Damn Idol Episode 6
* * *
I believe in the power of music.
That’s why I believe good music will always succeed.
Honestly, this isn’t a matter of believing or not believing.
It absolutely has to be that way.
If not, wouldn’t my long regression be a meaningless wandering dependent on luck?
So I devoted a great deal of time to honing my composition skills, and I believe they’re complete now.
I’m not saying every song I write will be a hit.
I’m saying there’s no one who can express the music I imagine better than I can.
But what I was imagining now wasn’t any melody or sound.
It was my friends.
First, GOTM’s drummer.
Andrew Geon.
I played the drums while picturing Andrew Geon’s usual self.
*Thud-thud-thud-thud!*
Andrew tended to be serious and earnest, but he liked funky music.
If ordinary drummers loved the sound of kick drums or snare drums, this guy was an oddball who loved hi-hats.
And his sense of rhythm was top-notch.
When he’d toy with ghost notes before suddenly unleashing a thunderous sound, it was exhilarating.
I tried to capture Andrew Geon’s feel exactly in
But since I can’t play drums, I tracked it with virtual instruments.
*Ziiiiing—!*
I played the electric guitar myself in guitarist Dave Logan’s style.
What would you call this guy? A kind pessimist?
His head was full of all kinds of negative thoughts, yet he was kind in his relationships with others.
Even if the whole world buzzed that we’d become Grammy winners, even if people were curious how many categories we’d sweep since the awards were already decided…
“We won’t win. We’re not the kind of traditional band the Grammys like.”
He was a guy who’d resigned himself to never winning an award on his own.
Dave’s guitar was flashy.
No matter how much the guitar stands out most in a band, I’d never seen a guy stand out as flashily as Dave.
An attention-seeking pessimist.
At one point, to break him of his habits, I’d given him a rhythm guitar part where he just had to strum chords, but he’d strum away energetically while even doing air swings.
An absolute lunatic.
But that’s exactly why he was a performer who suited the guitar—called the orchestra of six strings—so perfectly.
Next, I captured the feel of the bassist and keyboardist.
There was nothing particularly difficult about it.
What was surprising was that I’d expected a funky song when I started composing, but once I actually made it, it turned out to be a rhythmic song.
With electronic sounds at its center giving off a rhythmic feel, the public might call it funky.
But when you get down to compositional intent, funkiness and rhythmicness are as different as heaven and earth.
It seems like a song that’s good for dancing too?
I hadn’t been planning to make idol music, but if I layered the pre-hook and chorus with a simple yet addictive top line, it seemed like it would fit well.
Since I’d already moved away from funkiness anyway, I thought it’d be good to take the overall rhythm of the song in 2/4.
Because as far as I knew, Black music rhythms were the trend in Korea around this time.
Maybe this could become my idol debut song.
Because it’s my conviction that songs commemorating my past life are ones I sing myself, not give to others.
And so, sound began stacking up neatly, layer by layer.
* * *
Lee Hyeonseok, the owner of LB Studio, was a producer who’d been big in the early 2000s.
Among the songs he’d produced were some that pretty much every citizen would recognize if they heard them.
He’d received top-tier treatment like that, but what made him decide to retire was when idol music armed with hook songs took over the music industry.
Whether he’d fallen behind the times, the idol songs he made simply wouldn’t sell.
There were songs that barely sold, but they flopped miserably.
It was a natural course of events for a producer left behind by the times to open a studio with the money he’d already earned and the connections he’d built up.
Life as a studio owner that started that way was pretty good.
For one, business was good.
With a fuller wallet, his mind grew more at ease, and as he helped talented indie musicians, he came to be regarded as an elder brother figure in the scene.
Entertainment business cards piled up too, from people telling him to contact them anytime he had a musician to recommend.
The reason Lee Hyeonseok came into the studio on a weekend was because of his part-time worker’s persistent phone calls.
The kid had been screaming that a monster had appeared.
“Uncle!”
“At the shop, it’s ‘Boss’.”
“Uncle Boss!”
“…What.”
“Hurry up and listen to this. It’s insane, I’m telling you.”
As he took the monitoring headphones his nephew held out, Lee Hyeonseok had conflicting thoughts.
First, that there was no way a boy named Han Sion was really a monster.
There were over ten entertainment companies famous enough that you’d know them by name, and about twenty more where you might not know the name but you’d know their singers.
On top of that, there were probably around twenty companies that avoided deficits, and around twenty that were in the red but holding on.
Meaning there were an enormous number of companies raising singers.
And this was only talking about proper companies; if you included startups, the number swelled to hundreds.
All of them were eagerly searching for talented kids.
A twenty-year-old monster?
No way would such a kid rent a studio with his own money.
The companies would have already snatched him up.
But the fact that his nephew was a music major nagged at him, so he couldn’t just think that way.
He was still a student, but he’d chosen music as his career.
He wouldn’t marvel at music that wasn’t even up to basic standards.
‘But then again, the albums of the idols he stans are trash.’
With that kind of contradictory thought, Lee Hyeonseok began listening to the music flowing from the headphones.
It was exactly five minutes.
What shocked Lee Hyeonseok was—
“Holy shit, what is this?”
“It’s awesome, right? Seriously awesome?”
“H-hold on. Let me listen more.”
But Lee Hyeonseok’s shock didn’t subside.
If anything, it amplified.
The fact that he was impossibly good was surprising enough, but even more astonishing was the diversity created by a single person.
How could he produce such varied sounds and such varied feels?
The moment he heard the gentle guitar melody at the beginning, an album cover came to mind unbidden.
Refreshing music with a blue sea rippling against a backdrop of pure white sand.
But then, the guitar riff suddenly shifted to a feeling like a needle piercing through.
Incredibly aggressive.
It felt like being attacked in the vitals with a fencing foil, and it was breathtakingly sharp.
No matter what drums were layered on top, the guitar riff felt like it would be the star.
If you looped it and threw some drums on top before tossing it to rappers, all hell would break loose.
While he was thinking that, a bass performance suddenly came through.
He thought someone had put on a Victor Wooten recording.
If not for the occasional mistouch, it was a grooviness that was hard to believe a Korean had played.
What was even more surprising was that these diverse changes whipped back and forth without any particular anchor point.
Having no external anchor point means there’s an internal anchor point.
In other words, he might be technically unknown, but mentally, he was already a complete musician.
‘A superhuman has appeared!’
He’d believed that someday a superhuman on a white horse would appear in the Korean indie scene.
But that superhuman was in his studio.
“Except for a quick nap on the break room couch in between, he’s been tracking this song for over 30 hours… I think he’s crazy.”
“He’s handsome? And twenty?”
“Yeah. He looks like an idol.”
“You… you didn’t steal the chords, right?”
“Are you crazy?! No!”
It was something that happened from time to time.
Stealing chords or melodies heard in the studio and using them.
If even a single rumor like that spread, the studio would go under.
Lee Hyeonseok hadn’t asked this because he really thought his nephew had stolen the chords.
It was because he’d wanted to steal them himself.
They were melodies that made him want to steal them the moment he heard them and claim them as his own.
He’d asked to restrain himself.
“Uncle, remember when that entertainment company came by last time? They said they wanted to form a band. Asked you to contact them if you had anyone.”
“They did.”
“Let’s recommend him! He’s insane!”
“…”
The company would definitely snatch him up.
But did someone who made music of this caliber really need to?
The entertainment company had only said “band,” but the omitted word was obvious.
(Idol) band.
One where looks mattered more than performance, and variety skills mattered more than composition.
Would a place like that suit this kid?
Wouldn’t he become an incredible producer with just a little support?
If he wanted to be a star rather than a producer, he could form an indie band.
Given the nature of the Korean market, to become a superstar he’d need the power of broadcasting.
But completing his own music and going to broadcasting was a completely different matter from becoming an entertainment company trainee.
‘At that level, he must have poured everything into playing, so he probably can’t sing. If I just find him one incredible vocalist…’
Becoming like that famous sibling musician duo wasn’t a dream either.
It was the moment Lee Hyeonseok was thinking such thoughts.
The door to Studio A opened and Han Sion appeared.
His nephew had been right.
He was handsome.
Even though you could see he was exhausted from working overnight, he had an attractive face.
Han Sion approached the desk and opened his mouth.
“Can I order delivery here?”
“Ah, yes. If you eat it in the break room…”
“Thank you.”
“E-excuse me. Student!”
“Yes?”
His voice was good too.
Maybe he had some vocal ability as well.
“I’m the owner here. Where did you learn music?”
“I’m self-taught.”
“…You can do that by self-study?”
“Yes, well. I just kept at it.”
“The songs you played are originals, right? Are you taking composition sessions?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. I just help out when I see talented musicians…”
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
Cool.
He’d approached countless musicians before, but this was the first time he’d gotten a reaction like this.
Even if he didn’t know Lee Hyeonseok had been a producer, he was still the owner of a big studio like this.
Just then, his nephew cut in.
“My uncle is the one who made that. Toothbrush!”
A representative Korean rock ballad that had dominated the early 2000s and even won at a music awards ceremony.
It had been remade many times and was frequently chosen for audition programs, so even students these days knew it.
Sure enough, Han Sion’s eyes changed slightly.
Perhaps he’d been so surprised by the immense talent that he’d approached him so brazenly he might have looked like a scammer.
“Do you happen to have a company you’re signed with?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then I think I might be able to help you a bit. Ah, I’m not saying you should sign with a company I know.”
Then Han Sion, who’d been thinking about something, opened his mouth.
“Then that poster over there.”
“Poster?”
When Lee Hyeonseok turned his gaze, he saw a poster stuck beside the entrance door.
But he didn’t know what it was.
The owner didn’t pay attention to things like that.
When deliveries came, he’d just tell the part-timers to put them up somewhere, then take them down when they expired.
“Could you recommend me? I heard if you get a recommendation, you pass the first round.”
“Of course. Absolutely.”
It was probably a poster for a songwriting competition hosted by the city of Seoul, a large practical music academy, or a small agency.
A smile came to his face unbidden.
After all, this young genius didn’t seem to have a real sense of how talented he was.
With that thought, Lee Hyeonseok examined the poster Han Sion was pointing at.
He thought he’d seen it wrong.
He looked again.
But nothing had changed.
In the end, Lee Hyeonseok unintentionally blurted out his true feelings.
“W-why this stupid-ass thing…?”