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hey,

I'm looking to create a certain effect in Michael Jacksons Thriller song

it comes in at 4.15 of the song

youtube link> http://www.youtube…"]YouTube - Michael Jackson - Thriller - Thriller[/]="http://www.youtube…"]YouTube - Michael Jackson - Thriller - Thriller[/]

I have an idea on how to best make it, but i would really love some peoples suggestions on it

if anyone has some video links on it too that be great

I'm using reason 3.0 but will be getting 4.0 next week so help on creating the sound on malstrom, sub tractor or thor be very helpfull,

thanks

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Guitarfreak Sat, 06/26/2010 - 17:56

Not sure which part you are hearing, but I hear a few things. There are some staccato percussion parts stereo panned creating a cool ambience. Clean guitar parts harmonizing to the L and R. And what sounds like a synth or bass with some sort of bit reduction and/or sampling reduction panned center. Below that (or on top of) is simple kick drum and snare every other beat. Pretty simple, it's the stereo panning of the staccato parts harmonizing with eachother that plays with your ears a bit, nothing really technical or effects based there. To my ears anyway.

anonymous Mon, 06/28/2010 - 02:51

Guitarfreak, post: 350769 wrote: Not sure which part you are hearing, but I hear a few things. There are some staccato percussion parts stereo panned creating a cool ambience. Clean guitar parts harmonizing to the L and R. And what sounds like a synth or bass with some sort of bit reduction and/or sampling reduction panned center. Below that (or on top of) is simple kick drum and snare every other beat. Pretty simple, it's the stereo panning of the staccato parts harmonizing with eachother that plays with your ears a bit, nothing really technical or effects based there. To my ears anyway.

yep its the synth with the bit reduction, im not too sure on how to create that synth sound, any ideas?

moonbaby Mon, 06/28/2010 - 16:48

The only "bit reduction synths" that were around during that era were the original Prophet 5's with a
Zilog Z80 running a slew of Curtis chips- ANALOG- the ultimate bit reduction...:)
You might try going to the website of Dave Smith Instruments to check out some of the sounds he has
for the "newest" Prophet...the 08. You might very well find what you are looking for. Than you can inquire as to how the patch was programmed and duplicate that with your little VST synths. Kind of...

audiokid Wed, 06/30/2010 - 07:54

no problem. I grew up using most of the same gear and programming style used when this was made. That is a block that is repeated in 32 second increments using a sampler ( which was triggered by the MPC 60 / Linn Drum.

Could of been a sample from the Synclavier. I have all this in archives.

Do you remember Maniac, she's a maniac?

Same way this was done. It was a sidestick repeated in 64th about 16 times a sec to give it a vibrations effect.

How do you do this?

Take a percussion sound and sample it ( block, sidestick). Truncate it and make sure it has little decay and no attack. Stretch it over the keyboard placed in key (so you can play it musically of coarse) and then you need to get a sequencer to trigger the sound in your song. It would look like this in a step ******** ******** ********

8 repeats of * at 120 BPM would start to sound like that effect.

To play it in realtime, In a sampler you would loop it on the front and make the loop repeat like that (don't crossfade) ,giving the loop a course ( not smooth) loop, then stretch it over a keyboard. The problem with that is controlling the speed of the loop as you play different notes. Depending on your sampler, this is easy to do or impossible. Then you would have to stick with it being done via step mode in you sequencer.

Its difficult to explain but its not hard to do. I've done this for a lot in songs over the years. I grew up in the days where we made effects from scratch that are now parts of loops in songs today.

So to answer your question, its a percussion block being repeated really quickly many times in each bar. If you want the exact sound you could try and sample it (meaning just that bit) and then do what I say to achieve it musically via midi or a sampler. All you need is a split sec of that sound bite to take it to the final stage.