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Michael - The Great Album Debate

I did not take his side - in regards to authenticty, I actually do not even remember listening to the remix , probably I didn't pay attention to it. In any way I expressed no opinion about the vocals. and that's why I said "just about this part" meaning how some approaches closes your chance to get a response back.

You didn't post your initial email but I'll take a wild guess and say that you said it didn't sound like the original.
He responded to you saying he was given multiple takes hence explaining why it didn't sound like the original.
You responded to him again mentioning it didn't sound like the original, giving long examples basically asking him the same question again.
He stopped responding to you because to him it felt like responding back to you will be like pounding the sand meaning that no matter he answered you would still bring up the same question.

and I meant to say rather than going that detail and basically totally rejecting his previous explanation, if you accepted some stuff he said and sought further clarification, you were more likely to get a response back. People respond to "oh okay I get it but can you explain this further" a lot more than "nahh that's BS" tone. It was totally about the approach and had nothing to do with vocals.

and why wouldn't R. Kelly's vocals be properly labeled in this instance? We know the song to be legit, we know that Michael recorded it, it's totally fine for R. Kelly vocals to be used. What's the reason for not labeling R. Kelly as R.Kelly and Michael as Michael and leaving the possibility of a "wrong take"? I would understand in the Cascio song "fraud" Malachi being labelled as Michael, but in OMC why would there be a labeling mishap?
 
@SoCav: Aha, it's all about making sense. Not knowing Michael, Michael's friends and producers he hired, you are left with guessing what makes sense. Well, things that would make sense to a fan and the actual reality are two different things.

Lawrence Fordyce / FORD said:
Back when I produced this record Time Stretching programs were in their infancy and not very good. They added a lot of unwanted artifacts, that are then (at least attempted) to be EQued out. The reason for this is the original was a ballad. Michael wanted to dance in the video, so he asked me to do a mix, not only in double time, but also make it a little faster so it could be mixed in with other dance songs.
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ivy said:
I did not take his side - in regards to authenticty, I actually do not even remember listening to the remix , probably I didn't pay attention to it. In any way I expressed no opinion about the vocals. and that's why I said "just about this part" meaning how some approaches closes your chance to get a response back.

You didn't post your initial email but I'll take a wild guess and say that you said it didn't sound like the original.
He responded to you saying he was given multiple takes hence explaining why it didn't sound like the original.
You responded to him again mentioning it didn't sound like the original, giving long examples basically asking him the same question again.
He stopped responding to you because to him it felt like responding back to you will be like pounding the sand meaning that no matter he answered you would still bring up the same question.

and I meant to say rather than going that detail and basically totally rejecting his previous explanation, if you accepted some stuff he said and sought further clarification, you were more likely to get a response back. People respond to "oh okay I get it but can you explain this further" a lot more than "nahh that's BS" tone. It was totally about the approach and had nothing to do with vocals.

and why wouldn't R. Kelly's vocals be properly labeled in this instance? We know the song to be legit, we know that Michael recorded it, it's totally fine for R. Kelly vocals to be used. What's the reason for not labeling R. Kelly as R.Kelly and Michael as Michael and leaving the possibility of a "wrong take"? I would understand in the Cascio song "fraud" Malachi being labelled as Michael, but in OMC why would there be a labeling mishap?
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Try listening to it then. Also, didn't you read that I said R Kelly vocals were used in the OMC Ford remix? How is this MJ's "other take"?
 
Korgnex said:
@SoCav: Aha, it's all about making sense. Not knowing Michael, Michael's friends and producers he hired, you are left with guessing what makes sense. Well, things that would make sense to a fan and the actual reality are two different things.
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I might not know the guy, but I am familiar with the type of time-stretching method he blames for the way the vocals sound. And based on my experience, I simply cannot believe that it would alter a voice to such an extent. What makes it extra likely that this is not Michael singing, is that it sounds exactly like R. Kelly, who happened to be collaborating on this project with MJ.

ivy said:
and why wouldn't R. Kelly's vocals be properly labeled in this instance? We know the song to be legit, we know that Michael recorded it, it's totally fine for R. Kelly vocals to be used. What's the reason for not labeling R. Kelly as R.Kelly and Michael as Michael and leaving the possibility of a "wrong take"? I would understand in the Cascio song "fraud" Malachi being labelled as Michael, but in OMC why would there be a labeling mishap?
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I cannot think of any reason for this other than it being an honest mistake.
 
Pentum said:
Try listening to it then. Also, didn't you read that I said R Kelly vocals were used in the OMC Ford remix? How is this MJ's "other take"?
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you said he used the "wrong take and picked up" R. Kelly's vocals. And I'm asking you how and why he would mix up R. Kelly take with Michael, why wouldn't they be properly labelled? Why would there be a need to label R.Kelly as Michael? Why would there be a mix up? Why would there be a need to use another person's vocals? why at that time?
 
ivy said:
you said he used the "wrong take and picked up" R. Kelly's vocals. And I'm asking you how and why he would mix up R. Kelly take with Michael, why wouldn't they be properly labelled? Why would there be a need to label R.Kelly as Michael? Why would there be a mix up? Why would there be a need to use another person's vocals? why at that time?
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I'm asking you to listen to the song.

Why would he mix up? Another person's vocals? R. Kelly vocals as MJ?

Well, you do know that the original OMC contains R. Kelly vocals, right?
 
ivy said:
you said he used the "wrong take and picked up" R. Kelly's vocals. And I'm asking you how and why he would mix up R. Kelly take with Michael, why wouldn't they be properly labelled? Why would there be a need to label R.Kelly as Michael? Why would there be a mix up? Why would there be a need to use another person's vocals?
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There would not have been a need to label R. Kelly as Michael. I do not think Pentum is trying to imply that they were trying to fool others, or are you Pentum?

It could have been a mistake though. We know that R. Kelly also sings on One More Chance and also that when he worked with Michael he would record his demo singing it like Michael. If this Ford guy got all the takes that were used during the project, I guess he could have accidentally used one or more R. Kelly takes thinking that it was Michael.

Again, it sounds implausible, but it still seems more plausible to me than that this is Michael. Here's the link to the remix again:
http://youtu.be/jTNp6Rw5H4E
 
Pentum said:
I'm asking you to listen to the song.
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I have absolutely no desire to be part of any authenticity debate whatsoever. Even though I might or might not listen to it to refresh my memory, I would not take part in authenticity debate. I'm done with that.

furthermore that wasn't my point at all. How hard is it to understand that all I said was "with such interrogation tone it would be hard to get a response back?". that's all.

Well, you do know that the original OMC contains R. Kelly vocals, right?
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yes

SoCav said:
There would not have been a need to label R. Kelly as Michael. I do not think Pentum is trying to imply that they were trying to fool others, or are you Pentum?

It could have been a mistake though. We know that R. Kelly also sings on One More Chance and also that when he worked with Michael he would record his demo singing it like Michael. If this Ford guy got all the takes that were used during the project, I guess he could have accidentally used one or more R. Kelly takes thinking that it was Michael.
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even though R. Kelly was mimicking Michael his take would have been labelled as "R. Kelly demo", "R. Kelly guide" and so on. You are talking about professional musicians and professional studio setting. Such people do not give a bunch of unnamed tracks. So I'm still curious about how and why would a such mix-up happen? What's the theory behind it?
 
Opinions on the FORD remix are not any different than wide-spread opinions which state that the MICHAEL version of "(I Can't Make It) Another Day" would feature vocals from other songs (most prominently: "We've Had Enough", "Jam", "2 Bad") which is all wrong, yet these claims will go the circuit forever.
 
Well, look at the original master for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, they have been available on the internet for quite some time now, but the Audacity file I have is totally unlabelled, I have to sift through the 20 or so tracks just to isolate the drum or bass or guitar part for example. The multitracks were not labelled.

If the remixer obtained the tracks as a file package like this, it is possible that the multitracks were not labelled.

As for the thing about "sampled vocals" in Another Day, it's an even for both believers and doubters. I've seen many comments from some believers who say stuff like "what's wrong with there being cut-and-paste in the Cascio tracks when there's sampled ad-libs from 2Bad in Another Day" for example
 
ivy said:
even though R. Kelly was mimicking Michael his take would have been labelled as "R. Kelly demo", "R. Kelly guide" and so on. You are talking about professional musicians and professional studio setting. Such people do not give a bunch of unnamed tracks.
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I agree with Frankyboy5 here. It may be the standard that things are labelled properly, but mistakes can nevertheless be made. Not just by Ford, but also by the people who gave him all the material.

So I'm still curious about how and why would a such mix-up happen? What's the theory behind it?
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Your guess is as good as mine. You are approaching the issue (purposely, I guess) from a different angle. You take a bottom-up approach, trying to explain the events that could potentially lead to a mistake being made. But I take a top-down approach: the vocals that do not sound like MJ but an awful lot like R. Kelly are the starting point. Ford gives an explanation that seems implausible to me. All I can do after that is guess what could have led to it. As you pointed out, I indeed see no need for them to purposely label R. Kelly's vocals as Michael's vocals. Thus, the most reasonable conclusion I can arrive at is that a mistake must have been made somewhere during the process. But who knows what really happened?

Korgnex said:
Opinions on the FORD remix are not any different than wide-spread opinions which state that the MICHAEL version of "(I Can't Make It) Another Day" would feature vocals from other songs (most prominently: "We've Had Enough", "Jam", "2 Bad") which is all wrong, yet these claims will go the circuit forever.
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What does this even have to do with the discussion?

And Korgnex, what do you expect me to do? These vocals do not sound anything like MJ to me. Apart from that, the only explanation that is given for that is one that I deem unlikely based on my own experience with this material. Should I just ignore all that and simply believe this guy because the project happened to be officially released?
 
Frankyboy5 said:
Well, look at the original master for Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, they have been available on the internet for quite some time now, but the Audacity file I have is totally unlabelled, I have to sift through the 20 or so tracks just to isolate the drum or bass or guitar part for example. The multitracks were not labelled.
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that's 70s analog tapes. We are talking about Protools masters of 00's here.
 
Mod Note Thread cleaned and edited
Ok guys Please stop discussing each other or who is more logical. Also Best to leave labels out of the discussion too if you are only going to use them to insult or belittle ones opinions. All that only leads to arguments in this thread. Discuss the topic and leave the ad hominems, labels and your opinions of each others logic out of it - I will delete any further instances and any arguments steming from it.

Thanks carry on. The discussion is quite interesting :)
 
ivy said:
that's 70s analog tapes. We are talking about Protools masters of 00's here.
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no, these masters were converted into digital files (wav) and leaked.

So, if you know what "professional" pro tools masters should be labelled like, can you give an example? Not something like "vocals01" "vocalcut02" stuff like that?

It seems kinda far-fetched that they would be labelled "TALKING WITH R. KELLY.WAV" "MJ ROUGH CUT LAUGHING.WAV" "R KELLY DEMO.WAV"

Additionally he mentions that they came from R. Kelly's company. There's another place where an error could be made, since R. Kelly would not be directly involved and the company's just sending him the files.

using Melodyne, if you were to change the formant of MJ's voice, it sounds like he's singing with his nose pinched! LOL
 
Frankyboy5 said:
no, these masters were converted into digital files (wav) and leaked.
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and you think I don't know that? My point was those were transferred from analog to digital, so unless the person that did the transferring took the time to differentiate and label them , they could be unlabeled.

So, if you know what "professional" pro tools masters should be labelled like, can you give an example? Not something like "vocals01" "vocalcut02" stuff like that?

It seems kinda far-fetched that they would be labelled "TALKING WITH R. KELLY.WAV" "MJ ROUGH CUT LAUGHING.WAV" "R KELLY DEMO.WAV"
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well I never said that would give really long names as "talking with r.kelly". The thing with the protools itself differentiates the tracks such as track01, track02 and so on. It's illogical to think that the tracks would not be labelled with a simple "MJ" "RK" or with "leads" and "backvocals" / "guide". We are talking about professional music producing here. (note: the program also allows you to add comments about tracks. such as you can label it as 1.wav and in the comments box you can enter "guitar take 1")

Additionally he mentions that they came from R. Kelly's company. There's another place where an error could be made, since R. Kelly would not be directly involved and the company's just sending him the files.
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In your theory - the tracks even though digital aren't clearly labelled and the producers are left to fly in the dark + Ford although listening to masters, raw and unprocessed vocals cannot differentiate between R. Kelly and Michael + therefore R.Kelly was doing his best Michael impersonation + Ford processes a R.Kelly that sounds like Michael and the end result sounds nothing like Michael .
 
I's be quite interested to know exactly what was tested by the forensic Musiclogists to determine it was Michael Jackson. I am in no way stating that I believe it was fabricated, but It would be great if we had just a little bit more of a statement, even possibly a quote by one of the Musicologists involved.

I also thought that tests like these can never be 100% objective, and that they can only make an educated guess to who the voice is.
 
He did say he pitched the vocals. Here's the missing text:

Lawrence Fordyce / FORD said:
Hello Korgnex,

I am absolutely confident that the recording is Michael Jackson. On the original master there are sections the end of takes where Michael laughed and said something or gave instructions to the producer. The voice is Michaels. His voice may sound strange do to a process called Time Stretching. This is a process that speeds up the rhythm of the vocals, but holds them at the same pitch. Kind of like making a record play faster and the program then detunes the vocal to make it sound normal again. Back when I produced this record Time Stretching programs were in their infancy and not very good. They added a lot of unwanted artifacts, that are then (at least attempted) to be EQued out. The reason for this is the original was a ballad. Michael wanted to dance in the video, so he asked me to do a mix, not only in double time, but also make it a little faster so it could be mixed in with other dance songs.



Ford
FORD Productions, LLC
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"holds them at the same pitch" is what those programs claim to achieve, however this doesn't really work as you can read in the sentences that follow up and as everyone who's familiar with sound editing can tell you.
Basically if you use "time stretching" you also change the pitch because any detuning algorithm is far from keeping a voice's original pitch - especially back in 2003. It's a mathematical approximation, the voice is getting synthetic.
 
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It even changes the accent? Because when I first heard this, I noticed right away that it doesn't even sound like MJ singing (as in accent, style).

Or does this also change the accent, just like in the Cascio songs? (lol..)
 
Korgnex said:
He did say he pitched the vocals. Here's the missing text:
Hello Korgnex,

I am absolutely confident that the recording is Michael Jackson. On the original master there are sections the end of takes where Michael laughed and said something or gave instructions to the producer. The voice is Michaels. His voice may sound strange do to a process called Time Stretching. This is a process that speeds up the rhythm of the vocals, but holds them at the same pitch. Kind of like making a record play faster and the program then detunes the vocal to make it sound normal again. Back when I produced this record Time Stretching programs were in their infancy and not very good. They added a lot of unwanted artifacts, that are then (at least attempted) to be EQued out. The reason for this is the original was a ballad. Michael wanted to dance in the video, so he asked me to do a mix, not only in double time, but also make it a little faster so it could be mixed in with other dance songs.
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"holds them at the same pitch" is what those programs claim to achieve, however this doesn't really work as you can read in the sentences that follow up and as everyone who's familiar with sound editing can tell you.
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No, he does not say he altered the pitch, he only said he used time-stretching. And time-stretching holds a sound clip at the same pitch. It works perfectly fine in keeping the pitch the same. However, doing so leaves a lot of ugly artifacts - the more you change the speed of the original sound clip, the uglier the artifacts. But the pitch is still the same. He only says that he tried to EQ those artifacts out.

To give an example of the type of artifacts that time-stretching might leave.
This is what you get when you significantly slow down the speed of Black or White. It sounds horrible, very stretched out (which is what it is), but as you can hear, the pitch is still similar to the original:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ukwja881584sj83
And this is what you get when you speed it up. Again, it sounds terrible, very choppy this time, but the pitch is the same.
http://www.mediafire.com/?qy7kylike59ds58



Now, to get back to the clip from Much Too Soon you posted originally. I pitched it up by 4 semitones to get the original pitch back.
http://www.mediafire.com/?ik43bg48iwkpqh2
If your point is that the OMC remix vocals sound the way they do because Ford had to pitch them down (which he never claimed himself) the way you did with the Much Too Soon vocals, then I should also be able to get the OMC remix to sound like MJ by increasing the pitch. I also pitched it up by 4 semitones. This is what you get:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dls757vl7r4gz44

A clip with an unrealistically high-pitched voice that still sounds nothing like MJ, imo at least...
 
Korgnex;3603907 said:
http://www.dspdimension.com/admin/time-pitch-overview/
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From that website:
1.2 Time Compression/Expansion
Time Compression/Expansion, also known as “Time Stretching” is the reciprocal process to Pitch Shifting. It leaves the pitch of the signal intact while changing its speed (tempo). This is a useful application when you wish to change the speed of a voiceover without messing with the timbre of the voice. There are several fairly good methods to do time compression/expansion and pitch shifting but most of them will not perform well on all different kinds of signals and for any desired amount of shift/stretch ratio. Typically, good algorithms allow pitch shifting up to 5 semitones on average or stretching the length by 130%. When time stretching and pitch shifting single instrument recordings you might even be able to achieve a 200% time stretch, or a one-octave pitch shift with no audible loss in quality
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I do not content that time-stretching leaves ugly artifacts. But you said Ford pitched the vocals, similar to what you did with the Much Too Soon clip. However, this is not what he says himself. He said he used time-stretching, which does what is mentioned above.
 
Seems like you have to understand how it is technically possible to "leave the pitch of the signal intact". Any detuning algorithm will result in a synthetic voice. At first you won't hear much of a difference, but the more you processs, the more synthetic the voice will become. The FORD remix stands out for its incredible production and shows what you can do with a voice.
 
Korgnex said:
Seems like you have to understand how it is technically possible to "leave the pitch of the signal intact". Any detuning algorithm will result in a synthetic voice. At first you won't hear much of a difference, but the more you processs, the more synthetic the voice will become. The FORD remix stands out for its incredible production and shows what you can do with a voice.
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Hang on, I thought you and I both agreed that this does not sound like Michael the way he usually sounds - the difference is that I think that is because it is another person singing, you because of the techniques that were used. So if we agree on the fact that these vocals sound different, how can you call this incredible production?

And I am not really sure what you mean with your first three sentences. I also mentioned that the more you change the speed of the sound clip, the more artifacts it will leave. I get the impression you are basically saying the same thing? If not, could you perhaps elaborate?

Out of interest, does anyone know if there is an acapella available for One More Chance? And ideally, but not necessarily, also an instrumental of this Ford remix? I would like to try some things.
 
I wanted to try to match the vocals of One More Chance (the original song) with the beat of the remix, just to see what kind of processing I would need to make the two match up and how the voice would then end up sounding. I had a look around and there does not seem to be an acapella for OMC, so I ended up trying it with the original mix as a whole. There is a long instrumental intro in the Ford remix, which I used to mix it with.

What I found is that no time-stretching is actually needed to make the released version match up with the remix. As Ford describes himself in his reply to Pentum:
I believe I ended up producing it in half-time
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This seems to be the case. The original mix and the Ford remix in half-time both have a tempo of exactly 81 bpm. I already got the impression while listening to the remix that the speed of the vocals did not seem very different from the original mix of One More Chance. I did not suspect that they would be identical, but they are. Thus, you do not need to change the tempo of the vocals at all to mix them with the Ford remix beat. I therefore do not get why he says he needed to use time-stretching, unless the demo takes he used had a very different speed (which seems unlikely). No changes in pitch were needed either.

Have a listen for yourself. Unfortunately you will hear some of the instruments from the original mix as well (there is an abundance of snare hits that I hope you can ignore :) ). I tried to EQ them out as much as possible but obviously you will still hear them.

You will first hear my mix of the beat of the Ford remix + the original. After that you hear the same section with the vocals from the Ford mix.
http://www.mediafire.com/?lhve0kpob54je3k
 
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