databank said:

Kares said:

.
Yeah, spoke to him a bit again recently and hopefully we'll speak again sometime soon so I'll have more info. I did find it hard to believe that many unreleased would only have a draft mix on cassette, but apparently that is the case so I was wrong.
This of course makes Howe's job even harder as it means that faithfully recreating the mix they have on cassette is not enough – they would have to guess what changes Prince would've preferred to make to that draft mix. (That is why I would prefer to see the same engineer who worked on the material originally to be brought back in to perform the final mix, instead of someone who's never worked with Prince.)

.

You're right: an engineer is very seldom given the freedom to make artistic decisions such as omitting tracks from the mix. That's the producer's call.

.

Cool, thx. I hope you get to learn more about these CB98 tracks!!

.

Regarding the part in bold I'm not sure I understand. Why would they have to do that? On 1999 SDE, wasn't the idea to faithfully recreate the draft mixes we had on bootlegs? I don't have the ears or the patience to compare the mixes second by second, but on most of the tracks there doesn't appear to be much difference with the boots.

.

Because a lot of those mixes of unreleased tracks are only drafts – it's not how Prince would've released them. He would've asked his engineer to create new mixes just as he did for CB98.
.

Kares said:

databank said:

Cool, thx. I hope you get to learn more about these CB98 tracks!!

.

Regarding the part in bold I'm not sure I understand. Why would they have to do that? On 1999 SDE, wasn't the idea to faithfully recreate the draft mixes we had on bootlegs? I don't have the ears or the patience to compare the mixes second by second, but on most of the tracks there doesn't appear to be much difference with the boots.

.

Because a lot of those mixes of unreleased tracks are only drafts – it's not how Prince would've released them. He would've asked his engineer to create new mixes just as he did for CB98.
.

It would seem that Prince's pattern was to quickly track a new song demo, than work on multitrack ideas to layer it up, then a quick unmastered mixdown of the song to cassette for evaluation using some of those tracks, maybe not others. If he deemed it an idea worth publishing, he would then approach it with a more detailed mix to archival tape that was then put aside for mastering.

With the idea that there were demos recorded every week, it makes sense that he normally just stopped with a sketchy cassette or cdr mixdown made just to listen to the fresh song. He might have had tons of songs that he never deemed worthy of a proper mix, but were ready to be revived and mixed and worked on with additional new ideas (like with the compilation album Crystal Ball or with older songs like "Rave un2 the Joy Fantastic" dug up years later.

[Edited 8/12/20 8:25am]

Kares said:

databank said:

Cool, thx. I hope you get to learn more about these CB98 tracks!!

.

Regarding the part in bold I'm not sure I understand. Why would they have to do that? On 1999 SDE, wasn't the idea to faithfully recreate the draft mixes we had on bootlegs? I don't have the ears or the patience to compare the mixes second by second, but on most of the tracks there doesn't appear to be much difference with the boots.

.

Because a lot of those mixes of unreleased tracks are only drafts – it's not how Prince would've released them. He would've asked his engineer to create new mixes just as he did for CB98.
.

OK but now I'm confused. Wasn't Niko Bolas instructed (at least in theory and officially), on 1999 SDE, to recreate the cassettes mixdowns as such?

databank said:

Kares said:

.

Because a lot of those mixes of unreleased tracks are only drafts – it's not how Prince would've released them. He would've asked his engineer to create new mixes just as he did for CB98.
.

OK but now I'm confused. Wasn't Niko Bolas instructed (at least in theory and officially), on 1999 SDE, to recreate the cassettes mixdowns as such?

.
Yes, he was (afaik). I'm just saying that's probably not the best approach though, as Prince regarded those draft mixes unfinished. He would've mixed them for release.

.
There are of course a number of possible approaches to releasing someone's vault stuff after they gone. One approach is "we'll leave it as it is, even if it sounds bad, we won't fix anything, we'll leave it exactly as Prince left it" – and this is how P&AM83 was made. There are issues with this though: the tape speed issue is NOT something P "left behind", it's simply a result of the archivist not paying attention to the right playback speed (that matches the speed of the tape recorder Prince used, regardless of how wrong it was). So that is something I definitely would've fixed.
.
And they can try to match the draft mixes they found on cassettes, but when we know those were considered unfinished by Prince, releasing a recreated draft mix again disregards Prince's intentions (whatever we know about his possible intentions), so the right approach would be to bring in the original engineer and ask them to come up with a mix Prince would've approved back in the day (using period-specific gear) to the best of their knowledge.
.

[Edited 8/12/20 14:12pm]

Kares said:

Hans told me that many of Prince's unreleased tracks only existed in the form of quick (draft) mixes (aka refs), often on cassette, later on CD,

.

Holy shitballs.

Kares said:

databank said:

OK but now I'm confused. Wasn't Niko Bolas instructed (at least in theory and officially), on 1999 SDE, to recreate the cassettes mixdowns as such?

.
Yes, he was (afaik). I'm just saying that's probably not the best approach though, as Prince regarded those draft mixes unfinished. He would've mixed them for release.

.
There are of course a number of possible approaches to releasing someone's vault stuff after they gone. One approach is "we'll leave it as it is, even if it sounds bad, we won't fix anything, we'll leave it exactly as Prince left it" – and this is how P&AM83 was made. There are issues with this though: the tape speed issue is NOT something P "left behind", it's simply a result of the archivist not paying attention to the right playback speed (that matches the speed of the tape recorder Prince used, regardless of how wrong it was). So that is something I definitely would've fixed.
.
And they can try to match the draft mixes they found on cassettes, but when we know those were considered unfinished by Prince, releasing a recreated draft mix again disregards Prince's intentions (whatever we know about his possible intentions), so the right approach would be to bring in the original engineer and ask them to come up with a mix Prince would've approved back in the day (using period-specific gear) to the best of their knowledge.
.

Thanks for the feedback

.

I 100% agree when it comes to P&AM83. I wonder if it was more a matter of saving extra costs than of "releasing it as it was found" but clearly, this makes no sense because this is not indeed what Prince left but what was found after 35 years of tape deterioration.

.

Now restoring a problem with tape speed is one thing, but as you probably guess from many previous conversations I disagree with the mixing thing.

.

For one thing clearly some of P's early engineers are retired and while they were apparently happy to give advice to Niko Bolas, they were not in a capacity to do it themselves. Then, eventually and sadly, they'll probably all be dead before the vault's content is exhausted.

.

But the main problem IMHO is the whole "what Prince would have done" concept. For one thing what Prince would have done with most of the material is probably not to release it at all even if he'd lived another 60 years.

And if he had, who's to tell how he would have altered the songs before release, not just in terms of mix but in terms of overdubbing and editing. I could bring out CB98 as a good example of songs that were possibly altered in ways way beyond anything Prince would have done back in 1986, at least in ways that no one having either versions of Crucial from 86 could have anticipated (if of course Crucial 97 is indeed a brand new mix from 97).

Now of course you could say yeah but let's say how he would have released the songs at the time he recorded them. Even there, this leaves way too much room for interpretation: we know from the many versions we have on bootlegs and research that Prince often overdubbed, edited, took tracks off, rerecorded tracks of songs and so on on a short period of time (sometimes to end-up not releasing a song at all). It's likely that just adding a couple of reverb and other small things to "polish" the mix would not reflect what he'd have done in many cases if he'd gone as far as to release a song. Everything Prince left in the vault is potentially unfinished, even the usable mixes.

.

Besides, then not a song on Originals should have been released because they were by definition unfinished until overdubbed by the vocals artists who released them. The same could be said about International Lover on 1999 SDE: it was unfinished since it was basically only a draft recording that was to be rerecorded from scratch. And what to make of Computer Blue (Hallway Speech)? Certainly the estate should never have released it because it's unfinished, the only finished version being the edit on PR. For all we know Prince found the 12mn version dumb, after all, he made the (somewhat odd) choice not to put it as a b-side on a 12'' at the time (I say odd because critics and fans would have raved).

I fear we're on a slippery slope with the "unfinished reasoning"

.

Now I realize of course that you're not talking about any frankensteining, merely making a more professional version of the draft mix that would reflect Prince's standards. But how far do you go? Where exactly should any given engineer draw the line? I'm no engineer so please understand that I'm not sure exactly what your words mean. Not being an engineer nor an audiophile, would I hear the difference between a draft mix and a finished mix? I'd be very curious to hear your reply to that last question.

So IDK, I might be wrong, TBH this would be a question worth asking the engineers who worked with him and them only. What do they think?

.

But in the end, when I think of all the threads there have been addressing this topic, I can see there are basically 4 possible approaches to the problem in terms of mixing and other alterations to the material:

.

1- Release what Prince left as is.

2- Release what we think Prince would have done/wanted.

3- Release what we think will please the hardcore fans the most.

4- Release what we think will please the largest possible base of listeners.

.

The corresponding priorities would be:

.

1- A historical/documentation approach that treats the material as historical archives that need to be preserved and studied.

2- An approach that attempts to respect Prince as a person, his memory and assumed wishes.

3- A commercial approach that aims at generating good money by providing entertainment to the core audience.

4- A commercial approach that aims at generating as much money as possible by providing entertainment to the masses.

.

Obviously, I despise options 3 and 4. The problem I have with approach 2 is that for one thing Prince is dead and with all the love and respect I had for the man, what he wanted does not matter anymore to himself. And more importantly not only is it a probably vain exercise because releasing any material in the first place is taking the risk of doing something Prince would have despised, but it also leaves a lot of room for interpretation, that may eventually lead to some creative liberties being taken with the material because, hell, it sounds better that way, y'know.

.

This is why the only option I fancy is option 1. If it was up to me the draft mixes should be released (Moonbeam on 4ever, the PR Deluxe outtakes or Bold Generation didn't sound like a bootleg from 1991, most people would never even suspect they're from Maxell cassettes), and it is decided to reconstruct them, either to honor P's memory and/or to please the audiophile fans by releasing hi-fi versions, then the reconstructions should be as identical as possible to the draft mixes, AND the draft mixes should be offered somewhere alongside the reconstructions, even if it's only on a special section of P's site and people have to pay for them again.

.

But as I said I'm not a professional engineer and you are, so your insights are always appreciated.

Some items like the "Computer Blue" full length 12" mix (I think we can assume that's what Prince considered it) were actually worked over and mixed in great detail. I doubt they were recreating a cassette mixdown of that one. Maybe someone in the know (or rather in the employ) can clarify, but I suspect that one had a proper master tape.

databank said:

And what to make of Computer Blue (Hallway Speech)? Certainly the estate should never have released it because it's unfinished, the only finished version being the edit on PR. For all we know Prince found the 12mn version dumb, after all, he made the (somewhat odd) choice not to put it as a b-side on a 12'' at the time (I say odd because critics and fans would have raved).

.

Parts of it were used in the live version.

.

databank said:

1- Release what Prince left as is.

2- Release what we think Prince would have done/wanted.

3- Release what we think will please the hardcore fans the most.

4- Release what we think will please the largest possible base of listeners.

.

Option 3 and 4 are commercial determinations about material that they have after options 1 and 2 have been considered...

.

Option 1 then means to release the multitrack recordings, as stems or multitracks, along with whatever mix instructions were left. Every mix will change what is there... Option 2 probably means to not release anything anymore.

.

Now, I am all for releasing the entire vault, either as a subscription or however.. releasing (select?) multitracks for musicians and other artists to pour over would be a great way to enhance his status as multi-instrumentalist extraordinair.

.

In the end, it all comes down to money. This was true for Prince (Diamonds & Pearls, and his "embrace" of rap wasn't all for creative purposes, along with all the promotion), it's going to be true for the estate. As much as I despise it, a move like the Jackson estate did, with contemporary artists re-imagining songs, while at the same time releasing the original songs might be a way to get new ears listening to Prince tracks and hope that some will stay around. The tracks should be clearly separated though.

.

The estate seems to be trying to figure it out. I am happy they are releasing things as they are trying though. The releases appear to be getting consistently better. I do fear the problem with Sony/WB though, with regards to remasters/superdeluxes. I hope the two labels are willing and able to cooperate.

ufoclub said:

Some items like the "Computer Blue" full length 12" mix (I think we can assume that's what Prince considered it) were actually worked over and mixed in great detail. I doubt they were recreating a cassette mixdown of that one. Maybe someone in the know (or rather in the employ) can clarify, but I suspect that one had a proper master tape.

.

I'm pretty sure there's a proper (1/2", 2-track) master tape for the full Computer Blue as editing is almost always done on the 2-track master. (I doubt Prince made the mistake of chopping up the 2" multitrack again, as he did with LRC.) So there must've been at least 2 (1/2") reels of the full Computer Blue master (a master and a slave) and one of them must've been edited down to the album version.

.

The Vault disc of Purple Rain Deluxe contains a cassette-sourced copy though, there were no remixing involved when Warners put that together. Those vault tracks are all cassette-sourced.

.

databank said:

Kares said:

.
Yes, he was (afaik). I'm just saying that's probably not the best approach though, as Prince regarded those draft mixes unfinished. He would've mixed them for release.

.
There are of course a number of possible approaches to releasing someone's vault stuff after they gone. One approach is "we'll leave it as it is, even if it sounds bad, we won't fix anything, we'll leave it exactly as Prince left it" – and this is how P&AM83 was made. There are issues with this though: the tape speed issue is NOT something P "left behind", it's simply a result of the archivist not paying attention to the right playback speed (that matches the speed of the tape recorder Prince used, regardless of how wrong it was). So that is something I definitely would've fixed.
.
And they can try to match the draft mixes they found on cassettes, but when we know those were considered unfinished by Prince, releasing a recreated draft mix again disregards Prince's intentions (whatever we know about his possible intentions), so the right approach would be to bring in the original engineer and ask them to come up with a mix Prince would've approved back in the day (using period-specific gear) to the best of their knowledge.
.

Thanks for the feedback

.

I 100% agree when it comes to P&AM83. I wonder if it was more a matter of saving extra costs than of "releasing it as it was found" but clearly, this makes no sense because this is not indeed what Prince left but what was found after 35 years of tape deterioration.

.

Now restoring a problem with tape speed is one thing, but as you probably guess from many previous conversations I disagree with the mixing thing.

.

For one thing clearly some of P's early engineers are retired and while they were apparently happy to give advice to Niko Bolas, they were not in a capacity to do it themselves. Then, eventually and sadly, they'll probably all be dead before the vault's content is exhausted.

.

But the main problem IMHO is the whole "what Prince would have done" concept. For one thing what Prince would have done with most of the material is probably not to release it at all even if he'd lived another 60 years.

And if he had, who's to tell how he would have altered the songs before release, not just in terms of mix but in terms of overdubbing and editing. I could bring out CB98 as a good example of songs that were possibly altered in ways way beyond anything Prince would have done back in 1986, at least in ways that no one having either versions of Crucial from 86 could have anticipated (if of course Crucial 97 is indeed a brand new mix from 97).

Now of course you could say yeah but let's say how he would have released the songs at the time he recorded them. Even there, this leaves way too much room for interpretation: we know from the many versions we have on bootlegs and research that Prince often overdubbed, edited, took tracks off, rerecorded tracks of songs and so on on a short period of time (sometimes to end-up not releasing a song at all). It's likely that just adding a couple of reverb and other small things to "polish" the mix would not reflect what he'd have done in many cases if he'd gone as far as to release a song. Everything Prince left in the vault is potentially unfinished, even the usable mixes.

.

Besides, then not a song on Originals should have been released because they were by definition unfinished until overdubbed by the vocals artists who released them. The same could be said about International Lover on 1999 SDE: it was unfinished since it was basically only a draft recording that was to be rerecorded from scratch. And what to make of Computer Blue (Hallway Speech)? Certainly the estate should never have released it because it's unfinished, the only finished version being the edit on PR. For all we know Prince found the 12mn version dumb, after all, he made the (somewhat odd) choice not to put it as a b-side on a 12'' at the time (I say odd because critics and fans would have raved).

I fear we're on a slippery slope with the "unfinished reasoning"

.

Now I realize of course that you're not talking about any frankensteining, merely making a more professional version of the draft mix that would reflect Prince's standards. But how far do you go? Where exactly should any given engineer draw the line? I'm no engineer so please understand that I'm not sure exactly what your words mean. Not being an engineer nor an audiophile, would I hear the difference between a draft mix and a finished mix? I'd be very curious to hear your reply to that last question.

So IDK, I might be wrong, TBH this would be a question worth asking the engineers who worked with him and them only. What do they think?

.

But in the end, when I think of all the threads there have been addressing this topic, I can see there are basically 4 possible approaches to the problem in terms of mixing and other alterations to the material:

.

1- Release what Prince left as is.

2- Release what we think Prince would have done/wanted.

3- Release what we think will please the hardcore fans the most.

4- Release what we think will please the largest possible base of listeners.

.

The corresponding priorities would be:

.

1- A historical/documentation approach that treats the material as historical archives that need to be preserved and studied.

2- An approach that attempts to respect Prince as a person, his memory and assumed wishes.

3- A commercial approach that aims at generating good money by providing entertainment to the core audience.

4- A commercial approach that aims at generating as much money as possible by providing entertainment to the masses.

.

Obviously, I despise options 3 and 4. The problem I have with approach 2 is that for one thing Prince is dead and with all the love and respect I had for the man, what he wanted does not matter anymore to himself. And more importantly not only is it a probably vain exercise because releasing any material in the first place is taking the risk of doing something Prince would have despised, but it also leaves a lot of room for interpretation, that may eventually lead to some creative liberties being taken with the material because, hell, it sounds better that way, y'know.

.

This is why the only option I fancy is option 1. If it was up to me the draft mixes should be released (Moonbeam on 4ever, the PR Deluxe outtakes or Bold Generation didn't sound like a bootleg from 1991, most people would never even suspect they're from Maxell cassettes), and it is decided to reconstruct them, either to honor P's memory and/or to please the audiophile fans by releasing hi-fi versions, then the reconstructions should be as identical as possible to the draft mixes, AND the draft mixes should be offered somewhere alongside the reconstructions, even if it's only on a special section of P's site and people have to pay for them again.

.

But as I said I'm not a professional engineer and you are, so your insights are always appreciated.

.

You're right in saying we have no idea what changes P would've made to any unreleased song over the years. My approach would be to try to come up with a mix that would've been approved by him at the time of the original recording, using all the original gear he was using at that time.

.

The difference between different mixes can be huge (for example: you could hear certain instruments in one that you can't in the other etc.) so I'm 1000% sure you'd hear the difference between the draft and finished mixes too. In fact you already know you do: if I remember right you've immediately noticed that the Originals versions sound different to the bootlegs – and that's not only because of the obviously poorer sound quality of the boots, but mainly because they are different mixes.

.
When I used the word 'unfinished' I didn't only mean that "maybe P would've added this or that to them later on" because that can be said of ALL his recordings. I meant that probably many of those draft mixes are simply not good enough, so I would indeed take the liberty of asking Susan Rogers or whomever tracked it originally to try to come up with a new mix that, to the best of their knowledge, would've been approved by P. If the original engineer is not available, then I'd ask another who worked with P for many years.

.

'Love & Sex', for example, as we hear it on PR-D is a mix that, in my opinion, could be greatly improved by having another go at it. I'm not referring to the poorer quality of the cassette copy – but to the mix itself which is a bit of a mess to my ears and the vocals are buried in it.
It's interesting though as what we have may very well be a cassette copy of the final, professional mix – we know there is a 'Love & Sex' 1/2" mixdown tape in the vault as it can be seen on the police photos. Still, it's a mix that I would definitely redo because it's such a great song and the released mix doesn't do justice to it. So yeah, there are certain creative liberties I would allow myself (but only a few!) should I be in charge of the vault – but I'm not, so don't worry But then again, I would release both the original and the new mix and I'd be totally transparent about the fact that the new one is not what P left behind.

.

todesm said:

I am very happy with all these SDE releases. But feel extremely frustrated not to get each original project as they were originally planned by Prince... They should release each project separately. We should get the Camille album, the crystal ball and dream factory ones, etc etc with proper packaging for each. I really dont care about redundancy. Or at least they should do online releases. This is a non sense not to have them released at one point. To me things are not done the right way. Their SDE releases are more like high quality official bootleg compilations, and even if interesting, I definitely don't play them much.i know I would definitely play a Camille or a Crystal Ball release way much more. Volume difference issue and missing tracks, not to mention possible slight difference in tracks depending on the projects justify releases.

Howe said that fans can now creat the albums themselves. I'm with you on wishing they would release them separately - it seems to me a great opportunity for limited run vinyl pressings, which would surely sell out immediately.

What they can do very easily is create playlists of the albums on the streaming sites. It's not the same, but it would mean there is an official place where they exist.

databank said:

.

1- A historical/documentation approach that treats the material as historical archives that need to be preserved and studied.

.

.

Apologies for changing the subject a bit, but this point above is the key – or it should've been the key to approach the vault from the moment it was opened.
I've stressed this point over and over, many times, to several people involved, to no avail. It's "funny" (no, it's sad, really) that some of us mere fans understand the importance of this systematic approach better than apparently the Estate and Comerica do.

.

What I've always suggested to certain people is first and foremost:

.

1. Catalog everything. Create a comprehensive catalog that lists EVERY SINGLE BIT OF RECORDING found, all the analog tapes, cassettes, CDRs, DATs, DASH tapes, hard drives etc, etc.

.

2. Study and research that catalog, identify all the different compositions, their writers, dates of compositions (as much as possible) and recordings, edit out the duplicates, identify different versions of the same compositions etc. Assign ID codes (opus numbers) to each composition and build a list of ALL Prince compositions/lyrics, make it as comprehensive as possible, but leave room for new discoveries/corrections in the future.

.

3. Publish this comprehensive catalog of Prince's works. (I mean a book with the catalog/list itself, not the recordings.) This will already bring in a lot of money from the sales of the book, but what's more important: it will create awareness of the true depths of Prince's creativity and genius. Today, even a lot of the most dedicated fans doubt that the Vault contains a significant amount of material we haven't even heard about – even though I have already proved with my calculation of the number of tapes that were stored inside Paisley (see the link in my signature) that the sheer number of material is beyond our dreams.

A published catalog of Prince's works would result in even more academic studies, tons of more articles and a significantly raised awareness about Prince as a great composer and musician. A published catalog would also mean people can identify his songs/compositions by their opus numbers, just as we use the Köchel numbers for Mozart's, or the BWV-numbers for JSBach's compositions. People would be surprised and amazed to see that often, Prince's albums (such as Graffiti Bridge, for example) contain songs that are quite far apart from each other on his chronological catalog, proving that his released output is only a tip of the iceberg and there's a vast catalog worthy of exploration for both academics and the public.

.

4. Create a release strategy that simultaneously satisfies the needs for a constant and strong revenue stream (the commercial recordings) and the artistic need to share musically valuable material with little commercial appeal (the more experimental and live recordings).
I would've also designed a series with consistent, easily identifiable packaging designs and graphic elements (at least something as basic as the 'FZ'-logo on all of the official Zappa-releases). Whatever packaging for different price points (Super Deluxe, Deluxe, Standard) is decided, stick to it... (Altgough this could even be corrected after the first couple of releases, like the Jethro Tull Deluxe series found its now standard format only after the first 2 or 3 releases, so they had to go back to the first issues and bring them out again in the new format.)
Also: make sure the all the official releases are numbered (see the Frank Zappa releases or the Neil Young Archive Series etc) so fans can see how the ones they bought fit into the entire official catalog and what additional releases they'll need to buy to complete their collections.
.

etc. (The rest, concerning how the reissues should be compiled, produced and issued, is more detailed with many technical details so I don't want to put it here, I'm already off topic enough.)

.

[Edited 8/13/20 5:38am]

leecaldon said:

Howe said that fans can now creat the albums themselves.

.

Except they can't.

BartVanHemelen said:

leecaldon said:

Howe said that fans can now creat the albums themselves.

.

Except they can't.

.
And may I add that even if we did have all the tracks (the right versions) for DF or CB, we still couldn't recreate those original album sequences exactly as they might have been mastered – as creating an album master isn't only about creating a sequence of tracks, it's also about setting their levels in relation to the other tracks and also about setting the length of gaps (if any) between them. In the age of the dumb streaming services it's easy to forget that gaps play an important part in the flow of an album, they have to be the right length for the song they follow, the timing of the start of the next track sometimes needs to follow the tempo of the previous song etc...

Kares said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Except they can't.

.
And may I add that even if we did have all the tracks (the right versions) for DF or CB, we still couldn't recreate those original album sequences exactly as they might have been mastered – as creating an album master isn't only about creating a sequence of tracks, it's also about setting their levels in relation to the other tracks and also about setting the length of gaps (if any) between them. In the age of the dumb streaming services it's easy to forget that gaps play an important part in the flow of an album, they have to be the right length for the song they follow, the timing of the start of the next track sometimes needs to follow the tempo of the previous song etc...

.

According to this thread, some of the mixes on the Camille record were different to their released versions, although which ones haven’t been specified.

https://prince.org/msg/7/...?&pg=3

grantevans said:

Can I just say thanks to all in this discussion for giving me faith in the org again.

This is what the org should be, rather than some of the trolly subjects that are raised in this group at times.

Let's keep discussing the music in the context of its creation.

Kares and databank (and even Bart...he may be grumpy...but he's been there since a.m.p and that means something) thanks

Allow me to second that.

mediumdry said:

Option 1 then means to release the multitrack recordings, as stems or multitracks, along with whatever mix instructions were left. Every mix will change what is there... Option 2 probably means to not release anything anymore.

.

Now, I am all for releasing the entire vault, either as a subscription or however.. releasing (select?) multitracks for musicians and other artists to pour over would be a great way to enhance his status as multi-instrumentalist extraordinair.

As much as I would wet my pants 4ever, I can't see that happening.

Purely because a single isolated bass track from Prince would be enough
for any subpar bozo to use and sell his tune as much as Pharrell's "Lucky".

Now that's a stretch, but it ain't that far fetched.

Too many copyright problems await if you let multitracks out in the wild.
It's already difficult to spot illegal samples of released mixdowns.
You would need a Shazam! on steroids.

I rather not have any released songs on it to leave room for unreleased...

OnlyNDaUsa said:

I rather not have any released songs on it to leave room for unreleased...

1. It would be stupid for Warner to arbitrarily omit the title tracks of Dream Factory and Crystal Ball given their importance to the genesis of SOTT. And if you absolutely had to sacrifice tracks to make room for others, why not get rid of the 7" mixes first?

2. The poor mastering of CB98 would not mesh with the mixing/mastering of this set, so good luck making a consistent and decent-sounding reconstruction of any unreleased albums.

Dazza said:

I'd love to have a quality copy of Joy in Repetition with the long drum intro

I'm curious to her what a Crystal Ball single edit will sound like???

I know its only an intro, but since 1988 when I first got it bootleg, that is the one song I wanted released. It's frustrating that we'll got to the SDE era and 'so far, no see'!

SquirrelMeat said:

Dazza said:

I'd love to have a quality copy of Joy in Repetition with the long drum intro

I'm curious to her what a Crystal Ball single edit will sound like???

I know its only an intro, but since 1988 when I first got it bootleg, that is the one song I wanted released. It's frustrating that we'll got to the SDE era and 'so far, no see'!

Speaking of that song, is there a version that doesn't abruptly cut off at the end of the word "repetition" and allows the synth to fade out naturally?

mbdtyler said:

VaultCurator said:

mbdtyler said:

Speaking of that song, is there a version that doesn't abruptly cut off at the end of the word "repetition" and allows the synth to fade out naturally?

Hi there, According to Prince Vault (http://princevault.com/index.php?title=Joy_In_Repetition) the cassette version is 3 seconds longer and doesn't end abruptly in the same way it does on CD. As for an unsegued version, I think the fact that Girl O' My Dreams, Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, We Can Funk and Data Bank were also omitted from SOTT:SD heavily implies that Grafitti Bridge Super Deluxe is in the works. I reckon this is where Joy In Repetition Unsegued will eventually show up.

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Frankly I find it hard to believe that there would be many more Super Deluxe box sets apart from 'Parade', 'Diamonds And Pearls', 'Batman' and perhaps 'ATWIAD'.

.
Of course I'd love to see a 'Lovesexy Super Deluxe' and a lot more, but my prediction is that maybe a third of Prince albums would get the "Deluxe" treatment (1 or 2 bonus discs but no books and box sets) and the rest would be just remastered reissues with some bonus tracks, but I'm afraid the Estate will not be able to continue with the elaborate super deluxe boxes for albums that weren't amongst Prince's biggest sellers.

.

Maybe they'll turn their attention to live sets and vault-only compilations later – these will be far cheaper to produce than these massive box sets.

grantevans said:

Can I just say thanks to all in this discussion for giving me faith in the org again. This is what the org should be, rather than some of the trolly subjects that are raised in this group at times. Let's keep discussing the music in the context of its creation. Kares and databank (and even Bart...he may be grumpy...but he's been there since a.m.p and that means something) thanks

Wait, you mean you aren't on the edge of your seat in eager anticipation of the next great golden nugget of wisdom to drop in the epic "Prince's blonde hair timeline confusion" thread?!

Kares said:

VaultCurator said:

mbdtyler said: Hi there, According to Prince Vault (http://princevault.com/index.php?title=Joy_In_Repetition) the cassette version is 3 seconds longer and doesn't end abruptly in the same way it does on CD. As for an unsegued version, I think the fact that Girl O' My Dreams, Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, We Can Funk and Data Bank were also omitted from SOTT:SD heavily implies that Grafitti Bridge Super Deluxe is in the works. I reckon this is where Joy In Repetition Unsegued will eventually show up.

.
Frankly I find it hard to believe that there would be many more Super Deluxe box sets apart from 'Parade', 'Diamonds And Pearls', 'Batman' and perhaps 'ATWIAD'.

.
Of course I'd love to see a 'Lovesexy Super Deluxe' and a lot more, but my prediction is that maybe a third of Prince albums would get the "Deluxe" treatment (1 or 2 bonus discs but no books and box sets) and the rest would be just remastered reissues with some bonus tracks, but I'm afraid the Estate will not be able to continue with the elaborate super deluxe boxes for albums that weren't amongst Prince's biggest sellers.

.

Maybe they'll turn their attention to live sets and vault-only compilations later – these will be far cheaper to produce than these massive box sets.

I'm still eagerly awaiting the epic Vanity 6 SDE 5-disc release with the remastered original album, a disc of single edits in stereo AND mono, a whole disc of outtakes (Extraloveable ) and remixes (aren't YOU wondering what Prince had in mind when teasing the Make-Up (Special Dance Mix) at the end of I Don't Wanna Leave You?), the completed but unreleased second album (including Sex Shooter #1 with Brenda/Susan overdubs and full-length Sex Shooter #2), and finally a "live album" disc with both their Triple Threat set list (live in Norfolk/The Scope) as well as studio recordings of their rehearsals with The Time essentially re-recording every song on their album, save for 3 x 2 = 6, the only track never performed live.

I was really hoping that original version of Joy In Rep was going to be on here. But makes sense that it will probably show up on GB SE.

I can see them doing limited SE runs the less-popular (US) albums like GB and Lovesexy. But I do think they will happen eventually.

My wish-list albums that I don't think will ever see the light of day are the Paisley acts like The Family, Jill Jones, and Madhouse.

SixDemonBag said:

I believe I read an article somewhere discussing the SDE of SotT that said they specifically chose not to add these tracks because of redundancy. It will be nice to have a studio version of Power Fantastic.

Yet they got multiple versions of songs on multiple versions of Super Deluxe albums.