Neil Young - Heart of gold - v1.0

I've come full circle. This was the song that drove me to record my performances in this format. That was 6 years ago though. It was then that I started experimenting with audio and video recording techniques while learning to play instruments.

Acoustic guitar

Playing the guitar track is harder than it initially sounds. Yes, there are simple open string chords, yet there's a lot of technique to make it all sound good. I combined partial and full palm muting. I recorded the earlier versions with the acoustic models of my James Taylor Variax but I just didn't like the final sound.

This led me to get an acoustic guitar (Yamaha APX600) and it made the job easier. It's an electric acoustic, of course, so that I can record its direct output without a mike setup in sessions that would get inevitably disturbed by my cheerful cats.

Keyboard - harmonica

In the early recordings I tried playing an electric guitar version of the harmonica but that went nowhere.

Then I got more ambitious. I wanted to learn to play the harmonica for this track. It looks easy to play, right? Wrong. I gave it a try, did some learning, but it turned out to require a major investment. Instead I just got a harmonica sample for Native Instruments. It was a decent compromise.

Vocals

While far from perfect, this vocals line is so much better than what my early recordings were several years ago.

Drums

I changed my usual drum sounds to one of the Abbey Road 60s samples and tried to play it in a mellow, monotonous way.

Bass

Just walking the bass with a basic line.

Misc

Initially I wanted to record the Roxette version, the one I was more familiar with, but settled on the slightly simpler Neil Young original version.