30 The Submissions
Wearing monitoring headphones, Tang Miaoyi adjusted the volume to a comfortable level and took a deep breath before immersing herself wholeheartedly in her music production.
"The first item..." She clicked on the first email sent by a fan and scrolled down to find an attached MP3 audio file that was almost four minutes long.
The fan had written a lengthy message of over a thousand words, which deeply touched Miaoyi upon reading it. She felt surprised and honoured by the thoughtfulness of the message.
She carefully read every word of the message before playing the audio file. As she listened, she fast-forwarded through some parts and only listened to the general idea of the fan's performance. Whether their skill was good or bad was not her main concern, as a music producer, she knew how to correct the pitch. The main issue she was screening for was the recording quality. Even an expert producer would struggle to turn a poor-quality audio file into professional work.
Moreover, Miaoyi's original intention was to make a chorus out of the fans' recordings. Anyone who listens to a choir knows that one person alone might sound off, but the more people added, the more correct it sounds.
Of course, although most fans' performances were average, Miaoyi occasionally stumbled upon a few exceptional ones that could make one's ears pregnant with a single note. These performances were on par with those of professional singers.
Time flew by as she worked on the music production, and the task of processing the fans' recordings alone took her two full days. It was a much more laborious task than she had anticipated.
- - - - - - - - - -
The date was September 27th, a Tuesday. These past two days had been uneventful for Tang Miaoyi, who had surprisingly not taken any more leave or skipped any classes. She went to school with An Qiuying during the day and worked on her new song's production at home at night.
This surprised Qiuying at first, and she even suspected that Miaoyi was so busy with her new song that she was working herself into a fever. With how focused Miaoyi was, Qiuying actually started worrying about her burning out. Did something happen?
Her life slowly became more normal, and the controversy on social media about TMY and The Rex also faded away with time.
Although the controversy between the two producers is still occasionally mentioned by some, more attention is focused on their upcoming new songs.
The final result of the new songs will be the new standard, and online arguments won't make a difference. After all, what's the point of arguing if the new songs don't do well?
On the topic of which of the two will win, many data analysts have predicted that The Rex will be several times more popular than TMY.
"If TMY wants to win, their song has to be orders of magnitude better than The Rex."
"I agree. The way to top the charts is by having crowds of people download/purchase the song. However, TMY only has slightly over 2.2 million fans on Weibo, and even if we don't count potential fans who don't use Weibo, The Rex still has more fans. TMY will be easily overwhelmed by the support of his fans, and won't be able to make it."
"I'm not optimistic about TMY. The success of 'Fox' is mainly due to the development of the House style."
"To be honest, this style is really cool, and many producers are exploring it now."
At this time, if you look at the discussions and predictions on the Chinese forums, almost all of them lean towards The Rex, with very few optimistic about TMY, which is a far cry from the hype when 'Fox' was released.
It was barely a few days since 'Solo Dance' and 'Closer' were announced, and there were already negative comments everywhere online.
Although TMY's fans feel the hate is unwarranted, they don't have the confidence to argue back because they understand how unlikely TMY winning is.
At best, they can only leave sour comments,
"TMY's next song will be even better than the first. Just wait and see!"
"Don't count TMY out of the race yet."
Eric, "I've been friends with TMY for a while. We went on a trip to new york in '15. Absolutely masterful artist."
"I can vouch for that. I was flight 288 Shanghai to New York for China Eastern..."
- - - - - - - - - -
However, even with the success of 'Fox', her fans are still lacking in confidence...
In terms of debut time, The Rex debuted two years earlier than TMY, so their experience is incomparable.
Regarding the quality of their works, although there is some controversy, the success of 'Fox' is undeniable as it created a new style of electronic music.
Furthermore, the number of works is TMY's biggest shortcoming, as she only has one single, 'Fox'.
Therefore, considering various data, TMY is definitely at a disadvantage in all aspects.
Although there are many voices of criticism, there are still a few people who have a positive outlook on TMY. They have expressed different opinions.
"I don't necessarily agree with the naysayers. In situations like this, no one can say for sure until the very end. After all, many people have overlooked a detail, which is the fan-sung melody collection activity initiated by TMY on Weibo. I don't know if anyone has noticed, but in this activity, a small part of the vocal melody of 'Solo Dance' has already been revealed. Although this doesn't prove anything, personally I think the melody of these vocal parts is very catchy and pleasant to listen to."
This is one of the most popular comments among the few people who have a positive outlook on TMY, with many replies following it.
"!!!!!!"
"It seems to be true. That melody is really good and has a strong flavour."
"Yes, yes, I've been wanting to say this for a long time!!"
Due to the nature of the internet, when given enough time they would discover everything, and would debate anything. Something as small as a rough recording of one small section of an unfinished chorus revitalized the damaged pride of the TMY fan group, keeping the debate brewing in the background.
But regarding these controversies, while Miaoyi didn't particularly care, she noticed it happening. Although she doesn't pay much attention to these miscellaneous things, Miaoyi was not an ignorant person who knows nothing. After all, this is something related to her own self-image...
But even though she knew, Miaoyi didn't bother speaking up about it. She even feels like laughing and being disdainful.
Let others argue to their hearts' content.
She continues to focus on producing her new song.
After two days of busy work, Miaoyi had selected a total of 60 audio clips for the fan chorus section of "Solo Dance", with 30 male and 30 female voices. All with good vocal performance and decent enough mic quality suitable for production.
Subsequently, Miaoyi edited all these 60 audio clips into a suitable duration and state for "Solo Dance", which is the first step.
After all, everyone is different, so their singing state is definitely not the same. Some people may have longer pauses between each sentence, while others may have shorter ones. It is impossible for these sixty people to sing the same few lyrics with the same tempo, syllable pacing, attack and sustain. Therefore, uniform editing is necessary.
(A/N, Attack is how fast a sound hits your ears, Sustain is how long the sound lingers for)
Although this step is tedious, it went smoothly.
The next step is tuning, which is surprisingly the easiest part. After correcting the key for a few individual samples, Miaoyi did a pass of low-powered autotune, to make each individual track seem more pleasing. She then put all the files into one track, arranged the melody, did some minor pitch corrections and added reverb, and then it was done. The entire process took less than 30 minutes.
The overall effect was very good...
Thus, another day passed.
September 28th. This was the third day of production.
For Tang Miaoyi and An Qiuying, this was a relatively special day.
Because Miaoyi had finally completed all of the production steps for "Solo Dance." It was already considered a complete song, and she had even created an instrumental version with a synth as the lead melody.
Unlike "Fox" which was only credited to TMY, this time, "Solo Dance" had three names after the song title.
"Solo Dance" - TMY/Jing Qiuhua/TMY Global Support Association."
