TrevorAyer said:

um no ... first of all nothing compares 2 u is his greatest rock ballad and he didn't record it .. nobody plays purple rain at weddings or even considers pr a ballad .. secondly .. pr was his only decent guitar solo of note .. kiss was wendy .. little red corvette was dez .. and most everything else ON RECORD is quite boring and uninspired .. live he has some good moments on guitar but generally he just hits his wah to smooth over his same boring scales and same solo structure or he just hits his flange or hits his octave pedal to make his boring solos sound better .. gently weeps was a shot in the arm of a great guitar solo BUT as an avid listener of prince live shows, gently weeps stood out as 'finally a great solo from prince' rather than the norm of mind blowing guitar .. he also did great on 'we gon make it funky' but again .. these moments are rarity rather than consistent .. prince is more a technical player than an inspired player .. in the studio every note is on the beat and if you listen to music by counting numbers in your head than great .. prince probably meets your standards .. but for solos with melody and feeling and non repititiousness prince is a huge fail .. there are so many teenage guitarists that can do exactly what prince does and many more professional guitarists that can do the same as well .. on record especially, prince on guitar is a huge bore of mediocrity .. i would love to be an idiot groupie fan who can sincerely declare prince is the best ever .. i even want that to be true .. prince was once the kind of artist you could be proud of .. his brand once represented a caliber of music that was almost untoucheable .. but on record he really has not done much of anything good on guitar that showcases his skills, and live he repeats his solos often in the same setlist on the same night ... he is just not that good .. strange but true

Purple Rain was Princes only decent guitar solo? hmmm ok,so guitar solos in songs like Computer Blue,My Love Is Forever,Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad ,Bambi are the oposite of decent.haha. Man i can understand yoy,your guitar playing is so bellow average so i think that is the reason why you trash Princes guitar playing.your ear isnt

developued enough to hear what Prince is doing. my friendly advise,since you consider yourself to be an Artist at least tune your guitar before you record or judge any other player,especially Prince

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

Robert Fripp is still alive. Santana is still alive. Adrian Belew is still alive. Joey Eppard is still alive. Guthrie Govan is still alive. Omar Rodriguez Lopez is still alive. ..... I could keep going...

Buckethead.

I'm just going to enjoy his talent, while he's still here

I would never say he's the best, but I feel that he is one of the most effortless, instinctive and natural players. Kinda like how I felt James Brown was to dancing, even though he also practiced his moves all the time.

The author of the article cites the reason that Prince is my favorite guitar player....

"The power behind his playing is his ability to channel raw emotion through the instrument, to truly speak through his guitar."


This is the single, most important thing for an artist/musician to be able to do IMO. The way Prince is able to convey emotion through his guitar is positively phenomenal.

babynoz said:

The author of the article cites the reason that Prince is my favorite guitar player....

"The power behind his playing is his ability to channel raw emotion through the instrument, to truly speak through his guitar."


This is the single, most important thing for an artist/musician to be able to do IMO. The way Prince is able to convey emotion through his guitar is positively phenomenal.

Replica said:

paulludvig said:

Wendy didn't play the solo on Kiss. Where did you get that idea? From the video?

Gently Weeps was quite mediocre by Prince's standars, lacking the emotional impact that his solos usually have. I disagree completely that Prince is a technical player rather than an inspired one. Rather the opposite. His playing is often sloppy, but raw and emotional. Think Enpty Room at Montreux.

And the rest of the guitar work could have been done by anyone, as they used a rhythmical gating technique using the hi hats for trigging it. It's easily heard that the guitar cannot be played that way.

[Edited 6/7/14 3:53am]

Only the main chord part that plays through the whole song has been gated. The part following 'I think I wanna dance' is played live

babynoz said:

The author of the article cites the reason that Prince is my favorite guitar player....

"The power behind his playing is his ability to channel raw emotion through the instrument, to truly speak through his guitar."


This is the single, most important thing for an artist/musician to be able to do IMO. The way Prince is able to convey emotion through his guitar is positively phenomenal.

Exactly,, watching the LGC vid from Manchester..when he taps his chest and tells Donna he got ot and then holds that note as we points out at the audience is bad ass..

Mike Bland likes to tell the story about P and Santana at PP.. They was jmaming and P spit out Carlos' whole catalog and dude Carlos that is, couldnt keep uo on his own stuff

Lastly, a good many of the other guitarist mentioned in the threads have all said P aint nothing to fuck with on that axe

thebanishedone said:

TrevorAyer said:

um no ... first of all nothing compares 2 u is his greatest rock ballad and he didn't record it .. nobody plays purple rain at weddings or even considers pr a ballad .. secondly .. pr was his only decent guitar solo of note .. kiss was wendy .. little red corvette was dez .. and most everything else ON RECORD is quite boring and uninspired .. live he has some good moments on guitar but generally he just hits his wah to smooth over his same boring scales and same solo structure or he just hits his flange or hits his octave pedal to make his boring solos sound better .. gently weeps was a shot in the arm of a great guitar solo BUT as an avid listener of prince live shows, gently weeps stood out as 'finally a great solo from prince' rather than the norm of mind blowing guitar .. he also did great on 'we gon make it funky' but again .. these moments are rarity rather than consistent .. prince is more a technical player than an inspired player .. in the studio every note is on the beat and if you listen to music by counting numbers in your head than great .. prince probably meets your standards .. but for solos with melody and feeling and non repititiousness prince is a huge fail .. there are so many teenage guitarists that can do exactly what prince does and many more professional guitarists that can do the same as well .. on record especially, prince on guitar is a huge bore of mediocrity .. i would love to be an idiot groupie fan who can sincerely declare prince is the best ever .. i even want that to be true .. prince was once the kind of artist you could be proud of .. his brand once represented a caliber of music that was almost untoucheable .. but on record he really has not done much of anything good on guitar that showcases his skills, and live he repeats his solos often in the same setlist on the same night ... he is just not that good .. strange but true

Purple Rain was Princes only decent guitar solo? hmmm ok,so guitar solos in songs like Computer Blue,My Love Is Forever,Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad ,Bambi are the oposite of decent.haha. Man i can understand yoy,your guitar playing is so bellow average so i think that is the reason why you trash Princes guitar playing.your ear isnt

developued enough to hear what Prince is doing. my friendly advise,since you consider yourself to be an Artist at least tune your guitar before you record or judge any other player,especially Prince

the main melody of computer blue was written by his father .. the other songs you listed have nothing memorable about the guitar solos .. my frustration as a guitar player and prince comes from the potential prince has to push his guitar playing to another level .. yet he rarely does it .. as for my guitar playing .. i absolutely rule on guitar .. u cant touch me .. don't even try .. prince thinks his guitar .. he does not feel it .. his past work was taken to a whole other level by his collaborators .. i cant stand 3eg but i am happy to see prince pushing his guitar playing a little more than usual .. he does have nice melodies on the question of u but that is less a solo than a composition .. his rhythm playing is perfect but most studio musicians can be all perfect on a simple guitar lick .. when i think of GREAT guitarists i think of jimi page ,, whom every solo i can almost sing note for note they are so memorable and perfectly inspired and unthought out yet flow great .. i think of david gilmore whom again .. every solo is as important any other element of the song .. or jimi hendrix who can absolutely improvise the same exact song 20 different times and blow a cat like prince out of the water each and every one of the 20 different takes with melody texture ferocity and an unhinged element that prince rarely even tries .. when prince does really let loose a little HE IS FANTASTIC ... BUT that almost never happens on his studio recordings .. there is not a single memorable or note worthy guitar part on gold, rainbow or lotus .. all three of which were supposedly guitar oriented records .. or chaos .. yes he has some good riffs here and there but when it comes to impressive guitar prince just falls short 95 percent of the time .. i wont pretend prince sucks but greatest alive? not by a long shot .. where is the voodoo chile, where is the rain song, where is dogs (pink floyd), hell where is even the sultans of swing .. i suppose computer blue came close .. i really love the all the critics jam from 82 83 .. he doesnt jam on a song like that anymore .. maybe it was dez that inspired him back then .. all the new guitar rock 3eg tunes are horrible .. anybody with guitar skillz would be embarrassed to call that guitar rock

TrevorAyer said:

thebanishedone said:

Purple Rain was Princes only decent guitar solo? hmmm ok,so guitar solos in songs like Computer Blue,My Love Is Forever,Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad ,Bambi are the oposite of decent.haha. Man i can understand yoy,your guitar playing is so bellow average so i think that is the reason why you trash Princes guitar playing.your ear isnt

developued enough to hear what Prince is doing. my friendly advise,since you consider yourself to be an Artist at least tune your guitar before you record or judge any other player,especially Prince

the main melody of computer blue was written by his father .. the other songs you listed have nothing memorable about the guitar solos .. my frustration as a guitar player and prince comes from the potential prince has to push his guitar playing to another level .. yet he rarely does it .. as for my guitar playing .. i absolutely rule on guitar .. u cant touch me .. don't even try .. prince thinks his guitar .. he does not feel it .. his past work was taken to a whole other level by his collaborators .. i cant stand 3eg but i am happy to see prince pushing his guitar playing a little more than usual .. he does have nice melodies on the question of u but that is less a solo than a composition .. his rhythm playing is perfect but most studio musicians can be all perfect on a simple guitar lick .. when i think of GREAT guitarists i think of jimi page ,, whom every solo i can almost sing note for note they are so memorable and perfectly inspired and unthought out yet flow great .. i think of david gilmore whom again .. every solo is as important any other element of the song .. or jimi hendrix who can absolutely improvise the same exact song 20 different times and blow a cat like prince out of the water each and every one of the 20 different takes with melody texture ferocity and an unhinged element that prince rarely even tries .. when prince does really let loose a little HE IS FANTASTIC ... BUT that almost never happens on his studio recordings .. there is not a single memorable or note worthy guitar part on gold, rainbow or lotus .. all three of which were supposedly guitar oriented records .. or chaos .. yes he has some good riffs here and there but when it comes to impressive guitar prince just falls short 95 percent of the time .. i wont pretend prince sucks but greatest alive? not by a long shot .. where is the voodoo chile, where is the rain song, where is dogs (pink floyd), hell where is even the sultans of swing .. i suppose computer blue came close .. i really love the all the critics jam from 82 83 .. he doesnt jam on a song like that anymore .. maybe it was dez that inspired him back then .. all the new guitar rock 3eg tunes are horrible .. anybody with guitar skillz would be embarrassed to call that guitar rock

Wow. Don't hold back, let us know how you REALLY feel about your chops.

dandan said:

TheEnglishGent said:

Yep, it takes a lot of rehearsal to be that spontaneous. Seems like a good time to recount a story I've posted in the past.

I know a guy who used to be in the music biz, worked with many people. One day he's in the studio and Mathilda May is there and this is at the time she was involved with Prince. She related a story about a time she was at Prince's place and pretty bored because he spent the whole day working out a new piece of music on the piano. Working for hours on it.

The next day some record execs were there talking about the upcoming album and saying there was one track which needed something more. Prince said he would come up with something, went to the piano and 'spontaneously' played the music he'd be working so hard on the previous day. The execs said it was perfect and were amazed by his genius at being able to just come up with it there and then.

Love that. I can just imagine him feeling so happy about himself

He's a well oiled composing and performing machine, it's scary to imagine all the parts he kjeeps organized in his mind, from the "spontaneous" gestures to the different parts of a song he's composing or a setlist with highly rehearsed sections he cvn change from show to show. You have to admire the memory it must take just to remember so many of the songs he has composed over the years, all those lyrics and notes. In this case, yeah he labored over a song then he played it "on the spur of the moment" in front of execs -- that's just showmanship.

Aerogram said:

dandan said:

Love that. I can just imagine him feeling so happy about himself

He's a well oiled composing and performing machine, it's scary to imagine all the parts he kjeeps organized in his mind, from the "spontaneous" gestures to the different parts of a song he's composing or a setlist with highly rehearsed sections he cvn change from show to show. You have to admire the memory it must take just to remember so many of the songs he has composed over the years, all those lyrics and notes. In this case, yeah he labored over a song then he played it "on the spur of the moment" in front of execs -- that's just showmanship.

Glad someone is acknowledging this.

Trevor Ayer you say that you play guitar better than Prince and better than me.

I play 100 times worse then Prince but i can play guitar much better than you.

Do you wanna submit audio clip of your guitar playing and im going to submit a clip of my playing and lets orgers be the judges ok?

While i admit that you do have some songwriting talent you guitar playing is awful,its amateur and out of tune.

instead of talking bullshit about Prince playing tune your damn guitar or accept my challenge.

thebanishedone said:

Trevor Ayer you say that you play guitar better than Prince and better than me.

I play 100 times worse then Prince but i can play guitar much better than you.

Do you wanna submit audio clip of your guitar playing and im going to submit a clip of my playing and lets orgers be the judges ok?

While i admit that you do have some songwriting talent you guitar playing is awful,its amateur and out of tune.

instead of talking bullshit about Prince playing tune your damn guitar or accept my challenge.

Yeah I just checked out your stuff Trevor and what is going on with the tuning issues?!? Is that part of the style or something? I'm also pretty confident that I am better player than you are and would also be willing to let the orgers judge.

I don't know how you can say that Prince doesn't 'feel' his playing. Prince is SO far from the sterile, 'technical exercise' style of playing that people lap up nowadays.

dandan said:

thebanishedone said:

Trevor Ayer you say that you play guitar better than Prince and better than me.

I play 100 times worse then Prince but i can play guitar much better than you.

Do you wanna submit audio clip of your guitar playing and im going to submit a clip of my playing and lets orgers be the judges ok?

While i admit that you do have some songwriting talent you guitar playing is awful,its amateur and out of tune.

instead of talking bullshit about Prince playing tune your damn guitar or accept my challenge.

Yeah I just checked out your stuff Trevor and what is going on with the tuning issues?!? Is that part of the style or something? I'm also pretty confident that I am better player than you are and would also be willing to let the orgers judge.

I don't know how you can say that Prince doesn't 'feel' his playing. Prince is SO far from the sterile, 'technical exercise' style of playing that people lap up nowadays.

I checked it out too and having done so I simply cannot take a word he says seriously anymore.

Maybe Frank Gambale, Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen.

PopcornFetus said:

funkomatic said:

Ridiculously incompetent! Prince is good at what he does but there are so many guitarists playing and creating much more interesting guitar music than Prince. [Edited 6/5/14 22:25pm]

But are those players improvising new melodies, rhythms and counterpoints that could almost be songs on their own night after night for 34 years in a row?

There are several guitarists that fit your description and most of them are more physically gifted on the guitar.

Counterpoint is both the singuilar and plural form of the word. 'Counterpoints' is not a word. Counterpoint is also NOT what Prince does with guitar solos.

I have heard a lot of Prince guitar solos and I would say very few 'could almost be songs in their own right'.

Prince is a fine rhythm guitarist. He's fully competent and there was even a time when he was pretty interesting as a soloist, too. Prince has advanced as a rhythm guitarist but I would say he's actually lost a little ground as a soloist.

He's a good player, but he's not a guitar player's guitar player.

steakfinger said:

PopcornFetus said:

funkomatic said: But are those players improvising new melodies, rhythms and counterpoints that could almost be songs on their own night after night for 34 years in a row?

There are several guitarists that fit your description and most of them are more physically gifted on the guitar.

Counterpoint is both the singuilar and plural form of the word. 'Counterpoints' is not a word. Counterpoint is also NOT what Prince does with guitar solos.

I have heard a lot of Prince guitar solos and I would say very few 'could almost be songs in their own right'.

Prince is a fine rhythm guitarist. He's fully competent and there was even a time when he was pretty interesting as a soloist, too. Prince has advanced as a rhythm guitarist but I would say he's actually lost a little ground as a soloist.

He's a good player, but he's not a guitar player's guitar player.

Do you have particular examples in mind?

David Gilmour (Pink Floyd),

He is still alive - and a fine guitar player. One of the best imo.

I am really feeling his solos!

Yeah and Prince is fine as well....

steakfinger said:

PopcornFetus said:

funkomatic said: But are those players improvising new melodies, rhythms and counterpoints that could almost be songs on their own night after night for 34 years in a row?

There are several guitarists that fit your description and most of them are more physically gifted on the guitar.

Counterpoint is both the singuilar and plural form of the word. 'Counterpoints' is not a word. Counterpoint is also NOT what Prince does with guitar solos.

I have heard a lot of Prince guitar solos and I would say very few 'could almost be songs in their own right'.

Prince is a fine rhythm guitarist. He's fully competent and there was even a time when he was pretty interesting as a soloist, too. Prince has advanced as a rhythm guitarist but I would say he's actually lost a little ground as a soloist.

He's a good player, but he's not a guitar player's guitar player.

When was Prince interesting in your opinion?

Why do you think he lost ground as a soloist?

I dont get one thing ,some of you say Prince is not a guitar players guitarist

,others say that Jimmy Page and David Gillmoure play better than Prince.

Prince plays much more advanced than those guys.

Dave is nice but his playing is simple metronomic blues.Jimmy Page

is a great riff master but his live playing is sloppy as hell.

if we analyze all the aspects of guitar playing of these 3 guys we would come to a conclusion that Prince is much more advanced in terms of technique.

Its another thing if Dave and Jimmy suit your taste better than Prince.

I think Prince is one of the best axe men ever.the best does not exist.

like Eric Clapton title says>There is one in every crowd.

a few examples of Princes guitar playing

My Love Is Forever a very melodic solo on this underrated jam

Bambi very nice rock lead guitar

Get It Up same as above set the landmark for Jesse

Computer Blue an example of a very nice modal solo

I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man Prince at his most melodic

Other examples of Prince's brilliant guitar work are 777-9311, Head (live) during the Controversy tour, Whole lotta Love (live at the Aladdin), Joy in Repetition.....just to name a few

nobody plays the axe like Prince, but he can seemingly replicate any style he wants, i would argue that he can play Santana better than Santana (Jungle Strut)

Aerogram said:

dandan said:

Love that. I can just imagine him feeling so happy about himself

He's a well oiled composing and performing machine, it's scary to imagine all the parts he kjeeps organized in his mind, from the "spontaneous" gestures to the different parts of a song he's composing or a setlist with highly rehearsed sections he cvn change from show to show. You have to admire the memory it must take just to remember so many of the songs he has composed over the years, all those lyrics and notes. In this case, yeah he labored over a song then he played it "on the spur of the moment" in front of execs -- that's just showmanship.

I am somewhere over here with you in my response to this thread... Prince's music definitely isn't

boring!

Guthrie Govan

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

Robert Fripp is still alive. Santana is still alive. Adrian Belew is still alive. Joey Eppard is still alive. Guthrie Govan is still alive. Omar Rodriguez Lopez is still alive. ..... I could keep going, BUT my point is there are TONS of great guitar players alive and kicking, all just as good as Prince (better at some styles) but all different too. Hell, Prince is no longer even MY favorite musician alive anymore, let alone guitar player. Every time it see one of these "greatest guitar player alive" articles I can't help but hear Sheena Easton in my head. "OH PLEASE!" [Edited 6/6/14 9:35am]

who is your favourite mind me asking?

Guthrie, is that you?

TheEnglishGent said:

dandan said:

Totally agree! Sometimes I think even things like 'on the one' etc are actually just for show and the band already know when it's going to end. He makes something completely rehearsed look very spontaneous though, he's a complete pro. Times were something goes wrong (usually technical) and he changes things up on the spot to accomadate, leaving most people completely unaware there was an issue show, is pretty amazing (despite his temper and bad habit of glaring at people)

[Edited 6/6/14 2:11am]

Yep, it takes a lot of rehearsal to be that spontaneous. Seems like a good time to recount a story I've posted in the past.

I know a guy who used to be in the music biz, worked with many people. One day he's in the studio and Mathilda May is there and this is at the time she was involved with Prince. She related a story about a time she was at Prince's place and pretty bored because he spent the whole day working out a new piece of music on the piano. Working for hours on it.

The next day some record execs were there talking about the upcoming album and saying there was one track which needed something more. Prince said he would come up with something, went to the piano and 'spontaneously' played the music he'd be working so hard on the previous day. The execs said it was perfect and were amazed by his genius at being able to just come up with it there and then.

there are also the stories of spontenaity like when Stevie Nicks called him in to her studio to play for him her thought to be finshed song "Stand Back" where he listend once to it once, added a keyboard track they didn't know it needed that also made the song in 1 take that and left.

Or the story about him laying down the drum track for the entire first side of Lovesexy in one take.

Of course you don't get to the level Prince is at without a lot of hard work. In just about anything it takes a lot of hard work to make it not look like hard work when you do it.

As for the topic of the thread, the main problem prince faces in a discussion like this is he's not exclusively a guitar player. And he's not also exclusively one kind of guitar. On the same song he can play lead, rhythm, bass, and also play keyboards and drums. The next song he could leave out the guitars all togther. The people he gets compared to will exclusively play lead guitar in every song they are on, so that becomes their reputation.

Is the best exclusively lead guitar player going to play rhythm guitar as well as Prince does? Can they pick up the base and play it as well as Prince?

also, why can't I get blank lines between my paragraphs when I post on here?

alandail said:

TheEnglishGent said:

Yep, it takes a lot of rehearsal to be that spontaneous. Seems like a good time to recount a story I've posted in the past.

I know a guy who used to be in the music biz, worked with many people. One day he's in the studio and Mathilda May is there and this is at the time she was involved with Prince. She related a story about a time she was at Prince's place and pretty bored because he spent the whole day working out a new piece of music on the piano. Working for hours on it.

The next day some record execs were there talking about the upcoming album and saying there was one track which needed something more. Prince said he would come up with something, went to the piano and 'spontaneously' played the music he'd be working so hard on the previous day. The execs said it was perfect and were amazed by his genius at being able to just come up with it there and then.

there are also the stories of spontenaity like when Stevie Nicks called him in to her studio to play for him her thought to be finshed song "Stand Back" where he listend once to it once, added a keyboard track they didn't know it needed that also made the song in 1 take that and left.

Or the story about him laying down the drum track for the entire first side of Lovesexy in one take.

Of course you don't get to the level Prince is at without a lot of hard work. In just about anything it takes a lot of hard work to make it not look like hard work when you do it.

As for the topic of the thread, the main problem prince faces in a discussion like this is he's not exclusively a guitar player. And he's not also exclusively one kind of guitar. On the same song he can play lead, rhythm, bass, and also play keyboards and drums. The next song he could leave out the guitars all togther. The people he gets compared to will exclusively play lead guitar in every song they are on, so that becomes their reputation.

Is the best exclusively lead guitar player going to play rhythm guitar as well as Prince does? Can they pick up the base and play it as well as Prince?

also, why can't I get blank lines between my paragraphs when I post on here?

U make a BRILLIANT point! Which makes Prince even more gifted then any other musician.