I/m no talking about W & L on the piano and guitar or Prince on vocals.

There's crackling on several parts.

Listen closely; like the engineer messed up the tape.

Damn great song as well with just W & L and P.

yeah thats me riding the gain so far up ur ass til it burns. x SISTA.

sacredwarrior said:

What is wrong with you?

mikek1 said:

read that back.

I think you must be hearing things, I just had a listen to it and apart from a
slight bit of tape hiss there's nothing wrong with it... no crackling or popping.

The acoustic guitar is deliberately recorded up close so you can hear every
creak and squeak of fingers on fretboard, maybe this is what you've mistaken
for recording errors? It was recorded like that as a nod towards Joni Mitchell.

a little off topic, but the only song that ever bugs me in terms of recording/engineering quality is "Little Red Corvette". The distortion on the vocals is painful at times. Was that deliberate (ala the infamous lack-of-treble on TBODP) or by accident?

toejam said:

i'd say its deliberate. i know that whenever i speak harshly ( distortion ) its with great conscious intention.

toejam said:

i agree; i mentioned this awhile ago.

Imagine a remastered version of 1999 DONE BY SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING!

BorisFishpaw said:

that is what he is talking about... it was noticed and talked about to a ridiculous level years and years ago. it was also speculated that some of it was a squeaking chair but i tend to think it is all the natural squeaks of a guitar.

There's crackling on 2 songs on 3121 and also on Cybersingle I think. I've heard people ask whether it was a mistake, when clearly it is deliberate, a joke at the expense of digital recording.

metalorange said:

I've mentioned this and was told it was deliberate to mimic the sound of vinyl but i think it's a mistake.
I thought prince had used samples on these tracks; that's why they had crackling. Of course the usual supects on here went mad saying 'why you always accuse prince of stealing?

Prince has the greatest catologue of music ever; her deserves to have every track mixed and mastered perfect!

Of course it's deliberate. This is from a man who actually coughed during the 12" of Raspberry Beret. I'm sure someone with enough free time on their hands could catalogue all the "flubs". It's like looking at a painting; if it's any good, you'll find new things with every viewing, or with music every listening

there is also crackle on housequake anmd gett off

mikek1 said:

In the modern way of recording ie everything is tracked on computers and put through filters and all that, there's no way a mistake like some static could sneak in by accident, and if it did it could be easily removed these days, unlike the old days of tape. Besides, these tracks are played over and over before being mastered anyway, someone would have noticed an obvious mistake like that. No, it's clearly deliberate, as shown by the way the static is repeated consistently and very obviously at the end of The Word. Why Prince put it in is another matter. I do think it was a joke in Cybersingle since the whole point of the song was that it was a digital only release, mimicking vinyl static emphasized the way things had changed.

metalorange said:

prince still uses analog tape...well not all the time but that is still what he uses quite a bit of the time

mikek1 said:

Remastering ain't gonna help the vocal distortion on Little Red Corvette or
If I Was Your Girlfriend, as that's how they were recorded. Nothing can be
done to change it (unless the vocals were re-recorded again from scratch).

BorisFishpaw said:

It could be remixed! She's always is also like that!

mikek1 said:

looks like it's time for someone to take their meds...

HITYLTIRDATA?





Have I Told You Lately I Really Dislike All These Abbreviations?

mikek1 said:

That won't help either, you can't mix-out distortion (but you can always add it)

whats sisia?

ufoclub said:

Sometimes It Snows In April

mikek1 said:

FunkMistress said:

shit! now that I know wtf sisia means...onlyn thing I ever heard on that track is the stool or bench He's sitting on creaks....and I LOVE THAT.

There are no recording mistakes in Sometimes it snows in april.

The crackling you hear is indeed the crackling of the strings of Lisas guitar (when you listen good you can also hear some echoes of the piano strings, things that are normally mixed out of a song). I think it is mixed this way to give the sound an intimate, pure feel.

Riverpoet31 said:

you mean wendy's guitar...right?

"crackling"? there's squeaking of fingers on the frets.

ufoclub said:

I was just going 2 say that. THANK U.

Except it's actually the squeaking of the round-wound strings of an acoustic guitar.

Housequake, and nearly every other example above was intentional.

Peace.

G.
[Edited 10/2/06 12:46pm]

yea...it just sounds like he's shifting his "loaves."

Shorty said:

I've always interpreted the "crackling" as a creaking barstool. Like Prince or Wendy was sitting on a stool playing guitar and the stoll was creakeing when they shifted a little. That's happnned to me before, while i was recording even. Also you can hear the fingers scraping accoss the guitar strings alot in the recording, too.