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A new interview with Mike, done from his home studio via video call, has been posted by Rock Sound. Mike described how "Dropped Frames" came about, "Open Door", and more. - "Open Door": "After I had shut that down for the day, I realized that I really want some vocals on that song. And I thought "I just spent the last little while l with the fans, why don't I just see if there is a fan who could sing the song?" So I did a little contest for the song "Open Door", had all the lyrics and everything done so all they had to do was sing it. So I posted it, I literally texted it to fans. I texted the high res file to like 10,000 people... so somebody's got it, just track down somebody who's got the song, and you can sing over it. Put it online, use the hashtag, and I'll find it." The failed P!ATD jam: "I remember they wanted me to do a song in the style of Panic! At The Disco. And I just couldn't do it. I tried, and it just didn't sound good. So I just gave up and we did something silly. So I was going for modern and I told them before I even started, "Their music right now is all Brendon Urie's voice. So the second you don't have his voice, like what genre are you really even in? I don't even know what to call it. The new record is kind of like, pop/rock music." This was the day that "Booty Down" was created at the end of the stream. Picking "Open Door" vocalists: "There were hundreds of submissions. I feel like I could tell very quickly who was a professional vocalist and who wasn't. The hobbyists... there were a lot of people who can sing, and they sing well, and then there were people who were like, they do it for a living. So it was very quickly I could tell from the quality of the singing who I would consider putting on the song. And it was a short list. Originally I was thinking I'd pick just one person, but I liked so many of them that I ended up putting seven of these people on the song because they were all so different. There's a couple of girls from Russia, one of which is a little more R&B, one is a little more rock. One is a guy who goes by Phantom who has like face tattoos and his music is very modern but trap and rock and electronic and whatever. There's a guy Pershard, in the video his hair is all crazy, he's the only one who submitted anything that sounded like that. And he's great, he's so so talented, so good. There were seven different people, all different styles and different ways of approaching the track. Like they sent in lead vocals, they sent in harmonies, I probably did have somewhere between fifty and seventy five vocal tracks to sort through in order to really listen to and find what I wanted to put on the song. Mixing it was a bitch but it ended up being cool." - "Open Door" being on "Dropped Frames, Vol. 1": "I decided to put that on the front end of all of it because it kind of happened in the same moment. But the rest of the stuff I'm releasing for right now is going to be instrumental." - Releasing an instrumental album: "I've never released an instrumental album. There's a poetry to instrumental music that I've always enjoyed listening to. I grew up drawing and painting and a lot of times I'd paint and draw to instrumental music. It lets your mind kind of wander and go wherever it takes you. A song like that could mean one thing to one person and another thing to another. It leaves it open for like, thought and creativity. It's perfect music for studying and drawing and waking up/laying down, putting on in the background, etc... it's almost useful music in a sense. Like use it for whatever your thing is. In the beginning, fans asked a bunch of times, "Are you going to put vocals on it? Let's put vocals on it." And the truth is, number one, vocals are... it's a tedious process especially for me. I don't do vocals quickly and I wouldn't watch anybody to watch me sitting on a stream with a beat looping for six hours while I type on a computer, delete, type, delete, and then mumble to myself and leave the room. That's not fun for anybody. The other thing is, I feel as an artist, there's something in the stress of the world... with the news, and the pandemic, all of the things that are going on, so stressful, I feel like there's a poetry to the instrumental track that is appropriate for this moment in time. We are being talked at so much, like our whole experience on our phones is just people shouting. And you turn on the news and people are shouting. Everywhere I go, people are shouting. So I feel like this is a way to take a break, in a sense." - "Open Door" lyrics applying to current times even though it was written before the pandemic: "That was a surprising thing for me as well. At first I was like, "I don't know if I should attach Open Door to these other songs because they're not the same thing." But the reason I think we decided to do it is because it's a good launching point in terms of the context of everything and the fact that yeah, it was written originally about looking for opportunity, looking for something good in the midst of whatever else, all the noise that's going on. And it's also like, there are moments where I'm talking to myself but moments where I'm not... I'm like, thematically I'm going back and forth with like a pep talk for myself and encouraging, almost like challenge, to somebody who might be listening." - "Hybrid Theory" anniversary, why "In the End" is still so popular: "I think that when we wrote it, I remember being in... we were rehearsing in this little room in Hollywood. And when I say Hollywood, it was the grossest part of Hollywood. At the time, Hollywood & Vine had like prostitutes and drug dealers. There was a taco shop on the corner, an all black hair salon next door, like a grocery story with a Korean couple who ran that on the corner, and a bunch of like Scientologists. There was a place that was a reading center that was teaching you how to read but all of the books were Scientology books which is really kind of dark. And that was the place where we found a rehearsal room that we could afford. And we were working on our show and our songs there. And I decided to stay overnight in that building and I wrote "In the End." And I think Rob Bourdon was the first one to show up the next day for rehearsal and I played it for him and he was freaking out. There was something about that, there's a weird battle with hopelessness that, in our nature and our times, that the song is really about. What's odd about the song is it's almost talking about these things and saying like, "I don't have any answers." Because usually a song isn't about having no answers, right? It just kind of runs itself around in a circle lyrically. Especially as a young person, that's how I felt, that's how we all felt. I didn't know what to make of things and I think in a sense, that's still what goes on today. Time is a very universal thing. The fact is, yeah, it's been one of our biggest songs, it's been our biggest song for a long time." - "Hybrid Theory" at Download Festival 2014: "We played it in order. In the early days, we played every song off the album, but we just didn't play it in order. Download would have been the only one where we played it in order. I felt like it was a matter of time before we did that, before we played that album front-to-back just because people were starting to do it. People were starting to play their biggest albums front-to-back and we were slowly pulling some of those songs out of the set, so they were more in demand. Not that we were doing it so there WOULD be demand, it was because we were trying to make room for our other songs and then obviously it's like, "Aw! They actually didn't play Crawling tonight!" We always played In the End, sometimes we wouldn't play other songs off of that record. So it was like, "Oh ok, there's already this feeling of fans who want to come see that at that show.""

7/17 and 8/21, two parts coming.

As we close out the first Friday in July, Mike had a Q&A on his stream so here are the highlights. - Mike says it is too difficult logistically to do bigger sizes in his merch store as he'd have to get another retailer to supply bigger sizes. - "Hey Mike, I was wondering if you guys ever talked about the possibility of continuing LP, could this be with a female vocalist?" -> "In terms of Linkin Park and singers, that is a deep a question as you can have or get and I do not think that today is the day to discuss it. But I appreciate the obvious interest in the subject." - "Do you remember anything from the Linkin Park concert at Milton Keynes in 2008? I had to convince my boyfriend to go to the concert instead of a football match." -> "Hey I know how it is with you guys and your football. And the footie.. it's hard to get anybody that's a football to get something other than football when their team is on. So, it's not surprising. Milton Keynes is... what a venue. That's obviously, like legendary. For those who don't know about Milton Keynes, it's like Rock In Rio but with more history, it's like Coachella but with actual culture. When did Milton Keynes start? The 70s, the 60s? Right? In the 800s? They've been doing shows at Milton Keynes since people rode there on horseback and checked their cloaks and their armor at the door. "Pardon me, sir. Can't enter with that... I'm sorry sir, breastplates are not allowed inside. Is there some place where I could check my falcon?"" Ha! - "I've been wondering what happened to the song Looking For An Answer that you played at the tribute concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Have you developed it and will you release it?" -> "I tried to develop it a little bit and I never felt like it did the song justice. The best version to me, even though my voice was too shaky and the performance was.... what it was... the Hollywood Bowl performance to me was more special than any other version so we didn't release it. Plus I played the version for the guys and the guys were like, so uncomfortable. It was not a good vibe. So, yeah, it was just a... it gives us bad vibes." - "You once said you weren't going to show the One Step Closer music video to your kids. If they've seen it by now what was their opinion on it and the red hair?" -> "They have not, I don't think they've seen it. I know what their reaction would be. They would laugh hysterically and make fun of me and that would be that. They'd also follow that up with a week long pressure campaign to let them dye their hair bright red, which we're not into because, like, I guess it's bad for their scalp. I didn't know this until I had kids, apparently if you started bleaching your hair too young you can change the actual consistency of your hair. For example you can make straight hair a little curly or vice versa, you can change your color of your actual hair. Or it can fall out. So nobody wants to mess with that. It's just bad, the chemicals and stuff are bad for kids. Most people who do hair will say, "Yeah yeah, don't mess with kids hair. Until they're done developing. Pre-puberty especially, that's bad."" - "My daughters love the song Ghosts and Boris of course. Why did you name him Boris? It's a very common name in Russia." -> "Boris just seemed like his name, I don't know. It just like seemed like the name. It was one of those intuitive things and you kind of just go with it. He popped out of the universe and he said, "My name is Boris." Boris - and that was that.... I had no choice." - "Which LP or Fort Minor song do you wish was more popular?" -> "Wow, that's a good question, I don't know. More popular? Which LP or Fort Minor song do YOU GUYS wish was more popular? In Stereo, that's a good vote. Cigarettes. Kenji, yeah. Hands Held High. High Road. Red to Black. Cool, those are all good. I think I'd agree with a lot of those. Did somebody say this? Empty Spaces. The answer is Empty Spaces. I wish Empty Spaces was a lot more popular. No, probably.. Kenji is an important song to the record. I feel like Kenji is appropriately semi-popular. It's popular with the right people." - "I was wondering if we could get an MS skull art on canvas or any form of picture." -> "Interesting. On canvas? I think it'd have to be the right reason. I think I'd actually have to have a painting that I'd want to turn into a canvas print. But, maybe! Maybe." https://www.twitch.tv/videos/668962257

Mike only answered a few questions on July 2nd, but we covered it regardless: - "Hey Mike, do you think about doing a mini concert from your home?" -> "I don't really want to do a concert from home, from the studio or whatever. I don't know, I feel like the concerts from home... I don't know, a lot of people do them. It's very easy to do." - "Are there outfits you regret wearing from back then? What's the most ridiculous piece of clothing?" -> "Clothing from back then? I mean the pants were pretty extreme. But I certainly wasn't the only one wearing them, everyone was wearing them. It is what it is. You know what I never did, really, I mean a couple of occasions. I mean it was not really my thing, was wallet chains. I stayed away from wallet chains, I wasn't a fan. They were too rock for me." https://www.twitch.tv/videos/667979874

This was around the time of the Hybrid Theory EP, which Kyle is credited for, and before Scott joined the touring lineup, so it seems likely that yes this is Kyle.

When we were listening to the lyrics to send to LPHQ to update the Open Door video on YouTube.... we noticed there are so many layers of vocals buried on the track. Check the bridge which seems like just an instrumental but there are a lot of layered vocals there. Pretty good job by Mike.

Congratulations to Linkin Park! "In the End" has passed 1 BILLION views on YouTube as of July 2nd, 2020 and joins "Numb" as the two Linkin Park videos to have over a billion views. That's a huge accomplishment for Linkin Park, especially since both music videos were not added to YouTube until WELL after they were released! "Numb" was added in 2007 and "In the End" all the way in 2009, almost a decade after it was released.

That's Scott, yes, 100%.

Don't think he has to go through Warner to do a physical release, he can do it himself but obviously pays for more of the costs himself versus with a label. The label gave him an exception from his record contract (which makes total sense) to do this as it's just an instrumental release. Mike already mixed and sent in Volume 2 of the jams, so he's probably composing the third one right now. He has at least 50+ tracks already and is still making them. This could easily turn into 6-8 releases if he keeps streaming regularly. It wouldn't make sense to do vinyl for that - agreed. We will see what happens. Maybe at the end he will do a vinyl of the "best of" the jams.

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.

Surprised that no one discovered the lyrics on the YouTube page for the song are wrong.

Mike is back at home from vacation and answering questions, so here are the highlights from July 1st. - "You've mentioned a few times Joe Hahn is actually a good singer, would you have him sing lead vocals on a song?" -> "Joe is not a good singer, he's a must have in a gang vocal. So if we are doing a shouting vocal on The Catalyst or Guilty All The Same, Joe is like... we've gotta have Joe there that day. If he's not there, I kind of won't do the gang vocal because his gang vocal is really that good. It's like a good shouty vocal, you know you want him to come to your futbol match to watch the footy. He's got a good shouting vocal, what do you want from me?" - "If you were able to pick the lineup for a festival, who would you put on it?" -> "Here's who I would want on it. I'd want Run The Jewels on it. I'd want grandson on it. I would want K.Flay on it. Let me look at my Spotify. Jack Garrett, he's a great performer. You know who'd be dope but would be a total curveball? Anderson .Paak. Denzel Curry, I want Denzel Curry on the lineup. MGK is cool live, yeah. Muse would be cool. Avenged, sure. Who else, who is on another level? I'm just thinking of really dope live groups. Babymetal, haha, Babymetal is actually dope live, they are so sick live. I haven't seen them LIVE live, I've just seen videos of them. Fall Out Boy, oh yeah, they're great live. They're a very good live band. Green Day, good live band. Twenty One Pilots, good live band. I'm into Young Blood (Yungblud...?), sure. I am into Smashing Pumpkins as long as it's with James and Jimmy Chamberlain. I don't know about Darcy, I think they can't play with Darcy but to me, Pumpkins is Billy, James, and Jimmy. If you don't have those two other guys, it sounds too different to me, it's missing something. Billy is Billy, Billy sounds like Billy, I like Billy. Oh Nine Inch Nails, yeah Nine Inch Nails would be dope." - "What does LP, the band, mean to you?" -> "The band, it's like any brotherhood. It's awesome and it's complicated and you love them and you don't agree with them over stuff and it's all good. I think the thing over time that helped us keep our heads on straight, I mentioned this before, we'd kind of counterbalance and correct each other in a sense when necessary. So like, "hey you're being weird" type of thing." - "Demos have given fans unique insights into the development of Hybrid Theory except for Pushing Me Away. What was the process of this song and how did it develop over time?" -> "Interesting question. I don't remember how that song like came together in terms of pieces. I know that we made it in the studio while we were making the album. And we wanted another song in the vibe of Crawling and I think Don was pushing that and he was looking to see if we could beat Crawling. I mean that was a high bar. At that point we didn't know Crawling would be Crawling, it was just a song by Linkin Park that we had written, so it was like, "Can we do a song better than this one? Let's try it." And I think we started with the guitars and the sample beeping sounds. And I like the track, I think the track went really well. I think the place where it didn't reach Crawling status for me was in the lyrics and melody. Not that it's bad, it's a good song, but it wasn't like... when we did Crawling, it was like we were channeling something, you know? It was like the emotion was inherent in the process and the other one, I think we were thinking too hard. It was cool, it's a good song." - "What was or is your favorite part of touring?" -> "My favorite part of touring... shows, obviously shows. Also going on like, I like playing tourist. I like walking around. Sometimes I really love seeing super touristy crap, like the most touristy. Like when I go to Paris, even though I've been to Paris a bunch of times, I still go and see the Eiffel Tower. I mean I don't go up in the Eiffel Tower because it's a pain in the butt. But yeah, Paris is cool. I was just talking to somebody about Berlin, I love Berlin, I love Tokyo. Milan is dope, I like Milan. Stockholm, I feel so lucky to have gone to all of these places you guys. And yes, one of the problems for most Americans, the reason the USA has a problem with xenophobia and race issue and loss of perspective on the world is because we're not physically connected to the rest of the world easily. You have to like get on a twelve hour flight to go to Europe and that sucks. Like I wish a lot of the folks who are kind of small minded and stuck in these certain ways would travel. They're scared to travel to Mexico and they won't travel to Canada. It's like, "Why?", which is also stupid. In my experience of talking to people about like, "Why don't you travel?" It's like their version of traveling is like, they live in Michigan and they travel to Florida for a vacation. No comment." - "Do we have a chance to see Dropped Frames as a CD?" -> "Ok that's a good question. So here's the story with Dropped Frames. So Open Door started it and when I started putting everything together and realizing, "oh I've got all of these tracks that I made on the live stream", I realized that I wanted to put these out on streaming services juts for everybody to like enjoy them whenever they want. So I hope to have a volume two of this out a month after this one. So Volume 1 comes out a week from Friday, nine days from now. If you guys want to sing and rap over them, go ahead. I was going to put Open Door on its own and then I decided it should be part of the album and then I was worried since it's all instrumental, to put on a vocal song on it, I was back and forth and back and forth. But we decided at the end of the day with management and everybody to put it all together. And then probably the next release will be just instrumental. Super weird. I went to Warner basically, I looked at the metrics of how... this isn't going to be a number one album. This is a passion project, a fan project, something interesting to do. I don't know how many people are going to stream it. But what I do know is it's not going to be like a Linkin Park thing, even a Fort Minor or my thing, probably it's just a fraction as big as that. I don't know. But with that said, I went to Warner Records, actually my manager did to be totally honest, and asked, "Mike wants to just release this independently, can we just get an exemption and do that?" And when you sign a record deal, you have a commitment to a certain amount of releases. I'm not a free agent. And they said, "yeah, go ahead, this is just an instrumental release, it's fine." So I went and basically did a thing to just do streaming. I did a deal just to streaming. Let me put it this way, if I have some kind of sign from you guys, if Dropped Frames comes out next Friday and it does good enough then I'll think about doing physical CDs, vinyl, stuff like that. I've already done some merch, I love the merch, if you haven't seen that, head over to mikeshinoda.com to check out the new merch. I've got some tie-die shirts and hoodies with the dragon on it, with the mariachi on it. Dude you've gotta go check out the merch. Thank you for buying the merch, you guys are so great. But it came out great, that's one thing that's so cool about our art day but the stuff lends itself to a fun tshirt. It just looks good on a tshirt, that's cool. It's all about support, the more you guys support, the more you guys spread the word, get other people interested... treat me this is my first project, treat it like I've never put out an album before. I've never done an instrumental record, I've never done an independent record, so for all intents and purposes, this is a very different release." - A fan Dangerous Ant sent Mike a remix mashup of Mozart vs Stranger Things inspired by Mike's recent streams and Mike posted the link in the chat for everyone to check it out. It's actually really good, so here you go: - Mike: "Phobias? I don't like snakes, so the Iridescent video was difficult." https://www.twitch.tv/videos/667139762

Will work on cleaning this up. Already told people to stay on topic in the thread.

Yeah, great idea. Already starting to do this for the ones we know. A few aren't identified yet but we can find out when the album is released. http://linkinpedia.com/index.php?title=Doodle_Buzz

Keep the GD stuff in the GD thread, no sense in arguing about GD and OML in the Dropped Frames thread. Starting to add the new stuff to the wiki. http://linkinpedia.com/index.php?title=Dropped_Frames,_Vol._1

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.

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

Mike is on vacation, and he answered a few questions on his short stream today. - "Will you ever release your drum kits?" -> "I don't know, we talked about that. Somebody suggested making sounds available for subscribers when I get partnered. I keep talking about getting Twitch partnered. I feel like it's a sad tragedy, like it's some tragic film. Release some kits? Yeah, that'd be a thing... I'd have to figure out how to do it. I feel like I'll either put it up and do it for subs here or do it on sounds.com or do it on Splice, something like that." Mike talked about how his current software allows him to write remotely, then pull it up on his studio computer, or work on a song on his computer and go to the vocal booth and be able to pull the entire session up live on his phone. - "I love your vocals on the song It Goes Through, do you have a different approach when making music for film or TV shows?" -> "We released that on the Mall soundtrack right? I think that what the thing is for, the placement of a song affects how I might approach it. So ff I'm thinking of a song in terms of it being for a score then yeah, .. I don't know why that approach is how it sounds, but it does. That's the thing, I don't know. I think that's the reason A Thousand Suns came out the way it did because we started it as a video game score, like soundtrack, and then it turned out to not be. It went from being a video game score to being a score without a video game, and then it went to being an album. It is what it is, that's just the process, you never know how little things affect the sound of a project." - "What was your first reaction of your parents when you first told them you were going to be a rock star?" -> "I didn't tell them I was going to be a rock star. They knew my band was playing on the weekends and we were doing all that. And I was still in school and getting ready to finish up art school, so it was kind of like, "hey, things are getting serious, we got an offer for a record deal", etc. And I was so close to being done with school and my parents were like, "just finish your degree, you've gotten so far and we've spent money and you're so close, it's just a matter of months to get it done. Then you'll have it, if you decide to do art, you'll have a degree." So I did that. But I think even if I had been a year away from graduating, I would have still found a way to graduate. It was really important to me. I didn't think the music thing was actually going to go anywhere necessarily."

Mike posted a new teaser on his social media accounts today, saying that he will be making an announcement related to "Open Door" on Tuesday, June 30th at 9am PST, via his Twitch account. "Head over to Twitch tomorrow at 9am PST for a special announcement /// twitch.tv/officialmikeshinoda" In the teaser, the seven winners of the "Open Door" contest (#SingOpenDoor) to sing the track with Mike are identified in a clip of a video call Mike did with them. The winners are Debbie Darroch, Pershard Owens, Sage Douglas, V. Pitak, Joar Westerlund, Ai Mori, and Jessy Boray. Fans might recognize the name Air Mori for the huge views she racked up on her "Open Door" submission, but also as the fan who leaked the release date and number of contest winners for the song last week. Stay tuned for Mike's announcement on the song's release date!

Chris Traynor - guitar on "Soul Song", "Just Like Heroin", "What's In The Eye" and "Sometimes" Chris Traynor - producer on "Sometimes", "What's In The Eye" and "Just Like Heroin"

They sure aren't doing much work on social media and interviews to deflect the Just Like Heroin screams being from someone besides Chester, wow.

Mike's final Q&A of the week, here's a recap of the highlights. This is one of the longer Q&As with quite a bit of info. - "When your CoronaJams are all released, can we do a listening party?" -> "Sure, that would be fun, let's do that. That's a great suggestion." He talks about getting into the Maschine first and Ableton later, but both were very essential to both Hybrid Theory and Meteora and both albums are close to his soul. - "Hey Mike could you talk about the street soldier art?" -> "When we were doing the art for Hybrid Theory, I remember the label put us in the room with... we told them the art was going to be important for the album, just the art for the band in general, because Joe and I both went to art school. We weren't necessarily going to do our own art, but we cared a lot about what it looked like. We realized that we were just out of art school and somebody who has been working in graphic design or illustration or photography for many years, and does that all day every day, is probably going to be a better choice to create the art. With the head of the art department, they showed us a few rough ideas of what they might do for us and we didn't love them. It was not an immediate match. We realized that this guy named Frank had done all the Deftones art and that was starting to look really cool, like from the first album to the second album, like we had seen a couple other things they had done. We were like, "Frank works for Maverick which is related to, it's in the same umbrella as Warner, can we get that guy?" and they're like, "Yeah, probably so." So we kind of poached Frank from a different part of the company. And Joe and I worked with Frank. One of the things we wanted to do was the stuff like... Shepherd Fairy and Banksy were still underground and starting to become a little more well known and we loved that stuff... what would eventually become street art and it was mostly stencil-based stuff at the time. So we were like, "we want to do stencil art for our cover." I ended up drawing the soldier and Frank ended up adding the wings. When we had that combination together, we really liked it. He sprayed it, I drew it and asked him to like stencil it to figure out how that's supposed to look best when reduced and with the texture and everything. He did it, we just loved how it had that toughness of the soldier with the other soft element of the wings." - "Was there a reason I'll Be Gone was released instead of Primo?" -> "Primo was a version. So every song, just like these, has like a working title, like a rough title, a demo title. And Primo was the working title/demo title of what became I'll Be Gone. That long version of Primo was basically, that was a long epic version of what that song could sound like. As I recall, we went down this path and then the guys kind of didn't want to do that with the song, and then we went over here. What would always happen is I would bring in a demo... generally, there are tons of exceptions to this rule, but, the general process in very loose terms would be the following, especially in later years - generally I would bring in a demo of a song and play it for the guys and a lot of times I would sing the parts that would be Chester's parts and they weren't finished or or whatever. Sometimes they'd be completely changed, other times it was like almost exactly the thing, he would just sing it. Other times I left blank spots where I would want him to write something, or I would want us to write something together. So I'd bring in the track as complete as I could at that point, and then the band would listen to my most recent demos. Sometimes, in the beginning of an album process, I'd have a lot of them. I might have 25 things and I'd be like, "Ok here's what I'm starting with. What do you like or what do you not like?" And they would give... on some albums, they would rate them from one to five or A through F or whatever, they'd give it some kind of rating. Other ones it was, "I like this" or "I don't like this - here's some loose criticisms and things I like and don't like." And then I'd go back on the ones that everyone agreed had the most promise. We'd do that on a Monday, I'd spend that day and the rest of the week improving those songs. Brad would be in there some of that time. And the other guys would show up if they felt like they had something to contribute, or they were curious about how things were going, or if I called them in, like if I said, "Rob I need you to come in and play drums on this thing" or whatever. We'd do that every week or two. So we'd vote on them again and we'd repeat that process until the record was done. So that's basically the format. It gives you a sense of how demos like Primo existed. And they changed over time, because the guys were like, "I like this" or "I don't like this."" - "What do you think about when you're on stage?" -> "The question that that made me think of that I've gotten a lot over the years is, "How do you play the same songs regularly on a tour and not get burnt out on them or tired of playing them again?" Or maybe the question is, "are you still excited playing "In the End" for the millionth time?" And usually I'm not thinking about playing it. I'm more focused on the connection to the crowd and what is going on between me and you, not like playing the song. It's like the song is like just the vessel to have the experience. So I'm not really thinking about the song, it doesn't bother me, it doesn't occur to me that I'm playing it again. It's just part of the show." - "Of the LPU demos so far, which one would you choose to rework for a new album? What's the best one?" -> "I don't know what that would be. Primo is a good one, that's actually a good one. Cumulus was an old one, it was pretty good. No Roads Left was not an LPU demo, I mean technically, not really." He commented about the press going nuts about "Friendly Fire": "You guys have to be careful with these crazy people. That was me self-editing just now, in my head. These ridiculous people will take something you say... and I'll be honest, it's so annoying. That situation of saying something and having it being taken out of context and made into clickbait is so annoying that it makes me not want to be on social media at all. There are times when it pops into my head, "I should not even be on Twitch, on Instagram, on Twitter, on anything at all, I don't want to do it, I hate it, I hate them taking my words out of context." And part of it is not because the individual article bothers me, it's the idea of a snowball that I've seen happen to other people where they did, or said something, and then it rolled out of their control. It wasn't even about the thing they said, it turned into cancel culture, just hearsay and all of that. Maybe one of the things that keeps me from just shutting this all down is the fact that you guys will go in and attack them and be like, "You are an idiot, you don't know what you're talking about." So thank you for doing that, it is helpful even if it feels super annoying. It is helpful because when somebody sees that and looks in the comments, they go, "oh this is bullshit" and second, it hopefully makes that journalist or that outlet less likely to do it the next time because they get a serious negative reaction. Hopefully. So annoying man." - "What's the song you are proudest of EXCEPT for Waiting For The End?" -> "Well done, well done. What am I proud of? Proud of is an interesting way to put it. Kenji maybe, because I knew that nobody else was going to make that song. Right? And I was like, "I'm in a position to talk about this, what people don't talk about, because it's about Japanese internment." Who else is going to make a song like that? Especially a rap song in a weird meter." - "In your 20 years in the industry while touring did you ever have to call out sketchy or creepy or predatory behavior you saw dudes do?" -> "Have I ever done it publicly? I know you're asking in general, privately or whatever. In touring, you've got a big group of people from different walks of life in your crew and around the band and around the other openers and stuff. I do know that if I ever heard something inappropriate, I did at some point get in the habit of telling somebody that that's not cool. I remember hearing jokes that were like, kind of racist, and I knew that they were just playing around with being edge or whatever. Not from bands, but crew members. And if that happens a couple of times, it occurs to you, like, "You know what? This is my production, this is our band and our reputation and no fucking way." So that was something that at a certain point it was important to, when that that happened, even if the person was screwing around, say "Dude that's not funny, don't joke like that." And if somebody really pushed back and was like, "No, no, I'm just kidding, that's not racist", we'd be like, "No, actually, it is. And actually this is our tour and you're our representative and employee. You're representing us incorrectly and inappropriately, so if it happens again... either we can talk about it or we can fire you. Like I'm not joking." So yeah, that happened off stage. My favorite story about Chester calling somebody out on stage is when girls were crowdsurfing and guys were grabbing her, groping you, and he's like, "How dare you! That's fucking this, or that's fucking that!", like that's how he always talked on stage. "How would you like it if you were crowdsurfing and I grabbed you?" and all the girls were like, "YEAH!!!" He was like "no, no, wait, I mean...." and we were all just shaking our heads like, "...that backfired." - "What inspired the Holi color scene in The Catalyst?" -> "That scene was Joe's idea. He was directing the video for The Catalyst. Joe had the idea for it, we were like, "oh that's so cool!" I don't know if I really knew what that was, if I had ever seen Holi. That was super cool, it was super fun, and also very hard to breathe." - "Thanks for being Chester's safety net for all of those years." -> "I don't know that I would consider myself a safety net for Chester or for anybody else. But we certainly all did our best to have each others' backs. One of the most underrated versions of that is, just keeping each other in check in a way. It's almost like when a kid is trying out pushing boundaries or a kid is trying out, "Hey, I'm going to be sassy to my parents, or I'm going to be rude, or I'm going to bully, just a little bit." People in friend groups play around, like, "I'm going to act this way and see what the reaction is." And we would all do that to each other. Bands in general would do that. I think at their best, healthy friend dynamics, groups of people, do this a little bit. When somebody says something out of character and kind of weird, you go, "Oh, where did that come from? Like why'd you say that?" and they're like "I don't know why I said that", and you're like, "That was so rude, so mean." That's an example of this really subtle recorrection. It's like, You're a nice person, the thing you said was not that nice, and I noticed it." And what they're saying is, "Oh yeah, I guess it wasn't, thanks for pointing that out." Right? That happened a lot in our band. I think it happens a lot in groups of friends." - "How did you come up with the puzzles for The Catalyst single and A Thousand Suns? They were a great way to promote the album and got me involved in the LP community." -> "I mean we've always been doing, around releases, puzzles and scavenger hunts and stuff like that. It's always been a thing. I don't remember a band doing it before us where we went like, "oh let's do that." And you can ask Adam Ruehmer at Warner about it, or Lorenzo, Adam was there first. And we really came up with a lot of these with Adam. If I recall, though, it was like, within the band we all had this idea... first we did these little teases and puzzles and mysterious and then we made them more and more complicated. It's like suddenly... at one point we put out a visual around that time, it might have been for The Catalyst, where we hid a message, a code inside the visual. In order to see the code, you'd have to take the visual and put it in Photoshop and tweak the colors and then you'd see the thing. We thought maybe fans would never see it, and we thought maybe it would take somebody a week to figure it out. It took them less than a day. It was like, "boom", fans saw it, and they were like, "this either means this or that, or we figured out the album title, or about this single imagery." All of these things were happening like that, and it was like our fans have always been so fast to crack or hack a contest. It's always been a signature part of the Linkin Park fan culture. And by the way, shoutout to Twenty One Pilots, and Imagine Dragons, and grandson is doing it a little bit now. Those guys have taken that and gone to a different level with it, with complexity. I haven't followed all of those things because I don't have time in my life to crack all of those puzzles. But I do know that they do them and that it's been a thing. I don't know if they know where it comes from in terms of the history of it. Certainly those guys have taken it and gone a whole other level with it." - "Have you or the band ever had to cancel shows because you or band members ever got sick besides Chester's injuries?" -> "Our joke was always that if we were going to cancel a show, it would take Chester basically breaking a major bone or like some major injury. Like some minor injury... he'd break a bone in the middle of a show and still do the show. He broke his ankle at one point and did a show. He was injury prone, partially because he was really active and also because he had a very energetic way about him. If you think about it, if you move like Rob Bourdon, if you move slowly, like in life if you move physically slowly and deliberately, then you're less likely to slip and fall on something, right? Or to tweak a muscle. And if you move like Chester in life, then you're more likely to trip and fall on something. That's just how it is. And that played out with injuries and stuff. Because the other thing, if you're going to have somebody get sick and stop a show by being sick, it's going to be the vocalist, right? And generally when I got really sick, when I've been really sick, I am almost always still able to rap. And then I could lean on Chester for the singing parts, I'd just be like, "Look, I'll do the best on these harmonies but you may notice I'll just hold back on some of the harmonies just because I can't hit the notes today." And he'd be like, "That's fine." But if it was the other way around, he could sing to a degree but if he was cracking or whatever on notes, you'd notice it. But generally he'd sing through them anyway though. He just would do it, even if the notes cracked or his voice went out, he'd just try.. he didn't want you to miss your show. He wanted you to still have the show. It's very unusual to be able to push through things like that. Certainly if like, Adele gets sick, she can't push through a show, it hurts the style of her singing to the point where it won't work. So it is what it is."

Except LP attended the Out of Ashes shows and Chester attended the Fort Minor shows - both were showing support to one another. Mike talked on social media about that.

There are quite a few vocal takes used across the album that are not on the original releases.

Sean has nothing against LP but is waging a war with fans against Warner and treating the LP fans like trash by cussing them out on social media. Not just Sam. Chester's mom is a terrible person. His sister was involved in this stuff last year but she deleted her socials or something, not sure.