JorisE73 said:

In another topic here it was explained that Prince didn't version mixdowns with additional tracks on the same song: Witness version 1 as released on SOTT SDE being just that and this re-recording of the song being obviously the version 2 because it was a re-recording.

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It's v2 because that is what it literally says on the reel they took this from. As proven by the photo that accompanies this release.

BartVanHemelen said:

Urine said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

It's v2 because that is what it literally says on the reel they took this from. As proven by the photo that accompanies this release.

But it is the third version. Prince version = 1 Wendy and Lisa version= 2 Prince re recorded version= 3 Strange they put v2 on the tape. Maybe that was an error and it should have been v3 [Edited 8/15/20 10:50am]

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Not really. Wendy, Lisa and Eric added tracks to Prince's original version and a new mix was created that used both Prince's original and their additional tracks. But these are physically on the same 2" multitrack tape and one could use this tape to create further, different mixes.

.

V2 is an entirely new recording and a new reel of multitrack tape.

Urine said:

WOWWWWWW!!!!!

Blown awayyyyy!!!!!

My favorite Prince release in years!!!!

Can't wait for SOTTSDE!!!!!

JorisE73 said:

lavendardrummachine said:

I'll just leave it at that statement for now.

As for correcting it, you'll notice how many people here only knew of the speedy version.

Most of the speed variations we got happened during the sloppy tape to tape duplication.

Oh ok.
I heard back then after it was shared on bootlegs that the tape speed thing was delibaerate from the person who sold it to the bootlegger.
Some people here also didn;t seem to understand the whole "versioning" thing and claimed this was "version 3" (with them claiming Witness without W&L and Eric Leeds is version 1 and the released version 1 is version 2 to them)

Prince used so many tape speeds during recording, so how would we know?

How would we know a Camille track was chipmunked intentionally or not and to what degree?

If you got a longer version of Love or $, you could assume you knew based on the released version, but would you really know? These things didn't come with production notes, just rumors, and usually not even that.

The fluctuations occured from a few ways, like tape damage, but almost always were the result of someone trying to dupe quickly. It has a very specific sound to it.

My (admittedly hazy) memory is that Witness leaked a little later (and I don't recall it coming from a cassette actually, it was just getting traded off them) but it was still during the days when a pitch/speed change would effect everything, vocals, horns everything and it would fluctuate slightly with the cassette rotations in a barely audible way that would become more noticeable when you tried to fix it. Variable speed repair in the 90's was a big project until software let you do basic speed and pitch changes, but again, you can't really correct something unless it's all uniform.

And how would we know? How would we know the right speed Prince wanted?

How could anyone definitely claim to know what exists? You could collect a lot and make educated guesses or kiss ass with certain people and get gossip, but they wouldn't know. Even to this day, the logs only say so much.

So unless #%$@^ handed someone the tape and said "It's not supposed to be that fast" how would we even know to fix it?

But let's assume you could easily fix it like today, and when #%$@^ handed it off, they gave exact production instructions.

...then remember how many people heard an uncorrected version, to this very day.

This is without getting into the CD boots in circulation.

I'm trying to say this in a roundabout way and point people in the right direction.

lavendardrummachine said:

JorisE73 said:

Oh ok.
I heard back then after it was shared on bootlegs that the tape speed thing was delibaerate from the person who sold it to the bootlegger.
Some people here also didn;t seem to understand the whole "versioning" thing and claimed this was "version 3" (with them claiming Witness without W&L and Eric Leeds is version 1 and the released version 1 is version 2 to them)

Prince used so many tape speeds during recording, so how would we know?

How would we know a Camille track was chipmunked intentionally or not and to what degree?

If you got a longer version of Love or $, you could assume you knew based on the released version, but would you really know? These things didn't come with production notes, just rumors, and usually not even that.

The fluctuations occured from a few ways, like tape damage, but almost always were the result of someone trying to dupe quickly. It has a very specific sound to it.

My (admittedly hazy) memory is that Witness leaked a little later (and I don't recall it coming from a cassette actually, it was just getting traded off them) but it was still during the days when a pitch/speed change would effect everything, vocals, horns everything and it would fluctuate slightly with the cassette rotations in a barely audible way that would become more noticeable when you tried to fix it. Variable speed repair in the 90's was a big project until software let you do basic speed and pitch changes, but again, you can't really correct something unless it's all uniform.

And how would we know? How would we know the right speed Prince wanted?

How could anyone definitely claim to know what exists? You could collect a lot and make educated guesses or kiss ass with certain people and get gossip, but they wouldn't know. Even to this day, the logs only say so much.

So unless #%$@^ handed someone the tape and said "It's not supposed to be that fast" how would we even know to fix it?

But let's assume you could easily fix it like today, and when #%$@^ handed it off, they gave exact production instructions.

...then remember how many people heard an uncorrected version, to this very day.

This is without getting into the CD boots in circulation.

I'm trying to say this in a roundabout way and point people in the right direction.

.

Generally, there could be several different clues to tell whether a recording is playing at the right speed (and pitch) or not – recognising standard guitar chords that include open strings is one, for example, hearing a horn being outside (below) its range is another, recognising open strings of a bass guitar etc, etc. Also, some instruments start to sound unnatural even when sped up only by a semitone. Of course, sometimes it's difficult to tell, but not impossible.
.
You're talking about "fluctuations" but seems like you're mixing 'wow&flutter' with the 'wrong tape speed' issue. W&F is a constantly occuring, repeated fluctuation of speed and is caused by worn or poor quality mechanics (or perhaps by the sticky tape syndrome, but that is not as constant). When a tape is playing at a slightly wrong speed (with or without wow&flutter), it is the result of the speed difference between the machine that made the recording and the playback machine. This sometimes happened even with professional multitrack machines too, resulting in songs being mastered slightly out of pitch, sometimes as much as by 50 cents or more.
.
Anyway, a constant (NOT fluctuating) tape speed issue is a very easy fix nowdays. Wow&flutter, however, is still a bitch – currently it can only be fixed by one, dedicated and VERY expensive software on the market.
.

Kares said:

You're talking about "fluctuations" but seems like you're mixing 'wow&flutter' with the 'wrong tape speed' issue.

Agree with your post but I'm not talking about wow & flutter though similar degradation and similar to fix. I was talking generally about types of fluctionations that were popping up, not one specific type. Some of it was much more subtle, might occur during part of a tape not the full tape, etc.

People might think they're dealing with a constant speed change but that's not always true. In this case, you could with hindsight probably align a corrected bootleg with this estate track (wherever they're sourcing from is another story) and say anyone can throw it in audacity and fix it but there was no way to know that.

You also couldn't turn around and make the same adjustment to Cosmic Day, as far as we know without making huge guess work.

Prince released songs with the guitars and vocals adjusted together, just the instruments, just the vocals, and it could be subtle enough that we're still arguing about pitched vocals on actual released songs we know were intended to sound a certain way.

[Edited 8/15/20 13:39pm]

Kares said:

lavendardrummachine said:

Prince used so many tape speeds during recording, so how would we know?

How would we know a Camille track was chipmunked intentionally or not and to what degree?

If you got a longer version of Love or $, you could assume you knew based on the released version, but would you really know? These things didn't come with production notes, just rumors, and usually not even that.

The fluctuations occured from a few ways, like tape damage, but almost always were the result of someone trying to dupe quickly. It has a very specific sound to it.

My (admittedly hazy) memory is that Witness leaked a little later (and I don't recall it coming from a cassette actually, it was just getting traded off them) but it was still during the days when a pitch/speed change would effect everything, vocals, horns everything and it would fluctuate slightly with the cassette rotations in a barely audible way that would become more noticeable when you tried to fix it. Variable speed repair in the 90's was a big project until software let you do basic speed and pitch changes, but again, you can't really correct something unless it's all uniform.

And how would we know? How would we know the right speed Prince wanted?

How could anyone definitely claim to know what exists? You could collect a lot and make educated guesses or kiss ass with certain people and get gossip, but they wouldn't know. Even to this day, the logs only say so much.

So unless #%$@^ handed someone the tape and said "It's not supposed to be that fast" how would we even know to fix it?

But let's assume you could easily fix it like today, and when #%$@^ handed it off, they gave exact production instructions.

...then remember how many people heard an uncorrected version, to this very day.

This is without getting into the CD boots in circulation.

I'm trying to say this in a roundabout way and point people in the right direction.

.

Generally, there could be several different clues to tell whether a recording is playing at the right speed (and pitch) or not – recognising standard guitar chords that include open strings is one, for example, hearing a horn being outside (below) its range is another, recognising open strings of a bass guitar etc, etc. Also, some instruments start to sound unnatural even when sped up only by a semitone. Of course, sometimes it's difficult to tell, but not impossible.
.
You're talking about "fluctuations" but seems like you're mixing 'wow&flutter' with the 'wrong tape speed' issue. W&F is a constantly occuring, repeated fluctuation of speed and is caused by worn or poor quality mechanics (or perhaps by the sticky tape syndrome, but that is not as constant). When a tape is playing at a slightly wrong speed (with or without wow&flutter), it is the result of the speed difference between the machine that made the recording and the playback machine. This sometimes happened even with professional multitrack machines too, resulting in songs being mastered slightly out of pitch, sometimes as much as by 50 cents or more.
.
Anyway, a constant (NOT fluctuating) tape speed issue is a very easy fix nowdays. Wow&flutter, however, is still a bitch – currently it can only be fixed by one, dedicated and VERY expensive software on the market.
.

Rubbish!

Now is the time we dance on to version #1!!!

FanAllMyLife said:

nayroo2002 said:

Kares said:

.

Generally, there could be several different clues to tell whether a recording is playing at the right speed (and pitch) or not – recognising standard guitar chords that include open strings is one, for example, hearing a horn being outside (below) its range is another, recognising open strings of a bass guitar etc, etc. Also, some instruments start to sound unnatural even when sped up only by a semitone. Of course, sometimes it's difficult to tell, but not impossible.
.
You're talking about "fluctuations" but seems like you're mixing 'wow&flutter' with the 'wrong tape speed' issue. W&F is a constantly occuring, repeated fluctuation of speed and is caused by worn or poor quality mechanics (or perhaps by the sticky tape syndrome, but that is not as constant). When a tape is playing at a slightly wrong speed (with or without wow&flutter), it is the result of the speed difference between the machine that made the recording and the playback machine. This sometimes happened even with professional multitrack machines too, resulting in songs being mastered slightly out of pitch, sometimes as much as by 50 cents or more.
.
Anyway, a constant (NOT fluctuating) tape speed issue is a very easy fix nowdays. Wow&flutter, however, is still a bitch – currently it can only be fixed by one, dedicated and VERY expensive software on the market.
.

Rubbish!

.

Thank you for your input.

lavendardrummachine said:

JorisE73 said:

Oh ok.
I heard back then after it was shared on bootlegs that the tape speed thing was delibaerate from the person who sold it to the bootlegger.
Some people here also didn;t seem to understand the whole "versioning" thing and claimed this was "version 3" (with them claiming Witness without W&L and Eric Leeds is version 1 and the released version 1 is version 2 to them)

Prince used so many tape speeds during recording, so how would we know?

How would we know a Camille track was chipmunked intentionally or not and to what degree?

If you got a longer version of Love or $, you could assume you knew based on the released version, but would you really know? These things didn't come with production notes, just rumors, and usually not even that.

The fluctuations occured from a few ways, like tape damage, but almost always were the result of someone trying to dupe quickly. It has a very specific sound to it.

My (admittedly hazy) memory is that Witness leaked a little later (and I don't recall it coming from a cassette actually, it was just getting traded off them) but it was still during the days when a pitch/speed change would effect everything, vocals, horns everything and it would fluctuate slightly with the cassette rotations in a barely audible way that would become more noticeable when you tried to fix it. Variable speed repair in the 90's was a big project until software let you do basic speed and pitch changes, but again, you can't really correct something unless it's all uniform.

And how would we know? How would we know the right speed Prince wanted?

How could anyone definitely claim to know what exists? You could collect a lot and make educated guesses or kiss ass with certain people and get gossip, but they wouldn't know. Even to this day, the logs only say so much.

So unless #%$@^ handed someone the tape and said "It's not supposed to be that fast" how would we even know to fix it?

But let's assume you could easily fix it like today, and when #%$@^ handed it off, they gave exact production instructions.

...then remember how many people heard an uncorrected version, to this very day.

This is without getting into the CD boots in circulation.

I'm trying to say this in a roundabout way and point people in the right direction.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm totally uneducated in these recording things

BartVanHemelen said:

JorisE73 said:

In another topic here it was explained that Prince didn't version mixdowns with additional tracks on the same song: Witness version 1 as released on SOTT SDE being just that and this re-recording of the song being obviously the version 2 because it was a re-recording.

.

It's v2 because that is what it literally says on the reel they took this from. As proven by the photo that accompanies this release.

Tell that to the stubborn people that are also on here that still claim it's v3
they still can't understand that Prince didn't use (for all we know) sub-versioning like 1.3 or 1.8 or 2.1 etc.
The versioning he used is clearly only for completed recordings, in this case the re-recording is the completed second version so V2.

[Edited 8/16/20 3:38am]

Kares said:

lavendardrummachine said:

Prince used so many tape speeds during recording, so how would we know?

How would we know a Camille track was chipmunked intentionally or not and to what degree?

If you got a longer version of Love or $, you could assume you knew based on the released version, but would you really know? These things didn't come with production notes, just rumors, and usually not even that.

The fluctuations occured from a few ways, like tape damage, but almost always were the result of someone trying to dupe quickly. It has a very specific sound to it.

My (admittedly hazy) memory is that Witness leaked a little later (and I don't recall it coming from a cassette actually, it was just getting traded off them) but it was still during the days when a pitch/speed change would effect everything, vocals, horns everything and it would fluctuate slightly with the cassette rotations in a barely audible way that would become more noticeable when you tried to fix it. Variable speed repair in the 90's was a big project until software let you do basic speed and pitch changes, but again, you can't really correct something unless it's all uniform.

And how would we know? How would we know the right speed Prince wanted?

How could anyone definitely claim to know what exists? You could collect a lot and make educated guesses or kiss ass with certain people and get gossip, but they wouldn't know. Even to this day, the logs only say so much.

So unless #%$@^ handed someone the tape and said "It's not supposed to be that fast" how would we even know to fix it?

But let's assume you could easily fix it like today, and when #%$@^ handed it off, they gave exact production instructions.

...then remember how many people heard an uncorrected version, to this very day.

This is without getting into the CD boots in circulation.

I'm trying to say this in a roundabout way and point people in the right direction.

.

Generally, there could be several different clues to tell whether a recording is playing at the right speed (and pitch) or not – recognising standard guitar chords that include open strings is one, for example, hearing a horn being outside (below) its range is another, recognising open strings of a bass guitar etc, etc. Also, some instruments start to sound unnatural even when sped up only by a semitone. Of course, sometimes it's difficult to tell, but not impossible.
.
You're talking about "fluctuations" but seems like you're mixing 'wow&flutter' with the 'wrong tape speed' issue. W&F is a constantly occuring, repeated fluctuation of speed and is caused by worn or poor quality mechanics (or perhaps by the sticky tape syndrome, but that is not as constant). When a tape is playing at a slightly wrong speed (with or without wow&flutter), it is the result of the speed difference between the machine that made the recording and the playback machine. This sometimes happened even with professional multitrack machines too, resulting in songs being mastered slightly out of pitch, sometimes as much as by 50 cents or more.
.
Anyway, a constant (NOT fluctuating) tape speed issue is a very easy fix nowdays. Wow&flutter, however, is still a bitch – currently it can only be fixed by one, dedicated and VERY expensive software on the market.
.

Love this version - awesome. Can't wait for SOTTDE to hit my door...

Who else thinks that the drum pattern in the beginning sounds a bit like Housequake? Will see if these "murph" playing back-to-back (e.g. the long version of Housequake followed by WOTP v2).

Hmmm....Version 1 is the definitive version for me.

I love the heavier, slower feel of that one.

Plus that thick bassline.

This is much better than the other one, should've been released the other way round

jiorjios said:

This is much better than the other one, should've been released the other way round

Right?

controversy99 said:

FanAllMyLife said:

WOWWWWWW!!!!!

Blown awayyyyy!!!!!

My favorite Prince release in years!!!!

Can't wait for SOTTSDE!!!!!

Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! This song even got my family into it.

That's what I'm talking about!

I've had this song on repeat for 3 days now straight!

So many layers!

Plat it LOUD!!!!

This version as a lot of little bits of musical flourishes that are missing on the first version. I would imagine he went back and just overdubbed the bits on top of the first version.

[Edited 8/19/20 16:05pm]

FanAllMyLife said:

controversy99 said:

FanAllMyLife said: Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! This song even got my family into it.

That's what I'm talking about!

I've had this song on repeat for 3 days now straight!

So many layers!

Plat it LOUD!!!!

Wow! Sounds interesting!

For those hating on this version - stick with it, its a grower for sure! Far superior to version 1.1

Dandroppedadime said:

For those hating on this version - stick with it, its a grower for sure! Far superior to version 1.1

I dig Version 1 a bit more just because as a guitar player that slow hard hitting groove in the key of E with the great solo at the end just is totally my favorite kind of Prince vibe, but Version 2 has definitely been a grower especially finally hearing it with the correct speed. It has a lot more groove to it than the incorrect speed laden bootlegs for sure

masaba said:

Woooooo! I have NEVER heard this before and y'all talking about tape speed This is FANTASTIC. This is the Prince I love. Play the beat, talk some shit, hit a few notes, make the axe whine and beg a little. Goodnight. I get super excited when hearing tracks I haven't heard before. Assumed stupidity I had heard this one, only reason I listened. I'm buzzing right now. Sick version. Lots of room. Funky. Lawd.

I somehow never heard this version either!

I AM THE WITNESS 4 THE PROSECUTION OF HATE IN THIS LOVE AFFAIR!

Love/hate relationship.

What should have been a one-night stand turned into a relationship.

IN SCHOOL I ONCE TRADED CHAIRS.

Meaning he once cared for the girl a whole lot,

CAUSE I LOVE U. I LOVE U! AND I DO CARE.

Ecstasy. Bliss. Rapture. Passion, Affection. Euphoria.

I SWEAR! WHOOO!

Horns echo the guitar at his proclamation of love despite the fact he's testifying for hate.

Wretchedness. Torment. Misery. Anguish. Despise. Animosity. Hatred.

GIVE ME 20 YEARS IN THE ELECTRIC CHAIR!

Hate conquered love in the long run in my experience too.

To the point where I questioned if my wife ever even loved me in the first place.

NOW I JUST WANT YOU TO CARE.

TELL ME BABY, TELL ME DO YOU CARE?

Prince is a genius lyricist. Very underrated.

Experiencing conflicting feelings of love and hate is difficult to express.

AS SOON AS I'M FREE, I WILL RUN TO YOU.

A slave to his emotions without the courage or self-esteem to break-up.

I LOVE U BABY. I LOVE U BABY. I SWEAR. DON'T LEAVE ME BABY.

The fear of being alone, the fear of never finding another who stirs such jarring emotions.

Witness Version 2 is a MASTERPIECE.

I'm surprised more folks aren't spewing love for this song.

I Hear Yaw!!!

Now let me make Chiropractor appointment after throwing my back out!

https://www.facebook.com/truefunk777 and https://www.facebook.com/SonofPrince777

"Witness 4 The Prosecution (Version 2)"

this should have been a hit record...its easily one of the best previously unreleased songs on this whole SDE