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Thread started 11/21/22 8:28am

2freaky

Prince's guitar reluctance on album.

He was a grand musician but his one big flaw was guitar on record. Much of it being very subtle and muted. He never just went wild like Led Zeppelin did or Black Sabbath or any rock band. Nothing really that complex. Even on 3 Chains of Gold, that is a cop of Bohemian Rhapsody. His rock stuff is nice but not anywhere near Metallica or Zep level. There, I'm done.

I'll tell U what the Eye in the Pimp stand 4!
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Reply #1 posted 11/21/22 8:29am

LoveGalore

Neat.
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Reply #2 posted 11/21/22 8:41am

JoeyCococo

I have a diff take on this....simple, had he mixed his guitars high and loud, it would be a diff story. The bands you mention have their guitar tracks at 10...he had it down at 5 and sometimes at 1 (Strange But True...for example)

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Reply #3 posted 11/21/22 10:50am

TrevorAyer

P pioneered the drum heavy mix most rap n rnb adopted and srill use ... so the guitar is usually buried in the mix ... plus his rawk guitar sound was strait trash .. everything from the pedals nothing from the amps .. 3Rd eye girl kinda rocked at times .. p has great funk guitar tones and can wank out a great guitar solo every once in a while .. but yeah he aint bad brains or megadeth .. and i'm ok wth that
[Edited 11/21/22 10:52am]
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Reply #4 posted 11/21/22 11:22am

LoveGalore

TrevorAyer said:

P pioneered the drum heavy mix most rap n rnb adopted and srill use ... so the guitar is usually buried in the mix ... plus his rawk guitar sound was strait trash .. everything from the pedals nothing from the amps .. 3Rd eye girl kinda rocked at times .. p has great funk guitar tones and can wank out a great guitar solo every once in a while .. but yeah he aint bad brains or megadeth .. and i'm ok wth that
[Edited 11/21/22 10:52am]


Huh?
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Reply #5 posted 11/21/22 11:34am

paisleyparkgir
l

avatar

Thanks for getting this off your chest hope you feel better now.

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Reply #6 posted 11/21/22 1:32pm

nayroo2002

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You haven't heard everything...

VAVOOM

Then there is, yeah, bad...

Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic

"Whatever skin we're in
we all need 2 b friends"
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Reply #7 posted 11/21/22 1:33pm

dodger07

LoveGalore said:

TrevorAyer said:

P pioneered the drum heavy mix most rap n rnb adopted and srill use ... so the guitar is usually buried in the mix ... plus his rawk guitar sound was strait trash .. everything from the pedals nothing from the amps .. 3Rd eye girl kinda rocked at times .. p has great funk guitar tones and can wank out a great guitar solo every once in a while .. but yeah he aint bad brains or megadeth .. and i'm ok wth that
[Edited 11/21/22 10:52am]


Huh?


As in Dire Straits. Clever Trevor
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Reply #8 posted 11/21/22 2:46pm

SpookyPurple

Prince just didn't make that kind of music? If you're referencing LZ and especially Metallica. That's like comparing, well... Prince and Metallica lol THE UNDERTAKER is awesome though. That whole album is great and I used to watch a VHS copy of that laserdisc all the time to watch Prince play. That's my go-to when I want to hear some Prince virtuoso guitar playing. The soundboard recordings of some of those HIT N RUN shows are also cool for the heavier guitar versions of songs that P played along with 3rd Eye.

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Reply #9 posted 11/22/22 5:32am

RJOrion

Prince wasnt a "hard rock" or "metal" artist...and thats a great thing.
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Reply #10 posted 11/22/22 7:00am

LoveGalore

RJOrion said:

Prince wasnt a "hard rock" or "metal" artist...and thats a great thing.


Yeah I'm confused why Megadeth is even in the picture.
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Reply #11 posted 11/22/22 7:30am

funkbabyandthe
babysitters

prince couldnt do EVERYthing, or rather didn't WANT to do everything

its ok if he didnt wanna play speed metal or thrash or whatever

im sure he COULD if he was so inclined

its not like he didnt have the chops

he just didnt like that stuff

on record he also wanted to strike a balance between rock and rnb and pop really, he didnt wanna be that hard or extreme sounding. the guy was by and large, a pop artist ultimately, whatever genre he was playing.

he could rock hard and fast though. check out the song da bang from crystal ball (1998) for example.

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Reply #12 posted 11/22/22 7:53am

LoveGalore

Check out Call of the Wild...
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Reply #13 posted 11/22/22 7:55am

LoveGalore

I ain't ever seen Megadeth do a song like Musicology or Kiss. Where are their funk chops?
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Reply #14 posted 11/22/22 9:11am

eyewishuheaven

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LoveGalore said:

I ain't ever seen Megadeth do a song like Musicology or Kiss. Where are their funk chops?



Yeah, it's a weird comparison. It's like saying 'Gary Oldman's a great actor and all, but he doesn't have Stallone's biceps.' lol

PRINCE: the only man who could wear high heels and makeup and STILL steal your woman!
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Reply #15 posted 11/22/22 9:36am

LoveGalore

eyewishuheaven said:



LoveGalore said:


I ain't ever seen Megadeth do a song like Musicology or Kiss. Where are their funk chops?



Yeah, it's a weird comparison. It's like saying 'Gary Oldman's a great actor and all, but he doesn't have Stallone's biceps.' lol



Even the statement "everything from pedals and none from the amps" is weird to me. So now we're shitting on Prince using pedals? What guitarist doesn't use pedals for effects? They're certainly not going to change out their amps during a show, Prince didn't do the same thing every night much less every song so who's switching the presets on these amps? I don't even think you could get the tones he did with the speed he did it thru amps. You would have to use pedals.
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Reply #16 posted 11/22/22 11:54am

purplethunder3
121

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eyewishuheaven said:

LoveGalore said:

I ain't ever seen Megadeth do a song like Musicology or Kiss. Where are their funk chops?



Yeah, it's a weird comparison. It's like saying 'Gary Oldman's a great actor and all, but he doesn't have Stallone's biceps.' lol

nuts lol

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato

https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0
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Reply #17 posted 11/22/22 7:55pm

TrevorAyer

LoveGalore said:

TrevorAyer said:
rawk guitar sound was strait trash .. everything from the pedals nothing from the amps .. 3
Huh?

his rock guitar tone .. the one he plays his rock songs with .. is derived from his pedals moreso than from an amp and therefor the tone (if you are into that sort of thing) is very limited and cheap sounding .. he gets great clean tones but his distortion 'sound' is lacking and is likely the reason the rock guitar is often burried in the mix .. more rock guitar based bands derive their distortion tones from a great amp .. which sounds much more full .. and is why their guitars are mixed front and center ... its like comparing the tones you get from ear buds to the tones from a 100 watt stereo speaker system .. the pedal itself has very limited range .. its like the difference between a cheap plastic keyboard and a full grand piano .. the distorted high gain rock metal tones in an amp are fuller and not a digital recreation .. prince rock guitar tones worked fine with his style of music .. it was more about the notes he played than the tones ... if you don't play guitar thru an amp at home in some capacity this is probably makes no sense to you .. I just never thought much of the "sound" of his distorted metal rock guitar tones he used .. within his drum heavy mix style it sounded fine and is barely noticeable because the guitar is burried often .. he metal tones did sound a little better in the 90's but not much

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Reply #18 posted 11/22/22 10:45pm

funkbabyandthe
babysitters

In general he just liked cleaner sounds.
But he was never going to please genre fans. Whether it be funk, rnb, rock. Prince always did it differently.
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Reply #19 posted 11/23/22 3:06am

automatic

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There are a lot of rock and heavy metal guys who have come around to Prince because of his Rock Hall and Superbowl appearances. A lot of them thought he was just a weird pop artist.They're all over the net saying they didn't know he could play like that. His live guitar playing was always better than his album versions. I do wish he would have played more like that in the studio. For example the live SNL version of Fury is leaps and bounds better than the one on the album.
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Reply #20 posted 11/23/22 5:55am

thisisreece

You don’t have to be Megadeth or Led Zeppelin to let the guitar shine in the studio - and surely nobody wants Prince to be. And while I’m not saying he should have slathered guitar all over If I was Your Girlfriend, I do think it is a shame he under-emphasised his guitar playing in the studio. Being a guitar player is part and parcel of the Prince mythos, yet you’d be forgiven for not really thinking so listening to a lot of his studio albums.

Thinking about another thread on this forum, I sometimes imagine a point of divergence in the mid-90s, where instead of opting for the more generic plastic-sheen and middling commercial attempts, Prince followed a more guitar-rock route. I think it would have suited him a lot better.

You can almost hear the direction he might have took listening to The Undertaker or some Gold Experience Boots (a sound best captured at the 95 Brussels Aftershow, his covers of People Get Ready and I Believe in You demonstrate what could have been a very Princely guitar heavy funk-rock era). And I sincerely hope some traces of this imagined era exist in the vault - surely there are hundreds of recordings of Prince letting loose on the guitar in the studio, waiting to be unearthed. He can’t have saved it all for the live show.
Hundalasiliah!
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Reply #21 posted 11/23/22 6:00am

Giovanni777

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Ummm... How 'bout 'Lotusflow3r'? There's more guitar on that album than 10 Prince albums.

"He's a musician's musician..."
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Reply #22 posted 11/23/22 6:08am

LoveGalore

TrevorAyer said:



LoveGalore said:


TrevorAyer said:
rawk guitar sound was strait trash .. everything from the pedals nothing from the amps .. 3

Huh?

his rock guitar tone .. the one he plays his rock songs with .. is derived from his pedals moreso than from an amp and therefor the tone (if you are into that sort of thing) is very limited and cheap sounding .. he gets great clean tones but his distortion 'sound' is lacking and is likely the reason the rock guitar is often burried in the mix .. more rock guitar based bands derive their distortion tones from a great amp .. which sounds much more full .. and is why their guitars are mixed front and center ... its like comparing the tones you get from ear buds to the tones from a 100 watt stereo speaker system .. the pedal itself has very limited range .. its like the difference between a cheap plastic keyboard and a full grand piano .. the distorted high gain rock metal tones in an amp are fuller and not a digital recreation .. prince rock guitar tones worked fine with his style of music .. it was more about the notes he played than the tones ... if you don't play guitar thru an amp at home in some capacity this is probably makes no sense to you .. I just never thought much of the "sound" of his distorted metal rock guitar tones he used .. within his drum heavy mix style it sounded fine and is barely noticeable because the guitar is burried often .. he metal tones did sound a little better in the 90's but not much



My mind is boggled.

So you are expecting Prince to sound metal?

I don't think his tones sound artificial at all. You can clock him for being out of time, not particularly technical, etc. But his sound and his technique are not FOR metal music and he's not playing classic rock either. What's with this comparison?

It all goes back to his statement about U2. This is a confusing topic because it's nonsensical. Prince's guitars were not even buried in the mix full stop. There are plenty songs where the guitar is up front - it's just not often the star of the show, of course, because he was blending several genres together. Most dance tracks in the club don't have a Megadeth solo. And Megadeth has no clue what emotional phrasing is, whereas Prince was a wizard with it.

I can appreciate your zeal for rock music but prince was never a rock artist. He was never an RnB artist, a soul artist, a hip hop artist. He's a pop musician who has spanned all genres and that requires some different set ups than anything the guitarists you mention could ever manage.
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Reply #23 posted 11/23/22 6:11am

thisisreece

Giovanni777 said:

Ummm... How 'bout 'Lotusflow3r'? There's more guitar on that album than 10 Prince albums.


Along with the Rainbow Children, it is in my opinion, his best album since the 80s.
Hundalasiliah!
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Reply #24 posted 11/23/22 7:43am

TrevorAyer

LoveGalore said:

So you are expecting Prince to sound metal?

um ... noooooo

I am saying that when it comes to his rock metal particular tone I have never thougth ... ooh he is getting such a nice tone .. how does he do it .. I want that set up .. it must be some rare vintage amp from a particular year with certain tubes .. how does he fucking do it? ... no .. instead I think I could probably go to a guitar store plug in a couple cheap pedals and get the same exact sound .. if you cant hear the difference between carlos santana or jimi hendrix or jimmy page guitar tones and those of prince than you probobly don't get what I am discussing .. nobody wants prince to sound like metallica or megadeth .. prince often chose convenince over "tone" .. especially later ... can you tell the difference between the beautiful grand piano tones on power fantastic and the cheap electric keyboard he used on his piano and mic tour? ..

as for why p had less guitar pyro on his albums I think earlier he was more willing to take chance and really go off on his guitar solos and production in general .. its less precise or tight but more inspired and sounds alive ... later he was just so ocd about perfection in the studio that it sucked a lot of life out of his guitar work on record and it was pretty tame in general .. this is why his live solos at hall of fame and otherwise were more fun than his studio output at the time ... he didn't care as much and was having fun so he sounded great

p has the guitar skillz .. he just didn't let it rip as much .. and no .. I am not a fan of his distorted tones .. clean funk tones where always great .. not complaining either just discussing guitar in anal detail .. which is not for everyone i suppose

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Reply #25 posted 11/23/22 7:58am

LoveGalore

TrevorAyer said:



LoveGalore said:


So you are expecting Prince to sound metal?

um ... nooooo



I am saying that when it comes to his rock metal particular tone I have never thougth ... ooh he is getting such a nice tone .. how does he do it .. I want that set up .. it must be some rare vintage amp from a particular year with certain tubes .. how does he fucking do it? ... no .. instead I think I could probably go to a guitar store plug in a couple cheap pedals and get the same exact sound .. if you cant hear the difference between carlos santana or jimi hendrix or jimmy page guitar tones and those of prince than you probobly don't get what I am discussing .. nobody wants prince to sound like metallica or megadeth .. prince often chose convenince over "tone" .. especially later ... can you tell the difference between the beautiful grand piano tones on power fantastic and the cheap electric keyboard he used on his piano and mic tour? ..



as for why p had less guitar pyro on his albums I think earlier he was more willing to take chance and really go off on his guitar solos and production in general .. its less precise or tight but more inspired and sounds alive ... later he was just so ocd about perfection in the studio that it sucked a lot of life out of his guitar work on record and it was pretty tame in general .. this is why his live solos at hall of fame and otherwise were more fun than his studio output at the time ... he didn't care as much and was having fun so he sounded great



p has the guitar skillz .. he just didn't let it rip as much .. and no .. I am not a fan of his distorted tones .. clean funk tones where always great .. not complaining either just discussing guitar in anal detail .. which is not for everyone i suppose



Of course I can hear the difference between those players. But I'm also not saying Santana was shit at metal, Hendrix was god awful at jazz, and Page was terrible at reggae. I think their forays into those genres were great - for their own style. Page does reggae-ish tones in Dyer Maker, but is he going to be drafted for the Wailers? Hendrix had some incredibly jazzy phrasing in... Shit, everything, but let's pick Third Stone From the Sun. Santana doing metal might be a stretch but so is Prince doing metal. I can't think of a single song Prince would've or should've done a metal solo or have metal tones, lmao.

And yes I agree that Prince often popped off live and you could tell some solos were the first drafts that they truly were (as was his tendency in the studio, single takes barring complete reworking).

I love discussing guitar because I'm a player myself. But 1) I'm not competitive with it - artists deliver what they intend to and it's not my job to tell them it's shit, 2) I like comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. I'll compare Page to May, Beck, Satriani . I'll compare Santana to Frankie Gambale, maybe. I'll compare Hendrix to... Well shit, is there any comparison? Ike Turner, Clapton, SRV, etc. But compare Prince to fucking James Hetfield? Dave Mustaine? Lol! I'm afraid my preference will always take precedent - Prince was an incredible guitarist and Mustaine can't touch the dust in Prince's wake much less any real playing.
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Reply #26 posted 11/23/22 9:33am

funkbabyandthe
babysitters

One of princes greatest guitar moments isnt even a loud one
Its the solo on ICNTTPOYM
He killed it
Theres also the guitar solo on lady cab driver (weird fit with the sing though lol)
Anyone in doubt about his skill or versatility as a guitarist should listen to that
But many many artists and bands recorded output differs to their live versions
I like the fact he let loose playing live in a way he didnt on record
[Edited 11/23/22 9:34am]
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Reply #27 posted 11/23/22 9:56am

RJOrion

"Im Yours"

...case closed...
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Reply #28 posted 11/23/22 11:38am

LoveGalore

RJOrion said:

"Im Yours"

...case closed...


Yup.

If people are really looking for metal tones they gotta go to the right songs. Let's not pretend you'll find metal tones on "Cream" or "When Doves Cry." Prince specialized in emotive phrasing, bends, and really making that thing talk. These are not what I would call hallmarks of Dave Mustaine or James Hetfield or what have you.

Clearly going HAM on the guitar, up front;

"I'm Yours"
"Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad"
"Private Joy"
"Call of the Wild" (unreleased, but still inspired by Page)
"Bob George"
"Rave"

How did anyone forget he was a guitar player? Anyway, homeboy always had chops. You can't even compare him to metal or classic/alt rock players because duh.
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Reply #29 posted 11/23/22 11:44am

LoveGalore

Btw, distortion was never going to be Prince's thing cuz that's clearly not the sound he was ever actually going for.

Prince loved chorus effects, loved an envelope filter in his bass lines, LOVES reverb both pre and post compression, he loved silky, satin, buttery tones because what never left his sound was the deep Bay Area influence ala Santana, etc.

What was he going for? Seduction. Not brutal anthems meant to channel someone's angst. Who the hell is Dave Mustaine seducing but the devil?
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