Man in the Music by Joseph Vogel.
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...While he didn't read music or play instruments proficiently, he could vocally convey the arrangement, rhythm, tempo, and melody of a track, including nearly every instrument. "He starts with an entire sound and song," explained producer Bill Bottrell. "Usually he doesn't start with lyrics, but he hears the sound and the whole arrangement of the song in his head.... He hums things. He can convey it with his voice like nobody. Not just singing the song's lyrics, but he can convey a feeling in a drum part or a synthesizer part." Oftentimes, Jackson would vocalize a new song into a tape recorder until he could get to a studio; other times he would call a musician or producer and dictate to them directly. "One morning [Michael] came in with a new song he had written overnight,"
recalled assistant engineer Rob Hoffman. "We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. 'Here's the first chord, first note, second note, third note. Here's the second chord, first note, second note, third note,' etc,etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room...
He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed [Jackson] doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. He would actually sing the entire arrangement into a microcassette recorder complete with stops and fills."
Once Jackson got down the foundation of the song, he would begin fleshing it out, layer by layer, a process that would sometimes take a few weeks and sometimes take years. "Music is tapestry," he explained. "It's different layers, it's weaving in and out, and if you look at it in layers, you understand it better." He liked to allow time for the song to reveal itself. If it wasn't quite there, he would move on to something else and come back to it later.
