Genius of a Performing Arts High

Chapter 5: Softly 8

Sitting with her legs crossed, Lee Suh-ah wore a strange smile and opened her mouth.

“So, how do you want to do it?”

What did she mean? I thought but after a while, it hit me. Right, Lee Suh-ah was just dragged into the practice room and probably had no idea what the situation was. Touching my chin, I thought for a bit.

How should we practise?

I did force her here today but if I wanted to continue practising with her in the future, there had to be something good for Lee Suh-ah as well. We needed to grow interdependently to have the practice last a long time.

Then... I guess the best would obviously be a back and forth of feedback?

Clicking my fingers I replied.

“Let’s just sing songs one by one, then evaluate others’ song.”

She slowly nodded her head.

“Okay. You go first.”

“Okay.”

Standing in front of Lee Suh-ah, I breathed in deeply before closing my eyes. What should I sing... a song that could moderately test my vocalisation as well as appeal to Lee Suh-ah... Going through the music sheets in my head, I picked up a song – a song I was practising recently to use as a potential prac test song.

Mattinata.

Giving a nod, I opened my mouth.

“I’ll start then.”

“...”

Lee Suh-ah replied with a raise of her eyebrows. Meeting my eyes with hers, I slowly postured myself – I breathed in, created space and got the vocalisation ready. And finally, I opened my mouth and breathed out, and a song that I had gotten somewhat used to started flowing out.

“L’aurora di bianco vestita–”

Mattinata by Leoncavallo. This Italian song’s title could be translated as around, ‘Morning song’, or perhaps ‘sunrise’. But... although the title said morning, the song itself was a good old romance song.

In the beautiful morning scenery, I wish you were there – that kind of song. I can’t understand why they would talk about love straight after waking up but, how many songs would there be if there were no love?

Shrugging my shoulders, I sang along with a bright tone.

“Carezza de’ fiori lo stuol–!”

The morning song. Although it was a love song, a peculiar part of it was that it was an extremely bright song. Different to the depressed or sorrowful love, it was a song meant to be sung happy, joyously, similar to O sole mio I had sung before.

Therefore, when singing this song, I would feel really good. It wasn’t a song that required super high-level techniques either so it was quite relaxing as well...

Oh, a high note.

As soon as the important part approached, I got rid of the side thoughts and lightly pushed in the breath. The pressure that roared up from the stomach passed through the vocal cords and its ringing vibrations reached the head.

“E tu non ti desti, ed inva–no!”

It only required just a bit more attention on the highlight and a good understanding of a few important points – and was a simple song. But of course, a ‘simple song’ did not equal an ‘easy song’.

Because it was a simple song, it didn’t require any fancy skills, and therefore, little tricks won’t be able to grab the listeners’ attention. Then, it would boil down to the basics, the timbre people were born with as well as diction and expression skills...

Just singing wasn’t the end, we had to reach the premise of ‘good singing’ to be able to barely receive the applause from the audience.

“Ove tu sei nasce–!”

And that, was something I was quite confident in. When I easily held out a G4 note, strange light entered Lee Suh-ah’s eyes and meeting that gaze, I let out the last verse.

“L’amor!”

...Ah, my breath was a little lacking.

When I finished the song while gasping for breath, I found Lee Suh-ah staring at me with a strange light in her gaze. I tilted my head thinking what’s with this reaction, and Lee Suh-ah asked with a serious tone.

“...Have you studied abroad before?”

“No?”

Where was this coming from all of a sudden? Although I did go overseas several times to sing in the past, I had never gone out to study. Hearing my reply, Lee Suh-ah made a dumb expression before asking again.

“You’ve only been living in Korea?”

“Yeah.”

Tilting her neck slightly, Lee Suh-ah started pointing things out while folding her fingers.

“You haven’t studied abroad before but talk to Chloe in French, sang a German aria during the Improvement Concert and your Italian pronunciation is this good on top of that? Do you think this makes sense?”

“That’s...”

Seeing her staring at me gloomily, I scratched my hair with embarrassment. That might seem a little weird yeah. Languages required a lot of time to study so it was strange for a high school freshman to be able to speak so many different languages.

Especially subtle things like pronunciation would sound awkward with slight mistakes so there was the issue of sounding perfectly fluent. Besides, it’s not just one or two languages that had to be learnt.

For opera songs, Italian and German were basic knowledge and on top of those, French and English had to be good as well to perform overseas and it was a plus if you could speak Russian on top of that as well. Well, I learned it during the long years of singing plus as a hobby but...

In any case, since I couldn’t explain it, I had to play dumb here.

“It just worked out after studying hard.”

When I raised my chin shamelessly, Lee Suh-ah clicked her tongue before changing the topic.

“...Right. The pronunciation was good and well done.”

Starting like that, she slowly continued the feedback.

“First, you changed the vocalisation to be a bit lighter? It’s not bad – it’s more relaxing to hear now.”

Glancing above, Lee Suh-ah stared into nothing and started twirling her hair with her fingers.

“But right now, it’s too light. It sounds like a cat. Are you doing that on purpose? This song shouldn’t be about something like that though?”

It was a bit too light huh. I nodded and Lee Suh-ah continued endlessly.

“And the resonance is way too lacking. Although this isn’t an aria, do you think you can stand on a stage with that volume? Will that reach the audience?”

“Hard, I would imagine.”

“Also, why are you always stopping the legato in between? Are you doing that intentionally to make people angry? I would get it if the overall quality was low but it’s annoying because this kind of high-level singing is just suddenly stopping for no reason.”

“That’s because my breath is still lacking...”

“Let me say one more thing. I’ve mentioned it before but that thing where you pull the ends of the words longer really sounds like an old man. Likee~ thii~ su~. Why are you always doing that, it’s really annoying.”

I became slightly flared up here.

“Oi, this gives such an old elegant vibe, don’t you know classic? Opera is meant to be sung like that.”

“Nonsense. The song is old but the singer is from modern society. Shouldn’t we sing modern then?”

“This is super modern.”

“Puph.”

Scoff?

Trembling, I stared at Lee Suh-ah but soon relaxed. Whatever. Expression was subjective and depended on the person, so I should ask more on the vocalisation techniques.

“Huu... hey just help me with the vocalisation. You said it was too light right? Then how about this?”

Meeting the eyes of Lee Suh-ah who looked on with her arms crossed, I let out a sound. There was the feedback that it was too light so I made a voice a bit heavier than before, with more dignity.

If the vocalisation method of teacher Kwak Jungsoo from before was level 5, and the voice singing the ‘morning song’ was level 1, then the voice I made just then was around level 3.

Hearing me sing a verse like that, Lee Suh-ah gave a nod.

“Better than before, but it would be better to go a little lighter.”

Then level 2.

“Ah, too light. It’s like a cat.”

Then 2.5?

“Now it’s too flat.”

After repeating like that several times, it had finally reached a sound Lee Suh-ah liked.

“Not bad.”

“Really?”

Seeing Lee Suh-ah nod, I made some ‘ah’ sounds before listening to the recorded audio.

[L’aurora di bianco vestita–]

Hmm...

Gazing away from the phone to Lee Suh-ah, I found her raising her chin up seemingly very confident in herself.

Indeed, her confidence wasn’t baseless.

The sound came out quite nicely after singing with this vocalisation. It was like the best optimisation of the vocalisation teacher Ku Mingi suggested, and it wasn’t hard on the throat either...

“So you’re saying this is good?”

“Un. It sounds refined, and isn’t too Leggero either.”

Good, then I can have this fixed to my body. Since I had found the best sound, I had to sink it into the body perfectly, enough to use it during sleeptalks. After I get used to it, nothing similar to yesterday would be happening again right; fainting because of exhaustion...

“Ah–”

As I repeated the sound trying to fix it into the body, Lee Suh-ah opened her mouth.

“But why did you change the vocalisation method all of a sudden? So bothersome.”

“It was too taxing to sing like before.”

“Taxing?”

Mhmm, it was a bit difficult to explain. Saying that I could’ve injured my throat sounded way too over the top and it was questionable whether I would’ve injured it in the first place... after some thought, I gave a simple answer.

“The teacher said this was better, and it’s true that I can make higher notes as well.”

“Is that so?”

Crossing her legs with a flick, Lee Suh-ah asked casually like she wasn’t interested.

“How high does it go up to?”

“C.”

Seeing Lee Suh-ah flinch before glancing at me, I felt somewhat proud. Did she now have more faith in my skills and expression? Right, pulling the ends of words makes them so much better.

With annoyance, she watched me and nonchalantly said something to take me down a peg.

“But Kim Wuju can go up to D though?”

D5?

D already, with that vocalisation method?

Isn’t that crazy? Why is he still attending high school; I wish he would stop massacring the poor average people and go up to university already.

Because Lee Suh-ah saw my dropped chin and gave a grin, I quickly showed a bluff.

“Ah~ Did you just compare me with Kim Wuju? I’m so grateful.”

“What are you saying? You just started learning a new vocalisation; who do you think you’re comparing yourself to?”

“No but... you were the one that compared us.”

“More importantly, change that old-man expression first.”

“I said it’s not?!”

After a little fight, I heaved out a sigh. At this rate, it would be endless, and it would be better to continue practising. Perhaps understanding my signal saying that it was her turn to sing now, Lee Suh-ah stood up from her seat.

Then, after running her hand through her hair, she started.

“What should I sing?”

“Sing what you’ve been practising.”

“... You’re doing that to find out what my prac song is right?”

How did she know?

I flinched my head back to which she grinned and thought for a bit before coming to a decision.

“I’ll sing ‘Let me weep’”

“...Right.”

When I licked my lips in regret and stepped back, Lee Suh-ah slowly closed her eyes, seemingly in preparation for singing. Seeing Lee Suh-ah like that, I thought.

‘Let me weep’, huh.

It’s an opera aria so it won’t be the prac test song and... it didn’t seem like something she had prepared for concours either. In the first place, I didn’t think the song would fit her tone. Wouldn’t Han Dasom be better suited instead?

I thought and searched my head to look up ‘Soprano Lee Suh-ah’s repertory 20 years later but as expected, she had never sung this song at an official place from my knowledge.

But why did she choose this song? Thinking that, I tilted my head and stared at Lee Suh-ah,

As she who had been standing elegantly slowly started opening her mouth.