Beano Wild
How's Life?
So, over the weekend I decided to go to Brad Sundberg's "In the Studio With MJ" seminar, and leaving I had mixed - positive feelings on the entire experience.
DAY 1: MIXING SESSION
When I arrived at the "mixing session" on Friday, we all walked into the studio and brad introduced himself, explaining who he was and what he did, along with answering a few questions. he then gave everyone the choice of mixing a couple tracks:
2Bad
Scream
I Just Can't Stop Loving you
Bad
BOTDF
Jam
and Black or white.
He presented all of these in "stems", due to the previous attempt at a mixing session going bad due to there being too many tracks for people who don't usually work with audio, overwhelming them. all the multitracks listed there were previously leaked, and each of the people who were there were given the chance to go up and mix any track they wanted. Once the song ended, brad promptly said "alright, you're fired" and moved onto the next person, which got a few laughs.
An interesting comment was made when someone chose "Jam" and stripped it down to the percussion & sleighbells, when Brad mentioned that the sleighbells came from Bruce, and that he loved them from a very early iteration of Jam that was basically a different demo under the same track (think Streetwalker - Dangerous), that incorporated the bells. While he originally called it a different song, I found out the day after that it was not.
When IJCSLY was chosen, I asked the question about whether or not Whitney Heuston was supposed to be on the track, to which he stated she was NEVER in the cards, and that the only person actually considered was Barbra Streisand, who he was thankful didn't record it due to the age gap. The song was actually the last MJ song to be played by a band all together, live in a studio (guitar, drums, bass, etc.), when later tracks all had the elements recorded separately at different times/locations.
Next was Scream. Brad told us how when MJ & Janet first came into the studio and began warming up, they began to break down at each other, basically shouting and letting all the frustration with the media & the accusations out with F-ing and Blinding profanities. originally, the "stop pressuring me" was supposed to just be "stop fuckin' with me", but Brad was worried as at that time, America had a huge issue with the parental advisory board, which Brad felt Michael wasn't aware of. Brad asked Michael about whether he should really be doing this, to which Michael decided the best choice would be to change the chorus. When I asked him if there is an uncensored cut of the track in the vault, Brad said yes there is, but was doubtful to if Michael sung the word as well as Janet.
I decided to choose Bad and gave my notepad to someone else to write down any details. Brad told us about how he got the nickname "Brad Brad, Really Really Brad", and how that is supposedly in the album credits for Bad (someone please verify that for me hahah". MJ also supposedly couldn't choose what Bass sound to use for the track, settling on combining 7 different versions to create the sound on the album.
When BOTDF was chosen, I decided to ask the question of whether all the tracks had to be recreated in 1996 after supposedly losing all the tracks in 1992, to which he said no, but that they had to be recreated in 1997 for the History tour. This made no sense to me personally, as how would we be messing with the stems to the track if they were recreated? this would be solved the day after however, when someone else asked a similar question, where he stated that Teddy tended to lose a lot of tracks due to how quickly he worked, and that they were recreated in '96, and possibly some tracks were lost in the time between 96'-97' too that had to be recreated.
While everything played was leaked so far, this would change when he said he had a surprise, talking about how Michael recorded the bad tour into multitracks for Moonwalker, when he pulled out the multitracks (not stems) of an unknown Yokohama show, showing us the tracks to:
Billie Jean
Human Nature
and Beat It.
Brad again allowed us to go up and mix the tracks how we wanted to. I decided to go up and mix Billie Jean.
The tracks had an amount of bleeding between them, with the vocals having a very quick fall off in the high ends. The vocals also had several lyrics which weren't usually sung live, like the line about "you're just a city girl". The other tracks, while unique in their performances, didn't have anything notable to write about sadly.
Those multis would be all the "unreleased" stuff I would hear over the two days.
The seminar ended with me apologizing for taking notes as I felt he was somewhat intimidated/uncomfortable when I began writing down things and left to my hotel room.
DAY 2: THE SEMINAR
I took down very few notes on this day due to it consisting of nothing but the leaked stuff. apart from a comment about Michael calling a mix that is good "bible", and a mix that is really good "Bible, Bible" due to him not wanting anyone to touch it, like as if it's a bible (which is odd considering bibles have been edited for hundreds of years), there was nothing of worth to write down due to it all being online or being leaked.
The entire day felt like I was rewatching a really good film I saw before in clips. Like yes, it's a great film, and it's great to see it all in one continuous story, but I know all the stories he's going to tell.
One thing I was shocked about was his bashing on Bryan Loryen, stating he "missed out" due to him being "slow" in his working, focusing more on polishing grooves rather than working with finishing the tracks with Michael, along with leaving the studio to work in other studios.
He forgot to add an important detail, that Michael usually was never there with Bryan, instead coming in every now and again to ask for cassettes to hear some of the stuff he was working on, which of course, caused Bryan to become disinterested in the project due to the lack of commitment from MJ, causing both sides to slack off. I felt that Brad was unfair to Loryen, and that he was overly critical. Brad did rightly criticise Loryen for speaking to the media about working with MJ even though he signed an NDA, however.
I asked Brad about several unreleased tracks, and I believed him initially when he said he had nothing, until at one point in the seminar he switched the screen to his 2nd laptop (the one that wasn't stolen), and accidentally (and unknowingly until another fan that saw the track too told him during a break) showed a folder, where we all saw something that read like "Bubbles 4-19-90.wav" (not real file name or date hahah).
I decided instead of asking to hear the track, to test him, asking him something like "Brad, you mentioned how Loryen polished a lot of his instrumental grooves a lot instead of focusing on working with Michael, and was wondering if you'd be able to show us one of the grooves like Bubbles to hear what you mean by polishing them?" to which brad said "I don't have the track on me at the moment, sorry", which from what I saw wasn’t correct.
After that, I realized that no matter what, Brad was not going to play anything of worth to us, and that's when I clicked that the ONLY people that cared about that stuff was me and another lad (who coincidentally I met at the Jackson's Bedford concert hahah). To the rest of the people, everything was completely new, which in retrospective makes me feel that the leaks damaged the experience a lot for hardcore fans like myself due to already hearing/seeing 99% of the show in fragments.
I decided to go up to him during the break, to ask about why he's not playing anything unreleased, to which he stated
"The show is built".
At this point, I felt somewhat defeated, being nearly 400 euro down the drain and coming to hear 3 variants of live tracks I've already heard, along with demos & videos I've already witnessed. Again in retrospective, I now see that I was going into the seminar with the wrong mindset, thinking I was going to get the same experience as the other people who didn’t even know what the song “if you don’t love me” was (which a girl got ecstatic about which was amazing to see).
the show went on, going into the Neverland section, where I was less educated in. and while people call that section a "drag", I enjoyed it much more compared to the actual seminar due to it being stuff I didn't know, but was sad it was rushed at the end due to time constraints. I won't spoil that section as it was genuinely good, and people should go and watch the neverland seminars he does both online and in person.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I found the first day a little basic to my tastes, but enjoyable due to it going through the stories behind the tracks and giving people ample opportunity to ask questions relating to the process & the experience. The Yokohama tracks were great to hear and to mess around with the multis for them were great. The use of leaked multitracks however, and the dumbing down of the 48-90 track packs into 9 track stems wasn’t the greatest for myself however, and I feel he should have given people the option of either the stems or multitracks to mess with. Overall, I'd give it a 7/10.
The seminar itself, while I could definitely see it having an effect on the people not knowledgeable on, with some people crying in the outro with MJ singing Childhood, was not good for people who might have seen the footage & know the stories like me, which isn’t brads fault. I feel that he should definitely have introduced new material for the fans like myself, but can completely understand to why he hasn’t.
The Neverland section was genuinely good, and was interesting to hear about, and I feel that if you have the opportunity to go to that by itself, do.
If you already know Michael and have been reading up about him for a number of years, I would not reccomend you to the seminar expecting new things, but to go to see everything that is in fragments in “leaks” at the moment formed into a cohesive experience, being told by a man who actually lived in the studio.
if you are inexperienced with Michael and the stories surrounding him, I would 100% recommend going to it. It gave great insight into the song creation process for people who are less knowledgeable in that area and made a lot of the info surrounding the creation process much more digestible, but it depends if 190 euro is a justifiable amount of money to hear and see information that is already public.
Thanks for reading lads hahah, let me know what your opinion is below and if you have anything to add/argue about.
EDIT:
decided I’d add onto this after a few days of reflection, and while I believe I’m allowed to be frustrated at not hearing anything new, I now appreciate having seen all the previous material in a concise story being told by someone who was there, as an experience it definitely worked in what Brad intended it to be.
DAY 1: MIXING SESSION
When I arrived at the "mixing session" on Friday, we all walked into the studio and brad introduced himself, explaining who he was and what he did, along with answering a few questions. he then gave everyone the choice of mixing a couple tracks:
2Bad
Scream
I Just Can't Stop Loving you
Bad
BOTDF
Jam
and Black or white.
He presented all of these in "stems", due to the previous attempt at a mixing session going bad due to there being too many tracks for people who don't usually work with audio, overwhelming them. all the multitracks listed there were previously leaked, and each of the people who were there were given the chance to go up and mix any track they wanted. Once the song ended, brad promptly said "alright, you're fired" and moved onto the next person, which got a few laughs.
An interesting comment was made when someone chose "Jam" and stripped it down to the percussion & sleighbells, when Brad mentioned that the sleighbells came from Bruce, and that he loved them from a very early iteration of Jam that was basically a different demo under the same track (think Streetwalker - Dangerous), that incorporated the bells. While he originally called it a different song, I found out the day after that it was not.
When IJCSLY was chosen, I asked the question about whether or not Whitney Heuston was supposed to be on the track, to which he stated she was NEVER in the cards, and that the only person actually considered was Barbra Streisand, who he was thankful didn't record it due to the age gap. The song was actually the last MJ song to be played by a band all together, live in a studio (guitar, drums, bass, etc.), when later tracks all had the elements recorded separately at different times/locations.
Next was Scream. Brad told us how when MJ & Janet first came into the studio and began warming up, they began to break down at each other, basically shouting and letting all the frustration with the media & the accusations out with F-ing and Blinding profanities. originally, the "stop pressuring me" was supposed to just be "stop fuckin' with me", but Brad was worried as at that time, America had a huge issue with the parental advisory board, which Brad felt Michael wasn't aware of. Brad asked Michael about whether he should really be doing this, to which Michael decided the best choice would be to change the chorus. When I asked him if there is an uncensored cut of the track in the vault, Brad said yes there is, but was doubtful to if Michael sung the word as well as Janet.
I decided to choose Bad and gave my notepad to someone else to write down any details. Brad told us about how he got the nickname "Brad Brad, Really Really Brad", and how that is supposedly in the album credits for Bad (someone please verify that for me hahah". MJ also supposedly couldn't choose what Bass sound to use for the track, settling on combining 7 different versions to create the sound on the album.
When BOTDF was chosen, I decided to ask the question of whether all the tracks had to be recreated in 1996 after supposedly losing all the tracks in 1992, to which he said no, but that they had to be recreated in 1997 for the History tour. This made no sense to me personally, as how would we be messing with the stems to the track if they were recreated? this would be solved the day after however, when someone else asked a similar question, where he stated that Teddy tended to lose a lot of tracks due to how quickly he worked, and that they were recreated in '96, and possibly some tracks were lost in the time between 96'-97' too that had to be recreated.
While everything played was leaked so far, this would change when he said he had a surprise, talking about how Michael recorded the bad tour into multitracks for Moonwalker, when he pulled out the multitracks (not stems) of an unknown Yokohama show, showing us the tracks to:
Billie Jean
Human Nature
and Beat It.
Brad again allowed us to go up and mix the tracks how we wanted to. I decided to go up and mix Billie Jean.
The tracks had an amount of bleeding between them, with the vocals having a very quick fall off in the high ends. The vocals also had several lyrics which weren't usually sung live, like the line about "you're just a city girl". The other tracks, while unique in their performances, didn't have anything notable to write about sadly.
Those multis would be all the "unreleased" stuff I would hear over the two days.
The seminar ended with me apologizing for taking notes as I felt he was somewhat intimidated/uncomfortable when I began writing down things and left to my hotel room.
DAY 2: THE SEMINAR
I took down very few notes on this day due to it consisting of nothing but the leaked stuff. apart from a comment about Michael calling a mix that is good "bible", and a mix that is really good "Bible, Bible" due to him not wanting anyone to touch it, like as if it's a bible (which is odd considering bibles have been edited for hundreds of years), there was nothing of worth to write down due to it all being online or being leaked.
The entire day felt like I was rewatching a really good film I saw before in clips. Like yes, it's a great film, and it's great to see it all in one continuous story, but I know all the stories he's going to tell.
One thing I was shocked about was his bashing on Bryan Loryen, stating he "missed out" due to him being "slow" in his working, focusing more on polishing grooves rather than working with finishing the tracks with Michael, along with leaving the studio to work in other studios.
He forgot to add an important detail, that Michael usually was never there with Bryan, instead coming in every now and again to ask for cassettes to hear some of the stuff he was working on, which of course, caused Bryan to become disinterested in the project due to the lack of commitment from MJ, causing both sides to slack off. I felt that Brad was unfair to Loryen, and that he was overly critical. Brad did rightly criticise Loryen for speaking to the media about working with MJ even though he signed an NDA, however.
I asked Brad about several unreleased tracks, and I believed him initially when he said he had nothing, until at one point in the seminar he switched the screen to his 2nd laptop (the one that wasn't stolen), and accidentally (and unknowingly until another fan that saw the track too told him during a break) showed a folder, where we all saw something that read like "Bubbles 4-19-90.wav" (not real file name or date hahah).
I decided instead of asking to hear the track, to test him, asking him something like "Brad, you mentioned how Loryen polished a lot of his instrumental grooves a lot instead of focusing on working with Michael, and was wondering if you'd be able to show us one of the grooves like Bubbles to hear what you mean by polishing them?" to which brad said "I don't have the track on me at the moment, sorry", which from what I saw wasn’t correct.
After that, I realized that no matter what, Brad was not going to play anything of worth to us, and that's when I clicked that the ONLY people that cared about that stuff was me and another lad (who coincidentally I met at the Jackson's Bedford concert hahah). To the rest of the people, everything was completely new, which in retrospective makes me feel that the leaks damaged the experience a lot for hardcore fans like myself due to already hearing/seeing 99% of the show in fragments.
I decided to go up to him during the break, to ask about why he's not playing anything unreleased, to which he stated
"The show is built".
At this point, I felt somewhat defeated, being nearly 400 euro down the drain and coming to hear 3 variants of live tracks I've already heard, along with demos & videos I've already witnessed. Again in retrospective, I now see that I was going into the seminar with the wrong mindset, thinking I was going to get the same experience as the other people who didn’t even know what the song “if you don’t love me” was (which a girl got ecstatic about which was amazing to see).
the show went on, going into the Neverland section, where I was less educated in. and while people call that section a "drag", I enjoyed it much more compared to the actual seminar due to it being stuff I didn't know, but was sad it was rushed at the end due to time constraints. I won't spoil that section as it was genuinely good, and people should go and watch the neverland seminars he does both online and in person.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I found the first day a little basic to my tastes, but enjoyable due to it going through the stories behind the tracks and giving people ample opportunity to ask questions relating to the process & the experience. The Yokohama tracks were great to hear and to mess around with the multis for them were great. The use of leaked multitracks however, and the dumbing down of the 48-90 track packs into 9 track stems wasn’t the greatest for myself however, and I feel he should have given people the option of either the stems or multitracks to mess with. Overall, I'd give it a 7/10.
The seminar itself, while I could definitely see it having an effect on the people not knowledgeable on, with some people crying in the outro with MJ singing Childhood, was not good for people who might have seen the footage & know the stories like me, which isn’t brads fault. I feel that he should definitely have introduced new material for the fans like myself, but can completely understand to why he hasn’t.
The Neverland section was genuinely good, and was interesting to hear about, and I feel that if you have the opportunity to go to that by itself, do.
If you already know Michael and have been reading up about him for a number of years, I would not reccomend you to the seminar expecting new things, but to go to see everything that is in fragments in “leaks” at the moment formed into a cohesive experience, being told by a man who actually lived in the studio.
if you are inexperienced with Michael and the stories surrounding him, I would 100% recommend going to it. It gave great insight into the song creation process for people who are less knowledgeable in that area and made a lot of the info surrounding the creation process much more digestible, but it depends if 190 euro is a justifiable amount of money to hear and see information that is already public.
Thanks for reading lads hahah, let me know what your opinion is below and if you have anything to add/argue about.
EDIT:
decided I’d add onto this after a few days of reflection, and while I believe I’m allowed to be frustrated at not hearing anything new, I now appreciate having seen all the previous material in a concise story being told by someone who was there, as an experience it definitely worked in what Brad intended it to be.
