https://reverb.com/news/t...OG3vH5VTE0

Incredible article, incredible beat, one of the greatest drumloops evarr.

rap said:

https://reverb.com/news/t...OG3vH5VTE0

Interesting article. Thanks. Had me looking up and listening to Tower of Power (always thought it was "Tower Power"") and also the drummer. They were definitely a tight band. Lead singer went to jail for 30 years after a drug deal gone bad.

Thanks. That was a great read.

And Prince sampled or replayed Tower of Power twice (that we readily know about) in his music. I love they were on his radar over the years. He certainly learned from them in many, many ways. Horns, drums, arranging.

My takeaway is that...no one seems to know for sure who made this beat, including Garibaldi and Wood. There are snatches of it here and there on the demo flexi, but no smoking gun. Which means that...shocker...Prince made it?

[Edited 6/9/23 10:06am]

Thanks for posting!

Thanks. Really great read & article!

-

Plus this :

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/03/the-ballad-of-dorothy-parker

paraded said:

My takeaway is that...no one seems to know for sure who made this beat, including Garibaldi and Wood. There are snatches of it here and there on the demo flexi, but no smoking gun. Which means that...shocker...Prince made it?

Nah, it has a paper trail. You can dismiss it as "snatches of it here and there," but that alone is enough to know it came from other places. And because Garibaldi doesn't remember it right now doesn't mean he didn't do it. While Prince is innovative and forward thinking, I honestly don't believe he quite had that in him... not yet.

TrivialPursuit said:

The only thing I get out of a vague article like this is that Prince absolutely did this himself, regardless whether or not that drum pattern was allegedly programmed onto a demo flex or anything.

As much of a genius as he was, people still underestimate his abilities.

paraded said:

So wait, what,

Is the debate,

1) Whether or not Prince played the drum track himself physically,

2) Whether or not Prince programmed the drum rhythm himself into the Linn

or

3) Whether he physically played and programmed the drum track?

Admittedly I've never used a Linn or much 80s tech. My knowledge of drum sampler workstations pretty much starts with the MPC3000 so maybe that's why I'm not positive what the debate is here.

Like based on the evidence of the flexi, it seems like he just chopped and resequenced and stacked different portions of the original recording to create the final loop as we know it? Would that not be possible with 80s tech? Didn't Susan Rogers say sometimes he'd get a simple drum loop pattern in the machine but still play individual snares/kicks/hi-hats "live" during overdubs? It sounds like the simple programmed pattern/loop would be the kick/snare pattern and the hi-hats would be the more complex studio and/or machine trickery. The hi hats are almost kind of glitchy, but the basic beginning of the shuffle pattern is there in the flexi.

Like I might be corrupted by being more familiar with 90s tech vs. 80s, but it seems like all the elements are on the flexi, you just gotta mash them together on your machine.

[edit] Roger Linn developed the MPC hm... The plot thickens.

[Edited 6/10/23 3:24am]

[Edited 6/10/23 3:26am]

Eulonzo said:

i guess we should be thankfull that it's not wendy and lisa who programmed it. small blessings and all.

A lot of the comments above suggest people did not read this article closely. There is no debate about who programmed the Linn. It was Art Wood (the session drummer) trying to immitate Garibaldi.

The article quotes both Garibaldi and Linn saying Garibaldi had nothing to do with the program. Then it provides this solution to the mystery:

[Art] Wood takes a listen. He starts grinning. "Oh crap. That's me!" He explains that his original inspiration was, in fact, David Garibaldi—specifically the introduction of Tower Of Power's 1974 funk classic "Squib Cakes." [...]

"I thought that was the coolest little drum solo," Wood says. "Then Roger [Linn] asked me to make some beats up for the machine. And I said, 'If you can get it to approximate the subtleties of a real drummer, let me program this part that David played.' So that four-bar intro led off the whole thing."

Prince's contribution to the programmed beat remains unknown. "That's what I'd like to know, what Prince added to it," Garibaldi says. However, part of "777-9311" may also come from some of the other material Wood programmed on the flexidisc—including a favorite trick that Wood later showed drummer Stan Lynch of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers.

The mystery isn't who programmed the Linn. That was Wood. The myster is how much Prince altered it for his 777-9311.

TrivialPursuit said:

paraded said:

My takeaway is that...no one seems to know for sure who made this beat, including Garibaldi and Wood. There are snatches of it here and there on the demo flexi, but no smoking gun. Which means that...shocker...Prince made it?

Nah, it has a paper trail. You can dismiss it as "snatches of it here and there," but that alone is enough to know it came from other places. And because Garibaldi doesn't remember it right now doesn't mean he didn't do it. While Prince is innovative and forward thinking, I honestly don't believe he quite had that in him... not yet.

See my above post. As the article explains, it was Art Wood trying to imitate Garibaldi.

[Edited 6/10/23 11:14am]

lurker316 said:

paraded said:

lurker316 said:

See my above post. As the article explains, it was Art Wood trying to immiate Garibaldi.

Yes, Wood programmed the Flexi demo. No disagreement there. But the demo has at most fragments of the two measures of 777-9311. I’ve listened to it several times and it isn’t anything close to the version on the album. And there is still no evidence that these two measures we all know and love exist on a Linn as stock beats, right? Sure, Prince could have listened to these demos and sampled tiny slices or recreated them, but unless I’m missing something the huge leap from these half second fragments to the final product is still where some genius stepped in to conceive of the overall effect. I don’t really see it as much of a mystery if all there was was this Flexi demo. The answer is that Prince altered it enormously, completely rejiggered it into a legendary beat. [Edited 6/10/23 8:58am]

yeah that was what I got from reading the article, too. so are we missing something?

lurker316 said:

The mystery isn't who programmed the Linn. That was Wood. The myster is how much Prince altered it for his 777-9311

It's not a mystery though after including the Flexi? Some measures are similar but not exact, like paraded states here:

paraded said:

Yes, Wood programmed the Flexi demo. No disagreement there. But the demo has at most fragments of the two measures of 777-9311. I’ve listened to it several times and it isn’t anything close to the version on the album. And there is still no evidence that these two measures we all know and love exist on a Linn as stock beats, right? Sure, Prince could have listened to these demos and sampled tiny slices or recreated them, but unless I’m missing something the huge leap from these half second fragments to the final product is still where some genius stepped in to conceive of the overall effect. I don’t really see it as much of a mystery if all there was was this Flexi demo. The answer is that Prince altered it enormously, completely rejiggered it into a legendary beat. [Edited 6/10/23 8:58am]

like funkyandthebabysitters above me implies we don't have like an exact math % breakdown, but he did for sure "flip" the "sample" like all the great drum samplers in history going purely by the flexi... He had stock sounds and core elements, but 100% altered the order and "feel" of how they were delivered. More J Dilla than Puff Daddy from a more hiphop sampling perspective. You can tell this just trying to recreate it using the Flexi elements in modern software, let alone true tech from 1982.

Also the shuffle pattern seems like where most of the adjustment/flipping came in, and the shuffle is easily the most important/innovative part of the beat and totally looks forward by like 3 decades to trap music which never gets mentioned, maybe cause average Prince fan probably doesn't like trap.

[Edited 6/10/23 22:43pm]

"777-9311" (The Time), "Make-Up" (Vanity 6) & "Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)" (Prince) are all EQUALLY DISGUSTING BEATS!!!