On The Beach - Neil Young [fingerstyle acoustic/electric guitar cover]

On The Beach, the song that opens side two of (and gives its title to) Neil Young’s 1974 album, is a beautifully haunting song about fame, its downsides, and the loneliness and alienation that comes with it. It is one of my favourite Young songs (on one of my favourite albums of his) and it was a pleasure to arrange and record it.
I used three separate guitar tracks on it - the main one is the acoustic fingerstyle arrangement, played on my Yamaha APX600. On top of that, I layered some tremolo chords from the Les Paul, to add a bit of texture - I love how those came out! Finally, the solo was also played on the Les Paul. To me, this solo is a perfect example that you don’t need a lot of notes or speed to write a perfect solo. Young may sound sloppy or careless with his playing sometimes, but he is a master of spacious, emotive solos such as this one. Each note is there because it needs to be - there are no unnecessary notes or flourishes. Everything is played beautifully, with feeling - and that is harder than it seems at first. I hope I made justice to it.

Equipment notes:
I used both a Yamaha APX 600 and an Epiphone Les Paul Standard. Both were played in standard tuning. The guitars were plugged to a Hotone Ampero for processing and interfacing with my computer - the Ampero had different patches for the acoustic track, the clean, tremolo sound of the electric flourishes, and the slightly rougher sound of the solo. The recording was done in GarageBand, where I also sequenced the drum and bass tracks.

#guitar
#fingerstyle
#neilyoung
#electricguitar
#acousticguitar
#yamaha
#apx600
#epiphone
#lespaul
#hotone
#ampero