Inspiration for this topic is a song i listen to this days :Moonbeam Levels

it was recorded during 1999 sessions and it was left out that album in favor of Free.

The melody of the song is very unusual ,

yet very catchy it sticks in your head.

It's a great composition,unreleased ,some other artist would kill

for a song like that.

In the past Prince didn't care about the rules

and restrictions when it comes to music.

His songs were rich of highly sophisticated sound textures,while

his recent work is more down to earth,simple with no surprises .

Composers grow as time goes buy ,do you think that is the case with Prince?

I think Prince lost something ,his songs are more basic now without showing real improvement

as a composer.

[Edited 1/12/11 18:45pm]

[Edited 1/12/11 18:46pm]

I'm not qualified to comment on an artists composition skills, i just know what i like and what i don't.

But Moonbeam levels is a great song.

thebanishedone said:

Inspiration for this topic is a song i listen to this days :Moonbeam Levels

it was recorded during 1999 sessions and it was left out that album in favor of Free.

The melody of the song is very unusual ,

yet very catchy it sticks in your head.

It's a great composition,unreleased ,some other artist would kill

for a song like that.

In the past Prince didn't care about the rules

and restrictions when it comes to music.

His songs were rich of highly sophisticated sound textures,while

his recent work is more down to earth,simple with no surprises .

Composers grow as time goes buy ,do you think that is the case with Prince?

I think Prince lost something ,his songs are more basic now without showing real improvement

as a composer.

[Edited 1/12/11 18:45pm]

[Edited 1/12/11 18:46pm]

I think thats the case, he still makes good music, the lyrics are more meaningful to me now than ever. I focus on lyrics more than the music, but I do believe that he never lost anything, he just brought out something else. Some of his music is basic, but he has the ability to create those same songs that captured the world's attention. I do believe that all the songs you would love, probably remain in the vault and unreleased.. smh.. man.. makes me kinda sad lol.

P's lyrics are still very powerful and meaningful, IMO

You think Prince's lyrics are better now?

I think he displayed a much wider lyrical interests in the past.

thebanishedone said:

You think Prince's lyrics are better now?

I think he displayed a much wider lyrical interests in the past.

When he was singing about shagging?

Grand Progression

Moonbeam Levels

A Day in Heaven

There are other here with us

this songs have better lyrics then most of his new songs.

almost every new song have words like stash,cash,page,you want this but i can give you that type of lyrics

TheDigitalGardener said:

I'm not qualified to comment on an artists composition skills, i just know what i like and what i don't.

But Moonbeam levels is a great song.

I'm with you. I judge things based simply on if I like it or not. However, I could never get into "Moonbeam Levels". I like it better than "Free" though. Still, I think it's one of those songs that's partially so revered because it's unreleased. Or maybe it's just me?

^Most probably it's you. I'm afraid it's the first time I find someone who doesn't praise MB.

Regarding the main subject, I think it's not a case of compositional skills.

It's just that he used to be very demanding towards himself and now he isn't and he's trying to sound like today's radio (i.e. the worst music that ever existed).

(Accidentally duplicated post, sorry).

[Edited 1/12/11 23:47pm]

No I wouldn't say Prince lost anything....in fact, I'd say the opposite. Prince has grown so much as a songwriter. He can now write songs with different inspirations. Not saying his songs back in the day weren't amazing, they were and hard to comprehend. But the songs now are more reserved, but still show strength. They are classier when it comes to sex... its like this..before Prince f*cked you with his songs, now he makes love to you with his songs. Same outcome, just gentler and slower journey..

I like how your thread title indicates a certain position on the matter, and then in your post you take the complete opposite position.

Do you understand the concept of a thesis?

.

[Edited 1/13/11 8:29am]

Jakeasaurus said:

I like how your thread title indicates a certain position on the matter, and then in your post you take the complete opposite position.

Did you fail college? Did you GO to college?

Do you realize the Internet is a worldwide community everyone from every country has access too? Do you realize Prince.org is website everyone in the world is allowed to join? Do you realize the grammar order "subject+verb+rest of the sentence+question mark" is completely correct in a lot of languages (French for example) and that not everyone has been taught English as well as others?


You wouldn't have a single complaint if the thread title had been: "Is Prince a better composer than he ever was?" and although I like people to use proper grammar, you can't ask that of anyone. If you think non-English shouldn't post in an English speaking forum and all English speaking forums should consist of only native English speakers, then please, let's all stop speaking English as a second language. Americans can learn a foreign language too.


On topic, I think Prince lost a lot of his creativity or he hasn't really been trying for a long time. Especially ballads nowadays come across to me as Prince being on auto-pilot. He is still making nice music, but it isn't as ground-breaking as it used to be.


I love Moonbeam Levels. I wish it would be released in better quality and I can't understand why it didn't make the album. I think it's better than Free.

something is missing, that's for sure, but it's almost impossible to tell what exactly it is.

today, however, i'm quite convinced that he's lost his talent for programming.

I find his actual compositions to be much better now than they used to be. All I have to do is break down each song into a simple keyboard version with a bassline and leadline to get to the core of the song/melody or rhythm structure.

Much of Prince's 80's output for me was fascintating because of the mix or effects, but the compositions just sucked a lot of times, and I was always annoyed by that. For example:

Girl, Take Me with You, Baby I'm a Star, Free, It, America... these kind of compositions really annoyed me. They were very cliche and uninteresting to my ears when I first heard them, however he would pull out all manner of odd sounds and effects on something like Girl to make it have an interesting texture.

What he doesn't spend as much time doing now is mixing, arranging, or using effects as uniquely or consistently.

Nowadays, a song like Planet Earth or Sticky Like Glue, have better melodies and core compositions, but they don't have the unique mixes or effects.

At least thats how I see it...of course he will turn out something really cool on both ends like 3121, with it's crazy break.

I feel like a song like Beginning Endlessly is such a great compostion, but it seems a little stark on mixing flavor and unique sounds.

Modern day Prince is a terrible composer. Listen to Beginning Endlessly... in fact no... DON"T listen to Beginning Endlessly. I'm embarrassed by it. No human being should be subject to that song. It is absolutely terrible. The title, the unwieldy lyrics, the pace, the paint-by-numbers solos, the god awful lead vocal lines. The most entertaining part of the track is that you can hear Prince is completely lost while writing it. He doesn't know what to do with the song. The lyrics are painfuly confusing and not relateable at all. Not only is this song not even Top100 material by today's standards, it would have sucked back in the day too. Oh, but wait, it's all about the advance money now right? He's cool with it if the album sucks because he knows the core fanbase will buy it to fill out their collections.

Jakeasaurus said:

I like how your thread title indicates a certain position on the matter, and then in your post you take the complete opposite position.

Do you understand the concept of a thesis?

.

[Edited 1/13/11 8:29am]

Not jumping on you but it happens here a lot that we assume things about people here

We assume they are over the age of 25 or 30 we assume they have been fans for as long as ourselves. There are 14 yr old fans here there are people who just became Prince fans in the last 2 months.

mblevels said:

Jakeasaurus said:

I like how your thread title indicates a certain position on the matter, and then in your post you take the complete opposite position.

Did you fail college? Did you GO to college?

Do you realize the Internet is a worldwide community everyone from every country has access too? Do you realize Prince.org is website everyone in the world is allowed to join? Do you realize the grammar order "subject+verb+rest of the sentence+question mark" is completely correct in a lot of languages (French for example) and that not everyone has been taught English as well as others?


You wouldn't have a single complaint if the thread title had been: "Is Prince a better composer than he ever was?" and although I like people to use proper grammar, you can't ask that of anyone. If you think non-English shouldn't post in an English speaking forum and all English speaking forums should consist of only native English speakers, then please, let's all stop speaking English as a second language. Americans can learn a foreign language too.


On topic, I think Prince lost a lot of his creativity or he hasn't really been trying for a long time. Especially ballads nowadays come across to me as Prince being on auto-pilot. He is still making nice music, but it isn't as ground-breaking as it used to be.


I love Moonbeam Levels. I wish it would be released in better quality and I can't understand why it didn't make the album. I think it's better than Free.

You have completely misunderstood what I was saying.

You don't say "Is Prince a better composer than he was?" and then write a paragraph arguing that Prince is a WORSE composer than he was. Not in correct writing, anyway.

The thread title should have been "Prince is a worse composer than he was" or "Is Prince a worse composer than he was?"

Jakeasaurus said:

mblevels said:

Do you realize the Internet is a worldwide community everyone from every country has access too? Do you realize Prince.org is website everyone in the world is allowed to join? Do you realize the grammar order "subject+verb+rest of the sentence+question mark" is completely correct in a lot of languages (French for example) and that not everyone has been taught English as well as others?


You wouldn't have a single complaint if the thread title had been: "Is Prince a better composer than he ever was?" and although I like people to use proper grammar, you can't ask that of anyone. If you think non-English shouldn't post in an English speaking forum and all English speaking forums should consist of only native English speakers, then please, let's all stop speaking English as a second language. Americans can learn a foreign language too.


On topic, I think Prince lost a lot of his creativity or he hasn't really been trying for a long time. Especially ballads nowadays come across to me as Prince being on auto-pilot. He is still making nice music, but it isn't as ground-breaking as it used to be.


I love Moonbeam Levels. I wish it would be released in better quality and I can't understand why it didn't make the album. I think it's better than Free.

You have completely misunderstood what I was saying.

You don't say "Is Prince a better composer than he was?" and then write a paragraph arguing that Prince is a WORSE composer than he was. Not in correct writing, anyway.

The thread title should have been "Prince is a worse composer than he was" or "Is Prince a worse composer than he was?"

thebanishedone is from eastern europe so English is his secong language.

Have you nothing better to do than correct peoples grammar?

How many languages do you speak?

... but it's not a language thing ... it's a common sense thing....

muirdo said:

Jakeasaurus said:

You have completely misunderstood what I was saying.

You don't say "Is Prince a better composer than he was?" and then write a paragraph arguing that Prince is a WORSE composer than he was. Not in correct writing, anyway.

The thread title should have been "Prince is a worse composer than he was" or "Is Prince a worse composer than he was?"

thebanishedone is from eastern europe so English is his secong language.

Have you nothing better to do than correct peoples grammar?

How many languages do you speak?

Exactly.
@Jakeasaurus: You leave me wondering whether you know what a thesis is or not. A thesis is something you either agree or disagree with. Thebanishedone disagrees with the thesis and asks for the opinion of others. I agree with you that it's common for the first poster to agree with his or her thesis, but as far as I'm concerned it's not required. And even if it is, it's still a detail which isn't important at all and that's what I intended to say in my previous post. You select details from someone's post, maximize them like they are a great deal and use it to pick on the other. Is it really that crucial? Didn't you understand what the original poster was trying to say? I guess you did understand, given your severe criticism, so what is your problem then?

If it is indeed required, as you stated, to agree with your own thesis, it probably isn't taught at most schools and it's not information you keep remembering for the rest of your life. And although you have the right to disagree with me, I think it's applaudable when people try to formulate their sentences as positive as possible instead of depressing pessimism, which is far too common on this forum.

And please note that I wouldn't even reply to you, if I hadn't seen you post the exact same type of messages about the exact same small errors over and over in every thread you possibly can.

The Word

1+1+1=3

The Rainbow Children

The Work Pt.1

Boom

Feel Better, Feel Good, Feel Wonderful

Colonized Mind

These are examples that Prince is still a great composer. Better than he used to be? I don't know. I don't think so...

Thank you fellow orgers for your kind support.

I have always understand English language because

i was so obsessed with American movies when i was a kid

I admit that before i didn't know some rules of English ,

but i know English well and if i had to stop

talking and thinking on Serbian language i could do that .

i speak French also but not so good,French time sentencing was ,is still hard to me

Anyway i don't want people to argue ,what happened to a healthy discussions?

Do you remember the old org?

I am 29 years old and i grow up on Prince.org

It was a different place before,beside the design

of the web site,everything changed.

There were no negativity and all you could find

was a lot of great info on Prince.

Can we bring the positivity again?

And Jakeosaurus no matter what you say somehow i know that deep down you are one cool guy

thebanishedone said:

And Jakeosaurus no matter what you say somehow i know that deep down you are one cool guy

How is it that somebody can be such an asshole, yet y'all can still forgive him?

smoothcriminal12 said:

thebanishedone said:

And Jakeosaurus no matter what you say somehow i know that deep down you are one cool guy

How is it that somebody can be such an asshole, yet y'all can still forgive him?

Because they've seen my profile picture

Jakeasaurus said:

smoothcriminal12 said:

How is it that somebody can be such an asshole, yet y'all can still forgive him?

Because they've seen my profile picture

Gross.

thebanishedone said:

Inspiration for this topic is a song i listen to this days :Moonbeam Levels

it was recorded during 1999 sessions and it was left out that album in favor of Free.

The melody of the song is very unusual ,

yet very catchy it sticks in your head.

It's a great composition,unreleased ,some other artist would kill

for a song like that.

In the past Prince didn't care about the rules

and restrictions when it comes to music.

His songs were rich of highly sophisticated sound textures,while

his recent work is more down to earth,simple with no surprises .

Composers grow as time goes buy ,do you think that is the case with Prince?

I think Prince lost something ,his songs are more basic now without showing real improvement

as a composer.

[Edited 1/12/11 18:45pm]

[Edited 1/12/11 18:46pm]

Moonbeam Levels is

I think Prince is still an amazing talent (and still my favorite), but for sure way tamer.

TheDigitalGardener said:

I'm not qualified to comment on an artists composition skills, i just know what i like and what i don't.

But Moonbeam levels is a great song.

This is all the qualification anyone ever needs when it comes to basing an opinion on anything artistic.

It's funny, after years of thinking prince was over, when I first put planet earth in the CD player, the first 4 bars of it I thought, wow these are some unusual piano licks maybe he's got it again. Then the tune pretty sharply went down hill, then there was that grim LA LA LA bit in the middle with the crap synth horns. Followed by track after track of dross and I very quickly realised that after years of almost no inspirational rise from our purple man that he is over from a compositional and creative inspiration point of view.

Oh well such is life, we're all only young once.

It's possible that as far as technique is concerned he is a better composer than he ever was but what is lacking is drive/inspiration. I get plenty of enjoyment out of his recent albums, even the much reviled Planet Earth, but I do think he is capable of better.