LPLStaff

Mike joined Pooch and Tater on "Wrong End of the Snake" on May 26th. Jim Digby and Shelby Cude also joined in. Here's the recap!

Mike said that the band expanded their gear arsenal going into the Minutes To Midnight touring cycle, and he asked the crew how to down size some of the things he had, like the grand piano he used on the Meteora tour.

He wanted the band to pick good members for their touring crew, not just friends. But the exception to that was Mark Fiore, who took it seriously and studied hard to become their videographer. At first he was just a friend holding a camera but he wanted to become actually good.

Pooch mentioned that Mike asked him to do a "mic shootout" in rehearsals to pull together all of the professional microphones they could find. Mike listens to all of the TV broadcasts, live releases, live mixes, etc and oversees it with the mixer. He wants it all to sound good. So he wanted to make sure that the audio coming into the shows was also good quality. Mike mentioned it's not about how expensive it is, but he is talented at finding out how different gear achieves the sound he wants on stage. The plexiglass that was put up around Rob is because of the drum sound bleeding into the vocal microphones, so the band was changing microphones and trying any way they could to eliminate that bleed. Finally, the band didn't feel obliged to use a certain sponsor company's gear just because they were a sponsor, they'd branch out and use something else to get their desired result.

Jim explained that behind the scenes, the crew was testing out different PA systems for the band as well.

The band had shows with gear missing but the crew intentionally did not tell them so they didn't want the band to be nervous. The Austria show in 2007 was one of those shows. In Toronto in 2008, there were band members not showing up on time to the show due to their travel, as we know. The playback rig for the crew was also not there so they couldn't do a proper sound check of the PA, and then Dylan had to buy a new computer that day as well. Mike said that Linkin Park had five songs they could do piano style, and thankfully they only had to play two. Mike thought the set was starting to get obscure and thankfully the rest of the band was there because they didn't want the set to have so many obscure songs to start the show.

Mike is currently mixing his CoronaJams and about to put them on streaming services, relatively soon. They are all instrumental.

Mike said he really enjoys the huge crowds so he isn't very interested in playing socially distanced concerts. The band wanted the barricades as close as possible to the stage and the band, he didn't like them being so far from the stage at some shows. He said the band feeds off of the crowd being so close to the band, but also the crowd being close to each other.

About DSPs, Mike said it was so hard recording every show, mixing it, and getting it out to fans in a reasonable amount of time. Towards the end, the crew was turning them out every few days. It was crazy because the crew was kind of getting burnt out on it. At the first, they had to have a shipping container where Pooch and Dylan mixed the shows, but then they finally were able to cut it down to smaller gear after technology improved. At the start, Jim and the band had to review the edits but the band ended up trusting Pooch and Dylan with the mixing. Pooch says the fans still share and talk about the DSPs a lot to him.

Mike says the band wanted Ethan involved in the mixing at times too but he already knew that might upset Pooch in a way since Ethan mixed too. Pooch says it made him be a better mixer. Mike explained that the band brought their studio drum tech to help their live drum tech with sound too at that time. Pooch and Ethan still communicated a lot about the non-DSP live releases. Pooch could call Ethan before rehearsals to get all the plugins used in the studio because he'd give them the heads up on that sort of thing before LP would go out touring with a new album.

When building LP's live rig and when it came to maintaining it, Mike wanted someone who was smarter than him when it came to the new technological gear. Mike said he'd overload it or break it, or some idiot would knock it over and break it. So LP brought in coding geniuses and put them next to their touring crew.

Tater said that when they were promoting Post Traumatic with a TV show in New York and they were playing with The Roots. They went to play the first run through of the song... Tater wasn't allowed to touch anything because he isn't allowed to touch the console at a TV show. Tater immediately told Jim when he heard the click track that he knew things were wrong, but he couldn't touch anything.

Mike said the house band (aka The Roots) was two measures off. In Mike's click track, he only heard himself and the click. He said he wanted to just keep going, and the band ended up just playing around Mike. Mike's manager was there and Mike immediately asked him how it was... his manager wanted to do it again. Tater explained the house guy had the wrong program open in the console. Anyway, they played Crossing A Line again and then they were good to go on the second play.

Mike closed by talking about the Billboard Music Awards in 2012. An actor was supposed to introduce LP, and they went over it one hundred times, and then told LP, "the skrim in front of you will raise with smoke machines happening, etc"... very scripted. LP is backstage... came to the stage and was waiting, just hanging out. The show was live on TV and another person is talking, and the screens suddenly come up catching LP totally off guard. Brad's guitar tech has his guitar still, Mike has a mouth full of water, and they were supposed to start Burn It Down. Mike threw his water, ran to his keyboard, barely made it in time... Brad was rushing to the stage... and Mike said LP finally calmed down two minutes into the three minute performance. The band went off stage to watch the performance ASAP and saw that the smoke hid all of the chaos the band was going through.

Check the full stream out!

Of Mice and Men talked about Linkin Park in their recent Twitch stream on May 18th, where Mike had fans "raid" their channel by sending them all over to OM&M.

Due to the influx of fans, OM&M started talking about Linkin Park and their experiences with the band.

"We love Mike and we love the LP family. Linkin Park is a huge influence to all of us growing up, so..."

"I would say, straight up, Linkin Park is the reason why Of Mice & Men is still a band in 2020. The stuff that they taught us about, like, our finances, about planning, about the way we take our art seriously and not too seriously... shout-out to Linkin Park!"

"Shinoda really is like a musical father to us, for sure!"
"But he's like the cool dad, he's not like the dad who ground us. He's the dad who'd be like, 'I'm disappointed but you're not grounded!'"
"Yeah, good old Shino-dad!"

They talked about the memorable show in Zurich, Switzerland to start The Hunting Party Tour in Europe, their first arena that they ever played in Europe (with Five Finger Death Punch, but that was also the first show of the LP tour).

"We did do THP Tour with LP in Europe. It was the best tour we've ever been on, no doubt. 100%."

When asked about their fondest memories of Mike,

"One time when we were on tour, the unfortunate time when Chester broke his ankle on the basketball court. Shinoda got upset, not because Chester broke his ankle, but the fact that he got hurt again. And I guess that like was a thing that always happened. I don't know that was funny or not, but that is like one of my first memories... Shinoda being upset. Yeah, very very sad, I will never forget that time."

"I always think back to when he held open the O2 Arena in London. He kept it open so we could hang out with the band and some of their families in the room they had built for Michael Jackson. So it was like this whole disco room. Michael Jackson was going to do his 50 night residency or whatever there, so they built him a special room. So Mike held the venue open until at least 3 or 4 AM... I don't know how they had beer delivery, but we kept getting beers delivered."
 

A fan asked, "Did you guys ever consider making a song with LP at any point?"

They answered, "Mike actually helped us write an OM&M song, well a couple of them. He helped me structure the end of "Feels Like Forever", that's entirely Mike, that whole last chorus/triple repeat at the end."

"It's funny because when I invented that, and then I showed it to Mike, and then he showed it to you, it was like insane."

"Do you remember how he did it too? He was on like a plane to Japan. It was so sick. He was like "I'm going to be on a plane, so I'll listen to your jams and maybe I'll have some ideas" and then he got off the plane and he sent us the ideas. And he was like "what if you do this at the end?" and I was like "OH! DUH!" He also gave us one time an essay he that wrote for UCLA he wrote which was about how he broke down a song which was really, really insightful and cool to see his mind in his early 20s how he looked at a song. He's a legend."

"And it's awesome because he's got such a unique perspective when it comes to songwriting and storytelling, and you can see it on his streams, but he's able to explain things that make it less confusing than it needs to be."

"If we could get Mike to rap on one of our songs, it would be really, really cool. Get Mike on some heavy music again. Just have him spit... ooooo. We've definitely gotta hit him up about that."

And another funny story:
 

"When we did the tour with Linkin Park, we have a song that is called "Another You." It starts off with a really clean guitar part, and me singing a falsetto high note that directly correlates with what he's playing. We were in Germany in what I think is Munich but I looked over and Mike and Chester were both standing side stage. This is one of the first days of tour so we hadn't really gotten to hang out much. So I got really star struck and nervous that I totally fucked up that note. And just fucked up the whole song right at the very start. Aaron had to adjust his note. I just totally biffed the song because Mike and Chester were watching side stage and I got so nervous. And I remember immediately afterwards we were all in the dressing room, and before any of us say anything, Allen is like "he was right there! he was right there and I fucked up!" Not only was the 30,000 people sold out audiences crazy enough, we'd see them watching and we'd be like "OH MY GOD there's Linkin Park right there." And I just put my hand on his shoulder and I said "we fucked it up."

1 hour ago, hybrider said:

Please someone ask Mike about Thoughts That Take Away My Pride!

There's just no way he knows what that song is this far from it. Did you see him try to answer the Reading My Eyes question yesterday? lol

Here we go again! Mike answered some cool stuff on the 22nd, and here's the recap.

- "How did you start making music when you were young?" -> "I started with classical piano for about ten years. After that I went to basically sequencing and samplers. Back then, keep in mind, we didn't have the technology that we have today. So it was different. So I couldn't make stuff on a laptop, I was literally making stuff with like a cassette tape recorder. And like really shitty samplers and stuff like that. Specifically I did Akai S900 which I loved. I was programming it using a drum machine called the HR16, you'd have to literally... there was a little box and it was supposed to be a drum machine with its own drum sound but you could turn the volume off on that and instead of it playing its own sound, you could have it play triggered sounds off the other thing. So I'd have that, trigger my sampler, run the sampler into the cassette four track, and then rap over the beats. And I was using a $100 microphone. Microphone straight into the four track, nothing else. Sounded like shit."

- "You and Chester wrote QWERTY on the plane?" -> "The lyrics were written on the plane, but the music was not. So we did the music beforehand and then Chester and I wrote... like we had already started on the lyrics before we flew, and then we were running and forth in the plane to each other. We weren't far, like we were a few seats from each other. And we'd come over and be like "hey what do you think of this?" He wrote it, I usually write lyrics on my phone and he would write it on paper, he would usually write. He was slow typing and paper was faster and he was writing it and it was back and forth."

- "Can you talk about the making of "Promises I Can't Keep?" -> "There isn't anything really unique in terms of that, it wasn't different making that one versus making the other ones. The Post Traumatic record, everything was just capturing what was going on at the time when each song was made. And make the whole song as quickly as possible, at least get all the lyrics and vocal recordings as quickly as possible so I could capture that day and that moment in time. So, the same thing for that one. I think the lyrics are very self explanatory. The music was a track that I already had that I didn't use. And I heard it... I was like picking through folders of things, "oh I really like this one." And I feel like it filled a role on the album, because I wanted something on there that felt a little more like a Linkin Park song, like my version of what that would be if that would be, if that makes sense. It dipped its toes in the water of like a Linkin Park. So I thought that was important to have on the record."

22 minutes ago, Justin said:

You're suggesting that WBR sabotaged THP. That's the kind of thing we would have heard about by now. Concerns about lack of marketing and support is exactly what prompted LP's original dispute with WBR 15 years ago. If they were willing to stand up to it then, when nobody knew if LP would be successful with MTM, they would have definitely made noise about it in 2013... by which point they were already an established legendary act.

Exactly.

Mike Shinoda, literally yesterday on his stream: "Every time we put out an album, in the moment, I was 100% happy with what it was. Because we were in the drivers seat, there wasn't anybody else telling us to put out music or whatever. You hear that sometimes about artists who labels are telling them "now is the time, what's taking so long?" or vice versa like "we don't like this yet, go back to the drawing board, do something else." We never had that relationship with the label, for us, they trusted our instincts and everything. We always got our record to the point where we loved it and then we delivered it and then they helped us put it out. Or they put it out and we helped them get it out there, however you want to look at that."

Mike began his May 20th live stream by telling a fan he doesn't remember the guitar part to "Brooding" but to check online to find out what it is.

He says he doesn't know if there is any behind the scenes footage for the "Ghosts" music video that he still has.

- "What are some of your favorite moments on tour?" -> "The Post Traumatic Tour was fun and hard. It was just as much for you guys as it was for me. I didn't go out there strictly for my own benefit. Part of it was communal, that a lot of people coming to the shows needed that outlet. They needed to see me and see each other, they needed to hear those songs, they needed closure and other things. There were days when I didn't really want to do the shows but I did the shows because I felt like some people needed the shows. But overall I loved the tour. It was just like anything you choose to do over a long period of time, there are going to be times you don't want to do it anymore and then you get back on your momentum."

Mike said his merch company asked him about doing a coloring book, so Mike explained that he has one inside the Post Traumatic art booklet.

A selection of the CoronaJams will be released soon, but he won't put them all out. "I will draw a line, there will be an album and there will be like, bonus stuff, as usual."

- "What was the idea behind Victimized?" -> "In my head when I just heard the song, I heard the remix. The jungle version, hardcore version. I think the music came first on that one and the music inspired the lyrics. There was a lot on that album about feelings of being taken advantage of and there is some angry stuff on that record. Also, some not angry stuff, but yeah, Victimized was definitely tapping into some of that, I don't know what to call it, anger."

Mike has no news on a new Linkin Park album.

- "What's your favorite Linkin Park album?" -> "I have favorite songs for sure; overall probably "A Thousand Suns" but that is not to take away from any of the other albums. Every time we put out an album, in the moment, I was 100% happy with what it was. Because we were in the drivers seat, there wasn't anybody else telling us to put out music or whatever. You hear that sometimes about artists who labels are telling them "now is the time, what's taking so long?" or vice versa like "we don't like this yet, go back to the drawing board, do something else." We never had that relationship with the label, for us, they trusted our instincts and everything. We always got our record to the point where we loved it and then we delivered it and then they helped us put it out. Or they put it out and we helped them get it out there, however you want to look at that."

He tells a great ghost story about writing music in Rick Rubin's mansion, the Houdini House, when the band was recording Minutes to Midnight.
 

We're back with the first Q&A of the week from Mike and it's a big one! As we've started to do lately, we just recap the questions about songs and information about music, but not the instrument questions or silly questions. Check the full video for all of that.

In terms of wanting to visit places he hasn't seen before, he says he'd like to go to the pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, and places like that.

- "How did the remix of the Enjoy the Silence Depeche Mode song come about?" -> "I think they were doing like a remaster / compilation /greatest hits thing and they asked me to do it. I don't know how my name got added to the mix but I think I had mentioned a bunch of times that I loved Depeche Mode. I didn't meet them at the time, I just did the remix and sent it. Their management sent it back a note saying, "oh the guys liked it." We never met, and then I saw them play like fifteen years later I saw them play in LA. I met the band then, and they were great. They realized, they said, "oh thanks for doing that remix."
 

- "Are there musicians you would love to play with in the studio or even one day on stage?" -> "That's a good question. I've never played with Travis Barker, like PLAYED played with him. Travis is so dope. You know who I've run into a bunch of times but it'd be the weirdest collaboration ever? This track made me think of it, but Thundercat. So random, I've run into that guy a bunch of times in just completely random places. Like one time we were in Tokyo and just walking around at night and we saw these guys get out of this car and go into this club, a lot of people were crowded around them. It was in Tokyo and I could tell it wasn't a Japanese group, and I think their drummer recognized Dan Mayo so the two of them started talking. And he said it was Thundercat. Then we went in and they were so cool... we hung out for a few minutes. So I think that was the second time we ran into each other. I don't know what we would make, but he's obviously crazy talented."

- "How was your experience with the World's On Fire video? Would you like to do more animation?" -> "I love the World's On Fire video. Super fun and in terms of an animated video, really fast and really low budget. So to do something with a little more time and money would be really cool. I don't know what that would be and I had so much fun doing it. I grew up loving animation and anime. I went to school for illustration, I don't know a ton about animation, like physically doing animation, but I would love to do it."

- "What was it like working with The Lonely Island?" -> "It was mostly just emails and stuff, like they didn't really reach out. Kind of whatever, but, we love the track... the Things In My Jeep track."

His favorite non-music activity is snowboarding, but loves games where you can make the game like Mario Maker. He likes Minecraft too.

- "Have you ever thought about working with traditional Japanese sounds?" -> "We did. I used a couple of things, I used a shakuhachi on Nobody's Listening. I think I used a koto on something else but it might have been a sample that didn't sound like koto. Maybe somebody could suggest a Japanese day."

- "Hey Mike is it possible for you and Joe to collaborate on something?" -> "Ah that'd be great, that's a good suggestion, I'm going to hit up Joe. Soon we'll do it."

- "No Roads Left, Across The Line, Blackbirds, WWDK were scrapped from the initial seventeen on Minutes To Midnight. What was the fifth song?" -> "We always have lots of songs that get scrapped from an album, so I don't know. The fifth? Got me, I don't know. I wish I could tell you. Probably something that is unreleased."

- "Could you make it so we can buy your jams as digital downloads and the money goes to charity?" -> "I want to put the songs up on streaming. They make it really weird, like kind of hard to donate... they make it hard to stream to donate. There are a lot of hands in the pot. If you want dive deep into a subject where you could potentially get a headache and also learn something, read about how song royalties are collected. It's crazy. I doubt that anybody completely understands how it works. The problem is there are different rules from country to country and region to region. It's a fucking nightmare. So you add the idea that some portion of that money is going to go to a charity and it gets super complex really fast. So generally what people do is they make their money from the songs and they donate some of their income. I started our campaign on my Tiltify page with a $5,000 donation."

- "What was the label's initial reaction to A Thousand Suns? Were they nervous about the direction? Had they learned at that point to trust the band's vision?" -> "Yes to both. When we played them The Catalyst and said we wanted this to be the first single, they were like UHHHHH. But we knew we had like Waiting For The End up our sleeves, so we were like, "look, we are going to get to this one, we just want to come out with something really startling first and then we go with Waiting For The End which is probably a bigger single." And they were like "ok", but there were people at the label who were like "I think this is a bad idea", but at that time I feel you could do it that way then. I don't think you could do that today, I don't think it would work. When we released that, it worked."

Mike talks about why he picks a certain guitar for each song, what sounds they make, how it helps with the aesthetic and the sound, etc.

- "My kids say hi, we would love to hear about times you and Chester had fun or laughed really hard." -> "Laughed really hard? That's like, all the time. A lot of that stuff made it on LPTV. All the goofy characters and voices and stuff, we were always being ridiculous. It wasn't smart humor, we were just being ridiculous. We had a few times we were doing like jokey songs... any of you guys ever heard us do Burn It Down in like a reggae style? That was stuff was just always so stupid but it would always make us laugh."

Happy Birthday to Linkin Park's latest album, "One More Light, which turns three today.

It's hard to believe that it has been three years already since the album came out. However, there likely won't be three years until the NEXT Linkin Park album if things go well with the band writing new music.

How have your perceptions of OML changed since the album came out?

Mike has updated his merch store selection with five new offerings centered around the quarantine and his CoronaJams.

You can now purchase a Post Traumatic album cover puzzle, a Sugar Skull face mask,  a Line Sketch face mask, a ShinodaBucks tee, and a Bowl of Destiny tee.

‪Mike Shinoda will be a guest on “Wrong End of the Snake” with Ken "Pooch" Van Druten and Kevin "Tater" McCarthy on May 26th. "Wrong End of the Snake" is a new series by Pooch and Tater, a part of Jim Digby's Show Maker Symposium. 

The show will go live on YouTube on May 26th at 3:00pm EST here: https://youtu.be/i2CqQf7-JSs 

‪“Pooch and Tater team up to host a webinar exploring the sometimes irrational, always spirited relationship between Front of House & Monitor Engineers.”‬

Linkin Park fans know Pooch for his long time, great work with Linkin Park and Dead By Sunrise, having Linkin Park sound incredible on stage for eight years (2007-2015). Pooch has given tours at the LPU Summits to fans, met and signed items for fans post-show, and interacted with fans online for years. Fans know Tater as being Mike's Hollywood Bowl show MVP  and being the band's on stage monitor engineer since 2007... working with LP, Stone Temple Pilots with Chester, and Mike Shinoda's Post Traumatic Tour.

Mike said about Tater, "For all the things you saw onstage, there were a plethora of complexities at work to make them happen. Our crew is incredible, and when I say "Linkin Park Family," they are some of the people I'm talking about. Our production manager Jim and I were saying that the linchpin in the show--the guy who helped hold everything together on the stage that night--was our monitor engineer, Kevin (aka Tater). He's the guy that made sure each artist could hear themselves and each other, that every mic on every drum, every guitar, every voice was there when you needed it, that each artist could just focus on what they needed to do. With three dozen artists coming on and off stage, that is no easy feat. We love you, Tater! MVP!"

We're looking forward to the stream, particularly the technical discussion about interesting times in Linkin Park's career, particularly the "A Thousand Suns" Tour stage in the V shape.

12 minutes ago, sordomuda said:

Cool to know thongs like his son is learning to play drums. 
Question about the album he was the least satisfied was dumb imo. I mean artists dont tend to release music when they are not fully satisfied with it unless someone make them to release it. 

That's a great point. LP has had full creative control of all of their music for quite a long time. Really, all of it always, besides the label wanting a single for MTM and stuff like that.

Here we go with Mike's Q&A highlights from May 14th! We are just highlighting his musical / Linkin Park / interesting answers... he always answers some random stuff.

- "Share some info about the track on the Dust Brothers album." -> "We didn't really... we started something and then we sent it to them. And then they got really nasty about it, to be honest, back in the day. And then they were not cool about it. So we had a bit of a falling out. But they did work on "With You" and that was cool. They did a great job on that."

- "Did you expect Recharged to be as popular as Reanimation? And what about the Meteora remixes?" -> "No, I don't have expectations of that. Reanimation was remixing Hybrid Theory so I don't think anybody expected another remix album to be as popular as that. And I don't know if we expected Reanimation to be as popular as it was, so there's that."

- "What's your initial reactions to like old demos and stuff surfacing?" -> "Like most people, you can't stop stuff that's out in the world from being out in the world. So, it doesn't bother me. It didn't even occur to me that it was like, an issue or whatever. It's just out there. And there's stuff you guys haven't heard, you know. I don't know what it is, but it exists. It certainly exists in here (my computer."

- "Could we get instrumentals and acapellas for albums on Spotify?" -> "Some of them are out there. I don't know which ones aren't."

- "Who played the guitar solo on The Last Line from The Mall soundtrack?" -> "The guitar solo? I don't remember. If it's a shreddy solo, it was Brad. If it wasn't, it was either Brad or me. It's unlikely it was anyone else in the band. That's my guess."

- "Who makes LP's on stage keyboard and DJ stands?" -> "My setup has changed a lot over the years. Our stands and whatever have changed over the years. Lately it's been just basics, stuff you can find online that are available to whoever. The keyboard itself... for years I used a Nord. This one's a stage two. But yeah I was using Open Labs one for a while. It ran on PC and carrying around a PC-based keyboard... it was just getting beat up a lot. It felt like it was having a lot of problems. Knock on wood, the Nord has not crashed on me because of software bugs or whatever. In terms of the Post Traumatic stuff, I was using a Mac with Ableton and Native Instruments stuff on it in addition to the Nord. So like the Nord is controlling... I programmed all of this stuff inside Albeton to switch between sounds coming out of the keyboard itself and sounds coming out of the computer, so it was controlling the computer. And other times it was doing both. And other times it was adding the sample pads. It was a fun project. Get into that though, there's a setting up here, if you do use Albeton, there's a setting in the top right corner that says Midi. If you press that, all of these things turn blue or purple and you click on any of those and you push a button or key, and it will map that button to that key."

On May 13th, Mike answered some questions again on his stream so we have a few of the highlights below that deal with Linkin Park. One story that we didn't highlight is him talking about being on MTV's show Punk'd, so you'll have to check out the video if you want to see that one!

- "What is your favorite LP music video?" -> "I love Waiting For The End. I love The Catalyst. I thought Leave Out All The Rest came out really good too. I liked the video for Faint a lot and I liked the video for Castle Of Glass a lot. I don't think I have a favorite. Oh, Heavy, Heavy came out really good too, I thought that was really dope."

- "What are the things in your jeep?" -> "If you guys didn't hear that, that was a Lonely Island comedy song that we participated in. It was pretty funny. Did they ever make a video for that? I wonder if they made... did like a visual, that shit was so funny. We were doing One More Light album when the request for that came in. It was so easy to do, it was so great."

- "Do your kids listen to LP? Do they like it?" -> "Yeah! They do, they like it. It's funny because we've got so much music that like often times something will come up and the kids will be like, "what song is that? which one is that?" There's always a song they haven't heard. My son is learning to play drums, and he's working on "Numb" right now which is really funny to hear him play it. His groove is so much different than Rob's."

Mike talked about The Edge from U2 being someone he has met once who left a lasting impression on him, when he talked to Linkin Park at a party around the Grammy's.

He said one of his favorite guitars is the Ibanez that he painted the green girl on, which you probably know from him using on stage over the years. The guitar is currently in storage with the rest of Linkin Park's live gear.

- "Usually people ask which LP album is your favorite, but I want to know which album are you least satisfied with, and why?" -> "Ah shit. Dear Mike, could you please be a hater? Could you please talk trash about your own work? I don't know. I am definitely fully, like, satisfied with all of them. I don't know. Why are you guys talking trash in the chat? Like you're thinking I'm going to say Reanimation and Hybrid Theory. Na. I don't know if I have one. I don't think I can answer that one, it's an unanswerable question."

Mike mentioned a few interesting things on his Q&A on May 12th, so here we are with a recap of a few select questions!

- "What was the most difficult LP song to play on the Post Traumatic Tour considering you only had two people on stage backing you?" -> "I chose Matt and Dan... with Dan, I wanted somebody who had a lot of unique style and groove, who played differently from Rob. I wanted that because I thought it would be more conducive to that and the Fort Minor stuff. Every drummer plays differently like there are subtle differences, and especially based on what kind of music they listen to and play to. Dan has a jazz background and he loves old breakbeats and stuff. He really filled that stuff in. I told our manager I wanted somebody who could play as many instruments as I could or more, and hopefully could do back up singing as well. And Matt can do that, so we covered a lot of ground. I don't think any of them were tough for us. Couldn't really do ones with dual guitars plus bass very well, that was a little a tough. The answer is none of them were really hard. It was just getting creative about how to approach things."

Mike talked about bridges of songs being a lost art in modern music. "What's a good example? Rage, "fuck you I won't do what you tell me." Woah. It's the same mode of thinking as the bridge in "One Step Closer." If not for the "shut up" part in "One Step Closer", the song would have been like... that's a good metal song / nu metal song / rock song, whatever. We finished that song, we were ready to send it out to mix. The guy who was A&R'ing us at the label, who you guys know we had a difficult relationship with... he didn't send it to the mixer that we wanted. Before we got there, he basically sent it to his boss to get mixed, his boss was a mixer, he was a good mixer, he was just not the mixer we wanted. And then they sent back the song, completely changed around. He had edited out the bridge, the "shut up" part, and put it at the start of the song. And then it happened again in the bridge. Na man. No. That is not how that works. That's like watching the movie "The Sixth Sense" and at the beginning of the movie they go - hey FYI, the main character is already dead. That's a three minute movie."

- "How is The Catalyst a positive song?" -> "In the playoff bracket, they had pitted the song "The Catalyst" against "Breaking The Habit." Without getting into the personal backdrop stories of each of those songs, I will tell you that the personal stories related to each of those songs. The "Breaking The Habit" one was very negative. "The Catalyst" one was more aspirational, like it's about more adversity and overcoming it. Like we are the oppressed and we are tired of it, we are tired of being scapegoated and oppressed. So for me, those two things beside each other... I also have more positive memories of how it related to life."

Mercedes AMG has uploaded a new video from Mike, Joe, and Phoenix showing their home studios and explaining what they are doing on quarantine right now.

Phoenix, who is learning how to play drums right now, jams a little bit of "In the End" with his kids.

Check out the video here.

As if Mike didn't have enough music being released already in 2020, he is now also collaborating with blackbear on another new track, tentatively called "I'm Still Fucking Here".

You might have noticed that blackbear tagged Mike on his Instagram story earlier this month saying that he wanted to send Mike a new track to work on. blackbear and Aaron Harmon (who also worked on "About You" and "What The Words Meant" by Mike) sent Mike a guitar hook and vocal to play with, and then Mike went live via streaming yesterday, May 11th, to show fans his work on the track. Mike had blackbear call in via FaceTime to explain the track and his upcoming album before fans were able to watch Mike work on the track for several hours. When Mike finished his part of the track, he sent it back over to blackbear and his team so that they could continue work on it.

Mike said he wasn't sure if the track was going to be released or not at first, but once he talked to blackbear on FaceTime, blackbear explained that he thinks it could be an intro or an outro to his upcoming album. He said, "I have a new album this summer. It's coming out in two parts. I'm trying to squeeze this in somewhere, either it's like the intro or the outro or something like that of the sorts. It's a two part album - it's called "Everything Means Nothing". I think it's twelve songs. The first seven or eight are coming out in the next several months, we don't have a date yet but it's in the next several months."

Fans may remember blackbear for his previous collaborations, including "Sorry For Now" off of One More Light in 2017 as well as featuring on "About You" from Post Traumatic in 2018.

Stay tuned for more information on this track, which looks like it is slated for a release sometime this year.

Mike has his upcoming CoronaJams record coming soon to streaming services, as well as his "Open Door" single. Additionally, Linkin Park will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Hybrid Theory with a release this fall.

Time for some chat recaps with Mike!

He mentioned Xero after seeing a question in the stream when he was playing Animal Crossing online on May 7, so we'll start with that.

- "Will there ever be a Xero reunion?" -> "No. Mark is the best guy ever, for the record. And also, he is like a music manager, like he manages bands. He's with the company, he spends time managing System of a Down, Alice in Chains, Deftones, Korn. He's not trying to like, sing in like a throwback.... thing. It wouldn't be good for his... he is like a professional person. And by the way, I just texted him tonight, we're still super good friends."

Next, Mike took questions when making his 2000s pop song on May 8th, so here are those.

- "Will you have a lyric writing session?" -> "I probably won't because lyrics take a long time for me. It's long and tedious. And it's just a looping beat. Here's what a lyric session is like for me. Usually looping music, unless we are writing a song with like chords, then it's like sitting at a piano or guitar probably and going back forth between that. And there's an element of like privacy and an element of concentration that I have to have. If there's a live stream going on, I will probably be too self conscious to do it. Number two though, if it's rap lyrics or even some singing lyrics, I will have one section of music looping for hours. If I were to have four hours of looping music with me mumbling to myself and occasionally coming up with a line. That would be mind numbing, I know you think that sounds fun, but that would not be fun for you guys. At least the way it comes to me, it is not fun to sit and do. Our engineers just basically just go sit in the other room on their computers and wait, and you know, make their own music or whatever."

- "Would you ever dye your hair a crazy color again?" -> "I haven't thought about it. It hasn't occurred to me to do it. You know, you never know. I'll say probably not."
 

- "What is your favorite song to perform live?" -> "It depends on the day."
 

- "What is the toughest song to play live?" -> "Those are obvious because we don't play them or I don't play them. I love the song Breaking the Habit, but I don't want to play the song Breaking the Habit because it is a little tough to go there."
 

- "The demo lyrics for In the End were less straightforward and more abstract than the album version. What inspired the decision to start over?" -> "I don't remember who suggested who suggested we write new lyrics. At that point, we were operating on intuition. We didn't know what we were doing. We just had feelings about like what to try. I think it was probably like, "hey this is going to be an important song on the record. It's probably going to be a single, so we should probably try to beat the verses." And when I did the final version, I knew that like, I felt that they were better. And everybody kind of agreed. It was that interplay between me and Chester. It kind of the simplicity of it. The original version was a lot more abstract and a lot more rappy. It might be out there on the Internet somewhere I guess. I will say that I remember our A&R guy from the label coming in and trying to like, tell me what to do and produce it. And that was one of those moments when we knew the whole recording process might fall apart. And we were in full-on fight then with him and a couple people at the label for our souls, for our identity. Because that was THE song he kept coming in and saying he played it for like, whoever, that rapper, and he didn't like it, so we should change it. And I was like, we like it though and this is us. I respect that rapper but I don't care what he thinks of my stuff. He doesn't talk about the things we talk about. He raps about rappy things. I talk about real life and emotions, of course he doesn't like it. That couple of weeks was when he started going to Chester and was like "You could have the whole band to yourself, you could be the star, and you could ditch these guys." He went to me and told me I could play keyboard - that was that moment. We were getting verses to In the End right. Very tense time."
 

- "When you listen to new music for fun, do you listen to words or the overall sound to the song and the words later, or what?" -> "It depends on the thing. I think usually I do listen to the whole thing together. I can't have a good song without good lyrics and I can't have a lyrically exciting song without a good track. Or at least a track that compliments it. It kinds of comes together, both things at once to me."

- "In The Meeting Of A Thousand Suns DVD, you mentioned you were considering three other producers besides Rick Rubin, who were they?" -> "I don't remember who they were. But I think I remember we talked to Flood (British producer) and I think we talked to Atticus Ross. I don't think we talked to Brian Eno although he would have been on my list. I feel like there was somebody else who was more of a producer... who was more "of that moment." That wasn't a moment when they were like, the hot producer. I feel like there was somebody in conversation who was hot at the time. I just can't remember who it was. But I know we were serious about Flood and Atticus at the time. I think we even asked if they would work together. Trent was not doing anything like that at that time - I would have loved to have worked at Trent. But also the issue there is that although he is a producer, he is very much an artist. And he would have very particular opinions about things. I find that artist producers when they have a "sound", there is consciously or unconsciously an awareness about what their fans will come to the project wanting to hear. And therefore that artist's sound needs to be in the stuff somehow. I don't do that as much. If one if my sounds is in a thing that I make for somebody else, it's usually an accident, or because they say "hey, I want something like this."

- "I would like to know if you'd release the instrumental you made for the documentary This Is Life with Lisa Ling." -> "I probably won't release that, no, it is not something that is on my radar to release. You can just enjoy it in the context it's in."

- "What do you think about oriental scales? Persian, Egyptian, etc. Is it something that would inspire you while creating new things?" -> "Yeah sure. We could try that at some point. Maybe you redeem a theme suggestion and we do it. Throw Persian scales at me or something."

- "How did the Transformers remix of Iridescent come about? The version used for the movie was shortened and had additional percussion that wasn't on the album version." -> "Actually I think almost every sound used in the remix of Iridescent was in the song. We just turned them up or EQed them or compressed them. The reason for the remix was I think that the radio department at the label said, "hey, if you're going to go out with this song and the movie and whatever, we'd like to hear it pick up energy, like get to the point faster with a shorter version. And for it to have more energy earlier." That was a cool idea. To me it didn't ruin the song, I felt like it was a cool version of a song - kind of a subtle remix so we did it. Kind of a pain in the ass though because we were on tour working on it. I remember just having to go back and forth about mix notes and adding and subtracting things a lot. It was just tedious, it was fine though."

- "Why have you never done a song with Eminem?" -> "I think Eminem doesn't want to do a song, I think he has his own thing going on. So you can ask him. I don't know. It's no bad blood. I don't have any hurt feelings about when an artist doesn't want to collaborate or whatever. Even if I reach out to someone and say "do you want to a song?" and they don't answer... usually they don't come back and say "no", they usually just don't answer, that's just how it works. If you're an artist listening and you reach out to someone and they kind of ghost you because they don't want to do a thing, then just accept that as like that's where they are at that moment. And give them space to let them change their mind so just leave the door open because they may come back later. I think some people take it very personally, I think I did at some points but I don't anymore."

- "Can you play a classical piece on the piano for us?" -> "That was actually one of the song requests so if we get... if that one comes out of the bowl then we'll do it."

- "I really love the mashups you did during the Post Traumatic Tour. Are there some songs you tried to mash up that didn't work out?" -> "Yeah. Most of them worked out. The way I heard them happening, usually that would pan out and be good. I think I tried to do something with Castle of Glass and it didn't work. Blending it into another song. Then I thought "why would I do that? I want to play that whole song." But it's very intuitive."

- "I love your studio. I was wondering what's the most prized or favorite tech equipment you have. And if you could add any other items what would that be?" -> "You've seen the stuff I use as core gear. I'm thinking of adding... I've got a drum kit. I'm thinking of adding another camera so we can show the other room. We'll probably have to jump into ProTools and there will have to be some technical considerations to go through there. But yeah, the core of the studio, one of the core things that you can't see, there's hardware compressors and preamps and things like that. The kind of nerdier stuff. A lot of recording studios have like a mixing console in the middle and a computer connected to that. I decided to not do that because I don't really mix here. I wanted the keyboards and controllers to be the centerpiece. I do have some hardware mixing stuff, I use Ex-Logic SSL units and they're rack units. What that means is that faders and stuff that you usually see in the front of the room, I have the same quality gear but it's compacted and in a rack down there. And some other compressors and stuff over there. It's all real nerdy shit. Too much nerdiness."

- "How can you combine different genres in a harmonic way?" -> "I always told people like from the beginning, when we were doing Hybrid Theory, I feel like my best combinations happen when it's stuff that I really like. While I can make a song in the style of "whatever", with varying results.... I'm no expert... but I think if I really loved this (2000s pop) style of music and wanted to dive in and be great at it then I'd spend time listening to it, picking it apart, finding out what they use. So this is just an estimation of doing something in the style. When it comes to something I love, that's where you really go deep. Do the homework. It's one thing to be wandering around in the dark making stuff by ear and making stuff sound a certain way. You've got all the opportunity of actually researching and getting the actual gear. But back to the original point, mashing stuff up works the best when you actually like the stuff you're mashing up."

Phew! Huge Q&A!
 

Linkin Park Peru has posted a sort of "March Madness" bracket of Linkin Park songs on Twitter and it is taking the LP community by storm over the past day.

Linkin Park joined in the fun and retweeted it last night as well.

Take a look here and see what song comes out number one for you!

Mike Shinoda was a guest on the AWOLNATION Instagram Live on May 6th. He mentioned that Linkin Park will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Hybrid Theory with a release this year.

He said, "This year is the 20 year anniversary of Hybrid Theory. And we are doing a release for it and a celebration for it with the band and the fans. All of us have had to go back and watch stuff from that era. It is the cringiest stuff... I can't believe the things we were saying between songs. I was like "who is this guy?" Chester was talking like a wrestler, it was insane. I remember talking to Chester four or five years ago and we would argue about who was the most embarrassing person. But at the time, that was the shit. That's what we did."
 

Mike told a great story about the band starting as Xero. He said, "I loved the drums so much growing up, just listening to them. The reason that I got to know the Linkin Park guys because in high school I was really good friends... I started it with my friend Mark and we were both in art class together every day, we hung out outside of school all the time. I always gave him rap recommendations. He was in a band with these other guys from school (Relative Degree) that I didn't really know, and the drummer was from another school. And I would literally go watch them practice just to watch the drummer play. And then that ended up being Rob and our guitarist Brad. Eventually it was Mark on vocals but that didn't work out and we parted ways and found Chester. People always think "wouldn't suck to be the guy that didn't make it Linkin Park?" but he's a successful music manager and a good friend of mine."

The chat was full of a lot of interesting material and is worth a watch even though it's an hour. Mike talked about when Minutes to Midnight came out, the band wasn't too keen on playing the songs from Hybrid Theory and Meteora live anymore since they had been played a million times, but they didn't actually hate the songs so they did play them, but they just focused on all of the MTM material in the setlists instead.

He said when Linkin Park toured with Deftones in March 2001, Hybrid Theory was selling extremely well and it made the Deftones mad because White Pony wasn't selling as well. White Pony at the time was supposed to be a huge album. The Deftones guys were pretty rude to Linkin Park for years because LP took off so successfully commercially and Deftones had come well before Linkin Park time-wise, but Chino later apologized to Mike years down the road... now they are good friends as we know.

In between stories, Mike talked about scheduling a daily routine for him on quarantine, making plans to do stuff at different times of the day. And he is teaching his kids about cyber bullying as well.

Another good story is about Projekt Revolution 2007. Mike says the band felt rusty from not doing much touring in 2005-2006, even by the time Projekt Revolution 2007 came around since it was their first U.S. headlining tour in three years. They picked My Chemical Romance as direct support and Mike watched their first show from the side of the stage. He was completely blown away at how good they were and immediately told Chester to go watch their show the second night and that Linkin Park needed to step it up immediately or they "were going to be the second best band on their own bill." Mike thought Linkin Park's first show of that tour in Auburn, WA was like a "B" average but not great. So at the second show in Wheatland, CA, Chester watched part of MCR on the side of the stage then went backstage to see Mike and was pretty mad about how good MCR was, saying "I want to fucking destroy those guys." Mike says that Linkin Park played an amazing second show ("we were nails that night, we were the best band we could be that night") and put a lot of effort and energy into the show. After the show, Gerard from MCR told Mike after watching the LP set that night and said, "I was scared of you guys, you showed me what a real career, veteran band looks like on stage."

We'll link those shows below from Projekt Revolution!

There are no details yet about Hybrid Theory but stay tuned as this is shaping up to be a good year for the fanbase! Mike will be releasing his "Open Door" single featuring fans very soon, and releasing a CoronaJams record on digital streaming services.

Buckle up, because we're in for a ride the rest of 2020.

Here is night one from Projekt Revolution 2007 when Mike said Linkin Park was a "B" average but fans have come to regard this show as a pretty epic performance:

And here is night two when Mike said Linkin Park was absolutely epic:
 

Enjoy!

Something similar to Wake, Given Up, No More Sorrow, Bleed It Out, What I've Done into the slower songs. Maybe Shadow then the slow stuff. Pretty interesting. The way it turned out was better because everything was spread out across the album.

Some of them have titles already: http://linkinpedia.com/index.php?title=CoronaJams

In Mike's Q&A on his stream today (May 5th), he mentioned a few things of interest:

He has chosen the winners for "Open Door" and the single will be released soon. He said, "The "Open Door" single is on the way. I chose a bunch of vocalists and wanted to put them all on the track, so it has to all be approved... the approval process is happening now. I'll have an update shortly."

Also, Mike confirmed that he will be releasing the CoronaJams that he has been working on, hinting at a digital-only release on streaming platforms.

"I think I will make a record with all of the CoronaJams. It's not going to be a big release. It has been fun and I figured you guys would want to hear them on streaming services. I will clean them up and stuff, it'll take me a minute to clean them up."

Stay tuned as we will have two new music releases from Mike coming shortly.

Other interesting tidbits from his chat include highlighting what members play other instruments really well from Linkin Park - Phoenix knows cello and violin, but is really good at playing guitar and bass...and he is taking drum lessons right now so he is the person who plays the most instruments besides Mike. He also mentioned that Rob plays piano quite well.

Hey, need a favor from you guys. Can someone help us out and compile a list of the bad quality videos on the LP YouTube channel? For example Bleed It Out is in 360p and looks pretty rough.

We're back with another Mike Q&A summary from April 30th where he took questions again at the end of his chat.

- "What's the process like when you work with a mixing engineer?" -> "Usually when I make a song I would hand that over to a mixing engineer. All of the individual tracks that you see here that have audio on them, those would get bounced out individually. So one track would be just that kick. All of those tracks would go with my effects to the mix engineer. Sometimes I leave the effects separate from the audio so that the engineer can mess with the sound of the effects or choose a better effect. Like maybe my delay is cool but they have a better delay that works better. For me, I do love mixing and I am very particular of the sound of the things that I make. Because if you change the sounds it changes the shape of the songs. Generally, I will go in with the mixer or I will get on the phone with them and I'll have them change things. There will be a lot of changes and revisions in the mix."

- "What was the craziest or most unexpected source of inspiration for a music video?" -> "With more than half of the videos Linkin Park has put out, Joe Hahn directed those or had a hand in conceiving those. Once in a while I'd pitch in some content or some ideas or whatever. But Joe usually likes to be the boss of the video. If he's going to run it... he always talks about how it makes things difficult or hinders the process if there are too many cooks in the kitchen. So he prefers to have fewer people in the mix. And sometimes that's tough for different guys in the band, myself included. He's open to and will listen to suggestions but if he feels the opposite way, it'll be an argument or it'll be a conversation. That can be fine, that can be easy, that can be tough. We've worked with other people - sometimes we get really great results out of working with someone else. Other times it's not as good as what Joe could have made and we feel bad for working with someone else. I feel like inspiration usually comes from the song. If you're a freelance person working with the artist, I'd say defer to the artist because it's their content, it's their creation, it's their brand."
 

- "What was the most difficult song to make in my catalogue?" -> "I'm going to say the most difficult one might have been... for me... Bleed It Out was really hard. That's why I started the lyric with "here we go for the hundredth time" because I rewrote the verse to that dozens and dozens of time. And a lot of those were completely starting from scratch and I just didn't like them and I ended up on that one... because when I started with that it was like embracing the fact that the frustration of making the song was actually informing the content of the song. It took like, months. That was a tough one."
 

- Mike gives an explanation of writing major chords over a minor progression and does a tutorial of it on his computer for that question

- He isn't familiar with any Brazilian rappers, he doesn't speak Portuguese so he doesn't listen to that

- "How did you decide on the order of the songs on Minutes to Midnight?" -> "Yeah. There is a version of Minutes to Midnight where you can arrange the songs in a way where they blend into each other sonically so like one song to another is like, more similar. So you put like Given Up and No More Sorrow near each other, then you might transition to Bleed It Out, then you transition from that into What I've Done. It's like stepping stones so it's not jarring. So we decided to do the opposite and putting the ones that sound the least like each other, putting those together it made the album more striking we thought."
 

Talinda Bennington-Friedman has announced that this year's inaugural 320 Festival will be moved online due to COVID-19.

"Join us May 8 - 10 for the @320Festival Online ft mental health educational sessions, performances & more all day long. Stream it on Facebook Live, Youtube Live & @KNEKTtv Network on Roku, AppleTV. More info & daily schedules coming soon http://320festival.com"

The festival has announced the list of performers and you will see some familiar names - Kiiara, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Frank Zummo of Sum 41, Lauren Dair, and more. Julien-K was set to perform as well but with Ryan announcing on May 3rd that he will be going to rehab, it is unlikely they will be playing.

Mike Shinoda is set to be a special guest instead of a performer, so it seems like he will just be speaking instead of playing. Other special guests include Dan Estrin from Hoobastank, Duff McKagan, Frank Turner, and more.