when you tried to recreate original arangmant of some prince
songs witrh the band did you ever had a hard time with prince songs?
even the simpliest prince songs have some kind of catch that is not simple to play.
i bet keyboard players have problems with learning keyboard solo from "head"
musicians please share your expiriances

Not particularly. I have a music degree and play in a variety of bands (trumpet mainly, but keys, bass or guitar if necessary). Most of his songs are relatively straight forward. That's not to say they're "bad" or "uninventive" - far from it - more so, that he usually sticks pretty close to traditional harmony and chords, and a lot of his stuff is 'groove based' and not too highly arranged to make it overly time consuming to transcribe. Of course he does use some interesting harmonies sometimes that can be a little tricky to get exact.

As for the solo in "Head", first off it's an improvised solo, so I doubt bands who plays this song live would completely transcribe it note for note - they'd probably improvise their own solo. But if it was required, I think most semi-pro keyboardists could figure it out (or at least something very close to it).
[Edited 1/2/09 20:47pm]

toejam its not improvised sol most of the solo if not not by note matt fink replicated on live versions of the song head check out versions from 1980-81-82-86-88year

Most of the individual parts are not hard to pick by ear - however, since Prince's songs are often so strongly based on the textures of the sounds used, simply being able to play the same part on another synth patch is usually not really going to work too satisfyingly. It's quite different from learning parts that were played on a piano or guitar on the original recording.

He uses a lot of chord inversions and used to layer those on top of each other on different keyboards in the 80s - which was a part of the 80s mpls sound - and unless you're going to have "keyboard x" and "keyboard y" doing the exact same thing, the end results will be inevitably quite different. So it's not like playing the piano at all - it's more about matching the modulation and filter settings of the synths, and then it will sound like early-80s funk. For instance, if there is a more offbeat "synth bass" sound on the original track it's not necessarily going to work at all when played with a bass guitar (it might, but don't be surprised if it doesn't).

In the 90s when we all were using our workstation synthesizers it was nearly impossible to find a suitable patch for his synth horn riffs (played on old analog synths). These days, now that everyone has VAs, or even proper analogs once again, it's a whole lot easier. Playing the solo of Head is entirely determined by the patch used, since Fink goes into pretty wild modulation towards the end on that one. It has very little to do with "musical playing", and you're better off coming up with something of your own than trying to figure out the modulation settings for that one. Prince does of course have other type of material than just electronic funk as well, which makes more sense to replicate. His ballads are indeed rather straightforward, but at least the classic stuff contains usually a lot of quirks here and there (and that's usually what's missing from his more current output).

Many of the note transciption books you could buy of Prince's WB albums were quite badly notated and for the groovier material there was hardly anything there to learn. Once you remove the drums, some arbitrary FX and Prince's own voice, there's sometimes nothing else there. You could just as well write a song of your own instead.

thebanishedone said:

Yes, Fink played more or less the same solo live - but it's him on the original recording also from memory, and that's what I was refering to. I'm sure on the original recording Prince just said "play a nasty synth solo here, Fink" who then proceeded to improvise it. I doubt very much Prince actually told him what notes to play.

all contributions by band members included not only prince as instrumentalist

Thanks for writing this. I mostly agree with you, although I don't think one way or the other about the whole Head synth thing. I would also add a word about how Prince was not afraid to experiment. I would assert that this is what makes for some crazy moments for conventional music players who are not thinking outside the box.

novabrkr said:

novabrkr said:

I wish I wrote this response, it's almost verbatim to how I would think Prince records his songs.

'dre

toejam said:

Actually he gave him the finished song and said Fink should add a few solos and in the end Prince would pick one.

I would never change the solo on Head, because it's actually what a keyboarder is waiting for when listening to the song and it's thrilling to hear someone playing it note by note like it was the album version.


Other than that, I never had any problems with chord progressions or melody, sometimes it's just difficult to get the perfect "Prince sound" by mixing the arrangements well.

dave you are right,that's what i said also
solo from head is not improvised .
if it was improvised dr fink couldntreplicate it note by note and he did.

thebanishedone said:

why couldn't he?

thebanishedone said:

i'm a self-taught musician that cannot read a single note of music
but i can play bass, drums, my own form of using chords and melodies on the boards and guitar. i usually strum out some Prince songs on an acoustic, but even then i am sure that my chords are not the exact same as his, but i can usually find the key he's playing in. i can tune a guitar by ear by the way.

let me share this though...i grew up with Khari Simmons (bass player for India Arie) and back in high school, I can remember him and other friends rehearsing Prince songs.

I can clearly remember the members competing for who could play the guitar solo for ICNTTPOYM...and discussing how it was def not an easy solo to be played. it was actually then that i started to respect Prince more as a musician, coz i thought "damn, my friends are saying his solos are not easy to play"

thebanishedone said:

I just can't see Fink or Prince sitting down writing this thing out and making minor adjustments like musican surgeons to get the exact notes they wanted to hear. It's just Fink funking around playing a solo. Sure he may have done a few of them and Prince picked which one he liked best, but it's still improvised IMO.

Maybe we just have a different interpretation of the term "improvisation".

toejam said:

When he first recorded it for Prince it was improvised, no doubt about that, but the hard part was to learn an improvised solo by heart and make it sound the same every time you play it live.

Dave1992 said:

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I was talking about the original version.

I don't have much trouble but every now and then he uses some strange half note that takes me forever 2 figure out exactly what he is doing.

toejam
solo on instrument ,guitar,piano,saxophone,kalimba ... can be totaly improvised or a solo can be composition of their own.
if a solo is composition on its own measure then
the usual method
is composding solo while jamming on instument
and listening to the

background track on which instrumentalist is going to play solo.

matt fink maybe didn't write down solo on paper but he definetly
composed that stolo.maybe some parts of head solo sound

improvised because of its complex keyboard riffs
but matt fink have a jazz background and that solo
isn't improvised .thats the craziest thing.
improvisation is variation on the theme.

i heard many versions of the song head and a lot of times dr fink played EXACTLY THE SAME SOLO NOTE BY NOTE. .
that means solo in that song is not improvised .of course you can find versions of head from 1986 tor where matt played extended keuboard solo .

when u play improvised solo you usualy can't replicate a lot of licks the same way you would do if you are playing composed solo .

when i first listend to prince playing guitar solo of interactive i thought it was improvised but its not,prince played the same solo on various occasions

thebanishedone said:

the last Eb chord with the stretch of the pinky on purple rain was a bitch at first!

Prince is a musicaly mature musician,and back in the day,he wanted things to be played exactly the way it was on record for the tour by the musicians he hired.
I know he fined his musicians for screwups as mabey you can hear in some boot leg rehearsals.
I think now days he is a lil more less caring and letting the guys he hire to personaly add thier own solo's.

thebanishedone said:

Why are you so convinced that just because it's played the same live that it must have been composed for the original? Lots of composers make original 'compositions' out of improvisations. Besides, the difference between a 'composition' and 'improvisation' is a very grey area anyway... I suspect we're arguing the same thing only with a slighly different understanding of the terminology. All I was saying is that I can't see Prince and Fink spending hours on the solo - it was probably done in a couple of takes and not completely studied or reworked.

After the album came out, Prince probably asked Fink to play the solo live the same way in which it appears on the album so the audience could relate to it more than they would to a completely new improvised solo. At this point, it was up to Fink to relearn the solo, and the fact that he's a skilled musician, it probably didn't take him too long. Besides, Fink didn't play it exactly the same every time - there are examples of him playing around with it and "developing the theme" so to say.

But anyway, neither of us were in the studio, so it's all speculation anyway...
[Edited 1/6/09 15:22pm]

toejam said:

This is what I would have said also. Practically, noone plays a note and quickly writes it down, then plays the next one, ... Usually the best and most comfortable way to "write" a song/solo/whatever is to play/improvise it loads of times, until you are satisfied with it and are able to replay it the exact (or nearly exact) way. Then you usually start writing down.

So, basically, nearly every structured composition and every solo is based on improvisations; at least in Prince's and most popular music's case, unless it's twelve tone music and stuff like that, but it would be hard work to find something like a "solo" in there anyway.