Linkin Park - Session

Some songs are an act of creation. They start with a simple beat then layer and layer until they’re complex and towering. 

Trent Reznor works this way. Look at “In Motion” from The Social Network soundtrack. From :00 to :08 is the bass drum and bass line. :08 adds digital champagne bubbles. :15 adds snare. :23 fades in and unfolds a new rhythmic strand. :38 adds the actual melody. 

"In Motion"'s melody is a metaphor for musical creation. There is such a large gap between the first two notes and the third that it feels like the songwriter searches for and discovers that third note as he plays. Adding to this effect is that the third note, an A, is the dominant of the melody’s D chord. This means we expect the third note’s pitch before we even hear it. We are observers hoping for the song to find its way, happy when the song finds its melody, participating in the act of creation. 

Linkin Park’s "Session" takes this creation metaphor to another level. Not only does it build on itself layer by layer, but the instruments chosen for each layer and the melodies, beats and harmonies all contribute to the idea of creation. The effect is like listening to a creative process. 

"Session"’s foundation (from :00 to :17) is the music of the spheres - eerie, beautiful and solitary. This effect is achieved with what sounds like a water glass, an elegant pre-instrument that makes sound through revolutions. 

Drum precursors snare in at :08. At :17 they solidify into a dream beat, like stardust into planets. 

The drums are forceful, but also stumble and stutter, fade out and malfunction. There are mistakes: muffled drumbeats  (at :31, :32 and :34) and a mechanical stuttering familiar to anyone who had a Discman before skip protection (at :43, :57, 1:14, 1:30 and 1:50). 

Listeners, at least in the early digital days, were preconditioned to cringe when they heard muffled beats or skipping. They expected the song to cut out, that they’d have to open the CD player and clean the disk with their shirt and hope for the best. 

Linkin Park manipulates this fear. Each time that drum muffled or skipped, you were conditioned to expect the music to cut out. But “Session”’s drumbeat impossibly fights through. 

This is a creator’s drumbeat. Insistent, and plowing though malfunction. There must be purpose or confidence driving the drum that steamrolls through the missteps and errors. 

At :39 the synth strings play the chords progression. At :57 is a suspenseful drum malfunction, but the song pushes through and layers on a melody and a bass. 

At this point “Session” is a bona fide instrumental track - it’s built from a water glass to a drumbeat, to synth chords, to bass, to keyboard melody. It’s fulfilled it’s formal requirements. 

Now it can add its own layer of expression, it’s true voice, which comes in the form of a turntable. The first hint of a turntable is a little echoing blast, almost in the background at :57, which returns at 1:07.  

From 1:18 to 1:35 is a suspenseful breakdown section, achieved by collapsing the 3 chord progression into 1 sustained chord.  

The turntable echoes in the background of this transition: will it get to see the light of the day? 

Finally the music kicks back in at 1:35 with a hyperspeed drum roll and an aggressive turntable scratch. 

From 1:35 to 1:55 the turntable gets to express itself. It sounds so much like human speech, like an impassioned voice defiantly having its say. It sounds like what the drumbeat has drove towards the whole time. This is what it struggled through those errors and malfunctions, this is what it fulfilled it's formal requirements, for the chance to say. 

But at 1:55, the drumbeat falls out, and the turntable keeps going, taking an unhinged life of its own. It’s transcended the beat, it’s defied gravity, it’s forgotten all about the rules of the past. 

It all finally catches up to him at the end at 2:16 there’s a dial tone death rattle. 

The ending impression is like watching a man come from nothing, persevere and persevere to create beauty, and then go off the deep end.