Chapter 12: All But the East Wind
The girls sat down around Jiang Shu.
Jiang Shu had brought seven musical scores, one for each person. After distributing them, Jiang Shu held his score and began explaining the song.
This song, “I AM,” was the debut song Jiang Shu had prepared for IVE. He had abandoned the original “Eleven.” The reason for choosing this song was simple: as a song with a high-pitched chorus, it could be used as a single or included in an album. And for a new group from a small company, the debut song often needed to be memorable, otherwise, they would later fall into obscurity.
This was an insurance policy he had put in place in case the ‘bond’ didn’t exist. The quality of this song was definitely strong enough to ensure that DM Entertainment’s IVE wouldn’t flop upon debut, even if the ‘bond’ didn’t exist.
Jiang Shu also had his own reasons for not choosing other hit songs. With a trump card like Lily, even if she was just an accessory, Jiang Shu still had some desire to showcase his main vocalist’s strength.
Liz’s vocal foundation had been somewhat overlooked; her singing ability was not weak at all. However, an idol’s singing ability was always judged by comparison. Since he had the card of the Vocal Queen, it was natural to adopt a more aggressive strategy.
“Lily, you sing the chorus.” After explaining the song’s content, Jiang Shu immediately looked at Lily, who was sitting directly opposite him.
“Yes.” Lily nervously swallowed, looked at the musical score in her hand, hummed a couple of times, and then began to add the lyrics.
“I’ll be far~ away!”
Jiang Shu nodded slightly. The high notes supported by head voice indeed had a stronger auditory impact.
“Continue.”
Jiang Shu guided IVE’s six members through the song one by one, paying particular attention to Lily. She was primarily responsible for the high-pitched sections, and including the harmonized lyrics, her parts were quite numerous.
The distribution of lyrics for a difficult song is like this: it must revolve around the main vocalist. If your core center position can also be like Kim Tae-yeon, with both popularity and singing ability verified, then you can have it. But whether it’s Liu Zhimin or Zhang Yuanying, it’s clear they can’t handle the main vocalist position, so only Lily can.
After everyone was familiar with their assigned lyrical parts, Jiang Shu finally stood up and led the girls to the recording studio.
It was better sooner than later. Get this song done early, then practice the dance, and after that, they could discuss their debut stage with the music show producers.
“Lily first, while your condition is excellent,” Jiang Shu said to Lily, sitting naturally beside the sound engineer in the recording studio.
“Yes.”
When a group records a song, it’s not done in the song’s sequential order. Like filming a TV series, it’s broken down into sections and recorded.
Even when a solo singer records a song, they record all the content initially, then check for any unsatisfactory parts, and re-record specific sections.
This is also where the studio version falls short compared to live performances. While the studio version of a song sounds perfectly fine, people often say it lacks emotion.
Songs are recorded in fragmented pieces, so how can you inject emotion continuously? And this is where the charm of a live performance shines through.
Of course, groups with poor singing skills shouldn’t expect to attract popularity through live performances; it’s good enough if they don’t drive fans away.
Although IVE’s six members include the Dark Three Kings, the sisters do have basic abilities, so they aren’t completely unable to sing. Moreover, there’s Lily, an “accessory” who single-handedly raises the entire team’s ceiling.
Lily walked into the inner room of the recording studio alone, while the other five members of IVE sat on a nearby sofa, waiting.
DM Entertainment certainly had sound engineers; they couldn’t have absolutely nothing.
“Do you need to warm up your voice?” the sound engineer asked Lily in the inner room, wearing headphones.
“No,” Lily replied, also wearing headphones.
“Okay, are you ready?”
“Yes!”
The sound engineer outputted the musical score audio that Jiang Shu had given him earlier. The background music for “I AM” began to play, and Jiang Shu’s demo also started playing in Lily’s headphones.
Before an official version, what one usually hears in headphones is a demo.
The lyrics of a demo and the official version are not necessarily the same, but the music is identical.
Lily’s recording began. The other members sitting on the sofa listened intently to Lily’s singing.
Even though Lily was the last to arrive, everyone had already been impressed by her powerful skills after a brief interaction.
Dance… let’s not discuss that for now.
In terms of vocals, the five of them combined couldn’t even compare to Lily. No member had any objection to her main vocalist position.
Recording a song is a very tedious process. It’s quite normal for a three-minute song to take several days to record, especially since all of IVE’s members are rookies with no recording experience, which will lead to many more recording issues. Therefore, ample time must be allocated.
This recording session took three days for the six members to finish, one after another. During this period, Jiang Shu wasn’t with the IVE members all day. He also took time to visit the dance studio responsible for choreographing IVE’s debut song, conveying some of his ideas to them and asking them to incorporate them into the choreography.
The day after IVE’s debut song recording was completed, the song’s choreography was also freshly released.
Two dance teachers from the dance studio came to teach IVE’s members the choreography for their debut song.
As they entered the dance practice phase, DM Entertainment also sprang into action.
As a turnaround project, the impending debut of the new girl group IVE set all existing departments at DM Entertainment into motion.
Jiang Shu also no longer had time to accompany IVE during their practices. When he was at the company, he handled various affairs, and when he wasn’t, he was dining and building relationships with management from various television stations.
Although DM Entertainment was on the verge of bankruptcy, facing the birth of IVE, the entire company worked together with one heart.
Chairman’s Office.
“Chairman, we really have no money left!” Minister Wu said to Jiang Shu, his face full of helplessness.
“We still need to promote it even if we don’t have money. These days, good wine is also afraid of deep alleys, let alone a new girl group launched by an unknown small company like ours?”
“That’s true, but what do we do if we don’t have money? We can’t touch salaries, can we?” Minister Wu said, spreading his hands.
“We can’t touch salaries!” Jiang Shu shook his head.
DM Entertainment was very poor, but it couldn’t be poor without a bottom line. No matter how poor or short on money, they would reserve all employees’ salaries for the next month to ensure that when the company went bankrupt, they could pay everyone one last salary.
“Then we have no money for promotion.”
Jiang Shu raised a hand and rubbed his temples.
These Korean media outlets are very dark. For big companies, they charge market prices, but for small companies like them, they charge as much as possible.
In their view, small companies like DM Entertainment might go bankrupt any day, so now was the time to make as much money as possible.
“Contact the astroturfers.”
Minister Wu: “?”