chrisslope9 said:

coldasice said:

chrisslope9 said:

Sorry brother but Prince flanged and chorused his way through every solo in the 80's. Prince is by far my hero of hero's musically but he was nowhere near the player Hendrix was at age 27. He relyed ofetn on the same runs for solos throughout the 80's . As I said, something changed in the 90's and he got better and better. It's true Jimi used a lot of wah and distortion but not even close to the set up Prince was using on the SOTT and Lovesexy tours. And Jimi would often play things straight which Prince rarely ever did , even towards the end.

[Edited 1/9/18 20:00pm]

[Edited 1/9/18 20:02pm]

[Edited 1/9/18 20:06pm]

I’m not disagreeing at all, but sometimes when Jimi would hit multiple bad notes in a row you never cringed? I’m only talking live, his studio work was usually just overdubbed when he fucked up. His 27th year was his worst though he even lost confidence in his own ability to put out an album.

i never cringed but i heard it, his feel was always there though, which, counts for a lot in his style of music. Also, there were a lot of performances where he astounds, so, playing well was certainly within his grasp. He would have gotten better and better with time. Also, he may have laid down the guitar completely if he meant what he said, he wanted to get more into composition, planned to attend college to learn notation and theory. He didn't need it but most rock musicians do have some kind of hangup with euro legitimacy.

coldasice said:

chrisslope9 said:

Jimi was better than Prince at age 27. Prince used a lot of effects and tricks to make him sound like a better player than he actually was in the '80s. Not that he wasn't great but he was no Hendrix when it came to solo's. Prince's playing really took off in the 90's and his playing got better and better for the remainder of his life. When he passed his playing went way beyond Hendrix in every way .

[Edited 1/8/18 17:43pm]

Ok I agree here...Hendrix had 1 pedal in his prime and a wah. Live of course he toyed with octave pedals and things in the studio.
Prince used so many effects in the 80’s to sound better.
In the early 90’s he could use the effects so well I don’t think of it as cheating. By the 2000’s he could play at top level with or without effects.

Are you implying that the effects were there to mask supposed weaknesses? Sound "better" than what?
I disagree. He used that many effects to sound original, to achieve his own trademark sound. To push the envelope sonically.
When Prince is pushing his flanger or his tremolo at 100% wet, he's going for texture.
For the SOTT Tour, Prince asked specifically for Neil Young's guitar engineer.
Like all threads that fray into subjective territories, this one kinda goes nowhere.

If you prefer minimalism, you will prefer guitarists that sound way less boombastic than Jimi.
I never heard Jimi play proper funk riffs (like Reggae, there's this misconception that Chicken Grease is easy).
What Prince achieves on "Controversy" (the song) is one of the best rhythm guitar parts ever laid on tape.
I never heard Jimi going in that direction. Like I said, total different eras, total different approach, apples and oranges.

Look, it's like coming after Prince: you're a musician, and here's this big Commendatore statue.
You'll have to work pretty hard to come up with something that doesn't remind the great past works.
Prince came after Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Berry and countless others. Yet he has built a (very) distinctive guitar sound,
both in the way of playing and in the way he sounds, and he cannot be mistaken for another guitarist.

I'm pretty sure Hendrix, had he survived into the 80s, would have used chorus, delay, flanger pedals, just like the other guitarists did at the time.

Effects aren't used to just "cover up sloppy playing" or provide the impression that "you're a better player than what you really are". Effects are also used to make the guitar parts fit the mixes. It's amazing what especially delay / chorus / flanger type of effects can do in that regard. I'm pretty sure anyone here that's attempted to record "a Prince style track" on their own has personal experience in that regard. A gutar part with a good amount of modulation effects just fits a backing track made with 80s style electronic drum sounds better than a dry take. It's about filling up space, providing contrasts, adding more animation to the sound than what otherwise would be the case etc.

novabrkr said:

I'm pretty sure Hendrix, had he survived into the 80s, would have used chorus, delay, flanger pedals, just like the other guitarists did at the time.

Effects aren't used to just "cover up sloppy playing" or provide the impression that "you're a better player than what you really are". Effects are also used to make the guitar parts fit the mixes. It's amazing what especially delay / chorus / flanger type of effects can do in that regard. I'm pretty sure anyone here that's attempted to record "a Prince style track" on their own has personal experience in that regard. A gutar part with a good amount of modulation effects just fits a backing track made with 80s style electronic drum sounds better than a dry take. It's about filling up space, providing contrasts, adding more animation to the sound than what otherwise would be the case etc.

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

Lots of people have spoken about prince's melodic sense being better if we are talking melodic sense you'd be hard pushed to find better than this>

joyinrepetition said:

bonatoc said:

coldasice said:

joyinrepetition said:

All I have to say is Prince killed it with "I'm Yours" way before he was 27 as well as "Bambi.". At 27 Jimi might have been marginally better than Prince, but Prince skills improved by leaps and bounds. Honestly I feel we never saw his best. He gave us glimpses of his greatness like at the RRHOF. Jimi could have improved too but we'll never know. Both 2 of the greatest to pick up the axe!

Awesome songs, but definitely not “Killing it”. Usually to answer a question like this.
You can really only discuss live playing.
Studio trickery can easily edit out your mistakes.
Look at the full version of Purple Rain, if that song woulda been left in that form it’s a mess.

Bambi.

Purple Rain.

What is the point to your nonsense?

NorthC said:

Stimpy said:

Prince--hands down.

And I say that as a 25 year player who has studied and stolen from both.

It isnt about technique, where each of them excel, it is abouty MELODIC SENSE -- pure and simple.

And here P takes a backseat ONLY to Miles in this last Century.

Hendrix gets the nod for innovation on the guitar to be sure--in his day it was MUCH harder to squeeze tone and effects out of full stack and a Strat.

But where MUSICALITY (and MUSICOLOGY) is concerned Prince smokes Hendrix and, frankly, everybody else who ever played the guitar.

How many other instruments can the shredders play?

That tells it.

Okay. Post your version of Machine Gun. I'm waiting...

Dont think he ever played it, but here is Red House-(he KILLS IT)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6SG_zEo3fE

stpaisios said:

Prince shares more with Marc Bolan than Hendrix, as a guitar player, glam appearance etc. and Prince was right, they compare him to Hendrix only cuz his was black. First, Prince aint primary a guitar player but a composer, arranger and producer. Second, ppl wanna push Prince into some virtuoso or greatest guitar players lists with Jeff Beck, Clapton, Hendrix, or whatever I dont mind that lists, they are overrated in my book. The only musican and guitar player who undestood Prince is Pete Townshed.

And more with Santana than those two.

I never cared for Hendrix. This is just my personal opinion. He was put up as some deity and still is today, even by people who weren't around back then (I was). Prince, on the other hand, could just run rings around anyone. Again, just my personal opinion, but a lot of the Hendrix aura is because he died young.

bonatoc said:

novabrkr said:

I'm pretty sure Hendrix, had he survived into the 80s, would have used chorus, delay, flanger pedals, just like the other guitarists did at the time.

Effects aren't used to just "cover up sloppy playing" or provide the impression that "you're a better player than what you really are". Effects are also used to make the guitar parts fit the mixes. It's amazing what especially delay / chorus / flanger type of effects can do in that regard. I'm pretty sure anyone here that's attempted to record "a Prince style track" on their own has personal experience in that regard. A gutar part with a good amount of modulation effects just fits a backing track made with 80s style electronic drum sounds better than a dry take. It's about filling up space, providing contrasts, adding more animation to the sound than what otherwise would be the case etc.

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

I agree with all of that!

Great rant bonatoc, but what you got against Moroder? I'm no massive fan of his but he certainly has his moments, not least the entire album he did with Sparks.

also,

what does this mean?

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar & vocals

It's the kind of thing Noel Gallagher would come out with.

Ignorant Bullshit!

bonatoc said:

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

jaawwnn said:

Great rant bonatoc, but what you got against Moroder? I'm no massive fan of his but he certainly has his moments, not least the entire album he did with Sparks.

also,

what does this mean?

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar & vocals

It's the kind of thing Noel Gallagher would come out with.

Moroder. Swindlers like him deserve all my rage and some more.

This global 80's flash-back phenomenon we witness in today's music, it mostly references his gross, vulgar production traits.
What a (mundane) Feeling. The guy enjoys some kind of cult status among everyone who thinks FM radio was somewhat capable of art.

Blondie was sexy. Then comes Moroder, and poor Debbie is catapulted straight into the sonic equivalent of gonzo porn.
The ugly intro, the smelly background vocals served by drunk hooligans raping her while she screams for help,
drowning in Giorgio's über-compressed spunk. She never recovered.

What does Wiki say?

Moroder has stated that the work of which he is most proud is Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

It doesn't take a copycat like Gallagher to understand that if you strip down this gooey official soundtrack for mall corridors
to just piano and voice, all you get is a stupid diatonic descent and ascent, with a pentatonic gimmick every four bars,
just so we don't fall asleep from boredom. This shit sounds like your first piano lesson.
That horrendous bass sound, my God. And you have Orgers giving Prince a hard time with the production of Emancipation.
This is real plastik®, the kind swizzle sticks are made of.
Disposable is Moroder's muzak main quality.

And that's what he's most proud of? Easy on the cocaine, Giorgio. You sum the eighties pretty well by confusing royalties with talent.
Your only genuine state of grace was with Limahl, the two-hit wonder, when ethereal goofy arpeggios met thinner-than-air voices,
making it the perfect example of the eighties nothingness, a total artifice, oddly transcended
by Beth Anderson's background vocals, before returning to merciless anonymity.
Moroder is dangerous for your ears, and lethal for the career of everyone he touches.

At least with Irene Cara we got a melody. Unbearable once you hit fifteen, but OK, teens can always use another
mindless joyous chorus. But the substance tastes more Jell-O than crème brûlée.

Moroder, the ambassador of bad taste.
The antithesis of the Italian spirit.
The Patron Saint of Euro Disco, for crying out loud!

jaawwnn, you must have confused Gallaghers (let's fall back on the guitar heroes subject).
And beware, next time you call me half an oasis,
I'll kick your ass. twice.

[Edited 1/10/18 18:48pm]

MD431Madcat said:

Ignorant Bullshit!

Care to develop, or are you gonna stay hidden behind your petty two-word sentence?

I agree with many parts of what Bonatoc says about the brilliance of Prince's musicality. Mostly though I would give him an "A" grade in his exhultation of this characteristic, were I qualified, in his rhapsodizing the brilliance and cleverness of the Minneapolis hero. It's a joyful thing, but maybe perhaps a lil' overthetop. I too enjoy the gamut of Prince's experimentation in tone and texture, melody-craft, harmonization, arranging segments, rhythms, timing & space. He did really cool stuff with sound creation! Very skilled. He could do so much and be quick to change. Prince could touch upon some of the guitar elements that Hendrix grasped, but with his short attention span (one of the great but also kind-of-frustrating things about him, for me) you would hear a brilliant experiment evaporate within everything else happening in a song.

>

Hendrix was a guitar god. Carlos Santana, one of Prince's idols, knows this. Hendrix may not have come up with half of the ideas that Prince eventually could over time within his pop compositions, and/or maybe had lazier fingers, but he focused the hell out of his tones, textures and volume--no bad notes to me--just a kind of cosmic oscillation (eg. "Star-Spangled Banner"). I appreciate his depth of experimentation with the chaos of sound; conflagration of melody, if you will. Timeless music of the universe. While Bonatoc tosses the appreciation of this baby out with the bathwater by equating such admiration to drugs, the wasted mind-state of the era, and shape of politics, etc. it is a thing that I find to be quite deep and compelling about Hendrix. His is an approach less embraced by axemen but for some avant-garde. Hendrix was a most humble and ever-reaching musician while Prince was maybe less humble, being proud of his skills that he flexed with his particular acumen. Different motivations propelled each's approach toward playing as they evolved, I imagine. Hendrix could def. play straight but got pretty bored with what he was doing within the structure of bands as a sideman--he and Prince probably shared in their style of music learning, btw--but Hendrix split his experience by deconstructing a lot in his music with his own bands. Not everybody wants to hear that kind of thing, the noise and chaos. Not everybody wants to hear Prince's "chinka-chinka" chicken grease, either, I imagine. I greatly like Prince and Hendrix, but I'll give Hendrix the edge in that rock-guitar-kind-of-stuff.

>

Also, as each era of musicians finds their own set of influences and means of expression in the now, I wouldn't be too quick to discount a whole generation of them in comparison to one brilliant artist of another time near- or far-ago. As it's been said, you don't [always] get the same impression of a sonic creation as you had the year it was done--time can change perspective!

MD431Madcat said:

Ignorant Bullshit!

bonatoc said:

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

PopcornFetus said:

This is slightly off topic, but I also think that Prince got better at a rate that Hendrix might not have improved to. There are many (all?) skilled guitarists that lived beyond 27 that never matched his improvisational skill or pathos in soloing. I believe Prince was the greatest guitar soloist of all time.

he certainly left me in awe and proud of him too after the R&R performance, he did the same thing as a singer in those years (I never thought of him as a great singer until around this time). The thing was, the man worked,we all know that, he just never stopped, they say he slept 4 hours or "never" and worked all the time, he also had standards, almost athletic like, you know great athletes are often brutal to themselves and I could see Prince being like that and I think it's a part of his later problems. But, that kind of unrelenting, inhuman drive is what creates a Michael Jordan. You put that work ethic, drive, talent+years of unstinting work, even if he improved a little bit every year he was going to get better. Hendrix there is no telling, they say he was always playing and that he even slept with his guitar, but even if he lived, how would he have continued to progress with those drug habits? No telling, maybe he would have, maybe he wouldn't have. Some artists seem to do as well or better drugged out of their minds others like Sly Stone become mediocre, unstable, unreliable and uncreative. Hendrix didn't have the same focus Prince had so he could have stopped improving or he could have been like a lot of great musicians like Jerry lee Lewis who seemed to play better no matter what was going on in his life.

Germanegro said:

I agree with many parts of what Bonatoc says about the brilliance of Prince's musicality. Mostly though I would give him an "A" grade in his exhultation of this characteristic, were I qualified, in his rhapsodizing the brilliance and cleverness of the Minneapolis hero. It's a joyful thing, but maybe perhaps a lil' overthetop. I too enjoy the gamut of Prince's experimentation in tone and texture, melody-craft, harmonization, arranging segments, rhythms, timing & space. He did really cool stuff with sound creation! Very skilled. He could do so much and be quick to change. Prince could touch upon some of the guitar elements that Hendrix grasped, but with his short attention span (one of the great but also kind-of-frustrating things about him, for me) you would hear a brilliant experiment evaporate within everything else happening in a song.

>

Hendrix was a guitar god. Carlos Santana, one of Prince's idols, knows this. Hendrix may not have come up with half of the ideas that Prince eventually could over time within his pop compositions, and/or maybe had lazier fingers, but he focused the hell out of his tones, textures and volume--no bad notes to me--just a kind of cosmic oscillation (eg. "Star-Spangled Banner"). I appreciate his depth of experimentation with the chaos of sound; conflagration of melody, if you will. Timeless music of the universe. While Bonatoc tosses the appreciation of this baby out with the bathwater by equating such admiration to drugs, the wasted mind-state of the era, and shape of politics, etc. it is a thing that I find to be quite deep and compelling about Hendrix. His is an approach less embraced by axemen but for some avant-garde. Hendrix was a most humble and ever-reaching musician while Prince was maybe less humble, being proud of his skills that he flexed with his particular acumen. Different motivations propelled each's approach toward playing as they evolved, I imagine. Hendrix could def. play straight but got pretty bored with what he was doing within the structure of bands as a sideman--he and Prince probably shared in their style of music learning, btw--but Hendrix split his experience by deconstructing a lot in his music with his own bands. Not everybody wants to hear that kind of thing, the noise and chaos. Not everybody wants to hear Prince's "chinka-chinka" chicken grease, either, I imagine. I greatly like Prince and Hendrix, but I'll give Hendrix the edge in that rock-guitar-kind-of-stuff.

>

Also, as each era of musicians finds their own set of influences and means of expression in the now, I wouldn't be too quick to discount a whole generation of them in comparison to one brilliant artist of another time near- or far-ago. As it's been said, you don't [always] get the same impression of a sonic creation as you had the year it was done--time can change perspective!

MD431Madcat said:

Ignorant Bullshit!

Thank you.

I was hoping someone would come up with a brilliant defense of Jimi.
This was perfection.

If Prince was born earlier, he would have gotten the competition he was asking for ("the only competition is myself").
That would have humbled him. I think he still would have been an exceptional talent.
That's the thing about him, the ethics, they are the same of the Beatles Hamburg years,
the same of Hendrix and Page doing their session musician work relentlessly.

Maybe the problem with Prince was how blatant his talent and charisma were,
arriving at a time where sixties heroes were decaying. Led Zep was dead, the Stones were dead,
fucking disco and cocaine were the only, pathetic reasons to get excited.
No wonder they gave him a million right there. He was like the Second Coming alright.

Maybe it would have served him to spend a little more years in the dark, learning and refining. Being just a bit more demanding.
One thing for sure, he didn't rest on his laurels. But he lost his humbleness, and that gives us lots of junk filling The Vault,
half-assed experiments were I can't decide if it's a good thing he trained himself to be able to produce a song a day:
on one hand you get When Doves Cry, on the other hand you get [grab your own deemed ridiculously failed Prince experiments].
Again, he was alone in his league: I don't blame him for losing it. I really can't blame him for secluding himself.
Around all the bozoes of the eighties, he must have felt very, very much alone: "Am I the only one who's willing to do the work?".
Don't play the MJ card. He was an entertainer, but certainly not an artist.

All the side projects, they're great, but they're also fucking suspicious: What kind of person photocopies himself like that?
Of course PP Records became a mess. After producing all the possible female and male alter egos,
there was nothing left to say. And what is left is what could be harshly judged as wanking yourself in front of a mirror,
if it wasn't for all the irresistible, exciting, wild music engraved in wax for the ages. Oh, and the humour.
Prince was extraloveable when he was aware of his paranoid behaviours masking his shyness, all his Prima Donna poses.
He managed to be funny and smart about his own limitations as a human being.

But then he lost it and saw himself as a guru, with unbelievable trash like "The One Song", the christic poses, all this lame shit
no one cared about but himself, and a whole bunch of fanatics followers with nothing better to do than say yes.
But this was not Lovesexy's yes, it was a stupid, a.u.t.omatic nod to every shit he layed on 64 channels.
Eighties Prince would have kicked this guy's ass, and more than twice. But he was gone.
Prince is so talented that bursts of brilliance couldn't help but to come out, and I'm thankful nonetheless.
But it doesn't bring me the initial, adolescent joy he used to infect us with, it's a music of a man scared of the world, locked in Xanadu.

During the eighties, Prince was closer to the sixties spirit more than any other artist, and that's precisely the problem.
Gone were the managers and the promoters who really cared for the music.
He was very lucky to have Ostin, Waronker, Marylou Badeaux and all the unknown advocates.
But then came Reagan and the Thatcher bitch, and pretty soon they were surrounded by Gordon Gekkos,
who burned the dream factory and smashed the crystal ball.
The reaction of Prince during the nineties was thrilling and excrutiating at the same time.
He made a fool of himself, but at the same time he was the Lone Ranger, the Last Man Standing.

Then he kind of gave up the fight and took the money. I can't blame him, he worked his ass off for years.
But he could have handled the third part of his career much more artistically, bringing the ethos back,
instead of becoming just a performing act at a million a night. Money fucked Christopher's mind and killed Jamie Starr.

I don't know if it's better to die at 27. But I'm glad my long gone heroes weren't around to witness
how Wall Street took over music and sucked every spirit of risk out of it. It's a fucking disgrace.
I vomit on stuff like "Imagine". It's indecent. It's the beginning of the end, rock'n'roll used for insurance commercials.
But at least it's Lennon. But a decaying one. Maybe you just can't Twist and Shout all of your life,
but see, that's exactly what an old fart would say.

Personally, I'm not going to give it up so soon, I'm not going without a fight.
Of course I'm extreme in my expression (I guess Orgers know me by now),
but I hope you have fun reading it, and that's what it's all about.
Man I hate tepid. Look at what we've become.
These are extreme times, and yet we all seem under Prozac. We stun ourself.
"Otherwise we would go crazy!", I hear some say.
Well, let's!

What's the alternative? Let a miraculous, one in a 10.000.000.000.000.000-and-counting
planet rot in front of our eyes? Art is crucial because it carries the spirit.
Right now it's suffocating, and so are the hopes of the common man. Without muses, he becomes a slave.

And women, how disappointing. You were supposed to educate these apes,
to teach them to respect you and nature, since you are one and the same.
Like Prince, I really can't blame you. You played slaves for centuries, and what good did it bring?
But it's time for feminism to fight back, do not let some Hollywood posers and billionaires take over the flag.
Equal paychecks, respect, gallantry, help with the house and the kids, You've got a long way to go.

Fucking Corporate World. They made us bow our fucking heads, and they raped our hearts. We had the three Jays, then Punk, then nothing.
Cobain was like the last trembling a corpse produces. I can understand the pain of a hyper-sensitive at the turn of the century:
he could sense Goldman Sachs and such would take over everything, put their dirty hands on every fucking living soul,
every food, all the water, the energy, he sensed they would grab his balls and never let go.

Beauty rots somewhere in a lurid New York studio,
a few teeths left, opium and alcohol as her best friends.
Morpheus is a fucking, deceiving bastard.
And the Third World Little Girl is still waiting for "We Are The World" to become true,
while she looses her health, her life, her faith while she stitches, assembles for us things we don't need, day by day, year over year.
The junkyards hunger knows no limits, no end.

If you ask me, I would have chosen to be in my twenties during these incredible years,
where the doors of perception were massively open for the first time, and for a whole generation.
Suddenly, woman and man could spend time dreaming, making love,
and look with eyes wide open at the mess the Rockefellers put them in.

But I'm already on a natural high, I would have ended up a wreck on LSD in wrecka time.
What can I say, I'm your typical Dreamer.
I can't stand the world as it is.
Art is what feeds me.
What drives me.

[Edited 1/11/18 5:35am]

Ignorant Bullshit! 2.0

bonatoc said:

MD431Madcat said:

Ignorant Bullshit!

Care to develop, or are you gonna stay hidden behind your petty two-word sentence?

great essay bona, what is your art of choice? writer? Musician? both?

bonatoc said:

Germanegro said:

I agree with many parts of what Bonatoc says about the brilliance of Prince's musicality. Mostly though I would give him an "A" grade in his exhultation of this characteristic, were I qualified, in his rhapsodizing the brilliance and cleverness of the Minneapolis hero. It's a joyful thing, but maybe perhaps a lil' overthetop. I too enjoy the gamut of Prince's experimentation in tone and texture, melody-craft, harmonization, arranging segments, rhythms, timing & space. He did really cool stuff with sound creation! Very skilled. He could do so much and be quick to change. Prince could touch upon some of the guitar elements that Hendrix grasped, but with his short attention span (one of the great but also kind-of-frustrating things about him, for me) you would hear a brilliant experiment evaporate within everything else happening in a song.

>

Hendrix was a guitar god. Carlos Santana, one of Prince's idols, knows this. Hendrix may not have come up with half of the ideas that Prince eventually could over time within his pop compositions, and/or maybe had lazier fingers, but he focused the hell out of his tones, textures and volume--no bad notes to me--just a kind of cosmic oscillation (eg. "Star-Spangled Banner"). I appreciate his depth of experimentation with the chaos of sound; conflagration of melody, if you will. Timeless music of the universe. While Bonatoc tosses the appreciation of this baby out with the bathwater by equating such admiration to drugs, the wasted mind-state of the era, and shape of politics, etc. it is a thing that I find to be quite deep and compelling about Hendrix. His is an approach less embraced by axemen but for some avant-garde. Hendrix was a most humble and ever-reaching musician while Prince was maybe less humble, being proud of his skills that he flexed with his particular acumen. Different motivations propelled each's approach toward playing as they evolved, I imagine. Hendrix could def. play straight but got pretty bored with what he was doing within the structure of bands as a sideman--he and Prince probably shared in their style of music learning, btw--but Hendrix split his experience by deconstructing a lot in his music with his own bands. Not everybody wants to hear that kind of thing, the noise and chaos. Not everybody wants to hear Prince's "chinka-chinka" chicken grease, either, I imagine. I greatly like Prince and Hendrix, but I'll give Hendrix the edge in that rock-guitar-kind-of-stuff.

>

Also, as each era of musicians finds their own set of influences and means of expression in the now, I wouldn't be too quick to discount a whole generation of them in comparison to one brilliant artist of another time near- or far-ago. As it's been said, you don't [always] get the same impression of a sonic creation as you had the year it was done--time can change perspective!

Thank you.

I was hoping someone would come up with a brilliant defense of Jimi.
This was perfection.

If Prince was born earlier, he would have gotten the competition he was asking for ("the only competition is myself").
That would have humbled him. I think he still would have been an exceptional talent.
That's the thing about him, the ethics, they are the same of the Beatles Hamburg years,
the same of Hendrix and Page doing their session musician work relentlessly.

Maybe the problem with Prince was how blatant his talent and charisma were,
arriving at a time where sixties heroes were decaying. Led Zep was dead, the Stones were dead,
fucking disco and cocaine were the only, pathetic reasons to get excited.
No wonder they gave him a million right there. He was like the Second Coming alright.

Maybe it would have served him to spend a little more years in the dark, learning and refining. Being just a bit more demanding.
One thing for sure, he didn't rest on his laurels. But he lost his humbleness, and that gives us lots of junk filling The Vault,
half-assed experiments were I can't decide if it's a good thing he trained himself to be able to produce a song a day:
on one hand you get When Doves Cry, on the other hand you get [grab your own deemed ridiculously failed Prince experiments].
Again, he was alone in his league: I don't blame him for losing it. I really can't blame him for secluding himself.
Around all the bozoes of the eighties, he must have felt very, very much alone: "Am I the only one who's willing to do the work?".
Don't play the MJ card. He was an entertainer, but certainly not an artist.

All the side projects, they're great, but they're also fucking suspicious: What kind of person photocopies himself like that?
Of course PP Records became a mess. After producing all the possible female and male alter egos,
there was nothing left to say. And what is left is what could be harshly judged as wanking yourself in front of a mirror,
if it wasn't for all the irresistible, exciting, wild music engraved in wax for the ages. Oh, and the humour.
Prince was extraloveable when he was aware of his paranoid behaviours masking his shyness, all his Prima Donna poses.
He managed to be funny and smart about his own limitations as a human being.

But then he lost it and saw himself as a guru, with unbelievable trash like "The One Song", the christic poses, all this lame shit
no one cared about but himself, and a whole bunch of fanatics followers with nothing better to do than say yes.
But this was not Lovesexy's yes, it was a stupid, a.u.t.omatic nod to every shit he layed on 64 channels.
Eighties Prince would have kicked this guy's ass, and more than twice. But he was gone.
Prince is so talented that bursts of brilliance couldn't help but to come out, and I'm thankful nonetheless.
But it doesn't bring me the initial, adolescent joy he used to infect us with, it's a music of a man scared of the world, locked in Xanadu.

During the eighties, Prince was closer to the sixties spirit more than any other artist, and that's precisely the problem.
Gone were the managers and the promoters who really cared for the music.
He was very lucky to have Ostin, Waronker, Marylou Badeaux and all the unknown advocates.
But then came Reagan and the Thatcher bitch, and pretty soon they were surrounded by Gordon Gekkos,
who burned the dream factory and smashed the crystal ball.
The reaction of Prince during the nineties was thrilling and excrutiating at the same time.
He made a fool of himself, but at the same time he was the Lone Ranger, the Last Man Standing.

Then he kind of gave up the fight and took the money. I can't blame him, he worked his ass off for years.
But he could have handled the third part of his career much more artistically, bringing the ethos back,
instead of becoming just a performing act at a million a night. Money fucked Christopher's mind and killed Jamie Starr.

I don't know if it's better to die at 27. But I'm glad my long gone heroes weren't around to witness
how Wall Street took over music and sucked every spirit of risk out of it. It's a fucking disgrace.
I vomit on stuff like "Imagine". It's indecent. It's the beginning of the end, rock'n'roll used for insurance commercials.
But at least it's Lennon. But a decaying one. Maybe you just can't Twist and Shout all of your life,
but see, that's exactly what an old fart would say.

Personally, I'm not going to give it up so soon, I'm not going without a fight.
Of course I'm extreme in my expression (I guess Orgers know me by now),
but I hope you have fun reading it, and that's what it's all about.
Man I hate tepid. Look at what we've become.
These are extreme times, and yet we all seem under Prozac. We stun ourself.
"Otherwise we would go crazy!", I hear some say.
Well, let's!

What's the alternative? Let a miraculous, one in a 10.000.000.000.000.000-and-counting
planet rot in front of our eyes? Art is crucial because it carries the spirit.
Right now it's suffocating, and so are the hopes of the common man. Without muses, he becomes a slave.

And women, how disappointing. You were supposed to educate these apes,
to teach them to respect you and nature, since you are one and the same.
Like Prince, I really can't blame you. You played slaves for centuries, and what good did it bring?
But it's time for feminism to fight back, do not let some Hollywood posers and billionaires take over the flag.
Equal paychecks, respect, gallantry, help with the house and the kids, You've got a long way to go.

Fucking Corporate World. They made us bow our fucking heads, and they raped our hearts. We had the three Jays, then Punk, then nothing.
Cobain was like the last trembling a corpse produces. I can understand the pain of a hyper-sensitive at the turn of the century:
he could sense Goldman Sachs and such would take over everything, put their dirty hands on every fucking living soul,
every food, all the water, the energy, he sensed they would grab his balls and never let go.

Beauty rots somewhere in a lurid New York studio,
a few teeths left, opium and alcohol as her best friends.
Morpheus is a fucking, deceiving bastard.
And the Third World Little Girl is still waiting for "We Are The World" to become true,
while she looses her health, her life, her faith while she stitches, assembles for us things we don't need, day by day, year over year.
The junkyards hunger knows no limits, no end.

If you ask me, I would have chosen to be in my twenties during these incredible years,
where the doors of perception were massively open for the first time, and for a whole generation.
Suddenly, woman and man could spend time dreaming, making love,
and look with eyes wide open at the mess the Rockefellers put them in.

But I'm already on a natural high, I would have ended up a wreck on LSD in wrecka time.
What can I say, I'm your typical Dreamer.
I can't stand the world as it is.
Art is what feeds me.
What drives me.

[Edited 1/11/18 5:35am]

bonatoc said:

jaawwnn said:

Great rant bonatoc, but what you got against Moroder? I'm no massive fan of his but he certainly has his moments, not least the entire album he did with Sparks.

also,

what does this mean?

Moroder. Swindlers like him deserve all my rage and some more.

This global 80's flash-back phenomenon we witness in today's music, it mostly references his gross, vulgar production traits.
What a (mundane) Feeling. The guy enjoys some kind of cult status among everyone who thinks FM radio was somewhat capable of art.

Blondie was sexy. Then comes Moroder, and poor Debbie is catapulted straight into the sonic equivalent of gonzo porn.
The ugly intro, the smelly background vocals served by drunk hooligans raping her while she screams for help,
drowning in Giorgio's über-compressed spunk. She never recovered.

haha, Call Me is a great track, come off it! Fantastic riff on it there,

and once again may I point you to his work with Sparks, a career high point right for both of them on that album.

What does Wiki say?

Moroder has stated that the work of which he is most proud is Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

It doesn't take a copycat like Gallagher to understand that if you strip down this gooey official soundtrack for mall corridors
to just piano and voice, all you get is a stupid diatonic descent and ascent, with a pentatonic gimmick every four bars,
just so we don't fall asleep from boredom. This shit sounds like your first piano lesson.
That horrendous bass sound, my God. And you have Orgers giving Prince a hard time with the production of Emancipation.
This is real plastik®, the kind swizzle sticks are made of.
Disposable is Moroder's muzak main quality.

Bonatoc, bonatoc, bonatoc, I hear where you're coming from but some of the best music going has been inspired by Muzak, it's all about what you do with it, you know this.

I'm not saying we should trust Moroder on his own work, hell Emancipation was the album Prince said he was born to make, but we take what's good and keep going, things don't need to be 100% good to like them. What kind of world would we be in if I Feel Love didn't exist? Just the track itself, not the copycat soundalikes, that one track. It's worthy of all the respect in the world just for existing.

And that's what he's most proud of? Easy on the cocaine, Giorgio. You sum the eighties pretty well by confusing royalties with talent.
Your only genuine state of grace was with Limahl, the two-hit wonder, when ethereal goofy arpeggios met thinner-than-air voices,
making it the perfect example of the eighties nothingness, a total artifice, oddly transcended
by Beth Anderson's background vocals, before returning to merciless anonymity.
Moroder is dangerous for your ears, and lethal for the career of everyone he touches.

At least with Irene Cara we got a melody. Unbearable once you hit fifteen, but OK, teens can always use another
mindless joyous chorus. But the substance tastes more Jell-O than crème brûlée.

Moroder, the ambassador of bad taste.
The antithesis of the Italian spirit.
The Patron Saint of Euro Disco, for crying out loud!

Yah Yah but on the other hand the two tracks he did with Japan are great as well! Now allegedly this is because David Sylvian ignored all of the things Moroder wanted on the track but, like i said, take what you need and drop the rest.

jaawwnn, you must have confused Gallaghers (let's fall back on the guitar heroes subject).
And beware, next time you call me half an oasis,
I'll kick your ass. twice.

Ha! All i'm saying is that some tracks played on acoustic guitar or piano would suck, take the entire Remain in Light album as an example, it's not a good rule of thumb

nowrunandtellyourmommaboutthat

[Edited 1/12/18 9:50am]

rogifan said:

PeteSilas said:

morris hayes said something interesting, he said steve vai had Morris give prince a guitar or something because he was his hero, steve vai is technically better than both, he once said he was better player than jimi, not in an egotistical manner, but he said stated he was only following a style that jimi pioneered. Steve's awesome and humble.

Yep he said guitar was a signature Vai 8-string and when he gave it Prince looked at it and replied: “I can do it with 6”.

Discussions like this are maddening but I've always loved reading. However, as my appreciation for great music expanded well beyond Prince, I realized...it does not matter. When you hear David Gilmour blow that solo up in Comfortably Numb..you just stand still and love it...you do not compare it at that point. You enjoy it pretty much equal to how we love when Prince lays down the Purple Rain solo. However, what seperates Prince is that he had it ALL....EVERTHING. Prince had showmanship that few could get near but to be able to be compared to Hendirx on guitar, to James Brown for his funky stuff and dancing..etc...well that is where we can confidently say, no one could do it all and it does not appear that anyone is on the horizon to do so again.

Wow u said : Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" haha man do u know who is Giorgio and what he did for music? he is a living legend. dont u know how revolutionary I Feel Love is? and dont fool yourself that Giorgio didnt produce some very nice rock music. check Donna Summer Running For Cover. Giorgio is amazing

bonatoc said:

novabrkr said:

I'm pretty sure Hendrix, had he survived into the 80s, would have used chorus, delay, flanger pedals, just like the other guitarists did at the time.

Effects aren't used to just "cover up sloppy playing" or provide the impression that "you're a better player than what you really are". Effects are also used to make the guitar parts fit the mixes. It's amazing what especially delay / chorus / flanger type of effects can do in that regard. I'm pretty sure anyone here that's attempted to record "a Prince style track" on their own has personal experience in that regard. A gutar part with a good amount of modulation effects just fits a backing track made with 80s style electronic drum sounds better than a dry take. It's about filling up space, providing contrasts, adding more animation to the sound than what otherwise would be the case etc.

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

i think you guys are giving georgio a little too much credit, i only remember him from flashdance and the soundtrack to scarface, ok I guess but i don't remember him being some kind of rival to anyone else at the time in the music world. Maybe he rivaled that guy who played the pan flutes, what was his name? zampir?

thebanishedone said:

Wow u said : Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" haha man do u know who is Giorgio and what he did for music? he is a living legend. dont u know how revolutionary I Feel Love is? and dont fool yourself that Giorgio didnt produce some very nice rock music. check Donna Summer Running For Cover. Giorgio is amazing

bonatoc said:

Xactly. Every decade brought up new palettes, new colors.
I can't stand this mainstream integrism, as if music started in the sixities and stopped in the seventies...
Rock "musicians" nowadays got so lazy they're going back in time, ask for lamps, digital analog emulations, "vintage" and other bullshitisms,
as if the ghost of Jimi would visit them as soon as they press the "Purple Haze" preset on their digital pedal board.
Worse, now "rock" calls to the worst of Giorgio Moroder (as if there was a "good" Moroder in the first place),
and when I see a EDM turd like Lorde's Melodrama making the top ten in every 2017 Album of the Year lists,
I'm baffled by how low the critics bar has fallen. Must be the brains of the millenials: they're incapable of retaining stuff for more that twelve seconds,
so by the time they listen to this kind of shit, they've already forgotten it's already been made a thousand times before.

Luckily, some are still searching for new textures coming from the guitar, or at least try to improve familiar ones.
St Vincent now bores me (stucked in her limited composition skills, always the same chord changes and structures, yawn),
but at least when it comes to sound, she's trying and succeeds to be original.
This is the sonic make-up which chrisslope9 is referring to.
Interesting, ear-catching sounds to compensate for average skills on the instrument.

When Prince came with an alien sound, his playing never stopped kicking serious ass. Consider

U Got The Look
Shortberry Strawcake
Hello
Electric Chair

...and many others.

Problem is, you will never get the same impression the very year it came out.
You had to be there. Trust me, Prince was sonically light years ahead of the competition.
And he changed the paradigm with every album,
so by the time the industry got the ingredients of the Minneapolis Sound right, he was already far away.

There is studio trickery, and there is studio craftsmanship.

Prince belongs to the latter camp, my friend. And don't you try your "Prince didn't care about his sound" Susan Rogers bullshit.
Prince was fucking fast to come up with the sound he wanted, that's all. You could try to argue he was lazy with synth factory presets,
but there's a catch: once Prince used a preset in one of his song, no one could use it afterwards without reminding you that song.

It's quite simple to separate wheat from chaff:
reduce a song to piano and vocals, or guitar vocals, and you'll understand my above rant towards a fraud like Lorde,
marketed as some kind of prodigy. Stupid crazy era when declaring something on enough platforms will make that something true.
"Composer" and "producer" are the most usurped titles in nowadays show-business.
Another proof that SKipper tramautized them all.

If my Small Club joker card didn't do the trick in convincing you Prince could equal Jimi's fierceness and inventivity,
how about this? OK, Prince was past 27, I'll give you that.
But if we could put 27-years-old Jimi on the drums or the piano, we would have a laugh. Did I mention bass?
And don't start me on vocals while playing.
Not trying to diminish Jimi's magic.
But Prince was a very different beast.

Also, there's this aura surrounding Jimi, that feeds itself in some kind of extatic state we're all supposed to have about him.
This is the result of years of clever commercial back catalogue pushing.
As if the sixties were cool, dude. Bullshit. Everyone was feckin' high, that's what it is.
The problem is, stuff like this, you can either consider it the work of a genius,
or a drugged-to-the-bone guitarist messing around with a going-nowhere chords sequence. Yawn.
Fretboard touch and timing are phenomenal, but still, yawn.
I would need at least three reefers before deeming it "awesome, dude".

The era gave us fantastic records because of the surroundings, social events, and money pouring from everywhere.
The apex of the post-war boom made it possible. Also, you could not cheat: The Beatles machten fucking Schau
night after night after night. They played rock standards to the point they got implanted in their brains,
and their own compositions are brilliant precisely because of this. Like Prince's.
Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. You ain't gonna sweat in front of a fucking DAW.





Oh, and one last thing. Prince is the undisputable Wah-Wah God.
He mastered it to levels unknown to Jimi (granted, we'll never know).

[Edited 1/10/18 7:48am]

Hendrix. Prince was great but he never matched Hendrix. I'm not even a Hendrix fan but his creativity with the guitar is undeniable. Prince is a bit overrated on this forum but that's expected.

homesquid said:

Hendrix. Prince was great but he never matched Hendrix. I'm not even a Hendrix fan but his creativity with the guitar is undeniable. Prince is a bit overrated on this forum but that's expected.

he was the greater pioneer but i think Prince surpassed him by the time of the Hall of fame performance. In the eighties, i'm not really even sure the comparisons to hendrix were really even that justified, he wasn't even the best guitarist in minneapolis at that time I do think Jesse was damned good.,

[Edited 1/12/18 16:33pm]