The midnight hour is close at hand and we’re celebrating by ripping apart a Hallowe’en (or any other time of year) classic. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album is still the biggest selling album of all time and the title track was a landmark in production and was MTV’s first world premiere video. Written by Rod Temperton, producer Quincy Jones, along with engineer Bruce Swedien, crafted an inimitable sound, iconic for its bassline, synth strings and of course, spoken-word Edgar Allen Poe-style spiel from Vincent Price. While we might not have the Harrison 3232 console or the synth collection from Westlake Studios, LA c.1982, we will try our best to show you how the track came together using Ableton Live.
Update: We’ve now made the Ableton project for Thriller available to download! Learn the chords with the MIDI and use the sounds to re-create the track, or for your own productions. Click to download here.
Our Electronic Music Composition instructor Ski Oakenfull will work the keys to re-create this MJ classic and if you want to learn directly from Ski, not just composition, keys, scales and structure, but mixing, mastering and much more, check out our Ableton Live Diploma here. It covers sound design, music business, mastering and in the EMC module, you’ll get exclusive deconstructions from Avicii, Julio Bashmore and more. Find out more about the course here and watch the FFL! below! Happy halloween!
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Editor’s Note: This is an old article and things have moved on considerably since the original publication date 🙂
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