4 Thriller

(Pop)

Words and music by Rod Temperton

4/4 time signature/Key C major/Tempo moderately bright

Single released January 23^rd 1984 (USA 4 UK 10)

(Instrumentation)

Piano/Synthesizer/Guitar/Bass/Drums/natural sound effects loops

Song structure

Instrumental intro/Verse 1/Chorus 1/Verse 2/Chorus 2/Bridge/verse 3/chorus 4+fade-out

This song is a none-fictional story about demons coming back from the dead to eat and drink on people’s blood. Because the king of pop, Michael Jackson with his image and soft high pitched voice, he could not make this songs message come across to the public as being scary, far from it. Michael dressed up as a character from Night of the living dead, and created a short film along with the music that consisted of acting from Michael who is on a date with a girl until the full moon comes out and he transforms into creature from the dead, then the song starts up. In the middle of the song there is a large choreographed scene involving professional dancers following all Michael’s moves which adds to the excitement of the song. The whole video is 14 minutes long which went on to be one of the biggest selling music videos of all time. Over 26 million copies sold and very scary too.

The song starts with a door creaking open, footsteps, wolfs howling in the distance, thunder and the wind blowing hard. The synthesizer then plays a descending line to make a starting point for the guitar to come in playing clean sounding chords on and off the beats using quavers with E.Q added to sound brighter for more clarity the drums are lightly playing the bass drum on all the down beats and open and closed hi-hat on the off beats. This is all going on adding and building tension to a crescendo then the chorus melody “Thriller thriller night” plays on the synthesizer to open up the song then fades out slowly, while the drums and bass start the groove for the song. The bass is playing a riff that is on the first three beats, using four quavers and a crochet with slight variations more so when leading into the choruses. Main vocal is central in the mix with slight reverb very clean and easy to listen to the words being sung, there is lots of emphasis on sustaining the length of the notes, with lots of dynamic changes up and down. The backing vocals have lots of chorus/reverb and a small amount of delay moving about left and right in the mix singing the main chorus melody line “thriller, thriller night” same as main vocal but higher and lower range. There is a rap style outro with lighter dynamics in the instruments, the bass plays a short two semi-quaver groove on beat one playing the same note, the wolf’s howls come back in like intro, the synthesizer plays high range long sustained notes, all the instrumentation is creating this feeling of suspense and uncertainty. The male voice dark and evil sounding and is loudest in the mix, telling the story of thriller after the rap ends the song finishes with a evil laugh central and forward in the mix, that fades out.