposed death of audio quality is more than a little hyperbolic. In fact I would argue that most music recorded today sounds a heck of a lot better than a lot of the stuff in the 60;s, 70's, 80's and even 90's. I've lived through a lot of formats LP's, tapes, CD's, mp3's and now streaming and music still moves me and has a strong physical and emotional effect on me so those audio engineers Young vilifies must be doing something right.
11
I recently got hearing aids. The difference between lossless and compressed is now all too apparent. I'm not sure what the average listener hears, though.
1
New lossless recording and reproduction technology has made extremely high quality sound available to anyone with a decent size hard drive and a good digital analog converter (DAC).
There is plenty of great music, especially classical and baroque, available for download at reasonable price in (much better than CD) studio master quality. For the time being, rock is harder to come by due to copyright restrictions.
Standard CDs reproduce music at 44,000 Hertz. Studio Master downloads are available at 88, 96 and 192 kilo-Hertz with 24 bit sampling as opposed to the 16 bit sampling of CDs. High Definition, studio master sound is lush and detailed and free of the extraneous rumble and noises of vinyl.
On a good stereo system, the music is whole and the sound is revelatory. Listening to HD studio master recordings vs CDs (a fortiori compressed streams) is analogous to watching movies on a high definition TV screen vs watching them on an old cathode ray tube screen.
Are Neil Young and David Samuels unaware of HD music streaming services and downloads?
7
Good points. Probably they are aware of them, but are also aware that that's not how the vast majority of people access music.
2
I am aware that the word genius is overrated, and I also believe Jobs was a genius as is Young. And here you have two men who probably would argue to the bitter end about music. They are also so much alike. Cranky iconoclasts. Steve, may you rest at peace. Neil, keep on rockin' in the free world!
9
@Douglas ritter
Neil Young never hurt any member of the public. Steve Jobs ripped off his employees, his competitors, and the consumers of his product. No comparison. If Jobs isn't resting in peace, that's beyond the grave karma.
2
In my opinion there's a lot of ridiculous conjectures about Neil Young strewn about in this article. Obviously, the opinions he states are his own and I'm not arguing with those. However, and I am reluctant to say it but, I don't think you or maybe your generation will ever truly "get" Neil Young.
Also, I take issue with the characterization of Paul McCartney's latest music as being only a hologram of its former quality. I think that the quality of Paul McCartney's music has deteriorated only a little, but not nearly to the extent Elton John's music has, or Bob Dylan's, and Paul McCartney should be getting credit for that.
6
@Diane Got to disagree regarding Dylan. Saw him in concert recently-he takes the time to re-work his songs to keep things interesting. Not sure if Neil, Elton,Paul, Mick, etc., could, or even care to try.
5
@FloydStoner,
Dylan "Re-works" his songs? Is that what you call it when you have no clue what the song is, even when he is playing one of his "War Horses".
@FloydStoner OK--good to know :)
"I don’t know.....if all the missing information that Silicon Valley is engineering out of music and the rest of our lives is doing something truly evil to our brains or whether these are simply the latest obsessions of a habitually cranky, inventive, restless man."
Unfortunately, its the latter. And I'm a big Neil Young fan!
The difference between an analogue recording and a good CD is so small that it makes no difference to the average listener. The example the writer gives are the "oh oh oh la la la's" in Down By The River. I hear them just fine on my CD, even on the old CD player I had when the players first came out.
What some people tend to do is make a fetish out of things. Wine has always been like that. With the exception of a few extraordinary wines that cost hundreds of dollars, this $10 bottle is not appreciably better than that $25 dollar bottle.
Its a case of diminishing marginal returns.
I also detect a note of paranoia in Neil's comments. It sounds like he is implying that engineers are "masking" or "removing" sounds from recordings. Ok, engineers don't work like that. As long as the recording is clear, what you hear is pretty much what you get.
Sorry Neil.
4
This is like saying that the average fan can’t distinguish between a college and NFL football game (probably true), or concert pianist and a local wannabe (probably also true). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for best because the crowd is satisfied with having the art in the background only.
3
On most levels, we have become children of lossy technology, and yes...it is our loss.
4
Btw, it seems a little odd to go through the trouble of preserving top-shelf analogue audio quality, only to listen to it while revisiting Highway 61 with the top down. Did Neil Young really say that? I know someone who used to engineer for Neil, it seems implausible to me.
I think David Samuels is onto something with this article, but that he is out of his depth and missed an opportunity to nail something interesting here about cognitive decline pursuant to audio-sensory "garbage in, garbage out" experiences.
3
A lot of new "music" is produced to sound good (not great, not excellent) on streaming services.
That means that most of the new releases are already dumbed down and inferior.
1
Just a word in praise , of MY favorite NY album , and a weird omission from this article , After the Gold Rush.
3
@jopar
You mean the one mentioned in this excerpt?
"What’s still the same are his eyes, smoldering like two hot coals stuck beneath his overhanging brow that featured so prominently on the cover of 'After the Gold Rush,' his third album, released in September 1970, back when young people, stoned on primitive weed, might plausibly spend an entire weekend listening to his visions of a lone wanderer adrift in a lost Eden."
@jopar
A great one, mine's "On the beach"
1
Neil Young is right on this. Here's a graphic showing how a digital signal cuts off parts of sound wave:
http://www.centerpointaudio.com/Images/Analog-Digital%20frequency%20examples.png
Most people may not appreciate the difference. Part of that is perhaps their ability to listen and their own physical health -- but a lot of that may be due to a world in which everyone seems to expect everything with the click of a button.
4
@M
Unfortunately the graph is just plain wrong. Recommended reading: Shannon-Nyquist theorem.
2
Excellent read Mr. Samuels. Thank you, Neil Young, for your art.
3
Neil Young is the Baby Boomer elitist who epitomizes all the self righteous absurdity of that generation. To him and all the others that squandered the achievements of the Greatest Generation: Get over yourself and get out of the way.
2
Bruce Rozenblit's comment pretty much says it all. One related aspect of music today is well expressed in Mark Germino's song, "Rex Bob Lowenstein." Here are the lyrics spread over two comments to fit. Give a listen if you can find the real thing.
There's a disc jockey in Hartlinburgh
He works at W.A.N.T.
He puts 2 or 3 eggs in him
Then he's in your car by 6 a.m.
He lives for his job and accepts his pay
You can call and request Lay Lady Lay
He'll play Strange Cheese, U2, and Little Feat
And he even plays the band from the college down the street
And his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein
He's forty-seven going on sixteen
His request line is open but he'll tell you where to go
If you're dumb enough to ask him why he plays Hank Snow.
Well he trys to keep his talking to a minimum
He's a Democrat, He's a Republican
He's a mad man with a great voice say some
But when he spins those records he's neither one
He talks to the truckers on the interstate strip
The housewife and the car dealership
When his second wife left him for a paper millionare
He cried unashamedly right on the air
And his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein
He's 47 going on sixteen
His request line is open but he makes no bones
About why he plays Madonna after George Jones.
3
Now, one day a man in a pinstriped suit
Took the owner of the station to a restaurant booth
His pitch was simple, "you'll increase your sales
"If you only play the song list we send in the mail."
He guaranteed a larger audience
Less confusion and higher points
"But your drive-time jock won't get to do his thing.
"Hey he's not half bad, tell me, what's his name?"
Well his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein
He's frequently heard, but he's seldom seen
His formula's simple and his format's big
"I just play anything, you call and tell me what you dig."
Now Rex Bob David Saul Lowenstein
Quit his job a week later, but before he'd leave
He locked and bolted the control room door
And played smash or trash till they cuffed him on the floor
Well they drug him into court and the judge said, "Rex
"I've got to lock you up, for what I'm not sure yet.
"But your boss here says he thinks you're wrapped too tight.
"But, by the way thanks for playing 'Moon River' last night"
And his name is Rex Bob Lowenstein
He's a flaming bell inside a tambourine
He could play it all if he was just set free
Just to find what the people WANT
Just to find what the people WANT
Just to find what the people WANT
1
"..... Bob Dillon....Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves." I celebrate them all! Staying creative and still loving music! As for Niel, my teens were awash with his voice and guitar... Yes the California dream is over, but what a ride it was!
3
Great artist (but … 'off the record'? … he's got nothing to say -- or nothing worth listening to anyway).
Nothing to say?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...
Alabama, you got the rest of the Union to help you along. What’s going wrong?
Topical in 1971, Still pretty much true today.
2
@rlschles
You're missing the point. He gave us those (and so much more) 'on the record(s).'
I'm waiting for something he didn't sing or say in recorded song that was worth 'listening' to.
I found this article all over the place in sore need of editing. And a statement such as "when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves" wholly unnecessary. David Samuels was two-years-old when "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere" was released. It shows.
14
@EB I had the same reaction. His foray into his son's affliction seemed to come out of left field, and, as another reader noticed, he repeatedly demonstrated "fan boy" behavior. I'm thankful for the reminder to fire up my old stereo system, but the writing and lack of editing is emblematic of much of today's "writing" -- more like typing, to quote Capote.
I was a big fan of Young’s until I realized how disordered his thinking is. Shortly after his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace, came out, he contradicted much of it:
WHP: Called Pegi his Cinnamon Girl
Real Life: Divorced her
WHP: Learned via Carrie Snodgress that actresses are not for him
Real Life: Married Daryl Hannah
Normally I don’t care much about celebrities’ personal lives. But the contradictions between Young’s words and actions are startling. Something is wrong inside his head.
1
@Anonymous
I know. It's sad that he has clay feet. Divorcing someone after decades who only had five years to live. Wish I didn't know it.
1
Concerts are so distracting, both movements and sounds. Everybody standing, chatting, going back and forth for snacks. phones lit, giant speakers, tiny performers so far away they're unrecognizable. I just don't go anymore.
Coupled with the fact that recording artists can no longer "sell" their wares; overcome by free youtube downloads and that only huge megastars can fill the requisite venues (see 1st paragraph) the music industry is in poor shape.
Could Neil Young become Neil Young today?
2
Almost accidentally I Agree that Spotify, YouTube etc. music is missing a lot in musicality. I attend an urban church and in the stereotype of such it has great live music. Mozart, world music, ancient hymns, strings and drums sometimes. Organ usually, a Capello sometimes. Now admittedly it’s not always the best rendition- but there is something there that is annoyingly missing on the net version. Young can describe what this is but I can tell it’s missing. And I love it that I have a live music soundtrack in the background as I go through the day - my ear worms.
Our mind does change the perception of how music should sound
to our ears depending which machine is reproducing that music,
Remembering that 78 rpm recordings and 4 inch radio/phono speakers were quite sufficient for us to hear Nathan Milstein violin of Savoy jazz recordings ,our imagination filled in the rest of what that music would have sounded "live", nothing has changed much
even when I listen to MP3 , What is different today even with my old ears is that "live" music may actually be "live" but reproduced at the source and smoothed our by digital electronics which for me makes it all in the theater audience half alive.
If it was perfect, it wouldn't be art.
1
Embroider that on a doily, quick!
Love Neil Young but Jagger; Dylan and McCartney are still rockin too. That line in your story - that they are hologram skeletons of who they used to be is totally off base.
6
Wonderful article, I was especially touched by your son’s positive response to the “music” intervention.
1
"Paul McCartney [has] become skeletal hologram..."
Totally and vehemently disagree. I was fortunate to catch Sir Paul live a year or so ago and he totally rocked.
5
Two words for Mr. Young: Sturgeon's Law.
2
Dennis,
I'm happy with the ten percent.
Of course, I kind of miss 8-track tapes. I'm not that fussy.
1
Edited version of earlier post
Jimi Hendrix "the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever"? Meaning no disrespect to a pioneering rock and roll guitarist, I believe this quote inflates Jimi's legendary status as a musical innovator the extreme.
3
Is this piece about Neil Young, the history of sound recording, the evils of the corporate world, the unintended consequences of the internet, the author's favorite music and performers, the plight of kids with physical challenges, current thinking on neuroscience, or maybe something else squeezed in where I missed it? I'm trying to picture the circumstances that somehow led to this interview, and I wonder what Mr. Young thought about the resulting article.
1
I’m wondering if the perception that sound quality has deteriorated over the years is more due to aging than music reproduction algorithms. It’s well established that your ability to hear higher frequencies and quieter sounds declines as you age. Maybe older folks notice the missing nuances and ascribe the loss to the algorithms instead of their hearing loss.
1
@Kara
Kara. if you understood the underlying technical aspects of vinyl reproduction of "harmonics" (why, how, what exactly one is looking for);it would be clear you might be the one missing the "nuances" and are too electronically illiterate to know better.
Age does not make one less intelligent; experiences one has over time is an important component to learning what one does not understand right now.
I was 'smarter' than my father at 16, simply because of my formal education. As I aged, he got a lot smarter as I understood what I did not learn in school.
When your children get to your age, they may think you do not understand the "nuances" they have mastered. Be kind to them, you will understand then what they are clueless of, and how you know why.
Have a great day.
@Kenneth Galloway
Learn to read please. I never mentioned anything to do with intelligence. I wrote about hearing loss due to age. As a senior citizen and former engineer I question your intelligence regarding “vinyl reproduction of harmonics”. You do realize, I hope, that almost all music was not recorded directly to vinyl? Your so called vinyl harmonics (i.e. imperfections) were introduced by the vinyl medium itself when the music was copied (from tape) onto vinyl and during playback due to vinyl degradation and record player limitations. Your vinyl harmonics are not something intended or created by the artists.
1
@Kara
Well Kara, glad you wish to question my "intelligence". Artists do intend to use the harmonics, think Hendrix
You did 'dis' older individuals over understanding hearing deficiencies/pure tone losses. I too am a "senior citizen" and have a quirky inner ear syndrome (Meniere's), symptoms are vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss especially in the high ranges. These are only symptoms, not the disease;
I have digital hearing aids with computer control attempting to bring back the pure tone levels to normal. I have the amplified pure tone highs lowered so it does not hurt my ears. AND the digital reproduction is nothing like natural sound, pure tone is not normal either; whatever field of engineering you specialized in would inform you of this "not normal" sound.
Digital amplification will never replicate the music of multitrack onto vinyl.
The harmonics I speak of come from running an amp in Class C mode ("well past cut-off"), if your are an EE you understand what I am referring to, Yes the harmonics are defined as imperfections, they are also a layered effect onto the original frequencies. Just as my digital hearing aids do not replicate natural sounds, neither does other digital reproductions.
I also understand the digital world down to the individual gate level of computers. The clock is the master; the leading edge of the square wave is the most important key, it does not accept multiple frequency (WITH the distortions) it cleans the layered effect up.
Do some reading.
Look at Mother Nature on the run in 2019.
8
"I enjoyed listening to Young rant..."
When corporate-media types stop looking at expressing concern for the future habitability of the planet as "ranting", we just might be able to save the planet.
1
Great story! Neil Young is certainly no luddite. Co-inventor of the Lionel train director(!). I was disappointed that there was no mention in the article of his tireless, unrelenting fight against ... Autotune! Long live live acoustic music!!
3
The only thing worse than listening to streaming music, is listen to Neal Young's music streaming...
1
A wonderful piece. Thank you.
2
I have had fairly serious audio equipment for some time and welcomed the CD format. I recall records with ticks and pops fresh from the wrapper that required (and still require) delicate handling. The MP3 format is very user friendly also. Anyone complaining ever done any blind listening comparisons? Guessing you can't tell the difference.
Better to upgrade your speakers. Good ones are still out there but aren't cheap
You bet Neil is right about listening to low quality music. Play a tape or vinyl record through a good analog system and you'll understand the difference between that and wrung-out, low quality recordings. Neil's a singular musical genius. Of course he's right!
3
I completely agree with Neil Young when he talks about his severe hatred for the modernization of music in today's world. He feels that today's digitalization takes away from the "God-like" sound of real music. While as a teenager, I enjoy the conveniences of Spotify and Apple, as a dancer, I will take Young's feelings one step further. It is much less inspritational and much more difficult for me to feel and interpret manufactured music the way I can through the natural sound of instruments and voices. I believe that the glassy, raspy versions of songs that come through our phones and earbuds are actually doing an injustice to the authentic music created by some of the most talented and beautiful minds in existence. The real sounds, the sounds of music played as heard as they were meant to be, are some of the most moving and soothing sounds in the world. I agree with young that anything less is a rip off in every sense of the term.
2
There have been two parallel streams in pop music. They're not the same.
SOUND QUALITY: Young's career started when AM radio was pop's primary medium.
In those days, stations regularly mangled songs. They made the soft parts louder to get more listeners, added reverb to sound 'bigger', and frequently even sped up or edited songs to fit more commercials.
AM transmitters had serious limitations in both frequency range and distortion, compared to today's media.
And listeners could be using anything from a cheap clock radio to "shirt pocket' transistors, which - despite their size - couldn't sound as good as today's cellphones.
I was a station engineer dealing with that stuff in 1970. Fortunately, I moved to film and now deal with much higher quality. But any engineer can show that even run-of-the-mill mp3 is technically better than AM broadcast. You can see it yourself, and learn how mp3 really works, at my website (www.jayrose.com/tutorial/squeeze).
The other factor is MUSIC quality:
Great musicians of AM days honed their their acts with live audiences. Digital lets anyone with a computer put a credible song together, with no musical knowledge or performing chops.
A lot of what's being streamed is generated this way. It's given rise to new musical styles, which might provide classics of the future. But they're as different from guitar rock, as rock was from the Big Band era... and rock was just as distressing to Big Band listeners.
2
I've been an audiophile since I was 14. I built Dynaco tube amplifier kits myself. Add a Garard table, a Stanton cartridge and Advent speakers, you got a quality system for about $350 in those days (70s).
I have a listening club, theaudioatticvinylsundays.com. Go there to see what my system is like now. I have only 5 people at a time for listening intimacy. There is a rule: at the door, turn off your mobile and leave it in the tray. We chat over wine and cheese as I get a sense of everyone's musical tastes, I ask each for that favorite song that is etched into their subconscious. Then we sit down and listen to selections from my extensive library of LPs.
For newbies, the initial reaction is almost always the same: startled, slack-jawed, stupified amazement. Many people actually start to cry. They realize that they have never actually fully heard that piece of music that they thought they knew so well. Now, why is that? Because the emotional content of the music that is captured on analogue is stripped in the compression to a digital format with a sampling rate that is significantly lower than analogue quality. Why is that? Because market testing showed that 95% of the public would prefer the convenience of smaller CD disks at the expense of audio quality. CDs were nevertheless marketed as superior simply because they didn't scratch. We know this is true because the president of Sony fessed up in the late 90s.
It is true: nobody knows how to listen to music anymore.
4
Great article but please get your science right in this paragraph: "We are poisoning ourselves with degraded sound, he believes, the same way that Monsanto is poisoning our food with genetically engineered seeds." Monsanto is not poisoning our food with genetically engineered seeds. It is poisoning our food with heavy doses of carcinogenic pesticides. The genetically engineered seeds are what allows the crop to survive being sprayed with the deadly chemicals and so deliver the carcinogens to our table. Presumably seeds could be genetically engineered to resist weeds without the need for any pesticides which would actually be good for our health but bad for Monsanto's profits.
7
Part of the problem is the speakers, not the compression algorithm. No quality of music no matter what the bandwidth will sound like live music through ear buds, most ear phones, standard speakers on a computer or monitor.
To get the sense of a live performance you need large speakers that have a large presence.
If you listen to spotify spend some bucks on the best speakers you can afford.
2
I am somewhat of an audiophile (without the exorbitant equipment) having been brought up in a house with my father's audiophile equipment in the 1950s (Marantz, AR speakers, etc.) I cannot listen to less than full-range sound. Most people listen to music over chintzy Apple earbuds or horribly bass-extended bluetooth speakers. Recordings have lost the sound of live rooms, done with overdubbing and digital processing.
That said, I listen with fairly high-end sound, a huge four-speaker system I built myself using my father's old tower speakers as a base, almost a wall of sound. I did an A-B test using CDs and Spotify (best quality) playing the same recordings back and fourth - I could hear absolutely no difference, and I doubt anyone else could.
I recently, on a whim, bought a collection of Bob Dylan Super Audio CDs used on eBay. The improved sound quality of the SACD format floored me. Dylan never sounded this good. Not on vinyl, new or original pressings. Not on CD and certainly not streaming.
These discs were from 2003 and out of print. The SACD format is all but dead. Consumers keep rejecting these remarkable steps forward in sound, it seems.
1
Bob Dylan is certainly not a 'skeletal hologram' of his former self and the quality his late-career body of work for is unparalleled by anyone, far surpassing that of Mr. Young. You do capture what seems the essence of Neil, though - that he 'does' things, constantly. Consequently, it was sad to read that he is contemplating not making records anymore. Long may he run.
6
Yes, “skeletal hologram” is clever and excessive. Sure, many of us would like to see these icons hang it up instead of performing as the shadows of what they once were. But it remains a thrill to see them walk onto the stage. And they’re still breathing. I don’t care how rich or famous they may be, it was a nasty thing to write, offensive to anyone who still seeks to make their way in the world beyond 70. I would expect this brand of gonzo journalism in Rolling Stone, not the New York Times.
4
I agree with Young on the problems on streamed music. I tried it and found that it sounds deficient. Downloading and streaming music makes for a disconnect with the artist. I still buy the CD's and vinyl not only for the quality but to understand what goes into the music.
2
In the series of articles about the UMG fire in the NYT, the point was made that when the music was recorded, the tapes contained much more sound (music) than could be reproduced on records or consumer quality tapes played on sound systems at the time. But technology has changed re: sound reproduction and that's one of the reasons that the loss was so great--We'll never get to hear everything that was recorded on the tapes that were lost.
Like many of us, Neil may come off as old and cranky, but that doesn't change the truth of his statements. As a sound engineer once told me, it's an analog world and digital recording and reproduction doesn't do it justice. When it comes to MP3s, etc., for some people the mind may fill in what the ear wants to hear, but that doesn't change the underlying facts of the matter.
2
Incredible piece. I'm sure I'll be re-reading it several times. Thank. you.
1
In a word: TIDAL. In another word: Roon.
There IS high quality music brimming with emotion available and it's inexpensive and wonderful. High definition streaming, even on an iPhone.
Qobuz is an alternative to TIDAL.
Use big speakers!
We will always love Neil; whose music was the song track of our lives here in Ontario and BC.
Canadians are proud of our quirky hero. I was lucky enough to work many sold out shows in the Bay for Neil and he continues to bring joy and provoke thought to the masses.
5
Not all CDs are created equally though in my opinion none match a quality produced vinyl record. If you enjoy classical, Sony has a series of HiFi CDs. Being an audiophile beginning in my teen years In Berkeley CA our standard rig was two dyna kit amplifiers, AR speakers, and maybe a Dual turntable, memory is not coming up crystal clear. Also, we thought a very expensive Shure cartridge was mandatory. I later graduated to dual amplified Macintosh 200 watts per channel, with matching Mac components driving JBL Jubal speakers, think they were L-65s. eventually I had our local audiophile shop build JBL S-8s. In a large living room with the sliding glass doors wide open the sound was incredible, like you were there with the musicians. After all my fine recollections and bragging I noticed that besides not being interested in high end sound reproduction many people actually find it irritating. Now that I'm old and poor I am privileged to have a pair of KEF BBC monitors, with an 100 watt per channel Onkyo receiver. These little speakers are rather incredible.
Saw Neil Young at Knight arena a couple of years ago, great show. The trio of guitar players headed by Young jamming was great though very loud. Last thought, read Young's book, very entertaining I thought and could not have enjoyed the nostalgia more. Don't care what anyone says, for a lot of us the magic and the heartbreak of the sixties and seventies were way beyond anything I see today. Ps: Google dyna kit.
4
@The Iconoclast Amen, Brother. Dynakits were the weapon of choice for those of us good with a soldering iron and access to test equipment. I still have my AR speakers and AR turntable (with a newer Shure cart)--You can't beat 'em with a stick! I run an Onkyo receiver these days, like you. It's good enough for these old ears.
I'm not knocking today's quality equipment. But once one's ability to hear sound begins to deteriorate, the point of diminishing returns becomes much lower.
Outstanding. Neil was always on to something even he wasn't fully aware of. Of course great music can heal! It comes from a divine place of healing no matter the imperfections of the one who brings it. People have always had an instinct for this
2
The author appears to imply that the age of 73 is old. But I beg to differ. It is Young.
25
This goes beyond sound quality. The emphasis on convenience has devalued music. How much oomph is a drum sound going to have when it's coming from smartphone with the thickness of a saltine cracker? I think streaming services are garbage too. These are playlists developed by algorithms, and all this music is just dumped on you. One positive development is satellite radio, where you can hear actual human beings playing music that they love. One of the things I miss most is listening to music with other people. Even in bars nowadays, a well-curated jukebox is a rare thing.
4
@Jess: Thank you for saying. I agree with you.
1
Young's favorite place to listen to music isn't the studio but the car?
Maybe with the windows down, driving at highway speeds?
Isn't that a pretty lowfi envirnonemt to be listening to music in, for a guy promoting high def music and creating his own FLAC player?
Not that I disagree with his sentiments!
1
Digital media has made music far more accessible and affordable for consumers. Massive record labels and broadcasting companies no longer play gatekeeper to an entire medium of entertainment. Music more free and open now than at any other time in history. Makes me glad that people nostalgic for a time of rigid corporate control and limited access no longer dominate one of humanity's oldest and most celebrated art forms.
That's a great point, but keep in mind that these services are still massive corporate entities. While streaming might be a great model for consumers, it robs artists of their only valuable commodity. It'll be great if we come to a place where people recognize that paying for art is the right thing to do. As an artist, I'm only going to put one of my songs on Spotify. I won't let these massive corporate entities rob me of my only valuable commodity. Is it too much to ask for a dollar for a song? Is it fair that this model has turned musicians into beggars?
1
Wow. What an article. There’s a lot to unpack here, but SO worth it.
4
"Young doesn’t want to be a downer. He is passionate about music."
Are you kidding? Neil Young's music is a total downer. Whether it's "Ohio," "Southern Man," or "Rust Never Sleeps," the man is a downer ... with a really lousy voice.
But it's always fun to see an aging hippy millionaire rail about his groovy values while bashing millionaires. Must be nice to own 1,000 acres in Malibu.
5
Don't let it bring you down.
2
Whoa Samuels, this article’s focus is all over the place, and thank you for that.
Great news for your son. Congratulations.
I’m 68 and an “old man” in your value system, and I’ve kept most of my vinyl albums from back in the day, including all of Buffalo Springfield, CSN, CSNY and Neil’s first 4.
I have a B&O system with its incredible turntable. It needs a new stylus, and has for a decade. That’s how long it’s been since I played the vinyl.
I’m ordering a new stylus today.
Finally, I’m glad you critique in absolutes.
Yes about Hendrix who I was lucky enough to see twice.
Yes about Duane who I was lucky enough to see many times, including the Friday night live set at the Fillmore East which is part of the Allman’s live double album.
I did see Neil and CH in New Orleans in ‘89 in a small venue. Half acoustic, have live, and I mean live. As with you, I don’t listen to Neil for his guitar virtuosity but when they did Hey Hey, My My (into the black), the violent chord chops made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and tears stream down my face.
2
Digitization has its limitations. Without getting highly technical, when music is played the various single notes interact creating combinations that add "depth". These combinations range from very low frequencies to very high frequencies. Digitization "stifles" these extremes as well as "chopping", albeit finely, individual notes. This is why much today does not have that sound quality of a great concert hall (Try Carnegie -- yes I am biased) or even the phonograph, that analog system that was better able to capture and reproduce the nuances of harmonics.
Recently I have heard that vinyl is back and yes I have my old records but need turntable belt repair. Oh well.
1
@Richard Frauenglass
Well one thing the internet is very good at is finding replacement parts. If it hadn't been for the web (Ebay I think) I would never have found a replacement belt for my Kenwood turntable.
This article is so much more than what the title suggest. It could have been a one note take on Neil Young as a highly eccentric individual but David Samuels chose a more wide ranging, eclectic view. In honoring imperfection the article honors being human.
4
God loves an old curmudgeon. The writer is well on his way, also.
9
The best quality music is high definition music, which is based on the .flac file format. see https://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-flac-the-high-def-mp3-explained/
Flac music can be purchased on a site called HD Tracks, which features music from Neil Young. The problem is that consumers are less likely to want to purchase music. Flac files can be played on computers, music players like Sony Walkman and smart phones.
Nothing gets to me like the song "Old Man", and I'm no music expert, but I can watch and listen to this another 1,000 times, does something magical to my soul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An2a1_Do_fc
3
Hallelujah. I am huge music fan and recently got back into albums. Those free MP3 downloads that come with new albums are an insult. Why would I pay $20 for an vinyl record if I thought MP3 based music was any good? It’s garbage.
2
I got pleasantly carried away with all the stories and video marking the Woodstock 50th anniversary this past weekend.
Nostalgia and boyhood memories of a time when such a gathering could occur with "nothing but peace and music" to quote Max Yasgur - "the gentleman upon whose farm we are" as he was introduced to 400,000.
I listened to a lot of the music from the festival over the last days - including CSNY entire set.
Back then, at age 15, I bought the 3 record set of the concert released on the "Cotillian" label.
I have good ear.
Perfect pitch.
I sing well.
I know lyrics to countless songs.
I recall the sound of vinyl.
Beatles, Stones, Santana, Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, on and on.
I can hear the disappointing difference when I stream the music - hollowed out, gutted, sounds disappeared, an impaired version of the original.
We get used to the assault on what's real.
We become numb to the tawdry all around.
To the clown president and the people lost in their screens. Hello! Anybody home?
It's still pretty cool to smile and say hi.
Opens the world.
No cell phones at Woodstock.
Watch video of the crowd.
Just the person next to you to actually talk to, laughed with, share stories and background, listen to music with, help, share a toke and food. Real life.
Before we slipped into hollow and flattened ourselves and the music
Neil reminds us.
The Parkland students remind us.
We are stronger, happier when we bond and care about each other.
8
@Paul King Best post on any subject that I've seen in a long time. I too watched much of the video, particularly home movies that were gathered up and digitized. The one thing I noticed was the number of young men at Woodstock wearing button-down oxford-cloth shirts. I was 16 and green as could be and not there, but that was me.
Paul McCartney is a skeletal hologram? You must be a “John” fan. I suggest you attend a McCartney concert where you will overwhelmed by his blistering 3 and a half hour show. That’s no hologram.
10
@RG
This George fan agrees with Neil Young.
David Samuels, you totally missed an opportunity! There you were, interviewing one of the best musicians of our generation, and you turned it into your own navel gazing. Disappointed.
6
The downside of having a voice like Neil Young is that everyone else's voice sounds like putrefied garbage to your ears.
I've long been a big fan of Neil Young's music, but I find his stance on sound quality to be both quaint and pompous. What he seems to forget is many of us who grew up on his music accessed it through media formats that would make the average listener of today cringe. I'm talking about AM signals listened through a transistor radio, 8-track tapes, lousy car stereos, and whatever it was that we could cobble together to enjoy the music we loved. The average music fan isn't an audiophile and probably can't afford the kind of system Young seems to think everyone should own. I don't begrudge him the fact that digital sound compression has its problems but his stance is more or less elitist. I've gone back to vinyl myself for most new music I buy, though I still listen to MP3 for the sake of convenience and the simple fact that it isn't all that bad compared to what I grew up with. Ponyo was a disaster because only a few deep pocketed consumers were willing to fall for his audio-rhetoric. Now I just wish he'd get back to making music and maybe touring a bit more and stop with the soapbox. Oh, and yes, live music is still the best way to experience the songs you love (and that isn't perfect either).
4
I’m 61 and spent my young life as a musician and audio nut, eventually getting a BSEE so I could develop sound gear (which I did). I listened to music obsessively in the 70s and 80s.
That said, much of that time was spent fighting vinyl. The noise, the wobbly pitch of off-center pressings, the inner-groove distortion, the inevitable degradation of the media over time. I built turntables, had various fancy tonearms, built phono preamps, etc. I loved so much of the music but could never stop hearing all those defects. Sorry, Neil.
There is plenty to complain about with the modern music industry and the limp state of pop. But for me, the technology itself has been a boon, and sounds better than anything I had way back when (provided one uses good headphones or speakers).
3
I will never forget Mr. Young’s performance at the closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics. Amid the ostentatious excess of “look at us”, one older man, sitting in the spotlight with his guitar singing, “Long May You Run”, to the young athletes assembled there, and to we not so young athletes around the world. Like most of us who have been there and done mostly that, telling those with miles to go before they sleep, to keep running, or skating or, jumping, or whatever, for as long as you possibly can. A really beautiful and powerful moment in time.
4
He still "walks like a giant" to me and if this is "floating like a leaf on a stream" then that's one cranky old leaf that I'd love to meet.
2
Bob Dylan, a skeletal hologram? Jimi Hendrix, the greatest American popular musical talent ever?
I think my most favorite Dylan line ever is that "music critics are only qualified to judge other music critics." Or something like that.
13
@Joyboy
On a similar note, maybe Frank Zappa put it best when he said:
" Rock journalism" is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."
3
@The Jeffersonian.
Love it.
1
A really sweet personal essay masquerading as a piece about Neil Young. Brought tears to my eyes when you told of the success your son Elijah had with the modified Mozart music therapy. I hope his improvement continues, I wonder what his unique mind will bring us in another 15 years?
3
Jimi Hendrix "the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever"? No disrespect to a groundbreaking rock and guitar player, but that is taking Jimi's legendary status as a musical innovator to the extreme.
Several corrections:
“back when young people, stoned on primitive weed”
Absolutely not my experience, we were smoking some of the finest Afghani Hasheesh available at that time. Far from primitive as I recall, and it was so good that I can actually recall it.
The David Letterman show when Neil unveiled the Pono player was in 2009, a full 10 years ago.
Your own experience with your son was off track in this piece. I understand that you wanted to establish some common ground with Neil, but if seems that didn’t really work, and confused the subject.
If you haven’t seen Neil recently, you’re really missing the genius of one of the greatest writers and performers, of our time. With well over 400 songs in his catalogue, you’d be hard pressed to find an equal.
From the latest show that I attended, Neil’s appeal cuts across many generations of diehard fans.
I can fully understand his hatred of modern technologies, that have promised much, but continue to deliver far less.
2
It isn't just Spotify and streaming services who are the villains. Plenty of others are out there wrecking live music.
Last fall, I went to see Elvis Costello and The Impostors at the Sands Event Center in Bethlehem, PA. Costello's band is a cabaret band - a small club band, not a "fill the stadium to the rafters" band like U2. Nevertheless, the sound engineer, who should have been fired, created a mix dominated by the kick drum. It sounded like a cannon going off and obliterated most of Elvis' playing, his back-up singers, and the acoustic piano. My ears were bleeding after that one.
Last Friday, I went to see Mark Knopfler and his ten-piece band at The Met in Philadelphia. What a pleasure - a great mix, not too loud, you could hear every instrument and enjoy all the tonal complexities of "Romeo and Juliet" and "On Every Street." Combine the set list, the musicianship, and the top-notch mix, and the result was one of the best concert experiences I've had in a long time.
1
Bob Dylan is NOT a “skeletal holograms of their former selves.” Fresh new albums. Constantly reinventing his songs at each concert.
11
What about his great album “After the Gold Rush”? That was by far his best and most provocative album. That was ignored in this article.
4
Who needs a recording, vinyl or otherwise, to hear such rich and beautiful and cacophonous sounds as those we hear all around us, every day - no matter where we are? I'm amazed at how many people wear headphones, closing themselves off to everything around them. No environmental sounds, no spontaneous interactions with others. I see people with headphones hiking in remote wilderness areas. I just don't get it.
3
I got some noise cancelling headphones and it sounds like heaven to me, Neil. Miles Davis (Kind of Blue) never sounded better.
1
I still wake up sometimes singing, off key, "Everybody knows this is Nowhere". I lived with the "Cinnamon Girl " for 46 years. Thank you Neal Young, and thank you for the piece. He's probably right about the other stuff, too.
2
Neil Young is a purist in this sense. "It's about the music."
Listen to Don Maclean's Bye Bye Miss American Pie. "The day the music died."
Music has become a commodity, various versions of Muzak. Elevator music. It was long ago overtaken by corporate executives who had no understanding. Who don't care.
That's why, old man or not, the Golden Age of music was in the 1970's. That was the apotheosis of creativity and real genius.
In those days music was a shared experience. It was a gift amongst us. Produced and and promoted by legendary men who loved the craft and message. Nat Hentoff, Berry Gordy, Bill Graham and George Martin to name just a few.
1
Your article is a touching piece of beauty in and of itself. Very aesthetic approach! It would be great if the brains of those who have been locked in, or out of normalcy, could be healed in a precisely directed musical therapy. Young is on to something.
From the 1950s into the early 1970s, most pop hits were mixed to sound best on a 5-inch speaker. That's because the majority of pop and rock music was being played on AM stations and listened to on car radios.
The emergence of FM progressive-rock stations spelled the end for this practice, especially as songs ran longer and became more sonically complex, and AM radio eventually devolved into talk radio in the late 1980s.
Notice also that in the late 1960s, producers stopped adding heavy reverb and echoes behind vocal and instruments, giving more of an intimate studio feel to recordings. Most studios by the mid-1970s had at least 16 tracks on 2-inch tape at their disposal to record at 30 ips, resulting in some pretty high-quality vinyl pressings. That may have been the high point of analog recording.
All the more a shame that so many of those master tapes were lost in the Universal fire in 2008, and all we have is the pressing masters...
3
Yes, but it ultimately comes down to the ears with which we listen.
The composer John Cage tells a story of a Zen teacher he invited to an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where there was a performance "of a second rate aria by a third rate singer on an old, out of tune piano."
After about a minute of this, Cage looked over to the teacher, wanting to somehow convey his apologies.
The teacher had a radiant, content look in his face, with an almost beatific smile.
1
Well with out getting too technical Neil is right to a point but digital music has come a long way as SACDs, DVD-audio, Blu-Ray audio, and high resolution streaming are in my opinion exceptional choices if you dumped your vinyl back in the late 1990's like I did.
The reality for the masses is that " midi hifi" peaked in the late 1980's , this was when you might spend up to $2 grand for a pretty good system,
For audiophiles, you might call them the 1/10 of a percent of music lovers, the reproduction of music is a obsessive and never ending hobby and it quite expense as technology is always changing. A state of the art turn table today can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 but there are many great sounding ones under a grand, and that does not include the cartridge.
These are the folks they are fueling the resurgence of vinyl.
Neil can rest assure that there are still plenty of us still left, the faithful to the music, that look forward to every new remaster of a classic album or tweaking our set up to get even better sound reproduction
A perfect example will be the 50th anniversary remaster of The Beatles " Abby Road" which to my understanding will NOT be reissued in SACD or in high resolution digital audio....that is the problem with record companies as they hate to cater to the fringe market or to the best sounding reproduction.
Some thing swill never change.
3
Neil Young is right. The compression of MP3 is sad for all of us music lovers. We should be working to make music sound better, not making it sounds worse. I understand many like the convenience of MP3, but let's not relegate the CD to the dustbin until we come up with a better technology.
4
What a fantastic article. I haven't read any journalism lately that excited me like this piece. I was born in 1953 so vinyl records were all I knew (any of us boomers knew). I am intensely nostalgic for the analog days. High fidelity records were like books. They are the closest a listener or reader will get to the artist's pure intention. After reading this, I think that compressed digital music is like a book summary. There's hardly anything artistic or real left in the new product. The pops and hisses of vinyl, and maybe a scratch or two, were part of the aesthetic. I remember the beautiful, faint ssssshhhhhh that preceded every song. And back then, albums were designed and coherent -- the sequence of the songs was intentional. Each record was its own dense, detailed experience. As for Neil Young, I'm so happy to hear that he is still vital and angry and using his power. Thank you, David Samuels for a rich, many-layered piece of gorgeous writing and thank you to all the commenters for enriching the article with their voices.
34
We are all equal beings in a perfect universe.
In a perfect universe we are all equal beings.
1
the creation of music is key: make it together, be in the same room as its creation. That's what I learned from my musician father, at least. Neil Young should turn his hand to teaching people to make music if he really cares about it.
Have you looked into therapies of Sensory Integration Disorder for Elijah?
Easy to understand why NYoung regretted the interview. Samuels came with his conclusions intact and really didn't need to be there. The first half of the article presumes too much interest from readers in the writer himself, rather than in the supposed subject. Easy to understand why NYoung regretted the interview. Hope Samuels was able to listen to Crosby's comments on Young in the recent podcast with AlecBaldwin.
"Young joined with Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash (my personal ordering of talents) in the supergroup" -- What hutzpah leads the writer to believe I care about his ordering?
Once he moves on to discussing the history and issues of audio tech, he's less offensive. Best left to this realm perhaps.
4
This has to be one of the best pieces I've read in the Times--SO much to think about and look into regarding music and sound and artists and how the world is changing, and changing us. And about Neil himself, who was kind of the patron saint of my straggly gang of throwback hippie outsider friends (other students in our stuffy Pittsburgh private high school called us the "Search-for-Lifers," which I still consider a compliment, even though it wasn't meant as one). Everything he and Crazy Horse did (including the tragic junkie beauty of Danny Whitten's voice), well, blew our minds and made life seem worth living. (Not to mention Buffalo Springfield, earlier.) I still play the opening chords of "Down by the River" to try to figure out if my guitar is in tune by ear.
Yeah, so he's cranky, which kind of annoyed me later on, but this article really lays out what goes on just under all the wonderfully stubborn strands of stringy hair. I had no idea that streamed music makes such radical changes to the original music, and now I'm going to look into that, and play vinyl albums in full when I can (I recently remembered that most albums used to be made to listen to as whole works of art, rather than as a bunch of single songs, and have adjusted my listening accordingly).
As for Elijah, I believe that music saved my own son's life in other ways, as it has for many. May Mozart (or whomever he finds on his own later) continue to improve his life. Viva "atypical" minds, and love.
2
So funny and timely - When I awoke 1/2 ago, I started up my turntable and receiver (both brilliant old school models) again with Neil's Hawk's and Doves already on it - so I could make my coffee. And on my nightstand for 'right before bed' reading is Neil's Waging Heavy Peace. I'm about 100 pages in.
He's right, 1's and 0's are dreadful as presented by Apple, etc and listened to on iPods or whatever.
Vinyl is near perfect and in a pinch cd's work.
"Artists" may as well make the overwhelming mediocre music they are cranking out now because the distribution system is the very definition of mediocre.
3
@Clearwater CDs are also digital.
@Riley I know that, since some of my own records are on them. but they are def one or two notches up the food chain from iPods etc.
1
I want to point out that not only has the digitizing of music degraded the experience of listening to recorded music, but the insane worship of higher and higher decibels by "sound men", (you know, the guys who turn all the knobs as far to the right as they will go and make it impossible to actually "hear" the music), have destroyed live music as well. Instead of providing the necessary amplification so that the audience can enjoy the music, the music is transformed by these deaf maniacs into a concussive onslaught of hearing-destroying sound waves so hideous that free ear plugs are passed out at many venues. Picture an art museum where the lights are so bright that all you can "see" is your optic nerve burning up, and in order to make out the art on the walls you must wear a welding helmet, and you will have it.
This is a re-submit.
Great story, many of us "feel as Neil."
This story line that says, "He’s an old man now at 73," portrays him, it seems to mer, and "older" people in general, in a negative light. While it can be true that you're only as old as you feel, there's nothing wrong with being old, in fact it is impossible not to be old. If you deny your age you deny all you've been, all you can be, and all who you are now. It seems like Mr. Young wouldn't have like this thought.
And coincidentally in this regard, tomorrow is National Senior Citizens day. Those of us who are seniors should be glad that wrinkles don't hurt.
5
@Robert Bernstein Thank you. I had the rare priviledge of growing up in a household that included my mother, her mother and father, her grandfather (my beloved "Grandpa Pete") two sisters, one brother, on dog and several cats. No TV...Life Magazine once a week, a set of encyclopedia, and movies on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the news real of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima preceded the movie one Saturday in August....This was childhood and having the advantage of enterine college and career prior to the "baby boom" made life easier. I love being old and having breakfast the last Saturday of each month with my high-school friends (who are equally old).
3
Fantastic piece. Shame it makes Young out as a crank, which from what we read here he most decidedly isn’t - unless cranks can be right about everything.
Might have missed it, but Young avoids pointing out that it ain’t just how we listen, but what we’re listening to that’s rotting us from the inside out. But I suppose that would be an even more dismissible claim to make.
1
@James,
I was about to write the same thing. I may be missing some real new talent out there, but for the most part, I'm not hearing much that would be improved by listening to it on vinyl. Guess I'm old and cranky too.
1
Great article! Neil has also been my favorite since I wore the grooves off "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere."
3
Great article! Neil has also been my favorite since I wore the grooves off "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere."
Beautifully written. I agree regarding audio quality and the analogy to commodification by the mental-rational as destroying the quality of life. The thing about Niel has always been his humanity and that shines through nicely here.
1
Can I say something else about Tonight’s‘s the Night? It’s one of the great concept albums of all time. You can listen to the amazing side two which begins, “it’s too dark to put the key in my ignition, And the morning sun has yet to climb my hood ornament,” and ends with the title song’s brilliant affirmation of life,but if you listen to side one first, side two is even better and greater.
1
Bob Dylan, a skeletal hologram of his former self? While the rest of the article is on point and enjoyable, this statement calls into question the soundness of the rest.
8
@Tierney Giannotti
All of his comparisons of other artists are completely off the mark. That's what happens when you idealize your subject.
Radio, no mention of radio, which is where all the clipping and compression began.
2
Thank you David Samuels. I very much enjoyed your thoughts and writing here.
NYTimes: please, more like this. Support writing, subjects and thinking like this. The contemporary dearth of complex thought, another type of 'low quality streaming', is most definitely hurting our brains.
3
P.S.
Young's Harvest Moon & other post millennial works make his efforts to keep sound at it's finest a noble effort.
His energy and integrity for music can't be questioned.
1
"The idea that big technology companies are engineering all that back-and-forth out of his music just kills him."
But I'll bet he still cashes the checks.
His music was great, but he's a musician with a Malibu view. I'm not feeling his pain.
Wow! that's a really long piece of writing. The author clearly feels mr. young , his music and his opinions are important. He also clearly feels self important. why I can't imagine.
Neils right and wrong at the same time. music is available on many different platforms. mostly bad. especially live usually. its not all about how it sounds, at its best its about how if feels.
"The best thing about popular music is that it is not popular for long." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 1858.
Probably why there has been a resurgence in Vinyl once again. All this low-quality garbage that the 21st century has dished up is wearing us out. On some level we know things were never supposed to be this way.
Thanks for your candor, Neil.
2
The man is right but he's fighting a wall.
3
"Live music are better, bumper stickers should be issued"
1
Probably the loudest rock show I ever saw was Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 1978. Whenever I read Neil ranting about digital music, I wonder, “how’s his hearing? How can he tell?”
2
Wow. Every time I'm about to give up on The New York Times it offers something magnificent like this. It's one to reread a few times.
1
Contrary to popular belief, and the comments of Mr. Samuels, the environment of Malibu Canyon is not desert. It is Coastal Chaparral.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_coastal_sage_and_chaparral_ecoregion
3
I'm no artist, but man, there seems to be a lot of Neil's personality rattling around in my head.
3
Not everyone is a musician, and not everyone can be a good musician.
It is the effect of a larger problem though, which would be a rather long rant, exacerbated by parents who do not let their children fail (and groom them from birth to believe that they not only can do anything and everything, but that they are entitled to do whatever they want and be, magically I suppose, successful at it), and by a society that has decided that failure is too harsh, is unfair, and somehow disenfranchises a person.
And then there is our inefficient, horribly destructive, and so very delusional K-12 and higher ed systems that either cater to parents and their belief that each and every child is a genius or that education today is a business (higher ed), so to flunk out a student is to lose profit. Oh my, can't have that.
So, we have mediocre music today, at best. Hence, my listening to "oldies" all day and night. Interestingly, as I was jamming out to a Pandora mix (yes), having taking the time to train it to not play the trash, but to let the Cream come to the top along with some Siouxsie and the Banshees, this 55 year old has had one or two of his peers at school (chasing a BFA in art - long story) stop and ask, "hey, who's that?"
Why, that's Neil Young. That's Professor Longhair. And that is King Crimson. What, never heard of The The?
Not everyone has a good ear either, but some do. It is our duty to educate.
Now if it was just legal to smash phones...
1
@DKM As a high school tutor, today's youth aren't any more entitled than older generations. They have reasonable expectations, and they certainly aren't getting special treatment; workers between the ages of 25 and 34 earn lower average salaries ($40,581) than Baby Boomers did at the same age ($50,910). Not that this has anything to do with Neil Young. So the education system is responsible for people making music you don't like? Or are you mad that boomer rock 101 isn't a required high school class? Talk about entitlement.
It seems to me like you have many windmills to tilt at, but can't keep them separate.
1
@Riley
Perhaps I just don't like the kool-aid, friend.
But really, stats like that are worthless as they cut out the "outliers" which is where all the interesting bits, and problems, lay.
And, I am not sure you understand the term "entitlement", but I'd better stop before I start in on how higher ed is dumping too many PhDs who couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag.
They might not even be qualified to teach high school.
2
How could you not include Joni Mitchell in this sentence? "His peers talent-wise, at 19, included genius musicians like Stephen Stills, Duane Allman, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, the last of whom was the greatest American popular musical talent maybe ever."
3
There are many ways to describe Neil Young's guitar playing. Melodic ain't one of them.
1
I love Neil Young, he is one of the apostles
1
I grew up listening to rock on scratchy records and AM stations that faded in and out with the weather.
It ain't the sound it's the memories- scratches and all!
All in a dream...
2
Neil needs to be taken to task for the scam that was the Pono player. For those of us who take music seriously, it was, as Neil might put it, "the promise of the real." Yet, after several provider set backs and some squirrelly behind-the-scenes manipulation by Tim Cook and Apple, it all went up in smoke, leaving those of us who trusted him holding the bag in the form of an all-but-useless $400 piece of equipment. Young can prattle on to his heart's content about the sound of music, but in my mind and in the minds of others he scammed, he's nothing more than a usurious hypocrite.
Tyrone:
Sorry to read your resentment about being "scammed".
I too have my Pono Player lying inert in a drawer. I purchased it during the Crowdfunding effort. Far from anger, however, I feel only disappointment , & I suspect Mr. Young does, too.
At least we tried. I'm proud of that. Lesson learned. Maybe next time.
2
Ever wonder how the audiophile equipment industry persuades customers to spend vast sums on special interconnect cables and speaker wire, even on digital cables? Read this article.
The part about listening while driving was especially funny, since the dynamic range compression technique is intended for listening in noisy environments. The lowest bit-rate compressed formats are inferior, but most of us can't distinguish a high bit-rate MP3 from uncompressed digital audio in a blind test. Certainly no one Young's age can. Analog sources are another matter, since tape hiss and vinyl surface noise are audible. If nostalgia means you prefer this, fine. Early CDs sounded harsh when the engineers did not know to get rid of the equalization designed to compensate for phonographic playback.
Spend your money on good speakers or phones and listen to CDs vs 96Kbps sources for the same material on a good playback chain with a friend switching back and forth. If you can tell the difference, you have a golden ear indeed.
And get vaccinated and stop obsessing about GMOs.
7
Hi-res digital will become standard soon, as network speeds continue to increase. Even with modestly compressed audio formats, the limiting factor for most of us is our convenient-but-crummy playback systems - Bluetooth/Sonos speakers, Apple earbuds, laptop speakers, etc. Even when lossless digital audio becomes standard, it will be rare to hear it played through proper speakers
1
I've applauded Neil Young for at least publicizing high quality audio. I lament that many young people will only listen to compressed audio on portable systems, but I do think the real music lovers will, at some point, at least be confronted with the option of higher quality audio and have the choice to experience it themselves. It won't disappear, though it may be a hard to find option.
Currently, the music I primarily listen to, which would be labeled "indie," is almost always available for purchase on vinyl, and can be purchased digitally in 16 bit CD quality audio and very frequently in 24 bit as well, off the labels' websites. I have found the vinyl to be extremely problematic. Many albums are released in deluxe packaging with thick (128 gram) vinyl, but there seems to be no quality control and the pressing is poor and the vinyl sounds awful. I'd encourage artists to purchase random samples of their vinyl releases to check what their fans are hearing.
I think the safest bet is CD (rip it uncompressed if you wish), purchased high quality audio files, or TIDAL for streaming. I definitely have hearing loss and it does not at all diminish the pleasure of high quality audio. Quite the opposite I think, compressed audio I often find irritating and fatiguing.
You don't need a high-end system; just don't use a portable system as your stationary listening option and make sure your speakers can push out a wide range of frequencies, low bass and up.
3
Compressed digital music is not healthy. Even though there is a wave of frequency, it is cut into little bits that is not natural. I agree with Neil.
3
Maybe this is the end game. For most of human existence, a song disappeared as it was sung. Jealousies and theft have always been a part of creative work, but songwriters and musicians had an inevitable relationship. For a song to survive, someone had to play it.
Technology now allows us to preserve the song and play it forever, in something very closely approximating the original form. And for a very, very brief moment, the physical recording of the music was itself valuable. Copies could be made, but it cost money and required expensive equipment, meaning that it could be distributed, but in a limited way. People fell in love with their recordings, and their collections of recordings. I'm in my late, so I was part of this. I remember taking my paycheck, earned working fast food in the mall, to tower records. But even I'm a bit too young to have really lived in the golden age. I have my parents' records, though, including that magnificent CSNY record. I listened to it yesterday on the turntable (a cheap one, sorry).
But now? I think we've passed through that phase where the recordings themselves are valuable. I'm sure technology will progress to the point where the sampling matches the best analog recordings. But it is so endlessly replicable, at so little cost, in such an uncontrollable environment from an IP perspective, that maybe we're cycling back to the point where live music is the only place music really lives - and disappears as it is created.
1
As someone who became an audio geek at the age of 14 after saving my summer job wages and buying my first of many stereo systems I can relate to his cause. Audiophiles are a small, often odd, group however and trying to explain this obsession is usually pointless but this piece sheds some light on the subject. Hearing music reproduced as accurately as possible can be moving, bringing the listener that much closer to the live experience. Rock on Neil, the audiophiles of the world- all 50 of us - are with you.
16
Coincidentally, I just recently bought a vinyl repress of Rust Never Sleeps. Powered up my tube amp, slapped it on my turntable and blasted it through a couple of Klipsch speakers. I'm with you, Neil.
11
I realize the journalist has arrived at the foot of his long revered musical icon but why be so dismissive of Neil Young's peer musical stars with the agist line, "when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves." Can you be more judgmental in response and tone to the natural process of artists who live long lives and may approach their artistic lives and the oversized expectations of fans who think everyone should be immortal and reinvent themselves at every stage in varied ways that serve some public?
Where are editors of theses feature stories in which writers get free passes for all sorts of indulgent lines, asides, and forays in to the lazy writing of personal perspectives? Where are the editors who keep an eye out for tone, especially when it comes to aging. "Old": Now there's a word with a lot of baggage that dismisses individuals in a snap.
40
@Diane
yes. this throw-away line diminishes the article.
7
@Diane He's correct - as great as those three once were, only Neil is still making new relevant music rather than trading on the glories of his past. I've seen all 4 live in the past 4 years and yes, Sir Paul put on a great show, but none of it worth mentioning was new. The Stones are basically a Rolling Stones cover band featuring 4 seventy year old men, Dylan can't sing and doesn't care; only Neil played a concert that offered recent material as good as his older songs that blended together seamlessly as the evening progressed.
4
In my non-expert opinion, it’s not about digitizing or sound comprehension. It’s about the headphones/speakers.
With good Bose, Jbl or Sony headphones, or even beats, even Neil Young sounds like “a God.”
2
Support the live music
4
Another thing worth stressing about Spotify: they basically stole music, put their name on it, and charge you for it, with very little money going to musicians.
They got away with this because big record companies were worried they would not survive with the turn to streaming and Spotify managed to buy much of their catalogues, thus normalizing streaming to the extent that smaller labels eventually felt they had to join, too.
Musicians make next to nothing on Spotify. Here is one article with some math on this: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/26/how-spotify-apple-music-can-pay-musicians-more-commentary.html. It is a tragedy - musicians used to be able to make at least some money from streaming. And if you think most can easily make a living off touring that is incorrect, too (and requires you to live in a van).
2
Being a rather tasteless individual myself I have never been particularly fond of Neil Young’s songs and so I find myself repressing a sense of schadenfreude in seeing such a silly and overblown critique of a musical library that has wormed its way into the American consciousness for half a century via fm radio
Yeesh, what a self important writer. He really puts himself in the story.. not sure why. His thoughts about how Neil's brain works are not relevant. I'm not surprised Neil wanted to undo this interview.
With regard to digital sound, I'm not sure I can hear the difference, but it could explain why I barely listen to music anymore.
10
Anybody who refers to The Eagles as a "supergroup" doesn't understand enough about musical definitions to be writing articles like this.
21
So Neil young wants to “save music”?! He should start with pointing out the utter imbecility of most ‘pop’ music, including many of his own ‘compositions’.
1
I would have enjoyed this piece more if it had been written with just an iota of critical distance and skepticism. It reads like an ode to Neil Young. Fine, write an ode to Neil Young. But please don't publish it in the Times magazine and label it anything like "reporting." Put it in a book called, "I love Neil Young." The guy sounds like a world-class crank. Why couldn't the writer challenge him a bit on his views?
6
"That larger cycle, combined with his magnificent control over his art, is what makes him such a uniquely vital and generative artist, at an age when peers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have become skeletal holograms of their former selves."
This is lazy, ill-informed writing. I can't defend McCartney or Jagger, but Triplicate, released in 2017, won critical acclaim from critics who know what they are talking about, and it was not a one-off. Dylan has had a late-career revitalization--Tempest, a smoking record if ever there was one, was released just seven years ago--that stands alone in American music save for, perhaps, Johnny Cash. And is Jimi Hendrix really "the greatest American popular music talent maybe ever?" Well, maybe, no. Hendrix wasn't about popular music. At all. Everyone who thinks Hendrix belongs in the same genre as Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra raise your hands.
Once I got to those parts of the story, I just stopped. I'll come back and finish it later. The headline promised a lot, so, we'll see. Maybe there's something in the second half of the story to balance out what's in the first half. NYT needs to keep up with the times--that I understand--but it also needs an authoritative voice in a story like this, and I'm just not hearing it.
13
@August West
My name is August West
and I love my Pearly Baker best
More than my wine :)
We grew up with AM radio and tabletop record players with scratched LPs. Before that, live music was unamplified acoustic music often barely audible over dancers or pub patrons. And yet we still appreciate music. Sorry Mr Young, i respect your music, but this is silly.
116
@Dave Trop Did you read the article and do you think the acoustic experiences that helped heal the author's child are silly? Could there be something to better fidelity?
7
@Dave Trop, agree.
2
@Dave Trop
hmm, both sources you mention are ANALOG! So really quite irrelevant to the sonic issues of poor DIGITAL audio reproduction.
1
An overarching lesson of this piece is that you gotta go see live music on a regular basis so you know what it is supposed to sound like.
428
@WRosenthal, is the sound of a concert in a basketball arena with lousy acoustics or in one of those miserable "live nation" concrete/grass outdoor facilities what music is supposed to sound like? Because I've been to dozens of shows in those, and the sound often stinks (even when the experience of seeing a concert is enjoyable). I've been to concerts at a few facilities designed for live performances, but most shows these days are in venues that can't do the music justice.
17
@WRosenthal
What about music that was never intended to be performed live, most notably the last three-plus years' output of the Fabs?
3
@WRosenthal
I avoid live rock concerts because the fans sing along.
I pay to hear the headliner sing, not the audience.
6
The big problem, and why substandard sound is tolerated, is that people don't listen to music anymore as entertainment, as an activity in and of itself. Nowadaze music is just background noise so no one cares about sound quality.
See the movie "Love and Mercy"? In it Brian Wilson explains that to properly appreciate his "Pet Sounds" album you need to shut the lights, use headphones, do a doob, and play the record. That's Listening to Music. It's not just on in the background.
297
@MIKEinNYC, music has been played in the background since the 1950s (elevator music), on jukeboxes in diners, on outdoor low-fi speakers at camps and swim clubs, and in transportation hubs. All of it with low sonic quality.
Nothing new here.
2
@MIKEinNYC That's not even a problem, let along a big problem. By all means, by a CD and entertain yourself.
1
@MIKEinNYC , I love Pet Sounds, and only recently realized just how brilliant and unique Brian Wilson is.
And now, thanks to his (and your) suggestion, I plan to do just that!
10
This article is painstakingly beautiful. If you have a child that is atypical in your life, it will pierce your soul. This sentence at the end made me cry.
“His lesson Is that everything human is shot through with imperfection. Filtering that out doesn’t make us more perfect; it makes us sick. He’s a great artist, which means that he sees and hears more, which may make him a loon, but is also why he is still worth listening to.”
The way David Samuels wrote this article conveys such love; love of Neil’s music, love for his son, love for something we’ve lost in streaming music.
Thank you, thank you for reminding us that music touches our souls, hearts, and brains and that to dumb it down is just plain dumb!!!
375
@Cindy Van Lunen
good for you. this letter (alone among the others) gets it exactly right. as the father of 5 & grandfather of 14, that you!!!
3
@Cindy Van Lunen
Totally agree. Neil gets it. Music is made to nourish the soul. I know that when I listen to digital music, I get ear fatigue much quicker than listening to vinyl. Try it sometime. Compression can be brutal to your body and ears.
5
Get 'em, Neil! Streaming music sounds like garbage.
Unfortunately for the uber-talented Mr. Young and and those of us who agree with him, most young people have no idea what superb sound .... sounds like. They've grown up with 124K mp3 rot and have never heard quality audio. They have no idea what they're missing.
167
@HarlemHobbit Someplace in the middle of the "tapes" technology, people started plucking apart LPs that were conceived of as wholes and making "faves" tapes. Something precious was lost then. It's the attitude that made teh technology, not the other way around. Art has problems when the audience has been defined with the attention span of a mayfly.
7
@HarlemHobbit
Yes Neil Young, the de-realization of recorded music began when it started to be digitalized, made “perfect”. I have often wondered why the cleansed sound of digital didn’t equate to the original analogue versions, his descriptions here help explain it.
8
@HarlemHobbit
You're right. Sadly, music became a mangled mess because that's the best that storage and download speeds could do.
Today, we actually have the ability to store and stream lossless FLACs with the perfect sound quality that Young is looking for. But young people don't want to pay for it (witness Tidal's lack of growth) and even if they did, most music being recorded today is compressed to the point where a 320Kbps MP3 is literally giving you all there is to listen to.
6
I was at one of Neil Young's Carnegie Hall solo shows in early 2014. Three pianos,perhaps a dozen guitars, and Neil. I payed through the nose for two tickets in the third row, and I'd do it every year if he came to Carnegie that often--the acoustics in that hall made Young's astoundingly great music even better.
He pattered between songs. And my favorite moment in his conversations with the audience was when, after hearing fans yell song titles out to the stage, Young said, "Nah. I play for me."
And thank God he does.
4
Oct. 1 (I think 2017?). Last minute gig at Tower Theater on his way home from somewhere. Don’t know how they pulled off the last minute logistics. Mostly acoustic.
He’s not wrong.
5
When you hear the snap of Ray Brown's bass strings against the fingerboard, you know you're there. When you hear the slide of Charlie Byrd's fingers along his guitar strings, you know you're there. When you hear Pollini sigh during a Chopin nocturne, you know you're there.
176
@Arn Darvin you probably are not a jazz or classical music fan.
3
@Lee Downie
Not sure where "there" is when one hears these things, but these sounds are not music, and they were not written by the composers. They are side-effects, perceived as distracting or enhancing depending on the listener. Personally, the last thing I want to hear in a Chopin nocturne (e.g.) is the pianist vocally emoting about it. I want to hear the notes the master wrote. This why I cannot listen to most of what Keith Jarrett plays, even though he is himself the master composer!
1
@Jonathan Swift
I am, and Arn Darvin is right. The quality of any of those delivery media depends on the choices made by the producers and providers (and sometimes the consumer), not on the technology itself. Any of them could provide high fidelity sound. Whether they do, is a choice.
Ok, I wonder where to go here. Largely this opus has no information new or that ca not be found by merely reading Neil's wiki page. In fact i feel this was published before as it is all too familiar. Bouncing from Elliott ordering pizza to his untimely death is weird, far more that a large train layout. For example, why not explore new territory such as how Neil reconciles his desire to listen to music in his car with his fervent view of vinyl, or even the comeback of vinyl today...or was this written too long ago. Sorry NYT, you had a great subject yet new insights into this genius were squandered.
2
I'm not sure if I'm" poisoning myself", while I'm scrolling Pandora on my iPhone; but I remember riding my bike with the little AM transistor radio. Feeling free while blasting Great Balls of Fire!
Now, the box in my hand is even smaller than it was then. Amazing! From transistor radio to vinyl records to eight tracks moving to reel-to-reels, cassettes. onward through all the digitals through wifi.
The music has surely died!
More likely low quality "music" is hurting people's brains.
3
@RC that has always been the case.
Neal ain't crazy. He is thoroughly sane in a crazy world!
2
But here's the rub: can you tell the difference if you're stoned?
Of course, only more so.
Apparently Neil never listened to AM radio back in the day. I grew up listening to WLS in Chicago in the 1970s and the quality was marginal due to the limits of the technology. Is my brain ok? Sure is. Do I love music? Sure do.
Calm down Neil. You’re being a cranky old man.
3
Too much interviewer, not enough interviewee.
20
I came to this piece to read about Neil Young and his ideas on music, not to learn about the overheated journalist who can’t stop inserting himself in every paragraph. He vibes with Neil. He consoles Neil. He “feels bad” about making Neil feel bad. I couldn’t finish the piece because it reeked of the writer’s self-preoccupation. How about that weird paragraph that meanders into the fire-scarred description of the dry L.A. hills. And stating his many opinions as, well, just facts. This is nonfiction, right? Was there an editor to this piece? I’m pretty sure the great John McPhee would have red pen marks all up and down the margins of this draft. One of McPhee’s maxims on writing nonfiction, even creative nonfiction, seems appropriate here. He said, when writing, “It’s not about you”.
5
The rantings of an eccentric white man. Who is Neil to tell me what "sounds" good? If music is indeed "art" [and no liberal would dare say otherwise] then we need to be open and ready to accept all of it!
1
Best description ever.
"No one in their right mind would choose to live in the canyons outside Los Angeles, especially in the summertime between noon and 5. There isn’t enough water or shade. After a few months of summer heat, the scrub on the mountainsides is baked dry. Then someone gets sloppy with a stray cigarette butt or a campfire or the power company fails to maintain a power line and a spark accelerates into a terrifying wildfire that sends up pillars of thick smoke that from a distance hovers over the canyons like an illustration from an old Bible. News crews record burning mansions, which are intercut with the winsome llamas of the rich and famous that have been safely removed to Zuma Beach. Stragglers are incinerated in their cars."
3
All my music is now digital flac files, a lossless method. Anyone that thinks mp3 is a good format is a idiot.
By the way, a CD is the size it is because a big shot at Sony wanted them to be able to contain Beethoven’s Ninth without interruption.
1
Moving story. Music heals. Small plastic buds playing low quality sounds at loud volume harm. Digital streaming of high quality files into technology that opens up the sound file into its original rich vibrancy approximates the sound of the original live performance. Last night I was able to listen to the beginning of every recording of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto in C, Paganini variations. I could hear the sound of EMI's Abbey Road studios in the 60's and '70's as contrasted with other studios over time. There was a golden age of sound. I found it through the new technology. Neil remembers it, and hears what technology has done to humans but also rightly asks the technologists to use their minds for the benefit of humans. Take the time to change how you listen to music. I use a 1970's Sansui quadrophonic receiver to transform stereo into 4 channel that plays out of 1960's large wooden speakers. Very different than the speakers of today. If you were to take this argument further about the quality of sound it would also include the dynamics of physical space. Get out to a classical music concert and then reflect upon how you have been transformed. Great article!
2
I suppose that I matured along with Neil Young. I am a few years older than he, but for the last few months, I have been driving my family crazy, playing his song; 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart".
For reasons I don't fully understand, I have put the song to memory.
You know what, he's right about everything.
4
There was at one time a record player for the car. It didn't go over real well except for a short time and only played 45 records. Imagine driving on bumpy roads listening in..
Anyway, I grew up with very high end turntables and vinyl records in the house. My dad was an early audiophile back when he was called a hifi nut.. He didn't spend a lot on other junk, but when it came to audio and music the folks spared little. I inherited quite a bit of that equipment right before digital ruined it all.. Several moves later across country in greyhound buses kind of spelled the demise for my collections.
I’m sure Neil is 100% correct, but to me the music that speaks to me, well, speaks to me. If I am affected by iPod music, say 100%, better quality, while nice, does not affect the underlying 1st
"His lesson is that everything human is shot through with imperfection."
A corollary might be: everything "perfect" (AI, digital music) is shot through with inhumanity.
3
Music, like food, has a list of variables that can be quantified and qualified (rhythm, harmony, melody, instrumentation, timbre, the message and poetry of the lyrics, etc.). The people who say good music is only about subjective "personal taste" are like the people who think a cheeseburger and a bag of chips has the same nutritional value as a chef's salad. Music also has good and bad effects on the human physiology. The people who say that anyone critiquing the quality of music is a cranky bore are like the people who labeled those pointing out that cigarettes and alcohol were toxic and addictive "party poopers." There's junk food and there's junk music. There's good drugs and bad drugs. There are objective standards that point to the degradation of the quality of music in our culture. Absolutely.
2