Liu Yue, who helped He Jiong make "Gardenia Blossom", joined hands with Teacher He in this play
In early December 2019, Liu Yue, a musician who has been working in Beijing, received a call from his hometown of Hunan.
The other party is Zhou Xiong, the brother with whom he has been friends for more than 20 years, and the general director of the large-scale epic song and dance drama "Ode to the Earth".
On the other end of the phone, Zhou Xiong asked excitedly and mysteriously, "Teacher Liu, how is the recent schedule?" ”
Liu Yue was stunned for a moment and asked, "What instructions are there?" ”
Hearing that Liu Yue seemed to be idle, Zhou Xiong quickly told Liu Yue all the project overview of "Ode to the Earth".
After listening to Zhou Xiong's narration, the magnificent waves, warm pulses, ups and downs, sorrows and joys, one after another of the pictures of great opening and closing, melted into Liu Yue's mind, and immediately transformed into a magnificent picture of the children of Sanxiang's poverty alleviation composed of countless notes.
"Okay, I'll do it!"
After dropping the phone, Liu Yue took a sharp breath of his cigarette, and the excitement spread out with the smoke ring.
A baptismal creation
Liu Yue is a native of Hunan, before becoming the music director of "Ode to the Land", his name has long been hung with various honors and titles: he has served as the music director of the "Supergirl" and "Fast Boy" drafts for many years, and is also the senior music director of the China Golden Eagle TV Art Festival and the Spring Festival Gala of Hunan Satellite TV, and has also written musicals such as "Love in Western Xia" and "Angel Choir"... However, Liu Yue himself said, "My proudest 'title' should be the background of Huxiang's children flowing in my blood." ”
This is also why Liu Yue did not hesitate to agree to take over the work after hearing Zhou Xiong, the general director of "Ode to the Land", introduce the relevant situation of the play.
Liu Yue said, "'Ode to the Land' focuses on the poverty alleviation story of the Three Xiangs, but at the same time it is a historical theme. "Most of the musicians' life and work status are sealed in the recording studio," and I really didn't hear anything out of the window, I didn't know that there were so many details in the poverty alleviation attack, participating in this drama, from the beginning to the present, is also a baptism for me personally." ”
Shortly after receiving Zhou Xiong's call, Liu Yue flew back to Changsha from Beijing without stopping, and plunged into the crew.
The group was established in December last year, and until now, Liu Yue has hardly left Changsha, "only in the middle of it, I have returned to Beijing for two or three days to deal with some work matters." ”
According to Liu Yue's previous work experience, the script of the song and dance drama seems to be less important than the presentation of the song and dance elements. "Because it is narrated in song and dance, but the creation of 'Ode to the Earth' this time has changed my previous inertial thinking."
Major themes, the outline of historical events, "Ode to the Earth" in the early stage of script creation, tightened a string.
"I remember from February to May this year, I met with Director Zhou Xiong almost every day until two or three o'clock in the evening, and then got up the next day to continue the meeting, most of the meeting was to discuss the relationship between literature and music, although it is narrated in music and dance, but its premise is literature, so 'Ode to the Earth' as an epic song and dance drama, it has the dual DNA attributes of literature and music." 」
When he first joined the group, Liu Yue also participated in the creation of the script with the director team. Before the complete script was placed in front of him, Liu Yue began to write music, but this time it was a situation that had never been seen before.
Liu Yue said that this is a very interesting process for him. "Because I've never been involved in a creation like this, it's a learning process for me to structure a story from the source, and then design the characters, and structure a play from scratch."
Sometimes when you fight, you feel like your friends don't have to do it
In the process of creation, due to the high degree of participation in the early stage, many chapters composed of notes have long appeared in Liu Yue's mind.
"The state of each character, the dramatic outline of each act, first there is a picture there, and then the appearance of music is also felt, and the later stage is mainly a writing of music on the technical level."
But the various notes that hit our eardrums on stage are not a simple permutation. For example, some debates about the way music is presented continue until the makeup is arranged, "Every kind of work, such as theater director, dance director, composer, and screenwriter, everyone is from their own professional point of view, especially everyone's knowledge structure is different, and everyone will definitely have differences when interpreting the story and characters of the repertoire." ”
Liu Yue joked that sometimes everyone fights, and I really feel that my friends have not done it. "But what is very interesting is that now I look back, the process of those previous debates, will feel the hardships in the creation, but also very grateful for these arguments, will make our friendship and tacit understanding deeper and deeper afterwards."
For example, in the scene "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky", xiaoya's character carrying firewood appears to have a singing voice, while her classmates sing with it on the distant hillside. "The musical presentation of this scene should be the biggest difference between me and the director group before, and it is also the most tangled place."
Director Zhou Xiong feels that this scene has some heaviness in the script writing, but the music is a little "bright", this place should have been a sad scene, "but words and music are two dimensions of creation, and the interpretation of music in the audience, will change from time to time, maybe you listen to this feeling today, tomorrow listen to another feeling." ”
At the level of musical aesthetics, how the audience perceives what you want to express does not have a specific quantified data. And music is not as real as literal, so in the process of outlining music, many of the misunderstandings presented are technical problems.
"When the children's voice is singing, will it break through the atmosphere circle that the music originally wanted to create, and appear 'too excited'? There is also the harmony of children's voices, when singing, is it not too little sense of group, a little thin, children's voice should be not perfect enough?. ”
In the musical processing of this scene, the classmates on the mountain and Xiao Ya are double montages.
"They may have communicated, but they may not be realistic, and the current presentation of this scene, with the sublimation of light and shadow dance, should be very powerful to the audience's spiritual shock."
Another scene where Xiao Ya is buried because of a flash flood also experienced great ups and downs in the process of music creation. "The previous presentation was also completely different from the present, it was originally a big scene shot, the poverty alleviation team members evacuated with everyone, and now it was changed to the main storyline of Xiao Ya's burial, and then accompanied by Liu Jia's solo dance."
From the perspective of script creation, the design of the solo dance has been detached from literature, it is an expression of pure musical poetry. Finally, after many refinements, Liu Yue made a very exquisite design for the soundtrack of this plot. "I chose a very imposing symphonic writing to create an atmosphere, and then 'snapped' here and stopped directly, from one side to another, this power suddenly changed, like an awl into the audience's heart at once." 」
In the music production of this solo dance, there is the ethereal chanting of the female voice, followed by the crying performance of the cello, "The communication of the two voices can also be imagined as the communication of two characters, and the female voice can be imagined as the sadness of Xiaoya on another level, and the cello represents the determination of the poverty alleviation team members to rescue Xiaoya." ”
From an epic large group scene, a focus on a vulnerable child, and then through this child from being trapped to being rescued by poverty alleviation team members, this design is very consistent from the directorial structure, literary narrative and musical narrative, in fact, it is also the exchange of the fates of the two groups, "Which is also consistent with the value core of the whole play of "Ode to the Land". ”
The "gardenia" CP of that year, this time hand in hand again
For music, there can be such a whiplash into the dissection, naturally inseparable from the musical traces in Liu Yue's growth trajectory.
Her mother was an opera actor, her father was a drummer in the band, and Liu Yue grew up soaking in various blowing and singing in the troupe since she was a child. "When I was a kid, other kids played with toys and I played with my dad's drumsticks."
At the age of 13, Liu Yue was admitted to the Hunan Provincial Art School and experienced six years of opera studies, "during which I studied Jinghu, Erhu, Gaohu, and Gao Na, and also minored in piano, and later entered the university to study composition and piano. ”
After graduation, Liu Yue formed a rock band as a keyboard player, "In that era, Cui Jian and Luo Dayou were our spiritual leaders, and they hated that they couldn't rock and roll for a lifetime. Subsequently, the popularity of pop music and jazz once again enriched Liu Yue's music storage box.
Bursting musical inspiration, so that Liu Yue in the early stage of his career became the industry's "fragrant food", probably around 1998, liu Yue, who was still a hairy boy in his 20s, was recruited by Ouyang Changlin, then director of Hunan Economic Television, to serve as a music director, but Liu Yue, who believed in music's uninhibited and free thinking, left after a few years, ran to Beijing to become a "senior north drifter", and settled down in Beijing, until now.
As one of the earliest professional musicians in the circle, the singers that Liu Yue has cooperated with and witnessed seem to be able to make a list. For example, in the early years, when she was the music director of "Supergirl", Li Yuchun, Zhang Liangying and other contestants went to Liu Yue's recording studio to record songs. Everyone left after recording, Zhang Liangying was the last to go, and when she left, she swept the floor of the recording studio and took all the garbage away. "It's a small thing, but I still remember it vividly, and there's a reason this girl is doing these things in the circle now."
Another thing that makes everyone have a sense of sudden enlightenment is that the host He Jiong's most famous song "Gardenia Blossom" is Liu Yue as the producer, and this light and bright song has also become the label of He Jiong.
In 2004, Liu Yue, who had already taken root in Beijing, learned that his friend He Jiong wanted to publish a record, so he simply and neatly agreed to be the chief producer of He Jiong's new record. As the album's title song, "Gardenia Blossom" also lived up to expectations, and quickly became a hit song in the major charts of the year, and has been sung in the north and south of the river.
However, the production process of this song at that time was very "lazy", and Wu Jiao, who composed the lyrics and music, did not record the score at that time, but presented it with a few simple chords, "but the initial embryo of the whole song is very catchy and simple." ”
At that time, He Jiong's state of recording this song was also comfortable to no end. "Give me a call, are you in the studio?" I'll record a few words, and then I'll hum a little tune and I'll come. Liu Yue said that at that time, everyone did not have a very specific goal, often just like the mentality of playing, that is, to do a fun thing.
This time in "Ode to the Land", Liu Yue and He Jiong cooperated again, and the tacit understanding index between the two seemed to have not diminished at all. "I know what he can sing, he knows what I can write, and our aura is in line."
However, Liu Yue was also a bit "surprised", and when He Jiong sang in the "Ode to the Earth" and recorded the master version, He Jiong quickly found himself in the singing gap, starting from the first few beats of the first few bars, "There are more than a dozen bars in front, and as a result, he just found it at once." ”
At that time, Liu Yue sighed and said, "JiongJiong, you surprised me so much, this is very difficult to find." He Jiong on the other side crossed his waist and replied with a small proud expression, "Believe it or not, I can find everything later..."
Speaking of this conversation, Liu Yue couldn't help but laugh. "After so many years, Teacher He is still as responsible and serious about every job as in previous years, and nothing has changed. This is also my attitude, and what we are doing now is that we need to be serious. ”
Liu Yue said that using our own literary and artistic works to outline a magnificent interpretation of the poverty alleviation in Sanxiang is a blessing for every participant.
After saying this, Liu Yue took a puff of his cigarette, looked at the clock on the wall and said that he would have to touch the music in several chapters with the director team at night.
Estimated that he had to stay up late and work overtime, "Tired? ”
Liu Yue "Hi" a sound, "Very good, tired and happy." ”
Xiaoxiang Morning News reporter Zhou Shihao
【Source: Xiaoxiang Morning News】
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