Chapter 18 – The Most Important Work

The resignation process went smoothly.

Lu Chen called his manager yesterday about his decision to resign. Since he was a part time worker that got paid by the hour, there was no formal contract that restricted his actions. He could leave anytime.

The manager actually felt a bit regretful. Lu Chen had only been working at the Happiness Road’s KFC since half a year ago. He was a diligent and serious worker that was never late to work or early to leave his shift. He was the perfect worker.

It was a pity that very few young people nowadays are willing to work long term at fast food restaurants.

The manager didn’t make it difficult for him and simply left Lu Chen with a few words of advice and his monthly salary.

Carrying the thin stack of bills, Lu Chen left without any regrets.

“Lu Chen, Brother Lu!”

He had just stepped onto the sidewalk when, suddenly, he heard an anxious shout from behind him.

Lu Chen couldn’t help but turn his body. He saw a woman wearing the KFC uniform running towards him, shouting, “wait!”

Lu Chen asked, “Chen Xin, are you looking for me?”

Chen Xin was Lu Chen’s colleague. Despite her age being younger than Lu Chen, she was considered an old employee at KFC.

Lu Chen and her weren’t very familiar with each other. Lu Chen only knew that she was from Sichuan and that she had lived in Beijing for two or three years already. The two of them didn’t really have any conversations. They, at most, exchanged greetings with each other.

Chen Xin was rather nervous. A healthy shade of red appeared on her round, white face.

She stopped in front of Lu Chen but didn’t dare to look at his eyes. She asked, “you, you resigned?”

Lu Chen laughed, “yeah, I found another job, so I quit this one.”

Chen Xin finally raised her head. Her eyes showed a trace of disappointment. She bit her lip and quietly asked, “will you continue to stay in Beijing?”

Lu Chen was stunned for a second.

He wasn’t stupid. Chen Xin’s actions were so obvious, how could he not realize?

It was just that Lu Chen simply couldn’t imagine that Chen Xin would like him.

In his recollection, the amount of memories of this girl was regretfully low. There were only the memories of their conversations at work.

Hesitating for a moment, Lu Chen nodded his head and said, “yeah, if nothing strange happens, I will remain in Beijing. My new job doesn’t enable me to leave.”

A sliver of joy appeared on Chen Xin’s face and she said, “then, can you give me your contact details?”

Even though Lu Chen didn’t have any feelings for her, he didn’t want to let her down. He just treated her like a normal work colleague. Therefore, he promised her, “add me on QQ, we can contact each other in the future.”

Lu Chen gave his QQ number to Chen Xin.

Chen Xin used her phone to record the number down, then Lu Chen waved goodbye.

However, when Lu Chen turned his head around after walking far away, she was still standing there.

In this city of thirty million people, the interactions between people are always rushed.

 After he returned to his room, Lu Chen first washed his face.

The cold water chilled him to his bones. He needed to calm down and think about the road he will take in the future.

The decision to quit his job at KFC wasn’t impulsive. The pay for the job was not very high and it took up the entire day. It simply didn’t make sense to keep working there.

In Lu Chen’s eyes, his most pressing task was to sort out the treasures from his memories — the thousands of songs and countless stories.

These memories came too suddenly. Even if the knowledge was already in his mind, Lu Chen couldn’t guarantee that the knowledge won’t suddenly disappear one day.

It was extremely important to record down that knowledge from his dreams!

After washing his face, Lu Chen felt much more refreshed and awake. He sat down at his desk, turned on his computer and took out pen and paper.

First, he drew a simple table on the paper.

He separated the songs from his memories into genres: love songs, rock songs, folk songs, theme songs, traditional Chinese songs, fast songs, etc.

He broke these genres down further into sub-groups based on their style. For example, love songs were broken down into emotional, gentle, regret, melancholic, sad, happy, and duet songs.

Another example was folk songs; the genre can be separated into school ballads, urban ballads, village ballads, and independent ballads.

The other genres like rock songs and fast songs could also be broken down into sub-groups.

As he wrote more and more on the paper, his ideas became clearer and clearer.

In doing this, Lu Chen created a framework with numerous categories for his memory. Instead of arbitrarily thinking of songs and writing them down, he could fill in the spaces of each category.

This way, he could avoid as many mistakes or omissions as possible.

However, forming this framework was only the first step of many. The work only got harder from here.

A song required lyrics. If it was his own song, recording these would be very simple. However, many of these songs were only heard a few times, so it took a lot of effort to remember and record.

There was also the arrangement.

Someone once said, if you only wrote the melody without arranging the song, it couldn’t be considered a real song.

The saying may seem extreme, but it is not unreasonable. This song arranging was precisely Lu Chen’s weakest point — his understanding of song arrangement was very limited.

This limited knowledge of arrangement came from the singer Xu Bo from his memories. Xu Bo had a tremendous talent in music. However, this talent was only applicable to singing and performing. Xu Bo simply couldn’t arrange music!

In Lu Chen’s memories of these works, the works all had beautiful arrangements and some had even reached an optimal level. These clever arrangements caused the melody to become more moving and this important factor of these songs couldn’t be ignored.

The rich timbre of the explosive accompaniment required a great deal of musical instruments to create. Even if Lu Chen wanted to rewrite the song, it was impossible to complete the task.

Lu Chen could always hire someone to arrange the arrangement; the domestic pop music was very prosperous. Musicians who are good at arranging music were everywhere and there were many big figures in the industry.

However, these arrangers wouldn’t be able to perfectly meet Lu Chen’s requirements. Hence, Lu Chen wanted to master the skills of arrangement and then, by himself, arrange those pieces of music.

Lu Chen had never thought about this before. He thought that he could depend on the knowledge from his dreams, selling them without much effort, and live a comfortable life.  

He was still young and ambitious. With hard work, he hoped to achieve the goals that he set up in his life.

Of course, right now, learning about arrangement was pushed to the side. Even if he wanted to learn it, he couldn’t master it immediately.

Opening Singing Master, Lu Chen started the day’s work.

Time flowed silently and unceasingly. A small quiet room, only the sound of the keyboard, the occasional mouse click, and the computer fan could be heard.

Song after song was remade in Lu Chen’s hands and saved according to its genre.

The important songs were directly sent to the Greater China Music Database for copyright inquiries and registration to ensure that there would be no legal issues.

This was extremely important in popular music scene because copyright infringement was so common. He had to prevent it from happening.

The inquiry and registration fee of the Greater China Music Database was very high and many people in the music world had expressed strong dissatisfaction, but no one doubted its authority and credibility.

In fact, if Lu Chen wanted to save money, it was very simple. As long as he published his songs on a large music forum or site and paid a few dozen dollars for the copyright registration fee, he could essentially be guaranteed the creator’s copyright.

However, the value of these songs were just too high!

Lu Chen wouldn’t do something so short-sighted. He didn’t sign the contract from before because of his copyrights and, now, seeing that he had the money to register the official copyrights, he was even more focused on long term development.

His success at Forget Your Worries Bar and on his broadcast strengthened his conviction!

He was wholeheartedly focusing on his computer screen until his stomach growled in protest.

It was only then that Lu Chen woke up from his focused state and unconsciously touched his stomach.

He glanced at the time on the computer. It was actually already 12 PM!

Lu Chen was speechless. First of all, he didn’t think that he was sitting there for that long, and, secondly, because his stomach became hungry so quickly, much quicker than normal.

It had to be noted that he ate breakfast at 8 AM and furthermore, it was even double the portion!

Mental labor also consumed a lot of energy!

Lu Chen shook his head as he stood up. He stretched his sedentary body and got ready to go out for lunch.

It was at this moment that the phone on his table suddenly began ringing.