The sweetest in the entertainment industry

Chapter 144 Bickering
Lu Nanting loved playing music since he was a child, and his family was well-off. When he turned sixteen, his parents gave him a luxurious recording studio as a birthday gift.

This recording studio is located on the first floor of the Starlight Building, but it has separate front and back doors and is not connected to Starlight Entertainment.

There's even a dedicated freight elevator to transport heavy equipment, going directly from the second basement level to the first floor.

Because this building originally belonged to the Lu family, and it was originally an office building.

Lu Nanting's cousin started a business, and to support his cousin, Lu Weidong rented a floor for him at 20% of the normal market price.

When Starlight Development took off, my uncle bought the building, but only bought the area outside the first floor, leaving the entire first floor to his nephew.

After finishing her rice ball, Gu Lanxi rinsed her mouth with mouthwash before taking her suona and following Lu Nanting upstairs.

The car was driven to the second basement level, then directly into the elevator, and only drove out after reaching the first floor.

After exiting, there is a small parking lot that can only accommodate two cars.

Gu Lanxi had been here with Lu Nanting before, so she was familiar with the layout.

The two got out of the car; Old Li was driving today.

Unlike Lao Yang's taciturn nature, Lao Li was more cheerful. He greeted the two of them with a smile, telling Lu Nanting to call him anytime if needed, before heading to the lounge.

The entire first floor has only one recording studio. The rest of the space includes a kitchen, bedrooms, and single rooms for the accompanying staff.

The couple arrived at the location and went straight to the recording studio.

A song goes through several stages from the moment an idea is conceived to its successful release.

Speaking solely of creative work.

Once you have an idea, you need to initially determine the theme of the song.

Common themes include love, friendship, dreams, family, philosophy of life, historical reflection, and social issues.

Then we need to decide on the general musical style, such as pop, rock, folk, classical, etc.

There are dozens of subcategories, making it impossible to count them accurately. And people often mix two or more of them together to create new styles.

So this can only be a general overview; it would be very difficult to define it precisely.

After deciding on these two things, we started writing lyrics and composing music, and then we had to arrange the music.

Arranging music refers to the process of arranging and integrating elements such as melody, harmony, and rhythm in a musical work to enhance its expressiveness and artistry, and to make the original piece better suited to different performance styles and instrument combinations.

Lu Nanting is very good at songwriting. Among the singers who have debuted in recent years, he is the only one who dares to claim that he can handle lyrics, composition, and arrangement all at once.

Once the song is written, it will enter the production stage.

The birthday gift Mrs. Lu gave her son was naturally not just a house full of professional equipment; she also hired professional staff for him.

For example, professionals such as producers, recording engineers, musicians, and mixing engineers.

The producer oversees the entire process, controlling the direction and quality of the song's production; musicians record their instrumental performances according to the arrangement requirements; while the singer and musicians are recording, the recording engineer is responsible for adjusting the equipment to ensure sound quality and capture the best vocal and performance effects; the mixing engineer is responsible for mixing the recorded tracks, adjusting parameters such as volume, timbre, phase, and spatial position of each track to blend different instruments and vocals together, achieving a balanced and harmonious effect, allowing listeners to clearly hear each element while enhancing the singer's vocal impact.

This team has more than one person in each position, and almost all of them are at the industry-leading level.

When Lu Nanting releases a song, his needs are the primary consideration. When Lu Nanting is busy with other things, the recording studio will also take on some commissions from Starlight Entertainment, such as making albums for singers that the company is promoting.

Overall, he is quite well-known in the industry.

Once all these things are done, it's time for the post-processing stage.

Post-production processing includes mastering, cover design, lyric layout, and so on.

Finally comes the process of issuing, registering copyrights, promoting and advertising, and officially releasing the product.

Generally speaking, copyright registration requires a complete work. After the work is completed, it takes about twenty days from submitting the application to receiving the result, even with an expedited process.

Not registering a copyright does not mean you can't publish, but it can easily lead to copyright disputes.

However, this song was independently created by Lu Nanting, and there is detailed evidence. He also wants to release it for free on Gu Lanxi's birthday, and he can register the copyright next month.

Gu Lanxi followed Lu Nanting inside and saw that the staff were already waiting in the lounge.

They greeted them with smiles as they entered.

Gu Lanxi was a little reserved, but when she realized that most of the people were familiar faces, she greeted them one by one.

Surprisingly, even after so long, she could still accurately call out everyone's names, which made everyone quite happy.

Gu Lanxi used to make a living by playing the suona, and she often did some less-than-honorable things. Like a little beggar, she would sneak around to beg for money when people held weddings or funerals. When she was young, she cared about her reputation and was unwilling to talk about her childhood. Naturally, she did not want Lu Nanting to find out that she was good at this.

She had only been here once with Lu Nanting, but she had a good memory. How could she not recognize someone she had spent the whole day with, especially someone who was a close employee of Lu Nanting?
The producer's name was Wang Jia. He had naturally curly hair and a thick beard. He had been with Lu Nanting for many years, not only in charge of the daily affairs of the recording studio but also as the music director for Lu Nanting's concerts. He usually called him Lao Wang affectionately. Gu Lanxi, however, felt uncomfortable calling him that and instead addressed him as "Uncle Wang," shaking his hand.

"To be honest, when the suona starts playing, my head is full of heroic songs. Even swatting a mosquito turns into a world war. I have to say, you're something else!"

After shaking hands with Gu Lanxi, he gave Lu Nanting a thumbs up.

Anyone would feel resentful if they had a boss like that.

We had already recorded everything a couple of days ago and done most of the post-production work, but then I suddenly had a thought that this might produce a better result, so I immediately wanted to start over.

It's still in time for the song release tomorrow.

I finished recording this morning, and I'll have to work incredibly hard on post-production to make it uploaded at 9:08 tomorrow.

What a living dad!

Staff members are human too, it's normal for them to have grievances, but that's part of the job, isn't it?

Gu Lanxi just smiled and stood to the side without saying a word.

Lu Nanting reached out and tickled his armpit: "Old Wang, don't say these things! I don't believe you're not curious about what the effect will be, otherwise why didn't you go home last night and just slept here?"

Wang Jia rolled her eyes at him: "I'll give you two hundred, no explanation needed."

After saying that, he immediately clapped his hands, signaling everyone to take their places.

Large-diaphragm condenser microphones are often used to record vocals and instrumental solos, capturing rich details and a warm tone.

Gu Lanxi put down the sheet music, played it in her mind twice to make sure there were basically no mistakes, and then entered the recording area.

Put on the headphones, stand in front of the microphone, pick up the suona and start playing.

Most musicians need to familiarize themselves with unfamiliar sheet music several times before they can play it fluently, but Gu Lanxi is different.

I got off the high-speed train a little after eight o'clock, got the sheet music a little after nine, glanced at it a few times, and was able to play it fluently on the first try.

By the second time, the control over the emotional nuances was extremely precise.

The sound engineer gave an OK sign, and Gu Lanxi walked out of the recording area.

Taking off my headphones, I was still a little incredulous: "It's done so quickly?"

It's not even 9:30 yet!

Lu Nanting couldn't help but put his arm around her shoulder and laugh.

"Honey, you have no idea about your own abilities. By the way, I'm going to rehearsal this afternoon. Do you want to come with me and practice a dance? We can perform together later."

Okay, that's how it is when you go along with someone's lead.

Just two days ago, he said that as long as she hid in a corner and played a tune on the suona while he sang "Mosquito," he would be happy. Now he's having this crazy idea of ​​coaxing her to practice dancing.

Gu Lanxi rolled her eyes: "By next year, will I have to sing all your songs for you?"

As Lu Nanting walked out with his arm around her, he teased her, "Then I'll write a few more duet love songs, one line for you and one line for me."

"No way, I can't sing well, I don't know any techniques, and I'd be speechless if I went on stage and saw so many people below."

"It's not that bad. Don't think I don't know. You helped out at someone's concert. There were so many people in the audience, why didn't you panic? You're all smiles when you help other men, but when it comes to me, you make all sorts of excuses."

"What other men? That guy is forty-eight, okay?! Besides, that small concert only had a few hundred audience members. How can that compare to your stadium with tens of thousands of people?"

"Oh, you still remember my age!"

"Brother, don't go too far!"

Listening to the two chattering away, everyone couldn't help but want to laugh.

Compared to the always cold-faced "former" boss, this cheerful "new" boss is so much better!

There are many musicians in the Chinese entertainment industry who excel at writing lyrics, composing music, and arranging, such as Wang Leehom, Jay Chou, Xu Song, Li Ronghao, Hu Yanbin, Wang Feng, and Wong Ka Kui...

People who don't have a natural talent for music really can't do these things.

To make this book more authentic, I put a lot of effort into the details and it will introduce a lot of knowledge related to the entertainment industry.

If I've written anything wrong, it just means I haven't done enough research. You can tell me, and it won't hurt for me to learn more.

It's almost the end of the month, please vote with your monthly tickets!

(End of this chapter)