Hey guys, remember when Hybrid Theory came out?

[Moonlight Soldier]

A place for my head was my fave track

[ngsilver]

At first I was like, WTF is Hybrid Theory....

Then I remembered that I own the damn CD....

Now I'm like... feeling old and some shit for being in HS at the time...

[requiett]

No.

[Warheart]

I was thinking who the hell actually likes that shit, since I was in my "I'm so metal phase". Back in 7th grade. I feel old now, damn you Beo.

[Otohiko]

No.

Me neither. I wasn't really paying attention - I didn't really like LP's music videos, and that's the only way in which I followed contemporary music back then. So I really paid no attention to when their albums came out, nor to their popularity for that matter. It's only around 2003, when I started getting into AMVs, that they caught my attention. In a bad way, of course.

[LittleAtari]

The Catalyst >.>

[Kai Stromler]

To commemorate the 10-year anniversary of me digging this record out of the reject pile at the radio station (and, more immediately, because I had problems getting to sleep last night), I thought I'd see if I could cut it apart and determine if there might be musical reasons as to why it became an all-devouring plague. The cultural and right-time-right-place factors probably dominate over the musical ones discussed below, but you don't get this kind of peak without a perfect storm, including the record being really, really, easy to edit with.

Code: Select all

Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
--
title               videos runtime  tempo   meter riffs     tempo changes
------------------- ------ -------  -----   ----- -------   -------------
Papercut              385   3:04    120      4/4  3 riffs   0 tempo change
One Step Closer       347   2:36    120      4/4  4 riffs   ~1 tempo change*
With You              173   3:23    120      4/4  3 riffs   0 tempo change
Points of Authority   272   3:20    120      4/4  2.5 riffs 1.5 tempo change**
Crawling              427   3:29    120      4/4  3 riffs   0 tempo change
Runaway               153   3:04    120      4/4  4 riffs   0 tempo change
By Myself             153   3:09    120/100  4/4  4 riffs   1 tempo change
In The End           1020   3:36    120      4/4  4 riffs   0 tempo change
A Place For My Head   210   3:04    140/120  4/4  3 riffs   2 tempo change***
Forgotten             115   3:14    120      4/4  3 riffs   0 tempo change
Cure For The Itch      76   2:37    120      4/4  4 riffs   0 tempo change
Pushing Me Away       140   3:12    120      4/4  3 riffs   0 tempo change

* there's a couple "breakdown"s in this song, but they contain no content
** the sting at the end of this one, counting as half a tempo change, is the only legit aggressive riff on this record
*** starts at 140 and actually swaps a couple times, wow

All timings are approximate, but since nearly everything on this disc is ~120, it's not worth bothering to actually put a metronome on it. You can check them yourself by counting along as long as your watch has a seconds hand; everything is in 4/4 so you don't need to worry about counting wrong. There is some double-counting in the numbers of .org-catalogued videos (videos using more than one song off this album), but yes, there are more videos with songs from this record (O(3450)) than from the next most-used artist.

Longest song on this one is "In The End" at barely over 3 1/2 minutes. Woo, meaty. The average song has about 3.4 riffs, all of which are usually at the same tempo. There are only about 5 recognizable tempo changes on the entire album. I knew this was a simplistic record, even for nu-metal, but until cutting in like this, I didn't realize just how simple.

The time and tempo are the real killers: every goddamned thing is in 4/4; not exactly unusual for mainstream music, but easy and regular. More importantly, practically everything is at 120bpm. If you cut strictly on the 4s (which few newbies have the discipline to do, but it's still not especially challenging), this is 2 spc. (For the math impaired: 120 beats per minute = 2 beats per second, 4 beats in a 4/4 measure, 2 seconds of video to cover said measure.) This is wicked doable, and when your beats are on strict seconds, this plays into the way animation cuts are composed -- mostly in increments of half-seconds. (If you cut source instead of scanning through eps, check and see how many cuts of 24, 36, and 48 frames you're getting, or other stuff that divides evenly by 12.) Just by closure, stuff is going to synch when you're working in this tempo.

So, record with short, angsty, incredibly simple songs almost entirely in a moderate 4? It'd be hard to make an album more suited to newbie overuse if that was the intended purpose.

--K

[Scintilla]

So I really paid no attention to when their albums came out, nor to their popularity for that matter. It's only around 2003, when I started getting into AMVs, that they caught my attention. In a bad way, of course.

I paid no attention because my only exposure to popular music back then was (1) the top-40 radio station played on the school bus, which never played LP, and (2) school dances and birthday parties, which never included them either.

Admittedly I've only heard a very few of their songs, but I never quite understood why nobody around here seems to like them. I mean, I've seen some well-edited videos to their music (one of which was an Otakon winner in 2004) that really did a great job matching the sense of frustration and rage that the band does so well.

[MycathatesyouAMV]

I was 8 ._.

[Enigma]

2nd grade |: