Chapter 65
The man was massive. His black T-shirt bore the logo of some band or other. A gold chain hung around his neck, and his arms were covered in tattoos. His hair was shaved close, with a slash cut into it.
It wasn’t that he was judging people, but there was definitely something you could sense from his appearance alone. You know how some people seem to have a certain personality at a glance? The kind who are unnecessarily loud, too.
‘It’s not like they pay you an allowance for being the bandmaster.’
Was he the sort of person who liked wearing an armband? That was what Myeongjeon thought.
A bandmaster was the person who oversaw the session band. They handled the proceedings, caught things the singer might not know, and explained them. Depending on the song, they might arrange it, or coordinate the session players according to the singer’s feedback. That required both experience and skill.
But that was all it was. There was no real benefit. It was a position filled with nothing but bothersome work. Of course, being able to say you had served as the bandmaster for a concert did give your session résumé a slight boost. But that was the extent of it.
Even so, you couldn’t simply throw up your hands and say, ‘I don’t want to be the bandmaster~’ A good bandmaster went unnoticed, but an incompetent one stood out immediately.
After the man brought up experience and skill, no one gave a particular answer. Taekyeong looked at the session players anxiously.
But no one moved.
‘Can’t someone else do it? That guy seems like he’d have an unpleasant personality.’
If he were just someone Taekyeong happened to see on the street, it wouldn’t matter. But as the staff member responsible for communicating with the session band, Taekyeong wanted to work with a bandmaster who at least had a decent personality.
That was because Juhyeon’s team had never had a position called ‘session band coordinator’ before. There was no one he could ask, and if that man made some ridiculous demand, Taekyeong wouldn’t even know whether it was reasonable or not.
“If no one has any objections, I’ll do it.”
“Hold on.”
A hand rose in response to the burly man’s voice. Taekyeong let out a sigh of relief inwardly and immediately looked for the owner of the hand. The leader of the main session band, Ha Suyeon.
“Since the bandmaster is responsible for overseeing everything, I think our side should take the position, as the main session band.”
“The main session band?”
The man looked at Taekyeong as if to say, ‘There was such a thing?’ Then he opened his mouth again.
“Even so, it’s not as though we have to follow everything the band asks for. You seem to have very little experience, too. As far as the session side of things goes… well, do you happen to know anything about it?”
It was the sort of question that seemed to say, ‘Do you even know anything about sessions?’ But Suyeon answered calmly.
“If you’re talking about experience, then yes, mine is limited. But I don’t think I’m lacking in skill or knowledge. And I know session work well.”
“Huh?”
The man responded as though he found that utterly absurd. Normally, someone his age wouldn’t react so harshly. But even to Taekyeong, the claim sounded impossible. Mostly because of the physical impossibility of it.
How could a second-year high school student possibly have good knowledge and skill, while also knowing session work well? Juhyeon’s team simply hadn’t used a session band before; Taekyeong had still spent plenty of time communicating with session players. He knew perfectly well that what she had said made no sense.
“I don’t mean to dismiss you over something like this, but… you’re young.”
Taekyeong thought the words ‘How could that possibly be true?’ had been left unsaid, and the staff and other session players seemed to think the same. Heads turned around the room as the situation began to look like a battle of wills. But Suyeon merely grinned and spoke.
“Does age matter? Skill is what matters.”
“…I’m talking about skill.”
Perhaps because he felt he had been dismissed somehow, the session guitarist’s voice dropped lower. Suyeon wore a faint smile, while everyone else watched the situation unfold, wondering what was going on.
“Can you play guitar well? I’m not someone people usually say is bad at guitar, either. Why don’t we see?”
“Well, it’s not as though being good at guitar is all it takes to be a bandmaster. You have to arrange things and communicate, too. In that respect, it would be more convenient for me, as the leader of the main band, to handle it.”
At the session guitarist’s even lower voice, Suyeon seemed to divert the conversation slightly in an attempt to straighten out the strange turn things had taken.
“That’s why I’m asking whether you play well. If you’re a band leader, you must be good. How well can you play? Can you do something like this?”
But to Taekyeong, the session guitarist already seemed slightly agitated. Why was he acting like that?
‘Does he feel like he’s being dismissed by a child?’
Taekyeong thought that might be the case. The girl was obviously younger and seemed less experienced than him in every way, yet she was the leader of the main band and was telling him that her skill and knowledge were better than his. Hearing that must have made his blood boil.
Meanwhile, the session guitarist connected a cable to the amp and demonstrated some fast playing. Then he launched into a rapid flurry of picking. The speed was impressive enough that the staff let out a collective “Oh~.”
But Suyeon gave a hollow laugh.
“Can guitar skill really be judged by fast playing? If you’ve done session work for any length of time, you should know that’s nowhere near enough.”
“I’m asking whether you can play this well.”
“Well, um… haha. I can play about that well normally.”
Myeongjeon answered in resignation. What on earth was wrong with this person? You couldn’t learn anything from fast playing. He wasn’t some kid from the days when everyone played “Canon Rock,” and the man clearly looked to be in his forties. Why was he clinging to such an illusion?
Of course, agreeing to judge things by ‘skill’ without letting the conversation drag on was a good idea. It was simple and convenient. There was no need to go through the process of persuasion.
Myeongjeon plugged the cable into the amp and lightly adjusted the knobs. The amp couldn’t reproduce the sound perfectly, but it could get reasonably close. He shaped the tone into something heavy enough for a single-coil pickup, while still retaining the character of a Strat.
Then he stamped his foot a few times and began to play one of the songs he sometimes used to warm up: Yngwie Malmsteen’s “Far Beyond the Sun.”
Iseo watched the session guitarist’s expression. At first, he looked amused, as if the whole thing were ridiculous. A little later, his expression twisted as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Eventually, his face went completely blank.
Regardless, Suyeon’s performance continued. The session guitarist had played for about thirty seconds, but Suyeon was different.
No one knew what the song was, but it was a nearly five-minute metal shred piece with a slightly classical feel. Rather than trying to stop her, everyone around them seemed completely absorbed in the performance.
“Is this enough?”
After finishing the final note, Suyeon asked the guitarist. His face already looked as though his soul had left his body. He scratched his neck without saying a word, packed up his things, and walked out.
“Looks like we’ll need to find a new guitarist.”
At someone’s mutter among the staff, a low, hollow laugh spread through the room. Iseo thought, ‘Why did he suddenly pick a fight with her in the first place…?’
* * *
The session rehearsals that began afterward proceeded smoothly. It was inconvenient having to practice without a rhythm guitarist, but there was nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t the most important part, either. Once a new player joined the following week, they could rehearse it all together again.
“It’s not easy.”
While everyone else had left the practice room during a break, Seoha approached Myeongjeon, who was cracking open a canned coffee, and said that.
“Well, it’s not as though anything in the world is easy…”
“Do you realize that when you say things like that, you really sound like an old man?”
Myeongjeon flinched. It wasn’t that he sounded ‘like an old man.’ He actually was an old man. But Seoha failed to notice his reaction and dropped into a chair.
“Why was that guy acting like that earlier?”
“Who knows? I think… maybe he was angry because of his age?”
Judging by his appearance, he was over forty. On top of that, he was a session guitarist whose name Myeongjeon had never even heard, despite having one foot in the session world himself.
It felt wrong to speculate carelessly about someone else’s circumstances, but no matter how he thought about it, the problem seemed to be age. A girl who looked young enough to be a student was leading the main band for a concert, while he was only a session rhythm guitarist.
And if someone was already emotionally unstable because they were one of those ‘artistic types,’ hearing her say that skill mattered more than age was bound to make him angry. Myeongjeon had gotten angry at talented young people himself a few times, so he could understand the man’s position.
‘But that’s different from taking it out on me directly.’
“Anyway, that guy has nothing to do with us now. But now that we’re a proper concert session band, there’s a lot more to keep track of.”
“That’s true.”
The size of a concert session group varied enormously. Sometimes they put together a simple group of six or seven people, while other concerts brought in thirty or forty. There could be a string section—the instruments used in classical music—percussion, such as drums and bongos, a low-end section, guitars—lead, rhythm one, rhythm two, rhythm three, and so on—as well as other instruments like castanets, tambourines, and harmonicas.
To Myeongjeon, a session group of this size wasn’t particularly large. There was a string section, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, a few specialty instruments, and the band. But Seoha, as the sole drummer, seemed to feel a certain sense of responsibility.
“It feels like everything starts to wobble if I don’t hold it together. We’ve already gotten our timing down among ourselves, and since you’re perfectly on the beat, Suyeon, I can look to you and match you if I start to waver… But the others don’t know that.”
“Did I play too softly? Is the drummer unable to keep the beat? This won’t do.”
Seoha made a horrified “Eek!” face at those words. Myeongjeon chuckled and drained the last of his canned coffee.
“Still, once you go through something like this, your skill improves tremendously.”
They say good things come after hardship. If you keep practicing and adjusting until you can bring a situation that refuses to go your way under your control… before you know it, you’ll find that your own skills have improved by leaps and bounds.
“I’m looking forward to the concert.”
“Isn’t it too early to start talking like that? We still have several more rehearsals.”
“Could you not ruin the mood?”
Myeongjeon laughed again at Seoha’s words. These days, he was gradually finding it more and more enjoyable to toss such pointless jokes at the kids.