"CSNY will never tour again, ever..."

After seeing the reunion tour in 1974....the CSNY ship sailed from the dock !

No interest anymore.

Though what I've heard of Crosby's newest outing is nice.

 

I've seen him with CSNY 4 times. He doesn't do the one note and playing with feedback thing as much as he does with the Horse, but I don't think it's that different a style from whathe usually plays to my ears. If anything, Stills seems to move closer to Young's approach in these contexts, though he still uses his favorite scales and more piercing tone that make the playing identifiable as his.

 

Of course Neil knows scales. He might not know the names but he knows them on the fretboard.

 

I know you weren't replying to me, but I did not suggest he did not know scales - just that he hasn't demonstrated anything to suggest he can play them fluidly (even tempo, each note with the same tone and volume as the others).

 

Then he gets lost a lot when he plays. Theres no shame in wandering out of scale, lots of guys get into the heat of things and one wrong note and BLAMMO its just jazz.

Jazz is just a fret away, you know.

To me, Neil has something none of us guitar players on here have, or probably will ever have: an instantly recognizable sound. Few players do.

As far as soloing etc, yeah I've heard Young blow all kinds of clams. But I've also heard him turn really unusual phrases and melodies out of thin air that were improv of the best kind. Its erratic some times, but most of my favorite musicians are that way. If I want to hear pitch perfect never any mistakes guitar, I'll listen to Steve Morse.

No, wait, no I wont. There was a time where I did, he was my favorite. Somehow as I progressed thru my own playing, his sort of thing began to disinterest me, and I began to hear more appeal in these people who werent as good technically but somehow they had a gift of melody or interesting phrases in their playing.. even if they drove off into the weeds fairly often.

After all, who of us has never gotten up onstage in some crappy old bar and driven a guitar solo into the ditch?

 

I've had XM or Sirius going back to September 2004 but I'm not a Howard Stern listener. I wasn't paying the extra money for Stern in my old car but I bought a new vehicle in August. The free trial came with the Stern channels but I haven't really checked them out yet so I'm not familiar with the schedule.

 

Neil's playing is pure expression, pure feeling, totally free. Forget about scales.

 

Yeah, I wasn't replying to anything you wrote, but I just find the idea that Neil doesn't know scales hilarious. You can't play a guitar solo if you do not know scales (or have the solo memorized), that's like stepping into a minefield. He's not very fluent on the electric guitar, no. His style works for his music; it doesn't really work outside of that context.

 

Not to start an argument, but that's a non-musician myth. Any improvisation is built on scales. I mean, what happens when you randomly pick out notes on the fretboard? It probably doesn't sound like Neil Young. It might sound like free jazz. Neil knows what's he's doing.

 

Any numbskull can learn scales and play like everyone else. Neil has an undefinable, undeniable natural talent.

 

My style of lead playing isn't that far off from Neil's, though I don't get into all the feedback efffects he uses or go on all that long. But I tend to play about the speed that one can sing a melody and it's more about hearing that melody in my head and placing my fingers where they need to go to play it than about thinking scales. I know scales and can play them if asked, but it's nothing I have ever practiced and I could not play what an accomplished player would call a fluid scale. Either playing by ear as I described, or choosing notes based on their relationship to the chords being played (known as "playing the changes" in bebop circles) are equally workable approaches to improvising based on scales.

In jazz, scale based improvisation really only became prevalent with the advent of modal jazz in the late 50s, though blues and rock have been modal for longer than that.

 

That's what i'm saying since my last six posts! I said "it's a style, an option of playing, a direction he choosed to take.". This scales talk doesn't matter at all, since what makes Neil's sound so unique is this expression based kind of playing. But i desagree with you when you say "Any improvisation is built on scales". I'm no professional musician, but i study classical guitar in my university since i was 15, i can read sheet music etc. Sometimes Neil is only expressing himself, making noises, extracting sounds from his guitar without using any scale. A lot of musicians use free improvisation, not only free jazz guys. Yes, Neil knows what he's doing. He has something in his head or some feeling and he's expressing it through his guitar. Some times he uses scales, sometimes he doesn't. And sometimes his hand is only going through the guitar neck, working by it self. Arc?

 

Let's just say Neil knows his way around the fretboard very well - he knows in which positions to put his fingers in on the fretboard and where to go from there - whether he knows it or not, he is usually playing pentatonic and major scales, just like any rock guitarist. It's inarguable.

 

Right. The best (your guy Jimi) kicked on the pentatonic, and that's that.

 

Suddenly this thread has now turned into the Guitar Olympics.

You cant "just learn scales and suddenly you can play like everyone else".

If by "everyone else" you mean all the guys who never developed any sense of melody or phrasing, and just sat in their college dorm room for two semesters and learned how to whizz scales up and down the neck, OK. I've tried to play with those guys.

 

Oh, Jimi had a very good knowledge of scales. He praticed hard, very very hard. He probably didn't know the names of the scales.

 

That's irony, or my English isn't good enough. Anyway, his guitar wasn't even well tuned sometimes. But he kicked on the pentatonic.

 

I don't know what you mean, it's not something you would say in English.

 

There's an error of communication going on here...

 

Don't forget to take Buffalo Springfield and Byrds royalties into consideration.

 

Wonder if any of the $500 CSNY box sets will see the light of day?

 

"CSNYLos Angeles"

 

http://www.relix.com/blogs/detail/listen_neil_young_finally_visits_howard_stern

 

From 4waysite:
http://www.4waysite.com/csny-news-rumors-2015/

David Crosby is reaching out to Neil Young
2015 | March 18 | somethingelsereviews.com

David Crosby is reaching out to Neil Young via Twitter: “I apologized. We’ll see.”

David Crosby’s personal relationship with Neil Young appeared to fall apart late last year when Crosby commented on Young’s personal life. Now Crosby has taken to Twitter, over a period days, to both reach out to Young and to explain a complicated relationship that has been a cornerstone for the often-fractured Crosby Stills Nash and Young since the Woodstock era.

“He’s pretty mad at me,” Crosby admits, before revealing: “I apologized. We’ll see.”

Certainly, David Crosby still feels great affection for his former bandmate. Asked elsewhere to pick his favorite Neil Young song, Crosby says: “How can you pick just one?” He even put in a plug for Young’s new Pono music system, saying “I love it. Neil is right.”

Even in this period of reconciliation, however, David Crosby can’t hide his feelings on Neil Young’s lo-fi Letter from Home album, recorded in Jack White’s throwback phone booth. Crosby deftly avoided answering, thus making his real opinion clear. Asked whether Young can be difficult to work with, Crosby is more magnanimous. “Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no,” he says. “He’s very intelligent, can be funny.”

 

Crosby should keep this personal matter between himself and Neil to a personal private level and not share it with his fans.

“He’s pretty mad at me,” Crosby admits, before revealing: “I apologized. We’ll see.”
He's setting it up so either Neil accepts his apology or comes off as the bad guy. I don't like that.