shadowfax1007
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Meteora - Track by Track - An interview with Mike - Part 2
07 - "Faint"
"Faint" is a fun song. Brad actually brought that guitar part in originally thinking that it would be 70 beats per minute or somewhere in that vicinity I think. I'm not sure about the exact number. He played it to a click during Ozzfest and he came back. He and I had done the drum tracks to 140 beats per minute. First he argued with me and told me that it wasn't supposed to be that then I told him, "I know what you intended but I think this works." He listened to it and he totally changed his mind. I just heard something different when I first heard the part so that's how this came about. We're going to skip the lyrics on that one. "Faint" was just a working title that we wanted to keep. I don't know what the actual title would have been but it wasn't that. That word doesn't even appear in the song.
08 - "Figure.09"
"Figure .09" is another song that will be a lot of fun to play live. It's a really loud song. The first sound you hear sounds like little conga drums or something. It's actually Joe tapping on his turntables with a distortion pedal. So the distortion creates this drum type sound when he hits his needle and his vinyl. So he made this little beat just tapping on his records, which is really interesting. I think it's stuff like that that shows where Joe's going. He's doing some really creative things with his turntables. He's not limiting himself to just scratching and rubbing them back and forth and playing samples. He did some interesting stuff.
09 - "Breaking The Habit"
"Breaking The Habit" is a really interesting song. It will stand out to a lot of people as a different sound for us. It's very obviously Linkin Park but there are live strings and there is live piano. The guitar doesn't ever hit 11. Basically, the way the song started was as an interlude. It was going to be an instrumental track that was ten minutes long. The guys convinced me to turn it into a full song with verses and choruses and whatnot and add some lyrics. Well, five year ago or something I tried to write this other song that never came together. I had tried it 20 different times and it never worked because it was always cheesy or it was too dark or it was too melodramatic or something and I always ended up scrapping it. When I tried it out on this song and the lyrics were finished in two hour, I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is a song I had been trying to write for five years and it just came together in two hours. It was amazing. It finally came together and I'm really happy about that. I'm proud of that song in a lot of ways. I put a lot of work into it. From the beat, to the strings, to the piano, to the vocals, I put a lot of work in and the guys were really supportive. I had a lot if great suggestions and helpful criticism and that's why the song came out really well for me. It's easy for me to say that I love the song because I wrote so much of it. I just think it's a really powerful song. Chester's performance on it is one of his best.
Lyrically, it's kind of just about getting away from the parts of you that you do not like. It goes into great deal about that type of situation. The things about our lyrics in general is that we spend so much time on them that there is no way I can tell you in conversation any better than the actual lyrics. If I sit here and think up something, that's an off-the-top-of-my-head summary of what those lyrics are about whereas those lyrics took five years to do. So those lyrics are the most accurate depiction of what that's about, not what I can tell you.
10 - "From The Inside"
"From The Inside" started with an idea that Phoenix had on guitar. For the musicians out there, our songs are all in 4-4 time. That goes for the songs that we've released in the past anyway. I've tried a few things in 3-4, 6-8 or 7-8 before. Phoenix wanted to do a song in 6-8 really badly and he put it together in a way that was obviously going to work for us. We heard it and we knew that it was going to work. He felt like there was something missing. What's interesting is that Brad came in. We're all really open to other people helping us with our parts, like re-writing parts and whatever. It's not something that happens all the time but if somebody does have an idea, we're open to listening. Phoenix said, "Here Brad. Take this guitar part and make this work because it's almost there. It's just not quite right." Brad all of the sudden added this almost 4-4 style thing over top of the 6-8 verse which totally pulled the song together and makes it feel like a Linkin Park song. Finally, when it came to writing the lyrics, Chester had no problem throwing some stuff in the verses. I, on the other hand, had no reference point for 6-8 time signature rapping. There are probably only three or four songs I can think of where people have rapped in 3-4 or 6-8 time and I didn't like how they did it. I'd heard them and I wanted to do my own thing. Again, as simple as it sounds on the record, you try out ten to two different things to realize what is working and what's not. It takes a lot of time to get there. Needless to say, I've figured out what I like and don't like to do over 6-8 time. Now, the next challenge is going to be 7-8. I don't know, like a Tool or Mudvayne song. Lyrically, I am going to defer again to the person reading the lyrics because that song especially might be open to a little bit of interpretation.
11 - "Nobody's Listening"
"Nobody's Listening" is a more hip-hop style track. Beats and samples are the backbone of the song and of course, as always, we make our own stuff. When I use the word "sample", I don't mean that we're lifting it off somebody else's thing. We always create our own thing and loop that because to me it just feels more genuine. I can have more pride in a part that I wrote than a part that I lifted off of somebody else's thing. We made this interesting thing off of a Japanese flute with different Japanese flute sounds. It was actually keyboard and some other breathy sounds that we used, some piano and some drum stuff but it was most keyboard. It's like a real deal hip-hop track. The challenge in making that fit with the album was in the sonics and the vocals. At a certain point, we realized the song is like an island. It's detached from the mainland, the rest of the album. We realized that our bridge would be a little bit of guitar played a little differently. Brad does this muted guitar part in the chorus. Chester and I kind of play off each other's vocals. When we finished the vocals, we figured that it probably worked.
12 - "Session"
"Session", is an instrumental track. I did all the beats. Joe did all the scratching. Brad and I manipulated Joe's scratching on the computer. We used digital effects on it that basically make it impossible to play! It starts out as just this piano and this beat and then beat starts kind of disintegrate then the piano starts disintegrating then the guitar comes in. It's just this nice evolution of digital simplicity to complete chaos and two and a half minutes later, you've been thrown off a cliff.
13 - "Numb"
The last song is called "Numb" which starts with a nice keyboard hook. I thinks it was a nice way to end the album because it kind of sums up the record. It's very recognizable as our sound. It sounds like a Linkin Park song but it does have some mood that Meteora has if that makes any sense. Maybe I can say that better. When you hear it, you can easily recognize it as a Linkin Park song but it obviously belongs on Meteora. It obviously belongs in this new group of songs just because of the way the tone of the song is and the lyrics are. It's kind of about those times when you've got no feeling left or you just don't care. It's almost like exhaustion or something which funny enough is how we felt after touring last year.
Taken from Shoutweb
07 - "Faint"
"Faint" is a fun song. Brad actually brought that guitar part in originally thinking that it would be 70 beats per minute or somewhere in that vicinity I think. I'm not sure about the exact number. He played it to a click during Ozzfest and he came back. He and I had done the drum tracks to 140 beats per minute. First he argued with me and told me that it wasn't supposed to be that then I told him, "I know what you intended but I think this works." He listened to it and he totally changed his mind. I just heard something different when I first heard the part so that's how this came about. We're going to skip the lyrics on that one. "Faint" was just a working title that we wanted to keep. I don't know what the actual title would have been but it wasn't that. That word doesn't even appear in the song.
08 - "Figure.09"
"Figure .09" is another song that will be a lot of fun to play live. It's a really loud song. The first sound you hear sounds like little conga drums or something. It's actually Joe tapping on his turntables with a distortion pedal. So the distortion creates this drum type sound when he hits his needle and his vinyl. So he made this little beat just tapping on his records, which is really interesting. I think it's stuff like that that shows where Joe's going. He's doing some really creative things with his turntables. He's not limiting himself to just scratching and rubbing them back and forth and playing samples. He did some interesting stuff.
09 - "Breaking The Habit"
"Breaking The Habit" is a really interesting song. It will stand out to a lot of people as a different sound for us. It's very obviously Linkin Park but there are live strings and there is live piano. The guitar doesn't ever hit 11. Basically, the way the song started was as an interlude. It was going to be an instrumental track that was ten minutes long. The guys convinced me to turn it into a full song with verses and choruses and whatnot and add some lyrics. Well, five year ago or something I tried to write this other song that never came together. I had tried it 20 different times and it never worked because it was always cheesy or it was too dark or it was too melodramatic or something and I always ended up scrapping it. When I tried it out on this song and the lyrics were finished in two hour, I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is a song I had been trying to write for five years and it just came together in two hours. It was amazing. It finally came together and I'm really happy about that. I'm proud of that song in a lot of ways. I put a lot of work into it. From the beat, to the strings, to the piano, to the vocals, I put a lot of work in and the guys were really supportive. I had a lot if great suggestions and helpful criticism and that's why the song came out really well for me. It's easy for me to say that I love the song because I wrote so much of it. I just think it's a really powerful song. Chester's performance on it is one of his best.
Lyrically, it's kind of just about getting away from the parts of you that you do not like. It goes into great deal about that type of situation. The things about our lyrics in general is that we spend so much time on them that there is no way I can tell you in conversation any better than the actual lyrics. If I sit here and think up something, that's an off-the-top-of-my-head summary of what those lyrics are about whereas those lyrics took five years to do. So those lyrics are the most accurate depiction of what that's about, not what I can tell you.
10 - "From The Inside"
"From The Inside" started with an idea that Phoenix had on guitar. For the musicians out there, our songs are all in 4-4 time. That goes for the songs that we've released in the past anyway. I've tried a few things in 3-4, 6-8 or 7-8 before. Phoenix wanted to do a song in 6-8 really badly and he put it together in a way that was obviously going to work for us. We heard it and we knew that it was going to work. He felt like there was something missing. What's interesting is that Brad came in. We're all really open to other people helping us with our parts, like re-writing parts and whatever. It's not something that happens all the time but if somebody does have an idea, we're open to listening. Phoenix said, "Here Brad. Take this guitar part and make this work because it's almost there. It's just not quite right." Brad all of the sudden added this almost 4-4 style thing over top of the 6-8 verse which totally pulled the song together and makes it feel like a Linkin Park song. Finally, when it came to writing the lyrics, Chester had no problem throwing some stuff in the verses. I, on the other hand, had no reference point for 6-8 time signature rapping. There are probably only three or four songs I can think of where people have rapped in 3-4 or 6-8 time and I didn't like how they did it. I'd heard them and I wanted to do my own thing. Again, as simple as it sounds on the record, you try out ten to two different things to realize what is working and what's not. It takes a lot of time to get there. Needless to say, I've figured out what I like and don't like to do over 6-8 time. Now, the next challenge is going to be 7-8. I don't know, like a Tool or Mudvayne song. Lyrically, I am going to defer again to the person reading the lyrics because that song especially might be open to a little bit of interpretation.
11 - "Nobody's Listening"
"Nobody's Listening" is a more hip-hop style track. Beats and samples are the backbone of the song and of course, as always, we make our own stuff. When I use the word "sample", I don't mean that we're lifting it off somebody else's thing. We always create our own thing and loop that because to me it just feels more genuine. I can have more pride in a part that I wrote than a part that I lifted off of somebody else's thing. We made this interesting thing off of a Japanese flute with different Japanese flute sounds. It was actually keyboard and some other breathy sounds that we used, some piano and some drum stuff but it was most keyboard. It's like a real deal hip-hop track. The challenge in making that fit with the album was in the sonics and the vocals. At a certain point, we realized the song is like an island. It's detached from the mainland, the rest of the album. We realized that our bridge would be a little bit of guitar played a little differently. Brad does this muted guitar part in the chorus. Chester and I kind of play off each other's vocals. When we finished the vocals, we figured that it probably worked.
12 - "Session"
"Session", is an instrumental track. I did all the beats. Joe did all the scratching. Brad and I manipulated Joe's scratching on the computer. We used digital effects on it that basically make it impossible to play! It starts out as just this piano and this beat and then beat starts kind of disintegrate then the piano starts disintegrating then the guitar comes in. It's just this nice evolution of digital simplicity to complete chaos and two and a half minutes later, you've been thrown off a cliff.
13 - "Numb"
The last song is called "Numb" which starts with a nice keyboard hook. I thinks it was a nice way to end the album because it kind of sums up the record. It's very recognizable as our sound. It sounds like a Linkin Park song but it does have some mood that Meteora has if that makes any sense. Maybe I can say that better. When you hear it, you can easily recognize it as a Linkin Park song but it obviously belongs on Meteora. It obviously belongs in this new group of songs just because of the way the tone of the song is and the lyrics are. It's kind of about those times when you've got no feeling left or you just don't care. It's almost like exhaustion or something which funny enough is how we felt after touring last year.
Taken from Shoutweb
