i was wondering when P writes a song with alot of horns in it, how much of the composition is his and how much is improvised by the player? and if he doesn't play horns or write musical notes - how does he get the song across? does he play it on his guitar or the keys and then they copy it? (same w/ string arrangements too, i guess)

i've often thought about this - but this morning i was listening to the outtake of Desire w/ Prince as lead singer and the sax was just awesome. who was that playing?

...That's gotta be Eric Leeds on sax.

I love Prince's version of 'Desire' by the way.

I've asked that too.
The hornheads get a lot of credit for arrangement.

Look at their site: http://www.bone2bwildmusic.com/

yamomma said:

haven't they just been around since the 90's? and is Michael B. Nelson related to P somehow?

so what, Prince just humms something and they take it from there? (same with Clare Fischer???)

i'm just trying to figure out who i should be praising and giving the credit to . . . i want to believe it's Prince's genious-ness, but sometimes i'm just not so sure.

thanks

Great question-Ive always wondered the same
[This message was edited Thu Feb 19 6:47:32 2004 by FunnyWayOfStoppinTheJuice]

He probably writes the lead lines on keys, and lets the band ad-lib it from there.

http://hornheads.phpwebho...php?p=disc

I just know that in the case of the horns at the end of Billy Jack Bitch that that was all the Hornheads composition..

btw, does anybody know who the Hornheads members are?

i don't think i care cuz the best horn lines in popular music are always on Prince's albums. nuff said. the lines at the end of Mother, Sister, wife, blah, blah are just wicked! BJB is even better!!

altho i think the end of Billy Jack Bitch is credited to P and Michael Nelson.

With regard to horn arrangements by the Hornheadz, mention was made (I believe either on the Hornheadz website or in interview) a few years ago that the Hornheadz wrote the arrangements on the Prince songs where they contributed. This was swiftly corrected, with a note from Michael Nelson on the website stating that the lead lines were invariably contributed by Prince!

I'll see if I can trace the reference.

I've never seen any authoritative confirmation that Prince is related to Michael Nelson - and it's hard to spot the family resemblance!!!!

.
[This message was edited Thu Feb 19 8:20:07 2004 by langebleu]

Eric Leeds definitely plays on Desire and the whole Family album.

I would guess Prince writes a lot of the horn parts on keys, since his early sound and the Time's was distinctive for using synths to do parts normally done by horns.

Once the basic riff is down, I'm sure Eric and Matt kinda improvise the arrangement to suit their style a bit.

And Eric's solos are probably him just jamming what he feels.

With Clare Fischer, it's been reported that Prince sent him tapes and asked Clare to put something on it... which usually ended up being kinda "counter melodies" etc. Clare always gets credit for string arrangements so I think those are more Clare's contribution than P's.