Source: Zhihu
Author: Snow is shining
Some senior fans recommended Shan Yichun and her "Brave Quota" album~
First of all, I have to admire that God really loves her so much!
God loves her~
Her talent, no matter her voice, appearance, temperament is outstanding. In particular, the latter two also have an innate sense of art. If you don't believe it, you look at the photo of Director Zhang Yimou and her, that expression, is it not the look of seeing the future star... The feeling of taking a photo with Zhou Dongyu before the old schemer is the same, hahaha~
Shan Yichun's voice characteristics include the characteristics of Lin Yilian, Na Ying, and Han Hong, and they are also the most beautiful voice traits of each; Her vocal characteristics also include Mariah Carey's ethereal high frequencies and Demi Lovato's sturdy low-mid~
After watching some of her variety shows, almost all of them are very good, regardless of singing and typhoons, the overall feeling is natural and comfortable. She controlled her voice so well that it was almost hard to hear any flaws. Most of the time, the sense of hearing is enjoyable. Of course, she is far from perfect. When the answerer heard this, he felt that the pressure of the breath was still a little worse. Many times, it will appear that the voice is a little loose. It's just that in the case of her super beautiful voice and overall delicate carving, it's not too obvious. Of course, the pressure of the breath is not strong enough, which is a common characteristic of Asian female singers. Only a few female singers can break through this point and achieve a sense of breath close to European and American female singers. For example, Ye Qianwen, Lin Yilian, Zhang Huimei, Faye Wong, Han Hong and so on. Shan Yichun still needs to work in this regard.
As a native of Jinhua, Zhejiang, her mother is a fan of Yue opera, which is very common in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, especially in Zhejiang. During the period when the respondent worked in Hangzhou, he met many female entrepreneurs who sang very well in Yue opera, and some casually recorded at the level of professional singers. Shan Yichun's mother must be similar, these family music atmosphere from the direct parents' love of music must be the best artistic nourishment for Shan Yichun to grow up since childhood. Her mother must have also devoted a lot of effort to her music education, especially vocal education.
In a sense, the success of many musicians is actually the success of their parents. For example, Jay Chou's mother, Lang Lang's father, including Shan Yichun's mother who is now guessed by the respondent. Because I haven't seen her in-depth interview about her mother's music education for her~
Let's briefly talk about Shan Yichun's music and singing on this "Brave Quota" album~
I've seen a lot of this album in the Neo-Soul style. No problem, but it seems too general. The album is a stylistically blend of Contemporary R&B, modern soul and hip-hop, and is close to soul in some rhythmic and vocal interpretations. But the musical core of the album is quite a bit more based on jazz or fusion~
What is the biggest feature of Jazz? Harmony ~ "Brave Quota" is very close to this point. The specific style of its specific songs, the respondent feels that it is better to disassemble them separately and analyze them one by one, in order to express its musical connotation more clearly~
The term Neo-Soul comes from the definition of Motown's New Boss, which was meant to describe the evolution of soul soul music close to 2000. But this word is very similar to EDM (Electronic Dance Music Electronic Dance Music), for students who love pop music, but are not familiar with the evolution of music genres are very confusing, mentioning Neo-Soul is equivalent to not saying, it is like a huge packaging container ~
The first song "Empty Ear", Fusion Ballad~
The style is Ballad, but in harmony and string writing, it prefers Fusion fusion systems such as Jazz + Boardway (30s American Broadway style), and the vocals are R&B + Pop + Soul style.
Shan Yichun's breath is too good, it has surpassed Lin Yilian and Faye Wong, and is very close to Mariah Carey. Considering that her singing aura skills are not too strong, there is still a big gap from the super strong Carey sister. Therefore, if you wait until a certain day, Shan Yichun can sing until he can hear the super breath support at any time. Then in addition to the very high sound range, it is not impossible to be close to Mariah Carey's hearing sense comprehensively. I hope that day can come early, and listening to Shan Yichun sing Chinese songs will be the heavenly of the entire Chinese music scene~
The second track, "Another Answer", Jazz/Fusion/Contemporary R&B/Soul~
The arrangement of the electric guitar in this music is very good, the arranger has a good timbre aesthetic, and even the answerer is not sure whether it is a semi-hollow jazz guitar, or the beautiful Fender Srat tunes out the jazz electric guitar sound. The use of some harmonies is both advanced and nice.
The arrangement and pickpocketing of specific music, the answerer will be described in another article (the same below), this article only outlines the musical style and pure vocal characteristics ~
The vocals of this song are purely interpreted, still highlighting their invincible qi, which in technical terms is a kind of vocal ultra-high frequency resonance harmonics, which are basically completely talented, if the vocal characteristics are naturally lacking in these, then in any case can not be possessed through practice.
In addition, some high-speed RNB vibrato, such as the 64th note vibrato of Chrous's words "in" and "you", shows that Shan Yichun has worked singing vocal training~
The third track "Brave Quota", Pop/Jazz Ballad/Boardway~
The arrangement adopts pure Piano + Instrumental with a small amount of strings, in order to maximize the outstanding pure and beautiful vocal. The harmony design uses quite a bit of jazz-biased harmonies, but the melody takes a pop route. The Interlude interlude also uses the classic Boardway, the string arrangement of Broadway musicals of the 30s, thus adding a rich yellowing to the classic atmosphere of the old days. The respondent appreciates this very much, in a word, the taste is high enough!
The overall charm has a sense of timeless filter, especially relying on a pure ultra-high frequency air-acoustic harmonic, like a beautiful cloud floating~
If there's anything that can be improved, it's that the Beat writing of the chorus is a little too rigid, and here you can boldly break the scenes, because the whole main music is a continuous sense of baking, so you can allow the Beat part to deconstruct the Breaks.
第四首《Gray turns to may》，Garage/2-Step~
The Bass Line of this song is really wonderful, really, it is a stroke of God, I haven't heard such a great Bass Line in a long time!
Because I know that the album is involved in many European and American music producers, then there is no doubt that this song must be from the hands of foreigners, because such a super sense of Groove is not a gene that musicians in the Chinese music scene can have (this sentence was slapped in the face, it turned out to be the work of a mainland music producer). Such a Beat+Bass Line, not only with the standard UK Garage characteristics, combined with the quiet section in front, but also to form the specific style characteristics of 2-Step, is Breaks+Soul+R&B such an Urban pop rhythm.
This song doesn't sound like a Chinese music work at all... This statement states. Haha, it's really not a Chinese music work~
The fifth track "Hello Happy", Dream-Pop/Boardway/Smooth Jazz~
Smooth Jazz is a light jazz that is more of a fusion style, focusing on melody, and the ability to integrate with other styles such as R&B~
This song, the respondent believes is one of the more prominent songs in the album. It better highlights the characteristics of Shan Yichun's voice, and also plays her current vocal skills and different vocal ranges to bring different voice textures. Very beautiful! The most important thing is that its melody has also been greatly improved in popularity~
Arrangement, it would be better if the second harmony of the chorus chorus, the 3rd major chord, was replaced with 6 (9), which would open up the emotional brewing space of the song to a larger realm for thoughts to wander. Similarly, the fourth harmonic 5-level major chord is also replaced with a high-order extended chord of 5add9/13, which will be more intense and intoxicating, and more in line with the Jazz style of the entire album.
The song's large-interval jumping melody automatically repairs the weakness of Shan Yichun's original vocal air pressure. Because the large interval rises straight up, if the breath pressure is not strong enough, it is likely to be flawed, so for Shan Yichun, who has always pursued perfect performance and does not allow any flaws in his voice, it will naturally greatly enhance breath control.
If one day, when Yichun sings a musical phrase with little ups and downs, she can maintain a strong breath, it will be her perfect highlight moment~
The sixth track, "Diary After the Rain", Contemporary R&B
In this song, Shan Yichun's interpretation reflects her deep immersion in R&B. The sound in many places is like a native American singer interpreting a song~
The arrangement and music sections are relatively bland on the album.
Track 7, "Out of Focus", Jazz/Soul
A very ethereal song, whether it is Jazz guitar timbre, playing; Or the color of the human voice, the interpretation, can be called a perfect work~
The song's composing melody vocal range chooses a pure falsetto comfort zone, reminiscent of the Verse passage of Lin Yilian's "It's Too Dark", or Frank Ocean's "You Are Luhh"~
Bass also has a great arrangement and a strong sense of playing. The whole song sounds like seeing a standard 5-member band performing on stage~
Track 8, "Forever in You," Pop/OST
The style setting is basically a Ballad song with a sense of film soundtrack, but in terms of the specific arrangement timbre, the rhythm section starting at 03:24 is still unwilling and bland to choose some very deep sounds based on the Dub-Step style, which is very similar to Wu Qingfeng and Aurora's "A Wanderer In The Sleeping City". It can be heard that in the current era, the arrangers of popular music are working very hard to pursue the latest, most luxurious, deepest and most exciting music style and arrangement timbre.
So, look at the hard disks are now 14T start... Without further ado, the little friend who is engaged in arrangement, the pain in the heart, the answer to the Lord understands...
Track 9, "Anonymous Star," Contemporary R&B/Neo-Soul
This is a song from the album that can be used as a main style. The melody, arrangement, and mixing sound are very good! It is both tasteful and quite popular. In terms of lyric creation, Chrous's singing lyrics "Shine" have a wide open accent, so that Shan Yichun's voice characteristics are really good, sincere talent and love!
第十首《Tell Me》，Contemporary R&B/Neo-Soul
This is a heavy track. If you take apart its musical style packaging container, it is Bosa Nova harmony and basic rhythm + Jazz guitar sound + Jimi Hendrix-style art rock guitar playing style + Contemporary R&B's beat + Fusion vocals (Soul, RNB, Country, Jazz and many other singing methods). Therefore, in the future, similar pop music based on contemporary R&B will be a highly integrated music style.
Shan Yichun's interpretation is very in place, and all kinds of delicate little flavors are very durable. A variety of beautiful bubble sounds, weak dolphin sounds, pure air sounds, fine control of lip and tooth opening and closing, R&B vibrato, and vocal resonance positions are freely converted from nasal cavity and head cavity to laryngeal cavity.
The guitar arrangement is also very beautiful, and the usual chords give out some different flavors. It has the smooth sensuality of Smooth Jazz Guitar, the spirituality of classic rock music, and the beautiful tonal system of pop guitars.
In particular, the Wah-Wah treble guitar performance of the intermezzo Solo is very spiritual. Guitar god Jimi Hendrix must have listened to and studied less~
~Hot single feeling~
"Hello Happy", "Out of Focus", and "Brave Amount" are more recognizable and popular in the album. Especially "Hello Happy"!
The album cover has an artistic design sense, which is very good~
About arrangement~
The production information of this "Brave Quota" album was not deliberately searched and understood, and the aforementioned senior fans told the answerer that it was arranged and produced by different musicians. It sounds like the style control of the entire album is quite uniform. It's just that the specific arrangement and timbre parts can be easily heard from different music producers. For example, take Kick+Bass, the soul and core part of R&B music:
"Anonymous Star" is slightly more traditional, highlighting the percussion of the drum skin + Bass's deep low-frequency diving, that is, the traditional bass wrapped kick sound and style setting;
"Forever in You" is the standard Dub-Step high-power, high-hard, high-stimulation Electro sound system;
"Gray turns to may" is the overall fat and wide low frequency, and the same fat and wide mid-high frequency together achieve the top mix hearing~
Another example is Jazz Guitar, which accounts for a considerable proportion of the album's arrangement, which is also similar:
"Tell Me", the guitar tone is fat and warm, it is the standard semi-hollow Jazz Guitar sound, but the Solo part is stunning~
"The Other Answer" also has the sound of a semi-hollow jazz electric guitar, but with the beautiful sound of Fender Strat~
。。。
About mixing~
The overall mixing of the album is so good that the whole album, except for some arrangement details, in terms of giving the listener a high-quality professional listening feeling, the respondent will even ignore the industrial link of "mixing". Because it's done so well. It's so good that you forget that mixing exists, as if this music was born that way. The answerer thinks that this is the best and most professional mixing!
About mastering~
Finally, the overall music producer of the album has done a very good job of subcontracting and controlling the project, of course, the mastering of "Brave Quota" must have played a more professional level of overall style adaptation and adjustment. As a result, these different songs from different music writers, arrangers and music producers are finally kneaded into a music album that is highly unified in style and sound!
~Summary~
As a debut album by a rookie singer with a very hot start, this starting point is obviously very high! The whole album is sincere, the music is very dense and very listening. Whether it is used as a listening listening, or as a lounge and chill music as an ambient background, it is very suitable.
As for the places that can be improved to be more perfect, one is that the melody is not popular enough, such as achieving the top quality, musicality, and commerciality in a similar style, you can refer to Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me", of course, this is essentially about music creation and talent, it seems difficult to force. Another point is that there are some overly trivial things in the Beat Programming of the songs, and similar problems have appeared in several songs. The respondent does not know if it comes from the same music producer, but in any case, usually the details, unless it is the finishing touch, are mainly simplified and omitted, and the cleaner the hearing, the better~
The specific music parts, whether it is guitar, keyboard, Bass writing, tonal system, Drum & Bass sound selection and mixing foundation, vocal interpretation, recording, mixing, are of first-class quality, there is nothing to fault with, and the overall quality is very high. In the Chinese music scene, it is a very conscientious pop music album!
Especially considering that "Brave Quota" is the debut album of newcomer singer Shan Yichun, this is quite an exciting work!
About loudness and mixing style~
This is an additional topic discussion, which is not directly related to the pure "Brave Quota" album alone, or is not just a topic discussion for this "Brave Quota"~
The remix of "Brave Quota" feels a little close to the ear in terms of overall sound. This mainly refers to the sound field setting and loudness. This type of recording and mixing characteristics of dry and close to the ear reached its first limit in Europe and the United States, about 2000 years later, with the loudness war. hip-hop such as Black Eyed Peas' 2003 Elephunk album; Diva is like Britney Spears' 2003 album In The Zone. Rock and roll such as Metallica is getting louder and louder, and the 2008 "Death Magnetic" album is even directly mixed...
Since about 10 years, the recording and mixing of European and American music circles has shrunk slightly, and it is no longer blindly pursuing loudness and the feeling of being close to the ear. The main reason is also very simple, it has long been over. The loudness of most music albums is almost always against the ceiling of the mixing box, but the sound that is dead and broken is much less. Although it is generally still fierce, it has left a breath of popularity. But not long after the respite, the loudness war was once again in full swing, even more than the 2000 one.
The most representative Diva after 2000 - dance music is mainly Lady Gaga, and the music, especially the rhythm, is basically close to the ear. The vocal mix surpassed the stage of Britney Spears (there was still room for vocal mixing), and hit the ear thickly and loudly. 2020 "Chromatica" has reached the top, but in 21 years, there is another "Dawn Of Chromatica" remix version, all made into Hard Core & Tech House! And last year, she and Tony Bennett released the Jazz album "Love For Sale", which also sounded outrageously coarse, and the sound was almost like the next door neighbor moving furniture against the wall.
Taylor Swift, the hottest American national idol from the Country Music style, has a fairly restrained music album. Even if it is a popular "1989" album, such as "Welcome To New York" can represent a whole era's hit single, it is still relatively comfortable in the mixing and hearing, and there is not such a strong sense of ear pressure~
Of course, this "Brave Quota" alone is far less exaggerated than Lady Gaga's album. The respondent listened to it, in terms of recording and mixing quality, between the sound of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift's albums. Of course, the loudness is not so exaggerated. The mixing space is still a little blank, but the feeling that the vocals are too grainy and close to the ear is also there. It's just that Shan Yichun's voice is very beautiful and good, so this problem has been ignored to some extent.
About Shan Yi Chun~
Finally, let's talk about two sentences, about the pure personal opinion of Shan Yichun~
With Shan Yichun's current super frequent participation in various variety shows, willing to carry out self-commercial juice early, it is somewhat worrying. Can she walk on a bright road that really leads to Diva~
In addition, for a young rookie singer who started only two years and debuted through the draft, and did not have a truly representative musical work, it is obviously not a good thing to tout too much~
Regarding the signing of thousands of contracts by Baimu and the continuous flow of variety shows, for an extremely excellent music seedling like Shan Yichun, the role of seedlings must be stronger than the role of boosting her. I can't help but think of Liang Bo at the beginning. They are all singers and newcomers with excellent conditions and very strong singing skills.
However, there are always two sides, even multifaceted, to observation and thinking. If when you are popular, you don't take advantage of the victory to pursue, wait until the limelight passes, and you don't precipitate weighty works to come out, looking back, will it be another strategic mistake? For example, Liang Bo, his later development, to the feeling of answering the Lord has a little meaning~
Finally, it feels like the path of pure future alone may not be limited to singers, supermodel endorsements, movie actors, or all of them...
Sigh again, God loves to provoke Shan Yi Chun~