Not taking anything away from MJ but this proves how important all the unsung people are to a song. Thank you ALL for helping create this historic album.
@@mysticakhenaton1701 Quincy Jones is a genius, but he wouldn't have achieved too much all by himself. He always made a point to be surrounded by phenomenal musicians like Marinelli and Phillinganes and Louis Johnson and others because he wanted the best and he knew how much they could contribute.
Hi Anthony! It‘s so exciting watching you recreating the synths of Thriller. Thank you very mich for sharing these videos. By chance do you remember how you created the choir sound on "Beat it"? Or was it a preset maybe on synclavier? Michael used this choir sound from that moment on till the mid 90s and it became kind of a signature sound. He used it in Who is it, Ghost, Will You Be There (mixed with a real choir I guess) and some other songs. So it would be very interesting to know something about the "birth" of that sound. Thank you!!
We can see Michael playing choirs on synclavier on a video on UA-cam, i think the same sound on beat it, and on « ya mo be there » of james ingram. I hope marinelli remember if this is the synclavier or other ua-cam.com/video/Kxz9t-MHHIs/v-deo.html
For those who like me happen to not be able to own a synclavier and wondering how to get these sounds on Arturia Synclavier: For the organ there is no direct preset. But I found with tweaking of "Saint Eustache" (esp. lowering volume of Partial one and muting Partial 3) you get quite good results. For the Bass "Body Bass" pretty much is it.
Awesome 👏 What about for getting the other bass layers like the digital noise layer ? Is that through just transposing via the timbre settings on the plug-in?
Thx a lot for these Synclavier sounds and demonstration. I noticed some delays between the video and the sound at some points... (when Greg is playing the organ on the ORK)
FM technology at his best , i swear it was a real pipe organ or even a sampled one, it's amazing that early sampler was only the drum machine, those gear where elite back then having a Yamaha DX7 or a E Mu emulator II or even an early AKAI MPC was the only digital music gear regular people could afford , those stuff was cutting edge and cost the price of a house or fancy sports car.
I guess once the synth bass and real bass were recorded for Billie Jean then Bruce did his magic getting those low end deep in your soul frequencies dialed in on the master mix. Love to have been a fly on the wall on these sessions.
Not to disrespect Anthony's genius, goes to show that factory presets are good too. I wonder if Anthony can make a video of how concerts were done back in the day (if there were clicks, patch changes from other boards with MIDI, any backing tracks etc.)
Anthony wasn't on any of the Michael tours, but here's your quick rundown: Yes, there was click on every tour but it was just for the drummer (Ricky or Jonathan), though sometimes if you're listening hard enough you can actually hear the playback count-in on some shows bleeding in through the overhead microphones. Bad World Tour used a Synclavier direct-to-disk tower (Greg briefly mentions it in this video) to handle both MIDI (some sequenced parts going to the rack synths, mostly changes though) and audio playback (not album sessions, but more heavily submixed categories of tracks) hooked up to Sycologic matrix boxes which were in each rack to handle keyboards (from JL Cooper boxes on-stage), patch changes from the playback Synclavier and obviously the modules that were in the racks and I think they also handled some little rack mixers for the big FM beasts which they absolutely ABUSED on that tour. Dangerous World Tour had that exact same Synclavier tower performing pretty much the same role, except the Sycologic's were swapped out for shiny and brand new Synapse boxes from JL Cooper, I believe the technician who designed the rig either worked with JL Cooper in some capacity or was actually one of the guys building those boxes. Some new rack mixers were put in, believe they were the Yamaha DMP-11's (loved Yamaha mixers on all of the tours I'm just realising) and it was mostly the same, just far better and newer rack modules and keyboards. HIStory Tour swapped to having two redundant Mac Quadra's running Pro Tools with one AKAI S-3200XL per side as essentially extra RAM, all of the changes being done by computers (might have been either Mac or Amiga) probably running Studio Vision behind the keyboards sending out through some Opcode Studio 5's, new rack mixers were the Yamaha ProMix 01's. Mostly the same design as the Dangerous World Tour though, but pretty much just using a slightly more modern approach.
@@kamranhayden5866 This information is incredibly useful, very detailed and I guess very accurate, it makes me wonder if you were part of the MJ tour team? I mean you've made me read up on the Synclavier Direct To Disk system (still shocked that it offered huge amount of sample storage at "excellent quality" of the time, but probably out of reach for almost anyone, except probably for studios.
That's not the final Billie Jean bass, it's sounding pretty close to the demo from what I remember though. Pipe organ is correct though, reminds me of a factory sound I heard years ago.
Not taking anything away from MJ but this proves how important all the unsung people are to a song. Thank you ALL for helping create this historic album.
it ALL goes back to Quincy Jones. because HE was the Producer. the Music Producer has the FINAL say so.
@mysticakhenaton1701 MJ was also a Producer on Thriller.
@@cherylkelber6083 he/Michael, was co-producer ONLY on the songs he wrote...Quincy Jones made ALL the MAJOR musical decisions.
@@mysticakhenaton1701 Quincy Jones is a genius, but he wouldn't have achieved too much all by himself. He always made a point to be surrounded by phenomenal musicians like Marinelli and Phillinganes and Louis Johnson and others because he wanted the best and he knew how much they could contribute.
It honestly says more about Michael's ability to bring talented people on to work with him.
Thank you, gentlemen! These insights into the music in this album are priceless and so enjoyable.
1:00 The way he immediately noticed the organ sound! Awesome!
Man i wish those videos were longer! Would've loved to be in the Room with them
This is beyond awesome!
Hi Anthony! It‘s so exciting watching you recreating the synths of Thriller. Thank you very mich for sharing these videos. By chance do you remember how you created the choir sound on "Beat it"? Or was it a preset maybe on synclavier? Michael used this choir sound from that moment on till the mid 90s and it became kind of a signature sound. He used it in Who is it, Ghost, Will You Be There (mixed with a real choir I guess) and some other songs. So it would be very interesting to know something about the "birth" of that sound. Thank you!!
We can see Michael playing choirs on synclavier on a video on UA-cam, i think the same sound on beat it, and on « ya mo be there » of james ingram.
I hope marinelli remember if this is the synclavier or other
ua-cam.com/video/Kxz9t-MHHIs/v-deo.html
Awesome that you found this vid! And it‘s a synclavier 😄. This footage seems to be from 1987-88. So I guess this synth was also used on Beat It.
Hi Anthony, did you ever cover this? If not would love to see a video of it on this or your other channel if possible, please?
For those who like me happen to not be able to own a synclavier and wondering how to get these sounds on Arturia Synclavier: For the organ there is no direct preset. But I found with tweaking of "Saint Eustache" (esp. lowering volume of Partial one and muting Partial 3) you get quite good results. For the Bass "Body Bass" pretty much is it.
Awesome 👏 What about for getting the other bass layers like the digital noise layer ? Is that through just transposing via the timbre settings on the plug-in?
Thx a lot for these Synclavier sounds and demonstration. I noticed some delays between the video and the sound at some points... (when Greg is playing the organ on the ORK)
Gold thx :)
I’d love to know the signal chain for the Rhodes ? Did they take the external speaker outs of the cab, into a DI? Then into the console ?
Thank you for this video !!
But how can i make this sound on my Synclavier V Plugin by Arturia?
FM technology at his best , i swear it was a real pipe organ or even a sampled one, it's amazing that early sampler was only the drum machine, those gear where elite back then having a Yamaha DX7 or a E Mu emulator II or even an early AKAI MPC was the only digital music gear regular people could afford , those stuff was cutting edge and cost the price of a house or fancy sports car.
I guess once the synth bass and real bass were recorded for Billie Jean then Bruce did his magic getting those low end deep in your soul frequencies dialed in on the master mix. Love to have been a fly on the wall on these sessions.
I would loved to have been a fly off the wall 😂😂
🌷🌷🌷
Not to disrespect Anthony's genius, goes to show that factory presets are good too.
I wonder if Anthony can make a video of how concerts were done back in the day (if there were clicks, patch changes from other boards with MIDI, any backing tracks etc.)
Anthony wasn't on any of the Michael tours, but here's your quick rundown:
Yes, there was click on every tour but it was just for the drummer (Ricky or Jonathan), though sometimes if you're listening hard enough you can actually hear the playback count-in on some shows bleeding in through the overhead microphones.
Bad World Tour used a Synclavier direct-to-disk tower (Greg briefly mentions it in this video) to handle both MIDI (some sequenced parts going to the rack synths, mostly changes though) and audio playback (not album sessions, but more heavily submixed categories of tracks) hooked up to Sycologic matrix boxes which were in each rack to handle keyboards (from JL Cooper boxes on-stage), patch changes from the playback Synclavier and obviously the modules that were in the racks and I think they also handled some little rack mixers for the big FM beasts which they absolutely ABUSED on that tour.
Dangerous World Tour had that exact same Synclavier tower performing pretty much the same role, except the Sycologic's were swapped out for shiny and brand new Synapse boxes from JL Cooper, I believe the technician who designed the rig either worked with JL Cooper in some capacity or was actually one of the guys building those boxes. Some new rack mixers were put in, believe they were the Yamaha DMP-11's (loved Yamaha mixers on all of the tours I'm just realising) and it was mostly the same, just far better and newer rack modules and keyboards.
HIStory Tour swapped to having two redundant Mac Quadra's running Pro Tools with one AKAI S-3200XL per side as essentially extra RAM, all of the changes being done by computers (might have been either Mac or Amiga) probably running Studio Vision behind the keyboards sending out through some Opcode Studio 5's, new rack mixers were the Yamaha ProMix 01's. Mostly the same design as the Dangerous World Tour though, but pretty much just using a slightly more modern approach.
@@kamranhayden5866 This information is incredibly useful, very detailed and I guess very accurate, it makes me wonder if you were part of the MJ tour team?
I mean you've made me read up on the Synclavier Direct To Disk system (still shocked that it offered huge amount of sample storage at "excellent quality" of the time, but probably out of reach for almost anyone, except probably for studios.
That's not the final Billie Jean bass, it's sounding pretty close to the demo from what I remember though. Pipe organ is correct though, reminds me of a factory sound I heard years ago.