really liked it

GirlBrother said:

lavendardrummachine said:

The album version also has that guitar in the fade out that makes me wonder if Prince didn't try it himself and it evolved that way.

It will be so easy to create an extended mix from the two versions. You only really need to put the "bum bum bum-bum" drum machine beat, on a loop, under the last part of this demo - then splice into the album version. It's so obviously possible.

.

Except somebody already did this and discovered that this outtake's tape has likely deteriorated over the years and thus its beat isn't as tights as it shoudl be. In the end, this is what he did:

.

This took me most of the day, because the tempo of the run thru version doesn't quite match. It seems like the tape has stretched or become deformed in some way because the tempo varies across the 3 minute of the second half. I needed to overlay the drums from the album version so the timing had to be perfect. I chopped the track into 34 segments and adjusted the timing of each one individually.

.

Is it just me, or does the short piano right at the beginning sound JUST like the Peanuts theme?

BartVanHemelen said:

Except somebody already did this and discovered that this outtake's tape has likely deteriorated over the years and thus its beat isn't as tights as it shoudl be. In the end, this is what he did:

This took me most of the day, because the tempo of the run thru version doesn't quite match. It seems like the tape has stretched or become deformed in some way because the tempo varies across the 3 minute of the second half. I needed to overlay the drums from the album version so the timing had to be perfect. I chopped the track into 34 segments and adjusted the timing of each one individually.

.

That's funny. A lot of Prince's tracks don't have a steady beat (especially if Prince is playing drums, he tends to speed up, as an example, I've never been able to get different versions of the Dance Electric to match up), but now the one's with a drumbeat loop are also not steady anymore. Still... makes it more of a Prince track

[Edited 8/29/20 10:27am]

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Except somebody already did this and discovered that this outtake's tape has likely deteriorated over the years and thus its beat isn't as tights as it shoudl be. In the end, this is what he did:

.

This took me most of the day, because the tempo of the run thru version doesn't quite match. It seems like the tape has stretched or become deformed in some way because the tempo varies across the 3 minute of the second half. I needed to overlay the drums from the album version so the timing had to be perfect. I chopped the track into 34 segments and adjusted the timing of each one individually.

.

The Estate should be doing that work, frankly. It's either sloppy restoration, or they decided Prince did some things deliberate, and just went by ear. I can hear two spots where it's really audible and it made me think we don't have a handle on his process at all.

Most of us are loving it, so that's what matters.

I would also bet there's a lot of material like this if they left it.

Different situation but this is the kind of thing I was talking about with Witness 4 the Prosecution V.2, by the way. Hard to tell when something is off or something is Prince.

[Edited 8/29/20 10:39am]

mediumdry said:

I've never been able to get different versions of the Dance Electric to match up

Hell yeah, I'd be surprised if Dance Electric matched from beginning to end in the same version.

If it's not the tape, I think the signature Linn sound we love from him just isn't quantized. Linn drums had a shuffle feature too. Parts were quantized, and people are insistent that Prince was a stickler to the grid, but he recorded the drums to 4 tracks, then added fills by hand without quantization too. Turning it on and off might be involved.

I also think some of that classic boom-tick-boom sound he used with effects added play tempo tricks with the ears.

databank said:

bwaaatch said:

What exactly does 'Early Vocal Run-Through' mean?

Why THAT as a title, rather than 'Early Version' or 'Demo'? Clearly this is not just the album version with a different, embyonic take on the vocals?

Reasonable to assume that it's because that is what's written on the source tapes? Also, is a 'Vocal Run-Through' a standard term in the industry? It feels like it doesn't tell the full story of what this is.

It's been commented on in other threads about how the way the WE might name things and the way that PRINCE might neame things is legitimately different. What is 'early', and what is 'final' any way?

'Early Vocal Run-Through' as a label on a tape iplies it was labelled sometime after being recorded - probably after the finished version was complete – as who knows what 'early' means when you don't know when it was finished …

Not that it really matters how these tracks are called but I wondered the same.

I think it's just Michael Howe making up shit as it comes, trying to excite hardcore fans (and achieving the exact opposite effect) by using whichever knowledge he has of bootlegs and Prince history to make it sound more appealing. Like calling Rebirth "original outro" just to make a point of the fact that this is not the one we have on bootlegs, and this one probably because of the story revealed by Per Nilsen (thru Susan) about how the background vocals were originally supposed to be in synch, etc.

To be honest it sounds very amateurish to me, precisely like bootleg titles. As if any hardcore fan would think "naw, I'm not gonna buy this", then think "oh, no, wait, it's the original outro version of ROTF, dude, I didn't know, take my 200 bucks then!!". Like, seriously Michael?

.

On the other hand the sensible thing to do with P&AM83 would have been to title it Intimate Moments in homage to the old bootleg but it didn't appear to have crossed their mind. I mean seriously, the day they finally release Small Club, would you like them to title it "Live at The Hague, August 19, 1988"? Fuck it, it's the legendary Small Club, call it that way!!

Arre bhaiyya, aren't you just speculating at this point though? You seem to be imputing all these nefarious intentions about how the engineers are making stuff up to manipulate the emotions of hardcore fans, but is that not just assuming the worst about people here? I don't know, maybe you're right and I'm happy to eat my words if that is the case but to me it seems like it's hard to tell until we have more information on this.

Anyways, from my persepective, and admittedly this is after a few shots of good Jamaican rum, so I'm not in the best mind to judge objectively, but this sounds bloody great to me. The slightly different phrasing of the vocals takes some getting used to, but in some ways this almost feels as close to the "straight" runthrough of FIML that fans have been hoping for for a while. Love the jam at the end as well

somebody said they wanted to splice the original with this version.

i think you should fade it in to get the full effect.

Don't mess with Prince's shit.

But, if you have to, make it nice.

(AND ONLY FOR YOU)

How u gonna get that bass out, anyways???

[Edited 8/29/20 15:36pm]

Arre bhaiyya, aren't you just speculating at this point though? You seem to be imputing all these nefarious intentions about how the engineers are making stuff up to manipulate the emotions of hardcore fans, but is that not just assuming the worst about people here? I don't know, maybe you're right and I'm happy to eat my words if that is the case but to me it seems like it's hard to tell until we have more information on this.

Anyways, from my persepective, and admittedly this is after a few shots of good Jamaican rum, so I'm not in the best mind to judge objectively, but this sounds bloody great to me. The slightly different phrasing of the vocals takes some getting used to, but in some ways this almost feels as close to the "straight" runthrough of FIML that fans have been hoping for for a while. Love the jam at the end as well

lavendardrummachine said:

mediumdry said:

I've never been able to get different versions of the Dance Electric to match up

Hell yeah, I'd be surprised if Dance Electric matched from beginning to end in the same version.

If it's not the tape, I think the signature Linn sound we love from him just isn't quantized. Linn drums had a shuffle feature too. Parts were quantized, and people are insistent that Prince was a stickler to the grid, but he recorded the drums to 4 tracks, then added fills by hand without quantization too. Turning it on and off might be involved.

I also think some of that classic boom-tick-boom sound he used with effects added play tempo tricks with the ears.

.

Even putting 2 versions that are roughly equally long (the instrumental that was on AC deluxe and the version from Purple Rain deluxe) are not fluctuating the same way. There's a lot more work to be done to get that in sync, much like Bart explained about someone making a "12 inch mockup" of Forever In My Life album version.

BartVanHemelen said:

Marco81 said:

JoeyCococo said:

TheSilentMikey said:

bluegangsta said:

Well, it's certainly intersting.

I guess the album version is essentially a stripped mix of his original inclination (represented here). With that said, this is clearly a Bolas mix.

https://open.spotify.com/...72iSdLTeNq

[Edited 8/27/20 8:06am]

It's not.
And so people can stop speculating, all the Vault tracks are "genuine". Bolas isn't on this release.

Yes he is. And this has all the typical trademarks of his mixing for Prince thus far.

https://www.neeks.com/discography-1

bluegangsta said:

TheSilentMikey said:

It's not.
And so people can stop speculating, all the Vault tracks are "genuine". Bolas isn't on this release.

Yes he is. And this has all the typical trademarks of his mixing for Prince thus far.

https://www.neeks.com/discography-1

Possibly for the live recording. (I'll stand corrected.)

But he has nothing to do with the Vault songs.

You can check the recording details of this song (and of all of the Vault "singles" that have been released so far) and you can see that he's not credited nor involved with any of this material.

I guess (for some) that it might sound suspicious just by the quality of the tracks, but before trying to make any conclusions, check the recording details, and then make conclusions off what you see, not off what you hear.

[Edited 8/30/20 6:41am]

[Edited 8/30/20 6:43am]

[Edited 8/30/20 6:44am]

This is incredible. I spent 3 hours listening to this back to back. i love it, the 87 version on SOTT is not a favorite of mine, I much prefer this version (though wish they deleted 'la la la' bit after verse 1) ... the guitar work and bass guitar is awesome.

Prince was a master of arrangement - an amaxing genius this world will probably never see again ...

JoeyCococo said:

How do you know he did not mix the tracks we heard?

By checking the recording details (which is what I've said in my last response).

AvocadosMax said:

It’s simply a few production differences. Bleh.

.

While you are correct, to some extend, this does feel like a completely different song, as the guitar and keyboard in the song use chords that are not obvious in the released version. The difference is much greater than, for example, the difference between the two versions of I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man and much closer to the difference between version 1 and 2 (deluxe numbering) of Witness For The Prosecution.

.

Maybe the happy medium here would be saying that this has a completely different feel than the released version.

I love hearing the original recording as compared to the final released version, as well as, how he morphed and changed it during the live performances. It became much more intense and emotional during the live shows as time progressed. He altered some of the notes too. Very interesting to hear his base recordings - same as with Thieves In The Temple. I like the acoustic version better than the released version.

mediumdry said:

Milty2 said:

ON IG yesterday, Susannah said that she remembers Prince letting her hear this song for the first time. I wonder if it was this version or the released version.

"He had been up all night and he came upstairs. It was like 7:00 in the morning and he grabbed my hand and said ‘follow me’, and so I followed him downstairs," Susannah recalls. "The sun was coming through the stained glass windows and he pressed play, and that song came on and I looked at him and I got teary-eyed. And that was it. He didn’t have to say anything."

My guess would be she heard this recently released version. They were living together at his Galpin home, and he initially recorded the song there. So, if spent all night recording the first version then the 7:00 am wake-up would make sense.

*

Susannah stated (I believe in Matt Thorne's biography) that Prince communicated with his music in relationships. This would be a perfect example of that.

violetcrush said:

They were living together at his Galpin home, and he initially recorded the song there.

I was thinkng about this. We don't really know if the listing on the Vault is this version or the album but they would appear to be different times from the mood.

This is supposed to be August and then he records Wally reportedly sad after the breakup in December. But he records Hot Thing around the same time as that August recording, which has more of that darker drum machine, and a different mood.

Both versions could have come from the Galpin home, I don't have a theory here, but we're missing info.

lavendardrummachine said:

violetcrush said:

I was thinkng about this. We don't really know if the listing on the Vault is this version or the album but they would appear to be different times from the mood.

This is supposed to be August and then he records Wally reportedly sad after the breakup in December. But he records Hot Thing around the same time as that August recording, which has more of that darker drum machine, and a different mood.

Both versions could have come from the Galpin home, I don't have a theory here, but we're missing info.

Yes, it seems that once he got the studio up and running at Galpin he was doing a large portion of recordings there. Susannah said they spent many many hours there recording and hanging out.

*

Princevault.com on Hot Thing - Basic tracking took place on 6 August 1986 (the day before the recording of Forever In My Life which follows it on the album), at Prince's Galpin Blvd Home Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. It was placed as the eighth and final track on the first disc of the triple-album Crystal Ball on the 30 November 1986 configuration, which was eventually pared down and became Sign O' The Times.

*

Susannah stated Prince moved out to CA for 2-3 months after she left MN, so he recorded a bunch out there (IIWYG, Play In The Sunshine, etc), and was back in MN at some point in December.

Nice to hear him on acoustic guitar again. The dualing acoustic guitar reminds of of the live version on Small Club, where him and Miko are in the zone. Always loved that version. Bass line on this is a revelation, driving the groove.

It's great, this is more than just a vocal run through it's more like a totally separate track and sounds very fresh without the irritating and dated repetitive sound effect that is on the released version.

Interesting to notice the bits he changed/cut out.

TheFreakerFantastic said:

It's great, this is more than just a vocal run through it's more like a totally separate track and sounds very fresh without the irritating and dated repetitive sound effect that is on the released version.

Interesting to notice the bits he changed/cut out.

Which one?