bonatoc said:

LadyLayla said:

Examples of "Endorphinmachine" were given. And while I absolutely have an eternal hard-on for that song, I can also recognize oodles of keyboard layers and the brash tone to it. Live, it's wonderful. On record, it's really good, but it feels a bit like standing in a parking lot of semi-tractor trailers and they all suddenly turn their lights on and blow their horns simultaneously. I'm all for a shock n' awe in music, but at some point, one gets over/de-sensitized to thing like that aurally. The balance of sparse elegance vs thick-like-lava gluttony disappears. In "Endorphinmachine"'s defense, I think it was Jim Walsh who said the scream in "Endorph" and the guitar solo in "Gold" are both Prince searching - hard - for something new in his life (not just his music). It's a man on a mission who gives no fucks.

There's something very "Aerosmith" about this song and yeah, I get the lady boner for this one too. The analogy is (to me) a very precise description. But yet, I think the song needs something mor

[Edited 3/9/18 14:09pm]

The connoisseurs will know that the first rough take of Endorphinmachine is the one.
It's genuine spit. The gold-coated version, well, it's take-it-or-leave-it.

Like the mix of "Dolphin", which is pretty odd, kinda off-balance.
Yet in the ad lib, the mix proves phenomenal.

Prince's weaknesses production-wise...
God he had none.
I personally forgive him for the gold-plated soul stuff,
he went from something as dry as "When U Were Mine"
to the last minute of "Adore", from "Something In The Water"
to "Groovy Potential", to "Kiss" from one cello-overdubbed stadium anthem echoing for the ages?


Are we talking about the guy that came up with the sound of "The Glamorous Life"?
"Sign O’ The Times"? "She's Always In My Hair"? "For You"?

I begin to suspect some listen to Prince
mostly on crappy desktop speakers.
Adjust your EQ, people. Something don't compute.

The guy proved he was one of the best rock arrangers/producers around, on his 3rd album. Third album.
Don't start me on the sound and production of the first two Time albums.
"Parade"? Skipper went after Clare, not the other way around.
Get A Grip. LadyLayla is right on point.

[Edited 3/9/18 15:03pm]

.

It needs more COW BELL!! Classic!!

PeteSilas said:

herb4 said:

Same. I posted before I read your post but, yeah. To my mind, 1999 is the best example of this and it was the album that hooked me in. A lot of the songs are structurally simple, especially the funk tracks, but when you smoke a bowl and get some hedphones going you can hear so many other things going on.

I always used to listen to a new album TWO WAYS: Once in the car on the way home and then later at night with a hit or two and full volume on the headphones. Those little extras used to blow me away and always came it at the right spot somehow. Often they were subtle; like seasoning.

blackguitarist pointed that out, he was right, i never really noticed all that stuff, i did notice how simple a riff 1999 was, very simple, as was the melody. At that time though there was still space and emptiness in the music it gave the impression to me that the artist was alone and isolated and creating an alternate universe, the same feeling I got when I listened to Elvis' sun sessions.

A lot of that album feels/sounds simple and repetitive, especially the basics (beats, hooks, riffs, timing), but it's really not and I think the record would have been LESS without Prince's production. The callbacks, time changes and bridges on songs like "Automatic", "DMSR" and "Lady Cab Driver", the weird interjections on "All the Critics" and "Something in the Water" or even "Delirious", which IMO I the weakest track on the album really demonstrated how much his production talents brought to the show and made a song even more than it was.

None of it would have worked as well without those embellishments and, not to beat a dead horse, but without the LAYERS of sound. Some of those songs go on forever, never changing the beat, but the spices he added open them up to repeated listens. I STILL hear stuff on 1999, Lovesexy and SoTT that continue to blow my mind and catch me unaware. Parade too. Lovesexy and Parade skated right up to the edge of being "too much" sometimes - the obvious results of a genius with too many songs and too much in his head at one time - but even the simplest tracks on those records, are deceptive in thier simplicity and have these weird, very well timed and perfectly placed embellishments that really speak to Prince's production skills.

"Dance On", "Glam Slam", I Wonder U", The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "AnotherLoverholeinyonhead" are INSANE with production skill and a big reason why I'm still not tired of most of those songs. It's really astonishing what he accomplished.

Again, my only real bitch with his studio work was how often he nuetered really ballsy tracks (Fury, Interactive, Endophine Machine for example) by stripping out the edge and a lot of the organic sounding qualities. Rainbow Children is a weird outlier somehow because that thing sounds like he recorded it on a soundstage. "She Loves Me 4 Me" and 'Mellow' a really odd 'overload' of sorts - for lack of a better term - that makes them feel "real". Sometimes Prince veered too far into synthetic sounding, overly polished, plasticy sounding production that was like a nice piece of furniture with too much lacquer, but it worked more than it failed I think.

Often, it elevated otherwise average songs into an otherwordly area (Silicon, Judas Smile, Sex Me, Sex Me Not, Beginning Endlessly, And God Created Woman). A lot of the Chocolate Invasion and Slaughterhouse tracks really. But I like that shit.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Eric Leeds said about Lovesexy "I thought it was going to be a great album, but when i heard the final mixes i was disappointed. I thought he had just completely overproduced the music. I think an artist like Prince should be constitutionally limited to 24 tracks at the most. When an artist tends to get a little unsure of himself, that is when he starts piling up the tracks."

I think Lovesexy is a brilliant album,but Eric's comment is interesting.

SoulAlive said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Eric Leeds said about Lovesexy "I thought it was going to be a great album, but when i heard the final mixes i was disappointed. I thought he had just completely overproduced the music. I think an artist like Prince should be constitutionally limited to 24 tracks at the most. When an artist tends to get a little unsure of himself, that is when he starts piling up the tracks."

I think Lovesexy is a brilliant album,but Eric's comment is interesting.

It is brilliant but it WAS overproduced. That's part of what makes it so damned interesting but that album, along with Parade, like I said skated right up to the edge of just too much. Some of it's almost impenetrable.

I keep comparing Prince's best stuff to an onion but Lovesexy was a god damned artichoke.

The whole "experience" was akin to a really, really smart person trying to explain something incredibly complicated to you (like quantam physics) and they can't talk slow enough so shit just spills out and they just keep babbling. The tour was just ridiculous. Talk about "over produced". It was Liberace on acid, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road meets Paradise Lost, a tent revival on coke, the Rocky Horror Picture show with higher production values, Caligula with clothes on and a rave on a basketball court.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE Lovesexy and Parade but some the tracks are just TOO dense and thick to where I can't keep up.

herb4 said:

SoulAlive said:

I think Lovesexy is a brilliant album,but Eric's comment is interesting.

It is brilliant but it WAS overproduced. That's part of what makes it so damned interesting but that album, along with Parade, like I said skated right up to the edge of just too much. Some of it's almost impenetrable.

I keep comparing Prince's best stuff to an onion but Lovesexy was a god damned artichoke.

The whole "experience" was akin to a really, really smart person trying to explain something incredibly complicated to you (like quantam physics) and they can't talk slow enough so shit just spills out and they just keep babbling. The tour was just ridiculous. Talk about "over produced". It was Liberace on acid, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road meets Paradise Lost, a tent revival on coke, the Rocky Horror Picture show with higher production values, Caligula with clothes on and a rave on a basketball court.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE Lovesexy and Parade but some the tracks are just TOO dense and thick to where I can't keep up.

someone once said that lovesexy was like a woman who gets older and uses more makeup to compensate for it. there was definitely no missing how complex he got with the arrangements for me, it was a total about face from how he worked before. someone also said that that was the first album he recorded at paisley park with all the bells and whistles it afforded. the one thing it had in my estimation, Prince still had that youthful energy where the music sounds like it came effortlessly which was a hallmark for me of some of his side projects like shela e's debut and his album parade.

soladeo1 said:

If any?

.

Didn't you notice them while he was alive?

Lack of attention span. (he abandoned projects after a while)

Danger of overproduction (records) if delayed.

Lack of production in live situations. (he chose cheaper and cheaper ways of doing live shows and that has implications)

Lack of memory: he did not learn from his mistakes; he was stuck in the oldies shows in hist last decades.

PeteSilas said:

herb4 said:

It is brilliant but it WAS overproduced. That's part of what makes it so damned interesting but that album, along with Parade, like I said skated right up to the edge of just too much. Some of it's almost impenetrable.

I keep comparing Prince's best stuff to an onion but Lovesexy was a god damned artichoke.

The whole "experience" was akin to a really, really smart person trying to explain something incredibly complicated to you (like quantam physics) and they can't talk slow enough so shit just spills out and they just keep babbling. The tour was just ridiculous. Talk about "over produced". It was Liberace on acid, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road meets Paradise Lost, a tent revival on coke, the Rocky Horror Picture show with higher production values, Caligula with clothes on and a rave on a basketball court.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE Lovesexy and Parade but some the tracks are just TOO dense and thick to where I can't keep up.

someone once said that lovesexy was like a woman who gets older and uses more makeup to compensate for it. there was definitely no missing how complex he got with the arrangements for me, it was a total about face from how he worked before. someone also said that that was the first album he recorded at paisley park with all the bells and whistles it afforded. the one thing it had in my estimation, Prince still had that youthful energy where the music sounds like it came effortlessly which was a hallmark for me of some of his side projects like shela e's debut and his album parade.

That's right. Up until that point he was mostly recording at Sunset Sound, LA. However a lot of the '86 sessions were held at his home studio, according to Per Nielsen. So I think one of the studios at Paisley Park was already completed at that point.

While on that, does anyone happen to know which tracks were purged from the vault for cussing? As in number of songs? This was ~2001 time when he went full tilt Jehovah Witness.

His production values were at times amazing (shockadelica, Scarlet Pussy, Crystal Ball, Housequake, Bob George etc) but at the same time never sounding crystal clear. When I am listing to say, Earth Wind & Fire right after a Prince song, the sound quality difference is especially jarring.

It's funny because in a way "Lovesexy" was overproduced in the sense that it had many embellished layers of instruments added...

But it was underproduced in the sense that he chose to very spastically and wildly add those tracks and complete the entire project in a relatively short baking time. The keyboard voices even sound simple and basic at times, especially in comparison to other music coming out in 1988.

For me, it stands in complete contrast to the Black Album in terms of how the mixing and editing were more refined to create a more melded, cohesive, strong, and original final effect. But for me personally, the Black Album is my favorite whole sequence (album) from him from beginning to end.

I would say that the Black Album is a perfectly produced album, and Lovesexy is actually underproduced (needed more time to evaluate mixes, and then carve away, and mix layers in a more refined manner).

I've been listening a lot to the Sgt Pepper re-issue (The Beatles) that has tons of demos and developing takes on single songs. Often their earlier takes would have rather brash and sometimes often random instruments layered on, and then in the final iteration, these tracks would be cut way or mixed down into the arrangement in a more cohesive way.

So in fact, for me, adding on tons of layers can actually a midpoint of music production.

"Eye No" is an oddball example of where he took what I think of as a perfectly produced and very cohesive, unique finished track, "The Ball", that has tons of layers and effects, and then remade it very quickly with a different attitude of just putting all these layers on there, and then just putting it out there, without the more subtle mixing, and balancing that on display in "The Ball". Although to be fair, he did cut back on some things like the funk rhythm guitar chords that were up front on the initial tracking versions of "Eye No" that recently surfaced.

[Edited 3/11/18 10:56am]

RJOrion said:

that Carmen Electra album should have been filed away in the delete bin immediately after recording it...the few times ive tried to listen to it, i feel so genuinely embarrassed for P...her pussy/head must have been amazing for Prince waste studio time on that audio gibberish..

Yeah, i agree, but that was where he was at the time with his own music. It always boggled my mind how he went from SOTT in the 80's to Carmen Electra quality in the 90's. It was fall off the cliff, night and day drop in music quality.

RJOrion said:

that Carmen Electra album should have been filed away in the delete bin immediately after recording it...the few times ive tried to listen to it, i feel so genuinely embarrassed for P...her pussy/head must have been amazing for Prince waste studio time on that audio gibberish..

S.T. is pure horniness all around, love that shit.

And Alphabet St. is maybe one of the best dance songs, and favorite song of his catalog. Easily in my top 5. As a dance track it sounds soooooooo fresh. Garbage production? Come on! It sound as good if not better since 1988.

Some of his 80's work (okay, maybe a fair amount of his 80's work) could have definitely sounded better than it did if Prince didn't always rush his engineers through setting up. I absolutely love listening to it and the production isn't a dealbreaker, but let's be real, stuff like "Darling Nikki" could have been even better if everything was properly miked in the first place. I think there's a difference between giving a properly recorded song some raw edge through minimal mixing, and having a song sound sonically inferior because the actual recording process was half-assed.

mbdtyler said:

Some of his 80's work (okay, maybe a fair amount of his 80's work) could have definitely sounded better than it did if Prince didn't always rush his engineers through setting up. I absolutely love listening to it and the production isn't a dealbreaker, but let's be real, stuff like "Darling Nikki" could have been even better if everything was properly miked in the first place. I think there's a difference between giving a properly recorded song some raw edge through minimal mixing, and having a song sound sonically inferior because the actual recording process was half-assed.

He had engineers at his beck and call quickly recording his ideas as quickly as he could at all hours of the day. He is rightly known as a great artist. I doubt he could have created the output he did during his heyday if it was as polished and properly produced as an Earth Wind & Fire record.

His recordings for good and bad are as rough as they are because it was an artist being an artist first and foremost. Technical engineer second or third.

..We tend to forget that the Beatles were 4 individuals and one the greatest producers. The Rolling Stones were a band, EW&F also were a band and a great horn section. Prince was one man furiously creating music as fast as he could. Maybe that his tracks are rough around the edges is part of the charm.

[Edited 3/11/18 17:17pm]

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

mbdtyler said:

Some of his 80's work (okay, maybe a fair amount of his 80's work) could have definitely sounded better than it did if Prince didn't always rush his engineers through setting up. I absolutely love listening to it and the production isn't a dealbreaker, but let's be real, stuff like "Darling Nikki" could have been even better if everything was properly miked in the first place. I think there's a difference between giving a properly recorded song some raw edge through minimal mixing, and having a song sound sonically inferior because the actual recording process was half-assed.

He had engineers at his beck and call quickly recording his ideas as quickly as he could at all hours of the day. He is rightly known as a great artist. I doubt he could have created the output he did during his heyday if it was as polished and properly produced as an Earth Wind & Fire record.

His recordings for good and bad are as rough as they are because it was an artist being an artist first and foremost. Technical engineer second or third.

..We tend to forget that the Beatles were 4 individuals and one the greatest producers. The Rolling Stones were a band, EW&F also were a band and a great horn section. Prince was one man furiously creating music as fast as he could. Maybe that his tracks are rough around the edges is part of the charm.

[Edited 3/11/18 17:17pm]

Hey, like I said, the production isn't a dealbreaker for me. I know the raw production adds to the charm, especially on an album like Dirty Mind. But as someone who has obsessed over the art of home recording and mixing for years, I believe it's entirely possible that Prince could have made better sounding albums without losing any of the charm. You can lay down a well-recorded drum track without taking away from the charm of the song, and all it would have taken is a tiny bit of extra time for engineers to properly place the mics and check levels. I know Prince was impatient and always wanted to bang out songs so he could move onto the next thing, but sometimes you gotta sacrifice quantity to improve the quality of what you're currently doing.

[Edited 3/11/18 17:48pm]

rdhull said:

I get the criticism and the likes of the responses.. the one gripe I have mainly though is that Little Red Corvette sounds like shit ultimately Oh, and Lovesexy (the song and the album) begged for kitchen sink production imo

little red corvette is my favorite song ever by anyone it changed my life, i never thought much about the quality only of the impact it had on me.

udo said:

soladeo1 said:

If any?

.

Didn't you notice them while he was alive?

Lack of attention span. (he abandoned projects after a while)

Danger of overproduction (records) if delayed.

Lack of production in live situations. (he chose cheaper and cheaper ways of doing live shows and that has implications)

Lack of memory: he did not learn from his mistakes; he was stuck in the oldies shows in hist last decades.

people have said he lacked focus which is strange when you consider how much work he did, maybe what is more accurate is that he would move on too sooon to the next project before milking the previous one. I never knew he was cutting corners live, i only saw him live a couple times. As far as the oldies, I don't see how he could have avoided playing the oldies, people didn't want to hear just new stuff. At the musicology tour he did a few songs of the album but most of it was his repertoire and that's the stuff that got the most response, same for any established act with a backlog. I've only seen Springsteen once but i think he does the same thing, he won't play the latest album from end to end but he'll play the main songs and then he'll play his classics. Older acts can't win really, people complain when they don't play their classics and they call them an oldies act when they do.

PeteSilas said:

rdhull said:

I get the criticism and the likes of the responses.. the one gripe I have mainly though is that Little Red Corvette sounds like shit ultimately Oh, and Lovesexy (the song and the album) begged for kitchen sink production imo

little red corvette is my favorite song ever by anyone it changed my life, i never thought much about the quality only of the impact it had on me.

That's nice.

mbdtyler said:

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

mbdtyler said:

Hey, like I said, the production isn't a dealbreaker for me. I know the raw production adds to the charm, especially on an album like Dirty Mind. But as someone who has obsessed over the art of home recording and mixing for years, I believe it's entirely possible that Prince could have made better sounding albums without losing any of the charm. You can lay down a well-recorded drum track without taking away from the charm of the song, and all it would have taken is a tiny bit of extra time for engineers to properly place the mics and check levels. I know Prince was impatient and always wanted to bang out songs so he could move onto the next thing, but sometimes you gotta sacrifice quantity to improve the quality of what you're currently doing.

[Edited 3/11/18 17:48pm]

Yeah he certainly could have hired professionals to help. And that was his weakness, he never hired the help he needed, but went with what was familiar. And that was his biggest mistake in terms of running his own studio and record company. Hiring Alan Leeds was not a good choice. It seems he did nothing in terms of helping him. Or was not strong enough to get Prince to listen. But he was a huge mistake. A good man with a good history with James Brown, but nowhere near what Prince needed to run his business at his height. Shame Cavallo and Fragnoli couldn’t stay longer.

what could alan have done better, he knew the business well enough that's for sure. Prince wasn't eaqsy to manage for anyone even when he was 100 percent right, demanding a motion picture or firing people after selling a couple million albums is pretty unrealistic but he was right that time, still that is unreasonable as hell.

Look at the ballads for instance. They still hold up as the best of any decade in my opinion. I listened to Scandalous recently. Babyface put out Whip Appeal the same year. And it's scary how much better Scandalous has aged compared to that song. Again, in my opinion. Whip Appeal has everything that Prince wasn't about. 1989-1990'ish sounding drums, tacky synths and a weak chorus. The same goes with The Secret Garden (Sweet Seduction Suite). He outshines Quincy Jones on every level. And that performance on 1991 Soul Train Award is another proof that it's horribly dated.

SoulAlive said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Eric Leeds said about Lovesexy "I thought it was going to be a great album, but when i heard the final mixes i was disappointed. I thought he had just completely overproduced the music. I think an artist like Prince should be constitutionally limited to 24 tracks at the most. When an artist tends to get a little unsure of himself, that is when he starts piling up the tracks."

I think Lovesexy is a brilliant album,but Eric's comment is interesting.

I absolutely agree.

Lovesexy is a stunning LP - it has always been my guilty pleasure from the eerie intro to the watery ending. But for me this is not at all overproduced, though yes it is layered.

He made it in a very very short time, and should've had more time to refine it - extend it even.

But he desperately wanted to release something, after SOTT. And the bad trip of TBA (not to forget was a very important 'trigger'). Besides all that he had also created tons of dust eating recordings ('86-'87). Still, what a great album Lovesxy is.

-

And yes I also do follow what Eric says. On the other hand there are so, so ,so ,so many well produced Prince tracks. With that i mean super balanced and composed music.

My all time best is The Balad Of Dorothy Parker, amongst many many others. If I had only one song to take with me, that would be it.

-

Also good to know is that Eric is a jazz musician.

Prince was a pop and rock artist, able to play jaz, etc.

I think Prince was alowed to go completely thick layered on a 48 track machine imho.

Although I never liked 3 Chains Of Gold, Endorphine Machine...

Although The Dopamine Rush Suite I think was equally overproduced, layers and layers of Eric's horns on there. Still a great track (imho) i'd love to listen to.

[Edited 3/12/18 7:12am]

TrevorAyer said:

Lovesexy is a good example of what happens when you move from a recording set up you have used for years, and have used that time to tweak and perfect, to a brand new recording set up that is a supposed improvement. Nothing ever sounded as good or real since he ditched his home set up. He was chasing modern sounds too much and his bigger is better attitude swallowed the magic whole. His plastic thin sound that haunted his production carried thru the rest of his career. Trying to keep up with the loudness wars did a number on his sonics as well. Prince was at his best in his cozy home studio before pp was built

An artist like Prince loved to move on, and tried out a new recording set up.

I for one am not an expert about sound. But here i feel that Prince also wanted to imporve and try out new sounds (with a new recording set up). Basically all artists do.

PeteSilas said:

if we had remastered version of lovesexy people might be happier?

luvsexy4all said:

if we had remastered version of lovesexy people might be happier?

Depends. Can those super hot levels down and even it out with better dynamics? It's a tough album to listen to on some levels because the volume is so unbalanced. "I Wish U Heaven" you have to turn up, but "Dance On" and "Lovesexy" is overbaked. "Glam Slam" and "Anna Stesia" feels muddy and almost hiss-y. It suffers from the same thing SOTT does. It's uneven, muddy and hissy or overblown.

I do think those two albums could benefit most from some super proper upright remastering. Get Bernie Grundman in there, and not fucking Joshua Welton (who sounds like he probably mastered some songs on fucking GarageBand). While there are limitations with it being analog, these days those things can still be cleaned up to a point and improved; not perfected.

TrevorAyer said:

Lovesexy is a good example of what happens when you move from a recording set up you have used for years, and have used that time to tweak and perfect, to a brand new recording set up that is a supposed improvement. Nothing ever sounded as good or real since he ditched his home set up. He was chasing modern sounds too much and his bigger is better attitude swallowed the magic whole. His plastic thin sound that haunted his production carried thru the rest of his career. Trying to keep up with the loudness wars did a number on his sonics as well. Prince was at his best in his cozy home studio before pp was built

most artists probably do their best and or most popular work when they didn't have the best sounding equipement. Springsteen was mentioning he was only just beginning to learn about sound by the time of his fifth album and he'd already done his best albums by that time.