plus prince is not a typical "song-writer". he does write brilliant "songs" but he does not necessarily stick 2 the structure of a perfect "song". and by the way, who ever said a "song" had 2 have A, chorus, B, chorus, Bridge, Solo, chorus, ...? i hate it when people try 2 put music in2 categories; its like saying rock belongs 2 us white people and r&b is black - i mean what the hell does that mean? music is something that comes out of u and so do princes solos (unless hes so desperate 2 write a perfect song again he doesnt wait until it comes out of him but he someone "drags" it out, which doesnt make it sound that real and honest in the end).

in the end a "solo" is simply a certain instrument standing out, no matter when or how, what instrument that is or how long.
thats why the guitar work at the end of live 4 love definitely IS a solo. end of story.

and yes its a great solo, l4oa

ilove annie so in your opinion studio version of
i could never take the place of your man,
why you wanna treat me so bad and
computer blue don't have well structured briliant guitar solos?

I could never take the place of your man

i mean we can argue wheater prince is the best guitar player on not,but can we realy be so ignorant to say prince don't write great guitar solos.
i like it there isn't bad solo at all.

if you know music well you would know that guitar solo is in the best tradition of zz top like solos.and its compliments that song rather well.

and if you ask me between chosing to shread or to play great melodies
on guitar prince will always go for the melodic content,
thats what prince got from carlos santana.

iloveyouannie what do you think of prince's guitar solo on his song "so far so pleased " from rave???

while its a pretty crappy song guitar solo is a standout,its realy great well structured solo or you iloveannie don't agree?
but be honest we don't argue we only discuss

prince's sense for a nice and often very sophisticated melodies
and his in the pocket rhythm work combined
together is what makes prince special
and very intersting in a guitar player world.

im sure that guitar players like steve vai and
satriani who have better tehniqe on guitar then prince probably dig prince's guitar solos.

comfortambly numb realy have nice guitar solo
but can we honestly say that prince didn't wrote better
guitar solos than the one in that pink floyd song???

cuz i can name at least 10 better guitar solos by prince.
have you even hear dave gillmoure's take on purple rain(version with tom jones on vocals)?
dave played good but it was not even close to the passion and emotions prince emitate while playing it.

of course it's a prince song and it would be cool to hear what would prince play on comfortably numb.

what makes prince a great guitar solo composer is his ability to know how to get 3 very important thing to guitar solo begging ,middle section and big climax in solo.
the only time i didn't hear great prince guitar solos was during rave era including rave un2 2000 dvd.
all other solos i heard were pure bliss.

I forgot one...

"Digital Garden" has this AWESOME guitar solo halfway through that is a huge reason why I enjoy that song as much a I do

any just my imagination solo . the one from the roseland ballroom '88 has been in my head since yesterday

thebanishedone said:

I'd have to disagree, slightly. Yes it is structured however it is dull and uninspiring for me. Could it be more generic of a less-than-flamboyant rock song? I've heard more pleasing rock solos from The Darkness.

Perhaps I have a traditionalist view of guitar solos. But to me (and many millions of others it would seem) I don't hold that Prince has written, or performed, a great solo. He's improvised a lot of great guitar playing but, unlike his music, life and image, those moments have had very little structure. Sure go out and limb and see what happens. Yes it's creative and can lead to many awesome moments. He's done a similar thing many times at his aftershows with the whole musical piece but would people be prepared for an album of randomness with hit and miss possibilities? No, they like structure and forethought (coupled with impulse and imagination of course!).

And Dreamy? Well it's nice to see you're listening to The Rainbow Children. One of may favourite albums where I think Prince really goes out on a limb. Now that album I find inspiring and intriguing. But where is the solo you mention? He rocks out in the second half of the song, is that what you mean?


What was it someone here once said? Something along the lines of "...add enough distortion, throw in some high bends down at the dusty end, add some extreme vibrato, some hammer-ons and pull-offs, a couple of whammy-bar dive-bombs and you've got yourself a solo".

Well nothing like using space, harmonic structure and phrasing to achieve your goal...
[Edited 10/16/08 2:35am]

thebanishedone said:

Iiiinteresting...

Tell me more of this 'Pruince' you speak of

The question of u,thats works for me !

'Motherless Child' from Spanish TV during the Rave era. The pain and emotion that pours into his playing is unreal.

iloveannie said:

what do u think of the instrumental solos on the sensual everafter?

Live 4 Love

The Question Of U

Shhh

Um, Fury SNL

iloveannie said:

It's in the section where the deep-voice speaks the following:



It was an incredible solo
I wouldn't really know anything about whether his solos are the best of any musician in the industry because his were the first time I'd heard guitar that really sounded like musical poetry (I've long associated electric guitars with heavy metal bands and dismissed them as "noise" )

As a whole, the album I really haven't gotten in2 yet. I've heard it about 7 times of the course of a week in April. The first 2 times I made the mistake of checking in2 b4 bed and I fell asleep about halfway through
Highlights like "Digital Garden" and "She loves me for me" were ones I remembered pretty well I distinctly remembered a few people saying here that they hated Digital Garden or listed it among their least favorite of his songs. I thought it was an interesting piece with somewhat of a tribal vibe to it.

"Last December" while sometimes it lingers a little too much on the gospel side with the choir in the background, it has great lyrics that make one think. And for multiple reasons, it'd bring tears to my eyes

As for "Senusual Everafter," as l4oa mentioned, I haven't heard it enough times to be sure. I'm not sure what I was feeling at the time, but when I heard it, it always made me sad for some reason. I wish I knew why.

sometime soon, it might be worth adding that album to my iPOD so I can hear it a few more times. At least get rid of that line of blank tracks after "Last December" except for the very last track.

iloveannie i give up.you say prince isn't good guitar solo composer yet you quote gilmours comfortably numb solo as the perfect solo.

comfortably numb solo is great because of the atmosphere it creates not because it great composed solo.

if you analyze comfortably numb you'll see that every
lick gillmoure played is pretty basic and simple and
what makes it great is the sound athe texture.
how can you say that prince isn't great guitar solo composer.

prince is composer and most of us can say that he
is very good composer.

guitar solo is a segment,part of the whole picture.
it also contains music notes like every other instrument.
how can a great composer be not so good composer of guitar solos,thats a pure nonsense.

for instance you mention eric clapton,while eric is great
jammer he is not a composer,
his guitar solos are most of the time lick oriented .

except few cases eric clapton never composed a song by himself,he always had co-writer .layla,tears in heaven are songs he only cowrote.
so you can't call eric a good composer.

great composer is always good composer no matter
what instrument,so i can't argue with u iloveuannie you
are few years youbger then me and in a few years ull think otherwise.it's just a phase in your development as guitar player to think the way u do.

when doves cry guitar solo-just tell me that guitar solo alone is not worth to be in so called 100 best guitar solo in so called guitar lists.

do you know that legendary jeff beck said that guitar solo in when doves cry is one of the best guitar solos he ever heard and that prince is very underrated
as a guitar player.

jeff beck is one of the best guitar composers in rock music if you ask me and jeff probably knows to recognise other great guitar player,so

your opinion is not funny ,i can understand it,b
ut what i can't understand is how can you something as funny as "prince don't write great solos but gillmoure does".
c'mon man prince can play on guitar things gillmoure
can only wish for ,but irony is that dave is consider
to be bigger guitar legend then prince because of dave primarly being atached with guitar while many people don't even know prince plays guitar"

thebanishedone said:

The thread did state "favourite". With that in mind I stated that I do not have a favourite guitar solo from Prince. My love for Prince is for the music he creates, the fact that he plays a wild guitar is a bonus. The vast majority of his releases have understated his guitar playing.

We could debate the musical ability of the two guitarists for ever and if we were to start on that topic then I'm sure comparing the ability of classical composers through the ages to Prince would crop up. To do so would be unfair to Prince of course yet it would highlight the point that music comes in two parts. The most talentless musician is possible of creating music that speaks to someone, somewhere yet the most talented musician may never create a single piece to the same effect.

This is where the accomplished artists have benefited. The Rolling Stones were never going to play Chopin, yet their music spoke to (and for) a generation. Prince may be one of the most accomplished musical pop artists of our time (possibly all time) yet he was not rated highly by Lloyd Webber when he wrote for the Mail last year.

And the comment that Prince plays pieces that Gilmour could never dream of is daft. Neither guitarist is capable of playing as the other. The reason? They have each found their own unique voice with the instrument (the fulfilled dream of every player).

It's horses for courses as always. My ear is different to yours. I will always prefer a more melodic and harmonious style of soloing to the (often not always) brash, stuttering and cutting manner of that which Prince greets my ears. That's not to say I am not moved by his playing just that there are other players and solos to which I am more fond.

At least we both like the music. You do like his music I guess?

thebanishedone:

But if I was asked what I thought of Prince's live guitar playing... well that's another matter altogether There's Prince the recorded artist and Prince the live artist. Two different things entirely if you ask me (one's a raw, funky, sexy, mother-fucking rock god and the other is... umm, hard to sum up in one sentence).

Electrostar said:

Ditto.

Why has nobody said Gett Off

I love that guitar solo

ravein2thejoy said:

...and Gett Off.

Dave1992 said:

I like the solos from all the songs that have been mentioned so far. I always thought that the solo should fit the mood of the song that goes with it, and it doesn't exactly have to fit the common song structure (intro/verse/ chorus,etc.) all the time.

I like the solo for "Peach". It reminds me of a 50's rock kind-of Chuck Berry-style solo through a cranked up amp w/ lots of overdrive.

And as for trying to stick people in musical categories....It's like the Funkadelic song, "Who Says A Funk Band Can't Play Rock?". Most popular music (rock, R&B...and yes, even hip-hop) originally came from the blues, anyway.

'The Ride' from the Undertaker

'Joy in Repetition' from ONAL

'Days Of Wild (guitar)' from one of the NPG ahdio shows.

'Just My imagination' From Small Club

'Neon Rendezvous' Nearly all of it.

apart from 'joy', nearly all bootlegs and not commercially released. bit of a pattern, his best guitar work is hard to find for most.

DerekH said:

Not this again. Well somebody should one day thank the oppressors and instigators of slavery for without them we'd never have had Vanilla Ice.

iloveannie said:

You can (indirectly) thank Queen and Wild Cherry for the Ice Cream Man. Without them, had have had to sample someone else.

DerekH said:

Went to see Queen in Birmingham last week. Now May knows how to play a solo

I was upset that they didn't play any Vanilla Ice.

There's so many. I honestly do not know how some of you can list them?

For now:
What Do U Want Me 2 Do
She Spoke 2 Me
Joy In Repetition
Just My Imagination
The Question of U

I know there are more.

iloveannie said:

I didn't know they were still on tour. Did they do "Fat Bottomed Girls"? That's one of my fave Queen songs.