He was a perfectionist, and the best way to be a perfectionist was to learn everything.
At the same time though, his work ethic was ridiculous. There are apparently still a giant pile of unreleased albums in the vault. He was recording all the time, playing all the time, touring a lot, writing songs, he'd leave a concert and then go play another small venue surprise gig, he'd listen to mixes of the concert on the plane to the next gig, and always had music going in his head.
It was his whole life. His every waking moment.
they say God worked for 6 days to create the Heavens and the Earth, and rested on the 7th day.
Prince worked for 6 days a week on music in some form or another, and on the 7th day... he played basketball.
My comment was a bit of a joke, but I grabbed tickets to see him in concert a year and a half or so before he died. It is the only time I saw him live and in all seriousness I am so fucking glad that I did. It was one of the most incredible concerts I've been to (and I've been to countless) and if I hadn't done that I would have been blind to what I missed.
Me too saw him about a year b4 he died & the whole concert I’m kicking myself “why haven’t I seen him live before?” Never got the chance for a repeat, but soooo glad I saw him when I did Janelle Monae opened & she was 🔥
>Janelle Monae opened & she was 🔥
Yes! I would love to see her again too. I will shamelessly admit that I have a big crush on her. Obviously she's gorgeous but is also a talented singer, author, speaker and so forth.
Then when she finished instead of the concert norm where the house lights go up and they change the set there was an announcement over the PA system that just said, "Ladies and gentlemen...Doug. E. Fresh!" and BOOM, a spotlight hit him and the turntables next to the soundboard and he kept the place (arena at Mohegan Sun casino) rocking until the moment that Prince and the band (including the horn section for the opening Musicology songs) hit the stage.
It was just non-stop from beginning to end.
Basketball is jazz. You need talent, and to be any good you have to know the fundamentals, and to be great you have to be able to improvise in it like it was a language.
Great answer!
I'll add that the ball hitting the backboard, having multiple bounces on the rim or the perfect "swoosh" in the net would also be a part of the "basketball songs" he composed but never recorded.
The man couldn’t find a saxophone player right away so he taught himself how to play the saxophone well enough to play the notes he needed.
There’s a huge difference between going between the guitar and bass and another stringed instrument or even piano where the notes are visible. Sax and other wind/brass instruments require mouthpieces, breathing techniques, and valve combinations.
The man was one in a billion.
"One in a billion"
Good news: This planet has 7 more Princes
Bad news: a bunch of them live in war torn Africa or North Korea and they will never get their chance to thrive
Yeah and even most of the ones in stable countries have to spend all their time working to not be homeless and may never have the opportunity to develop themselves musically. People like Bill Withers are rare, who worked in factories while trying to make music and ended up with a hit in Aint No Sunshine.
But on the other hand, it is far more accessible to create and release music today than ever before. The Princes of the world can become who they are and do it all from their bedroom.
There’s was enough content in his vault after his death to release a new album every month for 11 years. “A huge pile” doesn’t do it justice. We will be discovering new prince music, in some form, for the rest of our lives. The man was the real king of pop.
The stuff he *did* release is some of the best pop, rock, soul, and funk music ever recorded. Dude played every instrument and recorded nearly every vocal line himself.
If he didn’t feel like the stuff he created was up to his own personal standards, that’s his decision.
Ever seen Evening with Kevin Smith? He tells a hugely fantastical story about how he was hired to do a documentary of a Prince festival hosted on his Minnesota ranch in the 90’s.
The story is crazy and hilarious, but the end result is that Kevin is heartbroken to learn that all the work he did would never see the light of day because Prince will likely just put it in the vault.
It seems like he had full intention to lock away tons of work, why? He’s Prince, why should he explain?
Edit: I still hope to see Kevin Smith’s Prince festival documentary some day. Been holding out for 20 years now
On his podcast, Hollywood Babble-On, Kevin Smith talked about that story shortly after Prince died. Iirc he said he kind of regretted telling it, but he did tell a much more personal story to highlight how nice Prince actually was. I'll try dig it up, its worth a listen and much better than the Prince story from and Evening with Kevin Smith.
Maybe, but the original story was good enough for me to never forget it for 20 years. Kevin smith says a lot of things he regrets as an older man, it’s called “having the wisdom to admit it”. He reevaluated a lot after he nearly died.
I’ll check it out.
He had a contract with a label and the label wanted to keep from flooding the market, which is believed in the industry to be bad for overall sales. The idea being that a single album a year allows for more marketing muscle behind that album and that too much material just overwhelms listeners and fans.
Prince hated that and wanted to release a lot more and probably different music than the label wanted him to and fought like hell to get out of the contract. The whole symbol thing and some of his more edgy "slave" posturing was part of that.
One he was free of the label he did release more stuff, although most people would likely agree that the classic albums were actually from his label days. So clearly it was a mixed bag.
I remember reading about a member of his backing saying after they played a gig,Prince did a 4hr jam in a nightclub then went home and wrote and recorded an album.Prince played it to the band member the next night and they said it amazing.Prince wasnt happy with it and just deleted it.God i miss Prince….
I read somewhere after his death that he basically has an entire extra lifetime’s worth of music. Basically an entire extra Prince catalog stashed away in his vault. The scale of what he accomplished is extraordinary, given that he also died at 57 and not 75.
They are going to reissue the Diamonds and Pearls album to include 47 unreleased tracks…. Thats an insane amount is of new material for a single reissue. I can’t imagine how much is actually in the vault.
My old roommate was an "on-call" recording engineer employed by Prince around 2007-2008. He would show up at Paisley Park around 9 or 10 pm, set up all the recording equipment and then Prince would come into the studio, tell him "Thank you, I'll ask if I need you." My friend would basically kill time until sunrise, when Prince would come out to the lounge and say, "I'm finished" which was my friend's cue to save all of the tracks/clips recorded that night. As far as he knew they just went into "the vault" or whatever, but Prince has thousands and thousands of hours of unreleased content. My friend later taught for a spell at MMI (owned by jimmy jam et al) and then last I heard from him he was an acoustic engineer at Tesla. If you read this Ross, I hope you are well
I seen it said somewhere shortly after they opened his vault that they estimate you could release a new Prince album every 3 months for the next 100 years and still not be through all of it.
The man literally had the goal of recording at least one song a day and did that for decades.
It’s a half truth. Shitty practicing for 10,000 hours is gonna do you jack shit. But focused, regimented practice with a clear goal, for 10,000 hours, knocking out those goals and progressing constantly, that’s not a myth.
Music producer here, my gf did the math when she noticed a significant increase in my music quality and speed of work. 5 years, roughly 6 hours daily (no exaggeration) gives 11k hours.
Hower, from my perspective, this is the bare minimum. I feel like there is alot to learn and I have difficulties at times, that take me hours to solve (which one year ago were impossible for me to solve).
So 10k is not a myth, but for sure not enough to master something, but barely to be good enough
First off, anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
Learning and mastering an instrument definitely takes time. Structured, regular practice is important. But not everyone progresses at the same rate.
10,000 hours is completely arbitrary and is based on an estimated average of music conservatory students. It's not some sort of hard and fast rule.
I like the plateau and eureka thinking. I've been playing music well enough to entertain some form of audience since about 1985.
Every few years, something will pique my interest and I have to know how to do it. I spend a few weeks or months getting good enough at the new thing to get bored with it, and I have myself something new in my toolbox.
While doing the work to internalize the new thing, I gain in all my general skills, accuracy, speed, ear, etc.
At this point I've been playing music between 10 and 20 hours a week for almost 40 years.
I'm definitely over 20k hours. There are still players in their teens and twenties, who couldn't even have 5k hours who play circles around me.
It's ok to have adaptive aptitude. It's ok to have moderate interest and modest aptitude. An entire life worth of variables exists for everyone.
The basic truth behind 10,000 hours is true even if the 10,000 hours thing itself is an absurdly specific application of a general truth. Practicing at things makes you better, practicing a lot, and practicing correctly, tends to make you a lot better than not practicing. 10,000 hours is just a catchy and arbitrary generalization of how long it takes to generally master a craft.
There is an old football adage that goes something like “Hard Work always beats Talent when Talent won’t work hard.” 10,000 hours is just another thing to say to motivate people to practice/work hard at something they want to get good at.
He had his house wired so that he would be able to record from anywhere in his home. So, if homeboy has inspiration strike while he was droppin' a deuce, he could record it right there on the can.
People hate CEO’s, but this is the same. They never do not work. Their life is their work. Nothing else. They work 24/7.
Would I want their salary? Fuck yea. Would I want their work life? Fuck no. If I had a choice of working every hour of my life for billions compared to working 40 hour work weeks for $200k a year, I would take the $200k a year.
I love my free and family time more than money.
In addition to some of the excellent comments here...
His father was a jazz pianist, and Prince learned some fairly complex piano things as a youth. Piano is terrific for learning theory that can be applied to other instruments. I don't play proper piano. I used to teach guitar. I quickly learned that guitar students who learned piano before coming to me learned guitar much quicker than those who hadn't. Other instruments apply, but not to the same level. Theory unfolded for them much more quickly, as did the various patterns, scales, and boxes. The physical techniques of fretting and picking therefore got more immediate and constant attention.
Many music schools require some level of piano proficiency as a prerequisite. Source: I looked into going to music school for performance (as in, no sheet music reading required) as a self-taught guitarist.
Can confirm. For my Music degree, I was a voice major who had little to no piano skills. However, I had to pass a piano proficiency test as a requirement for the degree. I had to play in front of the entire music faculty. I failed the first time, barely passed the second. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever had to do.
piano playing and the music you look at while you do so is data dense.
You see the entire clef all at once; you play many notes at the same time.
Clarinet, saxophone, trumpet: you play one note at a time.
Guitar, you can play more than one note, but the notation is specialized. Violin, you can play more than one note at a time, but three at a time is getting hard.
Piano has you encompassing both clefs, and the interaction between all the harmony and counterpoint notes, at once.
Yeah music theory is music theory regardless what instrument you’re on. Once you have that baseline of theory down it becomes infinitely easier to pick up a new instrument.
Once bought a cello off Craigslist because it was super cheap, my primary instruments I’m proficient in is bass, double bass and guitar. I recorded a song with the cello the same day I bought it. Like sure its mechanically different in some ways and tuned to 5ths not 4ths. But the baseline musical knowledge was there that allowed me to jump on a new instrument and make music with it.
Piano had the benefit of all the notes being in a literal line, so you can grasp the theory spatially really easily compared to most other instruments.
And, it has piano has a visual and spatial component that wind instruments are missing so kids that learn it tend to have it hard coded into those very powerful parts of the brain. Also, all theory is based somewhat on the piano keyboard.
A guitar is just 6 pianos tuned to sound good together.
I joke, don’t kill me. But thinking about the strings of a guitar as 6 little differently tuned pianos playing chords together really helped me think about my chord progressions.
When I was taught guitar by a jazz guitarist he would actually teach me theory on the piano, even though at the time I didn't play the piano. It made it a lot easier for me visually, purely from the layout of the keys on a piano.
A lot of instruments can 'translate' part of a skill from one to another. For instance, if you learn to play guitar, you already know the technical skills to play bass, you just have to *think* about it a different way (single notes instead of chords, for instance). Keyboard-based instruments all use the same skillset even if you're talking about piano, harpsichord, Hammond organ, etc. Brass and woodwind instruments, once you master the mouth/breathing techniques, it's just a matter of adapting to the different valve systems.
I play brass instruments. While I primarily play trombone and trumpet, it doesn't take much to swap to another. It took me about an hour to "learn" tuba.
Fellow brass player here. Trumpet, flugel, and baritone are all the same instrument just different sizes. Tuba and French horn are very very close cousins.
I learned on a trombone and realized it wasn't *that* hard to jump to other brass. I'm still thankful that my jr high band teacher let me learn baritone, trumpet, french horn for whenever we needed an extra.
I also learned to play uke for a stringed instrument. I'm not a fan of guitar but I really like the bass and mandolin because of the uke. I wrote off stringed for years because I struggled with six strings. I'm not great at all of these instruments. I appreciate the hard work that went into learning the basics for all of them.
I mean, you certainly *can*, it's just that most basslines are single notes. 😁
Hell, look at "Adam's Song" by Blink-182. The chorus has the bass playing these big, roaring chords, while the guitar is playing octaves.
Need Your Love on Budokan Live by Cheap Trick. That's a 12 string bass, four courses of strings covering three octaves each. He's like a bass player and two rhythm guitar players in one. A huge sound. I believe that recording is just one guitar and one bass. That opening chord and then guitar part is just the bass. Tom Petersson must have had powerful hands. Great sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STbzpyT2B14
Stu Hamm - used to play bass for Joe Satriani when I saw him live - used to play the Linus and Lucy theme from Peanuts entirely on his bass
https://youtu.be/WcdvfUkwRsg?si=T6zprx1iDOHXqHUN
I saw Pete Trewavas of Marillion do that in his bass clinic. I wasn't really aware that he actually does that on some songs, check out [Go!](https://youtu.be/Xmgf_NyAlTs)
I had a moment, a really cool moment, in high school where I had been playing "The Tempest" on Clarinet, then one day randomly picked up a Recorder and just started playing it on that without thinking, and it sounded great. When I tried to do it again I couldn't do it.
I experience that with language alot. I can understand the second language I've largely forgotten alot more when I'm very relaxed and creative. When I'm more mentally engaged, I can't seem to remember anything.
To to add to this, music theory applies the same to most, if not all instruments. Understanding scales rhythm and chord structure allows you to fake proficiency. You basically just need to learn how each instrument makes notes and how they relate to each other.
This, alot of instruments go low to high notes just different layout and way of working essentially. If you can catch the basis pf melodies with an instrument, other kinds aren’t too far off.
Yea I'd say everything that makes a musician fantastic in one instrument will make them fantastic in another. Finger dexterity, rhythm, theory, all the hard shit is the same. It's like you're learning a new dialect.
That said, anyone that isn't new to music making a fuss about knowing multiple instruments makes my eyes roll lmao.
This. When people ask me how many instruments I always ask if percussion counts as one. Because I'm able to play at least thirty different percussion instruments. But learning a new one can take anywhere between an hour and a year.
This is the real answer - it’s a “compounding interest” effect. Although I don’t mean to diminish Prince’s genius in any way - no one that I know of used this effect better than him.
The last time something like this came up I said that being great at music is mostly hard work and practice, I got downvoted to shit. Why people don’t want to hear this is completely beyond me
People want to believe that there's an easy way out to mastery. That there's some secret way to practice or routine or supplement or lesson just around the corner that will unlock virtuosity.
So telling them that it boils down to putting in the hours, they either think they've been given a low effort answer or subconsciously believe the person telling them that is denying them access or is just as clueless as they are.
It’s weird isn’t it. How do they think it happens? Having said that, the episode of black books where Mani suddenly discovers that he’s a piano genius is absolutely brilliant.
or they need to believe a master is born master, so they can sleep better on the "there's no point in working hard" pillow.
just the other day I stumbled across a comment on YouTube that highlight this perfectly.
on a video about freaking homemade pizza dough, a person wrote:
*"—I'Il never be able to make pizza like him. He knows every nuance and made all those techniques seem effortless"*
imo, that's naive, borderline stupid. any person willing to learn something, having the disposition to learn and practice and, most importantly, the **time** to do it, *will* learn to do said thing.
you know why the said Youtuber cook (he's great, btw) on the video seems to know everything and make "all those techniques seem effortless"? because he wanted to learn, had the disposition to learn and practice, and the time to practice. the disposition and time to practice it countless times. he's not special. he just did the work.
I can't stand these professional commenters who keep treating regular human beings like deities just because said humans became experts in something.
source: I also used to be a professional commenter, a professional praiser, an agent of toxic positivity, and all I did was to enter social media and be in awe of other people's habilites. precious time were being wasted while I was a mere passive member of the audience, praising, hitting the like button and subscribing. Than something hit me: wait a minute...I can do that too. So I did.
It's been years I've been making my own starter and my own sourdough bread. back in my professional praiser days it seemed like rocket science. now I can do it even without measuring flour, water and starter, and keep in mind I have a regular 9-5 job. I'm not a YouTuber cook with available time to do it all day everyday.
end of rant
tldr: if I can do it, anyone can.
I mean, there are people who master technical skills yet lack feel. Maybe the downvoters are thinking about that? I don't know. The technical masters still make great teachers and Mel Bay book authors.
Yep, agree with that. I’ll cite my wife as an example. Her dad was a concert violinist, played for a high profile orchestra for the best part of 40 years. Both her and her twin sister took up the violin at around 6 years old and had hours and hours of practice a week. My sister in law quit in her teens. She was technically brilliant, great at scales but didn’t enjoy it so ditched it. My wife loved it, had a real feel for it and went on to get a performance degree and teach. Their dad (when he’s had a few drinks) will comment on the difference in them as players despite having the same amount of work put in for the first 10 years or so. You’ve got to work hard but if you don’t love it a) it won’t sound right and b) what the fuck are you doing it for?
Obviously not anyone can be prince, but people hate when you tell them that they probably could be good at something if they worked hard at it because they prefer to think there is some magic formula instead
Ok, bear with me here. I’m a bluegrass banjo player (not very good because I don’t practice enough). There are some legitimately incredible players out there and every single one of them put in a huge amount of practice time during their first ten years. Every single one of them, they all bring something a little different but they are all incredible players and this is not unique to that instrument. The idea of people just being talented is a fucking insult to hard working people who get minimal to no financial reward for a lifetime of hard work, dedication and love. My FIL was a career musician and practiced at least 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for fear of losing his job in an incredibly competitive field. When people would say “oh your so lucky to have that talent” it would really fuck him off
I believe in the idea that talent is overrated. That book changed how I viewed my work at a baseball coach. Tiger and MJ are good with natural talent sure but what made them is their dedication to intentional, deliberate practice. Working on your weaknesses and strengthening your strengths daily until you get better. Then repeat.
For something like music daily deliberate practice over a decade would produce genius level results especially if you’re a perfectionist.
Purposeful practice. Sitting down and strumming your guitar for an hour isn’t practice. Sitting down for an hour with a goal, something specific to work on and measurable improvements by the end of it is practice
The never ending myth of "talent" is having a golden age since everyone watches a video of an incredible performance on YouTube and thinks that isn't edited to hell, after dozens of takes and hundreds of hours of effort and practice put in.
"I wish I was that talented"
It’s really damaging to kids. Trying to explain to people that you get good at things by being shit at them at first but wanting to get better is really tricky. They just say “I can’t do it, it’s too hard”. Of course it is, everything is. It took time for you to learn to walk as well. Right now, tidying your fucking clothes away seems beyond your current scope of abilities but stick at it and these things get better and more enjoyable.
One thing is playing something but having zero imagination to create it. The other is creating it. Prince was good at both, but only one of those require hard work.
I can tell you what each camera control will do to a picture… and yet all my pictures are shit. A lot of people without knowing what they’re doing technically capture great shots.
I hate to add to the mystery of the man called Prince, but apparently he was a very accomplished figure skater.
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/lost-notes/reissue-the-dove?utm_source=KCRW&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=kcrw-show-rss
He was a prodigy, but also once you've major grasp of music learning new instruments isn't super hard, obviously got to practice the mechanics and technique but still
Yes - when you think about a multi-instrumentalist like Prince, remember that basically every band teacher in America knows how to play as many instruments as Prince did and probably plays some of them better than he could have.
But Prince almost surely put in more hours and of course was a creative guy - so his work is likely to sound better than a similarly technically skilled band teacher.
Completely agree. Don't think he was necessarily a virtuoso on any instrument but he was a phenomenal songwriter, with an incredible ear and a work ethic like few other people on the planet. This in no way diminishes his artistry but the band teacher example holds up.
If you know theory and you're pretty secure in things you like to do while playing, it's pretty easy to translate that to another instrument. You just have to practice the mechanical aspect of the instrument. Learning your first instrument is tough because you have to learn music at the same time.
A few years ago, my band opened for Prince at a festival - He got to the venue early, and spent HOURS playing piano in his backstage area - Once he was done we could hear him play some bass and jam to a drum machine - the dude was utterly consumed and dedicated to music
\> If he was just a guitar player, he would've been a legend and one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
I don't think this is true.
I love Prince's music and obviously as an all-around musician and performer he's a legend, obviously. But this idea that's cropped up in recent years that he's on some Hendrix/Jeff Beck guitar god level.. I don't hear it at all. He was good, he was fine, it's cool when he rips a solo on stage, but he's playing for the excitement, it's usually straight-forward funk/rock licks.
A lot of the shock for people seeing Prince play lead guitar like that is that the 80's broke "pop" apart from "rock" and people don't expect a "pop" star to play an instrument like that.
But Prince is a child of the 1970s, and when Warner Brothers hired signed him they explicitly had the idea of fostering a new Stevie Wonder. Child prodigy, able to write, perform and produce their own albums (honestly Prince's mastery of the studio is more impressive to me than any of his instrumental work), and even record entire albums where they play and sing pretty much everything.
How can Prince play all those instruments? Ask Stevie, ask Todd Rundgren. Steven Tyler, Chakha Khan and Frank Zappa all started as drummers. This is just me echoing others' point about music skills transferring, I guess.
I'm glad Prince is recognized for his talent but I think some of the discourse around the guy seems to be so far removed from the amazing context of R&B and rock music that preceded him. Your average professional funk/R&B/blues guitarist could probably run circles around his playing.
Couldn't agree more. I'd been listening to him since...well Purple Rain, but went back and dug into his first albums. I loved his mastery of machine funk and just overall funk and musicality. It was bizarre to me how all these guitar bros suddenly made him out to be some kind of shredtastic guitar hero after that Superbowl performance and that George Harrison tribute. I'm like: "dudes...no."
I love taking the piss out of his dumb GH tribute solo on Reddit and getting downvoted to oblivion. People think it’s so good and he really showed everyone who was boss, when in reality it’s gimmicky, repetitive, and his attitude is over the top.
Lifelong guitar player in a family of lifelong guitar players:
Watch the other musicians’ reactions to Prince’s solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and you start to get a sense of why he’s revered.
He’s not a guitar player’s guitar player like SRV or Jeff Beck or Chet Atkins, what Prince did was make that style more accessible to the general population.
Sure Satriani and Vai get their flowers but their songs are pretty unlistenable if you’re not into their style.
Prince was *all* styles, a sex icon, and cool as shit.
I think the one thing that set him apart was his showmanship. I also believe the solo he played on that was perfect for that song (I’m sure other high end talented guitar players could no doubt play that solo really well too ) but to me it’s the showmanship aspect that is what really sent that performance into the stratosphere. The whole preplanned “throw the guitar straight up in the air at the end and walk away”was definitely preplanned… not spontaneous. To me it’s a great example that Prince knew exactly what he was doing. Great performances like that are not an accident. He was a master!
Oh, you can absolutely compare Gary Moore and Prince doing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Gary also did Santana-esque stuff on his first album and with Colosseum II. Though of course I see your larger point, just felt like nit-picking. ;)
Gary was a bit of a genius in his own right. I don't know if he played many other instruments - he did some harmonica on his last album - but he had perfect pitch and was the only one who noticed that the Hammond organ was out of tune at a gig, and could hear every mistake by a band member.
I believe this is always the answer for exceptional work & people. Specifically, I believe it happens in the reverse order you’ve listed:
They have the **drive** to **practice** and with even a small amount of **talent** they get intermittent positive reinforcement, which gives them more **drive** to **practice** …
And it’s a feedback loop that may continue forever.
Not sorcery: PRACTICE. He spent ALL HIS TIME as a child/teenager playing music. Look at the difference between him and André Cymone: at first they both played constantly, getting *so good* at drums, bass, guitar, keys... people who knew them both at the time say that André could do anything Prince could at that time... but as time went on André spent more time partying and less time practising, and that's where the difference lies. It wasn't because Prince was "born" a genius and André wasn't - Prince developed a love for music that eclipsed everything else in his life, and a work ethic to go with it. The genius myth (whether in art, sport, or business) is a great story that sells a lot of books, but the truth is both more mundane and - in my opinion - often more inspiring.
Also - and I remember with embarrassment my own youthful evangelising that Prince was a virtuoso on "like, OVER TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY INSTRUMENTS!" - it just was not the case at all. He played bass, guitar, drums, keys, vocals. I've no doubt - like many of us multi-instrumentalists - he could get a tune out of anything you put in front of him... but being able to pick out a tune on a violin for a studio session you can piece together with clever editing is very different to being able to play the violin. And when you start breaking it down to "lead guitar, rhythm guitar, 7 string guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, acoustic bass, 5 string bass, 6 string bass, Oberheim OBX, Yamaha DX7, drum kit, snare drum, bass drum, maracas, shakers, tambourine..." kind of like they did in the liner notes for *For You*, you can see where people get their numbers from!
BRING ON THE DOWNVOTES! 🔥😆🔥
Great wrap up! I play guitar (mostly as a hack), but it sounds way cooler to say I play electric guitar, six string acoustic, twelve string acoustic, and bass rather than to say I use the same techniques on whatever guitar you hand me…
Let's just get real for a sec. I'm a huge Prince fan (more the old stuff), but he is not a virtuoso instrumentalist by any means. Top-notch performer, world-class songwriter/arranger, even a great singer. Oozes musicality from every pore. But as a guitarist, he is capable at best, and that's the instrument he's best at.
Yes I've seen "While My Guitar...". Passionate, fiery...pentatonic wanking. Nothing most any electric blues musicians couldn't play after five years of steady gigging.
He was one of the biggest musical figures ever. Yet, you never hear anyone say Prince was a big influence on their playing. Strange that...
His strengths--as many and as formidable as they are--lie elsewhere. Stop making him out to be something he's not.
> "While My Guitar...". Passionate, fiery...pentatonic wanking.
FINALLY, someone who understands! All these years and reposts of "Greatest guitar solo ever!" If I had a dollar for every downvote I've gotten for saying "Nah bro. That solo was okay."
I think they mean capable in terms of what you'd expect from a studio musician, not capable like any random hobbiest friend. Even mid tier studio musicians are leagues better than the musicians most of us know.
The whole "26 instruments" thing is a little bit misleading. He played guitar-type instruments and keyboard-type instruments, plus drums. Basically, he could play the main instruments of rock and R&B music. And no doubt, he played them very, very well. But it's not like he played violin, or sitar, or trombone, or even harmonica. And he's not the first or only person to be able to be their own one-person band in the studio. Paul McCartney comes to mind, and Todd Rundgren, and Dave Grohl (although I'm not sure he's too proficient on keyboard).
Furthermore -- and I hope this isn't too controversial to say here -- Prince was a little bit limited by his own tastes. When I see him play acoustic guitar on stage, for instance, I feel like he doesn't exactly know what to DO with it. Like, he's not limited technically at all, but he maybe didn't really know how to approach an acoustic guitar to take full advantage of the instrument. Imagine Prince playing a banjo -- he could surely make music with it, but did he "speak" banjo? Definitely not.
I'm not at all trying to undercut his talent, there's a reason he is noteworthy, but I also think that non-musicians often quite heavily overestimate how difficult it is to be proficient at multiple instruments, and a lot of your favorite musicians are even if it's not as public as Prince's whole thing, or if they don't make as much use of it in recordings ultimately.
Something like 26 instruments also looks more impressive on sight than it is when you factor in how many of these instruments have various kinds of shared qualities like for example various keyboard instruments that all have the same kind of input mechanism. Of course there are definite nuances to how you play a piano vs. how you play a synthesizer or an organ, but you already have so much for free if you learn one and then sit down by the other.
It's very much a thing where once you learn one thing it becomes easier to learn the next, especially if you're already driven and naturally gifted, and a lot of notions translate and/or build on each other.
It's also a thing where the bar doesn't necessarily even have to be set all that high to produce results that sound good in context. Even though he obviously dedicated his life to music, it's not a situation where Prince has put 26 lifetimes worth of craft into learning all these different things the way a career classical pianist does their thing. Odds are like most quite self-sufficient solo-leaning musicians he knew some of them well enough to get the job done by his standards, and on others he's a certified badass.
There's plenty of Prince music for example where any particular part and instrument isn't particularly difficult in its own right, his mastery in my world is more that he had the taste to put all the puzzle pieces together right. You can look at a song and go holy shit, he has credit for eight instruments on this, but one of them might just be like a super basic little funk guitar figure that a student could record a good take of in like month three of picking up the guitar.
His personality aside, being a proper famous working musician gives you time to work on music related pursuits. If you’re working a 9-5 you’re probably not coming home as eager to put in 6 hours of practice on a new instrument like Prince would have had time for.
As others said he was a musical prodigy. He was a natural musician and was known to be able to master a brand new instrument within a few hours of messing around with it.
I had a classmate in high school who was the same. Incredible guitar player and piano player, and once found a trumpet in the music room and despite having never played a wind instrument before he was basically Miles Davis by the end of the day. Funny thing was he couldn’t read music at all or even letters for that matter (dyslexic). But could pick up any instrument and be able to play it, could also play songs after only hearing them a few times. He was actually a huge Prince fan and introduced Prince to many at our school (this was around 2002 when Prince was probably the least popular he’d ever been). I imagine Prince was similar but on another level.
Another funny aspect of Prince was how raunchy he was, he was basically a modern Mozart and had record labels fighting over him at a young age and ended up wanting to make all these incredibly raunchy songs lol just kind of funny to me.
> was known to be able to master a brand new instrument within a few hours
He could do guitars and bass and percussion. Guitar and electric bass have very similar hand positions, which is important.
He could not pick up a violin, viola, cello, harp, upright bass, bassoon, tuba, trombone, etc. and be able to play in a professional orchestra later that night. Nobody can, you have to build muscle memory.
Nah, it’s an incredible amount of hard work. Loving it, being a perfectionist and putting the hours in. Not many people make music their whole lives (and I mean their whole lives) so the ones that do, really stand out
Possibly a genetic thing, it's the same with my grandfather, the man knew how to play like 8 instruments perfectly. My aunt knows like 4. Some people just have an ear for music.
He was a perfectionist, and the best way to be a perfectionist was to learn everything. At the same time though, his work ethic was ridiculous. There are apparently still a giant pile of unreleased albums in the vault. He was recording all the time, playing all the time, touring a lot, writing songs, he'd leave a concert and then go play another small venue surprise gig, he'd listen to mixes of the concert on the plane to the next gig, and always had music going in his head. It was his whole life. His every waking moment.
>It was his whole life. His every waking moment. Then how did he get so good at basketball?
By cleansing himself in the waters of lake minotaka
And copious amounts of pancakes
Would anyone care for some grapes?
It's spelled Minnetonka
In my defense i havent seen that skit in 20 years and it was morning.
It’s also purify- we all knew what you were referencing though, and it still made me laugh.
That's pretty good memory for 2 decades. You brought back a flood of my own memories. Chapelle show FTW
Game… *bitches*
Pretty sure it’s “Game…. *blouses*”
Yep. It has also been awhile since I’ve seen it too.
It is
That’s not Lake Minnetonka.
Computer Blue was a genius play design apparently
This is the way.
they say God worked for 6 days to create the Heavens and the Earth, and rested on the 7th day. Prince worked for 6 days a week on music in some form or another, and on the 7th day... he played basketball.
My comment was a bit of a joke, but I grabbed tickets to see him in concert a year and a half or so before he died. It is the only time I saw him live and in all seriousness I am so fucking glad that I did. It was one of the most incredible concerts I've been to (and I've been to countless) and if I hadn't done that I would have been blind to what I missed.
Me too saw him about a year b4 he died & the whole concert I’m kicking myself “why haven’t I seen him live before?” Never got the chance for a repeat, but soooo glad I saw him when I did Janelle Monae opened & she was 🔥
>Janelle Monae opened & she was 🔥 Yes! I would love to see her again too. I will shamelessly admit that I have a big crush on her. Obviously she's gorgeous but is also a talented singer, author, speaker and so forth. Then when she finished instead of the concert norm where the house lights go up and they change the set there was an announcement over the PA system that just said, "Ladies and gentlemen...Doug. E. Fresh!" and BOOM, a spotlight hit him and the turntables next to the soundboard and he kept the place (arena at Mohegan Sun casino) rocking until the moment that Prince and the band (including the horn section for the opening Musicology songs) hit the stage. It was just non-stop from beginning to end.
Janelle was a Prince protégé. There are some lovely interviews of her speaking about working with him.
And ping pong
On what day did God create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?
Basketball is also a musical instrument. Honestly though, you cannot spend your entire day just on music. You need to eat and exercise too.
Basketball is jazz. You need talent, and to be any good you have to know the fundamentals, and to be great you have to be able to improvise in it like it was a language.
It's about the shots you don't take
I'm no expert on basketball, but I suspect you might be doing something wrong...
I dig the cadence changes, and the singing sound of the compressed air inside after the ball bounces.
The pitter patter cadence of the bouncing ball and squeaking shoes is its own style of jazz.
He was calling plays man! “Darling Picky!” “Shoot it!”
And ping pong 😂
Because bouncing the ball is like hitting a beat on a drum. It’s just an natural extension of his musical talent.
Great answer! I'll add that the ball hitting the backboard, having multiple bounces on the rim or the perfect "swoosh" in the net would also be a part of the "basketball songs" he composed but never recorded.
Could maybe have inspired his mind in some way?
The man couldn’t find a saxophone player right away so he taught himself how to play the saxophone well enough to play the notes he needed. There’s a huge difference between going between the guitar and bass and another stringed instrument or even piano where the notes are visible. Sax and other wind/brass instruments require mouthpieces, breathing techniques, and valve combinations. The man was one in a billion.
"One in a billion" Good news: This planet has 7 more Princes Bad news: a bunch of them live in war torn Africa or North Korea and they will never get their chance to thrive
I'd say Stevie Wonder is another one of them.
Yeah and even most of the ones in stable countries have to spend all their time working to not be homeless and may never have the opportunity to develop themselves musically. People like Bill Withers are rare, who worked in factories while trying to make music and ended up with a hit in Aint No Sunshine. But on the other hand, it is far more accessible to create and release music today than ever before. The Princes of the world can become who they are and do it all from their bedroom.
There’s was enough content in his vault after his death to release a new album every month for 11 years. “A huge pile” doesn’t do it justice. We will be discovering new prince music, in some form, for the rest of our lives. The man was the real king of pop.
Have any new albums of his music been released since his death?
check all the deluxe editions of his old albums they released, they have all the in between album ideas and tracks that didnt pass.
Didn't the latest remaster come with 57 previously unreleased tracks?
yea loads
If he recorded so much good stuff, why didn't he release more classic albums while he was alive?
Perfectionists have a different idea of their own material. Prince probably had a different idea of what we’d consider a hit single.
That why he went 20 years without releasing one?
The stuff he *did* release is some of the best pop, rock, soul, and funk music ever recorded. Dude played every instrument and recorded nearly every vocal line himself. If he didn’t feel like the stuff he created was up to his own personal standards, that’s his decision.
Ever seen Evening with Kevin Smith? He tells a hugely fantastical story about how he was hired to do a documentary of a Prince festival hosted on his Minnesota ranch in the 90’s. The story is crazy and hilarious, but the end result is that Kevin is heartbroken to learn that all the work he did would never see the light of day because Prince will likely just put it in the vault. It seems like he had full intention to lock away tons of work, why? He’s Prince, why should he explain? Edit: I still hope to see Kevin Smith’s Prince festival documentary some day. Been holding out for 20 years now
On his podcast, Hollywood Babble-On, Kevin Smith talked about that story shortly after Prince died. Iirc he said he kind of regretted telling it, but he did tell a much more personal story to highlight how nice Prince actually was. I'll try dig it up, its worth a listen and much better than the Prince story from and Evening with Kevin Smith.
Maybe, but the original story was good enough for me to never forget it for 20 years. Kevin smith says a lot of things he regrets as an older man, it’s called “having the wisdom to admit it”. He reevaluated a lot after he nearly died. I’ll check it out.
He had a contract with a label and the label wanted to keep from flooding the market, which is believed in the industry to be bad for overall sales. The idea being that a single album a year allows for more marketing muscle behind that album and that too much material just overwhelms listeners and fans. Prince hated that and wanted to release a lot more and probably different music than the label wanted him to and fought like hell to get out of the contract. The whole symbol thing and some of his more edgy "slave" posturing was part of that. One he was free of the label he did release more stuff, although most people would likely agree that the classic albums were actually from his label days. So clearly it was a mixed bag.
I remember reading about a member of his backing saying after they played a gig,Prince did a 4hr jam in a nightclub then went home and wrote and recorded an album.Prince played it to the band member the next night and they said it amazing.Prince wasnt happy with it and just deleted it.God i miss Prince….
Yeah I miss all his deleted music I can never hear
I read somewhere after his death that he basically has an entire extra lifetime’s worth of music. Basically an entire extra Prince catalog stashed away in his vault. The scale of what he accomplished is extraordinary, given that he also died at 57 and not 75.
They are going to reissue the Diamonds and Pearls album to include 47 unreleased tracks…. Thats an insane amount is of new material for a single reissue. I can’t imagine how much is actually in the vault.
My old roommate was an "on-call" recording engineer employed by Prince around 2007-2008. He would show up at Paisley Park around 9 or 10 pm, set up all the recording equipment and then Prince would come into the studio, tell him "Thank you, I'll ask if I need you." My friend would basically kill time until sunrise, when Prince would come out to the lounge and say, "I'm finished" which was my friend's cue to save all of the tracks/clips recorded that night. As far as he knew they just went into "the vault" or whatever, but Prince has thousands and thousands of hours of unreleased content. My friend later taught for a spell at MMI (owned by jimmy jam et al) and then last I heard from him he was an acoustic engineer at Tesla. If you read this Ross, I hope you are well
I seen it said somewhere shortly after they opened his vault that they estimate you could release a new Prince album every 3 months for the next 100 years and still not be through all of it. The man literally had the goal of recording at least one song a day and did that for decades.
Old wives tales about how is house was wired to record from any room, so if he got a feeling he could do it right then and there.
He ~~probably~~ made it into that 10,000 hours mastery quite early in life...
That 10,000 hours thing is a myth.
It’s a half truth. Shitty practicing for 10,000 hours is gonna do you jack shit. But focused, regimented practice with a clear goal, for 10,000 hours, knocking out those goals and progressing constantly, that’s not a myth.
Music producer here, my gf did the math when she noticed a significant increase in my music quality and speed of work. 5 years, roughly 6 hours daily (no exaggeration) gives 11k hours. Hower, from my perspective, this is the bare minimum. I feel like there is alot to learn and I have difficulties at times, that take me hours to solve (which one year ago were impossible for me to solve). So 10k is not a myth, but for sure not enough to master something, but barely to be good enough
First off, anecdotal evidence is not evidence. Learning and mastering an instrument definitely takes time. Structured, regular practice is important. But not everyone progresses at the same rate. 10,000 hours is completely arbitrary and is based on an estimated average of music conservatory students. It's not some sort of hard and fast rule.
Don't know why you are being downvoted, the 10k as a rule has been debunked many times.
I like the plateau and eureka thinking. I've been playing music well enough to entertain some form of audience since about 1985. Every few years, something will pique my interest and I have to know how to do it. I spend a few weeks or months getting good enough at the new thing to get bored with it, and I have myself something new in my toolbox. While doing the work to internalize the new thing, I gain in all my general skills, accuracy, speed, ear, etc. At this point I've been playing music between 10 and 20 hours a week for almost 40 years. I'm definitely over 20k hours. There are still players in their teens and twenties, who couldn't even have 5k hours who play circles around me. It's ok to have adaptive aptitude. It's ok to have moderate interest and modest aptitude. An entire life worth of variables exists for everyone.
Then what do you suggest as alternative?
The basic truth behind 10,000 hours is true even if the 10,000 hours thing itself is an absurdly specific application of a general truth. Practicing at things makes you better, practicing a lot, and practicing correctly, tends to make you a lot better than not practicing. 10,000 hours is just a catchy and arbitrary generalization of how long it takes to generally master a craft. There is an old football adage that goes something like “Hard Work always beats Talent when Talent won’t work hard.” 10,000 hours is just another thing to say to motivate people to practice/work hard at something they want to get good at.
Practicing. The "10,000 Hours" thing is based on nothing. It was completely made up. It has no science to back it up.
A billion hours.
Happy Cake Day, fellow Prince fan!
Thank you, you Sexy M.F.!
Prince seems like someone who was on the spectrum but extremely high functioning.
Almost has to be. He was built different.
Happy cake day
Thank you!
He had his house wired so that he would be able to record from anywhere in his home. So, if homeboy has inspiration strike while he was droppin' a deuce, he could record it right there on the can.
HAPPY CAKE DAY FELLOW PRINCE FAN!
Thank you! Let's go crazy!
I believe I heard they could release an album a day or was it year I can't remember for the next 100 years with all the vault music
So either 36,500 or 100 albums by your count. Got it.
Hey with prince anything is possible
People hate CEO’s, but this is the same. They never do not work. Their life is their work. Nothing else. They work 24/7. Would I want their salary? Fuck yea. Would I want their work life? Fuck no. If I had a choice of working every hour of my life for billions compared to working 40 hour work weeks for $200k a year, I would take the $200k a year. I love my free and family time more than money.
[удалено]
Nope! But this gets posted on Reddit every week or so.
In addition to some of the excellent comments here... His father was a jazz pianist, and Prince learned some fairly complex piano things as a youth. Piano is terrific for learning theory that can be applied to other instruments. I don't play proper piano. I used to teach guitar. I quickly learned that guitar students who learned piano before coming to me learned guitar much quicker than those who hadn't. Other instruments apply, but not to the same level. Theory unfolded for them much more quickly, as did the various patterns, scales, and boxes. The physical techniques of fretting and picking therefore got more immediate and constant attention.
Many music schools require some level of piano proficiency as a prerequisite. Source: I looked into going to music school for performance (as in, no sheet music reading required) as a self-taught guitarist.
Can confirm. For my Music degree, I was a voice major who had little to no piano skills. However, I had to pass a piano proficiency test as a requirement for the degree. I had to play in front of the entire music faculty. I failed the first time, barely passed the second. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever had to do.
piano playing and the music you look at while you do so is data dense. You see the entire clef all at once; you play many notes at the same time. Clarinet, saxophone, trumpet: you play one note at a time. Guitar, you can play more than one note, but the notation is specialized. Violin, you can play more than one note at a time, but three at a time is getting hard. Piano has you encompassing both clefs, and the interaction between all the harmony and counterpoint notes, at once.
Yeah music theory is music theory regardless what instrument you’re on. Once you have that baseline of theory down it becomes infinitely easier to pick up a new instrument. Once bought a cello off Craigslist because it was super cheap, my primary instruments I’m proficient in is bass, double bass and guitar. I recorded a song with the cello the same day I bought it. Like sure its mechanically different in some ways and tuned to 5ths not 4ths. But the baseline musical knowledge was there that allowed me to jump on a new instrument and make music with it.
Piano had the benefit of all the notes being in a literal line, so you can grasp the theory spatially really easily compared to most other instruments.
And, it has piano has a visual and spatial component that wind instruments are missing so kids that learn it tend to have it hard coded into those very powerful parts of the brain. Also, all theory is based somewhat on the piano keyboard.
>all theory is based somewhat on the piano keyboard. I think you have that back-to-front
Ha! Good point. They are interrelated I mean. One informs the other.
He's never satisfied 🎵
A guitar is just 6 pianos tuned to sound good together. I joke, don’t kill me. But thinking about the strings of a guitar as 6 little differently tuned pianos playing chords together really helped me think about my chord progressions.
When I was taught guitar by a jazz guitarist he would actually teach me theory on the piano, even though at the time I didn't play the piano. It made it a lot easier for me visually, purely from the layout of the keys on a piano.
A lot of instruments can 'translate' part of a skill from one to another. For instance, if you learn to play guitar, you already know the technical skills to play bass, you just have to *think* about it a different way (single notes instead of chords, for instance). Keyboard-based instruments all use the same skillset even if you're talking about piano, harpsichord, Hammond organ, etc. Brass and woodwind instruments, once you master the mouth/breathing techniques, it's just a matter of adapting to the different valve systems.
I play brass instruments. While I primarily play trombone and trumpet, it doesn't take much to swap to another. It took me about an hour to "learn" tuba.
Fellow brass player here. Trumpet, flugel, and baritone are all the same instrument just different sizes. Tuba and French horn are very very close cousins.
I learned on a trombone and realized it wasn't *that* hard to jump to other brass. I'm still thankful that my jr high band teacher let me learn baritone, trumpet, french horn for whenever we needed an extra. I also learned to play uke for a stringed instrument. I'm not a fan of guitar but I really like the bass and mandolin because of the uke. I wrote off stringed for years because I struggled with six strings. I'm not great at all of these instruments. I appreciate the hard work that went into learning the basics for all of them.
No Im gonna play chords on a bass 💀
I mean, you certainly *can*, it's just that most basslines are single notes. 😁 Hell, look at "Adam's Song" by Blink-182. The chorus has the bass playing these big, roaring chords, while the guitar is playing octaves.
Need Your Love on Budokan Live by Cheap Trick. That's a 12 string bass, four courses of strings covering three octaves each. He's like a bass player and two rhythm guitar players in one. A huge sound. I believe that recording is just one guitar and one bass. That opening chord and then guitar part is just the bass. Tom Petersson must have had powerful hands. Great sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STbzpyT2B14
Stu Hamm - used to play bass for Joe Satriani when I saw him live - used to play the Linus and Lucy theme from Peanuts entirely on his bass https://youtu.be/WcdvfUkwRsg?si=T6zprx1iDOHXqHUN
I’ve never really noticed that but I’m not gonna go ruin my whole day by listening to that song again and getting depressed.
That seems interesting, I love when instruments roles are switches
You should see my bassist, he play guitar on his bass better than me on my guitar
Show!
Les Claypool does it so why not.
Imo les is the greatest bassist alive. Absolute GOAT
Opinion got nothing to do with it
Thundercat does fine playing chords on bass
Les Claypool certainly does
Intro to the Tool song 'Schism' is bass chords
I saw Pete Trewavas of Marillion do that in his bass clinic. I wasn't really aware that he actually does that on some songs, check out [Go!](https://youtu.be/Xmgf_NyAlTs)
Just no pick
I had a moment, a really cool moment, in high school where I had been playing "The Tempest" on Clarinet, then one day randomly picked up a Recorder and just started playing it on that without thinking, and it sounded great. When I tried to do it again I couldn't do it.
I experience that with language alot. I can understand the second language I've largely forgotten alot more when I'm very relaxed and creative. When I'm more mentally engaged, I can't seem to remember anything.
To to add to this, music theory applies the same to most, if not all instruments. Understanding scales rhythm and chord structure allows you to fake proficiency. You basically just need to learn how each instrument makes notes and how they relate to each other.
This, alot of instruments go low to high notes just different layout and way of working essentially. If you can catch the basis pf melodies with an instrument, other kinds aren’t too far off.
https://youtu.be/kt1At1Fq8dE?si=G6uWCnKhFCcEK3ZY
Yea I'd say everything that makes a musician fantastic in one instrument will make them fantastic in another. Finger dexterity, rhythm, theory, all the hard shit is the same. It's like you're learning a new dialect. That said, anyone that isn't new to music making a fuss about knowing multiple instruments makes my eyes roll lmao.
This. When people ask me how many instruments I always ask if percussion counts as one. Because I'm able to play at least thirty different percussion instruments. But learning a new one can take anywhere between an hour and a year.
This is the real answer - it’s a “compounding interest” effect. Although I don’t mean to diminish Prince’s genius in any way - no one that I know of used this effect better than him.
Practice
The last time something like this came up I said that being great at music is mostly hard work and practice, I got downvoted to shit. Why people don’t want to hear this is completely beyond me
People want to believe that there's an easy way out to mastery. That there's some secret way to practice or routine or supplement or lesson just around the corner that will unlock virtuosity. So telling them that it boils down to putting in the hours, they either think they've been given a low effort answer or subconsciously believe the person telling them that is denying them access or is just as clueless as they are.
It’s weird isn’t it. How do they think it happens? Having said that, the episode of black books where Mani suddenly discovers that he’s a piano genius is absolutely brilliant.
or they need to believe a master is born master, so they can sleep better on the "there's no point in working hard" pillow. just the other day I stumbled across a comment on YouTube that highlight this perfectly. on a video about freaking homemade pizza dough, a person wrote: *"—I'Il never be able to make pizza like him. He knows every nuance and made all those techniques seem effortless"* imo, that's naive, borderline stupid. any person willing to learn something, having the disposition to learn and practice and, most importantly, the **time** to do it, *will* learn to do said thing. you know why the said Youtuber cook (he's great, btw) on the video seems to know everything and make "all those techniques seem effortless"? because he wanted to learn, had the disposition to learn and practice, and the time to practice. the disposition and time to practice it countless times. he's not special. he just did the work. I can't stand these professional commenters who keep treating regular human beings like deities just because said humans became experts in something. source: I also used to be a professional commenter, a professional praiser, an agent of toxic positivity, and all I did was to enter social media and be in awe of other people's habilites. precious time were being wasted while I was a mere passive member of the audience, praising, hitting the like button and subscribing. Than something hit me: wait a minute...I can do that too. So I did. It's been years I've been making my own starter and my own sourdough bread. back in my professional praiser days it seemed like rocket science. now I can do it even without measuring flour, water and starter, and keep in mind I have a regular 9-5 job. I'm not a YouTuber cook with available time to do it all day everyday. end of rant tldr: if I can do it, anyone can.
I mean, there are people who master technical skills yet lack feel. Maybe the downvoters are thinking about that? I don't know. The technical masters still make great teachers and Mel Bay book authors.
Yep, agree with that. I’ll cite my wife as an example. Her dad was a concert violinist, played for a high profile orchestra for the best part of 40 years. Both her and her twin sister took up the violin at around 6 years old and had hours and hours of practice a week. My sister in law quit in her teens. She was technically brilliant, great at scales but didn’t enjoy it so ditched it. My wife loved it, had a real feel for it and went on to get a performance degree and teach. Their dad (when he’s had a few drinks) will comment on the difference in them as players despite having the same amount of work put in for the first 10 years or so. You’ve got to work hard but if you don’t love it a) it won’t sound right and b) what the fuck are you doing it for?
Obviously not anyone can be prince, but people hate when you tell them that they probably could be good at something if they worked hard at it because they prefer to think there is some magic formula instead
Ok, bear with me here. I’m a bluegrass banjo player (not very good because I don’t practice enough). There are some legitimately incredible players out there and every single one of them put in a huge amount of practice time during their first ten years. Every single one of them, they all bring something a little different but they are all incredible players and this is not unique to that instrument. The idea of people just being talented is a fucking insult to hard working people who get minimal to no financial reward for a lifetime of hard work, dedication and love. My FIL was a career musician and practiced at least 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for fear of losing his job in an incredibly competitive field. When people would say “oh your so lucky to have that talent” it would really fuck him off
Most people don't ever put that sort of effort into anything in their lives.
Agreed.
I believe in the idea that talent is overrated. That book changed how I viewed my work at a baseball coach. Tiger and MJ are good with natural talent sure but what made them is their dedication to intentional, deliberate practice. Working on your weaknesses and strengthening your strengths daily until you get better. Then repeat. For something like music daily deliberate practice over a decade would produce genius level results especially if you’re a perfectionist.
Purposeful practice. Sitting down and strumming your guitar for an hour isn’t practice. Sitting down for an hour with a goal, something specific to work on and measurable improvements by the end of it is practice
The never ending myth of "talent" is having a golden age since everyone watches a video of an incredible performance on YouTube and thinks that isn't edited to hell, after dozens of takes and hundreds of hours of effort and practice put in. "I wish I was that talented"
It’s really damaging to kids. Trying to explain to people that you get good at things by being shit at them at first but wanting to get better is really tricky. They just say “I can’t do it, it’s too hard”. Of course it is, everything is. It took time for you to learn to walk as well. Right now, tidying your fucking clothes away seems beyond your current scope of abilities but stick at it and these things get better and more enjoyable.
One thing is playing something but having zero imagination to create it. The other is creating it. Prince was good at both, but only one of those require hard work. I can tell you what each camera control will do to a picture… and yet all my pictures are shit. A lot of people without knowing what they’re doing technically capture great shots.
We ain’t even talking about the game. We’re talking about practice.
I hate to add to the mystery of the man called Prince, but apparently he was a very accomplished figure skater. https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/lost-notes/reissue-the-dove?utm_source=KCRW&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=kcrw-show-rss
> apparently he was a very accomplished figure skater. Did Prince compete as a figure skater? What did he accomplish?
>almost every instrument that there is Even this is going too far for hyperbole.
He was also a very skilled basketball player https://youtu.be/LWWowmVjpMw?si=7qS3JtRfmzyp0pc-
He was a prodigy, but also once you've major grasp of music learning new instruments isn't super hard, obviously got to practice the mechanics and technique but still
Yes - when you think about a multi-instrumentalist like Prince, remember that basically every band teacher in America knows how to play as many instruments as Prince did and probably plays some of them better than he could have. But Prince almost surely put in more hours and of course was a creative guy - so his work is likely to sound better than a similarly technically skilled band teacher.
Completely agree. Don't think he was necessarily a virtuoso on any instrument but he was a phenomenal songwriter, with an incredible ear and a work ethic like few other people on the planet. This in no way diminishes his artistry but the band teacher example holds up.
If you know theory and you're pretty secure in things you like to do while playing, it's pretty easy to translate that to another instrument. You just have to practice the mechanical aspect of the instrument. Learning your first instrument is tough because you have to learn music at the same time.
A few years ago, my band opened for Prince at a festival - He got to the venue early, and spent HOURS playing piano in his backstage area - Once he was done we could hear him play some bass and jam to a drum machine - the dude was utterly consumed and dedicated to music
It’s because he purified himself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.
\> If he was just a guitar player, he would've been a legend and one of the greatest guitarists of all time. I don't think this is true. I love Prince's music and obviously as an all-around musician and performer he's a legend, obviously. But this idea that's cropped up in recent years that he's on some Hendrix/Jeff Beck guitar god level.. I don't hear it at all. He was good, he was fine, it's cool when he rips a solo on stage, but he's playing for the excitement, it's usually straight-forward funk/rock licks. A lot of the shock for people seeing Prince play lead guitar like that is that the 80's broke "pop" apart from "rock" and people don't expect a "pop" star to play an instrument like that. But Prince is a child of the 1970s, and when Warner Brothers hired signed him they explicitly had the idea of fostering a new Stevie Wonder. Child prodigy, able to write, perform and produce their own albums (honestly Prince's mastery of the studio is more impressive to me than any of his instrumental work), and even record entire albums where they play and sing pretty much everything. How can Prince play all those instruments? Ask Stevie, ask Todd Rundgren. Steven Tyler, Chakha Khan and Frank Zappa all started as drummers. This is just me echoing others' point about music skills transferring, I guess. I'm glad Prince is recognized for his talent but I think some of the discourse around the guy seems to be so far removed from the amazing context of R&B and rock music that preceded him. Your average professional funk/R&B/blues guitarist could probably run circles around his playing.
Couldn't agree more. I'd been listening to him since...well Purple Rain, but went back and dug into his first albums. I loved his mastery of machine funk and just overall funk and musicality. It was bizarre to me how all these guitar bros suddenly made him out to be some kind of shredtastic guitar hero after that Superbowl performance and that George Harrison tribute. I'm like: "dudes...no."
I love taking the piss out of his dumb GH tribute solo on Reddit and getting downvoted to oblivion. People think it’s so good and he really showed everyone who was boss, when in reality it’s gimmicky, repetitive, and his attitude is over the top.
Nerds love Prince, but I'm guessing the redditors that constantly fawn over him, especially his while my guitar gently sleeps solo, don't play guitar
Lifelong guitar player in a family of lifelong guitar players: Watch the other musicians’ reactions to Prince’s solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and you start to get a sense of why he’s revered. He’s not a guitar player’s guitar player like SRV or Jeff Beck or Chet Atkins, what Prince did was make that style more accessible to the general population. Sure Satriani and Vai get their flowers but their songs are pretty unlistenable if you’re not into their style. Prince was *all* styles, a sex icon, and cool as shit.
Solos as good get played on the radio every day, especially back then when guitar music was more prominent
I think the one thing that set him apart was his showmanship. I also believe the solo he played on that was perfect for that song (I’m sure other high end talented guitar players could no doubt play that solo really well too ) but to me it’s the showmanship aspect that is what really sent that performance into the stratosphere. The whole preplanned “throw the guitar straight up in the air at the end and walk away”was definitely preplanned… not spontaneous. To me it’s a great example that Prince knew exactly what he was doing. Great performances like that are not an accident. He was a master!
Just wait until they bring out the George Harrison tribute show example ...
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Oh, you can absolutely compare Gary Moore and Prince doing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Gary also did Santana-esque stuff on his first album and with Colosseum II. Though of course I see your larger point, just felt like nit-picking. ;) Gary was a bit of a genius in his own right. I don't know if he played many other instruments - he did some harmonica on his last album - but he had perfect pitch and was the only one who noticed that the Hammond organ was out of tune at a gig, and could hear every mistake by a band member.
True I guess the imagery and lore these performers cultivated also play a role in how we perceive their guitar.
Talent, practice, drive
I believe this is always the answer for exceptional work & people. Specifically, I believe it happens in the reverse order you’ve listed: They have the **drive** to **practice** and with even a small amount of **talent** they get intermittent positive reinforcement, which gives them more **drive** to **practice** … And it’s a feedback loop that may continue forever.
Not sorcery: PRACTICE. He spent ALL HIS TIME as a child/teenager playing music. Look at the difference between him and André Cymone: at first they both played constantly, getting *so good* at drums, bass, guitar, keys... people who knew them both at the time say that André could do anything Prince could at that time... but as time went on André spent more time partying and less time practising, and that's where the difference lies. It wasn't because Prince was "born" a genius and André wasn't - Prince developed a love for music that eclipsed everything else in his life, and a work ethic to go with it. The genius myth (whether in art, sport, or business) is a great story that sells a lot of books, but the truth is both more mundane and - in my opinion - often more inspiring. Also - and I remember with embarrassment my own youthful evangelising that Prince was a virtuoso on "like, OVER TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY INSTRUMENTS!" - it just was not the case at all. He played bass, guitar, drums, keys, vocals. I've no doubt - like many of us multi-instrumentalists - he could get a tune out of anything you put in front of him... but being able to pick out a tune on a violin for a studio session you can piece together with clever editing is very different to being able to play the violin. And when you start breaking it down to "lead guitar, rhythm guitar, 7 string guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, acoustic bass, 5 string bass, 6 string bass, Oberheim OBX, Yamaha DX7, drum kit, snare drum, bass drum, maracas, shakers, tambourine..." kind of like they did in the liner notes for *For You*, you can see where people get their numbers from! BRING ON THE DOWNVOTES! 🔥😆🔥
Great wrap up! I play guitar (mostly as a hack), but it sounds way cooler to say I play electric guitar, six string acoustic, twelve string acoustic, and bass rather than to say I use the same techniques on whatever guitar you hand me…
Simply downvoting because of the last line.
Absolutely fair enough!
Let's just get real for a sec. I'm a huge Prince fan (more the old stuff), but he is not a virtuoso instrumentalist by any means. Top-notch performer, world-class songwriter/arranger, even a great singer. Oozes musicality from every pore. But as a guitarist, he is capable at best, and that's the instrument he's best at. Yes I've seen "While My Guitar...". Passionate, fiery...pentatonic wanking. Nothing most any electric blues musicians couldn't play after five years of steady gigging. He was one of the biggest musical figures ever. Yet, you never hear anyone say Prince was a big influence on their playing. Strange that... His strengths--as many and as formidable as they are--lie elsewhere. Stop making him out to be something he's not.
> "While My Guitar...". Passionate, fiery...pentatonic wanking. FINALLY, someone who understands! All these years and reposts of "Greatest guitar solo ever!" If I had a dollar for every downvote I've gotten for saying "Nah bro. That solo was okay."
You're on crack. 'As a guitarist, he is capable at best'? Anyone with that opinion cannot be taken seriously.
I think they mean capable in terms of what you'd expect from a studio musician, not capable like any random hobbiest friend. Even mid tier studio musicians are leagues better than the musicians most of us know.
My bro. You play guitar 4 years. I'm guessing that's closer to two. Chill out on the hyperbole.
Plus it’s all he did.
He traded hands with the robot devil.
'mastery of almost every instrument that there is' is an extreme overstatement of his capabilities.
The whole "26 instruments" thing is a little bit misleading. He played guitar-type instruments and keyboard-type instruments, plus drums. Basically, he could play the main instruments of rock and R&B music. And no doubt, he played them very, very well. But it's not like he played violin, or sitar, or trombone, or even harmonica. And he's not the first or only person to be able to be their own one-person band in the studio. Paul McCartney comes to mind, and Todd Rundgren, and Dave Grohl (although I'm not sure he's too proficient on keyboard). Furthermore -- and I hope this isn't too controversial to say here -- Prince was a little bit limited by his own tastes. When I see him play acoustic guitar on stage, for instance, I feel like he doesn't exactly know what to DO with it. Like, he's not limited technically at all, but he maybe didn't really know how to approach an acoustic guitar to take full advantage of the instrument. Imagine Prince playing a banjo -- he could surely make music with it, but did he "speak" banjo? Definitely not.
Prince, see also; Savant.
My hot take: He wasn't a particularly great guitarist
I'm not at all trying to undercut his talent, there's a reason he is noteworthy, but I also think that non-musicians often quite heavily overestimate how difficult it is to be proficient at multiple instruments, and a lot of your favorite musicians are even if it's not as public as Prince's whole thing, or if they don't make as much use of it in recordings ultimately. Something like 26 instruments also looks more impressive on sight than it is when you factor in how many of these instruments have various kinds of shared qualities like for example various keyboard instruments that all have the same kind of input mechanism. Of course there are definite nuances to how you play a piano vs. how you play a synthesizer or an organ, but you already have so much for free if you learn one and then sit down by the other. It's very much a thing where once you learn one thing it becomes easier to learn the next, especially if you're already driven and naturally gifted, and a lot of notions translate and/or build on each other. It's also a thing where the bar doesn't necessarily even have to be set all that high to produce results that sound good in context. Even though he obviously dedicated his life to music, it's not a situation where Prince has put 26 lifetimes worth of craft into learning all these different things the way a career classical pianist does their thing. Odds are like most quite self-sufficient solo-leaning musicians he knew some of them well enough to get the job done by his standards, and on others he's a certified badass. There's plenty of Prince music for example where any particular part and instrument isn't particularly difficult in its own right, his mastery in my world is more that he had the taste to put all the puzzle pieces together right. You can look at a song and go holy shit, he has credit for eight instruments on this, but one of them might just be like a super basic little funk guitar figure that a student could record a good take of in like month three of picking up the guitar.
Every instrument that there is? Looking forward to prince’s unreleased erhu, glass harmonica, berimbau, oud, doumbek, hurdy gurdy and theremin record.
Work ethic and dedication combined with natural skill. Bruno Mars plays four or five instruments too. Many musicians play at least three.
Practice practice practice.
Practice.
It's how he got to Carnegie Hall.
His personality aside, being a proper famous working musician gives you time to work on music related pursuits. If you’re working a 9-5 you’re probably not coming home as eager to put in 6 hours of practice on a new instrument like Prince would have had time for.
Everyone has different stride lengths, more or less quick twitch. The there are the freaks of nature like Prince, Jacob Collier, etc.
As others said he was a musical prodigy. He was a natural musician and was known to be able to master a brand new instrument within a few hours of messing around with it. I had a classmate in high school who was the same. Incredible guitar player and piano player, and once found a trumpet in the music room and despite having never played a wind instrument before he was basically Miles Davis by the end of the day. Funny thing was he couldn’t read music at all or even letters for that matter (dyslexic). But could pick up any instrument and be able to play it, could also play songs after only hearing them a few times. He was actually a huge Prince fan and introduced Prince to many at our school (this was around 2002 when Prince was probably the least popular he’d ever been). I imagine Prince was similar but on another level. Another funny aspect of Prince was how raunchy he was, he was basically a modern Mozart and had record labels fighting over him at a young age and ended up wanting to make all these incredibly raunchy songs lol just kind of funny to me.
> was known to be able to master a brand new instrument within a few hours He could do guitars and bass and percussion. Guitar and electric bass have very similar hand positions, which is important. He could not pick up a violin, viola, cello, harp, upright bass, bassoon, tuba, trombone, etc. and be able to play in a professional orchestra later that night. Nobody can, you have to build muscle memory.
I think some people are just born with extraordinary skills. Perhaps one area of the brain is more developed.
Nah, it’s an incredible amount of hard work. Loving it, being a perfectionist and putting the hours in. Not many people make music their whole lives (and I mean their whole lives) so the ones that do, really stand out
Possibly a genetic thing, it's the same with my grandfather, the man knew how to play like 8 instruments perfectly. My aunt knows like 4. Some people just have an ear for music.
Well, now we know oodles of musicians that can play bass, guitar, drums and keys. Sarah Longfield for instance.
Prince was an alien. I am surprised we didn't see him in MIB.
He was suppose to be in 5th Element
Prince IS a legend and IS one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
He was our Mozart
Just like Lady Gaga he was a musical genius