Mike Q&A Summary 6/30/2020: "Dropped Frames"

[LPLStaff]

Mike released three new songs from Dropped Frames today and did a Q&A as well, so we have a lot to cover. Let's get with it!

Mike began the stream by debuting "Open Door". He said his management told him he had to go live at 9am PST instead of his normal time at 10am PST because music services push the new music releases out at 9am.

 

- "Open Door": "These vocals, for those of you who weren't paying attention along the way, the vocals on the song... you'll be able to tell which ones are mine. The rest of them are fan submitted vocals from seven vocalists from around the world who submitted. We had a contest called #SingOpenDoor and they submitted vocals and I went through all of those submissions and found the ones I thought would go well together."

 

"Damn, they can sing. That song is called Open Door. When quarantine started, when the whole pandemic hit and we started staying at home, I started posting... I was originally on Instagram Live and I did a few lives just on my phone, I set my phone down and made some beats and stuff. And this track was made from two different beats I was messing with. I asked the community on Instagram which beat I should work on. And it was pretty close, the vote on which one I should pursue or whatever. So I mashed them up. And then I listened to it and I was like, "I really need another singer or something. It's probably a female vocal that I want on the track." So we did the #SingOpenDoor contest so I ended up choosing seven people. The seven who are in the song are... (names here). The things they sent in... they're all so talented. I just love what they do individually and I loved just stacking all of those vocals. This is maybe the first song I've put together and mixed that had, I think it had one hundred vocal tracks. It was a LOT. So that was fun."

 

- "Dropped Frames": "Here's what's going on and what happens from here. I originally had this song and I said, "I want to put out this song." And then I started doing streams here on Twitch where I make a beat every day starting at 10am. And then I had all of these beats, so I was like, "Man I want to put these beats out. It seems like just fun." When I was in art school I used to listen to a lot of instrumental music when I was drawing or when I was hanging out. I was like, "Let me just put out this instrumental music." And there was a little bit of a moment where I was like, "Ah man should I put Open Door on it? If I put out instrumental music, should it only be instrumental on it, should I not put Open Door on it?" But I feel like Open Door really started the whole process. It went from making this track live to asking fans to participate on it to jumping over to Twitch and then making more stuff live and having the fans suggest themes and suggest genres and challenge me and all of this stuff. So it kind of all went together. So Open Door is the only track with vocals on my upcoming album. It's going to be an album in parts, in a bunch of volumes. Dropped Frames is the name of the album. Dropped Frames is a reference not only to the bad Internet connection that I've had but also the idea of like dropping music. So Dropped Frames comes out a week from Friday. Open Door will be on it. Other than that, it's an instrumental album. And then every so often, hopefully regularly, hopefully every month or so, if we can pull it off, I'll just continue to drop more Dropped Frames album. So the stuff I make on Twitch here every weekday, I'll mix it and I'll put it together, put it into an album, and this is volume one."

 

- "Super Galaxtica": "I named it Super Galaxtica partially because it sounded like space and also because you guys keep joking that the stuff I'm making sounds like aliens are coming down. So second track off the record, I wanted to reference that."

 

- "People have thrown together... I'll mash them up. One person redeemed horror movie hip hop and it's things like that with like Warped Tour, alternative, video game music, and my favorite was a song in the style of the Pokemon Mew. K-pop, emo, Michael Jackson, mariachi, Bollywood hip hop, I got a track from Money Mark who you guys know worked with the Beastie Boys. That one turned into a song that sounded like it was being sung by a chicken. We've done so many crazy things. And a lot of those inspired cool stuff that is going to end up on these albums. The first Dropped Frames on it next Friday is going to have twelve songs."

- Independent release + instrumental album: "This is my first instrumental album. This is also my first independent release. I'm releasing it just on my own without Warner Records. Actually, shoutout to Warner because they are helping support a little bit with a little bit of publicity. But other than that, it isn't going through their system, they aren't doing promotion or marketing or anything like that. It really is on me and you to spread the word. And that's it. All of the Linkin Park soldiers and super fans and stuff, I'm counting on you to help me out and spread the word. And that's appropriate because it's a weird kind of release, I've never done an instrumental release before. I feel like people are going to listen to it in a different way, right? While you're doing your work, while you're doing your homework, while you're working out, while you're eating dinner, while you're having a party, like it's a different kind of vibe. The two places I listen to instrumental music the most are when I'm drawing and when I'm cooking. Some of my favorite instrumental records are J Dilla's Donuts, one of my favorite ones is DJ Shadow's Private Press. I love Introducing as well, which is the previous record or two records before but people don't know about Private Press. A lot of you guys don't know about any of his records but DJ Shadow's Private Press is amazing. Ratatat, Flying Lotus, Prodigy, a lot of stuff that Liam's done that's been instrumental. I was excited to make an instrumental record especially because it seems to fit what we've been making here on Twitch."

- "Open Door demo" -> "I'm going to open up the track. It was made from two, but I realized I had one of them on my laptop. And what that means is, I'm on the move right now, I'm on vacation and my rig is the Native Instruments Maschine controller and my laptop and these gamer headphones. So that's how I made this demo, apparently minus the headphones. I made the demo on Maschine and this was the original demo for Open Door, apparently. It was called Out of Milan which tells me that I was making it either in a plane or in a car or something leaving Milan probably after a show. The little clip clop sounds are all here. And there was a keyboard thing I didn't use, or maybe I just mixed it down, I think I put that in the chorus actually, that's in the chorus underneath all of the beautiful vocals. These were pretty chill sounds, when I made this, it was pretty chill. "Whirly" is a Wurlitzer keyboard and these other ones, "Mark 1" and "Mark 2" also are just electronic piano sounds. Most of the stuff in the song, if you just listen to it on its own, it's pretty chill."

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Normal Q&A of fan-submitted questions:

 

- "How did you make the vocal synth on Open Door?" -> "The two vocal synths, I'm not sure exactly which one I used on that track, but the two I usually use... one of them is literally called Vocal Synth 2 and the other one is Infected Mushrooms Vocal Synth which is called Manipulator I believe. Manipulator is one that I like a lot and the other one is called Vocal Synth."

 

- "How would you feel about naming the Cow Abduction beat from last week Cattle Symphony?" -> "Oh my god, that's amazing. I should make a note of that... Cattle Symphony, it's a good suggestion. Battle Symphony was a song off of One More Light. I did name it something, I named it something having to do with cows but Cattle Symphony is definitely better."

- "I think The Hard Way is the most underrated Fort Minor song. Can you tell us a bit more about it?" -> "During the Fort Minor stuff, I did the beat and the chorus and then I did the verses after for most of those songs. This was with Kenna. The Hard Way is about making things difficult for yourself; you do things intentionally or unintentionally, subconsciously or accidentally that just make yourself crazy which I feel is a very universal thing. I feel like we all do that at some point, right? We try not to do it."

 

Mike will do a stream just dedicated to mixing so producers can see how he works. "Mixing is a little specific, it's not for everybody."

 

- "Osiris": "This one's called Osiris, it's track 8 on the record that comes out next week. So this was one of the more chill tracks, I love how the ending played out. I remember like, I feel like when I'm making a beat on the live stream, I get in a zone and then I just... I remember that zone. It's a really weird feeling, I like remember that weird moment. But that's probably one of my favorite moments in the whole thing."

 

- LP app: "We're not updating the LP app because LP is not doing much. You have to actively keep it up, that effort is not happening the band is not really doing anything.

 

- "Will there ever be a live DVD for the Post Traumatic show in London?" -> "That is a great question. You know I would love to do that. I don't know. Part of the thing about that that made me feel a little awkward is that I played versions of Linkin Park songs in my show and I don't know how I feel... unless I were just to just post it.... that deals with rights and like income streams too I guess of the other guys in the band. And it would get muddy. And I don't want to make them uncomfortable and I don't want to be uncomfortable. Just so you know, that's part of what has to go on on my end when I make decisions like that. I don't know, it's just a little tricky and I've never really jumped into the decision making process on that. But the shows were so special and so cool, it's not because I didn't love those shows."

 

- "What's the song that had the oldest original demo that made it to the album? Was there any song that took more than five years to finish?" -> "Probably. For sure. There's probably a song on Post Traumatic that started as a demo... the beat for Promises I Can't Keep may have been sitting in my hard drive for a while. Castle Of Glass, I made the demo for that during A Thousand Suns. The reason I didn't... it was later in the process and I played it for Brad and he's like, "I like this, it's really dope, but it's really different from the rest of the album." And I said, "I'm playing you this because I think it's good but it needs some work. It needs to get developed and we're almost done with this record. The record feels like it's like the whole thought, like the whole statement and this song feels like it's a different statement. So let's put this on the shelf or on the back burner for the next record." And he's like, "Yeah, yeah I see what you're saying, I feel like that's a good idea." Those are the ones that come to mind."

 

- "When you guys play a festival and they film you guys playing, and they don't let us see it, can you share it with us after?" -> "Yeah they've got like rights, the festival promoters have deals with whoever. And I think sometimes they strike exclusive deals and those are worth money. So they're exclusive, however they do it. So we don't have the rights. If we sign on for a festival where they've already locked in rights, then that's usually part of the agreement. And it's not usually my priority to get in the way of a festival's pre-existing agreements about web streaming. Cause you can't stream everything all the time, you know?"

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/666042658

 

[RYG4R]

And now, I'm curious to hear CASTLE OF GLASS original demo.

[xeroboi]

When will we start getting linkin park news?

[Somebodyangry]

CASHGRAB !!! 1111!!!! 😂

[Cesar656]

46 minutes ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

CASHGRAB !!! 1111!!!! 😂

rumours say he is trying to use GD ambassadors to promote his music🤮🤑

[vinifeijo]

didn't BTH take something like 5 years to get done?

I remember an interview with Mike saying it was one of the hardest songs to finish.

[Somebodyangry]

46 minutes ago, Cesar656 said:

rumours say he is trying to use GD ambassadors to promote his music🤮🤑

😂😂😂😂😂

[LPLStaff]

5 hours ago, xeroboi said:

When will we start getting linkin park news?

 

Whenever they announce that Hybrid Theory stuff Mike talked about. No idea when that is.

 

Yes, Breaking the Habit took a very long time to write.

[ThePretender]

On 7/1/2020 at 9:59 AM, RYG4R said:

And now, I'm curious to hear CASTLE OF GLASS original demo.

I'm not surprised at all that Castle of Glass originated from the A Thousand Suns sessions. It has a lot more depth in layering than the rest of the songs on Living Things. Just like Tinfoil/Powerless.

 

That said, I didn't think the same about I'll Be Gone..

 

But is this new info or am I just out of the loop? You now have four out of the thirteen songs on Living Things who started out during the recording of A Thousand Suns.

[Somebodyangry]

20 minutes ago, ThePretender said:

I'm not surprised at all that Castle of Glass originated from the A Thousand Suns sessions. It has a lot more depth in layering than the rest of the songs on Living Things. Just like Tinfoil/Powerless.

 

That said, I didn't think the same about I'll Be Gone..

 

But is this new info or am I just out of the loop? You now have four out of the thirteen songs on Living Things who started out during the recording of A Thousand Suns.

Yeah I totally feel COG being a ATS demo. Cool info 😂

[LPLStaff]

52 minutes ago, ThePretender said:

I'm not surprised at all that Castle of Glass originated from the A Thousand Suns sessions. It has a lot more depth in layering than the rest of the songs on Living Things. Just like Tinfoil/Powerless.

 

That said, I didn't think the same about I'll Be Gone..

 

But is this new info or am I just out of the loop? You now have four out of the thirteen songs on Living Things who started out during the recording of A Thousand Suns.

 

Mike said that about Castle a few months ago in a stream, so no you aren't out of the loop, that was pretty recent/new info.

 

Yes, good point about Living Things. So Mike talks about LT in an interview (or stream?) and said that the band was facing the deadline for ATS and had to stop making the album, they had to wrap it up. WBR had a brand new President at the time and they had to turn the album in by the deadline, which is the chaos you see on the Making of ATS DVD. Now, LP sets their own time limits and has no real deadline - well they didn't have one for One More Light. Probably have had enough #1 albums in their history to have full negotiating power / decision making power on when an album is made or turned in, at this point. But not in the ATS era.

 

Rick Rubin told Mike and Brad to stop working on newer songs, just wrap up what you have now for ATS, and when the touring cycle is done, we'll revisit this batch of leftover songs from ATS to make Living Things. So it's probably more than just four of the LT songs, it's likely a significant amount. Sure, there might be a new song idea or two in there that made it into a new song but it seems like most of LT originated from the ATS sessions.

 

That's also when they weren't afraid to stop experimenting and were now comfortable to use their old "style" of song (see: Lost in the Echo) again.

[ThePretender]

I forgot about Holding Company. Was that also from ATS?

 

Nice to hear the info about the nearing dealdine because I didn't knew much of the details you mention.

 

Do we have a list of the post ATS songs which were released on later albums?

 

And I want those demos!

[RYG4R]

I hope for once, they just have had stick to the folky sound for LT with minimal electronic elements. I think COG started as a folky acoustic demo same as Primo as well. 

[JZLP-NaughtyNottingham]

26 minutes ago, RYG4R said:

I hope for once, they just have had stick to the folky sound for LT with minimal electronic elements. I think COG started as a folky acoustic demo same as Primo as well. 

 

They need to make music with the sound of Papercut, Mike needs to rock not to put people to sleep. 

[RentEznor]

36 minutes ago, RYG4R said:

I hope for once, they just have had stick to the folky sound for LT with minimal electronic elements. I think COG started as a folky acoustic demo same as Primo as well. 

 

Not a fan of that specific sound but it complimented the rest of the record well.

[RYG4R]

28 minutes ago, JZLP-AmendsUltimateFan said:

 

They need to make music with the sound of Papercut, Mike needs to rock not to put people to sleep. 

 

They need to progress, not to regress.

[GlassCastles]

56 minutes ago, JZLP-AmendsUltimateFan said:

 

They need to make music with the sound of Papercut, Mike needs to rock not to put people to sleep. 

They need to make music with the sound of whatever they want. 

[JZLP-NaughtyNottingham]

3 hours ago, RYG4R said:

 

They need to progress, not to regress.

 

Im not saying that they have to make copies of Papercut, songs with the spirit of Papercut would be great to let fans know that they can still rock in their new era.