Mike Q&A Summary 7/6/2020

[LPLStaff]

Mike's Q&A highlights from Monday, June 6th!

- "Does it feel any different between playing a stadium where everybody paid to see only you versus a festival where the crowd is mixed?" -> "Size of the venue aside, let's just say those two things are the same size, who knows... bands generally look at festivals as either: festivals generally are a place where you mix between other bands in front of other fans and all that in order to spread awareness of your band. And on the other side of that, if you're on the headline side of things, then festivals pay really well. So like the reason the festivals go for the big headliners is because that's a big draw. If you don't have a big headliner for your festival then.... your festival is only going to be as big as your headliner. Having lots of little acts, it's ok, but the second you get Beyonce.... I personally enjoy the festivals because they are a mix of fans and I know that some people are new my stuff no matter what. And then a headline show is great because you're bringing your vision to the stage. When you see somebody's proper show, their headline show, they have put that together in terms of how they'd like to be presented. Any band that does the exact same thing on both of those shows, I think that's a little weird. We did that at some points, tried to bring the exact same show. But I still feel like the headline shows end up being more authentic to the brand or the band or whatever."

 

- "What are your thoughts on doing a remix contest for one of the jams?" -> "I love remixes and I love remix contests. Maybe if you stay tuned, I might have a remix contest for you to participate in. That might happen. Mike... was that foreshadowing? Were you hinting at something right there?"

- "Were your parents supported of your decision of wanting to be in the arts?" -> "My parents were supportive. I've been drawing since I was like three. My parents knew that's what I wanted to do. So it was not much of a surprise to them. The surprise was that when I got to the end of art school which was very expensive, I was like, "hey I want to go be in this band, I want to do this band thing" and they were like, "what?!" They were supportive."

 

- "What do you think of the Grey Daze album?" -> "I haven't heard the Grey Daze album and I kind of don't... I watched... his son Jaime did a video, he was on a song and did a video for them. And I gave them a shoutout on Twitter because Jaime, you know, because you know... Talinda said he wanted to do that record and she supported it so I was like, "well ok if they're supporting it and he really wanted to do it, fine." And then Jaime did a video, and so I tried to watch that video and listen to that song but I didn't really make it through it. It was weird to hear him that way and I guess they were just using vocals that, he had, I don't know, he had went in and cut some vocals and they were just working with those. And I just, I don't know, simultaneously I didn't connect with it and then it made me sad so it was just, "I can't listen to this." So, it is what it is, but good luck to those guys. But by the way, Jaime is a talented guy, he writes and he does film scoring and he's getting more into directing and stuff like that. I hope he gets more film and video jobs. He's really passionate about it."

 

- "What synthesizers did you use on Post Traumatic?" -> "The synthesizers I use. So the VSTs, most of the stuff I show you here, I mean this is the stuff, you know? So if you watch this channel. Massive, the Prophet, Moog, Roland SH-01, Virus, Cwejman, Juno, OP-1, Serum. I use a lot of different stuff, the Nord is one of my go tos and I basically use that mostly as a sampler keyboard. I put my own sounds in it and then I mix and match those with some of the ones that are in there already. But I use lots of keyboards because that's my primary instrument, so I just mess around with whatever sounds good."

 

- "Could you do a more complete tour of the track, show us how you mixed it, how you layered the vocals, the voices, especially with the vocals that were just from the phone?" -> "Oh you mean Open Door! Oh! Ok so I didn't use any vocals that were from the phone. I selected vocalists... from the ones who sang on their phone and stuff, I sent them a DM and I said, "Can you send me a high quality vocal of that, of your performance? And send me what you sang." And most of them, they were singing into a microphone and it was a phone recording or whatever, so I knew they either had a recording of it or had a capability to do a recording of it. I didn't use any phone vocals. And most people when they sent that, most people sent lead vocals and some background vocals, some harmonies and all this shit man. It was so many vocals. I could show you that a different day. Do you want to do that tomorrow? I could do that tomorrow. It was so many vocals you guys, holy crap, oh my god, it was so many. Alright, tomorrow we'll do it, we'll look at the Open Door vocals."

 

- "How many drawings did you get while on tour?" -> "I don't know. And obviously I can't even keep them all, because we get drawings every day. But all of the stuff... if you handed it to us, we saw it. Even if you handed it to the crew, even most of that stuff came to us. I mean generally Jim Digby knew, he would tell people, "yeah the band wants to see this stuff." Unless we can't, unless we don't have time while we are there or whatever."

 

- "You must have a ton of musical ideas on your hard drive. How do you manage the files, ideas and samples to find them later on?" -> "My samples are on my hard drive, my projects are on an external drive, my samples I organize by... I have a specific folder for stuff that I've collected and made. Like I just try and keep it organized as I go. The same with the sessions. You've just gotta try, you know, you do your best. Don't just save files wherever."

 

- "Did you ever think of releasing vocals and acapellas for demos like "I Have Not Begun"? -> "Acapellas or whatever, I feel like... instrumentals are one thing, acapellas are like, I think that's good if that's like a single. For like random b-sides and stuff like that, I don't feel like the demand is that high."

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/671736552

[eyesburning]

Mhm Mike doesn't seem to be excited about the GD album...but he kept his comment vague. Cool that he supports Jaime though.