All-rounder Artist - Chapter 3
Chapter 3 – Chapter 3 Military Order_1
The next morning.
Composition professional class.
Lin Yuan listened to the teacher’s lecture, making classroom notes on his notebook.
Even though the original owner had switched from the vocal department to the composition department and didn’t possess a high talent for composition, his fields of interest were all related to music.
And just like the original owner, Lin Yuan is also full of interest in music.
He didn’t want to end up producing a bunch of songs, but couldn’t even recognize five-line staffs proficiently.
However, Lin Yuan did not expect that being attentive during the professional class would lead to an unexpected reward—
Suddenly, a prompt tone rang in his ear: “Ding dong, the host is detected to be learning composition knowledge, triggering a novice task.”
Shortly after.
In front of Lin Yuan, half-glowing blue text emerged:
[Task Name: Student’s Task is to Learn]
[Task Content: Score within the top 25 in the next professional course exams arranged by the college]
[Task Reward: Receive one Bronze Treasure Chest]
This novice task came quite abruptly, but Lin Yuan didn’t feel too surprised.
Is it still a system if it doesn’t issue tasks?
Then he began pondering the difficulty of this task:
There are ten classes in the composition department of the Qin Continent Music Academy, each class with about fifty students, and Lin Yuan’s class had precisely fifty students.
But that had nothing to do with Lin Yuan.
Because he didn’t need to compete with students from other classes.
The novice task only requires Lin Yuan to rank within the top 25 in the next exam in his class.
This wasn’t much of a problem for Lin Yuan.
Because Lin Yuan’s regular professional course ranking is around 30 in the class, as long as he tries a little harder, he should be able to break into the top 25 in the class.
“What will happen if the task fails?”
Lin Yuan curiously asked the system in his heart: “Will I be electrocuted by the system? Or erased by the system? Wait a minute!”
Lin Yuan’s face changed slightly, “It’s not going to deduct money, right? Surely it won’t, surely not, surely not, right?”
[System First Rule: Never harming the host]
[Also, friendly reminder: electrocuting, erasing, each of these methods is more frightening than deducting money, please prioritize clearly]
“As long as it doesn’t deduct money, then it’s fine.”
Lin Yuan sighed in relief, but soon he realized that even if the system wanted to deduct money, he didn’t have money for the system to deduct…
This discovery depressed him a bit.
…
After the class ended.
Lin Yuan didn’t return to the dormitory, instead he found a quiet place, pulled out a number from his phone, and dialed it. The contact was marked as:
“Agent Zhao Yu”.
The phone was picked up after two rings.
From the other end of the phone came a slightly tired female voice: “Lin Yuan? What’s up?”
Lin Yuan said, “I have a song that I want to release.”
The voice at the other end of the phone suddenly became somewhat excited: “Want to release a song? Has your throat recovered? Can you sing again?”
“No.”
Lin Yuan said, “I have now switched from the vocal department to the composition department. Recently, I have a song in my hand, and I was wondering if the company can help find a singer to perform and release it?”
“I see.”
Zhao Jue was somewhat disappointed, and her voice went low again, “I suppose you want to participate in the New Talent Season in November, right?”
“Right.”
“I should remind you, you are a singer contracted to our Starlight Entertainment, not a composer and lyricist contracted by the company. The company has a dedicated department for connecting with singers, and most singers also have their own lyricists and composers…” Zhao Jue gently rejected.
However, Lin Yuan didn’t give up, “Can I switch to the composition department now?”
He really needed the company’s distribution channels.
Without the company’s resource promotion, even a good song could easily go unnoticed. All the newcomers who emerged in the previous New Talent Seasons had the support of entertainment company resources.
“No!”
Zhao Jue rejected outright.
After about ten seconds of silence, Zhao Jue suddenly sighed, somewhat helplessly: “Forget it, encrypt the song and send it to me through the company’s internal channel. If the quality is good, I’ll find someone to help you release it. Of course, if the quality is not up to par, let’s just pretend this conversation never happened.”
“Thank you.”
Lin Yuan sincerely thanked her.
Zhao Jue was the person who had signed Lin Yuan in the first place. She once had high hopes for Lin Yuan, but unfortunately, an accident happened to Lin Yuan’s voice and it lost its value.
Under such circumstances, Zhao Jue was still willing to give Lin Yuan a hand. This was a big favor.
“Let’s leave it at that, goodbye.”
Zhao Jue ended the call somewhat irritably.
…
Zhao Jue’s irritation was not aimed at Lin Yuan, but it originated from Lin Yuan.
Because next month will be the New Talent Season, Zhao Jue had too many things to manage.
A few newly signed artists under her hand need to be take this opportunity of the annual New Talent Season to try to rise up.
Original, Lin Yuan should have been one of these newcomers.
Previously, Zhao Jue had even considered inviting the few biggest talents from the company to help tailor a few songs for Lin Yuan, so as to allow Lin Yuan to shock the scene during the New Talent Season, because Lin Yuan’s vocal talent was really astonishing.
As a result, things did not go as planned.
“Unable to walk down the road as a singer so wants to turn to song creation?”
Zhao Jue shook her head with a bitter smile. If creation was so simple, why would some Heavenly King or Queen-level singers not make their own songs, but instead, invite professional composers and poets to write them?
Did they not want to?
Or was it because they just couldn’t produce good songs that listeners liked?
In this era, the status of a composition teacher for a song is far higher than that of a singer, especially in the pragmatic ecology of the industry.
The composer is the big daddy!
Because if a company possesses an awesome composer, that can support a bunch of singers.
In fact, in recent years, listeners have begun to pay more and more attention to the names of composers.
Clearly, the public was beginning to realize that composition is the soul of a song, with performance being secondary!
Other aspects such as lyric writing and arrangement, although they are also very important, the core element is definitely composition, which is even more important than singing–
A good song sounds pleasing regardless of any instrument accompaniment!
No matter if it’s with a guitar, a piano or even a double bassoon, if someone is passionate enough, they can even produce wonders with a suona.
“This boy is also quite pitiful.”
Recalling some past events, Zhao Jue felt some sorrow.
When Lin Yuan was in hospital, Zhao Jue, as Lin Yuan’s agent who signed him, did go to see him but eventually stopped at the door of his ward.
Because through the door, she could hear the raspy and sobbing crying from within the ward, a sound that was just like an injured puppy…
Everyone has a kind heart.
This is why Zhao Jue was willing to help Lin Yuan.
Regardless of success or not, she wanted at least to give the boy a chance, to let him know that many things in this world can’t just be done successfully as one wishes.
“However, you’ve gotten me in quite a bit of trouble.”
Zhao Jue sighed, her face showing signs of worry, this was the root of her anxiety–
The annual newcomer season on the music scene is when all major companies push their newbies hard.
During this period, all the major companies were fighting fiercely.
Even among the eight continents, Starlight Entertainment was a respected company.
In Qin Continent, Starlight Entertainment is amongst the top three in terms of overall strength!
However, Starlight Entertainment had been performing poorly in the newcomer season for the past three consecutive years.
In these three years, the company’s best performance was when they pushed two newbies into the top ten two years ago; however, they dangled towards the bottom of the list…
In comparison with companies of similar status, they were a bit embarrassing.
What angered Starlight the most was the company’s arch-enemy, Sand Sea Culture, took an overwhelming four spots in the top ten last year in the newcomer season.
Among these four spots, including the very prestigious second and third place.
This made Starlight’s high-level executives unable to lift their heads. After all, the major entertainment companies in Qin Continent don’t get along, so the executives naturally began pressuring Zhao Jue, the company’s top agent.
Zhao Jue, having no choice, made a vow in front of all the executives:
Gauranteed to place a talent within the top three this newcomer season!
If unable to do so, she would voluntarily step down.
The reason why Zhao Jue dared to make such a vow was not only because of pressure from the executives but also because she had just signed Lin Yuan, a young man with a stunning voice, and was full of ambition to achieve great things–
She thought Lin Yuan could help her complete this task.
But now Lin Yuan’s voice had gone, and her vow remained unfulfilled.
Executives care only for results, not what difficulties occurred along the way.
That’s why, in recent times, Zhao Jue was frantically searching for someone to replace Lin Yuan and thus fulfil her promise; because of this, she had already submitted nine newbies.
However, Zhao Jue knew it clearly in her heart.
Of the nine newbies she has submitted, they could perhaps make it into the top twenty, to reach the top ten would depend on their luck.
To charge into the top five or even top three?
They might as well just sleep on it. Everything is possible in a dream.
The company has allocated spots for ten newcomers and only one spot is left; yet, Zhao Jue still couldn’t find someone to replace Lin Yuan.
She was already in a state of giving up.
Therefore, she agreed to Lin Yuan’s request in the end.
Anyway, it’s just the last spot. If the song written by Lin Yuan turned out to be just barely passable in terms of quality, why not satisfy the wishes of this poor child?
Just at the time.
Her phone beeped.
This was a mail notification, sent encrypted via the company’s internal channels. The sender was Lin Yuan.
Opened the mail.
After decrypting it, Zhao Jue saw the audio file sent by Lin Yuan, titled: ‘Life Like A Summer Flower’.
Life Like A Summer Flower?
Zhao Jue didn’t understand the meaning of these words but vaguely associated it with some imagery.
She put on her earphones and clicked play.
Immersed in the music, the song quickly finished.
Zhao Jue looked surprised and a little shocked.
Unlike those rough drafts, the song sent by Lin Yuan was complete. Besides the melody being quite refined, even the arrangement had been done–
This is not something that could be done in a short period of time.
As for the singing part, it was just a hummed tune created by a machine.
However, this sound wasn’t as rigid as the usual synthesized sound, instead appearing rather natural.
Nevertheless, based on her experience, Zhao Jue could tell that this simple hummed tune could likely be turned into something more interesting should it be sung by a human voice.
“Quite interesting.”
Zhao Jue was a talent agent.
She might not know much about composing, but having been in the industry for many years, her basic judgments were on point.
Her eyes glinting, she felt that ‘Life Like A Summer Flower’ could be a good song as she was already quite attracted by it, although the song only consisted of melody and synthesized humming.
“This guy might have real composing talents?”
Arching her brow, Zhao Jue made three phone calls.
First call was to the review department: “I have a song here, have a listen and review it. It’s urgent, I need results by tonight.”
It was a necessary checkpoint.
The tech review was there to ensure Lin Yuan’s ‘Life Like A Summer Flower’ doesn’t overlap too much with other songs on the market and risk suspicion of plagiarism. If issues arise, it would be catastrophic damage on the company’s reputation.
The second call was to her subordinate agents.
As the chief, Zhao Jue’s voice was firm: “We’ll be recording tonight. It’s the last slot for the newcomer season, get me someone reliable, don’t make it too hard on the sound engineer.”
A newbie with a less-than-stellar voice wasn’t a big problem for Zhao Jue.
It just meant extra overtime work for the company’s sound engineer.
The third phone call was to Lin Yuan, her tone the softest, nowhere near as firm as her previous two calls: “When will your class end today? I’ll pick you up from your school to record a song.”
“Okay.”
Lin Yuan replied.
His tone seemed to reveal… no surprise?
