Anyone have it? I thought the Musicology book was rubbish. Didn't think the transcriptions were very good at all. What's this like?
[Edited 1/11/07 2:25am]

Didn't even know there were books for the past 2 albums.

Yep, they exist.

MattyJam said:

ya. i just got the 3121 songbook.
honestly, i was a little dissapointed. some of the music written in there doesnt match whats actually in the song. ex.- the recurring leadline in "Lolita" isnt written as it should be.
Also, it always irks me how they refuse to write out any of the solo parts, especially in GotB in this case. and Fury doesnt have any of the guitar lines written at all.
The book is pretty much useless unless you just want it to play two-handed piano with yourself..then it sounds alright.

But it does have some great piccers in the front

It's a typical chord songbook with some nice pics to accompany it, as opposed to
a note for note transcription piece.

.

Does it at least have a decent transcription for the awesome piano part in The Dance?
[Edited 1/12/07 2:01am]

MattyJam said:

nope. just has the stuff behind it.

Well, you have to understand this:

This kind of sheet music (often referred to as "songbooks" from a particular artist, album etc) usually have a 3-staff notation. One for the vocal line, and two piano staves. Naturally, the books are designed to sell as many copies as possible - which means that they want to present the music in a very easy format, that many people can read/play. If it looks too difficult, noone's going to buy the book.

Besides singing the songs, they also want people to be able to sit at home and just play the two-staff piano part, and have it sound kinda like the real thing. That means that the piano part often is designed as a combination of melody and accompaniment - plus, it still has to be easy to play... Of course this is an impossible equation. What you get is usually a piano part that neither (a) conveys the full experience/complete sound of the original record, nor (b) resembles the actual piano part (if any) played on the record, nor (c) sounds like anything a professional musician would play in a piano-and-vocal situation.

Then there's another kind of songbooks that can contain complete, detailed transcriptions of a recording, including all instrumental parts. These seem to be most common in the metal genre (and other band-oriented rock music). Although they can be fairly accurate, they are usually very hard to read and play from, and in fact require that you have listened a lot to the record as well - to the point where you probably wouldn't need the sheet music anyway...

In either case, another important aspect is that many of the characteristics of Prince's music (electronic sounds, studio effects, multi-layered rhythms, highly personal vocal and instrumental stylings etc) simply don't transform very well to conventional music notation - compared to songs by someone like (for example) Elton John, Stevie Wonder, or The Beatles, that are more traditionally constructed and would fit much more easily.

I mean, I've seen the piano-and-vocal sheet music for "My name is Prince", and it's just ridiculous...it sounds nothing like the real song.

So I guess my advice would be: do not buy Prince songbooks! Whoever you are, you won't have much use for them. Try to learn the stuff by ear instead (and write it down yourself, if you need to).
[Edited 1/12/07 16:19pm]
[Edited 1/12/07 22:04pm]

(Wrong post)
[Edited 1/12/07 16:18pm]

the only good sheet music i'd ever seen for a Prince album
was the full transcription version of Purple Rain
that was a lot of fun to play around with and learn from