Forgive me if this is a completely stupid question but since when did Prince start using a tremelo arm on his guitars. I have never seen or heard him using one until I saw him live in London in the thursday show! He had one on his purple symbol guitar and was putting to damn good use! Seeing as Prince like to use the bends to such a large degree, wouldn't using the tremolo detract from this a little? Or maybe I'm just talking horseshit!

The first time I saw him with it was a the Milwaukee Summerfest show a while back. It was only on the purple symbol guitar.

I don't think it detracts from his playing. Rather, it just adds a new element to it. The way he uses it adds chaos to his sound and it's effective. If you listen to the NPGMC track "Habibi" you can hear him using it a great deal. His style sounds much like Vernon Reid on that recording...and that's a complement.

I think his choice to start using it was probably two-fold. One, as respect for the style of Jimi. And two (this is a guess), his respect for Steve Vai's playing. If you have ever seen him live...wow, I consider him the master of using a whammy bar for actual, musical use.

Prince is using it for wilder bending of notes and trill effects. I have seen him also attempt the occasional "dive-bomb" effect but not as wild as Vai or Reid. There is quite an art to finding all of the subtle harmonics on the neck and making them scream using the bar.

My 2 cents...

Please explain what a tremolo is to us lay people.

Thanks

CherryMoon said:

A tremolo is used to raise or lower the pitch of a guitar by tightening or loosening the strings by pulling or pushing the arm down.

the tremolo is that metal bar you occassionally see the guitar hero-types cranking on, ala Eddie Van Halen

as cool as it was for Hendrix, his "whammy bar" threw the guitar out of tune and made a lot of his live stuff unlistenable, if you ask me. I think Hendrix is overrated as hell anyway

but Eddie Van Halen, well, that's another story

Thanks guys. Didn't know the technical term for that "little bar thingie"


Hey you learn something new everyday.

Peace

Didn't he use it during the jazzy guitar solo during the second half of "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" in the SOTT concert movie?

shockadelica said:

Prince's hand vibrato is great, I don't think he has ever needed to use a tremolo bar really. If he wants to do crazy dive-bombs etc he has his whammy pedals, pitch-shifting effects etc. I hate them because they fuck up your tuning even with a posh Floyd Rose locking tremolo.

In fact the only person who I can think of that uses the tremolo bar on his strat well is David Gilmour (Pink Floyd). Lovely vibrato mmm.

so a divebomb is like what's at the end of 3 chains o' gold right:?:

Thecherryloon said:

Peep the beginning of "Ronnie Talk To Russia". Before the drums kick in...

He also uses it on WWWBP. I don't care too much for his style with the tremolo, maybe because it DOESN'T seem so subtle to me.

And, yes, his normal (non-tremolo) vibrato is wonderful. I've been aping it for years and getting mad compliments about it, to boot.

Didn't Prince use tremolo on the Controversy album way back in 1981? I'm sure I heard him using it on that album. Not live in concert, but on vinyl.