Beat It Acapella Goes Viral On The Internet!

HIStory

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You never know what becomes an Internet hit and when. This is something that is known to us, fans, for years: the way Michael created music in general and this Beat It demo in particular which was released on the This Is It album in 2009. La Cienega (also a member here) put this on her Tumblr together with a quote from Robert Hofman about how MJ made music:

As Jackson couldn’t fluently play any instruments, he would sing and beatbox out how he wanted his songs to sound by himself on tape, layering the vocals, harmonies and rhythm before having instrumentalists come in to complete the songs.
One of his engineers Robmix on how Jackson worked: “One morning MJ came in with a new song he had written overnight. We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. “here’s the first chord first note, second note, third note. Here’s the second chord first note, second note, third note”, etc., etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room through an SM57. He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed MJ doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. he would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills.”

http://lacienegasmiled.tumblr.com/post/77598143356/demo-of-beat-it-composed-using-only-michael

It went viral immediately. Reposted by several websites and even tweeted and retweeted by famous people such as jazz musician and critic Ted Gioia and Radiohead's guitarist Johnny Greenwood:

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There are also articles written about it:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/mi...r-beat-it-is-the-ultimate?sub=3123929_2695623

Here is a discussion on a music forum: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f30/michael-jacksons-beat-demo-1066291/

(There are some idiots as usual trying to derail the thread into child molestation allegations talk - not even having their facts together, claiming MJ said on TV he took baths with young boys, when he never said that etc. And there is one narrow minded individual who insists MJ cannot be called a musical genius because he did not play instruments. The same person says Elvis (who never wrote his songs) is huge but MJ will be a footnote LOL. But most are impressed.)


[video=youtube;eZeYw1bm53Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZeYw1bm53Y[/video]
 
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Us fans already knew it and appreciated it but if it works for other people to notice and appreciate Michael's tremendous genius, it'd be wonderful indeed!
 
The Estate should really take note of how facts like this go unnoticed with the general public. We fans know how Michael created music, but apparently most of the general public didn't if it came as such a big surprise to a lot of people. A good documentary on MJ the ARTIST is badly needed! Bad 25 was OK, but did not focus on MJ the artist enough IMO. It was good for some behind the scenes footage and nice comments from collaborators, but it didn't say anything about Michael's creative process which is a shame. They spent more time with how Siedah wrote MITM than with talking about how MJ wrote 90% of the album.

I think there should be a several parts documentary made. One part focusing on MJ as a songwriter, another on MJ as a singer, another on MJ as a dancer-choreographer, another on MJ as the creator of amazing and groundbreaking music videos. It's clear that for a lot of people in the general public there are so many unknown facts about him.
 
I've actually heard people say that Eddie Van Halen wrote and composed Beat It
 
I think there should be a several parts documentary made. One part focusing on MJ as a songwriter, another on MJ as a singer, another on MJ as a dancer-choreographer, another on MJ as the creator of amazing and groundbreaking music videos. It's clear that for a lot of people in the general public there are so many unknown facts about him.

That's a great idea! You should post it in this thread: http://www.mjjcommunity.com/forum/t...-submit-messages-to-Estate-via-MJ-Online-Team
 
The Estate should really take note of how facts like this go unnoticed with the general public. We fans know how Michael created music, but apparently most of the general public didn't if it came as such a big surprise to a lot of people. A good documentary on MJ the ARTIST is badly needed! Bad 25 was OK, but did not focus on MJ the artist enough IMO. It was good for some behind the scenes footage and nice comments from collaborators, but it didn't say anything about Michael's creative process which is a shame. They spent more time with how Siedah wrote MITM than with talking about how MJ wrote 90% of the album.
Agreed 100%. It is nice to see a clip like this go viral. It shows that the general public is interested in learning more about MJ the artist. There are hardly any documentaries on MJ that focus on anything but the controversies in his life, and even the few that do focus on his talent put way too much emphasis on his commercial success or the ways in which his contemporaries and current artists were influenced by MJ (generally through interviews). Those things are not unimportant, but only one small aspect. In the end it is MJ's astounding work and talent that people fell in love with in the first place, and that is what should be focused upon.

I think there should be a several parts documentary made. One part focusing on MJ as a songwriter, another on MJ as a singer, another on MJ as a dancer-choreographer, another on MJ as the creator of amazing and groundbreaking music videos. It's clear that for a lot of people in the general public there are so many unknown facts about him.
An excellent idea indeed. And I really think the emphasis should be on showing MJ through archive footage, rather than merely adding a few clips to a compilation of interviews with others. As evidenced by the fact that this clip went viral, it is much more impressive and interesting to witness MJ's amazing talent directly, rather than to hear someone else talk about it in hyperbole. There is so much studio and dance rehearsal footage, and there are so many work tapes (think of The Girl Is Mine tape that was played during the Mexico Deposition) that could be used for this purpose.
 
It's amazing how these people on a music forum are blown away by something that has become so customary to us. I couldn't agree more, Respect, there needs to be a documentary series about Michael the artist - the vocalist, the dancer, the composer, the showman. People are clueless about basic things.

That's why I'll never support "contemorizing" MJ's music - his genius is in those demos, they are valuable and something that needs to be promoted, not someone else's renditions. I respect what is being done by the MJ estate, and Sony, and Cirque, but a lot of it is being done for pure entertainment value, and Michael was so much deeper than that. Someone needs to start shifting the narrative to The Artist.
 
The general public misses out on so much like this, when they focus on all the tabloid gossip. It's awesome how this demo got spread around so quickly, and we've all known about it for nearly five years.
 
Great article on NME
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/...ael-jackson-wrote-music?recache=1&t=123131157

The Incredible Way Michael Jackson Wrote Music

The news of 'Xscape', a posthumous album of Michael Jackson's archive material 'contemporized' by Epic boss LA Reid, has arrived the same week that an old demo of 'Beat It' has been doing the rounds. It shows Jackson's extraordinary process of writing songs by building each element of a track with his voice - every note of every chord, harmony, melody, bass and even the rhythm through beat-boxing. The full harmonies will blow your mind:


Jackson couldn't read or write music at all. Contrary to received wisdom, he could play instruments a bit - he's credited as playing keyboard, synthesizer, guitar, drums and percussion on 'HIStory' - but none proficiently. He didn't have any formal composition training, though one could say he was trained harder than any other performer by his father.

But just as Mozart could hear whole symphonies in his head, Jackson fully realised his songs before they were put down on paper. "The lyrics, the strings, the chords, everything comes at the moment like a gift that is put right into your head and that's how I hear it," said Jackson during the 'Dangerous' court case of 1994.

A top team of engineers and producers would work on the tracks that he brought into the studio but even they were wowed by his genius. Rob Hoffman, sound engineer, describes the process (h/t Rhythm Of The Tide):

One morning MJ came in with a new song he had written overnight. We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. “'Here’s the first chord, first note, second note, third note. Here’s the second chord first note, second note, third note', etc etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room through an SM57.

He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed MJ doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. He would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills


One of the most interesting and revealing interviews about the way Jackson crafted his work is the audio from the 'Dangerous' court case. Songwriter Crystal Cartier took him to court for plagiarism and during the trial Jackson was asked to describe his song-writing process. "I'll just sing the bass part into the tape recorder," he said between snips of sung melody, totally pitch perfect. "I'll take that bass lick and put the chords of the melody over the bass lick and that's what inspires the melody," he explained, before beat-boxing in court.


On Billie Jean he says: "Listen, you're hearing four basses on there, doing four different personalities, and that's what gives it character, but it takes a lot of work." At this point he had written a couple of hundred songs and said he'd usually be working on five songs at any one time. It's well worth listening to the 10 minutes of the trial in the video above if you want to know more.

Here’s another example of Jackson's ability to beatbox to show how he created ‘Tabloid Junkie’. It's from an interview with Diane Sawyer in 1995 (h/t MJ World) and you won't believe the sound's made by man not machine:


Of course, you don't need to be formally trained in music to be a successful artist. Paul McCartney has sold over 100 million records without learning how to notate. There are loads of ways musicians have found inventive methods to write songs without being able to actually pen down the chords - or if they just fancied going off the traditional path. You've got John Lennon assembling 10 people with pencils used to loop different sonic elements for 'Revolution 9'. Then there's Radiohead 'Idioteque' with a backbone made from a snippet of a recording Jonny Greenwood gave Thom Yorke (Greenwood's the only trained musician in the group). "There was this section of about 40 seconds long in the middle of it that was absolute genius, and I just cut that up and that was it," explained Yorke. Other examples include OMD who created their own notation system early on and Jason Pierce, Spiritualized's lead singer, who wrote all the orchestral parts for 'Let It Come Down' by singing them into a portable tape recorder. Ian McCulloch wrote 'The Killing Moon' by inverting the chords to David Bowie 'Space Oddity' and Goldie basically draws his tracks, using weird diagrams and squares and squiggles to write - watch this episode of Producers House, it's amazing.

I'm yet to hear 'Xscape' but will keep in mind the extraordinary way Jackson created some of the greatest pop anthems of all time. As anyone who's tried to write a song will know, it's pretty damn hard, even if you have some grasp of chords.

Read more at http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/...sic?recache=1&t=123131157#Bt4vBlOGmiGZPq4z.99
 
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And there is one narrow minded individual who insists MJ cannot be called a musical genius because he did not play instruments

The fact that Michael could compose music without having to rely on an instrument is what makes him a musical genius.
 
Someone in that talkbass forum said that the real geniuses behind Michael's songs were the instrumentalists that played the songs for him.

If those instrumentalists were such geniuses then they could have gotten together and composed all that music by themselves without Michael at all
 
Jackson couldn't read or write music at all. Contrary to received wisdom, he could play instruments a bit - he's credited as playing keyboard, synthesizer, guitar, drums and percussion on 'HIStory' - but none proficiently.

Out of curiosity, are there any good links to him actually playing instruments?
 
This is where I think the estate and has dropped the ball. They've done some good things mind you but not in showcasing Michael as a composer and the genius he really was. Fans know of course but the general public won't know unless it's shown as others have said in a documentary etc...There must be so much their just sitting on that's not being shared. Don't really understand why they don't.
 
Genius. He really was genius.

Glad to see the world now gets an insight to the creative proces.
 
Someone in that talkbass forum said that the real geniuses behind Michael's songs were the instrumentalists that played the songs for him.

If those instrumentalists were such geniuses then they could have gotten together and composed all that music by themselves without Michael at all

Lol that's silly indeed. It was MJ giving them instructions and the melodies, chords, notes and whatever, they just played them on an instrument. He could of have taken a bum from the streets who could play a certain instrument and the result would have been the same. In fact When MJ composed Much Too Soon they brought in an unknown local guitarist from the area and MJ directed and instructed him " ok first note here *sings*, second note here *sings*, third note here *sings* and the entire chord here *sings*" And they did the entire song like that. Words from the engineer that worked on the song. How genius it must have been for the instrumentalists to just follow instructions :p
 
One thing i'm really intrigued to see is if their was any footage shot, during the recording sessions in his final years.. with Neff-U etc.! would be so fascinating to experience that.
 
The Estate should really take note of how facts like this go unnoticed with the general public. We fans know how Michael created music, but apparently most of the general public didn't if it came as such a big surprise to a lot of people. A good documentary on MJ the ARTIST is badly needed! Bad 25 was OK, but did not focus on MJ the artist enough IMO.

I think there should be a several parts documentary made. One part focusing on MJ as a songwriter, another on MJ as a singer, another on MJ as a dancer-choreographer, another on MJ as the creator of amazing and groundbreaking music videos. It's clear that for a lot of people in the general public there are so many unknown facts about him.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BEST IDEA OF ALL TIME!!!!! I'll sign a petition or inundate the Estate with letters-this would be wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
There's tons of studio footage they could include, as well as his audios at Dangerous trial, etc. All the behind the scenes of the tours as well as the videos. I love it when Michael talks about his work. It's fascinating.

I read all those comments on the talkbass forum and found it interesting that they were comparing Mozart's and Beethoven's "stage" fathers to Joseph. I didn't know all that.
 
Lol that's silly indeed. It was MJ giving them instructions and the melodies, chords, notes and whatever, they just played them on an instrument. He could of have taken a bum from the streets who could play a certain instrument and the result would have been the same. In fact When MJ composed Much Too Soon they brought in an unknown local guitarist from the area and MJ directed and instructed him " ok first note here *sings*, second note here *sings*, third note here *sings* and the entire chord here *sings*" And they did the entire song like that. Words from the engineer that worked on the song. How genius it must have been for the instrumentalists to just follow instructions :p

One thing that many people don't understand is that being able to play an instrument doesn't automatically make someone a great composer. Someone could be the greatest multi-instrumentalist in the world and still be a terrible songwriter.

Look at Eric Clapton. He's a fantastic guitarist, and many music snobs would consider him to be more of an artist than Michael just because of that. But he actually wrote very few of his own songs
 
One thing that many people don't understand is that being able to play an instrument doesn't automatically make someone a great composer. Someone could be the greatest multi-instrumentalist in the world and still be a terrible songwriter.

Look at Eric Clapton. He's a fantastic guitarist, and many music snobs would consider him to be more of an artist than Michael just because of that. But he actually wrote very few of his own songs

I agree with your sentiments.
 
Michael didn't need to play an instrument proficiently. His voice was his instrument. The way he could vocalize all the cords, harmonies etc.. blows my mind. I love watching the clips of him beat boxing. Always leaves me stunned.
 
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