Chapter 098: Lead Singer

Recording the theme song for the Lobster Festival was, to Zhang Tan’s surprise, both simpler and more complicated than he had imagined.

The complicated part was that recording a single song involved an absurd number of steps.

First, the creator had to write both the lyrics and the melody. In artistic work, the order of lyric-writing and composition could be reversed; but for a commissioned song, the lyrics had to come first, and the music written afterward. Many singers, especially those who called themselves “songwriters,” simply bought the lyrics outright from someone else and then hired another person to set them to music, all under the proud banner of originality.

Lyrics and melody usually went through countless revisions. The words would be changed to fit the tune, and sometimes the tune would be adjusted so the lyrics could be sung to perfection. But in general, the lyrics had to bend to the music, because Chinese had four tones and rich rhyme schemes, making it more flexible and easier to alter the words than to alter the melody.

Composition was usually followed by a demo. On a computer, a rough version of the song would be made with MIDI, basically a simple humming guide. This let the client hear the beat, the pitch, the transitions, the mood, and so on, so they could get a clear sense of whether the song was good or bad.

That step was called making a demo.

Once the demo passed muster, the real arrangement began.

Many lyricists and composers could write melodies but could not arrange them, and Zhang Tan was undoubtedly one of them. Because of the memories from his previous life, he knew a rough melody and had written the tune accordingly. But he had no idea how to arrange it.

The hardest part of arranging was solving the instrumentation: which instruments should be used to express the song, where each instrument should come in, what part each one should play, and so on. Only after the arranger had completed the score and assigned the parts could each instrument be exported onto separate tracks and handed to the recording engineer.

If a live band was brought in to play real instruments, each musician also had to be given a written part.

Once the score was ready, the singer and the band could be brought into the studio. Usually, the live instruments were recorded first, and after each player had finished, the backing track would be assembled by the mixing engineer. Many singers could not read music and needed the accompaniment to guide them; otherwise, they would drift off-key before long.

In short, once the live instruments, electronic instruments, and vocals had all been recorded on separate tracks, and the producer and the others were satisfied with every aspect, the mixer would combine everything into a final mix and complete the recording. After that came mastering, duplication onto discs, and release for sale.

If one wanted a polished song with high audio quality, every one of those steps required a great deal of time and repeated correction.

That was the complexity of recording a song.

But clearly, "Spicy Little Lobster" did not demand such lofty standards.

Nor did Liu Yicheng’s studio have the resources to refine every detail so painstakingly. Everything was simplified, and there was no need to master a final disc; an audio file would do.

After all, this was not an album for Zhang Tan. It was only a song to be used for promotion and playback.

With the process streamlined, recording a song seemed far simpler in Zhang Tan’s eyes.

Liu Yicheng was a music producer himself and knew how to arrange music. The first decision was to make the guitar the main instrument, with electronic sounds added appropriately in some sections.

Then Zhang Tan could first play the tune on guitar and use MIDI to create a separate instrumental track, which would then be blended with the electronic sounds to form the accompaniment.

The mixing engineer in the studio was a thin young man with dyed blond hair, but he moved with astonishing speed and had several backing tracks finished before noon.

Each version used a different combination of instruments, and Liu Yicheng needed to hear the results before deciding which accompaniment to use.

After a busy morning, the recording of the backing tracks finally ended at twelve-thirty in the afternoon.

The main part used steel-string guitar accompaniment, while some sections included grand piano, synthesizer bass, and alto saxophone.

...

After the accompaniment was finished, someone brought up several boxed lunches, and the others continued recording.

It was Zhang Tan’s first time recording a song.

His excitement had not yet faded, and he cooperated very well.

Perhaps because he was too excited, once he put on the headphones, he kept singing off-key. There was none of the excellent performance he had shown when improvising with a guitar in his hands. He could clearly read the score and hear the backing track in his headphones, but he simply could not keep up with the singing rhythm. Or if he managed to keep the rhythm, he failed to bring in the emotion.

“You’re recording for the first time, so you’re nervous,” Liu Yicheng said, unsurprised. “Relax. We’re just going to help you get into the right state this afternoon. We’re not in a hurry to record yet, got it? Recording is actually very simple. Sing the way you normally sing. You’ve got the talent to write your own songs—why would you be afraid of singing badly?”

Having run a music studio for many years, Liu Yicheng had seen too many newcomers come in to record and run into all kinds of problems. He naturally had his own way of handling it. Since he said Zhang Tan needed time to adjust, he let Zhang Tan spend the whole afternoon finding his feel.

And Zhang Tan did not display any miraculous protagonist’s aura of instant mastery.

He spent the entire afternoon groping his way forward.

It was not until evening that he slowly began to find his rhythm.

“Phew.”

It was already pitch-black outside, and the clock showed half past ten at night.

Zhang Tan took off his headphones and let out a long breath. “Brother Liu, how is it? Can we do it now?”

“Mm, much better. Rest up tonight and settle your condition. Tomorrow we can officially start recording.”

With that approval, Zhang Tan’s tense heart finally relaxed. He called out to the several studio staff members who had been fighting alongside him and said, “Thanks for your hard work, everyone. Dinner’s on me. Let’s go out for a late-night snack.”

So the four or five of them went out laughing and joking to eat supper.

While they were eating, Liu Yicheng also took out a score and said to Zhang Tan, “While you were getting into shape, I reworked The Stone of Hefei and made a MIDI demo. The more I listen, the more flavor it has. What do you say, Zhang Tan? How about selling me this song?”

Zhang Tan asked curiously, “Brother Liu wants to sing too?”

“Heh heh.” Liu Yicheng smiled awkwardly.

The recording engineer and mixing engineer, the blond-haired one beside him, jumped in. “Big Liu didn’t tell you? We formed a band before, but because we never had inspiration and couldn’t write our own songs, we were barely scraping by. Now that Big Liu has opened this studio, we’ve all drifted into the background, but honestly, we still want to get onstage and perform.”

“You still have a band now, Brother Liu?” Zhang Tan looked at Liu Yicheng, who was already in his mid-thirties and almost forty, and could not have imagined that this man still had such a passionate heart for music.

Liu Yicheng lit a cigarette and took a drag before saying, “When I was young, I loved music, and I tried to be a rocker! But after all those years, I accomplished nothing. No one liked the songs I wrote, and even the bars where I sang as a resident act looked down on me. But if you like something, you like it, right? ...The band has always been there. I just couldn’t bear to break it up. The lineup has changed over time. Blondie, A Cheng, and Xiao Yu are all young—they’ve only been in the band for a short while.”

Blondie was the recording engineer, true to his nickname, with a full head of dyed blond hair.

Xiao Yu was the lanky fellow with glasses, who handled the keyboard and equipment repairs in the studio.

A Cheng was the errand runner, a little fat and a little slow-witted.

Zhang Tan looked at them one by one and honestly could not see much of a band’s style in them. “What’s the band called?”

Blondie answered at once. “It used to be called Road, but now it doesn’t have a name.”

Liu Yicheng then explained, “The ‘Road’ in the name was our former lead singer, Lu Xiaowei. He’s gone to Shenchuan now, and we haven’t heard a thing from him since. The ‘Yi’ was me. Now that everyone’s gone, the name changed too, but since we still haven’t released a single work, we’ve put the renaming on hold for now.”

After a pause, Liu Yicheng suddenly said, “I play drums in the band, Blondie plays bass, Xiao Yu is on keyboard, and A Cheng is lead guitar. We’re still missing a lead singer. Xiao Zhang, why don’t you join us too? Lead singer and guitarist—that suits you perfectly. Our first release could be your song, The Stone of Hefei!”