[contact-form][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Website” type=”url” /][contact-field label=”Message” type=”textarea” /][/contact-form]Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda recently spoke with Splice about songwriting and composing, ‘Meteora,’ vocal productions, and more. The musician addressed the vocal records of the tracks and how he helped various people, including Chester Bennington, push their vocals and motivate them. Shinoda admits to not realizing Bennington’s potential in the first instance, and adds: “I did that with Chester my entire career.” He was such a strong singer with such raw talent—so much so that I wouldn’t have known how unusual he was at the time if I hadn’t had the perspective. I had no idea he was a world-class vocalist of the ages back in 2000.
” Shinoda, who has assisted Bennington in shaping his voice over the course of their music career, recalls the story of how he helped the singer’s vocals: “I just thought he was nice, and we were trying to figure out, ‘Who are you?'” ‘How can we get the most ‘you’ vocal out of you and make it sound very nice on this song?’ Because he was singing like everyone he grew up listening to at the time. So, on one song, he sounds like this person, and on another song, he sounds like someone entirely else.
And I said, ‘Nah, you have to sound like yourself on every song.'” Shinoda isn’t the only person to praise Bennington’s singing. In an interview with Music Radar three years ago, the singer stated the following about Bennington’s vocal range: “He was truly remarkable in that regard.” We were completely unaware. I feel like we didn’t really realize how far we’d come, he and I, when we first met and began composing together and experimenting with how he’d fit into the band.
” Shinoda, as he mentioned in the most recent interview, assisted Bennington in shaping his voice. In the Music Radar interview, he also discussed the band’s early days and Chester’s first vocal impressions: “[…] It was probably 1999 or 1998, and we’d work on new stuff and see where we could take his voice. He was still forging his own identity as a singer at the time. And I say that because when he sang anything new, he was extremely adept at imitating someone else’s style, and he would frequently slip into his favorite singer’s style, even to the point of mistakenly forming words with an accent.” Mike Shinoda, who continues to pursue a solo career, just released a new single titled “In My Head.” You may hear the single in the player below.