Ok, it's hard to say for sure since I wasn't physically there, but...

1) You hear the beat to 777-9311, Hot Thing, then I Would Die 4 U. Obviously, these are prerecorded tracks. So what is John Blackwell doing during this time? No live drums?

2) What instrument is Prince playing in the beginning? It looks like he's playing piano, but you can't hear the piano. Then he moves to a synth, which you can hear.

3) Then he does a kick-ass bass solo. Absolutely sick bass playing. But then, he hands the bass off to his roadie and you hear a bass solo still going a little bit. Same tone as Prince's bass. I realize there is another bass player onstage, but the bass has the same exact tone as Prince's bass that he just handed off.

4) It appears after hearing this, Prince says, "Do you like REAL music?" Is this sarcastic? Since the beat is prerecorded and possibly that bass solo?

Just some questions.

It's a keyboard with a sampler, the piano shell is false. Its prob set up to play a dif instermental on each key. In the vid Andy takes his place on the sampler because if he where to lift his had off it the music would stop. I think John was on a Drum pad.

During this tour, Prince has been doing what has been referred to as a "sampler set".

The purple piano that he's playing at the start has a whole lot of songs in it and Prince basically stands there and plays snippets of different songs - often including tiny samples from tracks like Darling Nikki, just to tease

He usually sings at least some of each song (except DN), sometimes with some live instruments as well, but it seems that lately the sampler set has been worked on to be a more substantial blend of live and sampled music.

John was definitely playing in there somewhere - you hear Prince ask at the start for a bit more volume in the back.

As for the bass solo, he doesn't hand it off to a roadie, he hands it back to Ida, its owner, who then continues to play it, hence the tone sounding the same.

He's not being sarcastic with the "real music" line. In typical Prince fashion, he chose a curious time to say it, but there is definitely more live music in the sampler set than there was at the start of the W2A tour.

Hope that helps

Chiquetet said:

During this tour, Prince has been doing what has been referred to as a "sampler set".

The purple piano that he's playing at the start has a whole lot of songs in it and Prince basically stands there and plays snippets of different songs - often including tiny samples from tracks like Darling Nikki, just to tease

He usually sings at least some of each song (except DN), sometimes with some live instruments as well, but it seems that lately the sampler set has been worked on to be a more substantial blend of live and sampled music.

John was definitely playing in there somewhere - you hear Prince ask at the start for a bit more volume in the back.

As for the bass solo, he doesn't hand it off to a roadie, he hands it back to Ida, its owner, who then continues to play it, hence the tone sounding the same.

He's not being sarcastic with the "real music" line. In typical Prince fashion, he chose a curious time to say it, but there is definitely more live music in the sampler set than there was at the start of the W2A tour.

Hope that helps

Actually, that does clear things up a bit. Thanks!!

ARock said:

It's a keyboard with a sampler, the piano shell is false. Its prob set up to play a dif instermental on each key. In the vid Andy takes his place on the sampler because if he where to lift his had off it the music would stop. I think John was on a Drum pad.

I don't think it's necessarily a completely false piano shell. I've definitely seen him and Cassie play it as a piano (or at least as a keyboard that sounds very much like a piano, I guess), but clearly it's multi-purpose.

I had assumed it was Cassie in this vid at first, but with that silhouette, you're probably right that it's Andy.

Chiquetet said:

Yea I think he just sets it up to sound like a piano. I've seen close up pics of it and it's def some sort of keyboard.