LPLStaff

48 minutes ago, PizzaPino said:

Ugh I’m glad I’m barely following anything on lplive since the community is so toxic. 

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

1 hour ago, Stranger said:

 

i saw a tweet on twitter suggesting that which song is taken from which stream (date, title). that will be great. 

 

Example: "Osiris" (created on Bollywood theme session)

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

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.

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!

3 minutes ago, Razorkvn said:

Hey @Zoom  what about Chris Traynor of Bush?

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."

20 hours ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

Yeah exactly, Mike or the other band members never expressed specific opinions about High Rise or OOA (except for Mike saying the album was more “rock” oriented than LP). 

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.

41 minutes ago, PurpleFlinstoneVitamins92 said:

Sean said he has nothing against LP, they are not buddies but nothing against them. 
About Mike not answering about GD, it’s two different worlds and yeah he might not care about the project because of Samantha’s involvement but who cares TBH. Mike is Mike and GD is GD. 

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.

4 minutes ago, cristiann88 said:

does nobody EVER asks about what he thinks of grey daze, or amends?

He is asked all the time, and won't answer it. Why would Mike answer a question about them when their promo videos are full of people DESTROYING him for years now? That's gotta be incredibly disappointing for Mike to see that. The same people who said he is disrespecting Chester by playing In the End live, etc.

His silence says all that needs to be said.

Here's Mike's Q&A summary with highlights from Thursday, June 25th. Not a whole lot but he mentioned A Thousand Suns. Some of the questions deal with specifics about creating music, so check the stream out if that's up your alley.

- "Are there plans for the 10th anniversary of A Thousand Suns?" -> "Not at this moment. Maybe we should plan something, that'd be a good thing to do."

- "How do you feel about your music reaching newer generations even after so long?" -> "That's very exciting to me. Kind of like what I was talking about with renforshort.... in one sense, it's good to have fans, it's good to have young fans.. blah blah blah. But the idea of me being a 20 year old and making something and when I'm 43 and a 20 year old will listen to it or they're still going back to it, or I have something I can share or teach somebody... that's a whole other level of gratitude. So yeah, thanks for being here."

Haven't seen any evidence of them being rude to the press. Check out interviews from 2000-2004, they were always cool with the press.

Agreed about Pods, the 1998 date seems legit.

The other demos are labeled as 1998 because Mark likely recorded vocals on some of those, but Mike also thinks Chester joined in 1998 when he joined in 1999 lol

Still no news from Mike on the "Open Door" or CoronaJams release, but here's his Q&A summary from today.

- Someone sent Mike a clip of him on Frat Party in 2001 and he said they were having fun, but were also losing their minds on tour. "The travel was so aggressive. You know what our manager used to do back then that we caught on to very quickly? Well, not quickly enough. They did this thing they'd send you out to a country, and say, "oh we'll route them this way because while you're in the area, you should go to this country or you should go do this TV show." "While you're in the area" happened when we were in Australia and they sent us to southeast Asia to play a show, while we were "in the area." We didn't know the distance between New Zealand and Malaysia because we hadn't been to either place before, so we were like, exhausted. We were like, "oh we need to go promote the album, we haven't been there, we'd love to go." And it's like a six hour flight or eight hour flight or whatever... it's not "while you're in the area."

- "On the Hybrid Theory cover, there are four symbols. I wonder who designed it." -> "That was Frank Maddocks who designed those. I don't think Joe and I did anything with them or gave any input, I don't think we did. Iconic symbol combination."

- "Hi Mike you recently talked about Friendly Fire. What about other unreleased songs from One More Light?" -> "Every album we've got so many songs that we make and you know, they're not... some of them are just in really like, half cooked, half baked conditions. So I mean, I think fans tend to be very overly optimistic about those types of things. In their imagination, there's some gem that's the best Linkin Park song that's sitting on a hard drive somewhere. I promise you that's not the case. The best stuff is always the stuff we put on the record. There are some songs where we were like, "oh this is really good", but it's not better than the record. Some of it is like, a verse and chorus copied twice and that's the second verse as well... it's like half done, it's not done."

- "Have you ever considered doing orchestral versions of the songs?" -> "No, not really. I think other people and other musicians have done stuff like that and it's all good."

- "LP's past with the record label wasn't always roses. What are some things you would change about the way labels treat artists and/or the music industry in general?" -> "You know, we had a fight with the label a long time ago because it was like, they wanted to go public and make all this money and they weren't going to cut the artists in on it. And at the same time, they were spending all of their time and energy doing that and we weren't convinced they were adapting to the changing musical landscape very well. We were already concerned that they weren't prepared to like, keep up with what was going on in technology, like music technology. And then they were doing this IPO. And you notice, we're not complaining about Warner Bros IPO now, because it's an entirely different time and it's an entirely different cast of characters. I'm not super deep in it, I feel like the labels do what they need to do to be good partners and to make money. Some artists do really well in that equation and other artists don't get attention in that equation. It's always the artists who don't do well that complain. That's just life."

- "What inspired the lyrics of "Open Door", especially the first verse?" -> "Open Door was really like, I was already writing it before quarantine and all of that. It was like looking for opportunity, and for me, looking for things that really grab my interest and keep me excited and feel like the place to spend energy. It could be a lot of things to different people. I was writing from the perspective of wanting something that was worth investing myself in, in terms of energy and time and passion and all of that. But still with some attitude in the verse, but with an encouraging kind of verse. "

- "Are the lyrics of "Prove You Wrong" about a specific person or group of people? The lyrics in the second verse seem so specific." -> "I feel like this song was really a lot about feeling like somebody didn't have your back, somebody didn't have my back, or betrayed trust, you know. So, it's really about wanting somebody to support you. I feel like sometimes what's worse than somebody not supporting you is somebody lying about it. Or that you expect them to and then they don't. I think this song wasn't my parents or anything, but I feel like that's one thing that's so tough a lot of people when they talk about their deep issues, their real stuff that they deal with. It's like your parents or certain people in your life you expect more of them, or you expect them to have your back on certain things. And when it's somebody of importance, it's more hurtful or shocking when they don't. So parents are like that, that just sucks."

- "What was your first impression of Brad?" -> "Brad lived next door to my friend Mark. And their bedroom windows were directly across from each other. And it was almost like a TV sitcom. He'd like play guitar in his room and you'd hear him shredding like Metallica. But it was always that really funny thing, you could out Mark's window and you could talk to Brad. I didn't know Brad at that point, he'd just like yell out the window and talk to Brad. Mark would. He seemed like a cool dude, though."

- "How was your experience making the sounds and score for The Raid film?" -> "That was cool. Basically The Raid was a movie that was already almost basically done. They had put it out, it was a lower budget, Indonesian, action, martial arts film. They reached out because they were going to release it in the U.S. and they wanted something to kind of spice it up and the director and Sony who had put it out had thought of me. And I had fun. Basically I got to score a film, like learn on the job of scoring a film. The director was very open to my ideas and he didn't manhandle the score very much which from my understanding, sometimes that happens where people on either the production company or director, they will get really picky about the score and it can be contentious. So this was not contentious, it was very easy and a lot of fun. And I learned a lot on the job. I met Joe Trapanese and became friends with Joe. I love that guy, he's crazy talented. Super nice guy as well. So overall it was an awesome experience."

Long time popular Linkin Park remixer zwieR.Z. has released a brand new remix of "Sorry For Now" from One More Light in a rock version.

The release comes with a full music video as well, which is sure to rack up a lot of views on YouTube. His Avengers Infinity War remix of "Lying From You" has over 13 million views while his "One More Light" remix has over 6 million views.

As Mike Shinoda said back in the Living Things era, "And yes, of course I know @zwierz is a fan favorite for @linkinpark remixes."

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Mark Morton recently spoke to Midwest Breakdown about the reception from Linkin Park fans to "Cross Off" with Chester:

"I was really apprehensive and anxious about — not the creative side, because I really believed in the music that we had put together, but just how it would be perceived and how people would be willing to accept a release from me under my name," Mark admitted. "So we put out [the first single] 'The Truth Is Dead', and it really got received very well, and then knowing that we had this monster song with Chester that we were waiting to reveal. When 'Cross Off' came out, the response was absolutely mind-blowing, man. I mean, I knew it was a special song in and of itself, compounded with the fact, too, that Chester was no longer with us, and it had been a while since people had heard his voice that way. And the impact it had in that moment, it was so heavy to hear from all the LINKIN PARK world… I got so many messages and so much feedback from LINKIN PARK fans, thanking me for doing the song and telling me how much it meant to them and what a gift it was to hear his voice again."
 

He continued: "[Chester had] such an iconic voice — really, a voice of a generation in a lot of ways, 'cause he was so unique and so prolific and just such an amazing talent. I could go on and on. Chester was just a really genuine, loving, compassionate, creative, brilliant dude, and I'm just really fortunate to have had the opportunity to write and record a song with him. So when it came out, it was just mind-blowing, man. It was a hit at radio stations, and more important than that, it impacted a lot of people and they let me know it. So I was super proud of it and super grateful to have had that chance."

Listen to the interview here.

Mike's first Q&A of the week. Not much, but here's the highlights.

He's going to make a low budget jam with only Garage Band and free sounds.

"Is there a chance you can play Believe Me at future shows?" -> "I could, yeah. The thing I felt about that one, was the verses on Believe Me were all tied together conceptually. I want to do solo-solo shows, not all alone, but I want to do them like... it's my vision and my show. I didn't want to bring out Styles of Beyond or anybody else. I didn't want anybody else doing their vocals if I didn't have to. It's mostly about that. I can't just do my verses and then do the choruses, that's weird. I didn't know how to do that very well and have it presentable. I could rap their parts, but I thought that was... I don't know."

- "Is it true when Chester was auditioning for the band, there was a guy who heard him and said, "If you guys don't pick him, they're idiots" and left? -> "Kind of that. That's kind of how it happened. I think Chester finished and he walked out and there was another guy who was leaving, who decided to just leave. And I think he talked to the guy. And the guy was like "Ah no, I'm not trying out for this, that's just stupid. If they don't pick you, they're idiots." I think that would be anybody's reaction. That's how I think that happened because obviously he didn't come in the room and say it to me."

Still checking about what they aired Sunday.

Here's the interview they aired Saturday.

Moving right along to June 19th with Mike, here are the highlights!

Mike said check out the Kerrang piece he did talking about White Pony by the Deftones.

- "We both are celebrating 20 year anniversaries you guys. White Pony 20, Hybrid Theory 20, so cool. It's a monumental occasion, my boy Mark manages the band, which is awesome. Mark and I have known each other since we were 13 I think. Deftones was one of his favorite bands when we were in high school. Mark and I started my band, our band together. Eventually, like, he wasn't a singer, he would get like crazy ulcers and stuff from the stress of doing band stuff. Having to get on stage made him physically nauseous. Then he went into management, he's really good at a lot of stuff that has to do with music, and so he ends up managing, like basically number 2 at the management company at the company Velvet Hammer who manages System of a Down, who he loves, Alice in Chains, who he has always loved, Deftones, like talk about a dream job. Just working with bands that you love. It's stressful, managing bands is not for the faint of heart because bands will call up at three in the morning from another country and yell at you. Like, "This is falling apart, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm a sensitive artist! I'm masking it in anger and resentment" and the manager is supposed to be like, "ok I understand, it's going to be fine.""

- "You've been performing live over 20 years, do you still get nervous?" -> "I've said this before, if I do get nervous, it'll be for a TV thing or something that's live on broadcast, just because the stakes are high. Like screwing up on Saturday Night Live would suck, so that's a place where I do get a little nervous, or like on a live broadcast awards show or something like that."

- "Do you have anything to say about the live version of the song Cigarettes? Would you ever consider releasing this version? With it's outro, this song is so dope and I am sad it is rarely performed at the shows." -> "Thanks. I try to make it something special. I just feel like some things are special for those occasions, I feel like it's nice to keep some things... *interrupted by Booty Down* 

- "As I get ready to release this stuff, as I get ready to put stuff out, if you or anybody that you're friends with or whatever are dancers, even like, I have always for a few years now I have been wanting people to dance like legit dance to my shit. Because I don't dance, I can't dance. There were a couple of points where I was trying to make a video or two with hiring a dancer who is legit, like interpret the thing and dance. If you're good enough to do a short choreographed TikTok dance to any of this, that's a gold mine for my brain. Something like that that I can't do that you can do, I love it so much. Please, give me good dance videos. My TikTok is for you. You give me the videos, I will post them on my TikTok, my TikTok will be nothing but you dancing to this music. That's the magic. I don't care if it's ballet, in fact I want it to be like, hip hop and ballet."

- "In the song Fine the lyrics seem hopeful and positive towards change, why did you decide to make it a villain in the video?" -> "I felt that the lyrics in the song Fine were not intended to be literal, they were intended to be either open to interpretation or ominous. So, if you just take them literally, you think, yeah, this song is about reassurance. But if you listen to it and think, "this is being sung by a bad person", then you get a different experience. Go back and listen to Fine."

- "Hey Mike since you are a theater guy, would you ever consider making ATS: The Musical? I think ATS would be perfect." -> "I don't know. Yes.... I don't know if I would be like a good partner on something like that because I'd be so picky. That's a very precious piece of work and I feel like the guys and I would have to feel like the story or whatnot was really exceptional. Yeah, if it was a story that was exceptional. But of course somebody who is funding something like that, "well, why are you picking that record? You've got to do Hybrid Theory, the musical" and I'm like, "that would make a very weird musical." I don't know."

And he leaves us with - "we've got some fun stuff coming up in the next week or two!"

Getting caught back up with Q&A recaps, here's Mike from June 18th!

BIG answers to a few of these! And don't miss his piano tutorial for The Catalyst, Burn It Down, and What I've Done near the end.

- "Did anything ever happen with the track "Fuse" after the Xero days?" -> "Yes, I'll tell you what happened to it... it stayed in a hard drive. It leaked, I think it leaked, Fuse leaked right? You guys found Fuse, right? It was on like old demos and stuff. No, it didn't? Yes, it did? Ok it's a very unknown and unusual track. But yeah it was one of my favorites back in the day, a little rappy-style thing."

- "Hey Mike, you guys acted like little jerks in the 2000s, like throwing chicken at skylights, wet tissue at pedestrians, hiding broken glass tables. Do you guys regret recording these moments?" -> "Let me tell you something, it could have been a lot fucking worse. We could have been taking advantage of little girls - and we weren't. We could have been breaking all of our instruments - and we didn't. We could have been, I don't know, horrible racists - but we weren't. I don't know, pick your thing. Here's the thing, we were kids having insane experiences. Here's an idea of the sense of the transition of like coming from where we were to where we ended up being on Hybrid Theory. Before Hybrid Theory, when we even had the record deal and we were recording Hybrid Theory, I was living in apartment in Glendale. My rent was roughly $850 a month shared with two other people. That's what I could afford. If you know Glendale, CA in LA, my car that was I driving cost me $7,000ish, let's say between $7,000 and $10,000. Any of my extra money I would either spend on extra music gear or a movie. And I switched off between eating an actual meal of fish and rice, and the two meals after that would be fast food and ramen noodles. So I had a nice balanced diet of garbage and sustenance. When we mixed our album, we decided to mix it with Andy Wallace. Andy works in New York and the label flew us out to New York. I had never been to New York before. I was like, freaking out. Brad and I were freaking out - he had been to New York, but we flew to New York to go mix with Andy. When we got out off of the train and into Manhattan, he was like, "dude stop looking up at the buildings. You're obviously a tourist, you've never been here. I hear that people get mugged.. you're more likely to get mugged if you're in touristy spots and looking up at the buildings. Stop doing that, we're going to get fucking mugged." So I had never been to New York, but like all the music I liked was from New York. Well, more than half. Yeah and then all of a sudden we were getting flown around to do press and do shows. By the way, on our own budget at the end of the day. What happens is they will give you a budget to do press and whatever, and then they actually charge you back. Like, "Oh we're going to put a food budget in your studio budget", and we're like, "oh that's cool", but they take those receipts and when your album starts selling copies, they take the money from the food receipts and they take that out of the money out of your album sales. And they don't pay you until that is paid. Even if your A&R guy flies out to meet with you or you fly to do an interview because they want you to do an interview... all of that, you pay for. That is how it works. Because, by the way, if you decide to do that independently without a label, you're going to pay for it too. So either way you pay for it. It's not bullshit, it's bullshit in the sense that yeah it would be nice for them to pay for all of that, but also, I think most people don't realize when you're a musician, you're automatically a small business. Automatically that's what it is. You don't get it all for free. I'm not mad, actually, about any of that. There was a time when I thought that was very unfair, but, there are parts of it that are unfair, but we can talk about that another time."

- "Do you remember playing with Linkin Park in Portimao, south of Portugal, in August 2009? You made a lot of people happy." -> "Man, there's a reason Brazilians, a lot of people in South America have been really big fans of the band over the years and Portugal and Argentina, you guys are very... affectionate, just loud and affectionate. And I appreciate it. There's a reason why it has become a little bit of a meme in the Linkin Park community, because it's true, and you're cool, and that's good. I know Portugal is in Europe, I was grouping the Portuguese."

- "Can you show us how to play the bridge of The Catalyst, the organ during Joe's solo?" -> "Hmm, what is the best way to do this demo? How can I do this? Did you mean the "lift me up, let me go" part, is that what we are asking? Alright here's the thing, I'll do it quick here." And Mike did the demo. (2h38m in), "By the way, those shapes, those are the ones I use to write with" (he plays Burn It Down and What I've Done). This is a good insight into Mike playing piano, definitely check this moment out.

- "Mike, you said you guys did a lot of demos for Bleed It Out. Can you guess how many demos you did with all of the songs in total?" -> "Dude. I mean there are certain songs that are almost, like, notorious in our catalogue for having so many versions. Somewhere I Belong, Bleed It Out, actually Nobody Can Save Me was one. The song itself, like the words, melody, and chords came very easily. But the track, it took so much to get it right."

- "Because I have been doing the streams, I have been getting a couple of offers from some of the companies whose stuff I use to do some contests, so that's exciting... so free stuff for you guys, maybe? We'll see!"

- "Hi Mike, when LP would get a record mixed, would there be a lot of opinions in the band - any stories?" -> "I haven't really shown you guys, mixing can be a little tedious. I do it as I go, obviously. I did a demo of a song, it's right here, this is what we made. From here, I might work on it and tighten it up and fix some things in order to present it to the band. So I'd present it to the band and say, "here's the track", maybe I present it with no vocals, chances are I probably would present it with some vocals. There have been many different phases in the band for presentation of songs. Phase one was - "here's a demo with no words on it, what do you think?" Phase two was, "I'm going to put vocals on it, what do you think?" and then I realized the guys in the band, my band in particular, would get... if you put vocals on a song, those vocals were married to the song. So if I sang ANYTHING that they didn't like, they would think of the song as... if I sang "stinky teapot" in this song, in their minds, this would be the stinky teapot song forever. Forever. And even when I change those lyrics to something good, they would be like, "oh I don't like stinky teapot." So I stopped singing those things on it because psychologically they got married to the bad things and had trouble... I literally with Joe in particular, I had to remind him so many times. He's like, "oh I don't like that song, blah blah blah" and I had to keep reminding him... like I'd play it for him and he'd listen to the new version, and he'd like, "oh that's right, I forgot you rewrote the lyrics" or "you changed the thing, I do like this better" and the next time we talked, he'd be back to stinky teapot. *slams desk* So I started singing "la la la" or "da na na" with no words because people got married these old things. And then eventually I just stopped doing that altogether. This is where I'm at now, I would present either instrumental or I would present almost finished. Nothing in between because just in between, it was too problematic in our band. So mixing, it was always me and Brad with any mixer, we were always hands on, we were almost always in the room unless it was just physically impossible. And yeah, the reason we were in the room is because we had the most knowledge about it and sense about it. And that can be a subjective statement, sure, but there are some things that indicate whether that's a subjective statement. So for example, if I play a ten year old... if I take a track with three different types of EQ on it and I play it for a ten year old and say "are these different?", that child is probably going to say no. They're probably going to listen to it and say "no, what is different? they are all the same." Somebody more in tune with those things will say, "yeah I can tell they are different" and if I say "here's 1, 2, and 3, and play them" and I play them in a different order, and say "now tell me what order they are in", if you can't pick it up and tell me which, then your ear is not attuned to it yet. Make sense? So it's not totally subjective. My ear, I can probably pick out what order, like which one is which and what you've done, and you develop that over time."

Mike is working out the subscriber feature with Twitch and says that it is coming soon.

Mike would like to meet Dave Greco from Twitch in person one day but wants to do an art collaboration with him soon.

- "LPLive says, do you remember how or when your remix of Butterfly Caught by Massive Attack came about? Why did you pick that song?" -> "I don't know how that came about. I was so thrilled to do a remix for Massive Attack, I love their music. And I definitely chose that song, I may not have chosen it from the album, but they definitely gave me some options and I chose that one because I really liked it."

Wanted to add something from May 11th, the day before this:

- "What's your favorite song from The Hunting Party? What do you remember the most about that process?" -> "I was really into some specific heavier bands, hardcore bands. They weren't all part of one genre, it'd be like Helmet, Bobby Hundreds got me on to Gorilla Biscuits, Inside Out, there's a band called Gallows... the record where Andy Wallace mixed it, ah, that opening song that Riverbank song... the way they mixed it, brutal, in the best way. I was listening to Gojira a little bit. I listened to "Mark The Graves" the other day because a bunch of Peruvian Linkin Park fans did a playoff bracket of Linkin Park songs and a couple of people were like, man, "Mark The Graves" wasn't on there! "Keys To The Kingdom" was, "Guilty All The Same" was, and those are two of my favorite tracks off the record for sure. But "Mark The Graves" wasn't and I went back and listened to it, and I was like, 'Ah that was one of my favorite songs on the record. That was a really fun one, that was a cool one.' But that whole record, like "A Line In The Sand", those are some of my favorite ones I think."

"To commemorate White Pony’s 20th anniversary, SPIN reached out to several well-known Deftones devotees and friends of the band for their insight and perspective on how pivotal White Pony has been to the heavy music that would follow."

Mike Shinoda was the first feature by SPIN and had this to say:

"I heard the first album, Adrenaline, from a friend when I was in high school; he bought the CD. I liked that album, but I liked Around the Fur even more. I think everyone who was following what the band was doing was really excited to see what would come next. Deftones just has such a unique sound and aesthetic, and White Pony was the album that took such a big step up in terms of communicating who the band was.

Chino’s sense of eerie and unconventional melody, the band’s technical chops, and the engineering and production all felt really innovative and fresh when it came together. Nobody was making anything that sounded like that, and when people did, you could tell they were inspired by Deftones.

We wouldn’t have written a song like “A Place for My Head” if not for them. There was a bounce to their music that reminded me of my favorite hip-hop songs. And even though the guitars were super heavy, oftentimes they felt smooth like a keyboard, as if the distortion had flattened it so much it was just a wash of chords.

White Pony was one of the few albums I was into where I barely knew any of the words. They felt like estimations of lyrics, to me — really abstract and intuitive. I probably still think some of the lyrics say things they don’t say. But isn’t that the beauty of music? A listener’s experience with it can be such an integral part of the song, that it takes over the song’s actual intention or meaning."