"My voice has stood the test of time."
Article/Reporter Zhang Mingmeng from Changsha
Editor/Zhou Jianping [email protected]
Away from the public days, singer Jin Haixin fell in love with tidying up the room. Every day, she spends at least an hour cleaning up. The clothes are hung separately, the shoes are uniformly outward-facing, and the ornaments are moved to 45 degrees. The last step is to vacuum, you have to use a wired vacuum cleaner, replace it with different sizes of suction heads, and pull the dust in the suction room. She used this to gain a moment of peace. When something is done to mess up, it is a matter of taking care of it again.
Years ago, her tidying up was not so extreme. Several times she wanted to find something, but she didn't know where it was, turning the house into a mess, and her head was a mess, so she made up her mind to study the storage and tidying up, so that she could enjoy the pleasure of "what I wanted right away" at any time. "Tidying up this thing clears my head." She said.
She also cleaned up when she went to a friend's house. A few good friends sat and chatted, Jin Haixin couldn't sit still, his mouth didn't stop, and his hands didn't stop—collecting here, picking up there. When it comes to pets, Jin Haixin will even bring a vacuum cleaner. Her airways are sensitive, sunny days, and when a friend's house closes the curtains, she sees pet hair floating in the air and tingling in her nasal cavity. Immediately plug in the vacuum cleaner, sniff at the curtains, carpets, air, and don't forget to say to your friends: "For everyone's health, please go out first." ”
This kind of obsessive-compulsive behavior has been described by Kim Hae-sin as "some craftsman spirit". Similar evidence is that in her childhood, she envied the cooks who were good at knife skills and practiced cutting potatoes at home every day. She loves cooking, especially chopping vegetables, and being able to cut potatoes to the point of near transparency is admired by everyone who sees them.
The storage habits and Kim Hae-sin's singing form a clever intertext, and her songs are often commented on as "smart" and "jumping" but "not losing coherence". Some music experts analyzed her songs, saying that the same five notes, she sang out of 8 or even 10 notes. But the added tone does not interfere with the expression of the original sentence, making the melody thick or swollen, but instead sounds fuller and unexpectedly — just like the clothes in the closet are arranged according to the color system, and suddenly a few anti-color clothes are stuffed in the same color system. Former Oriental TV host Qiulin worked as a DJ for many years and studied the voices of Chinese pop singers around 2000. She commented that Jin Haixin sang that "every sound is like a pearl of different sizes, she can use a thread to string these sounds together, become very flexible, coherent, and the sound will not be broken." "I'll add some accents to the song, with some small turns, but not on purpose." Jin Haixin said.
When Jin Haixin is storing, there must be no music - cutting vegetables, vacuuming, washing dishes is enough to form an intracranial orgasm. Once the melody sounds, she forgets what is in her hands and indulges in it. She's very poor at math because "the numbers I see are all musical notes, and when I keep stringing them together when I do the problem, I will lose my mind." ”
She sees all of this as part of her musical talent. She came from a musical family and her mother was a music professor. She and her sister learned to play the piano from elementary school, because the hands were relatively small, and later changed to flute. When she was 3 years old, her sister played Michael Jackson's songs to her, and she could sing them only once. "That's when my musical talent was there, I couldn't resist, and I loved music."
22 years ago, her talent was favored by the times and the market. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the Chinese music market boomed, and several of the world's major record companies entered the Chinese mainland market, and the top record executives contacted a number of well-known musicians Chinese mainland, hoping to dig up good seedlings for development. The musician Sampo is a student of Jin Haixin's mother, and he often hears people mention that Jin Haixin's voice is good. Once, Sanbao was recording in the studio, and just as Jin Haixin was also there, he asked Jin Haixin to sing a paragraph. Jin Haixin went up and sang Maria Kelly's "Looking in", a song that changes frequently from true to false, and has extremely high requirements for breath control. When Sanbao listened, he was shocked: when the Chinese people were not yet familiar with the European and American music scenes, this fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl was able to successfully complete Maria Kelly's relatively niche and extremely difficult songs. Kim Hae-shin was recommended by him to Sony Records, thus becoming the latter's first female singer to sign in Chinese mainland.
At the age of 19, Jin Haixin officially debuted and released the album "Wake Up the Ears", and DJs on radio stations around the world have affirmed her singing skills with words such as "amazing", "unique temperament" and "great potential". Half a year later, the second album "So Proud" was released, and the album's eponymous song "So Proud" entered the ears of more listeners as the theme song of the popular hit drama "All Angels Are Troubled", and also made Jin Haixin's name more familiar. At that time, Hong Kong and Taiwan singers occupied the mainland music market, and Jin Haixin, as a newcomer, stood out under the creation of the pop music system and became a new hope for the Chinese music scene, and some media once called her "Faye Wong's successor".
At this time, the high-level turmoil of Sony Records affected a number of signed singers, and Jin Haixin was one of them. She switched to Warner Records, and encountered a change in Warner Records' strategy, featuring Hong Kong and Taiwan singers. Despite the participation of well-known musicians such as Song Ke and Zhang Yadong, her third and fourth albums "Jin Haixin" and "Independence Day" still have not received matching support. The album budget was cut and the publicity didn't keep up. The album has a good reputation, but it has not achieved the same amount of results as the first two albums in the market.
During the same period, talent shows such as "Super Girl" were in full swing, and online music developed rapidly, impacting the original Ecology of the Chinese music scene. The traditional record industry to which Jin Haixin is accustomed is gradually not adapting to the new context of the highly productive and stimulating music scene. She panicked and found that the original meticulous work was less and less done. By Independence Day, Jin Haixin had to take charge of planning, production, composing, and even publicity.
After Independence Day, Kim Hae-shin's appearance frequency gradually decreased. When the public discussion was triggered again, it was already 2016, and Jin Haixin participated in a variety show, she wore a cartoon mask and sang, but was heard by many viewers. In April this year, she once again participated in another music variety show "Who is the Treasure Singer", she incarnated as a "" singer, also anonymous, but sang the famous song "Wake Up the Ears", or can pull the new people back to the dream back to 1999.
This is in line with Jin Haixin's positioning of himself. She claims not to be open-minded, afraid of competition, and hates competition. It was because of the company change that she was indifferent and wasted many years. In another music variety show, "Singer", she was one of the most highly called names, but she did not want to compete and declined the offer of the show. In "Who is the Treasure Singer", even if there is no elimination and no competition, she is still sweating on stage, her heart is beating faster, her head is empty, only the voice is as old as ever, and the conditioned reflex follows the melody.
Sound is Jin Haixin's weapon in the music scene and the source of her self-confidence. There was a voice imitation program that planned to invite her to attend as a guest, but a search found that no one resembled her voice and gave up. "I've had that confidence since the first album, because until now I haven't come across the same voice as me. My voice is so unique and hard to imitate. That being the case, I think I could have stretched the singing longer and my voice would stand the test of time. She said.
The following is Jin Haixin's dictation:
Who eats so much and sings on stage?
Now participating in variety shows, for me there is a process of adaptation. Recording the first issue of "Who is the Treasure Singer", the process is much longer than I thought, and when it was recorded late in the evening, I thought I wouldn't have to sing today. I was hungry and ate a lot. When I had eaten hiccups, the director suddenly asked me to wait. I ran over in panic and called my name on stage, and I didn't even wear wheat. The scene was pitch black, I had night blindness, I could only see a light in front of the stage, I was nervous at once, and my palms were sweating.
My previous gig experience has been that a staff member would tell me at least an hour in advance to get ready to wait. Who eats so much and sings on stage?
I was going to sing "Wake My Ears Up" that time, but I rearranged the music, made a deletion, and I was afraid of forgetting the words, and I had rehearsed it three times before. I think it would be okay to be so well prepared. It turned out to be so dark, I kept trying to hiccup, the scene was in a panic, and I couldn't hear anything the choreographer told me. On stage, I have been looking at the ground, and the good words cannot be forgotten. I was prepared to sing poorly, and if Luo Yonghao (one of the music recommenders) asked me, I would say I ate too much, hahaha.
It was a terrible day, but maybe life was like that, always full of surprises, but very real.
Now that I've recorded five episodes, one thing I reckon will have to adapt to by the end of the show is that I'm in a particularly hasty schedule to get the arrangement, sometimes I only get the arrangement the day before rehearsal. One of the biggest problems that bothered me was that I couldn't hang up the teleprompter on the spot, and the new arrangement would make me forget all the lyrics I remembered. It's like there's a guy who always comes in front of you in the same outfit, and one day the guy suddenly changes his outfit from head to toe, and I know he's still him, but I don't know him, and I've memorized the lyrics for so many days.
Recently, I listened to various types of songs because I was preparing for the show. In fact, I rarely listen to songs, especially when I am creating, listening to songs will interfere with me. When I listen to crosstalk, listen to Guo Degang, and watch the news, it must have nothing to do with music. My creation comes from life, and my life is to stay by myself. I don't like to meet people, I don't like to socialize, I don't like to eat and chat. I was particularly afraid of occasions with more than two people and was at a loss. I love chatting with myself and thinking of something.
Now it seems to have reached a stage of self-isolation, preferring to be quiet and alone, thinking about things and thinking about things. Probably since the beginning of the epidemic, we have entered this state, and the surrounding environment has changed a lot. It turns out that many things are not done as in the past, and they can still live. Originally, writing songs required going out for a walk and meeting different strangers, but now this process can be omitted and completed by your own imagination.
I have several little selves in my body, usually well hidden, and when it's just me, I'll let them all play for a while. We discussed the subject of creation, discussed the weather, discussed eating and drinking. Before writing "Jiang Lang", during that time I always ran to the workers' body, and I saw a lot of passers-by coming and going on the car. That piece was very lively at night, passers-by were dressed up, and the expressions on their faces were written with stories. I wanted to write a song based on their story. I ran out of this, we had three meetings, the first time to sort out the general direction, I want to write about this type of person. The second time I set the theme, I wanted to write about the love behind their expressions, about the fact that they had lost the ability to love after they were superficially affectionate. The third time I studied the details, what expressions they had foreshadowed what kind of love.
But we rarely discuss melodies. It's so easy to write melodies, I can write them in minutes. I have hundreds of melodies in my notepad, and I usually write a paragraph when I have the inspiration to go into it, and they represent many of my moments. How to organize them into a unified expression needs to be decided in a meeting.
WouldN't I be a lot like a neurosis? Hahaha.
Not every song has to have a meeting, like "Stars in the Sun" is done in one go. I had just gone to my sister's house, and my sister was in the United States. When I woke up, the jet lag was not good, but after all, it was at the home of a relative, very kind. The sun was shining in, and I felt lazy, too comfortable. The melody comes out. After writing it, I thought that this song should be called "Stars in the Sun".
I see fans on the Internet discussing what exactly does this song title mean? Some people say that it is just basking in the sun and shedding tears! This was not my understanding at the time. I mean, it means that love is a pipe dream. There can't be stars in the sun, right? Just like some love, it is a daydream, beautiful and hurtful. It has nothing to do with my own experience, but it has to do with my personality. I am an extremely optimistic pessimist, with a pessimistic starting point for many things, with the worst expectations, and doing my best.
A lot of my songs are, as if singing happy melodies, but there is a sad gene in it. Probably the happier something is, the easier it is to evoke my sad memories, and there are many tears behind my bright smile. It's definitely not a point that I design, but something I carry in my genes and let me deal with it this way. My sadness is not great compassion, it is a point to the end, and my voice is a little sweet, which can dissolve the sad part again.
The hardest part of my song is the lyrics, I don't write lyrics, but I tell the lyricist what I want, like where and where the word is going to appear in each sentence. I can't write it myself, I can't open the side of the text. That was too deep for me, and I didn't want that side of myself to be seen.
One of the few songs I wrote with lyrics was "Spider's Bee", and during that time the team made music together, and everyone almost ate and lived together, and shared a lot of stories as a result. Every lyric in it is the story of a team member. Spider means "confidant" and bee means "secret", and during that time we were very chaotic, dense as spider webs. So "Spider's Bee" is actually written "Confidant's Secret", which is the code word I think. You see, I avoid direct expressions in my lyrics and use them in such a subtle way. But people who understand it understand it at first glance, because that's my love for them. I'm not going to be numb, but I'll make them remember forever.
I want to emphasize that each song is a record of my state of mind and thoughts at that time. I change very quickly, which is why I don't listen to the songs I pass by anymore. Probably from recording to publishing, my mind has changed. I'm eating out and when I meet to play my songs, I'll go out and go back when it's over. I also ask myself now, what did I think at that time?
My voice has stood the test of time
I should be regarded as a cross-era singer, witnessing the production methods of the Chinese music scene in different eras, the production process, the production of records, the direction of music, etc., have undergone great changes. In the first issue of "Who is the Treasure Singer", I finished singing and talked to Teacher Zhang Yadong about our experience of doing "Wake Up Your Ears" at that time.
The traditional record recording method is not like it can be repaired now, and now a word and an air port can be repaired. There was no such technique before, and the requirements for singers were very high. If you don't sing it right, you have to sing it again, and not just sing that one word, but the whole paragraph has to be sung again.
Kim Hae-sin sang "Is There a Song That Reminds You of Me" in "Who's the Treasure Singer"
The producer of my first two albums is Teacher Li Manting, she is a very senior musician, before producing "Leaving People", "Flower Heart", "A Little Touched", "Laughing Red Dust" and other well-known songs, I was the first of her to produce such a young voice. We were in our twenties, she was stern, I wasn't a well-behaved kid, and our communication process went through a run-in period.
Every time I get a song and I go to the studio to sing it, I have my own ideas. But because of her production experience and judgment of the market, she would let me use a different way of singing. But her description is very ethereal, it will make me "sing a little colder" and "sing a little hotter", such a general adjective thrown to me, it is difficult for me to understand when I am not yet 20 years old. I asked her to demonstrate once, and she couldn't demonstrate either, so we froze there. Although she is Taiwanese, she loves to drink er pot head. Every time the recording took a small bottle in his hand, took a sip, and said to me, "Are you okay with this?" "Drink a bottle and take another bottle." The second pot head is paired with a Taiwanese cavity, and the scene is very magical. One day the two of them reached a very deadlock, and I said I couldn't sing it, and I didn't know what you meant. She said then you don't sing. I put down my headphones and went home. We quarrel without a fierce argument, she threw two words coldly denied me, I will directly complete her. Maybe she wanted to stimulate me, but I didn't expect that I really left.
But I have to say that those two albums are very accurate in the lyrics and concept parts. Like "Wake Up Your Ears" and "So Proud", the lyrics in it are very targeted, the market at that time really needed that, and the sales and word of mouth proved that she was positioning me correctly.
When I recorded "Wake Up My Ears," I imagined that I was a happy little girl, carrying a school bag just after school, and the road was full of sunshine. I said hello to butterflies, said hello to bugs, said hello to the grass, and went home happy. Press down on the other little monsters in your heart and take out the happiness.
When I record songs, I add something in it, which is different from demos. The original author often hears it and says: Is this what I wrote? How so good to listen. I reviewed and felt that the process of recording songs was a kind of re-creation, and singers must have such a talent, and they could not learn or teach, which was a unique understanding. I felt that I should sing like that, just like a good actor, the spirituality of the performance cannot be taught. I'm performing with my voice.
At that time, the selection of songs was also different from now. Big companies have demo libraries, and they receive a lot of demos from authors every day. The author will not keep the good works for himself, but give them to large companies, and he can do without money, as long as he can come out. The staff was able to pick out ten albums in one night. I hadn't signed the contract yet, and Sony had already sent me all the demos, saying that you could sing these songs if you saw that you signed them. All I had to do was go to the recording, practice the concert for two days, and finish the album in a month. The first album is still being promoted, and the songs from the second album have all been sent to me.
After the first two albums, I've been fighting for my own album. Companies have always objected and every time they hear my demo, they crash. Will think, "Can this song be released?" It's so different from before. "They're afraid my reputation will collapse.
The Album of Independence Day was the first album I led. At that time, the company finally agreed to my independent production. I said I had written several songs and put them on you, and everyone was excited. When I showed them demos of "Stars in the Sun" and two other songs, they didn't speak. I could tell from the look on their faces—very unproductive. They say it's too unpopular and too unmarketable. But I don't care so much, since they promised me to let it go, then I will do it hard. Because the company felt a bit risky, it did not give a lot of support in terms of budget and publicity. But they also didn't interfere with me in the middle.
It was the album I put in the most time and energy, and I basically ate and lived with the production team. Rosie, the "daughter of the Great Immortal" who wrote the lyrics, lives in my house. Teacher Meng Jun pushed off several albums in his hand and said that he would finish my album first. Every day, we talk about music and production, and when we feel like we come, we go to Teacher Meng's house to record a short paragraph. That album is very emotionally demanding on the voice, not ready for "ready-to-run", but very relaxed, very relaxed, a little lazy, but also with the attitude of an independent woman. I was easily nervous, so I found that state and recorded it right away.
I practiced in front of the mirror for a long time, and found that the expression of singing was different, and the state of the voice was different. Like singing the first sentence of "Stars in the Sun", "Warm sun lazy crawl into the window", if the eyes are wide and the corners of the mouth are tight, the sound will be very dull. To loosen my shoulders, the strength of my body sinks, the scalp hair has to fall, and I feel a breath wrapped around me, soothing me. The breath pushed the voice out, "Lazy sun lazy climb up the window." "That's right. Since then, I've learned to sing with expressions.
That album went on to win quite a few awards, and to this day some people tell me they were impressed by that album. I am very happy. Looking back now, many times it wasn't just one person, but really needed teamwork. After Independence Day, there were some changes in the company and all the release plans were stranded. I wasn't a very nervous person myself, and I waited stupidly, but I was actually quite dazed during that time, because the people who could help me disappeared. I don't have a sense of time, A few years have passed, I am confused, and I have no sense of enterprise. But you say regret, no.
Over the years, many singers have invited me to be their producer. I'll tell them that I'm very demanding. I don't have much experience and rely on my own feelings. I hope that my requirements will finally be presented in the work, I can't say it clearly, but you can understand where the difference is when you hear it. I'm used to having them sing first without an arrangement, and then design the arrangement based on their expression. Maybe people are used to "clothes wear people", but I prefer "people wear clothes". The voice is your person. When recording, I would also say such elaborate adjectives as "you sing a little colder" and "you sing a little hotter". I immediately understood why Teacher Li Manting asked me so much. I also emailed her and apologized to her. She said, oh, little things.
The singers who were looking for me were very excited at first, but then their expressions dimmed, and they gradually looked embarrassed. Finally, euphemistically said, "Let's try a song together." ”
Over the years, I have paid attention to diet and exercise, and I have spoken less and am afraid of draining my throat. Although it does not appear in front of everyone often, it is not far from the music. I can record a new song at any time, and I can always have AN OST (soundtrack) or other songs that I want to sing. Always picking, music and I were never separated. I can now be at peace with music and not put pressure on each other.
Before the epidemic, I had already started to prepare for a new album, and the songs were almost finished. I wanted to take the team to an island in Thailand, bring some simple recording equipment, and make an album of simultaneous recordings. Maybe the network is not very good, there is no modern event to interfere with attention, mobile phones can probably only be used to make calls and send WeChat, everyone can focus on making albums. But at the beginning of the epidemic, the plan was stranded.
I still believe in the ten thousand hours rule, and there are some things that can't be taken out in less than a time. Singers with good voices are good whenever they come out, and there will be no shelf life. Like in Who's the Treasure Singer, I said I wanted to wake everyone up. Neither Liu Baixin nor Wang Yuan has ever heard "Wake Up Your Ears", but they will still be attracted by this song and by my singing. As I get older, my singing fades and becomes more mellow. My voice has stood the test of time, and that's the only thing I can trust.