1st of all I think prince is a great guitar player, one of the best out there.

Ok, yesterday i was watching the musicology performance he did on Jay Leno 3 or 4 months ago and i noticed something: When he picks the guitar you hear a a funky chord being played and he doesn't play it cuz he's looking for the pick ,which i think is on the guitar, with his right hand. I know the left hand is playing the chord but I know you gotta hit the strings to make a chord sound like that and I'm not a pro guitar player. Once he take the pick he play it just fine.

I'm not saying prince fakes his guitar playing cuz that's not true, but maybe he used pre-recorded pieces on odd occasions.

Sorry for my english

I dont believe thats true
[This message was edited Tue Aug 10 5:02:52 2004 by apple2]

newpowerboy I love your avatar its real cute,but please dont be brain washed by some of the bullcrap that has been said about Prince faking his guitar playing,its a waste of time.

Check the tape if you recordered it, that's all.

Maybe I'm wrong... But see the performance for yourself

The only thing Prince fakes is that "he will play his hits for the last time..."



Don't worry, Prince is one the last remaining artists who plays live ...
Don't believe the hype!

Prince for some reason has been known to pre-record some stuff for live telecasts.

lovemachine said:

I think you mean "samples"....!

newdawn said:

No, he really means pre-records... And in the case of that performance on Leno it seems to me the only thing that's live there is all the vocals, the rest is just a backing tape...
The most obvious "fake" is John Blackwell... Check out his cymbal hits, he misses some...
And for the bass players check out Rhonda she doesn't even play some of the things you hear in that performance...

Neversin.

Supposedly the SOTT/ Play in the sunshine mtv awards performance was all a tape except for the vocals and lead guitar (prince).

I don't know other instruments cuz I can't watch the tape right now, but something is wrong with the guitar part I talked about in my first post.

Is strange how people say it's impossible without see the performance again... anyway

I'll have a butchers at the performance later just for the hell of it, but IIRC they had to shoot this performance twice due to technical problems. It's quite possible a mix of both performances was used with one soundtrack and that is why some things may look slightly out of synch.

newpowerboy said:

Look at the SOTT movie!!!!! He PRE-recorded "LIVE" some of the material...nothing wrong with it, cause it has to be done for quality purposes. If an artist, lip synchs to a basic CD track, then you have the right to be offended. As long as they make it a "LIVE" recording, I see nothing wrong with using that in a TV/Video shoot. I also work in the business, and sometimes it cannot be avoided.

You're missing one important thing here.

As a guitar player I can tell you that it is easy to produce a sound with the right amount of pressure from the fretting (left) hand. Jimi Hendrix based half his act on this very thing.

It's that simple.

mrdespues said:

As does Stanley Jordan, who is known to play the fretboard exclusively...like a piano.


Now any tape and every tape of live video performance by Prince is gonna be overanalyzed.

`
[This message was edited Tue Aug 10 12:48:52 2004 by Supernova]

I know that, mrdespues, but you cannot make a guitar chord sound like that just pressing with the left hand that's for sure, I play guitar (very amateur) and I know what you can do with your left hand and a good compressor and it's not that.

So i guess it's not that simple


I would like somebody to watch the performance, if you did recordered it of course, to see if I'm wrong or if you see something strange too

mrdespues said:

Sure strings can be hammered on or pulled off with just your left hand but that's not the case here...
As a guitar player myself I can tell you that the lick he's playing here can only be played when strumming the strings... And clearly he doesn't do that, he too busy getting the pick instead of playing that lick, so either he's an amazing guitar magician who can play funk licks (chords) without strumming the strings or he's just faking it (which he usually does when performing on TV shows...)

Neversin.

its also possible that mike scott was hidden somewhere playing. from what I remember in the Guitar Player interview, he wasn't asked "officially" to join the tour until it was about to start.

this is getting silly.

performances in a tv-studio are very rarely recorded live. Because of the fact that in most cases they are not equiped to capture the sound decently (except when it's a music show, and even then) most artists actually prefer to play-back or lip-synch on shows like that.

henri salvador said once: 'i don't want to play live in a tv-studio, I'm not spending months to create the perfect sound on an album and then have the terrible conditions in tv-studio's make me look like someone who can't hold a tune."
[This message was edited Tue Aug 10 13:24:13 2004 by kev1n]

Yeah, Prince does "fake" his guitar playing. I watched him fake and 3/4th's of the acoustic set last night after Mike Scott's guitar had no sound.

The ignorant morons on this site continue to increase by the day. Anyone who claims that Prince fakes his guitar playing after all of these years and the widespread acclaim he receives from legendary professional musicians, not people on a fuckin' message board, is either misinformed, jealous or shit starters.
[This message was edited Wed Aug 11 1:01:09 2004 by DorothyParkerWasCool]

Prince has lip-synched before (anybody seen the Soul Train performance?) and maybe he's even occasionally pre-recorded guitar parts and mimed.

But really, what does it matter? You put all the tv performances he's done over 20 odd years together, that's a damn site more live performances than most artists will ever do, the live stuff way out-weighs the mimed stuff.

I know he says he's against lip-synching now, but really, he means artists who simply have to use lip-synching because they don't have the talent to do it any other way ever.

And we all know he can play guitar - even if he pre-records it, it's still him.

As for this performance, it's difficult to tell because is playing guitar out of shot and then comes into shot - but like gsh said, it's possibly the music from the second take mixed with the performance of the first live take.

Every1 from G. Clinton 2 Bootsy 2 Suga Foot and Ernie Isley has raved about P's genius in playing guitar. Even Santana! Sooo this is a really stupid thread that should b banished from the archives 4ever! STUPID ASS SHIT!

ELBOOGY said:

Nobody is fucking saying Prince can't play guitar we are saying he did not play it on Leno. Watch the fucking tape. The most obvious mimer during the performance is John as was mentioned above but it's clear that they are not playing live.

.
[This message was edited Tue Aug 10 14:03:37 2004 by lovemachine]

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

Ah... The fucking retards come out...
Nobody on this fucking topic said Prince isn't a professional musician, everybody knows he is...
It's just a fact that about 95% of people who perform on TV shows use backing tapes or pre-recorded "live" music, Prince included... It's not a slam or anything, it's just the way it works with TV...
You're making it seem as if someone on here said that Prince fakes all the guitar playing he ever did...
And BTW receiving "widespread acclaim form legendary musicians" doesn't mean shit... It's just an ego boost...

Neversin.

Neversin said:

Hmmm, Okay, I will just take your word for it the Omnipotent Neversin: King or Queen of the Message Board. Actually, receiveing widespread acclaim from professional musicians is much better than getting acclaim from or torn down by bitter people who sit on a fan site and jump on every little detail with the hopes of finding something to make their intolerable lives better. (You know the back hand compliment crew who wouldn't know what to do with Prince's talent if he gave it to them.) That Alicia Keys intro at the concert is working a hell of a lot better than the Neversin tape they started with. Oh by the way, referring to me as part of the "fucking retards" is actually quite comical. After reading some of the posts you've so eloquently provided for us, that retard statement is a compliment. If your thought process is the standard for logical thinking, I will take retard anyday.
[This message was edited Wed Aug 11 1:09:13 2004 by DorothyParkerWasCool]

Supernova said:

Yea, there's gonna be a new "he faked THIS performance!" thread every week now

Get over it he is a genius: and he is very rich and very talented anyone who said he cant play guitar is a jealous mother fuck ok xxxxx

Folks, just because he might tape his music for TV performances, doesn't mean he is less of an artist. Its not uncommon for artists to do this, since TV studios often sound like crap (just check out SNL. They do not allow ANY pre-recorded music, which is why you'll often hear great artists sounding like shit). Prince is a perfectionist, and he damned sure isn't going to risk a TV performance sounding bad. He has control over his concerts and how they sound, but he doesn't have ANY control when it comes to television. TV perfromances should be viewed more in the vein of videos, really. This is the ONLY time you'll see P not actually playing, outside of a video shoot (and this is true of MANY other performers as well).