Mike Q&A Summary 7/13/2020

[LPLStaff]

Mike's first Q&A summary in a while, here's the recap and highlights.

 

- "Could you active your phone number in Italy and other countries?" -> "Here's the thing. The number that I have released to you guys, I do it with a company called Community and Community is not yet available in other countries. They are getting there, they are a growing start up. What they have to do, is they do deals with the phone companies basically to acquire numbers and then they assign those numbers to the people that work with them. So they gave me a number. It's very hard for me to keep up with texting people back. But the texts do come through to my app on my phone. I don't get pinged every time somebody texts me because that would be too crazy because the followers are in the five digits so there is a lot of people. But I see more than I respond to. And it does come to me. I should do it more, I don't do it enough."

Mike talked about lemon tea and ginger tea helping him with his throat and voice.

 

- "I was wondering if you ever plan to release a live album from the Post Traumatic Tour." -> "I don't think I'll do it. I kind of don't want to do a live... I feel like those shows are very special and I don't think I'm going to release it. I think that people saw it, if you didn't, the stuff is online already. I don't think I need to have an official version."

 

There was a huge explanation on publishing and royalties, how complicated it is, how countries where songs are recorded actually have a say in the publishing, etc. Mike said he is trying to get it so the Dropped Frames music can be used in Twitch streams by other people. He said he is not the one taking down Linkin Park music online, it is extremely complicated.

 

- "Release a vinyl version of Dropped Frames." -> "I will if there's enough demand. That doesn't mean, by the way, that Dropped Frames has to sell a bajillion copies. It just means that there have to be enough people that want vinyl so that the vinyl will pay for itself. In order to make a product, you have to produce a certain quantity so I would have to have enough people who were interested in buying it for it to make sense. I don't know how to quantify that."

 

- "Can you tell us why songs like I'll Be Gone and Promises I Can't Keep were never performed live?" -> "You know, it was just that we only have so much room in the set. The guys have never wanted to play longer than 90-100 minutes or so. We sometimes stretch that a little bit. That was the limit. The more songs that we have to add, the more the band has to know all of those songs and I don't think that, I guess I just didn't have the interest or brain space to add more. We did add a lot, we did play so many. At some points we were rotating three different setlists with maybe a 1/3 of those being unique to that setlist. So it was a lot to remember. I could have probably done more, but I think that's because of what I was responsible for. I don't know how to explain that. It wasn't really me, I would have done longer sets, I would have done a little bit longer."

 

- "Do other members of the band have home studios too? Can you tell us about them?" -> "So everybody is different, everybody has got some stuff. Not as in depth as what I've got going here. Brad doesn't really have anything. Dave has some bass guitars and drums, but no mics or recording equipment really. He's got a laptop with some stuff on it just to throw a couple of things on it, but he doesn't do recording. He'll only do it if I'm asking him to or somebody's trying to send a thing. But he doesn't really mess with it. Joe has stuff, but it's usually in disarray. He gets excited about a thing, buy a piece of gear, play with it, and then move on really quickly. And there aren't that many units that he goes super deep on. He knows the sampler stuff really well and of course turntables and Serato and all of that. In terms of the individual keyboards, he usually relies on an engineer to go deep on those for him, which is normal. A lot of people are that way. A lot of people are that way if they have the means to have that gear. If you're in Joe's situation, it's not crazy. Rob probably has almost the setup I have or getting there. Some of the stuff is a little older, and he can use it. It's like, the focus is usually always on drums for his stuff. He's got some other stuff to play around with, but it's mostly all about drums. And even then, up until now, we've gotten better results at my place or in a professional studio. But I upgraded a bunch of my drum stuff in the last two years so I feel like I get awesome drum sounds now."

 

Mike isn't very interested in doing drive in concerts.

 

He isn't going to do a lyric writing session on a stream.

 

- "How was working with Darren King on Hold It Together? Darren absolutely rips?" -> "I agree. Go do yourself a favor and check out Darren's Instagram page because he puts a lot of his stuff up, his crazy, creative studio studio sessions. We didn't meet in person because he lives in not LA. He said, "Yeah I get a really good sound at my home in my home studio, so let me just send you tracks." And we did it that way and then I chopped those up and used them. I didn't just like, play the drums. I grabbed them and effected them and chose different sampled drum parts for the beat and verse and got to his part in the bridge. Darren's the reason the drum stuff on "Hold My Shit Together" off of the Post Traumatic record was so good. He's so great."

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/678532004

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Releasing the Russia live EP w piano songs of LP on a MS release was stupid as fuck

 

Not releasing a live album of your own songs for the people who couldn't attend the shows is kinda.... I don't know. 

 

YouTube quality is cool but nothing compares to a properly mixed release. 

[LPLStaff]

It was just all around a weird release. Soundcheck Session, so a significant portion of it was not in front of a crowd. The only two songs from the show were In the End and Numb, which were the two piano songs. The entire thing just didn't make any sense, and releasing it as video only with no way to stream the audio.

 

If Crossing A Line and Make It Up As I Go were on there, why couldn't there be a proper release of the PT live songs?

[GlassCastles]

I can get him not wanting to do a proper live release. He said a lot that the shows were meant to be an experience in the moment and a release could dilute that. But yeah, the Soundcheck Sessions release was weird, especially since he said a few streams ago that part of the issue with a live release was that he played LP songs in the set and the rights could get messy... but 60% of the only solo live release he's done is LP songs lol

[RogueSoul]

Something tells me that he might not have any recollection of the Soundcheck Sessions release even coming out lol

[Cesar656]

4 hours ago, RogueSoul said:

Something tells me that he might not have any recollection of the Soundcheck Sessions release even coming out lol

This