Chapter 205: Dawn Of 204
The previous song Lost, although Wang Heng had never heard it before, wasn’t hard to discern the flavor of that niche indie singer from the first playthrough. It’s just that the young girl not yet twenty years old couldn’t perform it completely enough yet, still somewhat immature.
But this song she was singing now sounded particularly unfamiliar and fresh in Wang Heng’s ears.
The slow and leisurely melody echoed in the empty music store, accompanied by similarly gentle guitar zither sound:
“I see the brilliant sunset hiding behind dark clouds,
Fog swirling around front, back, left, and right,
Lonely people are most afraid of loneliness,
The hardest is to bravely move forward…”
After singing the verse part, it was time for the chorus climax. But at this moment, the singing voice abruptly stopped.
The young girl’s hand pressed on the strings, her perky little nose couldn’t help but wrinkle: “No, that’s not right…”
Wang Heng asked: “What’s not right?”
Pei Ningle: “For this song, I wanted to first sing out the fog, that sorrowful melancholy feeling, gradually covering the emotion bit by bit, building it up higher. Then at the end, suddenly become bright, like flowers blooming…”
Wang Heng imagined it: “Do you mean build up then bring down?”
The young girl immediately nodded: “Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted.”
Wang Heng: “Then just write it that way, what’s wrong with that?”
Pei Ningle: “The problem is, pop music templates are all like that. First a relatively flat verse, then a prominent chorus, interlude, then another verse, finally chorus repeat, many even go up an octave to push the emotion to the highest… But for this song now, I want to use the first seventy percent for emotion buildup, ten percent transition connection, last twenty percent to the peak. That way it’s different from all the mainstream ones on the market.”
Wang Heng: “Then make it different, you don’t like following conventions, right?”
The young girl put down the guitar, tugged at the shoulder straps of her little skirt, her face clearly showing some irritation—there were many things she wanted to say, but for the moment she couldn’t express them clearly, something like that.
She frowned and thought for a bit, then said: “But pop music templates make a lot of sense! A song needs to intersperse chorus and verse to not seem monotonous. I’m really worried that if I keep using the same mode to build emotion, people might get impatient…”
Wang Heng: “Then just add a couple bridges.”
“Bridge? You even know what a bridge is?” Pei Ningle stared at him, her gaze revealing surprise.
Wang Heng shrugged: “It’s just the music sentences connecting different sections, not hard to understand.”
Of course, besides the so-called ‘bridge’, Wang Heng had heard more music terms. But for these terms, his understanding was merely knowing them, grasping some basic concepts. Everyone has different talents, just like Pei Ningle finds it hard to learn logic in code, Wang Heng really couldn’t figure out how she handled those notes.
Pei Ningle wasn’t interested in nitpicking details, just seriously analyzed: “If after the first verse I don’t put another verse, but a bridge with a similar tone, then build an interlude, repeat the verse… that actually seems workable.”
Wang Heng: “As long as it works.”
But Pei Ningle was still a bit hesitant: “I don’t know if it will work, feels like the song written this way would definitely be even shorter than the last one, maybe not even three minutes…”
Wang Heng: “No problem, short isn’t an issue, cliché or unpleasant is the problem, right?”
Pei Ningle didn’t speak, contemplated for a moment, then picked up the guitar again.
This time, she sang the chorus part again, using wordless humming for the ‘bridge’ in the middle to transition, and when it reached the final chorus part, the guitar accompaniment suddenly became more urgent and powerful.
The young girl gazed out the window in a daze, raised her voice, singing even more ethereal high notes:
“I see every ordinary day,
Turn into fresh miracles,
I see those brilliant rainbows,
Shine into lonely dreams,
I hear the harp playing crystals,
Woven into beautiful poems,
I see you…”
At this point, pluck a string of light notes on the guitar as the coda.
The song finished, Pei Ningle turned her head to look at Wang Heng, asked somewhat nervously: “What do you think?”
Wang Heng gazed at her, his mind already rapidly analyzing.
During the first playthrough, Pei Ningle’s songs were almost never about love, the themes were either urban young people’s loneliness and confusion, or attempts at niche themes like cyberpunk and such.
In the second playthrough, the time she formally started creation was earlier, but the style of the first song Lost was still the same, not related to love at all. This song Dawn, Wang Heng originally thought was the same, but hearing that last line, it seemed a bit different?
Does the lyric ‘I see you’ hint at something?
While Wang Heng was analyzing, Pei Ningle leaned in front of him and repeated: “What do you think of this song? Is it good?”
Wang Heng smiled, clapped: “Great.”
Pei Ningle couldn’t help asking again: “Really?”
Wang Heng: “Really.”
Pei Ningle was still a bit uneasy: “Really great?”
Wang Heng emphasized: “Very great. Why not go to the recording studio and record it?”
Pei Ningle: “Okay, let’s go now!”
The young girl hugged the guitar and headed out.
Seeing this, Wang Heng reminded: “Return the store’s guitar.”
Pei Ningle looked down, gently patted the body: “Perfect, I want a new guitar, I’ll buy it!”
At that moment, a stranger man’s voice sounded in the music store: “I’d like to ask, was that song just now written by you, little sister? I’ve never heard that melody before, and you two seemed to be talking about creating this song…”
The two turned around, and saw a man sitting on the sofa in the corner, looking about thirty or forty, with a full beard, wearing thick-framed glasses, very vicissitude feel. When Pei Ningle was playing guitar and singing earlier, he sat motionless there, right behind the drum kit, so Wang Heng and Pei Ningle hadn’t noticed him.
At this time, the man stood up and said: “I’m the boss of this store. Little sister, do you want to buy that guitar?”
Pei Ningle nodded: “How much?”
“Original price is over eight hundred, but to you…” The music store boss smiled, “Make it a round number, five hundred.”
Pei Ningle blinked: “Five hundred eighty?”
“I mean five hundred, five hundred flat!”
The music store boss couldn’t help but slightly doubt—this somewhat dazed girl, and the young girl who just sang heavenly music, really the same person?
Wang Heng suddenly asked: “Why the discount? Because her song is good?”
The music store boss sighed: “Yeah, that’s enough. I’ve seen plenty who buy guitars, lose the three-minute heat and never play again, left in the corner gathering dust. In the right person’s hands, that’s a guitar’s best home…”
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