I read the posts about Billie Jean and I have a question for Dave Polich. Dave, Our band is wanting to do Billie Jean and I wanted to ask you if you actually explain in the Keyboard magazine article what you used to produce the bass sound for the song. My guess is no so can you tell me what I can use to get that gnarly bass sound. I am using the XS6.

magickpurple - 31 December 2012 12:21 AM

I read the posts about Billie Jean and I have a question for Dave Polich. Dave, Our band is wanting to do Billie Jean and I wanted to ask you if you actually explain in the Keyboard magazine article what you used to produce the bass sound for the song. My guess is no so can you tell me what I can use to get that gnarly bass sound. I am using the XS6.

I explain how the Billie Jean bass sound was replicated for Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” show on page 46 of the September 2009 issue of Keyboard magazine. The bass player for the This Is It band, Alex Al,
used two minimoogs to play the bass part. There are also additional bass
synth sounds which were taken from the original multitracks and played back from a Pro Tools rig. One was a Yamaha TX816 sound, I think, and one
was a Roland D-50 bass sound, as I recall. So that’s a total of four instruments for the bass sound - not just one.

The article in Keyboard explains exactly how to set up a Minimoog, or
virtual Minimoog (like Arturia’s Minimoog V) to create the main bass sound for the song.

You may be able to come close to the sound by using one of the minimoog
bass sounds from the “Pulse” library, available in the Voice Libraries for XS section of the Motifator Shop.

I own the “Pulse” library. I’ll take a look at it. Thanks.

Hi,

I created a patch for Billie Jean on my MOX using variations on the following presets:

CS80 Brass—Main Riff (tweaked cutoff, etc a bit)
80’s Boosted EP—Bridge EP
80’s Muted Brass—Bridge Riff
JP Strings—Synth strings—Bridge/Chorus
Quick Bows—Strings—Bridge/Chorus—took the velocity off

For the weird lead sound on the 2nd verse I used a random digital waveform that I found using the Melas Voice editor to search waveforms.

Just wondering if anybody has any idea what synth was orignally used on that particular part and how to best emulate it. It has an almost nasally oboe-ish sound, kinda like a square wave with some effects on it.

Thanks!
Ben