I greatly prefer the unreleased version of Crystal Ball without Claire's contribution. To me, the strings clutter up the song and are distracting. The unreleased version also has the benefit of being longer with less edits.

Anyone else agree, or am I on my own on this one?

100% agree!

I deleted the file when I heard the version with orchestration.

A thousand times WITH.

It is one of Clare's best achievements in orchestrating for Prince.

BonnieC said:

A thousand times WITH.

It is one of Clare's best achievements in orchestrating for Prince.

I love how it was recycled for The Future indeed.

BonnieC said:

A thousand times WITH.

It is one of Clare's best achievements in orchestrating for Prince.

Less is sometimes more, but there's something seriously wrong with y'all rockists always favoring barebone demos over finished (or "overproduced", as y'all say) songs. There's more to life than guitars, bass and drums.

The released version of "Crystal Ball" is one of my favorite Prince songs of all time. Clare's orchestration is fantastic.

databank said:

I find the 2 mins or so intro of the released version grating and tedious so I prefer to play the unreleased one

lurker316 said:

databank said:

Less is sometimes more, but there's something seriously wrong with y'all rockists always favoring barebone demos over finished (or "overproduced", as y'all say) songs. There's more to life than guitars, bass and drums.

I’m not a “rockist”. My preference isn’t because I want songs to be limited to guitars, bass and drums. As I explained in my original post, the strings clutter up the song and are distracting. The unreleased version also has the benefit of being longer with less edits.

You may have other reasons than being a rocker, I'll respect that. But it remains remarkable how many Prince fans favor barebone demos over the finished product, and I believe it usually has to do with their taste for rock. There are cases where I agree (The Line comes to mind: there's an intimacy in the original that gets lost in the finished version — though the latter has other qualities), but in most cases, doing too much of everything is precisely the reason why Prince was such a fascinating composer/arranger

Sometimes I wonder if Clare Fischer got pissed that Prince endlessly sampled Clare's carefully composed orchestrations. He would have got paid to compose for the one track, and then to hear it all over a bunch of other songs must have been a little annoying creatively speaking (and financially...)

I don't see why it would be problematic financially. Clare was paid for his work. End of story. And he was paid for many orchestrations that never saw the light of day.

Prince loved Clare's work. I don't know if he was annoyed (creatively speaking, like you say) or flattered. I don't remember whether Brent ever talked about that.

olb99 said:

I don't see why it would be problematic financially. Clare was paid for his work. End of story. And he was paid for many orchestrations that never saw the light of day.

Prince loved Clare's work. I don't know if he was annoyed (creatively speaking, like you say) or flattered. I don't remember whether Brent ever talked about that.

Not to mention that Brent did many of the arrangements at some point, and Prince never had a clue about it, so I don't think they were upset: it was income and any musician is happy about this

databank said:

fishwillbite said:

databank said:

Not to mention that Brent did many of the arrangements at some point, and Prince never had a clue about it, so I don't think they were upset: it was income and any musician is happy about this

Absolutely. Great to be paid. But the Fischers won’t be earning royalties on any of the sampled work, just the original arrangement. They don’t get a songwriting credit. So they get paid once for a work that is exploited several times over. That’s not a good deal.

WITH! That's the only version I knew for years...when I finally heard it without it, it sounded wrong...