How does Michael write a song?

analogue

Proud Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
8,397
Points
113
Michael can't read and write music so i was just wondering how does he write a song? I know he'll beatbox the music he wants into a tape recorder but does he do anything else to compose a song? Like does he sit down on a Piano and write a few notes there? When he wrote BAD did he play the Keyboard solo himself on the keyboard or did he hum the solo to the backing musitions and then they played it?

and if Michael only writes just by beatboxing into a tape recorder then that's freaking amazing!
 
This probably should be over at ''The Music and The Madness'' section of the forum.

Sorry about that
 
Michael can't read and write music so i was just wondering how does he write a song? I know he'll beatbox the music he wants into a tape recorder but does he do anything else to compose a song? Like does he sit down on a Piano and write a few notes there? When he wrote BAD did he play the Keyboard solo himself on the keyboard or did he hum the solo to the backing musitions and then they played it?

and if Michael only writes just by beatboxing into a tape recorder then that's freaking amazing!

Well, I think it's best that Michael tell you himself: (Skip to 5:00)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bWlA-xax3Mo
 
Last edited:
Michael plays the keyboard and the drums and some guitar, from what I understand, but as you said, he doesn't read or write music, so he can't write the song out. He sings the different parts to studio muscians and they play it until they do what he hears in his head. Like for "Will You Be There", Michael sat down with his keyboardest Brad Buxer and had Brad pick each note out on the keyboard and Michael would stop him and tell him when it was right. Michael's a genius. He hears every component of a song in his mind, it just comes to him. He doesn't sit down and think about it or work it out note by note as he goes along, its all just there in one, whole package, in his head, from the strings to the precussion to the horn sections, the rhythm, melody and bass, and he then has to get other people to play what he's hearing. So like I said, and I get this all from Michael's own descriptions, he sings each part to his musicsian, using his voice and beatboxing. Bill Bottrell said what's so amazing about Michael doing that is, he doesn't just sing the part to you, like if it was a guitar part, he actually injects the feeling he wants the instrument to convey using only his voice, like the emotion he wants it to convey.
 
Last edited:
The idea may come in various forms. it may come as a melody--just a one line simple melody which you might hum to yourself. Or it may come to the composer as a melody with an accompaniment. At times he might not even hear a melody; he may simply conceive a accompanimental figure to which a melody will probably be added later. Or, on the other hand, the theme may take form of a purely rhythmic idea. He hears a particular kind of drumbeat, and that will be enough to start him off. (Copeland:p23-24).

"The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining...." Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908), French anthropologist

Both great quotes on composition... The 2nd one relates to Michael as he seems to understand climax points in songs better than most... he knows how to tease the listener and also just let it go.

Michael also talks about letting the music write itself, that's similar to the idea of when you try to remember something you remember it easier when your not thinking too hard. He's also said that he's woken up at night with ideas which is common with most forms of writers.
 
he does a demo when he compose the song with all the parts he hear in his head
 
Yeah, basically the essays that everyone just typed, is all summed up in that video I posted.

:D
 
EBONY/JET: Speaking of music and rhythm, how did you put together the gospel songs on your last album?
JACKSON: I wrote “Will You Be There?” at my house, “Neverland” in California….I didn’t think about it hard. That's why it's hard to take credit for the songs that I write, because I just always feel that it’s done from above. I feel fortunate for being that instrument through which music flows. I’m just the source through which it comes. I can’t take credit for it because it’s God's work. He’s just using me as the messenger….






Ebony, 1992
 
Last edited:
Back
Top