It was. Not the first time a thread on here has randomly disappeared.
.
.
).
.
..
). But still fun (sorry for messing up "Shake Your Body", Michael, love you 
).
.
I think after his laptop was stolen That shifted and changed how he did his seminars. That's why he doesn't really play a lot of demos and unreleased material anymore. He changes up how he does a lot of his presentation/seminars now. Sadly a lot of that stuff that was stolen from him ended up on mine and I still refused to look any of that. I'm still hoping one day he will wound up near me in Missouri.Seems like I will go first (trying to keep it short, @thiron asked all the questions):
The timetable was:
- June 27th: 6.30 pm - 9.30 pm: Virtual Tour of Neverland
- June 28th: 12.00 pm - 7.00 pm: In the Studio with MJ
- June 29th: 12.00 pm - 7.00 pm: Mixing and Stories In the Studio with MJ incl. a live call with Matt Forger
Maybe some general info first: There was no parking space at this specific location, which worried me at first but you could park at a street nearby for free (on Sunday however, of course there was a triathlon or sth and of course the streets were closed down, so I panicked at first but found a cheap parking space...only took me like half an hour to find it
On Saturday and Sunday we had a lunch break for an hour where we could go out and buy sth to eat. There were some snacks you could grab during the seminar and free beverages, but not a lot to choose from. So I recommend to bring snacks and sth to drink, especially when its soooooo hot, like it was in FFM or when you have special food preferences and like to eat all the time, like I do
Phones and bags had to stay outside the seminar room and we were checked with a metal detector. I guess that's all the side info worth mentioning.
I am trying to keep it short, so: it was a unique experience, Brad is super nice and has a great sense of humour (just like in his videos/the podcast). You can also chat with him during the breaks. He is very honest and also brought up some uneasy topics but was never insulting towards Michael. I feel like they really had a great friendship (as colleagues, so no best buddies of course – he also said that) and it was special to hear the stories directly from someone who worked over such a long time period with Michael and had a good connection to him.
What is interesting for most people here (I guess):
He didn't really play new stuff. If I remember correctly, there was one song/melody/whatever you want to call it I didn't know so far, but I am also not an expert on this topic of unreleased material. He also said that there is a lot in the vault, but mainly ideas/melodies/beats/etc. - nothing you could just release as it is. But also mentioned that Brad Buxer says different things, so...who knows...mystery as always
To listen to the songs on Brad's speakers was really blowing my mind. I will have to save money for a sound system now and maybe will get thrown out of my apartment because I will turn that thing up, but...different story
I loved the first two days, when he told a lot of stories. The third day was mainly mixing. Everyone could experiment with one song and so there was not so much time for other narratives, so it was a little boring (maybe also because it was sooooo hot – did I mention that? - and I was just overwhelmed by the two other days
Maybe I will add one or two stories, if you are interested. Or you guys just want to know the answers to your questions, then you have to wait for @thiron
Had a great time, can recommend, will visit again (in winter)
View attachment 7534
edit: I am so satisfied with all the pictures and my signature being mainly red and black, damn. Nailed it.
Can imagine that. But for me, personally, the stories are worth more than listening once to a unreleased track.
I guess, one of the demos was this leaked one. Is the other one much different than the leak? Are both from Dangerous sessions?
Judging by its description there isn't anything interesting about this track in any way whatsoever, but just learning anything new about Michael's music always scratches that right spot in the brain.
The I Can’t Help It demo is from the Bad era? Huh?
Least favourite the mixing - day, because there weren't a lot of stories. Fav part really everything else.
.
. And the mix between fun, seriousness and touching stories was great (mainly funny, though).
Thank you for the Feedback!!Seems like I will go first (trying to keep it short, @thiron asked all the questions):
The timetable was:
- June 27th: 6.30 pm - 9.30 pm: Virtual Tour of Neverland
- June 28th: 12.00 pm - 7.00 pm: In the Studio with MJ
- June 29th: 12.00 pm - 7.00 pm: Mixing and Stories In the Studio with MJ incl. a live call with Matt Forger
Maybe some general info first: There was no parking space at this specific location, which worried me at first but you could park at a street nearby for free (on Sunday however, of course there was a triathlon or sth and of course the streets were closed down, so I panicked at first but found a cheap parking space...only took me like half an hour to find it
On Saturday and Sunday we had a lunch break for an hour where we could go out and buy sth to eat. There were some snacks you could grab during the seminar and free beverages, but not a lot to choose from. So I recommend to bring snacks and sth to drink, especially when its soooooo hot, like it was in FFM or when you have special food preferences and like to eat all the time, like I do
Phones and bags had to stay outside the seminar room and we were checked with a metal detector. I guess that's all the side info worth mentioning.
I am trying to keep it short, so: it was a unique experience, Brad is super nice and has a great sense of humour (just like in his videos/the podcast). You can also chat with him during the breaks. He is very honest and also brought up some uneasy topics but was never insulting towards Michael. I feel like they really had a great friendship (as colleagues, so no best buddies of course – he also said that) and it was special to hear the stories directly from someone who worked over such a long time period with Michael and had a good connection to him.
What is interesting for most people here (I guess):
He didn't really play new stuff. If I remember correctly, there was one song/melody/whatever you want to call it I didn't know so far, but I am also not an expert on this topic of unreleased material. He also said that there is a lot in the vault, but mainly ideas/melodies/beats/etc. - nothing you could just release as it is. But also mentioned that Brad Buxer says different things, so...who knows...mystery as always
To listen to the songs on Brad's speakers was really blowing my mind. I will have to save money for a sound system now and maybe will get thrown out of my apartment because I will turn that thing up, but...different story
I loved the first two days, when he told a lot of stories. The third day was mainly mixing. Everyone could experiment with one song and so there was not so much time for other narratives, so it was a little boring (maybe also because it was sooooo hot – did I mention that? - and I was just overwhelmed by the two other days
Maybe I will add one or two stories, if you are interested. Or you guys just want to know the answers to your questions, then you have to wait for @thiron
Had a great time, can recommend, will visit again (in winter)
View attachment 7534
edit: I am so satisfied with all the pictures and my signature being mainly red and black, damn. Nailed it.
Thank you!!My experiences from the seminar in Frankfurt. This is gonna be a long one.
Introduction:
We few people here in the forum are a very special target group, even among MJ fans. We are total unreleased-song-nerds, of which there are probably only a few people like that in reality. There were a lot of different people at the seminar: Mostly longtime MJ fans, but also music fans in general. Probably only a fraction of them are intensively bothered with numbers, dates and facts of secret MJ songs and meticulously share every single studio story in online forums (example: the Keep The Faith story seemed to be new to most of the participants, while in this forum probably most people know it). That's why Brad's seminar is not aimed at hardcore nerds, but basically at MJ and music fans in general. Keep that in mind. The seminar is not only about going through obscure and secret recordings all day. Its about sharing stories from the studio and telling what it was like recording some of MJs biggest albums.
I haven't really followed all the leaks over the last few years, so I don't know if we've heard anything you haven't heard. For me, there was new stuff I didn’t know beforehand. We've heard a lot of multitracks, for example. I'll get to the unreleased songs later, but as I already stated, there wasn't “much” stuff. Brad was also quite reluctant to give any information about unreleased songs, while he was very willing to talk about all the other topics and questions and shared many memories. Given that presumably almost all of the content from his seminars has already been illegally recorded and leaked and that one of his laptops was stolen a few years ago, I'm not surprised by him being cautious.
Who is Brad?
Brad worked as a studio technician in the big studios (Westlake, Record One, Hit Factory) on the songs that were supposed to appear on an album. He worked alongside people like Quincy, Bruce Swedien, Rod Temperton (who by the way was there during the whole Bad album creation process), Matt Forger and others. He wasn’t there when MJ tinkered in Hayvenhurst or later in his private studio in Neverland. Brad is a very nice, down to earth guy with his own sense of humour.
Day 1: Neverland
Brad told us several stories about how he got to be working on Neverland and how it was like. He showed both relatively recent (HD) pictures and old photographs of Neverland. We went through each part of the ranch and got to hear stories about each of them. Either Brad himself told us the stories or he showed short interviews he did with ex-employees (e.g. train conductor, chef, head of security). Brad installed about 200 rock speakers all around Neverland so that music would be heard everywhere. At the beginning, there was no MJ music at all. It was a mix of Disney and classical music, except for the rides. I’m not going through all the stories told, but I liked this one: MJ didn’t only invite children to Neverland. Once, there was a group of Alzheimer patients. When they got to the amusement park, they would act just like they were children again.
I really liked the Neverland part of the seminar. Neverland used to be a wonderful, beautiful and fascinating place. Wish I could have been there in the 90s! Brad acknowledged that while being as wonderful as it was, Neverland also has been completely financially unsustainable: MJ used to spend money like he never left the Thriller era (there were more than 100 full-time employees and MJ never demanded an entry fee from anyone).
I asked Brad if he knew anything about the song Neverland Landing and if it had to do with his own ranch: He didn’t know the song.
Day 2: In the Studio with MJ
This was the “regular” day of the seminar. Brad told stories about the Bad, Dangerous and HIStory albums, showed short interviews with other participants, photos, videos and sound recordings. I was at one of Brad's seminars 10 years ago. Some parts were repeated in a very similar form, but a lot has changed (and improved, I would say) since then.
A few miscellaneous things:
MJ listened to music through headphones with an extreme volume. So loud that you would actually suffer hearing damage in the long run. Brad was surprised that this didn't seem to be the case with MJ (Michael didn't once say “I didn't understand you, could you repeat that?”).
It was usually very dark in the individual studios themselves and there were only a few people there. Michael only wanted people there whom he trusted. There was never anyone from his family in the studio (apart from Janet, of course). When Brad showed video footage to us, it was from a home camera from the 80s or 90s in an extremely dark room. So don't expect any making-of footage in HD in the future.
Before the recording sessions for the album tracks, MJ would show up in the studio 2 hours beforehand and sing music-scales up and down for 2 hours straight as a warm-up. He often moonwalked in circles while doing that. It must have been a very special sight
They did not talk with MJ about the lyrics or meaning of the songs he wrote. Brad said it wasn’t his job to ask MJ about that and MJ didn’t really seem like wanting to talk about it.
Brads favourite song to work on was Stranger in Moscow and one song he did not wanna name (suggested it was an unreleased one).
MJ didn’t drink coffee. He drank hot water when recording vocals and tea when working in the studio.
Bad trivia:
It wasn't originally planned for Smooth Criminal, Bad and TWYMMF to be sped up after the recording. Michael played around with the speed control on the console while working on SC until he found a tempo he had to dance to. Brad played us a slightly earlier version of SC with the original speed. By the way, the “I wanna clear the area right now!” in the song is spoken by Bruce Swedien.
I love the Liberian Girl backround harmonies, which consist of 16 individual tracks at different pitches.
IJCSLY is the last song that was recorded with a four-piece live band in the studio. After that, the instruments were recorded either by individual musicians or via computer sounds. The piano and orchestra in the multitracks of that song sound cool.
More stuff we heard from Bad time: A demo of "I cant Help It", which sounded like a jazzy live version with lots of piano and ad-libs. Two versions of Streetwalker that were pretty cool. On one version, MJ sang the "Give me some Time" part in a high pitched register, so the vocals probably weren’t finished here.
Is there a dance mix of Speed demon?: Brad says there isn’t. He also does not know why the LMA dance mix Bruce Swedien did has not been released.
Dangerous trivia:
Brad talked about the 3 (4) producers of Dangerous, which where Bruce Swedien, Teddy Riley, Bill Bottrell and Bryan Loren at the very beginning. He praised Bill for his work and explained that he had a vastly different approach to working in a studio than Bruce Swedien. Bruce would have a scientific, meticular approach and would record to up to 44 lead vocal takes with MJ (did that with Jam), while Bill didn’t do more than 5. There was a video of Bill and his team partying in the studio to some sort of dance mix of Monkey Business, which was pretty funny. Brad also praised Bryan Loren for his work in general and explained why he got replaced by Teddy: MJ liked to move fast in the studio, he wanted to quickly produce new sounds. Bryan would be very slow and didn’t seem as motivated like the other producers. Teddy on the other hand was very professional and quick.
We heard 2 demos of SPYHO which sounded completely different than the released ballad: Much faster, harder drums, different vocal take. We also heard the tape with the recording of the creation of Give Into Me (a portion of it, as it is 2h long). Brad does not know if there are other songs that where created in such a short time with the process being recorded.
Brad played isolated BG vocals of If You Don’t Love me, which sounded cool. We saw a video of MJ and Bruce listening to Jam in the studio and of Teddy playing piano.
There was a video of MJ and Bruce listening to WYBT in the studio.
HIStory trivia:
The multitracks of YANA are nice with great vocals, especially the ad libs at the end. R Kelly is doing some bg vocals.
We were shown the video of MJ recording Childhood. I think that has been leaked already? I didn’t see it before and it was a highlight of the entire seminar for me. I asked Brad if there are more video recordings of MJ doing lead vocals. He said “Not much”, as they usually didn’t carry a video camera in the studio and wanted to keep MJs privacy. Brad made it sound like there might be slightly more. In fact, I just listened to a podcast where (if I remember correctly), Matt Forger stated he filmed MJ while recording Smile.
Christmas Star: You already know the story of MJ decorating the studio, Brad being Santa and the children doing a choir. MJ never recorded any vocals for that one. Brad said he is sure MJ just wanted to do a Christmas party, as he never had one before and was super curious about Christmas.
Brad has no idea why Come Together is on HIStory. MJ wanted it, so there it is. He doesn’t know the origins of Little Susie or how it sounded in the 70s.
I asked Brad at which point in the album creation process MJ would record lead vocals: First, MJ would to scratch vocals, then the instruments would be recorded, then overdubs. At the very end, shortly before mixing, MJ would do final lead vocals. They did extensive vocal comping (picking the best lines of all recorded takes), which is why they waited until most other stuff would be finished. MJ also was a procrastinator, Brad said.
Day 3: Mixing session
Each participant had the opportunity to live-mix a song on the multitracks and listen to them really loud on great speakers. Brad already prepared the songs so that there only were only about up to 10 tracks (for example lead, bg, drums, guitar, horns, orchestra, synth etc.). That was really fun! I did Jam and really enjoyed stripping back some of the production to discover more of the vocals. Brad did have about 15 different songs that we were able to mix. I especially enjoyed Jam, Scream (great vocals), BOTDF (great bg vocals), 2Bad (beatboxing MJ) and Shake Your Body (08:20 min mix). On Billie Jean, I noticed that the “huh huh, huh huh” sound throughout the song is not some kind of instrument, but, in fact, MJ bg vocals. Maybe you already knew, but I never noticed J
More stuff we heard:
2 demos of Earth Song (one very early with a different vocal take)
Super early “demo” (more like just a groove) of Jam. Instrumental, sounded completely different and had a hard hitting industrial beat. Written by Rene Moore and Bruce Swedien.
Late Ghosts demo: Sounded nearly finished, but some parts of the lead vocals weren’t done 100%.
Russian Groove: A looped drum beat from 1994 done by Buxer and MJ. No vocals, just a groove.
Deep in the Night: A short groove from 1990. Nearly no vocals except for MJ singing “Deep in the Night” and one more sentence I can’t remember.
Homeless Bound (1990): A groove that plays over homeless people being interviewed by Matt Forger. Sounds very experimental and rough. Strange industrial sounds done by Bryan Loren and a nice piano melody by Buxer. No MJ vocals done for that. They worked for weeks on that track and then just moved on.
Throwing Your Life Away: I don’t listen to leaks anymore, so this one was completely new for me. Sounded unusual, pretty fast singing. The vocals seemed nearly finished, the instrumental track sounded demo-like for MJ album standards. With some work, this song could be really nice. Hope for a release in the future J
Faces (1994): Didn’t hear that one before, you probably already know it. Starts with a long inspirational speech by MJ, followed by pretty cool African sounds, beats and drumming by (I think) the Long Beach Marching Band. Buxer worked on that groove. We saw a short video of them in the studio. Nelson Mandela was going to also record a speech, but he had to cancel that appointment. No MJ singing in that song.
About unreleased songs: Brad says most stuff that has not been released is in the form of experimental grooves with no or nearly no vocals (like the ones above mentioned). They aren’t even “songs” in that sense. They are nice and interesting, but nothing ground-breaking and couldn’t be marketed as new MJ songs. There is no other MITM in the vault. He also stated that Brad Buxer would disagree with him and say there is some good stuff that should be released. I asked if Brad Sundberg worked on Don’t Be Messing Round after Bad: He said he didn’t and does not think there’s a finished version, but also was not there in every studio for every recording session.
We saw videos of MJ and Shean Lennon playing with that strange Theremin instrument, of family Friday in the studio and MJ in the control room recording the Andrea Crouch choir for TDCAU.
Matt Forger was there for about 30min via zoom. Would have loved to have had him for a couple of hours. He is such a great guy who probably could tell stories all day long. He told the story of the Beat It solo being recorded by Van Halen in detail. Sadly, not much time for questions.
What was the biggest challenge during the Thriller session: The extremely long working hours and the fatigue. Sometimes they would sleep in the studio. The time factor was very challenging, especially as they also did the ET book simultaneously.
How did they record the rain in SiM: They didn’t, it is a sound effect.
Typical day in the studio: Anything could happen. It depended on what MJ wanted to work on. He often worked with Buxer or Barnes on sounds Mj liked to explore. Sometimes there would be session musicians. The recording process with MJ was exciting and unexpected. There was no shortage of ideas and spontaneity. MJ often asked for new sounds, so they tinkered and explored a lot.
Did Matt anticipate Thrillers success? He did not, but also didn’t think about sales. They focused on doing the best quality possible and knew it was going to be a great album.
Are there other cover songs besides Smile and Come Together: Matt couldn’t recall other cover songs being done.
Why was In the Back on the early tracklist for the Blood on the Dancefloor album? Matt doesn’t know. It is a Brad Buxer song, so we could ask him.
Too long, didn’t read: Fantastic for people who want to hear + see first-hand information and stories from the studio with MJ, connect with other MJ fans or just celebrate MJ in a cool environment. The seminar is not for you if you already know every detail from the recording sessions and are mainly interested in secret information about unreleased songs. For me, the discounted price of 200€ was totally worth it (I usually pay double the amount for education/training seminars in Germany).
Sorry, my "Bad"
I think he played it shortly before beginning after a break. We then started with the Bad album stuff, so in my notes I have this demo in the Bad-section. So thats my fault. ). There were really interesting and cool people: One attended a Bad concert and several Dangerous and History concerts, one liked to collect rare stuff and had the shirt MJ wore in the Why-video, one visited Neverland in the early 00s.I agree. Russian Groove itself isn't that interesting and no one but hardcore fans would bother. But in context, along with explanations of who, why, when and where it was created, it starts to get interesting. Its a glimpse of how MJ and Buxer worked and experimented on new ideas which sometimes led to nothing and sometimes to eternal tunes like Stranger in Moscow.
I already asked Matt 2 questions, the time was almost up and there were plenty more people eager to ask. So sorry, maybe next time
So, there's no dance mix of SD at all. Thanks for asking this.
I think there is. I just posted a video in the Unreleased Music thread.
There isn't, at least not one done by the main Westlake team.
Super cool stuff there! Love the info on those tracks they played. Was that early demo of Jam just a drum beat? With no keys and all that. Teddy once said he did most of the keys on that tune.My experiences from the seminar in Frankfurt. This is gonna be a long one.
Introduction:
We few people here in the forum are a very special target group, even among MJ fans. We are total unreleased-song-nerds, of which there are probably only a few people like that in reality. There were a lot of different people at the seminar: Mostly longtime MJ fans, but also music fans in general. Probably only a fraction of them are intensively bothered with numbers, dates and facts of secret MJ songs and meticulously share every single studio story in online forums (example: the Keep The Faith story seemed to be new to most of the participants, while in this forum probably most people know it). That's why Brad's seminar is not aimed at hardcore nerds, but basically at MJ and music fans in general. Keep that in mind. The seminar is not only about going through obscure and secret recordings all day. Its about sharing stories from the studio and telling what it was like recording some of MJs biggest albums.
I haven't really followed all the leaks over the last few years, so I don't know if we've heard anything you haven't heard. For me, there was new stuff I didn’t know beforehand. We've heard a lot of multitracks, for example. I'll get to the unreleased songs later, but as I already stated, there wasn't “much” stuff. Brad was also quite reluctant to give any information about unreleased songs, while he was very willing to talk about all the other topics and questions and shared many memories. Given that presumably almost all of the content from his seminars has already been illegally recorded and leaked and that one of his laptops was stolen a few years ago, I'm not surprised by him being cautious.
Who is Brad?
Brad worked as a studio technician in the big studios (Westlake, Record One, Hit Factory) on the songs that were supposed to appear on an album. He worked alongside people like Quincy, Bruce Swedien, Rod Temperton (who by the way was there during the whole Bad album creation process), Matt Forger and others. He wasn’t there when MJ tinkered in Hayvenhurst or later in his private studio in Neverland. Brad is a very nice, down to earth guy with his own sense of humour.
Day 1: Neverland
Brad told us several stories about how he got to be working on Neverland and how it was like. He showed both relatively recent (HD) pictures and old photographs of Neverland. We went through each part of the ranch and got to hear stories about each of them. Either Brad himself told us the stories or he showed short interviews he did with ex-employees (e.g. train conductor, chef, head of security). Brad installed about 200 rock speakers all around Neverland so that music would be heard everywhere. At the beginning, there was no MJ music at all. It was a mix of Disney and classical music, except for the rides. I’m not going through all the stories told, but I liked this one: MJ didn’t only invite children to Neverland. Once, there was a group of Alzheimer patients. When they got to the amusement park, they would act just like they were children again.
I really liked the Neverland part of the seminar. Neverland used to be a wonderful, beautiful and fascinating place. Wish I could have been there in the 90s! Brad acknowledged that while being as wonderful as it was, Neverland also has been completely financially unsustainable: MJ used to spend money like he never left the Thriller era (there were more than 100 full-time employees and MJ never demanded an entry fee from anyone).
I asked Brad if he knew anything about the song Neverland Landing and if it had to do with his own ranch: He didn’t know the song.
Day 2: In the Studio with MJ
This was the “regular” day of the seminar. Brad told stories about the Bad, Dangerous and HIStory albums, showed short interviews with other participants, photos, videos and sound recordings. I was at one of Brad's seminars 10 years ago. Some parts were repeated in a very similar form, but a lot has changed (and improved, I would say) since then.
A few miscellaneous things:
MJ listened to music through headphones with an extreme volume. So loud that you would actually suffer hearing damage in the long run. Brad was surprised that this didn't seem to be the case with MJ (Michael didn't once say “I didn't understand you, could you repeat that?”).
It was usually very dark in the individual studios themselves and there were only a few people there. Michael only wanted people there whom he trusted. There was never anyone from his family in the studio (apart from Janet, of course). When Brad showed video footage to us, it was from a home camera from the 80s or 90s in an extremely dark room. So don't expect any making-of footage in HD in the future.
Before the recording sessions for the album tracks, MJ would show up in the studio 2 hours beforehand and sing music-scales up and down for 2 hours straight as a warm-up. He often moonwalked in circles while doing that. It must have been a very special sight
They did not talk with MJ about the lyrics or meaning of the songs he wrote. Brad said it wasn’t his job to ask MJ about that and MJ didn’t really seem like wanting to talk about it.
Brads favourite song to work on was Stranger in Moscow and one song he did not wanna name (suggested it was an unreleased one).
MJ didn’t drink coffee. He drank hot water when recording vocals and tea when working in the studio.
Bad trivia:
It wasn't originally planned for Smooth Criminal, Bad and TWYMMF to be sped up after the recording. Michael played around with the speed control on the console while working on SC until he found a tempo he had to dance to. Brad played us a slightly earlier version of SC with the original speed. By the way, the “I wanna clear the area right now!” in the song is spoken by Bruce Swedien.
I love the Liberian Girl backround harmonies, which consist of 16 individual tracks at different pitches.
IJCSLY is the last song that was recorded with a four-piece live band in the studio. After that, the instruments were recorded either by individual musicians or via computer sounds. The piano and orchestra in the multitracks of that song sound cool.
More stuff we heard from Bad time: A demo of "I cant Help It", which sounded like a jazzy live version with lots of piano and ad-libs. Two versions of Streetwalker that were pretty cool. On one version, MJ sang the "Give me some Time" part in a high pitched register, so the vocals probably weren’t finished here.
Is there a dance mix of Speed demon?: Brad says there isn’t. He also does not know why the LMA dance mix Bruce Swedien did has not been released.
Dangerous trivia:
Brad talked about the 3 (4) producers of Dangerous, which where Bruce Swedien, Teddy Riley, Bill Bottrell and Bryan Loren at the very beginning. He praised Bill for his work and explained that he had a vastly different approach to working in a studio than Bruce Swedien. Bruce would have a scientific, meticular approach and would record to up to 44 lead vocal takes with MJ (did that with Jam), while Bill didn’t do more than 5. There was a video of Bill and his team partying in the studio to some sort of dance mix of Monkey Business, which was pretty funny. Brad also praised Bryan Loren for his work in general and explained why he got replaced by Teddy: MJ liked to move fast in the studio, he wanted to quickly produce new sounds. Bryan would be very slow and didn’t seem as motivated like the other producers. Teddy on the other hand was very professional and quick.
We heard 2 demos of SPYHO which sounded completely different than the released ballad: Much faster, harder drums, different vocal take. We also heard the tape with the recording of the creation of Give Into Me (a portion of it, as it is 2h long). Brad does not know if there are other songs that where created in such a short time with the process being recorded.
Brad played isolated BG vocals of If You Don’t Love me, which sounded cool. We saw a video of MJ and Bruce listening to Jam in the studio and of Teddy playing piano.
There was a video of MJ and Bruce listening to WYBT in the studio.
HIStory trivia:
The multitracks of YANA are nice with great vocals, especially the ad libs at the end. R Kelly is doing some bg vocals.
We were shown the video of MJ recording Childhood. I think that has been leaked already? I didn’t see it before and it was a highlight of the entire seminar for me. I asked Brad if there are more video recordings of MJ doing lead vocals. He said “Not much”, as they usually didn’t carry a video camera in the studio and wanted to keep MJs privacy. Brad made it sound like there might be slightly more. In fact, I just listened to a podcast where (if I remember correctly), Matt Forger stated he filmed MJ while recording Smile.
Christmas Star: You already know the story of MJ decorating the studio, Brad being Santa and the children doing a choir. MJ never recorded any vocals for that one. Brad said he is sure MJ just wanted to do a Christmas party, as he never had one before and was super curious about Christmas.
Brad has no idea why Come Together is on HIStory. MJ wanted it, so there it is. He doesn’t know the origins of Little Susie or how it sounded in the 70s.
I asked Brad at which point in the album creation process MJ would record lead vocals: First, MJ would to scratch vocals, then the instruments would be recorded, then overdubs. At the very end, shortly before mixing, MJ would do final lead vocals. They did extensive vocal comping (picking the best lines of all recorded takes), which is why they waited until most other stuff would be finished. MJ also was a procrastinator, Brad said.
Day 3: Mixing session
Each participant had the opportunity to live-mix a song on the multitracks and listen to them really loud on great speakers. Brad already prepared the songs so that there only were only about up to 10 tracks (for example lead, bg, drums, guitar, horns, orchestra, synth etc.). That was really fun! I did Jam and really enjoyed stripping back some of the production to discover more of the vocals. Brad did have about 15 different songs that we were able to mix. I especially enjoyed Jam, Scream (great vocals), BOTDF (great bg vocals), 2Bad (beatboxing MJ) and Shake Your Body (08:20 min mix). On Billie Jean, I noticed that the “huh huh, huh huh” sound throughout the song is not some kind of instrument, but, in fact, MJ bg vocals. Maybe you already knew, but I never noticed J
More stuff we heard:
2 demos of Earth Song (one very early with a different vocal take)
Super early “demo” (more like just a groove) of Jam. Instrumental, sounded completely different and had a hard hitting industrial beat. Written by Rene Moore and Bruce Swedien.
Late Ghosts demo: Sounded nearly finished, but some parts of the lead vocals weren’t done 100%.
Russian Groove: A looped drum beat from 1994 done by Buxer and MJ. No vocals, just a groove.
Deep in the Night: A short groove from 1990. Nearly no vocals except for MJ singing “Deep in the Night” and one more sentence I can’t remember.
Homeless Bound (1990): A groove that plays over homeless people being interviewed by Matt Forger. Sounds very experimental and rough. Strange industrial sounds done by Bryan Loren and a nice piano melody by Buxer. No MJ vocals done for that. They worked for weeks on that track and then just moved on.
Throwing Your Life Away: I don’t listen to leaks anymore, so this one was completely new for me. Sounded unusual, pretty fast singing. The vocals seemed nearly finished, the instrumental track sounded demo-like for MJ album standards. With some work, this song could be really nice. Hope for a release in the future J
Faces (1994): Didn’t hear that one before, you probably already know it. Starts with a long inspirational speech by MJ, followed by pretty cool African sounds, beats and drumming by (I think) the Long Beach Marching Band. Buxer worked on that groove. We saw a short video of them in the studio. Nelson Mandela was going to also record a speech, but he had to cancel that appointment. No MJ singing in that song.
About unreleased songs: Brad says most stuff that has not been released is in the form of experimental grooves with no or nearly no vocals (like the ones above mentioned). They aren’t even “songs” in that sense. They are nice and interesting, but nothing ground-breaking and couldn’t be marketed as new MJ songs. There is no other MITM in the vault. He also stated that Brad Buxer would disagree with him and say there is some good stuff that should be released. I asked if Brad Sundberg worked on Don’t Be Messing Round after Bad: He said he didn’t and does not think there’s a finished version, but also was not there in every studio for every recording session.
We saw videos of MJ and Shean Lennon playing with that strange Theremin instrument, of family Friday in the studio and MJ in the control room recording the Andrea Crouch choir for TDCAU.
Matt Forger was there for about 30min via zoom. Would have loved to have had him for a couple of hours. He is such a great guy who probably could tell stories all day long. He told the story of the Beat It solo being recorded by Van Halen in detail. Sadly, not much time for questions.
What was the biggest challenge during the Thriller session: The extremely long working hours and the fatigue. Sometimes they would sleep in the studio. The time factor was very challenging, especially as they also did the ET book simultaneously.
How did they record the rain in SiM: They didn’t, it is a sound effect.
Typical day in the studio: Anything could happen. It depended on what MJ wanted to work on. He often worked with Buxer or Barnes on sounds Mj liked to explore. Sometimes there would be session musicians. The recording process with MJ was exciting and unexpected. There was no shortage of ideas and spontaneity. MJ often asked for new sounds, so they tinkered and explored a lot.
Did Matt anticipate Thrillers success? He did not, but also didn’t think about sales. They focused on doing the best quality possible and knew it was going to be a great album.
Are there other cover songs besides Smile and Come Together: Matt couldn’t recall other cover songs being done.
Why was In the Back on the early tracklist for the Blood on the Dancefloor album? Matt doesn’t know. It is a Brad Buxer song, so we could ask him.
Too long, didn’t read: Fantastic for people who want to hear + see first-hand information and stories from the studio with MJ, connect with other MJ fans or just celebrate MJ in a cool environment. The seminar is not for you if you already know every detail from the recording sessions and are mainly interested in secret information about unreleased songs. For me, the discounted price of 200€ was totally worth it (I usually pay double the amount for education/training seminars in Germany).
