Damn Idol Episode 164
Album 1
5. Self Made
The format of the variety program we were filming,
In Season 1, we had to earn money through music in Korea while hiding the name Sedalbaegil.
In Season 2, we would take the money we’d earned and go on an overseas busking trip.
The reason I said “overseas” was because originally it had been Spain, but it seemed like it might change to the United States.
Producer Kang Seokwoo had contacted Eddie just in case, and Eddie had readily agreed to appear, so he was apparently thinking it over.
From my perspective, it was kind of absurd that the travel destination of a program could change just because Eddie was appearing.
But that was purely my perspective.
To me, he was someone I’d gotten to know over dozens of rounds, but to the public, he was a composer at the very top of Billboard.
I heard the documentary HBO was filming was almost finished too, so if that became popular, Eddie’s appearance fee might climb even higher.
Anyway, the structure was that we earned money in Season 1 and spent money in Season 2, but if you looked at the program’s intent, there were more detailed elements to it.
Producer Kang Seokwoo wanted to show our usual selves and the music we made.
In some respects, it seemed like he was also trying to take the form of a documentary that conveyed information.
That was why they had filmed the university festival where we became famous for performing every track on our album, as well as our fan signing event.
Oh, these days, among Time Travelers, they call it a “fan satisfaction meeting” instead of a “fan signing event.”
We’d held three so far, and two more were scheduled in Gyeonggi-do next week.
Anyway, until now, they had filmed a lot about the main entity known as “Sedalbaegil,” but now it was time to film our mission.
“Choi Jaeseong.”
“Yes?”
“What should we do first?”
“Hmm, shouldn’t we decide on names first? We can’t work as So-and-so of Sedalbaegil.”
Mm, good point.
In the music industry, it’s common to decide on a stage name for another persona inside yourself.
People naturally have dual sides, and singers can express that.
Eminem has Slim Shady, an amplified version of his violent persona, and Kanye West has Ye, symbolizing his own success story.
The brand modeled after that is the famous Yeezy, and—
“……
No, hyung.”
“Hm?”
“I just meant we should casually pick names for our alternate characters……”
Just as I was feeling slightly embarrassed at Choi Jaeseong’s words, Lee Ion clapped his hands once.
“Then should we decide on stage names?”
“Stage names?”
“We don’t have stage names because we made our names known on Coming Up Next.”
True, we’d had to decide on a team name, but no one had told us to decide on stage names.
Since we were a project group anyway, Choi Daeho probably intended to decide them after the show and debut us that way.
“What do you want to use, Sion?”
“Zion.”
I’d used this name every time, after all.
“Oh, I just wanted to use Ion.”
Come to think of it, if Ion hyung had debuted under a normal company, there was a high chance he would’ve been given the name Ion.
It was his real name, and he looked like an ion drink.
On Saemiro also felt like he would’ve kept his name as is, while only Choi Jaeseong and Gu Taehwan would’ve changed a bit.
On Saemiro said he’d wanted to go with “Miro,” and Choi Jaeseong said “Vib.”
He didn’t tell us the meaning, but I could roughly guess.
When Choi Daeho had been attacking Sedalbaegil, I’d looked into the members’ backgrounds a bit.
Rather than digging up dirt, I’d done it in case there were weaknesses I could erase.
No, was that digging up dirt?
In any case, I pretended not to know.
Gu Taehwan didn’t seem to have any particular thoughts.
Since he’d made a living off mushrooms, he asked if he could go with Mushroom and got criticized by the members.
Wouldn’t Toadstool be better than Mushroom?
Mushroom refers to edible mushrooms, and Toadstool refers to poisonous ones.
That’s cooler, isn’t it?
But I didn’t bother saying it.
I felt like I’d get criticized along with him.
In any case, Gu Taehwan’s name was decided as Mushroom.
Since we had to hide our identities while filming Self Made anyway, the opinion was that the more ridiculous it was, the better.
Gu Taehwan tried to argue that it wasn’t ridiculous, but no one listened.
After that, On Saemiro chose Miro, and Choi Jaeseong chose Vib.
Now only Ion hyung and I had to decide, and I just decided to go with LOOP.
Because I was a regressor.
“I’m the only one left? I don’t have any ideas. What should I do?”
“How about something simple, like Mimo?”
“Mimo?”
Anyone could tell Choi Jaeseong was joking, but surprisingly, Lee Ion seemed to like the word.
Man, he really had a defined character.
But he said Mimo was a bit much and decided on Mimyo.
I didn’t ask whether it was the mimyo from “subtle,” or “beautiful cat.”
If it was the latter, I didn’t think I’d feel very good about it.
We’d decided on names like that, but honestly, it was just because we were in front of the camera.
I didn’t know if there would be any situation where these names would actually be used.
“Then how are we supposed to make money now?”
At On Saemiro’s words, Choi Jaeseong opened his mouth.
“Wouldn’t busking be the easiest?”
“Again?”
“Something like personal streaming? We can wear masks. Oh, we could make a YouTube channel and upload cover songs too.”
“Again?”
“Umm…… SoundCloud?”
“SoundCloud doesn’t make money.”
“Part-time job singing congratulatory songs at weddings!”
“If we disguise our faces, it’s possible. But aren’t those handled by agencies?”
As I watched the members chatter, Gu Taehwan singled me out and asked.
“What about you, Sion? During the program meeting, you looked confident.”
It went without saying, but even if I started as an unknown singer, I was confident I could earn hundreds of millions of won in a year.
But to do that, I’d have to endlessly repeat the process of writing songs and selling them.
You didn’t need teammates for that kind of thing.
I could just compose alone, make guides, and sell them.
No matter how much Producer Kang Seokwoo had told us not to worry about making good television and to keep it real, wouldn’t that be too boring?
So at first, I intended to follow the members’ opinions.
When I told them that, the members thought for a moment and nodded.
“True. Sion’s composing is too much of a cheat.”
“But Sion, how did you end up selling songs to Drop Out sunbaenim and NOP sunbaenim?”
“I uploaded them on SoundCloud, and the A&R team contacted me. The person who contacted me back then was Director Seo Seunghyeon, who was the BVB team leader at the time.”
“Oh, so that connection brought you all the way here?”
“That’s right.”
I was the one who’d thought of selling to Drop Out, but it wasn’t wrong.
“Okay. Then let’s start by doing everything we can.”
With that, the members began planning various jobs with energetic expressions.
To get special makeup done to hide our faces, we had to contact the broadcasting station in advance.
So first, we decided who would go out.
Lee Ion and Gu Taehwan decided to busk, and Choi Jaeseong decided to do an internet broadcast.
Wearing the mask he’d worn during the filming of the State of Mind music video.
On Saemiro said he’d look into part-time wedding singing jobs.
“What are you going to do, Sion?”
“I’ll compose a bit.”
And so the members began moving with their respective plans.
“I’ll ask them to make Ion hyung look ugly.”
“Why?”
“It’s fine to be ugly for a day.”
Saying that, Gu Taehwan contacted the broadcasting station with Lee Ion and disappeared, while Choi Jaeseong called CEO Lee Hyeonseok of LB Studio.
He said he was going to get tips about personal internet broadcasting.
For reference, these days Lee Hyeonseok was focusing more on his own content than on content about Sedalbaegil.
It was an evolved version of what he’d been doing originally: content that discovered unknown singers.
It wasn’t as if an enormous number of people watched his broadcasts like before, but he seemed to be enjoying it.
The agency was showing a lot of interest too.
Come to think of it, CEO Lee Hyeonseok might look careless, but he had more influence in the industry than one would think.
While Choi Jaeseong was making his call, On Saemiro began searching for wedding song agencies.
But to be honest, everyone seemed kind of half-baked.
To me, someone who’d lived in show business for dozens of rounds, none of them looked very reliable.
Still, I decided to trust the members for now, went into my room, and began composing in front of the camera.
“When I compose, I usually do it in two ways. One is composing with a singer already decided. The other is composing with a main melody already decided. In this case, I’m just composing without either, so should we start by deciding on the main melody?”
Producer Kang Seokwoo had said it would be nice to have some in-depth footage about my composing method.
“We need to make a main melody, and I have a reference. This video is from the fan signing event we held a few days ago……”
The video showed our fans shouting our cheer phrase during the performance.
At the first fan signing event, the fans hadn’t known anything, but from the second one on, they also understood how things worked.
So they prepared events for us, and this was one of them.
Right before we moved to the gymnasium to perform, the fans had shouted it in unison.
“Let’s tweak this a bit and make a main melody. I haven’t thought about how I’ll do it yet either.”
But I was confident in extracting melodies from specific sounds.
After all, even
I sampled the fans’ voices and raised the pitch, but it wasn’t good.
Since the voices of several people were already mixed together at a high pitch, lowering it would be better.
I lowered the pitch like that, tweaked the EQ a little, then stopped.
“The sound itself is good, but the method of composing feels too similar to K-Pop Struggle.”
K-Pop Struggle had also been lo-fi with a pitched-down chipmunk sound.
If I did it this way, the methodology would be too identical, so I didn’t like it.
“Hmm. I’ll try matching harmonies instead.”
Over the screaming voices shouting the cheer phrase, I added precise harmonies with my own voice.
There were no lyrics; I simply matched it with humming, going “mm— mm—.”
That didn’t mean I matched it to obvious chords, though. I made it a bit complex.
This was probably the final realm Lee Ion could reach.
The level of being able to hit even a quarter tone precisely with one’s voice.
Could Lee Ion do it too if he had just two or three more years?
“It’s pretty good. This time, I’ll put compression on it.”
After that, I refined the melody using various methods and finally extracted a main melody I liked.
Making a song with that didn’t take long.
People seemed to think I composed songs with a clear sense of purpose, but that wasn’t actually true.
The song that had been entangled with the masters was special; normally, I composed whenever I had free time.
Sometimes I made songs for the first time in this life, and sometimes I made songs I’d liked in past lives.
That was the only way the well of composition wouldn’t run dry.
After all, this life would also become a past life in the next round.
Around the time I’d nearly finished the guide version of the song, a KakaoTalk message from Gu Taehwan appeared in the group chat.
[Sedalbaegil Gu Taehwan (20): (Photo)(Photo)(Photo)]
[Sedalbaegil Lee Ion (21): Ah....]
It was Ion hyung’s face after the makeup was done, and it was truly strange.
He wasn’t ugly because of the original face, but should I say it was like they’d put ugly toppings on top of handsomeness?
Or should I say they’d put handsome toppings on top of ugliness?
It was truly subtle.
Ah, was that why he was Mimyo?
Laughing, I showed the photos posted in the group chat to the camera and focused on composing again.
By the time the day ended, the members gathered back at the dorm.
Shockingly, the money earned from busking was minus 3,700 won.
The food had cost more.
The highest number of viewers for Choi Jaeseong’s personal broadcast was three, and apparently two of them cursed him out and left.
Saying he was filthy bad at singing.
Lastly, On Saemiro had done nothing but make phone calls all day.
I thought things would get better the next day, but they didn’t.
It was still the same, and the day after that was the same too.
And by the fourth day, our profit and loss had reached a staggering minus 110,000 won.
“It’s okay. Tomorrow will be better!”
On Saemiro said that after paying a 30,000 won registration fee to some agency.
“……”
I’d planned to let the members do whatever they wanted for about a week, but it didn’t seem like that would work.
At this rate, we’d look like kids who knew nothing about the world.
“Everyone, gather around.”
(Ongoing)