Studio Update from Mike Shinoda

Hey!

First of all, thanks for letting us send you emails. I don’t think we’ve said that before, and it's worth saying outright. I hope our notes to you are fun to read, and give you a peek into our process. As things move forward, you might be the first ones to learn about certain parts of the album. Not sure what that means yet—could be a song title, a lyric, who knows.

We just started narrowing down to some of our favorite songs, and we’re starting to put our first “final” vocals on them. As I listen through them, I feel like these songs are really personal and revealing. We have really poured our hearts into the words and melodies, and it’s starting to show as we approach recording the “keeper” vocals.

With that said, we’ve got a lot of material to choose from, and decided to get votes from all six of the guys in the band, to see which songs are rising to the top. We clearly have an album in there. We’re looking forward to getting the vocals right, and starting to put sounds on them.  Keyboards/samples and drums are high on the list…but first, we’re going to get some of these vocals nailed down.

More to come…
- Mike (with Brad and Chester looking over my shoulder at this email. They say “hi” by the way)