"Beat It" by Michael Jackson in Chrome Music Lab

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:01]Hello ladies and gentlemen. This is Mr. Baker the Music Maker coming at you with another hot chrome music lab tutorial.

[00:00:07]This one's from the GOAT, the greatest entertainer of all time. And his name was Michael Jackson. That's right. Wacko Jacko himself, the best to ever do it.

[00:00:17]There's been no one since. And there never will be another Michael Jackson.

[00:00:20]This song's called Beat It and it comes right off the Thriller album with all his other big hits which kind of established his solo career as he took over the charts with the greatest selling album of all time to this day.

[00:00:33]And this song is one of the reasons why.

[00:00:34]Super iconic hard rock anthem with Eddie Van Halen shredding a guitar solo. It came out in 1983 when the pop world was blowing up because of Michael Jackson. Let's hear it.

[00:00:58]Boom. Super easy, super catchy little tune from Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. The iconic Beat It. Let's build it from scratch. Restart. Go to settings. We're going to change middle C to middle D. That's all we got to do.

[00:01:13]One setting change. Middle C to middle D. Click the blue check. We just switched the key up a little bit. No big deal. Don't worry about it. It's going to work out perfect. We're going to change the tempo next, which is the speed of the song. 120. Nope. It's quicker. It's at 139. Can you drag it there? Nope. So, double click and hit 139.

[00:01:32]Enter. And now our tempo is 139. Then we're ready to put in the drums. Before we do that, I'm going go ahead and change the sound from MIA to synth because we're in the mid 80s.

[00:01:41]Synthesizers were taking over everything. and everything. Michael Jackson is very synth heavy, but still has a lot of great instrument parts. But yeah, we're gonna change the sound from MIMA to synth. Now we're ready to put in the drum beat, which is pretty cool.

[00:01:53]We're gonna go boom smack, boom, smack, boom, smack, boom, smack. Whoa. So, basically, it's like just doing the same thing over and over again, which you can start with that and just move one beat to make it that's easier for you. You can start with this very simple pattern.

[00:02:10]A circle skip one, triangle, skip one, all the way.

[00:02:16]But we got to change something about this beat right here and this beat right here. There's a little delay in the bass drum pattern. We're going to add this one over here and add this one over here. All we did was shift this one bass drum note over and it's going to create a cool little hiccup sound in the beat to give it some kind of new energy and not the same stagnant thing over and over again like Billy Jean was which is a nice mid-tempo pop song as well with the same beat. Let's hear it.

[00:02:47]Yeah.

[00:02:50]Yeah. That little hiccup, that little push back in the beat of the bass drum right there, it was called a little syncupation action. It's really what makes a song kind of have a cool little dance groove to it and a little contrast to his other singles on the album. Let's go ahead and put this sucker in, shall we? We're going to put this one, this one, and that one. We're going to have this kind of a stack of a chord, which is a EGB. That's a E minor chord for you music nerds out there. Yep. That's E GB with no spaces in between. And then we're going to do this high teal. No, that teal right there. And then yellow right there.

[00:03:29]Then we're going to skip two, but this green one, skip one, yellow, orange, skip one, orange. And that's like the entirety of the melody, which we're about to just repeat in the next measure. Let's hear it.

[00:03:46]Where's the rest? Yeah, we're ready to put it in. So, we got to basically repeat this idea, but instead of putting this note in the very beginning, we're going to put it at the end of the gray section and leave the beginning of the white one blank. Here's why. I'll show you in a little bit. It's called a pickup, which is why this is kind of weird to put into Chrome Music Lab, which you musicians understand. I'd have to add extra measures to it to do it correctly, but I'll explain that a little bit to the best of my ability.

[00:04:08]But what we're going to do is all we're do is shift that one over just like we shifted a bass drum pattern, but to the left. So, we're going to leave the first one in the white blank. Then put the same pattern we just had.

[00:04:22]Instead, we're going to delete that last orange, though. So, instead of the two oranges, we're going to leave that blank because on the repeat, it leaves the orange out. If you listen the song, you hear it's not the exact same. It just leaves that last note out. And then, let's hear it.

[00:04:42]And then it restarts right there. But like you guys, when I told you to shift that, that's what's called a pickup, which means this note in the beginning supposed to be on that same beat, which is right before this. But in order to do it correctly, it would had to add extra bars, which made the repeat would have sounded weird. So like basically instead of the down beat, they put it on the upbeat right before it, which is why this one is not where it is. And if you want to play accurate, you'd really just delete that one and replace it with that one right there, which on the repeat would mean it's the beat before that. I don't know if that's confusing, don't worry about it. But basically, you could leave that there and leave this out or you could replace that with that or put them both in and it's all going to sound pretty good. So, I'll kind of show you what I mean. On the loop, it repeats the same way because of where that yellow one is. Let's hear it.

[00:05:35]on the repeat which is right before that bass drum hits. So it's like it's kind of a anticipated it's what called a pickup in music. But yeah, that's what's happening there. And that's the entirety of the song. Like I said, pretty easy, very straightforward. Beat it. One of his most popular songs and one of the greatest pop songs of all time from the greatest entertainer of all time, Mr. Michael Jackson. Let me know what y'all thought of the movie if you went to go see it. I can't wait to check out part two when it comes out. But yeah, keep on making music. Peace and love. We'll see you in the next one. Later.