i doubt any one drum machine was used. the drums were most probably played live (and then digitally arranged, heavily processed) or sampled on a sampler like an MPC or E-MU.
here's an insightful interview with Teddy Riley from Keyboard Magazine 1992 regarding the issue:
Do you write at the piano?
Yeah, mostly. Then I put it all in the computer. That way, if I do the Michael Jackson tour and he wants all the sheet music for what we did, I have it later on down the line. It's good that I documented everything. I document everything that I record, from the time the song starts all the way to the end — the tempo, every part that's played, every program on every keyboard. You never know when you're going to want to come back up with the song. Suppose somebody asks you to do a song like something you did before? You're gonna want to go back to your sources and say, "What did I use on this song for the strings? For the horns?"
Do you think of each instrument as having its own specific function?
Yeah. It's like going to a restaurant. If you go someplace that specializes in Italian food, you want Italian food. So when you buy a keyboard, you look for certain things that it does well. I like the stuff that E-mu did with strings in the Proteus/2. They specialize in strings. Roland, of course, specializes in everything. They're really good.
Do you still play the D-50?
Yes, I do. I have six or seven D-50s, five or six D-70s, four or five JD-800s. I also used the [E-mu] Emulator Three when it first came out — that long, big keyboard that gave everybody prob lems. But I liked the first Emulator.
More than the later models?
Yeah, because the EMI was too compli cated.
Did you stock up on much Yamaha gear?
No, except back when they had the DX7. I used the DX7 on some of Keith Sweat's stuff, because it gave me the whole catalog of sounds that I needed.
You've also used the Synclavier and the Fairlight, especially on ballads.
They're both too clean, too polished and pop, for me. When I want a song to have street appeal, I wouldn't use a Synclavier unless I could put something pretty in there. But for ballads, they're both great. I used the Fairlight on Kool Moe Dee's rap project, How Ya Like Me Now. It was pretty rich on that one, with a lot of fat sounds, even though we got fat sounds and bottom out of little drum machines and the stuff we had for the Heavy D projects. With the Fairlight, everything is right in front of you. It's just, "Gimme this sound. Gimme that sound."
What instrument do you like to use as your MIDI controller?
The D-70. It has so much control right there. You can change all the presets so easily. Plus it has more keys than most keyboards, like the [Korg] M1. I used to use the M1 as a controller. I also used the JD-800 for about a week, but then I went back to the D-70 because it had a lot to offer.
Do you use the D-70 strictly as a controller, with local off?
Sometimes, but I also use the internal sounds. I'll bring up five or six sounds at the same time.
You're often seen in photos with a strap-on Lync controller.
I love the play the Lync on live gigs. I run it through a vocoder.
You seem to use completely different sets of instruments for your slow and your faster tunes.
Not really, but as I create a ballad I go into a different mode. I change all my sounds. I don't like using the same sound twice on an album. My floor plan is to make the whole carpet colorful.
But you also go for a certain kind of unity. Your snare sounds throughout Dangerous differ from cut to cut, yet there are similarities as well.
Yeah. They're all hot. My engineer and I always have our drums poppin'. We used a variety of drum machines, but we compressed all our snares to make 'em pop.
You reverse-gated the snare on "She Drives Me Wild" in a way that nicely anticipates and sets up the actual backbeat hits.
There are lots of elements on that song. In fact, the whole percussion track is motor sounds: trucks, cars starting, cars screeching, motorcycles idling, motorcycles revving, car horns. Even the bass is a car horn.
Where did you get those samples? I made them myself. You just took a DAT machine out to the parking lot?
We usually do that. We even sampled Michael's tiger. We got tiger sounds, lion sounds, monkey sounds.
What about your regular drum sounds? We sample most of our drums. If not, we work on and edit the drum sounds in our machines so they don't sound like stock sounds.
