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Producer reveals King Of Pop's studio secrets
Future Music, Fri 3 Jul 2009, 1:24 pm UTC
Jam
"Jam was a track that Michael had the idea for. He told me to see what I could do with it so I took it and created some more instruments and reproduced the record – and he loved it.
"That's the way it worked a lot of the time. He'd come in with an idea and I'd flesh it out in the studio. He bought it to me as a DAT, and he told me there were things he wanted done, and I did them. It was my idea to get the rapper Heavy D to perform on there as well. He was Michael's favourite rapper at the time."
Why You Wanna Trip On Me
"The element I'm most proud of in this song is my guitar playing. I thought he [Jackson] was going to get another person to play on it but he wanted my good self playing! That was something special to me. I was using an acoustic Ovation guitar.
"The whole song didn't take long to produce, actually. I think the longest part was writing everything and getting everything formatted. There's no studio trickery either, really. When you're doing analogue it's pretty much, you know, getting everything on tape, you know? It's very warm. That's basically it."
In The Closet
"Now, In the Closet was something Michael came up with, and it came out exactly as he wanted the track to be. He kind of put his vocals on a Dictaphone when he was in another room. He'd often record the vocals on a Dictaphone and take them into the studio and then see how it would all work out.
"This is some of Michael's more explicit material on there, in terms of lyrical content [laughs]! But it didn't surprise you at the time. No, not at all."

The Dangerous tour hits Brazil in 1993 - as does a signature Jackson move. Image: © STRINGER/BRAZIL/Reuters/Corbis
She Drives Me Wild
"My biggest memory from that recording was that we used all car sounds as drum sounds and it came out perfectly. I didn't go out into the field and record actual car sounds and take back to the studio – I had a sample CD that was really cool. It wasn't something I'd done before; it was the first time I went for unusual sounds in the place of drums."
Remember The Time
"One of the biggest things Michael really surprised me with on the Dangerous album was his vocal deliverance on Remember The Time. That really blew me away. I came to the project with this track. That was the sound I was thinking of for this album. Basically it was the sound I wanted on Dangerous and he loved it – loved it from the beginning. I'd describe that sound as, really, like the New Jack Swing sound.
"He'd [Jackson] often record the vocals on a Dictaphone and take them into the studio and then see how it would all work out." Teddy Riley, speaking in 2008
"The elements on this song that give it that New Jack Swing sound are the ones that I used when I recorded with Guy and Bobby Brown to pioneer it. Sort of like the twisted samples I brought in. There were no samples of other people on that; what I did was make the sounds myself – I was sampling myself. I'd just jam with a riff and think, 'That's a cool bit there…' Yeah, it kinda really brought a lot to the production side. It worked."
Can't Let Her Get Away
"This was mostly from a sample CD that I just put together myself, and it kind of reminded me of the James Brown sound. I could feel it. I thought I'd bring a shadow of some of the greatness of the James Brown production sound to this. I made the sample CD myself – that was me playing instruments, then looping them up and having them lying around for potential projects. Back then I just had them lying around and I hadn't used them… But I really wanted to use them!
"Throughout the album I was drawing off a lot of CDs I had hanging around, all played by myself. I'm a multi-instrumentalist."
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