Inside the Song

Inside "Rock with You": Bringing It to Dolby Atmos

October 11, 2026 24:53

Very few songs in history don't need to be named. A couple of seconds of that intro and you already know.

"Rock with You", written by Rod Temperton and produced by Quincy Jones, was the second single from Off the Wall and spent four weeks at number one on the Hot 100 at the start of 1980. Together with Humberto Gatica I got to mix it in Dolby Atmos, as part of the whole catalog we rebuilt in immersive, the same sessions the I Can't Help It breakdown comes from. The immersive master is by Vlado Meller.

It's a recording from 1979 that still sounds as current today as the day it came out. On this one we really used the space of Atmos to enhance the music, and I want to show you how, element by element, straight from the session.

Same song, brought to today

Carlos Rodgarman and Humberto Gatica in the studio — With Humberto Gatica, mixing the Michael Jackson catalogue in Dolby Atmos.

We all have years of memories listening to these songs. So the first purpose of these mixes is to preserve that memory. It needs to feel like the same song, and we need to respect that.

At the same time, we need to bring it to today, and use the space we have in Atmos that we don't have in stereo, because back then it simply didn't exist. Same thing with the low end: in 1979 everything was going to vinyl, and there was only so much low end and so much loudness a record could take. Today we have a bit of a luxury there. The character stays; what changes is that Atmos lets us open up all the glory of these arrangements.

And it has to feel coherent. A lot of people tell me Atmos is distracting, and it is, when everything starts moving everywhere: top, back, front. It always needs to be about the music. A mix should never sound like a demo of the platform, or of the technology.

Others tell me stereo has a punch that Atmos doesn't. My answer is always: it depends on what you're listening to. There are great mixes in stereo and great mixes in Atmos, and there are bad mixes in stereo too. It's not what the system allows you to do, it's what you do with it. How you use those extra possibilities, so they support the story of the song, is a matter of taste and a matter of experience.

The groove starts on the floor

Portrait of JR Robinson at the drums — JR Robinson, on drums here as on I Can't Help It. Photo: Suzanne Teresa, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Obviously we need to start with the drums. That drum feel is legendary, and it's JR Robinson. Solo them for a second, then let the bassline in, and you hear how the song starts.

On top of that, carrying the whole intro, there are just the electric guitars, the other main part of the groove, and the Rhodes supporting the harmony. Three things. That's all the intro needs.

This is where Atmos is already working. The guitars are an object, a sound I can place anywhere in the room, on 67-68 in the session. They're not in the front: a little behind you, and almost not elevated at all, pretty much on the ground. The Rhodes, on object 65, is a bit wider, almost at shoulder level. So the guitars stay a little out, but not too much, because they belong with the drums, and the Rhodes is what gives the width, at that height, with the harmony.

The solo line, on 37-38, sits in the front but slightly elevated, just on top of the guitars. Together, the lead and the guitars make one shape.

I'm not afraid of the center channel

Then, as always, the center of attention is Michael, as it should be. He's always in the middle, in the front.

And I'm not afraid of the center channel. Some people like it, some don't. In the early days of Atmos, a lot of labels and producers asked not to put the artist in the center channel, because there the vocal is isolated and people could steal it. These days, with AI, anybody can steal anything anyway.

So I use it. Not as the main focus of the vocal, but because it has a different sound from the phantom center we're used to in stereo. Michael lives in the stereo center, and then I bring in as much or as little center channel as the song asks for.

Three reverbs, one room

The RG Studio control room, with height speakers mounted on the ceiling — The room at RG Studio. With speakers all around and on the ceiling, you hear the reverb travel from the front wall to the back.

For the reverbs we always try to recreate the vibe of the original, but this is a different medium. For most of Michael's reverbs I've been using the Eventide H9000, and here I built three instances of three reverbs: a short one straight on the front wall, a slightly longer one in the middle of the room, and the longest one, with a little more pre-delay, in the back. Listen to them one at a time.

On headphones, which is how most of you will hear it, you get the binaural emulation, on Tidal or on Apple's Spatial Audio, and it does what it does; it gets a little better with every update. But in a room with speakers, or with one of the soundbars that project to the walls and the ceiling to emulate side and back speakers, you'll hear that reverb go from short in the front to long in the back. You hear Michael here, and then his trail traveling through the room, all the way to the back. It's really neat.

Strings, voices and brass

Then comes the magic: the strings and his background vocals. The strings, arranged by Ben Wright, are on object 97-98, a little wide but not too far out, because they have to work together with the backgrounds. And the backgrounds get a similar reverb, the one that travels to the back.

The other element that comes in right there is the brass, arranged by Jerry Hey, the same pen behind the horns of Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. It's on 69-70, and those horns are on the sides. So the strings, the horns and the voices each have their own place, and none of them covers the others.

Michael's clap

Something worth noticing on the chorus: it's the first time we hear Michael's clap. Listen to the king of groove at work. In the pre-chorus come those beautiful sixteenth notes on the hi-hat, and then the clap lands on the chorus, with the snare.

It's amazing how groovy it feels, with the snare played pretty much in the middle of the drum, no extra impact. It's just sitting there, grooving. That's one of the things I love about this song: it feels so intimate, and it's still grooving. It isn't a ballad, and it isn't an uptempo either. It's somewhere in between, and it just works.

The second verse

In the second verse, look at the string arrangement under Michael. Open his vocal with its effect next to the strings and you see how beautifully they move together. Then the brass gets added, and, for my bass friends, there's the bass with the guitar.

And listen to Michael's delivery. So much energy, so much groove in his breaths. We all know him for that, but it's still amazing to see how he makes the track flow. And his harmonies: brilliant, as always.

Why my session is full of cuts

Portrait of Quincy Jones — Quincy Jones in 1980, the year after Off the Wall. Photo: Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0.

If you work in this world and you look at my Pro Tools session, you'll wonder why there are so many edits on the regions. I've told this in a couple of interviews, but it's worth telling again.

This was an album of live musicians, and everything was analog. Digital audio didn't exist in 1979 the way it does today. It was recorded on tape by Bruce Swedien, mixed on tape and mastered on tape. Even with the machines synced, there are tiny fluctuations at every stage: recording, overdubs, mixing, mastering.

When I tried to line up our new Atmos mix with the original stereo, it didn't match. It was at a different speed and a different pitch: it had come up. I asked Humberto, and he said: "Probably, in mastering, either Quincy or Michael just sped up the tape, to make it more exciting." That little speed-up raised the pitch a tiny bit, and the tempo with it.

So I had to find a percentage of speed-up, digitally, to match the original and stay in tune. It would work for a segment and then start to drift, so I'd cut, adjust a little more or a little less, and cut again in the next section. Section by section, through the whole album. That alone was a lot of work, but it had to be done: the song has to come out the way we've all heard it, same speed, same pitch. That's what all those cuts are. I tell it in more detail in the guide to the Michael Jackson albums in Dolby Atmos.

The bridge and that synth solo

Into the bridge. What an arrangement, Jerry Hey. Open the Rhodes for the harmonic context, and the bass, because it's doing some really funky moves in there.

And then the synth solo. Incredibly memorable: the sound, the performance, the melody. After it, the strings take us to the modulation.

Surrounded, and still intimate

Then it's Michael's moment, and this is one of the beautiful things we get in Atmos, because of the space. There's so much music going on. Michael is in the center, coming out a little from the center channel; around him, the keyboards and the reverbs; up in the height, a little of the strings and a little of the keyboard effects. He's surrounded. That leaves room to pull the backgrounds out a bit, and now there's a dialogue between them and him.

That's the key thing: making a song immersive doesn't mean things have to fly left and right. They can be static and it still feels immersive. And immersive doesn't have to lose the punch, or the intimacy, like in this song.

Tell me how you listen

What a glorious album Off the Wall is. It was the first collaboration between Michael and Quincy Jones, the start of his adult era, and I'm really curious what you think of it in Dolby Atmos. We did the other albums too: they're all in the Michael Jackson in Dolby Atmos project.

Tell me two things. First, how you listen: headphones, car, TV, soundbar? What's your setup? And second, what you like about Atmos. A lot of people tell me they're discovering musical elements they never noticed in the originals. They were always there; we can't add or take away anything. But with the space, you hear them in a different way, and you understand those gorgeous arrangements a little better.

Full transcript

0:00 Very few songs in history don't need to be named. We just need to listen to the first couple of seconds.
0:07 Hi, I'm Carlos Rodgarman, and I'm here to talk about Rock with You, another jewel on the Off the Wall album that, together with Humberto Gatica, we got to mix in Dolby Atmos as part of the whole catalog remixing that we did in Dolby Atmos.
0:23 This was mastered in immersive by Vlado Meller and Ander Rivas, and it's just another example of how brilliant this whole Off the Wall album is.
0:33 It's a recording from 1979 that still sounds as current today as it did when it came out.
0:39 This is another legendary song in which we actually took the space of Dolby Atmos to enhance the music.
0:45 We all have memories, for so many years, of listening to all these songs. So the purpose of these Dolby Atmos mixes is to preserve the memory that we have. It needs to feel like the same song. We need to respect that.
0:57 But at the same time, we need to bring it to today and take advantage of the space that we have in Atmos that we don't have in stereo. It didn't exist back then, right?
1:05 Same thing with the low end. There were limitations at the time, because this was all going to vinyl. There was only so much low end on vinyl, certain loudness, certain considerations to keep in mind. It's different today. So today we have a bit of a luxury of different things.
1:24 We need to respect the same character of the song. But Dolby Atmos allows us now to open up all the glory of these incredible arrangements that I'm going to show you.
1:31 It needs to feel coherent, because sometimes a lot of people tell me, well, you know, Dolby Atmos is just kind of distracting, when people start to do so many movements everywhere, top, back, front, and it gets distracting.
1:46 It needs to be always about the music. It should never feel like a demo of the platform, never a demo of the technology.
1:52 Some people tell me the same thing: stereo has a punch that Dolby Atmos doesn't have. I'm always saying, well, it depends on what you're listening to. In stereo it's no different than in immersive: what mixes are you listening to?
2:08 Because there are great mixes in stereo, great mixes in Atmos, and there are bad mixes in stereo too. So it's not so much what the system allows you to do, it's what you do with it. And that doesn't differ from stereo to immersive.
2:23 Now we have more possibilities in immersive, and how you use them creatively or musically, so that it feels coherent and supports the story of the song, that is a matter of taste and a matter of experience.
2:35 Obviously we need to start with the drums. That drum feel is legendary. Let me just solo the drums real quick.
2:57 Let me open it with the bassline, so you see how it starts.
3:17 Besides that, to support this whole intro, we just have the electric guitars, the other main part of the groove, together with the Rhodes supporting the harmony.
3:46 One interesting thing that we're starting to do already is the guitars, right? I have them here as an object, which I'm panning. We can see it here, 67-68.
4:01 So we have them not in the front, a little bit behind, and almost nothing elevated. They're pretty much on the ground, right?
4:12 But the Rhodes is a little bit wider. It's on object 65, which is this. As you can see, it's a little bit wider, so it's almost at shoulder level.
4:26 So this way we're keeping the guitars a little bit out, not too much, because they're together with the drums. They should feel together with the drums. The Rhodes is what gives us the width at this level, with the harmony. Let me play everything again.
5:02 Did you catch that?
5:12 Then of course we have the solo line, on 37-38. This object, 37-38, is pretty much in the front, but we have it a little bit elevated, so that it sits a little bit on top of the guitars, which were also out a little bit. So together, the lead with the guitars would be these two.
5:55 Then obviously, as always, the center of attention is Michael, as it should be. So we always have Michael in the middle, in the front.
6:05 But I'm actually not afraid of the center channel. Not afraid. Some people like it, some people don't.
6:13 In the beginning of Atmos, a lot of labels, a lot of producers were requesting not to put the artist in the center channel, because then it's isolated and people could steal it. These days, with AI, anybody can steal anything anyway.
6:28 So I'm using the center channel, not as the main focus of the vocal, but because it does have a different sound, right? The center channel is different from the phantom center that we're used to in stereo.
6:41 So we keep him in the stereo center, but then we bring in as much or as little as we need for the song on the center channel.
7:04 For the Atmos versions of these reverbs, we always try to recreate the same vibe of the original, right? But obviously this is different. In this case, I've been using the Eventide H9000 for most of Michael's reverbs.
7:22 What I created here was three instances of three reverbs. We have one that is straight up on the front wall, a second one that is a little bit longer, in the middle of the room, so to speak, and a longer one with a little more pre-delay in the back.
7:38 So you can hear: this is the first one, on the front wall.
7:50 You have the second one, in the middle of the room.
8:04 And then you have the back one.
8:27 What this does when you're listening on headphones, and most of you are going to be listening on headphones, on the binaural emulation that you get, whether it's on Tidal or on Spatial Audio on Apple, it does what it does. Every time it gets updated, it gets a little bit better.
8:44 But when you listen in a room with speakers, or on a soundbar, and today we have a bunch of soundbars that do different projections to the walls and ceilings to emulate back speakers, side speakers, etc., you will hear how this reverb goes from shorter in the front to longer in the back.
9:01 So effectively, you're hearing Michael here, and then you're hearing this trail in the room that keeps traveling to the back. It's really neat. Can we play it? With everything.
9:25 So you can see in the track what that reverb is doing.
9:50 This whole verse is being supported by the Rhodes.
10:17 Now, this is where the magic comes in. We have the strings and his backgrounds coming in. Look at the strings.
10:30 The strings, we have them on object 97-98, which is right there. So you can see that they're a little bit wide. Not too much, not too far out, because they should be working together with the backgrounds. I'll show you.
10:52 The backgrounds are actually here. Background vocals, these guys here.
11:06 And same thing, we have a similar type of reverb on them that travels to the back. So, together with the strings.
11:28 The other element that comes in right there is the brass, right? Which is on object 69-70. I'll show you. These horns are actually on the sides, so that we have the strings, the horns, and the backgrounds.
12:04 Let's see how all those elements are working together in the mix.
12:37 It's worth mentioning here, on the chorus, it's the first time that we introduce Michael's clap. Listen to the king of groove. Yes, sir. Listen to his work here.
12:54 When we go into the pre-chorus, I'll include the hi-hat, those beautiful sixteenth notes on the hi-hat. This is where we introduce the clap on the chorus, on the snare.
13:34 It's actually amazing how groovy it feels. The snare is played pretty much in the middle of the drum, no extra impact, and it's just grooving. It's just sitting there.
13:44 That's one of the beautiful things that I love about this song: how it feels so intimate, but at the same time it's still grooving. It's not a normal ballad, or a normal uptempo either. It's somewhere in between, and it just works.
13:58 Let me play you the chorus again, so you can hear that groove on the drums with the claps.
14:20 Now, the second verse.
14:37 I know, my bass friends... But before we talk about that, I need to show you the strings. Look at this arrangement.
14:46 I'll open Michael with his effect, so you can see those beautiful strings together with him. Listen to this.
15:20 Let me include the brass in there, because it's an important element that gets added there.
15:42 So, again, with everything in there.
16:03 Okay. Let me do this for my bass players. With the guitar.
16:39 Now listen to Michael's delivery. So beautiful, as always. So much energy, so much groove that he puts in his breaths. We all know him for that, but it's pretty amazing to see how he makes the track flow.
17:22 Now, some of you who are in this world and understand what I'm showing here in Pro Tools are going to wonder why there are so many edits on the regions. Why is all this stuff here?
17:33 I've spoken about this in a couple of interviews, but in case you haven't heard it, it's actually pretty interesting. This was an album of live musicians, and everything was analog, right? Digital audio didn't exist in 1979 the way it exists today.
17:53 So basically, this was all recorded live to tape. It was mixed on tape and it was mastered on tape. So there are all those fluctuations, even though the machines are synced: little fluctuations during recording, during overdubs, during mixing, and then during mastering.
18:12 It got to the point that I was trying to match the stereo mix to what we were doing in the Dolby Atmos mix, the new one that we're creating. It needs to sync, it needs to match the original, obviously. And then I find that it's at a different speed. It's at a different pitch. It actually came up.
18:32 So I was talking to Humberto, and Humberto says, "Well, probably at the time, what they did in mastering is that either Quincy or Michael just sped up the tape, to make it more exciting."
18:44 So that little speed-up actually brought up the pitch a tiny bit, and also the speed. So the original recording that we have, once we mix it, doesn't match.
18:56 So I had to come up with a percentage of speed-up, digitally these days, so that it would match the original and be in tune. But that would work maybe for a segment, and then it would start to drift.
19:11 So I would have to cut there, stop there, do a little bit more or a little bit less, and cut again in the next section. Section by section, I had to do this through the whole album.
19:22 That alone was a lot of work, but it needs to be done, because it needs to come out how we've all heard it: at the same speed and the same pitch. It needs to match the original perfectly.
19:32 So that's the reason, in case you were wondering, that you see a lot of these edits. It's where I had to cut, speed up, move, etc.
19:42 Look at Michael's harmonies. Brilliant, as always.
20:08 We're going into the bridge.
20:19 What an arrangement, Jerry Hey. It's worth listening to that. I'll open the Rhodes for harmonic context, and the bass, because it's doing some really funky moves in there.
21:07 Incredibly memorable, this synth solo. The sound, the performance, the melody.
21:26 In context again.
21:40 To the modulation. The strings are going to take us there.
22:04 Then it's time for Michael to do his thing.
22:23 This is one of the beautiful things that we get in Atmos, because of that space. We have Michael, and there's so much music going on, right? Michael's in the center, a little bit coming out of the center channel.
22:35 We have all the keyboards, all the reverbs. We have, in the height, a little bit of the strings and a little bit of the keyboard effects, right? So he's surrounded.
22:43 So now the backgrounds, we're able to pull them out a little bit. Now there's this dialogue between the backgrounds and him, and it just works fantastically in Atmos.
22:55 So the key thing is that making a song immersive doesn't necessarily mean that things are going to be flying left and right. They could be static and it still feels immersive. And immersive doesn't have to lose the punch, or the intimacy, like in this case.
23:25 Glorious album, Off the Wall. If you get a chance to listen to it in Dolby Atmos, please let me know in the comments.
23:41 First of all, I'm curious about how you're listening. Are you listening on headphones? In a car, on a TV, a soundbar? What's your setup?
23:50 And number two, what are you liking about Dolby Atmos? The separation? A lot of people are starting to tell me that they're discovering so many musical elements they didn't realize were there in the originals.
24:01 Obviously, they are. We can't add or take away things that aren't there, right? But because of the space, now you hear things in a different way, and there's a different understanding of the gorgeous arrangements and so much musicality in these songs.
24:19 Especially this album, Off the Wall. What an album. So go check it out. I will leave the link here for the platforms that support Dolby Atmos.
24:28 We also did the other albums of Michael Jackson, but I'm very curious to hear what you think of Off the Wall in Dolby Atmos, since it was the start of Michael's adult era, right? This is the first Quincy Jones collaboration.
24:41 So I'm curious to see what you think. If you get to experience it in Atmos, please let me know. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and we'll see you in the next one.