Technology behind prince's "Kiss"

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What kind of keyboards/drum machines was use to make the hit song "Kiss"

― startrekman, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 02:54 (twenty-one years ago)

just a linn drum machine and electric guitar, i believe.

― splooge (thesplooge), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 02:57 (twenty-one years ago)

electric guitar?? what about the keyboard sound...

I actually heard that he didn't use the linn on "Kiss"

― startrekman, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

http://hunter.apana.org.au/~gallae/hecate/images/media/frankenstein_laboratory.jpg

― Marcel Post (Marcel Post), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 03:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds like they looped a couch being scurched across the floor.

― manthony m1cc1o (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 03:26 (twenty-one years ago)

god this song is good

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 03:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Flanger in ther too, yeah?

― Jimmy Mod, Los Sexx Yanqui (ModJ), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 03:36 (twenty-one years ago)

the snare sounds like a Sequential Circuits Drumtracks tuned down a bit. The "bass" drum sound is probably some sample on a chip pitched way down. On those old early digital machines, DMX, Linndrum, Drumtracks, you get this certain sound when you tune the samples to far down or up, it breaks up and gets realy crunchy. Prince used this. A lot, I think.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 04:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Dan Selzer are you an expert on synthesizer tech or are you a musician of somekind.

― startrekman, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 04:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I heard he sampled himself spanking Appolonia's ass and made a beat out of that.

― fredster, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 05:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds more like Vanity's rear to my ears.

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 05:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Why she likes to put her ass against my ears, I'll never know.

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 05:19 (twenty-one years ago)

The most prominent detail in the mix is the "gated" bass drum (fed through a gated reverb effect, which is reverb "in reverse" impossible to achieve in real life of course but possible on a digital reverb). This sound was popular for a while on some techno records (see Wicked Wipe's "Rok da house (slaughterhouse mix)").

― Hank, Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:14 (twenty-one years ago)

i think dan is probably right, sounds a lot like a Drumtraks (and you can tune the sounds up and down on a Drumtraks)

― zappi (joni), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember a discussion in Future Music magazine regarding the drum machine used in "1999"; nearly every 80's drum machine was mentioned. Funnily, there were like four people who claimed to have been in the studio and knew for sure that it was one particular drum machine -a different one every time-.

Dan is right about Prince's detuning drum sounds thing.

― Diego Valladolid (dvalladt), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:34 (twenty-one years ago)

you can get gated reverb on a drum if you mic it and send it through a gate. All a gate does is turn off the input if the volume falls below a certain threshold or level. Like if Phil Colllins hitting a snare you hear the bam followed by it's decay(w/ reverb or not) going PFSSsss and you tell the gate to cut off anything below "S", you will only hear the PFSS on the recording/in the PA.

Another famous use of Gate is in the recording of David Bowie's Heroes. Reportedly there were three sets of microphones. One right in front of David, one a few feet away, and one even further away. The second two had noise gates on them, so when David was singing normally, they didn't pick up any sound, no ambient sound or faint singing, but when he raised his voice for the chorus, the volume would go above the threshold and the other mics would kick in, changing the sound of the recording.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 15:25 (twenty-one years ago)

the story behind this song is GREAT [it was originally brought to the studio as a half-written demo for a band called 'Maserati'!!].

the drum machine is a linn 9000 (which yes they regularly detuned & gated), but the greatest thing about it is that those rhythmic synthy-sounding chords are made by a guitar which also has a gate on it, midi-synched to open in time with a delayed hi-hat track!!

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 15:46 (twenty-one years ago)

startrekman you can't be an annoying trainspotter AND terrible at research:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_princes_kiss/index.html

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

(bump cuz this article is really good)

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 21:50 (twenty-one years ago)

that IS a great article, though i find it hard to believe anyone, either in the studio or at the record company, would find the absence of bass to be disturbing and dangerous. the dude had already had the biggest hit of his career by taking the bass off a record. the record company would presumably be asking for more of that, not less! and that was as obvious a hit in its day as anything in any day.

but besides that kind of silly storytelling drama, i love this kind of shit.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

“I asked him what was going on. He said to me, ‘This is too good for you guys. I'm taking it back.’”

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 22:35 (twenty-one years ago)

[quote]startrekman you can't be an annoying trainspotter AND terrible at research..[quote]

but i can and will....

― startrekman, Wednesday, 22 September 2004 01:14 (twenty-one years ago)

let me ask you all something...

what exactly is a "Gate"

― startrekman, Wednesday, 22 September 2004 01:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Gate: explained by Dan's longest post above.

― OleM (OleM), Wednesday, 22 September 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

nineteen years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2h18M6ky8

the wordless ahhhhahhahh from this (a Brenda Lee classic) were integrated/interpolated for Kiss, just learned.

― fpsa, Friday, 7 June 2024 13:29 (one year ago)

Oh wow. The "uh-huh honey/alright" in the beginning was sampled on the first Beatnuts album.

Thought this revive was gonna be about this interview with David Z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHd-0UHW1gg

― peace, man, Friday, 7 June 2024 14:17 (one year ago)

Oh that's where that Yeezus sample comes from

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Friday, 7 June 2024 14:21 (one year ago)

nice, will check it out!

it's really funny how David Z shows up in different ways. Around 1998/1999, he recorded/produced a Brazilian rock band that used to be famous in the 80s (but a third-tier band really). And the first single they came out with is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jDgQDiUm0c

and you can see that David Z brought similar ideas all around: the wordless backing vocal arrangements (same in Kiss, and you kinda can see them punctuating She Drives me Crazy by FYC), and that dry sound. That's how I learned about him, and start to read more about how Prince produces/writes as well

― fpsa, Friday, 7 June 2024 14:29 (one year ago)

"that dry sound" - over on RateYourMusic I remember someone pointing out that "Kiss" is one of the most quintessentially made-for-compact-disc singles. Part of the song's impact comes from the cold open and the complete dead digital silence in between the instruments. With a 7" single you press play and there's a bit of stylus noise, but with CD you press play and instantly there's a guitar jingle and Prince singing that you don't have to be beautiful etc.

If there's one thing this thread reminds me, it's if you if you ever read the recollections of US-based funk/dance music producers from the 1980s (a) they're always called Bobby D or Bobby Z or Paulie Y or Marky Q or Bobby Y (b) they ramble on for paragraph after paragraph (c) they're hopelessly vague about what they actually did. Presumably because of the cocaine.

― Ashley Pomeroy, Friday, 7 June 2024 21:21 (one year ago)

updated link from above: https://www.mixonline.com/recording/classic-tracks-princes-kiss-365014

― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 7 June 2024 21:42 (one year ago)

altho the band’s name was Mazarati goddamit

― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 7 June 2024 21:49 (one year ago)

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