Production tips: how to funk like Prince

There are many ways to funk. In a live situation, players can hit a groove and sit in the pocket for days. As a shared experience, finding the groove and keeping it loose is something musicians strive for. Then there's Prince, whose taught, '80s funk was anything but loose. 

Prince's Minneapolis sound owed much to the stripped-back rhythms of James Brown and co, but liberal lashings of programmed drums drove this new synth-funk sound into a more rigid direction. One that, no doubt, suited the funky oligarch down to the ground. 

There's much that can be gleaned from this approach to production and in this video, Adam - one of our resident Prince acolytes (there are a few) - breaks down some of the key components required to produce funk just like the Purple One used to.

Getting that Minneapolis sound in your productions can be achieved in many ways, with the easiest being via sample packs. Perhaps the most authentic way you can pay homage to Prince's sound in your DAW, is with a few key emulations, such as the Aly James Lab VProm v2 and OB-Xd from DiscoDSP.

Want to be more like Prince?

• Learn 4 Prince guitar chords
• The 40 greatest synth sounds of all time, No 31: Prince - 1999
• 7 times that Prince blew our minds: classic recordings and performances
• The 12 days of riffmas: learn the riff to Kiss by Prince