novelraw Chapter 79 Absolute Pitch from the Grasslands
Chapter 79 Absolute Pitch from the Grasslands
Song Ze was suspended in mid-air, his feet a full twenty centimeters off the ground.
He glanced down at Dima Creek.
Dima looked up at him, her arms steadily supporting him under his armpits, her face showing little sign of strain. Instead, she looked genuinely sincere and uttered a sentence in heavily accented Kazakh English:
Wow, so light.
Song Ze: "..."
So light?
I'm 1.83 meters tall and weigh 75 kilograms. You're telling me I'm light?
Is the way your hometown shows friendliness by lifting people like dumbbells?
Xiao Jingteng was stunned for a moment, frozen on the sofa. Then, for some unknown reason, he suddenly leaned back and burst into wild laughter.
"Hahahaha—Song Ze! Song Ze, you've been lifted up!"
He laughed as he frantically pulled out his phone, shoving the camera close to take a picture.
Song Ze's face darkened, and he freed one hand to pat Dima Xi on the shoulder.
"Down. Put me down."
Dima Xi blinked and carefully put Song Ze back.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Song Ze glanced down at his clothes—his suit jacket was lifted up, and his shirt was pulled out from his waistband.
He expressionlessly pulled his clothes down a bit, then turned to look at Jam Hsiao, who was still squatting on the ground taking pictures.
"Deleted."
"I won't delete it." Jam Hsiao held his phone protectively to his chest. "Don't you think this is quite interesting?"
"Brother Xiao, if you dare to post this, I'll leak your song selection for the first competition to the entire internet ahead of time."
Hsiao Ching-teng hesitated for a second, then put his phone back in his pocket.
"...You win."
Song Ze turned around and met Dima Xi's somewhat embarrassed face.
The guy finally realized belatedly that he had done something wrong. His hands were fidgety, sometimes touching his trouser seams, sometimes tugging at his sleeves, and finally he managed to string together a sentence in broken English:
"Sorry...In my country, this is...friend. Good friend. I like your music, so I..."
He gestured as if he were lifting someone up.
Song Ze understood.
In Kazakhstan, lifting people up is a way to express friendship and respect.
Goodness, cultural differences have directly impacted him on a physical level.
"Brother, you're 1.86 meters tall, and I'm 1.83 meters." Song Ze held up his hand and compared the height between their heads. "We're only three centimeters apart. Can't you at least have a little respect for physics?"
Dimash didn't understand the whole sentence, but judging from his expression and actions, he should be able to guess the gist of it.
"Three. Yes."
Jam Hsiao got up from the ground, patted his pants, and muttered to himself, "When I first debuted, I was singing on the streets of Taipei, and nobody ever lifted me up like that. What a difference."
Song Ze ignored him, turned around, picked up the acoustic guitar from the corner of the rehearsal room, and handed it to Dima Xi.
"Didn't you say you were going to sing? Come on."
Dima Creek's attention was instantly drawn to the guitar.
He took it with both hands, sat on a high stool, and placed the guitar on his knees. He didn't play it or tune it.
He closed his eyes.
The lights in the rehearsal room shone on his profile, and the shy, flustered boy from before vanished in an instant.
A melody flowed from his throat.
There is no accompaniment, no intro, not even a hint of a breath. The Kazakh lyrics begin softly, like the wind sweeping across the steppe, gentle and expansive.
Daidawu.
Song Ze recognized the song. Dimash had sung it on several occasions in his previous life, but the studio version and the live version were completely different.
The verses are fairly normal. The lower register carries the desolate quality characteristic of Kazakh folk songs, and the vocal cords close cleanly.
The pharyngeal sound comes in at the second line of the chorus.
That's not the frequency a human voice should have.
The penetrating power of the sound waves was amplified infinitely in the closed rehearsal room. The moment the head voice resonance and pharyngeal voice exploded at the same time, the hairs on the back of Song Ze stood up.
Hsiao Ching-teng, who was standing next to him, stopped chewing his gum.
The high notes are still going up.
By the time she reached the last long note, Dima Creek's vocal cords had completely switched to an almost supernatural operating mode—the metallic quality of her pharyngeal voice, the penetrating power of her head voice, and the resonant thickness of her chest cavity. The three layers of sound overlapped, and the glass windows of the rehearsal room emitted a slight hum.
Song Ze stared at the edge of the window frame.
It really hummed. It wasn't an illusion.
The last note faded.
The rehearsal room was silent for a full ten seconds.
Jam Hsiao finally swallowed the chewing gum.
Then he said, "That's really impressive."
Song Ze did not respond.
He was still processing the impact of the sound he had just heard.
Then, the familiar electronic notification sound in my mind rang precisely on time.
[Ding! Target detected demonstrating "expert-level" pharyngeal voice and resonance techniques! Extract?]
Song Ze silently uttered the word "extract" in his mind.
The system panel has been refreshed.
[Singing: Expert Level (7512/10000)]
[Pharyngeal Resonance: Beginner (1/100)]
It increased by a thousand.
7,500.
Adding to the points accumulated from Tan Jingjing, Na Ying, and Guang Liang, three-quarters of the artists have already reached the expert level. This number is sufficient for the entire Chinese music scene.
But Dimash is not a figure in the Chinese music scene.
He's the kind of player whose talent is simply overflowing. If we were to face him in the first round of competition, relying solely on stats would be risky.
Dima Xi opened her eyes, looking at Song Ze and Xiao Jingteng with some trepidation, waiting for their feedback.
Song Zechong gave him a thumbs up.
"Amazing."
Dimash's face lit up instantly.
Hsiao Ching-teng recovered, slapped his thigh, and stood up: "If this kid sings before me in the first episode, I'll just leave the stage. What a load of crap!"
Despite saying that, as he leaned back on the sofa, his fingers had already begun to casually strum guitar chords in the air.
Rock musicians may verbally admit defeat, but they're already working on rearranging songs.
Just as Song Ze was about to say something, his phone, which was on the piano lid, started buzzing.
Caller ID: Sa Dingding.
He gestured to Jam Hsiao to wait a moment, then walked to the corner by the window in the rehearsal room and answered the call.
"Sister Sa."
Sa Dingding spoke rapidly on the other end of the phone, words bursting out uncontrollably:
"Xiao Song! The post-production editing and mixing for the 'Left Finger Pointing to the Moon' music video are all done! I personally oversaw the picture quality, going through each frame one by one; not a single shot was done half-heartedly!"
Song Ze hummed in agreement and waited for her to finish speaking.
Sa Dingding didn't give him a chance to interrupt: "The studio held three meetings and finally decided—next Wednesday at 8 PM, it will premiere online! It will be simultaneously released on four platforms: Weibo, NetEase Cloud Music, QQ Music, and Bilibili, precisely targeting the peak traffic across the entire network!"
Next Wednesday.
8 PM.
Song Ze leaned against the window frame and tapped his fingers twice on the edge of his pocket.
The first episode of "Singer" was recorded on January 10th. There are still more than two months until then. If this music video is released during the peak of online traffic, the hype will be still fresh when he stands on the "Singer" stage.
The timing was perfect.
"Sister Sa," Song Ze lowered his voice, "has the Weibo promotional text for the launch day been written?"
"I've written three versions, you choose."
"Send it to me."
After hanging up the phone, Song Ze turned around.
Jam Hsiao was chatting with Dimash in broken English. The two communicated mainly through gestures and onomatopoeia, and although their conversation was somewhat nonsensical, they were both very happy.
Dima Creek was gesturing something, drawing a circle in front of his chest with both hands, and then pointing to his mouth.
Hsiao Ching-teng guessed three times.
"Basketball?" "Eating?" "...Singing?"
Dima Xi shook her head, anxiously pulled out her phone from her pocket, scrolled through it for a while, and finally found a photo—
A cup of bubble tea.
Hsiao Ching-teng was silent for two seconds.
"Do you want some milk tea?"
Dimash nodded frantically, then put his finger to his lips in a "shh" gesture, pointed to the door, and whispered something in English.
The gist of it is that his agent doesn't allow him to drink sugary drinks, and he asked if they could sneak him in a cup.
Xiao Jingteng turned to look at Song Ze.
Song Ze put his phone back in his pocket and pushed open the door to the rehearsal room.
"Let's go, the convenience store downstairs sells them."
Dima Xi jumped down from the high stool and followed behind Song Ze.
As he reached the door, Song Ze paused and glanced back at him.
"Dima Creek".
"Yes?"
"In the first round of the competition," Song Ze said in the simplest English, "I will beat you."
Dima Creek paused for a moment, then grinned.
"OK. I also."