Michael Jacksons Recording Secrets 

so what happened with MJ is, he was born in an era with perfect ears and vocals and had an obsession with music and manged to get the best ever engineer and best ever producer, composer quincy and they all made masterpieces. its no wonder when i listen to MJs albums they all sound amazing even the songs i dont particularly like, there's nothing wrong with the sound or production!

Bruce's and MJs working partnership was legendary. From 1978 til MJ died in 2009. 30 years. Deep respect and love. Bruce even became co-producer on some of MJs recordings. I've noticed MJs engineers all talk about MJ with the highest respect and much much love. And my guess is they spent the most time with him. Their tales of MJ are always real, mostly funny, the best reflection of the man. Certainly better than the media portrayal...

One important note about the Shure SM7 is that it is NOT the same SM7B microphone you see so many modern producers, podcasters etcetera use. The SM7 mentioned in this video is the "original" version.

I like how Bruce loves EQ more than compression. Most newbies don’t know how to use compression correctly. But you can be taught how to eq without ruining a instruments sound. Most of the time. Lol. Bruce was a real one. Good engineer so to speak.

Just decades of unparalleled genius...

MJ was the Bruce Lee of recording artists.

I suspect you could have recorded Michael Jackson with a toy microphone, and he would still have managed to become the King of Pop.

His voice was natural whithout autotune he was king ❤

I really appreciate how your videos emphasize the philosophy of engineering

MJ's music was always a level above his peers in terms of the depth of the sounds. So immersive and dynamic. I think that's why it's aged so well.

Brilliant dude. I did a lot of these stereo techniques in film audio recording. Most productions thought I was crazy, until they heard what I’d turn in.

MJ and Bruce are both legends ❤

I am fortunate enough to have acquired the 4-way Ashly crossovers that MJ had in his home studio monitoring system. Two of them are sequential in serial number and have the warranty paperwork still. What really isn't mentioned, is much is how much effort they put into just his monitoring system. A 4-way crossover is unheard of these days, and an analog one from the 90's was crazy, but not out of hand. Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it. When I first started doing sound, a 3-way crossover was semi common still, I didn't even know a 4-way existed until I got a hold of MJ's.

love the information Bruce shared about the early reflections. i thought the exact same thing, its often the "dirty" recorded songs that are the most interesting

2 important things to note. Michael could really fuckin sing and Bruce could really fuckin engineer

This is the first video I’ve ever seen about Michael Jackson gear and for that you have my eternal thanks this is automatically awesome

Omg when he started singing 🥺❤❤❤❤

Wow, “the way you make me feel” was an old school SM7, huh? That’s really interesting but it makes total sense. Gear is one thing and picking the right gear is occasionally *very* important but there are a few major takeaways here. Above everything, these guys worked at getting top notch performances from world class musicians…the importance getting an inspired performance worthy of documenting can’t be overstated. Secondly, their recording techniques and engineering skill levels were off the charts. If you want anything approaching this, you need to become absolutely immersed in the world of audio engineering. Something as simple as gain staging is often overlooked but it can make or break the performance of your dreams.

This is Golden stuff! Thanks. Just awesome tidbit, love the idea of using the room sound in everything and avoiding compression. Got me interested in finding out more about Bruce's work..

My favourite recording engineer - you did great Bruce !

This is some good info. Makes me wanna look more in depth into my own own sound equipment. Big ups

Wow, loads of the stuff this guy did for recording and techniques I taught myself by feel to do pretty much the same way with my band's music! The only things I have not tried that this video gave me an idea to try out is the wooden foam coated board to isolate the snare microphone from the hi hat to minimise bleed, great idea!! Same with the kick bass drum isolation and such. I must try that out!

The title should be Bruce Swedien's recording secrets.

This videos incredible. Thanks a million for sharing this man!

I am sound technician and the recording space doesn’t matter to me. With the right technique you can record anywhere and you won’t tell the difference from a real or home studio. Knowledge is the key.

This video is enlightening, thanks a lot to share.

Super dope. Thanks for uploading.

Incredible! Bruce's techniques and approach are simple and incredibly musical. I love the part about actively working the mix to spotlight the great emerging parts, as hooks. I do that in live mixing, and it works great! Good for recording, too, I see!

Bruce Swedien is All Time Greatest engineer.

This is such a great documentary! To be a fly on the wall in one of those sessions

Bruce was a master and he deserves a ton of credit, MJ was drawn to Bruce's talent and they both prospered because of it. If you see when they're working on Jam, Bruce had recorded like 20 different approaches to the chorus that Michael had to choose from, all subtly different but TWENTY!! This was just one small part and then multiply that by 30 years.

Amazing! I respect the true old analog sound engineers... genius

THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK

Always love some MJ content on the channel!

Это видео просто шедевр! Я уже несколько раз смотрю его без усталости. Я помню те времена, когда ходили разного рода слухи , что Майкл Джэксон пишет музыку не так как остальные. Что у него самая крутая аппаратура. Но у него, оказывается, еще был звукорежиссер-волшебник.

You’re channel is fantastic

I will forever be in love with Michael. Forever.

It was an awesome video and thank you for sharing, but I'd love to get my hands on the original full length video(s) and watch those too !! :-)

Keep up the good videos man!

Amazing video, especially for engineers

This was a really cool video! Thank you buddy!

Nowadays many are so called engineers . Genius at work

grew up in the midst of his greatest works, in sheer awe and amazement. Bruce taught us - up and coming engineers - to not mix the life out of a record but to transfer as much of its essence and emotion, to the listener, as possible. He was and forever will be an engineering God. Thank you so much for this great video and would you be so kind to like and follow. Co' 🙏🏽

Great information! Thanks for posting

this is really good thank you. learned a lot. very interesting the part about the dullness of synthesised sound

He’s really a musical genius

The "choir technique" is M/S. I used this once recording a live session in a long but narrow room with everything bleeding into the drum mics and placed overheads in M/S (vocals and keys) in order to minimize faze issues but still have good stereo. X/Y I use almost always on drums to get a nice wide mix.

Excellent video. It would be interesting to compare these recording techniques to what he was using as a kid with the Jackson 5 recording for Motown; plus the recording techniques used for their one album with Gamble & Huff.

8:03 PERFECT Street Fighter

This Is Really Awesome...One Love Fam.

Saudoso Bruce, companheiro de longas datas do MICHAEL..

very good video thanks!!

Yeah, would be great to be born back when all of this was just starting. Back when you could get an internship at a studio instead of having to know someone, or paying to build a studio yourself.

Excellent video 👍🏾

I'm pretty sure Quincy Jones had all the recording secrets

BRUCE SWEDIEN GOATED ENGINEER

George doing all the research so I don’t have to. My man!

Slap a compressor and a limiter on your own vocal dude.. way too dynamic!!

Wow he was a great producer❤❤❤

So much learning in this short video needed more

I appreciate you so much bro

home studio examples were wild

Great Video Im About to Read His In The Studio With Micheal Jackso0n Book Bruce Wrote Im Sure He Goes More In Depth About Everything Youi Mentionj! Thanks For The Video! Cant Wait Ti See Whats Next!

Nuggets learned thank you

7:05 that's like the flower of life geometry. Wowzers.

Please do some levelmatching, some of the clips are very quiet while others loud.

Ironic that you've made a video about recording secrets (a good one albeit), and your own video's audio seems to lack normalization.

for a video about sound production about the greats, YOUR AUDIO LEVELS ARE ALL OVER THE GOD DAMN PLACE IN THIS VIDEO! I keep have to adjusting the volume, damn this is really frustrating my watching experience

In one of the videos they showed it said September 26th 1993. Today is September 26th 2023. Wow!! Thirty years later on today.

This taught me so much! #subscribed

WOW WHAT A VIDEO WOOOOOOOOW

SOOOOOOOOOO DOPE!

The Greatest of All Time

jeez...impressive

now this is the reason for yotube to exist 😊

How did you get around the Copyright issue for this video?

Why you were talking about audio levels, you might want to consider getting your own audio level, more loud and clear

Bruce Sweden’s recording secrets applied by Michael Jackson should be the title

@0:30 JBL 4311 sighting ! Nice tripods

4:09 where is this footage from? would like to watch the whole lecture

more mj content! love you brother

*Thing is about those CUBE SPEAKERS these days is, absolutely no one is listening to music in that way any longer, even in the stores. In the stores these days they use a series of FRFR COAXILE speakers bridged to mono. Cafes, bars, starbucks, etc they tend to use 2 way speakers in mono, everyone else uses ear buds, car stereos and home theater systems.*

Can we stop and talk about this goatee MJ is rocking at 11:00 min in?

Wow is that Dave Pensado now ? Man someone introduce him to David Sinclair!

The sound level of the dialog in this video varies so much as to be very difficult to listen to.

Nice video

Timeless

Wow that was loaded!!!

The acoustics course is only $40! I just might look into it. I definitely need to tighten up my room

Amen brother 🙏

good video

wow!

4:44 I would have this one 😅 that’s that full sail package

I can't even remember all the many times when, in my little home studio, I pulled out a half dozen Neuman U87 microphones to mic the drums. I mean, who *doesn't* do that? 😜

Is 7:58 where the "perfect" sample comes from?

Based. Cool video.

Beautiful strings at the very start. What track was that please? 👍🇬🇧

it was the sm7 that made thriller great, not michaels outstanding voice, performance and energy or bruces mixing or quincys producing

I think compression depends on the song. I like it for rockier tracks, but I’d use minimal (if any) compression for quieter tracks.

your voiceover could have used some level balancing with the videos and some compression....just sayin