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Thread started 06/08/23 8:27pm

rap

The Secret Origin of Prince’s Most Famous Drum Machine Beat

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Reply #1 posted 06/09/23 1:18am

WhisperingDand
elions

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

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Reply #2 posted 06/09/23 8:38am

TheTruth123

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.

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Reply #3 posted 06/09/23 9:27am

lurker316

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Thanks. That was a great read.



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Reply #4 posted 06/09/23 9:35am

TrivialPursuit

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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.

"eye don’t really care so much what people say about me because it is a reflection of who they r."
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Reply #5 posted 06/09/23 9:59am

paraded

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]

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Reply #6 posted 06/09/23 10:06am

TwiliteMan

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Thanks for posting!

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Reply #7 posted 06/09/23 10:33am

Vannormal

Thanks. smile Really great read & article!

-

Plus this :

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

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves. And wiser people so full of doubts" (Bertrand Russell 1872-1972)
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Reply #8 posted 06/09/23 3:36pm

TrivialPursuit

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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.

"eye don’t really care so much what people say about me because it is a reflection of who they r."
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Reply #9 posted 06/09/23 7:15pm

paraded

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.


Well, I’m willing to buy Garibaldi and Wood are responsible in the way grandparents or great grandparents are responsible. But Prince seems to be the parent of the beat unless anything else is revealed.

If involved it is weird that Garibaldi wouldn’t at least go “yeah, maybe I did, I don’t remember” instead of expressing puzzlement at his own involvement. And would Roger Linn really have that bad a memory about his iconic Linn to flat out deny Garibaldi was a key contributor to its stock programming?

Sure, Prince probably heard the flexi demo, I buy that, and maybe culled some licks from it, but we have zero evidence (or correct me if I’m wrong) that anyone but him and maybe Morris sat down to painstakingly construct these two measures of iconic patterning. I know it’s hard to accept because it is the most impressive drum beat of all his beats, even trouncing Dorothy Parker, but I’d say he had it in him, in the same way he seems to have had the Sound 80 piano parts in him from the very beginning.
[Edited 6/9/23 19:18pm]
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Reply #10 posted 06/09/23 10:20pm

funkbabyandthe
babysitters
Great piece
I need to listen to all the audio though to determine who did what
[Edited 6/9/23 22:21pm]
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Reply #11 posted 06/10/23 1:12am

Eulonzo

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.

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Reply #12 posted 06/10/23 1:15am

bwaaatch

paraded said:

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.


Well, I’m willing to buy Garibaldi and Wood are responsible in the way grandparents or great grandparents are responsible. But Prince seems to be the parent of the beat unless anything else is revealed.

If involved it is weird that Garibaldi wouldn’t at least go “yeah, maybe I did, I don’t remember” instead of expressing puzzlement at his own involvement. And would Roger Linn really have that bad a memory about his iconic Linn to flat out deny Garibaldi was a key contributor to its stock programming?

Sure, Prince probably heard the flexi demo, I buy that, and maybe culled some licks from it, but we have zero evidence (or correct me if I’m wrong) that anyone but him and maybe Morris sat down to painstakingly construct these two measures of iconic patterning. I know it’s hard to accept because it is the most impressive drum beat of all his beats, even trouncing Dorothy Parker, but I’d say he had it in him, in the same way he seems to have had the Sound 80 piano parts in him from the very beginning.
[Edited 6/9/23 19:18pm]



I hear snatches of Dorothy Parker on that flexi, too.
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Reply #13 posted 06/10/23 3:17am

WhisperingDand
elions

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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]

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