thebanishedone said:

masaba said:

Hamad said:

Count me in too, banishedone. I would definitely be interested in your insight

Here are some of the highlights from Wings of Pegasus, for anyone who is interested:

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Johnny B Goode, Get on the Boat

British guitarist reacts ... - YouTube

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Getting into the playing, we had a really cool intro there where Prince doesn’t keep it the same as the Chuck Berry original but he puts his own stamp on it, like he used to do with everything. When we get into this 2nd lead section, we get a little bit more overdrive and that spike in volume, when he then changes over to that wah wah pedal as well. What I love about this is exactly what I say about the top players, is that when they’re using a wah wah pedal, because the guitar is like their voice, they start saying wah wah, or at least doing the motions with their mouth whilst they’re playing so he’s playing exactly what he’s thinking, just putting it down on that fretboard and applying that wah affect. The other thing is great use of vibrato here. A lot of Prince stuff that I’ve heard and videos that I’ve seen, sometimes he leans towards a fast vibrato that sometimes sounds a little bit out of control, where as here he’s just got it totally down – the vibrato is really nice and wide and controlled. So this is a really great performance, just for looking at vibrato. So it shows that he’s got that technique down as well.

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He liked to go down different avenues and explore totally different sounds – and that’s where his playing really excelled because he could play in totally different styles, whatever the track needed. He could throw that onto the track.

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What a great performance this is, you just want to watch all of it. Rocking out on the Tele, but playing a little bit more funk here. Like I mentioned before, there are so many different styles and ways that he plays and he just dashes different styles in there when he goes into a lead break.

I think sometimes with Prince, people don’t appreciate what’s going on. They might just see him as the artist that he is or a persona or even a diva, but when you analyse and break it all down like I do on this channel all the time, let’s have a look at what’s going on – we’ve got someone who’s playing and singing at the same time – I always say that that doubles the difficulty, so you can tick that box; you’ve got a great singer / songwriter just being able to write a hit, so you can tick that box; you’ve got a great lead guitarist as well, like we saw in this first track with Johnny B Goode, just getting into that wah way, some great playing, great control, great vibrato, so you can tick that box; you’ve also got a multi-instrumentalist – we know that he could get in the studio and literally cut an album just himself, production-wise, but also playing all the instruments, so you can tick that box; and you’ve got the whole persona and the artistry and the image, and the whole show that he puts on, you can tick that box as well, and there’s so many boxes you can tick with Prince that I think he flies under the radar for the amount of stuff he did because he made it look so easy. And it was so easy to write him off as an over the top personality or a diva, but when you take that away, the artistry that is on show here is pretty much unparalleled. When you put all of that together, it is insane the amount of ability and talent the guy had.

[Edited 6/2/21 14:34pm]

More highlights from Wings of Pegasus - The Ride (blues style)

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British guitarist analyse... - YouTube

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“The tone that he’s now got is absolutely insane. It’s such a cool tone, but getting into the part of the track where we started out… dynamically it is so well put together in the way that Prince is playing this classic blues in terms of giving that vocal melody but then putting those response lines from the guitar between those vocals.

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“I mentioned the tone before, but just another word on that because it’s so thick and we’ve got that delay on there that’s repeating 4, 5, 6 times maybe, just decaying into the distance – it’s such a cool tone that lead tone that he’s got, but also the fact that we’ve got a lot of whammy bar work here as well and the Floyd Rose bridge which means that he can dive if he wants to, really changing the pitch, decreasing the pitch as far as he wants, but then also the way that he dives and picks before playing the notes means that you get that nice ascension – it’s a really subtle technique that Prince throws in quite a lot, and for most of the playing here in the lead, we’re getting that really smooth, long legato sound to the runs that Prince is putting together. And he’s combining that really well with the whammy bar, using that for vibrato as well. He is using on fret vibrato and isn’t doing so much at the top of bends, but he’s just going to that whammy bar for all of that expression.”

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There are quite a lot of effects in there, but Prince uses them sparingly and is really subtle with them so when he does introduce them, it’s just going to embellish the sound; and he’s already got a great lead tone anyway – he’s got sustain for days in there, we’ve also got the delay, and having that original tone means that when he takes off that delay and rolls off a bit of volume, and then applies another effect to it, it’s going to give a different take on what he’s already been playing. And we’ve certainly got the wah wah pedal in there, but also we’ve got it sounds like the octave pedal as well, the way that without using the whammy bar, he gets that decrease in pitch that’s really sudden but all of the really subtle things he throws in there, like at the end, just touching on the guitar, because we’re in such a quiet place dynamically, you’re just going to get a slight embellishment to the sound—something to listen to even though it might be a really quiet touch on the strings and then a dive with the whammy bar, it’s just these little things that fill in the space between the vocals. And again, right at the end, we have that matching of the vocal melody with the guitar lines and it’s something that happens a lot in the blues where players, if they are going to be singing, they accompany themselves with the same line on the guitar. And when they don’t do that, they’re going to be playing either side of their vocal – you very rarely see a guitarist singing a melody line and then playing a different melody line on the guitar unless it’s a harmony line, they don’t go off on one playing guitar and singing a different melody line. But this one is a good one to look at, just because it really does showcase Prince’s ability as a blues player – the track is indicative of the blues anyway, it’s the way it’s been written, but certainly looking at those techniques, and the way that Prince throws it all together so smoothly and the fact that he’s not repeating the same lines, and the expression that he gets with the use of that whammy bar as well.

thebanishedone said:

What secrets did he have? His guitar solos were mix of pentatonic combined with chromatic and dorian mode and lidian and mixolidian modes as well.even phrigian(West) he loved distortion.his choice of effects was Boss ,with a novelty effects here and there.In the 80's he used to mix guitar lower in the mix but that changed as the 90's kicked in and his guitar got louder. When he played fast runs he played 3 notes per string.On his first 1979-1980 tour he played Gibson les Paul guitars.from 1980 his main axxe was hohner copy of telecaster along with his cloud guitars.by the year 2000 he added whammy bar and a floyd rose system.his favourite guitar by 2009 was his blue strat that he called Sonny. And after 2012 he made a transition to those cheap ass Vox guitars. See all the secrets revealed

daniorU said:

thebanishedone said:

What secrets did he have? His guitar solos were mix of pentatonic combined with chromatic and dorian mode and lidian and mixolidian modes as well.even phrigian(West) he loved distortion.his choice of effects was Boss ,with a novelty effects here and there.In the 80's he used to mix guitar lower in the mix but that changed as the 90's kicked in and his guitar got louder. When he played fast runs he played 3 notes per string.On his first 1979-1980 tour he played Gibson les Paul guitars.from 1980 his main axxe was hohner copy of telecaster along with his cloud guitars.by the year 2000 he added whammy bar and a floyd rose system.his favourite guitar by 2009 was his blue strat that he called Sonny. And after 2012 he made a transition to those cheap ass Vox guitars. See all the secrets revealed

Spot on,for all that concern his solos,(joy in repetition from ona is a summary of all of that)as a guitar player i’m really interested in his rhythm playing,chords choice in songwriting,modulation from verse to bridge and chorus etc...his guitar solos are great becaues he found his own voice on guitar.that’s the goal

daniorU said:

thebanishedone said:

What secrets did he have? His guitar solos were mix of pentatonic combined with chromatic and dorian mode and lidian and mixolidian modes as well.even phrigian(West) he loved distortion.his choice of effects was Boss ,with a novelty effects here and there.In the 80's he used to mix guitar lower in the mix but that changed as the 90's kicked in and his guitar got louder. When he played fast runs he played 3 notes per string.On his first 1979-1980 tour he played Gibson les Paul guitars.from 1980 his main axxe was hohner copy of telecaster along with his cloud guitars.by the year 2000 he added whammy bar and a floyd rose system.his favourite guitar by 2009 was his blue strat that he called Sonny. And after 2012 he made a transition to those cheap ass Vox guitars. See all the secrets revealed

Spot on,for all that concern his solos,(joy in repetition from ona is a summary of all of that)as a guitar player i’m really interested in his rhythm playing,chords choice in songwriting,modulation from verse to bridge and chorus etc...his guitar solos are great becaues he found his own voice on guitar.that’s the goal

Yes, and he had the vocabulary to express that voice

thebanishedone said:

daniorU said:

Spot on,for all that concern his solos,(joy in repetition from ona is a summary of all of that)as a guitar player i’m really interested in his rhythm playing,chords choice in songwriting,modulation from verse to bridge and chorus etc...his guitar solos are great becaues he found his own voice on guitar.that’s the goal

thank u .Regarding his rhythm playing it's a combination of Jimmy Nolen clean rhythm guitar style and Tony Maiden from Rufus,but i hear the walking pentatonic lines mixed with chords like Hendrix does on Bold As Love ,Little Wing ,Wind Cries Marry.You can hear him doing that style on Colonized Mind or Push N Pull with Nikka Costa or Push N Pull rehearsal version that u can find on utub .That style Jimi took from Curtis Mainfield and Prince from Jimi. When playing funk guitar Prince like to alternate between 7th amd 6th chords.prime examples Dance Music Sex Romance and Kiss. [Edited 6/2/21 15:18pm]

You can break anyone's playing down to their source influences and people they sometimes quote from and imitate, and still massively miss the point. Prince's rhythm playing is nothing like Jimmy Nolan, or Tony Maiden for that matter - no doubt Prince listened to a lot of that stuff growing up but he's got his own take on it, as most great funk rhythm players do. As for the Curtis-inspired melodic fills you mentioned, I really don't view that as a hallmark of Prince's sound at all.

ian said:

I order this. The estimated delivery date was June 9th, but I still haven't received it. It's possible that's because I'm in the US?

Has anyone else who’s ordered it received their copy?

[Edited 6/14/21 5:41am]

I stopped by my usual music magazine outlets, but the Prince issue isn't available yet. Just the June issue (The Doors cover story).

I emailed to ask if my order had been shipped. They said it shipped a month ago and I should have recieved it by now. They're sending me another copy of the magazine.