Chapter 360: You Can Play the Violin Too?!

Chapter 360: You Can Play the Violin Too?!

“That’s right. Seven. Come pick one.” Wu Chen nodded.

Her expression was very strange.

Counting generously, he had spent about an hour and a half writing all seven.

Seven songs composed on the spot?

He had to be joking.

She came to the coffee table.

Wu Chen slid the laptop toward her.

She picked it up, sat on the long sofa, and set it on her lap.

The lyrics and scores were all inside professional software, so she could scroll straight from one to the next.

The first song.

Single Blade.

A Japanese-style song that could also be called rhythm and blues, blending jazz and gospel with elements of electronic blues worked in.

Its lyrical theme was hard to pin to a single word. It combined notions of chivalry and female heroism.

The second song.

Fireworks Across Three Lives.

A guofeng song, love as its theme, with long opera-style vocal passages through the chorus.

Love had always been the great subject of popular music, and most of An Menglan’s songs touched it one way or another.

But she had never sung guofeng.

The remaining five were Queen, Castle, Please Don’t Look Back, Galaxy, and The Final Chapter.

Their styles, in order: jazz blues, country, punk rock, rap-inflected, and folk.

Not one repeated another.

An Menglan skimmed all seven and was left dumbfounded.

There really were seven songs.

And not only were all seven in different styles, every one avoided the styles she specialized in.

Set against everything she had released before, all seven were different.

She had asked for something special.

Wu Chen had handed her seven at once.

For her, every one of them qualified.

She could not help looking up at him, her gaze extremely strange.

Clearly these could not have been prepared in advance. All seven were tailored to be unusual for her.

But if he had truly composed all seven on the spot, one after another…

That was terrifying.

Had he simply scribbled down whatever came to mind to fool her?

She said nothing.

After that one glance she lowered her eyes to the laptop and started over from the top, reading each song carefully.

The lyrics.

Good.

All of them good.

Very good.

The scores… they felt good too, but she could not judge immediately how good.

Her thoughts were too scattered.

She could not focus long enough to savor any single piece.

More than an hour went by before she noticed.

She spent the whole of it reading in earnest, examining every song closely, humming here and there to find the feel of each.

She did not notice time passing.

Or rather, it slipped by without her knowing.

Wu Chen stayed in the armchair, scrolling his phone.

It was on silent.

He was messaging Li Ruobing.

She had already had lunch with Su Qingying and Mu Qianqian, and the three of them were still out shopping.

Around two-thirty in the afternoon.

An Menglan finally raised her head.

She rubbed the back of her neck without thinking. Only when she noticed Wu Chen on his phone, paying her no attention, did she realize how much time must have passed.

She checked her watch quickly.

“It’s been that long,” she murmured.

“Hm?”

He looked up and smiled.

“Finished looking, Miss An?”

“I have.” She nodded, then added at once, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wu. I got so absorbed I forgot you were sitting here. It’s already this late…”

“It’s fine.”

He smiled and gestured toward the laptop.

“Pick one?”

“Mm…”

She hesitated, then said a little awkwardly, “Mr. Wu, how about… could we try them? I can’t quite decide right now.”

She gestured toward the piano room.

She was genuinely embarrassed.

She had taken so much of his time.

Skipping lunch herself was nothing, but Wu Chen had been sitting here with her and had not eaten either.

“Sure.” He smiled.

They both stood and went back to the piano room.

An Menglan set the laptop on the small platform at one corner of the piano. It came to about collarbone height on her, which made the screen easy to read.

Wu Chen sat straight down at the keys.

“Which one first?” he asked.

“The first. Single Blade,” she said.

No empty courtesies.

They were beginning at once.

An Menglan felt an urgent excitement now.

She desperately wanted to know what these seven songs would sound like performed.

What they would feel like.

Whether they would be good.

She was excited.

For all her questioning of whether Wu Chen truly composed on the spot, there was anticipation somewhere underneath it too.

What if he really was the kind of musical genius who appeared once in an age?

“Starting.”

Wu Chen said the word and pressed the keys.

A bright, tinkling sound flowed out like a clear spring.

The introduction to Single Blade was light and brisk, with a particularly strong pulse.

Strictly speaking the score called for no piano at all.

They were using it because it was what they had, a stand-in for the proper arrangement.

In a formal recording the arrangement would carry many instruments, and backing vocals besides.

The introduction ended.

An Menglan began to sing.

The opening used a spoken-singing style.

After that it shifted into something distinctly Japanese, growing faster and faster until the chorus finally broke open.

Though it was her first time with the song, her ear and her sight-reading were both astonishing.

She would not sing a wrong note.

Whether she had caught the right feeling was something they could adjust afterward.

Four minutes.

The song ended.

She pressed her lips together, looked at the laptop, then at Wu Chen.

Her face revealed little.

Inside, a stormy sea was crashing through her.

“Ahem. Fireworks Across Three Lives.”

She cleared her throat and named the second song.

“Let’s go,” Wu Chen said.

A melody steeped in the flavor of traditional Chinese music flowed out from under his fingers.

A pure guofeng song.

And one exceptionally well suited to a woman’s voice.

The moment An Menglan opened her mouth, the effect was stunning.

But when she reached the opera-style passage in the chorus she had sung only one line before Wu Chen’s brows drew together slightly.

She was not quite doing it right.

Clearly she had never trained in it.

Her fundamentals were too strong and her range frighteningly broad, so the notes themselves were fine.

What was missing was the flavor.

When she reached the third line of the opera passage, Wu Chen joined in.

Stunning.

This was what truly deserved the word.

She stopped singing on instinct and looked at him.

Wu Chen was using a pure dan-role opera vocal style, not a pop-adapted imitation.

He had not practiced opera singing much during the thousand-year loop, and even now he had not reached master level.

But he was far past the level of an amateur enthusiast.

He was unquestionably professional.

More than enough to shock An Menglan.

She stared at him, dazed.

He kept playing and singing, and signaled with his eyes for her to come in.

He was only correcting the flavor of her delivery.

She understood.

Following his voice, she began to sing again.

They sang the chorus through together once.

When the chorus came around a second time, he stopped singing.

She had already found the feel.

As for whether she could sing it at a fully professional opera standard, there was no need to ask that of her.

Every art had its specialty.

An Menglan was not a trained opera performer.

She was a pop singer.

There was no need to be exacting about an opera-style passage.

The song ended.

An Menglan drew deep breaths, struggling to settle herself.

There was something new in the way she looked at him.

Still she said nothing.

After a moment to steady herself she turned back to the computer and chose the next song.

“Queen…” she began, then added at once, “I brought my violin. One moment, Mr. Wu.”

By Wu Chen’s notes in the software, Queen opened with a blues violin solo.

They could have played it on the piano for now. Piano served blues perfectly well.

But if a violin was at hand, the violin was naturally better.

An Menglan could play many instruments.

The two she could be said to have mastered were piano and violin.

A piano was hardly something she could carry with her.

A violin was.

And she had a habit of traveling with her own.

She hurried out of the piano room.

Back in the suite’s bedroom she took the case from the wardrobe, opened it, lifted out the instrument, then hurried back and came to stand beside the piano.

Eyes on the score displayed on the laptop, An Menglan settled the violin against her shoulder.

Her left hand held the instrument.

Her right held the bow.

She rested the bow on the strings and, out of habit, took a deep breath to settle herself.

She was about to begin.

“Won’t it be awkward for you to sing like that?” Wu Chen asked suddenly.

“Hm?”

She stopped and turned to him.

“How about I do it? You sing…”

He rose as he spoke, smiling, and gestured toward the violin.

An Menglan seemed rooted to the spot.

She stared at him and blinked.

Several seconds passed before she asked slowly,

“Mr. Wu… you can play the violin too?!”