I hope I'm making sense. When I go to make a song cover of a Prince song on GarageBand (an iPad music making app), and go to put together a song's element, I realised that Prince's music isn't as minimalist as it sounds "on the surface".

For example, if I'm making a cover of "Diamond and Pearls" and am recording the drum beats - the drum composition is not consistent in the 1-4 verse. So to get it right, you have to really be in tune with the "1-2-3-4" count.

People making song covers of Prince's songs may have noted this.

Well Michael Bland is a pretty inventive drummer so that may account for some of that on D&P. Interms of musical complexity, I'd say a lot of the 85-88 tracks had a huge amount of layers. Listen to something like the extended La, La, La, He, He, Hee and you'll hear so many different elements coming together to make that track sound like it does. I personally don't think that carried over to most of his 90s and later compositions (with some exceptions).

SoftSkarlettLovisa said:

I hope I'm making sense. When I go to make a song cover of a Prince song on GarageBand (an iPad music making app), and go to put together a song's element, I realised that Prince's music isn't as minimalist as it sounds "on the surface".

For example, if I'm making a cover of "Diamond and Pearls" and am recording the drum beats - the drum composition is not consistent in the 1-4 verse. So to get it right, you have to really be in tune with the "1-2-3-4" count.

People making song covers of Prince's songs may have noted this.

Well, to start with, in "Diamonds and Pearls" there are five different time signatures, including 4/4; 2/4; 3/4; 5/4; and 6/8. So you aren't going to be consistent on "1-2-3-4" for that one. Don't feel bad!

You are correct in that Prince's recordings and production are VERY complex. There are multiple instruments buried in the mix on almost every song. And most of the time, Prince's use of instruments is orchestral - meaning that he rarely had an instrument play a straight rhythm melody, instead having them play specific parts at specific times.

On another thread, we debated whether or not Prince ever had a "throwaway" song. My feeling is that while there may have been songs Prince wrote in a very short time, he never to my knowledge released a song in which the production was not involved and complex. It's truly mind-blowing, IMHO.

RJOrion said:

most complex composition i ever heard from P, is the song "Kamasutra"...amazing music...im always shocked that this song wasnt/isnt given more attention..that haunting 8 note melody that appears throughout the song (and other songs later on the album) comes into my mind all the time, still... [Edited 12/1/17 9:06am]

it depends .some of his stuff is complex some not so much

funk songs are usually simple with one chord but songs like 3chains of gold,last december strays of the worold are very complex