Dropped Frames, Vol. 1

Template:Infobox album Dropped Frames, Vol. 1, released July 10, 2020, is the first series of instrumental releases by Mike Shinoda of his CoronaJams music.

Background

In March 2020, the global pandemic created by the COVID-19 coronavirus caused communities to quarantine at home. During this time, Mike Shinoda decided to start live streaming online and inviting fans to watch him create new instrumental music.

Mike began on March 17, 2020 when he did an Instagram Live about a song he was working on titled "Open Door. In this stream, Mike recorded guitar for the song and shared updates on the track. The next day he went online again and a fan in the chat asked him to create a song from scratch. He accepted and created what would become the first CoronaJam. So he decided to quickly mix the "Open Door" demo and text it to fans via the Community app, along with instrumental and stems but also the track he did earlier.

The streams were originally called "Beat Making Demos" but then Mike shifted to the tag "CoronaJams." He then said in June when communities were starting to reopen that he stopped calling them CoronaJams as he felt that it wasn't an appropriate name for them any longer.

March 25th was the last stream via Instagram Live as on March 27th Mike shifted to Twitch, using Restream to also broadcast on YouTube, Facebook and Periscope. When he shifted to Twitch, he started using a Streamlab extension which allowed fans to collect points during the stream, called "Shinodabucks", that can be redeemed to ask questions or request a style for the jam. When he got too many requests he started writing all of them on sheets he put in the "Bowl of Destiny", picking randomly the themes and sometimes choosing to mashup some of them in the same track. Other prizes were gradually added like the chance to request an art theme, get a Twitch follow or an Animal Crossing visite by Mike himself, choose a Twitch channel to raid or a sound/loop to use in the tracks.

At times, Mike has streamed calls with other musicians, such as Jason Butler from Fever333, Phoenix, Dan Mayo and grandson.

The stream on April 21st was a drawing stream done from Mike's iPad. He encouraged fans to color in his drawing and then tweet it back at him using the hashtag #CoronaDrawing. He later started doing more art streams, also drawing the album cover for the release.

On May 5th he added another stream category, doing for the first time an Animal Crossing livestream.

On June 19th, Mike said, "As I get ready to release this stuff, as I get ready to put stuff out, if you or anybody that you're friends with or whatever are dancers, even like, I have always for a few years now I have been wanting people to dance like legit dance to my shit. Because I don't dance, I can't dance. There were a couple of points where I was trying to make a video or two with hiring a dancer who is legit, like interpret the thing and dance. If you're good enough to do a short choreographed TikTok dance to any of this, that's a gold mine for my brain. Something like that that I can't do that you can do, I love it so much. Please, give me good dance videos. My TikTok is for you. You give me the videos, I will post them on my TikTok, my TikTok will be nothing but you dancing to this music. That's the magic. I don't care if it's ballet, in fact I want it to be like, hip hop and ballet."

On June 23rd, Mike tweeted, "Hey guys. Just heard about the #TWITCHBLACKOUT / I’ll be abstaining from streaming tomorrow out of respect for those protesting racism, abuse, and sexual harassment. Please support those who deserve to be heard and decide to stream / post tomorrow." This followed Mike also taking off June 2nd for the Black Lives Matter "Blackout Tuesday" movement.

Composition

Mike's "CoronaJams" were based on unique themes or ideas that Mike is inspired by, or fan requests. The first theme-based jam was a "Hybrid Theory" style track, followed by the first fan request, a "Reanimation" style song. Another Linkin Park album was a theme, "A Thousand Suns". A lot of different genres were experimented, 90s hip-hop, electronic and pop from the 80's, symphonic metal, grunge, doo wop, pop punk, reggae, industrial, k-pop, traditional styles as well, like Indian or Mexican music, dabke or Italian neomelodic.

Sometimes Mike started with loops from other artists, like a jam from a Money Mark's Instagram post, some drums recorded with Dan Mayo or a beat created by Elise Trouw.

On April 29th, Mike revisited earlier CoronaJams from the original Instagram Live streams. As he began working through them, the recent files on his computer showed that he started giving names to some of the tracks. One of them, "King Paprika" was mentioned by a fan in the comments on June 5, Mike noticed it saying that he changed the title.

Throughout April, May, and June, Mike continuously went live on Twitch to work on songs. On June 26, 2020, it was revealed that he had already composed at least 47 jams.

Track Listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	Open Door	Shinoda Michael Kenji	3:05
2	Super Galaxtica	Shinoda	2:29
3	Duckbot	Shinoda
4	Cupcake Cake	Shinoda
5	El Rey Demonio	Shinoda
6	Doodle Buzz	Shinoda
7	Channeling Pt. 1 feat. Dan Mayo	Shinoda
8	Osiris	Shinoda	3:18
9	Babble Bobble	Shinoda
10	Session McSessionface	Shinoda
11	Neon Crickets	Shinoda
12	Booty Down	Shinoda

Personnel

• Mike Shinoda