The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 21: Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park -- On Music, Creativity, Selling 60+ Million Albums

Episode Date: August 4, 2014

Mike Shinoda is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist and one of the two vocalists of Linkin Park, which has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and earned two Grammy Awards in the process.Mike has collaborated with everyone from Jay-Z to Depeche Mode, and he's also the lead rapper in his side project Fort Minor, which I'm a huge fan of. As if that's not enough, he's also provided artwork, production and mixing for all the projects that I just mentioned. The man is a beast... but did he start out that way? The answers might surprise you. This episode covers how he got started, advice for beginning musicians (or creatives/artists of any type), navigating "entertainment" and Hollywood, daily rituals, how he writes songs, how he and his band rehearse, and much more.Enjoy! Tim***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen around the world. Thank you for tuning into The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is going to touch a lot on creativity, productivity, creating an identity for yourself, becoming a category of one, and we will explain what that means. But it's related to art and the art that is your life. So let's start with two quotes. The first is from Pablo Picasso, and it is, every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up. And secondly, if you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. That is Vincent Van Gogh. Because most of you

listening, a lot of you listening, will not identify or view yourselves as artists. And perhaps after this podcast, you will think differently. But before we get to the guest, an incredible guest, a tip, and this is a pro tip. If you feel anxious, if you have some type of low grade anxiety, start making your bed. I know this is a crazy recommendation. It might sound ridiculous. There is a gentleman named Dandapani, and he is a Hindu priest. At one point, I was having a tremendous amount of anxiety, and he suggested, start making your bed. At the very least, when you then come back at the end of the day, or even throughout the day, you will have that one piece of your life that you were able to control completely. And it will

seem orderly. It will seem as it should be. So this sounds nuts, but believe me, the cascading effect can be pretty profound. If you have anxiety at the very least, perhaps you should consider start making your bed in the morning. It doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to look nice. Okay. Moving on. Our guest, ladies and gentlemen, is Mike Shinoda. If you don't know that name, Mike is a musician, record producer, and an artist. He is perhaps best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist. It's a long list. And one of the two vocalists of the rock band, Linkin Park, if you want to consider it rock band. If you don't know Linkin Park, they've sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and have won two Grammy Awards.

Mike is also a solo rapper, if you would call it that, in his side project Fort Minor, which I love to death. It's amazing. And the lyrics are incredible. He's also provided artwork, production, and mixing for all of the projects that I just mentioned. And he has collaborated with everyone from Jay-Z to Depeche Mode and everyone in between. It's a really incredible career. The story of how he got started, how they in some ways accidentally became the phenomenon that they are, is fascinating. And there are many different takeaways. We get into not just the broad philosophical underpinnings, but also advice for beginning musicians or artists of any type, parallels between music and publishing and really any type of creation along those lines, some of his daily rituals, as well as, for instance, how he and his band rehearse,

how he songwrites, all of these things. We really dig into it. So I hope you enjoy it. Certainly visit the sites in the show notes, and you can find all of those, including musicforrelief.org, which is a nonprofit founded by Linkin Park, and I've done work with them. They've raised millions of dollars for survivors of multiple natural disasters around the world. You'll find all these in the show notes. So if you want to see the transcript, the show notes, the links to all the resources that are mentioned, the books and so on, go to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And this podcast is supported as always by you guys. So please,

if you enjoy the show, if you'd like me to do more of these shows, they take time. They also take some money. Please visit fourhourworkweek.com forward slash books, 4hourworkweek.com forward slash books, where you will find the Tim Ferriss Book Club. These are a handful of books that have had a huge impact on my life. And if you click through, it'll take you to Amazon and that kicks back a little penny here or there to keep this thing going. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening. organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. Mike Shinoda, thanks for coming on the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Tim. It's been quite a few years since we first met, and I was very amused to see on your Wikipedia

page that your bio shot is actually from Blog World Expo when we first met in, I guess, 2008 or so. I'm very glad that I was able to somehow indirectly contribute to your Wikipedia page. That's funny. I didn't know that's where it was from. That's amazing. I think that actually is a replacement of... I had said to the fans at one point that I hated my, the old picture that was there. I was like, you guys, seriously, this is like the worst picture of me. It was from like 2003. And I was in mid sentence with my eyes half closed. Like somebody had put it up there as like to kind of mess with me, I think. And it was horrible. And so I asked for,

I said, somebody, please like find a great picture and replace it. And that's what they came up with. That's really funny. So actually, I'm going to put out a call to action to my fans right now. I hate my Wikipedia photo. It was taken of me at LaWeb, a speaking engagement in Paris, when I had pulled an all-nighter to get there and just look like Al Pacino after a bender. I mean, I look really, really rough. But we were initially put in contact through Aaron Ray, the Red Baron. I just want to give him a nod and a thank you for that. But I've been continually impressed as we've gotten to know each other about how eclectic

your skill set is and how you've come to contribute not only to your own work, but to the work of so many other musicians and also done art installations. When somebody asks you, assuming they don't recognize you, what you do, how do you answer that question? I usually lie, first of all, because if they don't know what I do, then I tend to like to keep things pretty mellow. And especially, I live in LA and I live on the border of, I live near Beverly Hills, but I think I'm technically in Beverly Hills, but I'm not also. So I tend to spend most of my time in more low key in the Valley and stuff like that, where on the Beverly Hills side, you walk around, if you see paparazzi or you see somebody you recognize from People Magazine, that's not that surprising. But if that happens on the Valley side, it's just a little bit more, I think people get a little

more attention. So I tend to like stray away from that. I did grow up, however, doing like the first, probably my first love was actually drawing and painting. And I had always thought I was going to grow up to do that. In fact, we started the band, I started the band as like a hobby after high school. And I wasn't even very serious about it until midway through college. And in college, I was studying illustration at Art Center College of Design. It's a very, very serious school. It's a very rigorous curriculum. And a lot of the folks from there go on to be really great, you know, designers in auto and graphic design, ad film, and of course, illustration. And you've done your own art installations. I remember seeing a number of them. There's one particular piece that maybe you could remind me the name of. There were two women,

there was a figure with a skull head and it seemed to be composed of dollar signs. Oh man, I did a whole series. I'm not sure exactly which one that is, but I did a whole series, a two-part show called Glorious Excess. And it was about, I was mostly inspired by the fact that I felt like I had a weird, a unique perspective on the idea of being a celebrity. We started our, I mean, I started the band as a hobby on the weekends with a friend of mine from high school. And we never got into it with the intention of becoming a signed band or a popular band or anything like that. It was just like, we love to do this. This is the kind of music that we want to hear.

And nobody's really making the specific combination of elements. And all of the things that followed, followed. And I found myself one day looking at it and realizing that it never really occurred to me there would be people who would fabricate a whole music career with the intention of becoming famous or becoming like rich. Right. Cause that wasn't on my radar at all. When we started, we started it because we love music. It seemed like, yeah, that's why you would start a band. Right. And then eventually you're, you know, we're at the Grammys, we're at the MTV awards and there are people there who clearly are there because they love to be famous. They love to be celebrities and so on, even if they had gotten into it originally because they liked singing or whatever,

but now they're clearly there for another reason. And this art show, as you were going back to the art show, I felt like I had, I'm sitting there in the middle of that, like literally just pulling out my phone and taking pictures and video and stuff and seeing this stuff in first person and just simply not relating to it. It's been a fascinating experience for me to look at different success stories and try to deconstruct the motivations and also their focus on process or outcome, right? And like you said, there's some people who are so focused on becoming famous or becoming rich. And of course, a very small percentage succeed at accomplishing that. And if that's the motivation, it would seem to me at least that they wouldn't

actually enjoy the process of creating the music or the books or the art or whatever it is that they choose as a medium. And I always found it sort of a juxtaposition to your experience. It seems like, and I've heard the story, you might be able to confirm or deny this, that you two, the band started out and at least one of the members decided we are going to be the biggest rock band in the world from the very outset. But it doesn't sound like that was or is the Linkin Park story. What were the tipping points for you guys? I mean, as the band came together over time and you met people not just in high school, but I guess you met Han when you were studying art. Is that right? Yeah, that's right.

I mean, it's a really interesting time to be talking about this kind of thing because we just put out a new album called The Hunting Party. And one of the inspirations behind The Hunting Party was rock right now is at a place where it's very indie alt alt indie driven it's like everything is if you compare it to 10 years ago or 15 years ago it's very it's a lot softer it's a lot more dancey um there's not a lot of edginess to it or aggression i feel right and so there was a day when I was listening to the radio and I couldn't find anything to listen to. And I was listening to all my music services. And I just had a hard time finding something that kind of filled that void for me. So again, it's like whenever we have that feeling, whenever I get that feeling, that's usually a time when I go

into the studio and I start making whatever it is that I feel like I'm missing. And that's what the new album was inspired by. But it's also what the first album and the original, you know, um, kind of idea of the band was inspired by along the way. I think not a lot has changed. We we've, as far as like the, the philosophy of, of what we're striving for. And it doesn't, you know, to your point, it doesn't really include like being the biggest, because if we wanted to be like the biggest band in the universe, I think we wouldn't make an album like our new one. Our new one's very aggressive, very heavy. We knew going into it that we would be potentially hurting our chances at getting on, for example, getting on the radio. And truth be told, the radio is a

great way to promote your band and promote your album and so on. So if you know going into it, you're making something that's not going to be effective in promotion. Like you're making a decision that is, it's a creative decision, not like, for example, a career oriented or, or, well, maybe it is a career oriented decision, but it's not a money decision. Right. Right. So going back though, I think there were definitely points when we were getting started, we, we met, we were all kind of friends from high school for the most part. I knew Brad, I've known Brad, our guitarist, since we were out like 13. He was good friends with my best friend, Mark, who was the original singer on our band. Brad's roommate was our, became our bass player, Dave. My friend from college became our DJ,

Joe. Rob, our drummer, came from neighboring high school. And eventually Mark, our other singer, we parted ways because the singing thing was just getting on stage like drove him crazy. He was getting like an ulcer. He was so nervous to get on stage. And it turned out he was actually much more talented at the behind-the-scenes stuff. He ended up managing bands. He currently manages bands like Alice in Chains, and he managed Deftones and Cypress Hill at one point. So that was what he was kind of made for. Once we parted ways with Mark, though, we found Chester through a mutual friend.

And that was a moment where I only say that to say this. So he came into the band. We did a whole bunch more showcases and shows and tried to get signed and eventually got a little bit of interest. We got turned down by every label, indie and major there was, but eventually we worked our way into Warner Brothers. We kind of convinced them that we could like do almost like a demo deal and make some stuff. And if they liked it, they continue on and we continue on with them. Is a demo deal like a spec deal where you basically, yeah, it's like a spec kind of situation. I mean, let's put you in the studio and depending on how it's going,

it's a development thing. It's something that they don't do a lot of anymore because they don't have the budget. I think like everything's so tight now because sales, album sales are so much smaller than they used to be. They tend not to develop artists in this way anymore. But with us, to be honest, there wasn't a lot of, a ton of developing to do. We kind of were developing on our own and in the midst of it, because of a complicated relationship of like the guy that had signed us with his boss and that person with their boss, and they were all kind of new. Chester, our singer was kind of new. So there was a lot of turmoil and they were trying to they started to get nervous they started imagining scenarios like well this band's popular and that band's popular and they tell us things

like well you guys need a gimmick you need um we want to dress joe in a lab coat and a cowboy hat and chester you should like kick a shoe off at every like every every show like it was stupid stupid record company stuff that almost sounds like something out of a movie, like spinal tap. But it was absolutely true. And these were real suggestions. Like if you went back, I imagine that you'd say them to somebody these days and they'd be like, Oh no, I was totally joking. I assure you, they were not joking. We were sitting in the room and they were literally ready to buy Joe a lab coat and like beakers and put them in front of his turntables. Um, so yeah, so, so we got to that point and we were making the album and we were doing what we wanted to do and

got about halfway there and they tried to like, you know, run away with the whole thing and change everything. They wanted to turn, you know, basically kick me out of the band. They're talking to Chester and telling him, you're the star, you need, we need to do it this way. And he's saying, but this is like Mike's band. And he's like, I've only been in the band for a few months. What do you want me to do? Like, this is, I think it's great. And then we all talked as a band and basically stood up to these guys and said, you can either, you know, shelf us,

which effectively means they'd be putting us in record label limbo for the rest of our career. We'd never put out a record. Right. Or they can just accept that this is who we are and let us make the album we wanted to make. That's a ballsy move. I mean, it panned out. But like you said, the worst case scenario in that particular case isn't that they say no, and then you're able to walk off freely with everything that you had. I'd imagine at that

point, like you said, you ran the risk of being prevented from doing things elsewhere. If you walked, I don't know if you had any sort of contractual obligations at that point, but it's been, it's been very challenging for me working with television over the last year and producing episodes, having this division at Turner effectively get shut down and having the content stuck in this limbo space where you can't free it. It's just kind of in a holding pen. It's been super challenging. When the record label realized that they had something that could be hot or that was becoming very hot, what were the indications? Did they take the music and present it to a test audience? Did they hear it internally and simply decide as a group

that they liked the sound and therefore wanted to put some muscle behind it? What were the indications that got them excited? At that time especially, that was our first album came out at a time when if we played a show, we would put out a mailing list at the merchandise table. Right. We'd have a shirt, our EP, and some stickers, and we'd put out a mailing list. If you like the band, put your info down, and we'll come back, and we'll contact you.

Maybe we'll send you some stuff. Maybe next time we play, we'll contact you. People didn't even have—50% of the people signed up with their snail mail address because they didn't have email yet. So as you can imagine, like the MP3 wasn't a problem for record labels yet. Right. We signed at a time when they were operating in a very old school manner. And, and it was, you know, so when our album, rather our first single, One Step Closer, came out, it was, you know, it's what, out, it's like a classic record label kind of attitude. They throw it out there and see if it sticks.

And if they catch some interest in it by the radio stations, then they go a little harder and they go a little harder. There's no testing, per se they just kind of the only testing is like we'll put it you know see if we can get the djs and the programmers to put it on the air and then see who's like what the response isn't called whatever the other thing is though at the meanwhile we were out touring really really hard playing maybe five shows a week sometimes six we were in an rv because we didn't we would have been in a van we didn't we could we didn't fit in a van because there's six of us with our gear. We have a drum set and a DJ rig that was the size of a refrigerator. So we couldn't fit all of our stuff in a van. And I was driving probably more than half the time.

You get off stage. We may have played like 20 minutes. Get off stage, clean up all of our stuff in a hurry, put it all in the trailer, and then I would be driving half the night to get to the next venue. It was pretty rough, but I know that we were boots on the ground, talking to fans in person and managing our own, the presentation of who we are, the introduction, like this is what our band is about. We were doing that face-to-face with people. Right, so you were able to sort of refine not only how you communicate that to fans, but I would imagine that helps you think through

a lot of issues as well. There was a really funny story. When we first signed the label, we told the guy that was representing us, we told him, hey, can you get as many people as possible who might be working on our stuff? So mainly the rock department, but whoever at the label wants to come, we'd like to have a meeting in their building and introduce ourselves. And he said, yeah, okay, I'll set that up. Keep in mind, we were about 19 and we requested this meeting with whoever, everybody from the label and they show up and they're roughly, they're, they're like between 25 and like 45 years old with like, you know,

probably an average of 15 to 20, 15 years of experience in the music industry. And we go in, looking the way we did in our first album, me with probably red hair and Chester with the tattoos and piercings in his lip and whatever. And we go in with an outline of what we are going to discuss with them. They're going to come in and we're going to tell them how to work our band. Let me tell you what we're about. Let me tell you how it goes with Linkin Park. The instruction manual.

It was so absurd. I couldn't believe, in retrospect, I can't believe they didn't just kick us out of the building. I think that it was humorous to some of them that this band had the balls to just walk in and tell them how to do their job. And clearly, we were way out of line. But at the same time, I think they admired the attitude of the group. And by the way, they knew that we were very sincere about this deep connection that we were building with our fans from day one.

How do you think about putting yourself in the shoes of, say, a new musician now? So you mentioned the lab coat shenanigans and people trying to get you to adopt a shtick. And I've dealt with a lot of large companies in a number of worlds. When large groups of those folks try to have creative meetings, they tend to sort of create a camel, which is a horse designed by committee, and it just ends up being ridiculous. And a lot of, I would imagine a lot of people succumb to that and allow things to change to their band or their book or whatever that they really shouldn't. To someone coming up now, sort of like the actual rose getting off the bus and welcome to the jungle, right? Someone who's very sincere about, let's say, their music,

but who wants to have a commercially viable career. What would your advice to them be in this day and age? I would say, for one thing, there are a lot of similarities, whether you're in any creative medium, whether you're an author or a filmmaker or a musician, there are going to be situations that are not the obvious ones where somebody comes in and literally wants to just turn your thing into a commercial, obviously like watered-down commercial nightmare.

But they're subtle. It's really more about those are easy to pinpoint and say, okay, that's absurd. Like lab coat, scientist gimmick is absurd. No way. Right. But it's more about like, I think it's more about the subtle ones, you know, because even if they're not trying to be manipulative, a lot of times your partners, their priorities and their, their goals are not completely aligned with yours, you you know and that doesn't mean they're bad we had it's taken us a long time to learn that you know as a band because you know

record labels get such a bad reputation as it is just being sleazy you know corrupt organizations and you know they to some degree they deserve that and to some degree they don't you know not everybody at a label is trying to scam all the artists. And sometimes they're doing what they genuinely think is best. And they just don't. It's not in line with what the artist thinks is best. So those are the things to look out for. Because it can be very convincing.

And it can be very subtle. And it could not be a grade A mistake. It could be like a minor level mistake that over time, you know, 10 of those adds up to something catastrophic. So for example, in a situation like, I think, have we talked before about that with books where an editor, like subtly, you'll be writing something, an editor might subtly change a few words and then another pass, they subtly change a few more words and change. And all they subtly change a few more words. And all of a sudden, you're looking at it, and you might go back and compare it to the

draft before they ever got their hands on it. And you go, whoa, they completely changed the tone of my chapter or my story or what my point was and so on. And it happens over time. And at that point, you've kind of committed to a thing. So that's... Yeah. And at that point, you've kind of committed to a thing. So that's... Because dealing with journalists, it's amazing how just a single word replacement can change the entire tone. It can take you from saying something that could be interpreted as profound to completely absurd and stupid with one replacement.

So yeah, you really have to have a fine-tuned radar. Yeah, context is everything. I love to do print. I love to type my print interviews if it's possible. Luckily, these days, I feel like with social media being as powerful as it is, for you and I, if we're in a situation where somebody prints something that they've edited or changed substantially, we can go out there to the fans and say,

hey, you guys, this was not correct. And this is how it actually went down. This is how I feel, which has to happen once in a while. But you know, it's again, it's like, I don't feel like necessarily the people are being deceitful. It's just realizing that like, everybody's got their own agenda and they have to, a magazine is not doing it. But like even a music magazine is not interviewing you because they love music. That's not their day-to-day. We need ad dollars. We need click-through.

Whatever it is that's going to get us that. And if you have a 40-word sentence that, chopped down to seven, is really titillating and interesting and will definitely make people click, but it has nothing to do with anything you ever, you said in your interview, it's just clickbait. They'll absolutely go for that. Oh yeah. Cause that's what their, that's what their business is built on. Yeah. It's important when I'm talking to people just getting ready or there's, they have something taking off. Usually it's a book coaching them on how to approach this stuff. But on the creative side of things, how has your songwriting process changed over time, if it has? And was it different or is it different for, say, Linkin Park versus Fort Minor? Well, our process is, at the end of the

day, it's pretty democratic, but it's rooted in individual inspiration and craftsmanship. So when a song starts, usually I usually start most of the songs. It will, sometimes it will be a very fleshed out bed of music. Sometimes it'll just be a chord progression on piano or guitar with some vocals on it. Those two things are very different from one another. Could you explain just as a non-musician, I'd love to hear why those are so different. So first of all, just from the outside, if you don't know anything about recording music, it bears mentioning that there's lots of ways to make music

and a lot of different genres. I'd say, first of all, a lot of different genres have different approaches kind of built in that are not similar to one another. So for example, a producer for a rock band is a person that comes in, the rock band is writing all of the music and the lyrics. The producer is kind of helping them make decisions and help sculpt the sound of the album. And they all work together, but the musicians in the band are really making the

song and the producer is kind of their coach. In hip hop, a producer does the whole track, all of the music, probably makes the hook, the chorus, makes basically everything except for the rap verses. The rapper comes in and raps on it. And then the producer will make all the mixing and finishing choices as well. So they do a lot more in that genre than rock. When we make an album, it generally takes about nine months from start to finish to make the album. In contrast, when we were making this most, when we're making The Hunting Party, next door to us was a world-renowned pop singer's session.

And this person came in, their producers were there for a few days before they showed up. And this person showed up on day one and they were there for about 15 minutes. On day two, they showed up for less than 15 minutes. And on day three, they neglected to show up at all. And the song was actually done. And I was talking to their people going like, how is this even possible? And they're like, oh, you know, it's like we do this, we do that. And I'm just like, this is crazy.

You know, I don't even, as a songwriter and artist, like I definitely relate more to the producers on that track than the person who sings it. But I don't even know if I'd be able to call myself an artist personally if I was the one just showing up for, you know, say 25 minutes and the song was done. But also because that's, you know, my interest and my skillset and whatever, that's what I love to do. So with all that said, you know,

I want to master as many versions of making a song as I can. So every time we go into the studio, I try different approaches. I've tried approaches that come from, you know, folk writing and rock and pop and hip hop and whatever, like whatever, if it's something I haven't tried before, that sounds interesting, I might take that approach. And with, with say hip hop specifically, and again, I don't know any of these people personally, but you've collaborated with say Jay-Z and I'm curious in your particular approach, but much like the sort of U2 story, I've heard that Jay-Z is very famous for improvising. And at one point, just to appease some record executive, pretended to be taking notes, but was actually improvising lyrics in the studio. What is your

approach with, say, hip hop specifically? How much of your time is spent writing beforehand versus improvising in the studio? And what does your writing process look like? So if it's on the shorter end, if a song just kind of like, let's say a song appears and it's just magically great and in a matter of a couple of weeks, it goes from the first notes played to something that just sounds awesome.

Usually in those cases, it's because the melody and the melody of the music and the vocals have kind of arrived at the same time or similar time in a rap song or my off of the fort minor album the song where'd you go um came up that way it was like i was playing the piano part i sang the chorus i said that's that's what the song is i put a drum beat to it i wrote the lyrics to it and it was done um it was really just a couple of weeks. Similarly,

on a Linkin Park song called Breaking the Habit, that one was, I had like a beat looping and then I was playing keyboard over it and it was like a string thing. And I added some, I was singing vocals over it and the whole chorus was there. The melody of the verse was there. And that was like within an hour, i knew there was something to that song there are other songs that we've done where they take a lot of work i mean over the course of nine months they might you know come closer to sounding done and then be start to get boring or you know start to materialize and then fall apart once you add something there was a the new our newest uh we're about to put out a single called Final Masquerade. And Final Masquerade is a song that early on the chorus, the chords of the

song, like the piano chords of the song and the vocal were there from an early point. And I, and I knew listening to the chorus of the song and the progression and the verse, that song is going to be really good. I really liked it. At the time, though, we were deciding the arrangement of the song, which means what do the other instruments play? What other instruments are on it? And one of the main things that was a make or break element was the drum pattern.

At the time when I wrote it, there were no drums. And so I kept putting different things over it. I put programmed loops. I'd write live loops. I kept trying all these things on it, faster and slower tempos and all this stuff. And every time I put something on, I could just tell it was kind of ruining the song. It just wasn't very good. It was like a B or a B plus. And I knew the song had potential to be really great. So it did take us a long time to just stumble upon the right thing. And it was a time when I was in the studio with our drummer, Rob. And I had already kind of picked the tempo. And I had said, what if we do like a halftime,

kind of almost like more of a hip hop or classic rock, like groove, drum loop type of thing. And I don't remember what the reference points might have been or whatever. But the main thing was that, Rob, I said, just play. And as you play, I'm going to like give you, you know, suggestions about where the hits might be or whatever. And it immediately started coming together. It was like within a few minutes, you could tell like this is the best groove for this song. It's totally making the song better.

What activities outside of music have had the greatest positive impact on your music that are not directly musically related? And that's, I'll leave that broad, but I'm just any activities, books, inspirations. Well, you know, I mean, you know, from our conversations that I love experimenting with, you know, new toys, new technology. I love reading. I tend not to read a lot of fiction. I've read your books. I love books like The Tipping Point and Blink, et cetera, as well. One book that I read that speaks to the answer to this question

is a book called Category of One by Joe Calloway. And it's about finding ways to make what you do stand out. Oh, got it. It's a really nice book. There's a lot of great information in there. And one of the things that he stresses is to benchmark what you do, not against your immediate peers or your immediate competition even in your category, but compare it to things that have nothing to do with your thing. If you're a music maker, there's no reason you shouldn't say, well, can I get great ideas from people who make cars, people who make shoes, people who make

apps, people who make cooking utensils, whatever it may be. You could have a great idea based on something that's so foreign to your thing. So with that said, I've been getting into things that really excite me, but I don't know how they might inform what I do. It may be musical. It may be kind of like the visual aspect of how we present our music, but I love 3D printing. And I most recently got into, I just got- You said 3D printing? 3D. I love 3D printing. And I most recently got into, I just got 3D. Oh, 3D printing. Got it. Yeah. 3D printing. Fascinating stuff. And I most recently, my wife actually got me for our anniversary. She got me like a camera drone quadcopter. It's by DJI. It's called a Phantom Vision Plus. And I've been playing with that

lately. And that one's actually really, the connection for me is just really easy. It's like, I love, first of all, it's just really relaxing to do. But second, I'm filming stuff with this drone and I film like our, I'll film our rehearsals or I'll film stuff as we travel and stuff. And that stuff is just really, it's just fun to do. You've constantly experimented with technology. That's part of the reason that we bonded. And I thought that Blog World Expo would be fun when we initially met. One thing that is constantly on my mind is related to sort of routines and habits of

people who are highly effective. And you are, I guess, right now as we speak, getting ready to, is it rehearse or record? We're rehearsing right now as we speak, getting ready to, is it rehearse or record? We're rehearsing right now. We are going out on a US tour with 30 Seconds to Mars and AFI. It's called the Carnivores Tour and we'll be out from August to September, about six weeks. Got it. So as we speak, it's about noon where you are. What have you found for yourself what can you do to facilitate flow or sort of peak performance for yourself whether that's timing wise routines or rituals that you have what have you discovered personally one thing that i and i believe that by the way kudos to you because the one of the ideas from i think you're i think it was from the four-hour work week,

that occurred to me, I don't know if it was because it was literally in the book or just the book kind of inspired this thought, just in a broad sense looking at the things that you do every day that actually are making you better, whatever that might mean, and the things that you need versus the things you don't really need. That could be in the way you handle your emails. It could be the things that you choose to read up on on your computer or iPad or whatever

when you're not working. Your workflow during while you're working or even the things you choose to do when you're not. Is it making you, the way you eat, is that affecting how you feel during the day to do your work or your creative stuff or have fun and all of that? I mean, I find that for myself personally, I don't watch, I barely watch any TV. I watch almost no TV. I do love movies. I love going out to movies. I find it a more like inspiring and rewarding experience than television. For

some reason, a lot of TV, barring the more series-based stuff, I love Netflix as well, and I love House of Cards for the same reason I love going to films. And I stay away from, I'm not getting anything out of cooking shows and like singing competitions and crap like that. Like especially the reality shows, like really, I feel like I've totally wasted my time at the end of watching one or two of those. So that's like something for me that I just like, I started just removing from my schedule. Another thing that I always tell my wife,

she's really working on, and I think a lot of us have a tendency to want to respond to every email and expect responses from every email. And that's just unnecessary, I feel. Everyone I work with, all my friends know that given the opportunity to not respond to an email, I will take it.

I will delete it. The the answer is yes, cool. I would sooner delete the email. If your answer is going to be yes, cool. Yeah. If it's going to be okay, or I hear you or whatever, let's assume I got this email and we're good. I don't, unless I have something to say, you know. Right, substantive response. If it's substantive, I will respond. If it is substantive, I will usually spend, if I really feel like I have something to offer, my emails will be, you know, they tend to be a little longer. They tend to have a lot of information in them. So you'll either get no email or you'll get something a little longer. Yeah, but I do that because I don't like to have

like 150 emails in my inbox. And I also don't think like every time you send an email out, I mean, I've seen, you know, we've all seen threads where you've got five people on the, on the email and all of them are responding. Okay, cool. Yeah. Great. See you then. It's like, I don't want 15 emails saying, okay, cool. Yeah, it's stressful. It's very stressful. Now, the rehearsal itself that you're going to be going into, what have you arrived at as your format for rehearsing? What does that look like?

What's the template? Every band will be, every artist is totally different when it comes to rehearsing. I've heard that some groups just get together and they just jam and just play whatever what do you guys do artists is the opposite we as you could probably imagine um we actually because we have six guys in the band and everybody's pretty much got you know families and other stuff going on we set up rehearsals in a way that you we start with just the most basic people who are needed on certain tracks. So let's say right now we're practicing up two new songs for this

upcoming tour that we haven't played in front of people before. And we'll start those. The first day of rehearsal would be with just maybe our guitarist and I and our bassist and our drummer. It might just be the four of us. And then we'll add Joe, our DJ, and then we'll add Chester. There's no reason for Chester to come in and sing if the music's not tight. So Chester gets a day or even two days off from rehearsal because of that. It's rougher on, especially the instrumentalists, it's more time. But in the big picture, it's all a wash.

Because while Chester isn't in here rehearsing on these days, he and I are always requested when it comes to interviews. You know what I mean? So there's a balance, a nice balance of things. Whenever somebody's not totally needed for something, we kind of remove them from the situation. And also just for anybody, for the techie people listening, one of the things we do to make those rehearsals extra focused, we actually have everything tracked out,

all of the instrumentals from the studio recordings in the computer, and we play, we'll unmute anybody who's not there. So if Chester's not here, his voice will actually still be coming through the speakers because it's coming off the, out of the computer. So we use those strictly as practice tracks. And then of course we don't use them live, but we have those around so that we know, you know, and we can reference them too. Like, oh, hey, you know, Brad, I think that this note, this transition between the verse and the chorus, it's actually these notes. And we can listen to the album version and say, oh yeah, that is what I played.

And then, you know, Mike is wrong or Mike is right or whatever it may be. And yeah, so that's actually a part of our, not only the way we rehearse, but the way we just operate on stage. As technology has gotten, as music performance technology has gotten more advanced, it's actually allowed us to be a better live band. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. Where

technology can augment and not necessarily replace performances. I think that's something that's often overlooked. Just for my own personal curiosity, what software do you use for that type of tracking? We use a ton of different things on stage. The main thing that I was talking about, the performance stuff is in Ableton Live. Ableton's great because you can actually, let's say, if you imagine in your iTunes library or whatever, you've got a track and you can play it, fast-forward and rewind. Ableton, you actually can throw it in, you can play it fast ordering wine ableton you actually can throw it in you can slow it down speed it up pitch it if you wanted to modulate the pitch um you can mash it up with other things and so on so you know if we on some of the tracks like we have a song called guilty

all the same and when we first started playing it we wanted to practice it slower so that we could get tight and then move get it faster and and faster. So we, we actually just turn, turn the tempo down a little bit in the computer, played back slowly. And, and you know, 10 years ago, this would have been impossible or it would have at least taken hours for the computer to process that information. And then you could do it. Now you do it like on the fly, right? Instantaneously. You could do it. In fact, you could do it as you're playing. If you wanted to hit a certain spot and then slow down, you can do that. You can loop spots. You know, if you want to practice one spot over and over, we actually have a part during the set. We do run some stuff, some backing tracks. When we play, we try to be careful about that

because we always want to be a live band first. It's not a scenario where I think everybody, when they hear stuff like that, it's like, you're wondering, are there vocals in the track and whatever we try and stay away from all that. Um, generally it's like percussive stuff and like beat loops and things like that. Again, 10 years ago, if we were doing that, if we were playing a song on stage and we had that running, if you got off beat, you'd be screwed. If you wanted to extend the part, you couldn't do it. If you want to slow down, you couldn't do it. Now we can do all of those things on the fly. If I decide, hey, let's get to this guitar solo, let's have Brad play twice as long. Let's have him play five times as long.

Any night of the week, any show, we can do that. The Ableton rings a bell, and I could be mistaken, and I'll double check this for people in the show notes, but I think that is also the software that Ira Glass, host of This American Life, uses when he's doing live speeches because he wants to recreate the feeling of one of his shows. And so he'll have an iPad up and he'll actually call up different types of quotes and so forth. Very cool. Yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. That's not the only thing we use. I mean, just so that it's clear, like when I have a keyboard rig and mine is software-based, I'm using a bunch of stuff by Native Instruments.

I'm using stuff by other makers. Joe is actually running his completely off of a Windows tablet, believe it or not. His whole rig with the turntables and everything is actually, the brain of that is actually a Windows tablet. It's a Surface. Wow, that's so cool. I love it. I tell you what, I want to be cognizant of your time,

and I know you have to practice. So I'd love to just do perhaps a couple of rapid fire questions, if that works for you, and then I'll let you get to making your music. So the first question is, you mentioned movies. What are some of your favorite movies of all time? And that could include documentaries, non-documentaries, totally. Yeah. I love, I think growing up, I was really into the, like some darker stuff, but usually kind of plot driven. I always loved the Godfather movies. I loved the usual suspects. I loved Fight Club and Seven. Yeah. I actually saw Fight Club the other day and I haven't seen it in a number of years. And it's still such a great, like the story, the writing is just so great.

Yeah, and then on the other side, like being an illustrator, I was into anime. Like I loved Akira. And I actually love a bunch of the Disney films. WALL-E is awesome. I mean, one thing that always struck me about that is it's like, you've got a movie that's more than half basically just score and visuals with no dialogue. Oh, it's amazing. It's an incredible feat.

I've been researching screenplays recently and working on one myself. And one of the recommendations I heard was you should be able to turn off the sound and follow the movie. Of course, Wall-E is a perfect example of that. So even in a foreign film, you should be able to follow the plot or a lot of the major plot points turning off the sound. Pixar's amazing with stories. I'm actually hoping to have the president of Pixar on this podcast as well to dig into the stories because I think it's so systematic and amazing

how they approach that. Have you seen Ninja Scroll before? I have, I have. I used to be so into Ninja Scroll. That's just the side. Ninja Scroll's amazing, yeah. We actually, I think that our DJ Joe, who he's, Joe has directed most of our videos and he actually just directed a movie called Mall, which is coming out soon on, I think Paragon was the

company that picked it up. And he just debuted it this last week. So it's coming pretty, hopefully pretty soon. M-A-U-L? No, it's M-A-L-L. Yeah, it's about a bunch of suburban kids. They're all kind of dysfunctional to some degree. It's a very, it's an indie film in every respect. And it's, these kids are very awkward, all for different reasons. And basically they're at the mall doing their thing. And there's a, there's another kid who comes in and opens fire in the mall and shooting people and stuff. So it's a really interesting, you know, uncomfortable and interesting film. I had a lot of fun, you know, doing, we did some score to it, but actually going back to the Ninja Scroll thing and all that, Joe is Princess Mononoke,

Ninja Scroll. Like he, a lot of those types of movies, those movies in particular, actually, have worked their way into some of his work in the past. In fact, Princess Mononoke is one of the main inspirations behind our video for In the End. Oh, that's amazing. I didn't know that. Princess Mononoke is, for those people wondering, you should watch every movie made by Miyazaki Hayao, or I guess in English, Hayao Miyazaki. And if you ever go to Tokyo, go to the Ghibli Museum, which is the Ghibli Studios Museum in the middle of Inokashira Park, which is just amazing. What is your favorite book or the book that you've given most as a gift to other people? Given most as a gift. Wow. I think when The Tipping Point came out, I gave that book to a lot of people. I know that Category of One was another one that was really, that I did pass

around a lot. Or most of the guys in the band read Blink as well. Yeah. Some fascinating, especially The Tipping Point really kind of put him on the map as an independent book writer. And I do talk about 4-Hour Workweek quite a bit, Tim. Well, I appreciate that. So thank you for that. I would also feel remiss if I didn't mention my wife's book, by the way. Of course.

Which is, although I'm not a big fiction reader, she wrote an amazing book called Learning Not to Drown, which is about a young girl whose brother is in and out of prison. It was inspired by my wife's actual family growing up, but it is fiction. It's not a memoir. It's about this girl whose brother's actions effectively devour her entire social and family life. And she's forced to make decisions about who she is and what she's going to do, you know, as she finishes high school and leaves the nest. Did you read? Did she get one to you? Yeah, no, no, she did. And I read fiction before bed as a way of turning off my problem solving machine in my head. It tends to keep me awake. So I'd recommend people check it out

for sure. And I'll link to that in the show notes as well. So people can get a direct link. When you hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind? Successful. Gosh, I think of Rick Rubin for some reason. I think that there's something about Rick that we've worked with Rick on a number of albums and he taught me a lot about songwriting and producing, but also, you know, just life lessons. He grew up practicing transcendental meditation. And although I haven't really, I've, I've went to this woman, this teacher that he recommended and I tried it out a little bit and it stuck and it didn't stick. Like some people do it every day. I do not, but meditation and just like focusing inward and turning off all the noise is something I do believe in. Like, especially if you're finding that you're

tightly wound at any moment or in general, you know, it's a nice way to just get yourself focused. And I feel like I make better decisions and I'm more effective when I'm, I have a clear head and I'm fresher. Yeah. You know, it's, uh, I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but Rick, for those people who don't know, incredible music producer. You're going to look up his discography on Wikipedia, but first came across his name actually on the Notes Inside a Slayer album when I was just a little youngster. But he's also, for those people who've seen the 99 Problems video, he's the guy with the big beard in the car. Rick is actually one of two people responsible for getting me involved in meditation regularly in the last few years. Chase Jarvis, a very world-class photographer and Rick are both the people kind of responsible for introing me to meditation and TM

in particular. Very cool. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I guess the first thing that comes to mind is something that I work on is not expecting other people to do things the way I would do them. Right. Or, you know, not holding like my opinion and my way of doing things, even, even like for you, for you and I being people that try, like spend a lot of time trying to be very effective. And by the way, balancing that with things that we love to do as a part of being well-rounded and whatever. And, you know, sometimes you hear things from other people and you go, well, why are they, that's so stupid. Why would they do it that way? It's like so backwards and whatever. And you feel

like you want to tell them, I mean, it would get to be very preachy. It's, it's not, I feel like my to do right by my friends and family and whatever, that it's good to just remember that everybody just kind of, you know, to give everybody room to do their own thing their own way. And what I choose to do is, is my decision. Yeah, for sure. That's something that I'm, it's a hard one, right? I still, I still do that. I find like one of the things, this is actually a funny one that my friends and I talk about is like, first of all, just like simple, simple things like expecting people to work harder on stuff because I would like, that's, that's not, that's not very nice. The other thing that's funny is spelling in emails. When I guys, like I said, I'm going to, if I'm going to write an email, I'm going to probably, unless it's like benign, I'm going to write, I'm going to like write it

and I'm going to edit it. I'm going to look at it and there's spell check and all of this stuff. And when I get emails where people are just clearly, you know, punching numbers on a phone and we're punching letters on a phone and it's, it's a mess. There's a part of my brain, maybe it's because my mom was a stenographer. As there's part me in my brain that's just like, ugh, what an idiot. And I go, no, that's not nice. Don't do that. Yeah, it's so true. It's a real pet peeve of mine as well. So to all those folks who are emailing people you want to get a response from, take the time because not everyone's sensitive to it, but I'm very sensitive to it. And I suppose that's just a byproduct of, of writing

and editing all the time, but yeah, take the extra 10 seconds to look at anything that's under underlined as a misspelling. What is your most frequently played music right now on, on your phone or otherwise not that you haven't recorded yourself yeah i don't listen to my stuff a lot unless i'm like you know practicing something or trying to you know we have some activity that requires getting into our stuff i am listening there's two playlists i have and they're both actually in my i'm on spotify and on beats under my name so if you want to check out some of the stuff I'm listening to, there's a lot more than this.

One batch of music that I'm listening a lot to is some heavier rock stuff, which, you know, Tim, you're a fan of. There's not a lot. I feel like right now, you know, this was part of the inspiration for our new album was that there is not a lot of super exciting, brand-new, cutting- edge, aggressive music out there. And I do have a playlist of some stuff, which includes a band that Frank Turner, who's like a folk singer, did a hardcore band called Mongol Horde, which is amazing. Such a good album.

It came out a few months ago. There's a band called Doom Riders. There's a band called Doom Riders. There's a band called Royal Blood. Judging by the name, you'd think these things are like really, really heavy metal stuff. And they're not. There's a lot of melody in some of the songs. And it's just really great, energetic music. Awesome. All right. Last question. If you could go back in time and give some advice to your 20-year-old self, what would it be? 20-year-old self?

How old am I? Buy Apple? I don't know. I don't know. There's probably, aside from anything like cheat the system. Back to the future style. Right? Yeah.

There's definitely over the course of our, I think it comes back to one of the things that we talked about earlier, which is just, it's so important to stick with your gut. And if some voice inside you tells you that something is the right thing to do, the right way to go about something, or the right thing to make, pay attention.

I've gotten to know Todd Wagner a little bit. And he told me that when he's investing in a company or a group of people, he always asks them, two of the questions he always asks are, would you be willing to quit your job for this idea and would you be willing to put all of your own money behind this idea? Those are questions designed to say, do you really believe in this idea? And would you be willing to put all of your own money behind this idea? And those are questions designed to say like, do you really believe in yourself? Do you believe in your

thing enough? Is this an idea for you or is this an idea because you think someone else will like it? And if you believe in it to the point where you put yourself on the line, then that's a good measure of how important it is to you and how much you believe in it. Definitely. It's so true. I mean, just for those people listening, at least for me also, if you scratch your own itch and create something for yourself, the thing that you've been looking for, you'll always have an audience of one. And that's more than I can say for a lot of folks who kind of focus on the outcome and miss that because you'll have to live with whatever you put out. If you put something out, Mike, this is, this has been a blast. Where can people find out more about you,

what you're up to and so on? Lincoln park is obviously on Lincoln park.com. It's L I N K I N P A R K.com. Any social media, Instagram, Facebook, uh, Twitter, whatever we are, we are available under the same name. I am, uh, Mike Shinoda.com. And, uh, Twitter, whatever. We are available under the same name. I am MikeShinoda.com and you can find me under that name on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as well. Beautiful. Mike, I'll let you get to your music,

but keep putting out great stuff and look forward to hanging again soon, hopefully next time I'm in down south in LA. Yeah, thanks, man. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, buddy. I'll let you get to it. I really appreciate it.

If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com F-O-U-R-A-T-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter.

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