Chapter 2.5 - Bit by bit 5 (1/2)

Picking the phone up, I pressed on the play button.

– Hi everyone, nice to…

It was the recording file. After checking that teacher Ku Mingi’s voice was properly coming out, I stopped the audio.

“Mhmm… working well.”

The size of the audio was a lot larger than I had thought so there was the question of whether a phone could play it but… fortunately it worked fine. Although it was big, it was still within the boundaries of an audio file so perhaps it was just me looking down on the technology too much.

In any case, with this, the preparations were now over.

Sitting down, I could feel the comfy cushion of the chair around my bum. After all the lessons of Future Arts High had ended, I had finally reached the practice rooms.

“How long has it been.”

Looking around the practice room gave me a nostalgic feeling.

Practice rooms.

Through my high school, university and ensemble days… more than half of my life had been spent in this space every day.

Most of the time I would stay in here more than in my own house. A home was only a place for sleeping and on days that I indulged myself in training, I would sometimes not even go back home so it wasn’t an overstatement to call the practice rooms my house.

“…”

But with one incident as the cause, that life had been shattered like a lie, and my feet had never carried me back into another practice room ever since.

‘Met…’

It truly was pathetic now that I reflected back on it. So what if I failed the interview? And yet I had spent more than 5 years after that just playing around like a NEET.

Without ever stepping back into a practice room.

Ever.

Then, I realised that I was unconsciously touching the soundproof walls. The rough texture meeting my fingers felt unusual and awkward.

Unusual, huh.

“…”

Throwing my gaze to the front, a black piano entered my sight. Placing my hand on top of it, I held onto a random key.

Ding-

The sound of C4 quietly echoed through the room.

“…”

Just like that, I continued up.

D4, E4, F4, G4, A4, B4

And lastly, I pressed down on C5 along with the pedal and the ringing string continued its vibration for a while.

‘C5’.

In other words, 3 Octave C.

It was a high note that symbolised top tenors.

Why? It was because there weren’t many males that could give out a proper C5 pitch. That meant something other than just reaching up to C5, and was different from squeezing everything out to hit that note.

A person that could have the high note C5 fill an entire stadium of a few hundred metres in diameter could stand proud as a revered tenor with that one ability.

Right. Exactly like that famous Pavarotti who had been called the King of High Cs.

Getting rid of all the stray thoughts, I prepared my throat and started off lightly with some simple scales.

“Ah- ah- ah- ah!”

The tone that barely brought itself up had stopped at F4 – a note 4 steps lower than C5.

Of course, it was due to a lack of practice. If I were to train, I should be able to go up to B4 which had been my highest note before coming back in time.

B4 – one level lower than C5.

‘To that B4 which I had been stuck at for 20 years.’

With only that, I could not call myself a tenor. How can an opera singer that can’t even sing a high note be a tenor?

‘Tenor…’

Turning my head over, there was a mirror to the side of the practice room. Mirror, through which my eyes were able to glance over the me inside it.

A feeble body and a small height. Staring directly at that youthful face, there was a burst of fantasies floating in my head. Wouldn’t it be possible this time, with this body that had yet to fully develop

“…”

After a while of staring into the mirror, I flicked my head away.

“Let’s just practise.”

Whether it would succeed or not, there was the need to actually begin. Putting aside all the ideas and opinions, I played the rest of the recording. Along with some background noise, the voice of the teacher started to flow out.

‘It’s indeed quite bad.’

I had thought it was just the recording feature but the playing feature was also quite bad. When I tried putting an earphone in, the earphone itself was terrible too so it felt like my ears were rotting away. If the recording file was in bad quality on top of this, then the practice itself would’ve been impossible.

At least thanks to teacher Ku Mingi, I’ll be able to practise.

I listened to the rest of it after a sigh.

At the start, there was the teacher’s explanation on concerted music and blah blah blah. I knew all of these so I just skipped it. Soon the teacher called Jun Shihyuk and I to the front and Jun Shihyuk’s turn to sing had arrived.

– Ah–!

The shabby phone speaker vibrated as if being ripped to pieces, by the notes overflowing with power.

Hearing it the second time, there were still feelings of admiration.

‘Jun Shihyuk is indeed really good.’

After hearing this much of a cool sound, it had even created some good-will towards the guy. He must’ve tried quite a lot as well, so I wanted to have some conversation on how he approached his singing.

Maybe I should talk to him later and become friends.

Soon, his voice ended and it became my turn to sing. Opening my ears to its maximum, I glared daggers at the speaker.

– Ah–…

The first note was dropped.

‘Mhmm…’

Indeed.

It was different to what I had felt during when I was singing. The sound was different and the resonance had dropped… making it sound raw. That was the sound it made.

This was my song from the audience’s perspective.

– Ah– Ah- Ah ah–!

The me inside the speaker tried its hardest. Filling in the breath, and barely ringing the resonating chambers. I could feel it trying whatever it could to somehow continue with the song.

‘I’m going crazy.’

It felt like I was ripped naked.

Barely holding my hands back from trying to stop the song, I swallowed the embarrassment and analysed the timbre.

– Ah –…

Hmm… It was a timbre with leftover signs of a boyish feel. Even then, it was soft, not sharp and the diction overall gave off a bright feeling.

‘It’s more different than I thought.’

Compared to 20 years later, it was way too different. I scanned deeper.

First, the bright feeling it gave off was a little burdensome and there seemed to be a need to consciously make it darker. Hmm and… there was nothing much to complain about the timbre. In fact, I quite liked it. Did I have this kind of voice?

I organised my thoughts while tilting my head.

“For now… I’m done with checking.”

Now that I had finished analysing my voice patterns, it was time to decide the direction I was going to head towards. How should I develop my singing from here? After having my brain quickly spin, the 20 years of experience as an executant had immediately thought of a few training routines.

First off, the most lacking were the basics, and especially breath. The body that had not even tried abdominal breathing suffers from even having to maintain that breathing.

The basic of singing was breath so without this, things collapsed like a house built on sand. After all, how would one sing without air?

‘But since I can do breathing exercises at the dorm, let’s do that later.’

There was a limited time of use on practice rooms so they had to be used efficiently. Exercises that couldn’t be done at the dorm. A practice that should only be done at the completely soundproof practice room – exercises that require sound…