Glow

Sample Tracks

'I really don't know about this...' my voice trails off as I murmur in the mic in front of me.

'This is what I want for Christmas. Are you really going to deny me this?' Smirks Yoongi from the other side of the glass. A sigh and a shake of my head and I resign myself to this humiliation.

'So, just to clarify, you're not singing the words. The song has already been set and prepped for production, you're just going to give some ad lib background sounds,' Yoongi glances up at me while fiddling with the digital soundboard in front of him. When he nods I close my eyes, focusing on not being embarrassed, and nod as well.

The music quietly sneaks up into the headphones on my ears, the music swelling as it builds to the opening sequence.

****

'This is the fourth run through. Did you hear the chord exchange that time?' He asks, patiently rewinding the song to the second stanza.

'I think so. It was after Jin's high note, right?' I reply.

'Yep. If you can find something to add there, I think it'll be perfect.' Yoongi smiles at me encouragingly.

'But Hoseok's awfully fast after that. I might run over him vocally...' I frown.

'It's a background add in, his voice will be prominent, your's will not. Can you try both a high note ad lib as well as a low note one? I want to see how they both fit.' He nods at the idea.

'Okay, I'll do the high note first. Then you can rewind to the start of Jin's section and I can see if I can find a good low note one as well for that section.' I take a sip from the water bottle on the wooden stool next to me and resettle into the mindset for tonal singing... not with words, but almost anything else. Humming, whistling, yodeling... though maybe not yodeling for this.

I listen to Jin take the song from Taehyung's section, weaving the song higher, his voice like silk in my ears.

I catch the chord exchange this time, following it higher than Jin is, letting my voice spiral up softly, feeling the almost break as I get near the top of my range, then slowly let the notes drift down as Hoseok's voice comes in. 

The music pauses, and I can see Yoongi resetting the sound board for the next take. When he looks up at me I hem to resettle my throat, then nod. He nods back and starts the music again.

****

'I'm not sure what to do for the low part. I could do chord steps, kinda like for the high note ad lib, but it seems repetitive.' I shake my head, closing my eyes in frustration.

'What about whistling?' Yoongi asks.

'I'm better at high notes, but they're piercing, so I would imagine it'd be harder to modify to a background sound.' I say quietly.

A bit of silence, some hmmm-ing from both of us, and I look at him through the glass. 'Do you want to ask one of the other guys for advice?' I ask.

Shaking his head Yoongi frowns. 'As much as this is a gift from you to me, I want to surprise them as well.'

'Let me ask you then, what is the story behind this song? Maybe it'll help me figure out what to do.' I look him in the eye, working to not frown as I try to find ideas.

'It's easy to do fun pop songs. The fluffy music is easy to dance to, and usually the topic is pretty much based around a person's ego or the hormonal automatic response to stimuli. Instead this time we're working to redefine bouncy pop music to mean something.' Yoongi looks at me smiling wryly from the other side of the glass. 'Several current musicians are already doing this in the USA, and while we can't copy them on their intent, several of them using it to speak out against how their gender or race is thought of, it made us all realize that there's still plenty of topics that are universally an issue.' I nod, listening intently as he takes a deep deep breath before continuing. 'We wanted to talk about how humanity is all one species, regardless of gender or color. Not quite as seriously as Michael Jackson's Black and White song, but bring the idea that everyone is equal in how they see things, how they love, and what they need.'

'It's not really that heavy of a song though.' I point out.

'Right. We wanted it to be a happy, boppy, encompassing song. Something to make people want to celebrate their unity with everyone.' He agrees, nodding. 'RM had a hard time working the words out for the lyrics. I know he and Hoseok had several all-nighters over it, and even the 95'ers added in their thoughts.'

'Was it harder to do this song because of the lack of access to the producers at HYBE?' I asked, concerned.

'Not really. We've been working out what we want first for a while now, bringing it to the producers to polish after we get to a certain point. We don't have that this time, but the last two records we put out has had minimal input by producers before going public.' He smiles.

'What is the overall intent on this record?' I ask further.

'Unity, love, acceptance.' He says, eyes shining as he blushes.

Humming to myself I think about the conversation, but his hem into the mic has me looking up to him again.

'You ready to try again?' He asks.

'Two more times. I might just listen this time through, but keep the recording on just in case I get inspired.' He nods and sets it up.

The first run through I pitch my voice into my chest, barely moving up the scale as I lowly sing. 'Let love grow...' Hoseok's voice runs over the last bit of the word grow, but I am happy with how it is steady and smooth. At my nod he resets and starts Jin's part again.

'Let love glow...' This time I bring the ending notes a half octave higher, imitating the idea in my head of love being a plant growing towards the sun, or in this case the guys' higher registers.

After his nod and a gesture to come to him I remove the headphones and go over to the room he is in, settling on the couch behind him.

It isn't until several minutes later that he turns around to look at me.

'I know I said no words, just sound, but I'm glad you didn't keep to that.' He says, stretching. 'I like the high note one, but most of the vocal line can go into that range, and honestly a female's high pitch will stand out in a way we haven't done yet.'

'Didn't you have a female voice on one of your previous songs before?' I ask, trying to remember which song it was.

'She's actually in a lot of our songs. Her voice is too mellow to go solo, but works wonderfully in backgrounds.'  Yoongi nods. 'Adora was a producer with BigHit who got signed elsewhere. The party we gave her as her goodbye was both happy and sad, the maknae line weeping into their cups while us hyungs were reminiscing and smiling over the memories we had built.'

'I hope she's happy where she moved to. I loved her voice.' I smile softly, nodding.

'But back to the point. What you sang is in English, a counterpart to our Korean, as well as the translations, so it fits better than I expected.' Yoongi looks at the clock in the room before standing up. 'Looks like sunrise is only a few hours away. Let's see if we can get some sleep before the chaos descends on us. I'll clean it up and work on adding it in later.'

I just nod and head to my bed to collapse.