I cannot get the solo near the end of Gold. That man's fingers can fly! He's brilliant! Or, for all the new guitar players out there, which song convinced you to buy your first guitar? For me it was the opening of The Truth. That's when I knew I couldn't stand on the side lines and just listen anymore!

teacherlady88 said:

I don't really consider myself a musician, but if you're going to go to The Truth, there's tons of stuff on that album that I know is extremely difficult to play. But just to point to something that is easily recognizable, I would have to say the interlude between Glam Slam and Anna Stesia... that keyboard part is wicked. Another easily recognizable part on keyboad is the ending of When Dove's Cry. On guitar... too many to mention. In my opinion, some of the hardest stuff he plays is not the long runs, but instead the intricate phrasing that he uses. He always seems to play notes that don't seem to follow a natural progression.

The beauty of a lot of Prince's compositions is that if you break a Prince song down piece by piece, part by part, it all seems so simple. But when you put everything together it becomes like this extremely complex maze. His music tends to have synergy - the whole is always greater than the sum of it's parts (did I say that right? you know what I mean ). I know just enough about music to know that Prince, the composer, is definitely going to be studied for years to come just like they continue to study Mozart and Beethoven today.

I think the toughest lick on a Prince record has to go to the Eric Leeds/Atlanta Bliss hornline in Rock Hard in a Funky Place. The band TJ Kirk does an asskicking version of it on guitar though. Has anyone ever heard their version?

I'm sort of new to guitar but I think the opening riff to When Doves Cry seems hard to play. It is so friggin cool. Then his voice going from right to left in the headphones with the yow-yows. I shit my pants the first time I heard this song.

DMSR said:

my, god! didn't you really know it was flipped backwards?

no wonder you can't play it.

there are tons of hard licks on his recors. the rhythms are usually pretty tight, but the solos are usually quite easy. oh my god, the solo on "gold" is doubled with synth, so you probably can't make it with just your git.

it's of course totally impossible trying to transcribe his stuff because it's so much based on sounds. won't really work. you can always improvise...

I know what you mean. I wouldn't say usually, but I always liked about his solos that they are like compositions themselves, like...the I Will solo for example or Computer Blue. He doesn't just noodle some fast notes.

Backwards!? Doubled with synths!! No wonder I'm loosing my mind! I'm still trying to learn the basics! I've been practicing the A minor pentatonic scale to Beautiful Strange, which has really been cool. What's totally funky is that he throws in an f7 chord that blows me away. It's just enough outside/ yet overlapping the A minor to make it nice. The man is a study in funk!

freshwater said:[quote]

DMSR said:

my, god! didn't you really know it was flipped backwards?

no wonder you can't play it.


=====
It isn't played backwards...there is some kind of effect called a harmonic divider (I think). I've seen the beginning transcribed but my guitar sucks so I couldn't play it...lol I'll blame the guitar not my fingers.

There are so many examples of his amazing musicianship on record but what makes it more incredible for me is when you see him do it LIVE. An example that immediately comes to mind is from The Sacrifice of Victor video when he plays a solo at the end of "Call the Law". Whats so amazing for me is that the song is pretty average with one of Princes worst collaborators AND YET he pulls out this incredible solo. He pulls a funny face like he is scaring himself at his own playing

mynameisnotsusan said

=====
It isn't played backwards...there is some kind of effect called a harmonic divider (I think). I've seen the beginning transcribed but my guitar sucks so I couldn't play it...lol I'll blame the guitar not my fingers.

[/quote]

it's not a harmonic divider (doesn´t sound like it), it IS backwards. I've also seen the beginning trascribed (at guitar world) but... well, I can't remember if they also made the point of it being backwards but it definitely sounds backwards. I mean just listen to it.

don't worry it's really nothing else than just ramdom fast noodling around some figures, stuff like that always goes down a bit hardly on any other player than the person who played it originally.

calldapplwondery83 said:

I agree on the composition aspect. and it's definitely the way to go anyway, I think. but he does a lot of that noodling live (well used to at least) and a lot of that compositional stuff is actually quite improvisational on th eother hand.

I personally love the guitar work from the "dirty mind-purple rain" era the most, because it's so wonderfully energetic. more like outbursts of anger and all that more "young man" stuff. it's just great. the new wave comping on many of the songs on "dirty mind" just absolutely does it for me. you gotta love 'em, punks.

Some I find hard, others I do not but the hardest thing about imitating Prince (that I have discovered from recording the Purple Rain cover on my website) is getting that 'feel' just right.

Ive noticed that, even though Prince performs a whole range of different musical styles, the same 'feel' is present in all of them. Obviously he changes the feel to suit the style but I always know which instrument Prince is on in the recordings due to this sort of underlying soul signature he adds to his music.

Prince will always be my musical hero. Always wanted to jam with him too.....ah one day.....maybe

See u on Cloud9?

Thanks for the responses!

[*]When Doves Cry's guitar intro *IS* backwards. Use a sound recorder on your computer to sample and reverse it. It's far a far less mysterious scale, when you hear it as he played it.

[*]The solo to U Got the Look was a tough one to learn. The final swirl of notes down the neck was really colorful. I suspect that he was just hitting random notes and had a killer "color" to his tone that made it sound so pretty.

[*]In the Prince and the Revolution live video, he hits this run near the end of that long, long, long solo that started with a traditional blues bend on the B string up to the Bb note but that morphed after that note into a more major-key riff back down to the Bb an octave lower. It's right before he requests "everybody in the world" to sing along with him and go "ooo ooo oo oo...."

[*]On that video tribute whose snippets were part of the American Music Awards tribute to him in 1990, he's shown (in Nude-era attire, maybe?) playing a peach cloud during Purple Rain (what appeared to be some clean-setting noodling before he sang the first verse). And, they showed about 10 seconds, about enough time for hims to slide a chord up and down a step, then launch into this really cool jazzy ascending scale. Having only been playing for about 5 years, then, I was dually enchanted and depressed! )

[*]On the CB version of The Ride, he does this descending scale that's hidden within a blues riff; it ends on a raised-third note (B, since the song's in G7). Gosh, if I hadn't lent the CDs to a buddy of mine, I could get the track time for y'all. But, it's like 10 seconds or so right before he heads into the final chorus that features a distorted guitar (before he switches to a cleaner setting).

That's some sick stuff. He's a bad, bad man.

Under the Cherry Moon, the chords are a B..... !

maybe its because I've only studied Aural skills for 8 months or so,but I could never get certain parts of Father's Song right on the piano...it drives me crazy...UTCM isn't so bad..xcept some of the arpeggios are weird...and some funky chord progression...but hey its Prince!

I love such discussions! MORE!
What's up with the piano solo during When Doves Cry in the Nude Concert from Tokyo? I could imagine that some tough shit, right?

SenorSandalwood said:

[*]On the CB version of The Ride, he does this descending scale that's hidden within a blues riff; it ends on a raised-third note (B, since the song's in G7). Gosh, if I hadn't lent the CDs to a buddy of mine, I could get the track time for y'all. But, it's like 10 seconds or so right before he heads into the final chorus that features a distorted guitar (before he switches to a cleaner setting).


Hi Senor Sandlewood!
I love The Ride. I'm going in search of that scale in the riff. I'll let you know if I find it and/or can get to it on my guitar. I'm loving this! You all have given me so much to study! Thanks!