“So, any melodies come to mind? Anyone? Something that’s been circling in your head?”
After going down to the shower room on the lower floor, Pedro sat back down with a refreshed look on his face, as if nothing had happened.
As a bonus, because they had opened the windows to air out the smell of vomit, a cold wind was blowing in, so everyone had their outerwear on.
“Dohee said first that this was how she wanted to work, so do you maybe have anything?”
Of course I did. Not just one or two.
“Give me a second?”
I took out the secret notebook from the bag beside me.
My book where I organized ideas that came to me from time to time.
It was the notebook that had been revealed not long ago in the first episode of our in-house content.
And in here, not only lyrics and lyrical rhymes, but even melodies that suddenly came to mind were organized as sheet music.
“Ah, an inspiration notebook?”
“It’s an important habit~”
The other composers here reacted as if it was familiar, like they each had one of these notebooks too.
“Wait. But does anyone actually write down pitches? Don’t people usually use the recording function on their phones?”
“That too, but… people usually take notes on a tablet or phone too, don’t they…?”
“Mm… Dohee is definitely the youngest one here, though…”
“I guess if you major in classical music, your sensibilities lean a little analog too…”
“But she’s still an idol…!? I mean, I majored in jazz and cello myself, so I started with classical too.”
What was wrong with taking notes with a ballpoint pen… For composers, these people had no sensitivity.
I slowly flipped through the notebook, looking over the written melodies and ideas.
This analog sentiment and pleasure.
Even though they were drawn as sheet music, the moment I met them with my eyes, the melodies automatically played in my head.
Through the mysteries of brain science…
“Ah, this is it.”
One line written beneath the score, the source of inspiration.
#Idea—Easy Listening.
—Addictive chorus, falsetto.
This score was a melody that had come to me while I was thinking about easy listening.
How should easy listening be defined?
I singled out Erhan, the hip-hop producer and beatmaker, and asked.
“Erhan, what do you think easy listening is?”
“Well… If it isn’t difficult and the progression makes sense, that’s easy listening, isn’t it?”
Just as I was about to say what I thought, Jada, who had majored in cello and jazz, shook her head and fervently denied it.
“What are you talking about? Easy listening clearly means music that gives off a comfortable, peaceful atmosphere. Like light music made with instruments.”
“That’s just the dictionary definition.”
The standard for easy listening was something even composers had differing views on.
In truth, naturally, since Erhan had worked in hip-hop, he considered complexity to be the representative element of hard listening, so he thought the opposite would obviously be easy listening.
And Jada, like me, was a jazz artist derived from classical music, so she took easy listening to mean the dictionary definition itself.
So if I had to choose, I was also the latter.
Leaving aside the fact that the dictionary definition was the shared agreement.
Because I thought it was a misunderstanding that had arisen because lately, boy groups had been releasing a lot of difficult, hard-listening songs.
“You know how there’s this prejudice these days that all girl groups are easy listening.”
“That’s true.”
Of course, every now and then, girl groups also released difficult hard-listening songs.
But I wasn’t simply saying people failed to recognize that.
I meant that, even excluding the difficult girl group songs, there were plenty of songs that clearly couldn’t be dismissed as easy listening.
To begin with, just think of songs where the octave rises extremely high, high-note songs.
High notes themselves carry high energy and create high-frequency sound waves.
That inevitably means they cause listeners to consume more energy compared to low notes.
‘It’s not for nothing that low voices, cave-like voices, feel comfortable.’
I’d even thought that for people who preferred male vocals, that factor might be mixed in.
But that wasn’t what was important right now.
There had to be a reason people considered easy listening to be the opposite of difficulty.
“So after thinking about it, I wondered if what people call easy listening these days is a song with addictiveness.”
“That’s… obvious, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I think it’s obvious too, but after listening to old songs, I felt like there was another perspective.”
Something I felt while singing old songs was that famous songs from the ’70s to the ’90s, perhaps because they were made with natural instruments, tended to have easy progressions and flat scales, so most of them were in a form people could quickly sing at karaoke.
So… what I meant was.
“I’m saying that easy listening these days might simply mean songs that are easy for people to sing along to.”
It seemed faster to play it than to explain it in words.
I kept pressing a single black key.
* * *
‘…That approach is good, isn’t it?’
That was what Pedro thought while listening to that simple, repeated single note.
The key Dohee was playing right now was B♭6.
In C major terms, B-flat.
A high register that was good for both men and women to sing in falsetto.
—here-ee-ee
As if that had been her intention, Dohee was bringing out the charm of this simple melody with a falsetto-style humming placed over the B-flat.
Literally a melody that stayed in your mind and was easy for both men and women to sing.
But of course, they still had to hear the melody that followed.
Up to this point, even a middle schooler could do it.
“What’s next? Is there a next part?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought up a rough draft up to the chorus.”
Then Dohee played the topline with only the melody part, her right hand, and continued humming.
—here-ee-ee is your demon-mon-mon
—Yes, all you need-ee-ed is me, truly one
The lyrics took into account that Debonair’s previous two title tracks had also been based on a self-loving, haughty, little-devil concept.
A full-voice second-octave line that supported the charming falsetto.
A sound that rode the rhythm and descended the stairs.
At the nod-worthy chorus, everyone began thinking about what kind of track to attach to this topline.
* * *
“So, what genre do you want to do?”
As soon as I recorded only the chorus myself for the guide and came out, Pedro asked.
In truth, if a melody and lyrics had come to mind, most composers usually had a framework they had thought of in advance, so it was only natural to ask.
Something that also fit the proposal, the lead, that the director had handed me.
And a genre that, like the debut song, brought to mind a bit of retro.
A genre that had once had its heyday, then gone into decline, and in the 2010s, had produced only one mega-hit.
But it was a genre that had left a huge mark on American music history, one that everyone would still probably like, with a rhythm that was easy to sing along to and an addictive beat.
“Could we do this… in a funk style?”
The reason I deliberately split the lyrics like here-ee-ee was also because I had been considering a slight funk rhythm.
“Funk… I grew up listening to funk too. When it comes to Latin, there’s baile funk. Of course, what you’re talking about is standard pop funk, right?”
“Yeah, I was thinking we’d start with the kick…”
At some point, Lucas, the Canadian singer-songwriter, had left the room and come back, holding up an electric bass.
“What kick! Funk is all about the bass. A groovy sound!”
“Lucas, do you know how to play bass?”
“Of course. I was originally a bassist. I learned piano later.”
Erhan, the beatmaker, also strongly agreed with Lucas.
“That’s right, for funk, you start with the bass! Let’s make the accompaniment that fits the chorus first. The rhythm can come later!”
Sure, you guys, the experts, would know better about that sort of thing.
And with that, the full-fledged accompaniment.
The work on this song’s main theme began.
—Since the melody is basically in B-flat major, if we’re building the harmony…
—Hmm… I think this would be better than that.
—Then should we add a seventh chord, like this?
* * *
Collective intelligence really is the best.
“The main theme is done. Now we have to make the funk rhythm. Erhan.”
“Since the accompaniment’s out, the rhythm is simple. Especially with funk.”
“Ah! But I have an opinion.”
“What is it?”
“Let’s have Lucas play the bass sound and put it in as a real, old-school groovy sound… and put in the drum sounds with a drum pad synthesizer! With a trendy sound, doom-doom-tat… Ah, the doom-doom kick can sound real, but lower the pitch of the snare sound… like this…”
* * *
Collective intelligence really is the best.
“Now the pre-chorus…”
“But I have another opinion.”
“Again?”
Music made with a diatonic scale.
In other words, music whose tonality was made up only of white keys could sound fine no matter how, no matter what, you played it.
But most music necessarily included black keys, semitones.
The reason was that diatonic music had neither fun nor charm.
The basic tonality of modern music was chromatic chords, and chord progressions that created and resolved tension were fundamental.
Among them, the most famous chord progression was the ii–V–I progression.
Even just looking at last year’s hit songs, how many ii–V–I progressions were there…
Anyway, what I wanted to say wasn’t simply about chords.
It was the same with musical parts.
Creating a sense of tension in the pre-chorus for the sake of the chorus was a common feature of pop.
“For the pre-chorus, take out all the bass and drums.”
I went over and sat down in front of the computer.
“That… this synthesizer. Let’s use this.”
And I played the piano.
The accompaniment for this part was simple.
Unlike the bass riff that had been the main theme, this was a section where it would be good to use a common chord progression.
“Good. Then we can put claps here.”
“Then does that mean we just need to put a melody in the pre-chorus now?”
“Oh, right, right… Oh, no, I have another opinion!”
“What is it!”
“First, at the end of the pre-chorus, turn off all the accompaniment again and just use a guitar riff.”
“That’s good. Then let’s put guitar into the main theme of the chorus too!”
“Right, that’s it!”
“Okay, then now let’s make the pre-chorus melody…”
* * *
—Oh, I have another opinion!
All day long, Dohee had been smiling brightly, saying collective intelligence was so great, but whenever they tried to do anything, she said she had an opinion, sat down in the seat beside him in front of the composing program, and kept fiddling with it however she pleased.
Watching her, Pedro let out an incredulous chuckle.
“Oh, I have another opinion.”
At first, he had thought it couldn’t be helped because it was her first song camp…
“What is it?”
“I think this is something that should be done in the arrangement, but I want to put one moment of silence in the chorus melody too. Before it repeats here again…”
Already, not only the main chorus melody, but nearly half the song was all Dohee’s opinion.
“Ah, then let’s add one more instrument here too. It’s the same melody, so it could get boring. When it comes into the chorus, we added a guitar riff, so let’s layer one more thing and make the sound richer. Erhan, what do you think?”
“You know a bit about beats, huh? I think that would be good. But what kind? If it were me, I’d use percussion.”
“Yeah, percussion, a percussive instrument, that’s right. But if it’s too heavy, it’s not good… You find something. You know? Like this tak-tak sound? A woodblock is too old-fashioned.”
More than that, every time she sat beside him, the scent that naturally reached him—not a stimulating perfume, but the fragrant scent of strawberry shampoo—made him feel as if his head was clearing.
It was a good day for composing.