meh...this is an average thread

After talking with a amazing musician about prince and showing him some of prince best music we came the the paint to say that:
Prince is just another avarage musician! Not bad, and not great! There are thousands of people better than him! he is an good guitarplayer, a good paino player, ...and so on! But never great nor the greatest!( some people here maybe never heard some people like gary moore playing goutar,,,....wow..)
Maybe thats the problem with weak respond of the music buying public! he is not enough to be a rocker,not enough to be an rnb, he is everything but...is that what the people want..

At the end he has written some really great pop songs, thats what people will remember, not his guitar playing.
He will be remembered as one of the greatest pop stars (but not as musician...)
He is like MJ an entertainer( higher that Mj because he can play some instruments..)

i will still listen to him, but my ears will be also open for other great music!

In your post musician = istrumentalist. Sure, there are many better instrumentalists than Prince. But Prince's greatness is not his ability to play the piano or the guitar, but his ability to compose and perform great popular music.
[Edited 11/20/08 15:20pm]

one of my favourite ever threads in here was as follows:

I often wonder, especially in the early days before computers and sequencers were a heavy part of the recording process, how Prince did those long extended jams on his albums.

What I mean is - many of his songs would be a few verses, a few choruses, and then would launch into long jams... such as DMSR, 1999, Just Another Sucker, Just As Long As We're Together, Let's Work, etc.

To write a structured song with verses and bridges, etc, is relatively simple. It's all mapped out basically. Like the Kenny Rogers song "The Gambler" for an extremely simple example.

But I wonder, how did Prince "map out" those jams if he was doing it all on his own. Could he "hear" all the parts in his head before starting? Or did he literally say "I am going to make this song 8 minutes and 25 seconds."?

This sounds like a simple question, but when you are actually recording in that fashion, it is really a mystery. The reason being is that if you are recording the drum part first, for example, and at 8:14 you decide to do a fill or a stop, then you will have to remember to change with the drums at 8:14 when you are doing the bass, synth, vocals, etc...

I am probably phrasing this question to sound complicated, but I'm trying...

For another example... The song "I'm Yours" has kind of a massive build up, or crescendo, throughout the song to the ending. Somehow Prince had to known in his mind to make all the parts interlock to create this crescendo properly.

It would be one thing to record a song like this with a full band and give the other bands members cues and whatnot, but playing all the instruments yourself? Without the aide of ProTools (in 1980)? And at a studio that probably charged $50+ per hour?

That's feckin' amazing.


nuff said.

misiu said:

how long was the conversation? 1 minute

In your post musician = istrumentalist. Sure, there are many better instrumentalists than Prince. But Prince's greatness is not his ability to play the piano or the guitar, but his ability to compose and perform great popular music.
[Edited 11/20/08 15:20pm]

I'm the first to concede that Prince is not the greatest guitarist... or the greatest pianist... or the greatest bassist... or the greatest drummer... or the greatest singer... or the greatest composer/arranger... or the greatest dancer... or the greatest bandleader... or the greatest producer... (I could go on, but you get the idea!)

But the fact remains that he is above average in all of those qualities. That is an amazing feat. He took what people like Stevie Wonder were doing to the next level.

Prince has recieved major props from some of the most respected musicians ever to walk the earth - people from the rock world, the soul/rnb world, the jazz world etc, etc. So unless you're the human reincarnation of music herself, how can you say he's simply an average musician?
[Edited 11/21/08 1:13am]

meh...this is an average thread

After talking with a amazing musician about prince and showing him some of prince best music we came the the paint to say that:
Prince is just another avarage musician! Not bad, and not great! There are thousands of people better than him! he is an good guitarplayer, a good paino player, ...and so on! But never great nor the greatest!( some people here maybe never heard some people like gary moore playing goutar,,,....wow..)
Maybe thats the problem with weak respond of the music buying public! he is not enough to be a rocker,not enough to be an rnb, he is everything but...is that what the people want..

At the end he has written some really great pop songs, thats what people will remember, not his guitar playing.
He will be remembered as one of the greatest pop stars (but not as musician...)
He is like MJ an entertainer( higher that Mj because he can play some instruments..)

i will still listen to him, but my ears will be also open for other great music!

One thing i just have to say is that the person who i was talking to is multi instrumentalist! He is now 38 and is playing piano since he is 5 years! He also plays guitar( at the moment bass in his band ) , drums...and that very good!
maybe the problem is that he studies the music in his head, he feels it and hears what other dont hear! i mean, when musicology came out i showed him call my name!after a moment he took his guitar and played some great solos and parts that sounded great without not knowing the song! i mean, that is a talent..

its not that the person doesnt like prince, but he says that prince work is more quantity than qaulity!