hahninator Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 Josh Newell, an engineer that has worked with LP for several albums, recently sat down to answer questions about Linkin Park's recording process for One More Light, offering a glimpse into the working atmosphere and more for the album. A few highlights: "HOW COME IT TOOK SO LONG? I’ll be as concise as possible here: We entered the studio with a skeletal idea of what the band wanted to do and a few songs/demos. The band decided they wanted to work with various collaborators on this album. Schedules had to get worked out, and initially there was a lot of songwriting going on. Next, they started fleshing out the productions a bit and making decisions as to which direction to take each song. There were a LOT of songs written. After working on them all for a while, they’d narrow down to what they thought were the best songs (going from about 80 songs to 40 songs then to 20 songs, with around 10 finally making the album). Now you’re basically working on 40 songs, and they’re bringing in sonic collaborators to get some new ideas and sounds. Some parts work and others don’t. Those new parts inspire changes in the productions. And nothing about the sounds or production were off limits. Want to see what the track might sound like in a different key and tempo? It got tried. There are also six people in the band giving their input so there’s nor shortage of ideas. Vocals get cut, demo parts get replaced with keeper parts, structures change, and so on. Sometimes a song everyone liked would end up going off in a direction that people didn’t like so we’d walk it back to see what changes didn’t work. As that happened, the list of songs starts getting shorter and shorter as the stronger material becomes obvious, and then the band picked the top 15 or so for the album and finished those. It was a very meticulous process, to say the least. The album definitely wasn’t just thrown together." "PIGGY BACK ON THIS QUESTION, HOW DO YOU AND THE BAND KEEP FOCUS ON THE VISION OF THE ALBUM FOR THAT LONG? If I’m being completely honest, there were times that I had real trouble maintaining perspective on tracks. Since there were two engineers, sometimes we’d swap off tasks if one song in particular was being worked on for a few days straight. That seemed to help. Fortunately, I wasn’t the producer so the fact that sometimes I couldn’t tell if I liked a change better because it was actually better or just because it was new wasn’t an end-all, be-all. And I could be honest with the band about that when it came up. As for the band, different people in the band had different approaches. Overall as a band they would meet weekly to discuss the songs, and we’d keep a going DropBox of every version of the song (upwards of 20 versions for most songs) so it was possible for them to go back and reference what had been done. I do think the overall vision for the album changed a bit as it went along since the band didn’t come in with all of the material written and demoed." Read the full, in-depth interview here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
castro78 Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 They wrote 80 songs, and somehow Heavy and BS made the album ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 They wrote 80 songs, and somehow Heavy and BS made the album ? Heavy was obviously aimed at radio, with a feature by Kiiara. That's been a success so far. You may hate Heavy but it's receiving regular radio play right now. I think Battle Symphony is a good song. I don't understand the amount of hate it's receiving. It's not even that much different that some songs they've made in the past. It would fit right in on ATS for example, and I personally feel that ATS is the band's best album as a whole thus far. Different people have different tastes. You absolutely have a right to your opinion, but not everyone thinks these songs are terrible. Obviously the band didn't since as you said they made the cut. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
castro78 Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 Heavy was obviously aimed at radio, with a feature by Kiiara. That's been a success so far. You may hate Heavy but it's receiving regular radio play right now. I think Battle Symphony is a good song. I don't understand the amount of hate it's receiving. It's not even that much different that some songs they've made in the past. It would fit right in on ATS for example, and I personally feel that ATS is the band's best album as a whole thus far. Different people have different tastes. You absolutely have a right to your opinion, but not everyone thinks these songs are terrible. Obviously the band didn't since as you said they made the cut. Yes, Heavy is getting plenty of play on pop radio stations. As for BS, I disagree, what song on ATS does it remind you of? I really like ATS, but to me, it doesn't resemble anything I've heard so far from OML. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 Yes, Heavy is getting plenty of play on pop radio stations. As for BS, I disagree, what song on ATS does it remind you of? I really like ATS, but to me, it doesn't resemble anything I've heard so far from OML. Vocally it reminds me of WFTE. Not that those two songs sound alike, but it sounds like they could have been on the same album. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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