THE MOTTO:  “Music first!”

“Painting the image you have in your head on the sonic canvas.  You translate the sounds in your mind to tape, and make the listeners a partner of your own created soundscape.’

Michael Jackson

“The music is just too infectious.  The attention to detail in the making of it is a learning experience.  From compositions to timeless arrangements and production values, moving vocal lines to beautifully captured and sonic images.  It’s almost like a chemistry-process-fantasy experience.

A. Machanda

LISTEN TO HOW TIGHT THE SOUND FIELDS ARE!

“IF YOU ARE A VOCALIST, YOU STUDY MICHAEL JACKSON…IT IS MANDATORY!”

Jill Scott

Michael Jackson has an innate sensual feel inside, an incandescent genius who translates lyrics into emotional extremes, believing that music can heal wounds, ease pain, and offer solutions.  He is a dancer at heart, allowing his vocal prowess playful expression in and around intricate rhythms.  Sound fields, vocals, sonic personality and sound design all made for productions that lacked the predictable and the repetitive.  Instead, listeners are surprised by unique beat patterns, textures and nuances creating different music in different sections of a single recording.

“I bind my soul to my work.”  Michael Jackson

Michael felt he was compelled to perform, to give people some sense of escapism, a treat for the eye as well as the ear.  The world was his stage and his image was  “performance” whenever in public.  Music, he felt, was universal.  He wanted to experience art for its own sake, all the while understanding its anatomy.  He had the gift of harnessing suffering for productive ends.

With his voice, Michael could move masses of people toward cause…or, stir sensuality…or, recall childlike innocence.  It was a voice that moved from angelic to painfully frustrated to powerful outcry.  He strongly defended his eclecticism, arguing for borderless music.

“I don’t categorize music.  Music is music.  How can we discriminate?”

MICHAEL MADE POP A MULTIGENRE, MULTIMEDIA AFFAIR THAT WAS LIMITLESS IN ITS RANGE OF SOUNDS, STYLES, AND POSSIBILITES. (J. Vogel)

A STUDY OF VOCALS USING BLUE GANGSTA AND BUTTERFLIES:  Michael’s INVINCIBLE Album takes the listener on an epic journey using soundscapes that accelerate the emotional spectrum and range from assault to luscious sensuality to human outcry.  Love’s complete vista is explored.  We female Michael Jackson Fans know full well the definition of a mikegasm. BUTTERFLIES is one of those songs that fits the bill.  I agree with Joseph Vogel when he says that it is song that reminds listeners of what made Michael’s voice such a revelation in the first place.  Michael pushes his range to completeness as it rolls up and down making the song so aptly named.  His voice flutters becoming the butterfly’s wings.  Dipping deeper beyond the surface level offers the metaphorical journey of a “love-making” voice. THIS IS SENSUALITY AT ITS FINEST.

Contrasting that with Blue Gangsta, which is a wonderfully crafted dream capsule carrying out the SMOOTH CRIMINAL theme and the 1930’s, film noir genre…Michael’s voice travels a different vista of sound.  We hear voice as a rhythm instrument, big band sound, gritty lyrics, background textures that offer a juxtaposition to lead vocals…and, then, the bridge featuring lushness and wonderful harmonies.  THIS IS THEATRE AT ITS FINEST.

HITTING A SPACE THAT IS EMOTIONALLY RIGHT ON THE BUTTON!

Michael always believed that music could get him out and he could take his audience with him, linking himself to the community of people. He had the gift…the ability to dissolve into the stories, the emotions, the magic of music and take masses of people with him.  For Michael, it was about sharing and receiving love.

HUMAN NATURE…Wembley Stadium July, 1988  Michael Jackson magically crafted paradox…a sensitive, gentle, quiet and shy man who saved beetles by turning them right-side up, who rescued abused animals, created Utopia for disadvantaged and terminally-ill children and their families to experience the healing powers of joy, showed up asking how he could help for every possible need that came across his radar, AND, a man who dissolved into powerful  human emotions with an intensity that rocked the world.  Michael’s performance of Human Nature at Wembley combines angel vocals with sensual movement, body as canvas that defies understanding, and, a power of the people community of love.  WOW!!  How’s that for God showing off?!

Michael believed that audiences were a vibrant community composed of all ages, races, religions and cultures…standing shoulder to shoulder, temporarily bound up in the collective spell of his music.

VOCALS ATTACHED TO VISUALS:  “Michael Jackson’s image was as much a work of art as the man himself.  Through his music, dance, and fashion, he created a mystique that was unique to him and recognized as such throughout the world.  Michael’s appeal was in his desire to send subtle messages through the manipulation of his voice, body and clothes.  Costume and performance came together to become Michael Jackson.  We likened Michael Jackson to a canvas.  He wanted his clothes, like his music and dance moves, to be mind-boggling self-expression…a very real man with a deep love and appreciation for art, someone who very much embodied the dreams he inspired in others.”  Michael Bush THE KING OF STYLE…Dressing Michael Jackson

THE FOUR F’S OF DRESSING MICHAEL JACKSON:  Fit, Function, Fun, First  a study of Michael’s WEARABLE ART using Michael Bush’s THE KING OF STYLE

OUTRO…SESSION TWO ENDING