jazzz said:

Wow, great little track!! Hope there are more of such treasures in the vault.
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And please, stop whining about the "tape speed". Just enjoy this piece of art....

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I DO enjoy the track. That's what I started my initial post about this with. It's absolutely great and was a nice surprise and I've been listening to it dozens of times for hours before even the very first reports of it appearing on YT and iTunes started coming in.
I absolutely LOVE it.

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But there are lots of us who are deeply concerned about the fate of the vault and about the many technical issues of ALL of the official releases so far. Do you think the Estate will make the necessary changes to ensure future releases are produced more professionally if no-one is "whining" about these issues? Do you think simply cheering everything they put out will result in better quality, more comprehensive and reasonably priced sets?
Someone has to "whine" to raise awareness of the many issues. That does NOT mean that getting new music is not appreciated. Of course it is.

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Just ordered the 45 from the Estate. It's really interesting to hear this version. I like it.

Kares said:

been listening to it a lot, today nice little surprise gift

Kares said:

LoveGalore said:

Kares said:

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I DO enjoy the track. That's what I started my initial post about this with. It's absolutely great and was a nice surprise and I've been listening to it dozens of times for hours before even the very first reports of it appearing on YT and iTunes started coming in.
I absolutely LOVE it.

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But there are lots of us who are deeply concerned about the fate of the vault and about the many technical issues of ALL of the official releases so far. Do you think the Estate will make the necessary changes to ensure future releases are produced more professionally if no-one is "whining" about these issues? Do you think simply cheering everything they put out will result in better quality, more comprehensive and reasonably priced sets?
Someone has to "whine" to raise awareness of the many issues. That does NOT mean that getting new music is not appreciated. Of course it is.

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Well, the CSI fans have been proven wrong on at least one occasion. That is probably what inspired the cinematic mix of Nothing Compares 2 U - fans crowing that the Estate wasnt using masters so they specifically did a mix to show his isolated vocals. And for all the interesting and informative dialogue about tape speeds, transfer processes, and (near-) perfect pitch, there is also equally plausible theory around it literally being a 20 year old Prince picking up a guitar, hitting record on the boombox, and knocking out an extremely rough draft of a song. Any number of technical errors or imperfections could've been achieved during this - including a guitar that is out of tune. Further, you insinuated his voice sounds unnatural and that is something I wholly disagree with. Match this tune up to other acoustic tracks of the era and it fits right in, to my ears. My very unscientific, ramshackle ears. In the end, I'm glad you do like it because I think it's brilliant and I hope the estate does continue to make choices like this. And I believe they make these choices with the best of intentions. I know some folks on here are undiscovered Bernie Grundmans and Susan Rogerses and Questloves. Everyone seems to think they'd do a better job of what's going on so far. But at least some of us are grooving to it.

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(I don't know anything about CSI so I can't comment on that.)

All I ever said about NC2U was that it was PARTIALLY sourced from cassette and for me the new mix doesn't prove otherwise.
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Guitars can go out of tune of course, but they rarely go UP in tune (unless you take them out in the cold, straighten a loose neck or adjust the entire bridge) and they certainly don't make all the strings go up in tune equally so they remain in relative tune. And even if Prince didn't have absolute pitch, I don't think he would've tuned his guitar this far above normal pitch – especially with all his other instruments nearby that were obviously tuned to normal pitch. I didn't rule it out, I said I find it highly unlikely.
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I said "speeding up (or slowing down) a vocal recording by this much also makes the human voice sound a little unnatural" – note: "LITTLE unnatural" – and added that this is harder to notice on falsetto vocals. So I didn't say this sounds unnatural, only meant that in comparing the release with a speed-corrected copy, one of them will sound slightly less natural than the other.
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But really, guys, this is not just about this single demo – if this would be the first and only instance of an official release being out of tune, I would be a bit more open to accepting the possibility that on this instance Prince tuned his guitar wrong. This is YET ANOTHER example of several official releases now that have this issue – and I trust you won't try to insist that P&AM83 was recorded with a piano that was RE-tuned to a reference A of 445Hz...
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Still, of course, having this new tape is amazing and I'm very much enjoying it!

jazzz said:

Kares said:

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I DO enjoy the track. That's what I started my initial post about this with. It's absolutely great and was a nice surprise and I've been listening to it dozens of times for hours before even the very first reports of it appearing on YT and iTunes started coming in.
I absolutely LOVE it.

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But there are lots of us who are deeply concerned about the fate of the vault and about the many technical issues of ALL of the official releases so far. Do you think the Estate will make the necessary changes to ensure future releases are produced more professionally if no-one is "whining" about these issues? Do you think simply cheering everything they put out will result in better quality, more comprehensive and reasonably priced sets?
Someone has to "whine" to raise awareness of the many issues. That does NOT mean that getting new music is not appreciated. Of course it is.

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. . Thanks for your reply, and for selectively editing out my remark about the guitar not being tuned exactly to 440 Hz. I understand that this remark does not fit in your way of reasoning, or that you even did not think about it in the first place! . .

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Jeez... I edited it out because I've already explained several times before why I find that possibility highly unlikely in the case of an already professional musician who was usually surrounded by several different instruments, including keyboards.

ChocolateBox3121 said:

same here.

I would order it but I have nothing to play it on. I'll stick with the Apple music track.

I love how you can hear his foot tappin' on the floor...

For the love of God pleeeeease keep stuff like this coming. This song is such a nice little gift from the Estate. Would love an unreleased demo or track from the vault a month. Even every other month. Please do it.

https://www.clashmusic.co...y-intimate

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“I was blown away,” says Prince vault archivist Michael Howe. “Here is 20-year-old Prince thinking aloud, feeling his way through the song. You hear his incredible talent shining through on acoustic guitar, which is not something he typically showcased, and his guide vocal is astonishingly great.”

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Really amazing stuff. If anyone spots a guitar tab for this version would love to see it.

Why not just praise how good this is? Dude always was solid gittar playa.

TheEnglishGent said:

Kares said:

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If we disregard all the reasoning above, the only way to decide is to compare the two versions and trying to tell which one will give you a more natural sounding human voice (and it's harder with falsetto vocals).
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In case of professional studio tapes: they should contain reference tone(s) (at least a 1kHz sine wave) so when they are played back on another machine, the speed can be calibrated to match the correct speed of the recording.
But knowing how fast Prince worked, I'm not sure if his engineers/technicians always had the time to follow industry standards in this regard so most probably there are a lot of master tapes without reference tones in is vault.
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You're talking about master tapes but isn't this demo something Prince just recorded straight onto a standard consumer audio casette, C90 or similar? Feels wrong to be talking about professional studio tapes when that isn't relevant to this release.

Do we know where this was recorded? I assume without any engineers or technicians present? Maybe Prince just had a guitar handy, picked it up and started strumming his idea in his bedroom? That being the case, this was never intended for anyone to hear, let alone to be released. Isn't it just an idea on a 'notepad' for him to refer back to later in the studio. In which case, there's no reason for him to have worried about tuning his guitar if all he wanted to do was get his idea down.

When you're working with consumer grade tapes there's always margin for error. I know that there's no doubt on the technically correct speed when matching it to the released studio version, but that doesn't mean that Prince had to record his original idea in the same key.

Anyway, for me and my inexact ear this is a great release. I'm very happy to hear this and glad the estate have decided to release it. Let's hope we get more regular surprise releases of this nature.

Amen to every word of this.

2freaky4church1 said:

Why not just praise how good this is? Dude always was solid gittar playa.

I find myself thinking the same thing... if you isolated just the guitar, I'd think it was the latter part of his career. He was something else.

Ha!

The song just ends. I was looking at the time of the record wondering how it was going to wrap up.

Good stuff, even though I want a proper ending to the song! I wasn't in any rush to go back and listen to the earlier stuff. Now, I AM, if they've got more acoustic versions or different remixes to the earlier stuff!

Estate? MORE PLEASE! And advertise this "ish" dang it. They could really get some sales, if more people knew about it.

Dropping a grenade like this out of nowhere? Perfectly Prince-like. Awesome

yes! .. this is outstanding .. the kind of tune u can share with friends .. instantly sounds a million times better than the "originals" tunes .. mostly because it doesn't have some producers fingerprints all over it mucking up the pureness .. is it fast? hmmm .. logic says prince was anally tuning his instruments with precision .. but he is also known to fuck with tape speed .. i will even admit the "proper" speed for 'purple music' sounds sluggish compared to the boot that was circulating prior .. i can just say this sounds great as is and i hope they keep this shit coming ... when is the graffiti bridge aniversary??? i am ready for a nice clean version of that thieves in the temple acoustic boot that has been around for ever .. that is one of my favorites of all time and if they can make it sound as good as this demo of i feel for you than they are definately on the right track ... also .. i hope they keep dropping songs like this random .. but more often .. maybe a good platform for some of those songs they wont put in the box set ...

WhisperingDandelions said:

Kares said:

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I talked to Michael Howe about this when P&AM83 came out. He didn't notice that its speed (and pitch) is off. His intention was to leave the audio untouched, without any manipulation that could've been performed to enhance the quality. That is fine, an acceptable approach – however, I pointed out that transferring the cassette using a slightly different speed machine than the one it was recorded with IS manipulation as what we end up with is NOT how Prince played/sang it.
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For home demos, Prince obviously used cheap, consumer cassette recorders that weren't calibrated properly (most consumer decks were running a bit faster or slower than normal), so when he taped something with a machine that was running slower and today we play that cassette back on a properly calibrated machine, we are speeding it up. This kind of issue should ALWAYS be corrected, not only because it's a very easy fix without any sideeffects, but also because that's how the music sounded at the time of recording it.
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Apparently though, they still don't agree with this thus we are getting releases with the wrong tempo and pitch...
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So odd. So his intention was to leave tape audio untouched, but for the full mix down masters we get the other guy submerging all the individual tracks in a vat of reverb? How is that congruous?

His perspective in general just screams a lack of knowledge for how cassettes work, for all the reasons you specify and are clearly aware of. Like I said, I mean, I believe a simple Google search will provide a similar lines of logical explanation... there's no way of convincing this guy of indisputable fact?

[Edited 10/17/19 16:51pm]

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I can pitch it to the right speed, if I want to, when I have it donwloaded or in released version.

Tried it withthe other so called speeded up recent releases. Not all that much of a difference to me.

I focus on the song, the wrting, etc. For years we had to live with bad quality boots etc. One gets used to (whatever is released first), right?).

Don't always understand the fuzz. Then again, i'm not (that much) of a true (music) technician.

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I do belief M. Howe's genuine.

And the choices they made, ar so far all good for me. I'm happy with basically all of it.

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And for one, I don't care all that much for the full mix down masters, reverbed or not.

Prince also tooled around a lot with his own music...

Like, can't hardly believe the end result of ArtOfficialAge for instance.

Joshua Welton fucked up some (interesting) Prince music there. And Prince let him do it. (...would love to hear the original untouched versions by Prince alone... one day).

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Prince is also known for not caring all that much about the (exact) quality of his output.

He wanted things to move fast forward...

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Or am I wrong ?

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IstenSzek said:

ChocolateBox3121 said:

same here.

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Me Too.

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piemel said:

I can totally understand not caring about the tape speed issue for purely listening aesthetics. Truthfully, honestly, I have whatever the opposite of perfect pitch is, I have zero ability to ascertain pitch and tuning.... but it's about friggin' respect for proper documentation of history. Respect for what the man produced and what the man documented. Kares is the only other person who can ascertain that?

And it's one thing to say, oh, it doesn't matter to me, I don't care, it doesn't affect me. It's another thing to sit and argue the tape speed is correct. I get it, with the estate it's like when you had a questionable childhood but you try and rationalize the decision-making process involved because you don't want to think of your parents as wholly defective people. But c'mon with this, "Well mayybe Prince was feel kooky and decided to tune everything 1/18ths of a percent sharper or flatter and tried to sing a couple semitones in the direction of the Camille or Bob George register organically without altering the speed physically." C'mon now.... Read what you're writing here.

klick2me said: