“I’ll choose the track first, Erhan.”
“Okay, just wait.”
Erhan, who had been introduced as a beatmaker, opened his laptop and flicked through the track list he had prepared in advance, playing them one after another.
Boom bap, trap, synthwave, garage, club house, Afrobeat.
True to the name beatmaker, the styles of the instrumentals made it clear that he was a track maker particularly well-versed in hip-hop.
‘Ah, this one’s kind of catchy.’
“You know it? This one’s good, right? It’s my ambitious masterpiece this time! In an easy-listening style…”
“Let’s listen to the rest of them first. Then we’ll decide on today’s composition theme.”
After looking through several track lists, they settled on a theme and a beat.
Now all the topline composers had to do was lay melody lines over the beat Erhan had written.
“Dohee, you said you were just going to observe today, so you can simply watch, but basically, you’ll be taking the role of a topliner.”
“A topliner?”
“Why? Are you better at track-making or arranging afterward?”
“You said you learned composition from Yosef. Either way, if you came as Yosef’s substitute, you must have some talent for arranging, right? Track-making too.”
“No, no. It’s not that. I just… I’ll only observe for now.”
It was just that, hearing the word topliner…
I thought of our Seoyoon unni.
While I was working this hard, I wondered who our Seoyoon might be meeting and whether she was sitting in front of a computer somewhere.
Well, I trusted that the director had given her something to do.
‘She said everyone had their own mission… Please.’
* * *
“Harang unni, that guy’s noob.”
“Seoyoon, don’t you have a schedule?”
“I do. After this game.”
“Oh, and tomorrow’s Dohee’s birthday, right? What should I give her? Hmm… a book?”
“Hey, I told you to come quickly! Jungle diff!”
“No, when did you tell me to come?! Top diff!!!”
“I said I was noob, noob!”
* * *
─How about doing it like this here? Make it a little Jazzy. Hmm↝♪
The composers were humming whatever came to mind and laying melodies over the track.
The more I watched the song camp that had begun in earnest from a step behind, the more I understood why nine out of ten K-pop songs came out of song camps.
The sheer, fundamentally absurd speed of the work.
‘If I worked alone… it would always take at least several weeks…’
The pace today was so intense that it felt as though they might finish two songs in a single day.
Of course, there were composers who could complete a song alone in a day, but having an average daily expectation of one song was something only a song camp could achieve.
‘Of course, I’m confident I could write a song in just one day too. I could…’
I could make a track by copying the trends of a few other songs, then slap together some melody that roughly fit the chords.
But the result would be a mass-produced song.
And a song camp had no need to worry about that.
Since composers familiar with all kinds of genres gathered together, the results born from their collective intelligence were, regardless of their speed, mostly far removed from mass-produced music.
‘Next time, maybe I should ask Lira to let me observe one of their song camps too…’
That was why K-pop born from song camps was a new genre encompassing the strengths of every genre.
If one had to give it a name, it would be mix-pop.
Lately, there had been cases where K-pop songs clearly displayed the characteristics of mix-pop and built a narrative around being mix-pop itself, but in truth, most K-pop could be considered mix-pop from the start.
When you listened to idol songs, disco urban might appear in the first verse, pop in the verse, hip-hop in the chorus, and EDM in the bridge.
Jazz, dance, R&B—anything could appear as well.
Just like our debut song was disco, Latin, and pop.
The problem was that mixing all sorts of ideas together also made it easy for abstruse, complicated songs to emerge.
That was why the most important part of this entire process was organizing all these drafts in a creative way and binding them together into a single framework.
Tidying up the melody at the end, then changing the track again to fit that melody.
Arrangement.
Perhaps that was why arranging was the most highly valued ability among composers these days.
* * *
The moment I entered the company’s assembly hall the next day, an explosive burst of sound greeted me.
─Ba-ba-bam-ba-bam!
“Congratulations♪ Congratulations♬”
Tap-tap! Scamper-scamper!
“Huh?”
Uah unni charged at me, and Chiyo unni pounced on me.
Kim Seoyoon clung to me, while Naeun unni clapped like a seal.
“Ah, wait! Wait! Someone actually punched me.”
And before I knew it, the unnies were circling around me.
“Kim Seoyoon! Are you insane? I’m bruised!”
“…? Why are you blaming me again? It wasn’t me—I’m being framed!”
“Then who…”
“This brat! This brat!”
That Kimchi bitch’s hands had gotten rowdy again.
“Okay, okay! Enough! Stop!”
“Hngh! Shushushuk!”
“Stop it now…”
While I agonized over my fate until my hair nearly fell out, the unnies kept spinning around me like maniacs until my mouth tasted sweet from exhaustion.
At last, I was able to receive my favorite strawberry cake from Naeun unni.
“What, did you make it yourself?”
“Of course~ We all made it together.”
“Why are there only two candles?”
“Because you’re two years away from becoming an adult~ Your wish right now is to become an adult soon, isn’t it, Dohee?”
“Right. I want to get out of this place as soon as possible.”
“We are disappoint-ed… After we’ve treated you so well.”
Do you have a conscience?
* * *
When I returned the next day, I distributed my birthday presents to the composers here for free.
And I gave them several boxes each.
“What the fuck?”
“Ugh… This is disgusting…”
“From now on, I’m going to become your anti-fan.”
“Are you trying to assassinate us?”
They were extremely expensive herbal medicines the director had prepared for me, telling me to stay healthy despite being busy. A stamina tonic meant to help with my liver and fatigue.
The fact that it was bitter and tasted awful was one thing, but the nauseating disgust rising in my throat made me feel like I could throw up at any moment.
‘Ah, I still have a whole bunch of the herbal medicine Mom sent me.’
I’ll have to make Chiyo unni drink it.
“It’s good for your health, at least. Hurry up and drink it.”
Anyway, starting today, I would be joining them as a topliner after finishing my observation period and composing with them.
There was something I had wanted to suggest throughout the two days I spent observing.
“Pedro.”
“What the hell is this disgusting taste…? It’s the worst thing I’ve eaten since coming to Korea.”
“Pedro?”
“Urk, ugh… Sorry, it’s just so disgusting.”
Then don’t drink it. I don’t want to either, but I’m drinking it to survive.
Anyway.
I sat down in front of the piano and took out the brief the director had given me.
Most composers received a lead from the agency’s A&R team, which was responsible for planning albums and collecting songs, and worked from there.
A lead was a kind of proposal containing the concept and references pursued by a specific artist.
And this lead described our next promotion.
Of course, the fact that these composers and I worked together and made a demo did not mean the song would automatically be used.
The song would be purchased from the composer only after the company judged it to be “a song suitable for the lead.”
And the track list for the next album had already been roughly decided.
After all, albums were usually prepared six months to a year before release.
Still, there was also meaning in it being a self-composed song…
I handed the brief to Pedro, who was still dry-heaving.
“Pedro, this is the lead.”
“Urk… wh-who? Debonair?”
Pedro skillfully took the sheet and read it even as he continued to gag.
“Blegh…”
Since he was also the composer of our debut song, he would be familiar with our concept.
“Erhan! Do you have a track like this…?”
The brief was passed to Erhan, the track maker and beat maker.
“Hmm… But didn’t we already receive the exact same lead? I already sold your agency one song for your next promotion.”
“Urk, look at the bottom! It’s a little different!”
How many times was he going to retch?
“Ah, I see. It’s changed a little. Still, it doesn’t feel like an exact fit. We could make it work, though.”
“Then do we have to compose an entirely new song?”
“Probably.”
At last, I decided to make the suggestion I had been considering throughout my two days of observation.
“If we’re making a song… could we write the melody first this time, instead of starting with the beat?”
“The melody? But then the process would take longer…”
I knew that. Over the past two days, I had experienced firsthand how much more efficient it was, in terms of speed, to make the beat first and then lay the melody over it.
“Yes, I could really feel that while watching.”
As commercial artists, that was clearly something they could not afford to give up.
“But… fundamentally, unless Debonair’s song is a rap song, the most important thing is the melody.”
That applied to both hard listening and easy listening.
A lively beat could be laid over a bland melody intended to be easy listening, transforming an inadequate song into something charming.
And just as with the hard-listening song I had first analyzed with them on the first day of song camp, an excellent sense of rhythm could fill out an abstruse song and heighten the fun of listening to it.
But in the end, the famous songs of an era—songs everyone knew—were the ones whose melodies people thought of and hummed as soon as they heard the title.
Of course, I might have been biased because I had once played classical music.
But the melodies of those masterpieces were anything but dull; they were addictive, and at their core lay the emotion conveyed by the melody.
Even the beat of the hip-hop song everyone immediately thought of, , was a melody—a tune created by a white producer playing piano and laying pads or strings over the keyboard.
That was why, now that I had met such good composers, I wanted us all to try making a song by starting with the melody.
“Urk… Since you brought it up, Dohee, why don’t we start with the melody… Urk.”
Even as he continued gagging, Pedro gave me an okay sign with his fingers.
“L-let’s… let’s try it.”
“No, but if it makes you gag that badly, shouldn’t you just stop drinking it…?”
“You gave it to me because it’s good for me, so… ugh.”
Wow. It smells like vomit.
Open the window.