Linkin Park members Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson recently recorded a Soundcloud Podcast for their fans. They answered questions and discussed the process of recording an album. Since they formed in 1996, the band released six albums over the course of twenty years. Their last album, The Hunting Party, released in 2014.
Mike reveals that this time around, the band “approached the process differently” for the making of their new album. He says that the band usually approach it backwards, but now they’re doing things “right side up.”
Alternative Live Press transcribed the podcast.
Brad states:
There’s a certain amount of experimentation and failure, essentially trial and error that’s baked into this process. We’ve made so many records and we clearly know how to make a record and we definitely didn’t take the easy way out this time. I think that we just dove straight into the fray of inspiration and its yielded really interesting substance, finding the destination is definitely a journey. We kind of have a sense of the path and we’re finding our way there.
Regarding the different approach to the recording process, Mike states:
The music inspires the vocal to some degree and in this, in this process, doing it the other way around; vocals came first, and the chords and the tempos, but nothing else is there, it almost opens up this Pandora’s box of possibilities where you can make any kind of track you want.
Mike and Brad also add that the band changed studios because they “needed more studio space to explore.” Mike states, “I wanted to get a lot of live drums. We’d been doing a lot of programming, program-y based stuff and it was time to start outing some roomy sounding live instruments.”
The two then go on to discuss songwriting. They reveal that the band is collaborating with a variety of songwriters. Writing an album takes the whole team to pitch ideas. Working with other people also gave the band more experience in how to start songs. They say that no matter what point someone is at in their career, “you can never know everything.” Mike and Brad also add that the album is still untitled.
Linkin Park’s Podcast
What do you think about their new approach? How do you think it will affect their sound? Tweet us at @CelebMix!