When is the last time Prince played his onw 'real' drums in one of his songs?? It seems to me that whenever he plays all the instruments in one of his tunes he always uses a drum machine...

Soladeo

soladeo1 said:

Unless you count the 'Crystal Ball' CD set (which was released in 1998 and contained a number of Prince's drum performances) or 'The Hits/The B-Sides', the last time Prince released a recording featuring himself on acoustic drums was probably on 'Lovesexy'. This is hard to confirm because Sheila and Prince tend to sound similar on drums. But I'm pretty sure Prince played drums on at least one track on 'Lovesexy'...

...anyone else with 'Turn It Up 2.0' in front of them that can help on this one?

-SWANGlovesPrince'sdrumming

SWANG said:

I saw him play drums in a concert once.. does that count?

enjoyniki said:

I think he was talking about studio...

...If not, then I guess last December in Vegas, he opened the show with a brief drum solo...

..Batman was all drum machine, Come was loops and/or Mike Bland on drums, Emancipation was loops, machines, or Mike Bland or Kirk Johnson on drums, the Truth was machines or Kirk on percussion, Rave was machines or Kirk...

-SWANG'sback

soladeo1 said:

Its just the era, most musicians were embracing technology from the late 70's to present day. Drum machines were especially popular during the 80's so Prince was just doing what was popular at the time. As Prince would say, its a Sign O The Times

cloud9mission said:

Guess so, but it's a pity. I love Prince work on drums, maybe he is not an incredible drummer, but he always has a little touch of magic on everything he plays.

JavierAlcalde said:

Tell me about it, Im a drummer myself. Those bastards with their drum machines are putting us poor drummers out of buisiness. Like to see em try to program some of the stuff Im playing lol.

cloud9mission said:

Sure, man, I'm musician and I love to play with good drummers. I suppose they do that because it's faster, you program, and you don't lose time. And sometimes I love drum machines (poor musicians on the whole, my friend, the last drums samples are almost perfect, and same for the other instruments, but they can imitate the human touch), but not all the time.
For this reason, at least, I love Prince gathered John Blackwell, he is an incredible drummer, and now Prince's songs have more real drums.
Do you like John?

Didn't Prince do the drums on Cybersingle?

cloud9mission said:

I'm a web designer. Now, did you do your website yourself with a copy of Dreamweaver, or did you hire a professional web designer to hand-code it?

phunkymunky said:

it sounds like Blackwell to me.

I have it on good authority he played his own drums yesterday, he also blew his own trumpet.

Boom Boom !

This looks quite recent... 2002?

JavierAlcalde said:

John blows my mind. The best drummer alive at the moment

unremarkable said:

Im a webdesigner too, I dont use dreamweaver though, I hand coded everything. I just find it easier that way as dreamweaver seems to put things where you dont want them.

phunkymunky said:

thats definatly blackwell

PRETTYMAN!

gottagottagotta said:

I was thinking about that song. But not sure if drums are real or machine.

He also played Drums on The Rave un2 the Year 2000 dvd.Its just a shame that he does'nt get enough praise for his ability to play most instuments superbly.Its always Slash from Guns and Roses that get the good feedback and also flea from the REd hot Chilli Peppers with the guitar work but any music lover with intellegence knows that prince could wipe the floor with any of them.

JavierAlcalde said:

It's a drumloop...

Mike Bland played drums on Cybersingle...same session date as Baby Knows...

Mike told me himself...

-SWANGlovesit

SWANG said:

I bet on it. But why doesn't Prince play drums on records now? I cannot understand why. Is he lazy? Because some of the drum loops or programmed rhythms are very simple, nothing different from the real drums he played in past.

JavierAlcalde said:

I had a long conversation with Hans (Prince's former engineer) at the 1st celly. According to him, Prince likes to work very fast in the studio...Apparently, he's usually too impatient to be bothered laying down a live drum track. It's faster for him to throw a loop together, or even have Kirk come up with one (which was what he was more apt to do at the time). This was in 2000, btw...

-SWANGdrumshisfingers

SWANG said:

And I wonder. Does Prince practise on drums or not? He's supposed to play guitar and keys all the time. And my question is if he practises on drums. Has he got a drum set in his private musical room or not?

He played drums on The Truth
I think he played some percussion on One Nite Alone (Studio)

Also: It is very easy to piece together songs on Protools and other studio software when there is a drum machine or loop which is in perfect time. It is very difficult to play drums to a click track. Knowing how Prince likes to write a song or several in a 24 hour span, using real drums would be nearly impossible to get this done. Also, I read an interview once about why he uses drum machines. He said that he had a hard time finding a drummer at two or three in the morning to come to the studio when he had a song idea.

More about Protools: Basically when you have everything synched in perfect time with a drum machine, you can cut and paste and edit very easily with the click of a mouse. I have recorded drums and it is much easier to produce a song when there is a drum machine layed down first. It does not sound as live, however, in the end (the reason why I like Prince's music with real drums more).

Lovesexy: I believe most of that is Sheila E. Same with Black Album. There is also drum machine on several of those songs.

comeon said:

I know Pro tools, I have recorded an album using that software, and you're absolutely right.
But what I don't know is why he doesn't drum never.
And about The Truth. What songs are you talking about? I think there are only 2 songs with drums, and they are beat programming. Are you talking about percussion?
I'm interested in knowing if congas on Man in uniform are real or not.

I'm a drummer, and of course I love real drummers, but when I DJ now, there's nothin like a funky drum machine and some cowbells and congas to get em dancin. The old Prince tunes with real drums always sounded best when mixed with a drum machine (lets go crazy, 1999, etc.)

The neptunes do a great job of mixing machines with live drums- justin timberlake's "Love You" is very funky live drums, and Rock Your Body has great drum machine sounds.

JavierAlcalde said:

Why play drums anymore when you have a powerhouse like John Blackwell?

eldog98 said:

I love John, he is unbelievable, but when Prince plays all instruments, I prefer Prince on real drums than machines all the time.

I know this isn't the most recent example, but I fell in love with Prince playing drums on Tambourine.