The decision to record the cassette was finalized.
In the days that followed, Zhou Ziheng grew busy.
At night, he continued to sing at the cabaret, while spending his days with the Speak Truth Band working on the accompaniment music.
Whenever he had free time, he would head back to Nonglin Lower Road for busking.
More than half a month passed in this manner. Once the Speak Truth Band had thoroughly mastered the tunes for Zhou Ziheng's cassette, he led them into the China Record Company recording studio.
In truth, the pre-production and post-production phases of making a cassette often demand far more time than the actual recording itself.
Pre-production includes sourcing songwriters and producing the accompaniment.
First comes the songs.
A formal album or cassette requires no fewer than ten tracks or so.
With so many songs, if one lacked a company's backing and a large team of lyricists and composers, handing the entire workload over to a single person would make the sheer volume of work terrifyingly vast.
Because creators need inspiration to write songs, sometimes they can churn one out in an hour, while other times they might strain for half a year without producing a single note.
Consequently, this stage often devours a vast amount of time.
Even major record companies, in order to guarantee sales, invest immense effort into song selection, gathering a multitude of tracks and picking through them based on quality, style, and various other factors.
After all that work, it is virtually impossible to finish in less than one or two months.
Next is the preparation of the accompaniment music.
Ordinary singers do not need to handle this part. Once the company receives the songs, they find an arranger to handle the arrangement, then have a band or instrumentalists get familiar with the tunes and record the accompaniment.
As for post-production—such as mastering and mixing—this likewise requires professionals to spend a certain amount of time to get it done.
In a word, a singer is merely a fastener in the making of a record.
They connect the pre-production and post-production work; while indispensable, they are not nearly as almighty as the vast netizen population of later generations imagines.
They are merely a cog in a massive team.
Take Zhou Ziheng's cassette, for instance.
He took charge of the songs himself, and as for the accompaniment, he had complete versions of the tunes in his mind, allowing him to systematically break down the instruments—what instrument should be used when, and how it should be played.
Once he had all of that sorted out, the remaining work actually became much simpler.
Especially the recording.
After the Speak Truth Band practiced and rehearsed for over half a month, they were able to play the tunes for the cassette together with very few flaws.
Thus, recording became much simpler—nothing more than playing along in sync with the recording equipment.
Of course, because the recording equipment of this era was not as advanced as in later generations—where you could record in small segments and piece them together—the band had to play each song through from start to finish in one continuous take.
As a result, this phase still consumed some time, taking about a week before the accompaniments for all the songs were officially finished.
With the accompaniment out of the way, the next step naturally was Zhou Ziheng's vocals.
This stage required little comment; the songs Zhou Ziheng brought out did not demand profound vocal skills. Ordinary people could sing them quite well after some practice.
Therefore, this stage took only five days to complete, with Zhou Ziheng basically recording two songs a day.
Time marched on to the seventeenth of mid-August.
The weather in Yangcheng grew increasingly scorching.
The muggy, damp air left people feeling irritable and oppressed.
Yet, even though Zhou Ziheng was drenched in sweat from the blistering heat, his heart felt exceptionally clear and refreshed.
Today, the production of his cassette—officially titled Wandering Song—was formally declared complete.
"Hiss..."
He pressed the play button on the cassette player, and the static inherent in the old machine hummed to life as the melody began to play.
"Tonight I've come once again to your window"
"How lovely your silhouette looks on the curtain"
"Having quietly loved you for so many years"
"Tomorrow I must leave"
As the prelude ended, Zhou Ziheng's own voice rang out from the recorder.
"It sounds so good!"
Listening to his own song from the player, Zhou Ziheng could not help but raise an eyebrow.
Zhou Ziheng had listened to the songs on this cassette countless times in his past life.
Listening to them back then felt entirely different from experiencing them now.
He was the one singing them.
And in this era, they would be his own works.
"When are you heading to Pacific Audio & Video?"
Across from him, Li Chunbo sat in front of an electric fan, enjoying the warm breeze it blew, and asked Zhou Ziheng.
"Tomorrow!" Zhou Ziheng took out the cassette, stroking it affectionately. "I can't wait to hear my songs playing on the streets."
"I hope Pacific Audio & Video signs your cassette and releases it as soon as possible!" Li Chunbo said with a sigh of admiration. "Perhaps your cassette will be released before mine, who knows."
Hearing this, Zhou Ziheng fell silent for a moment.
He did not know how to offer comfort.
Nearly two months had already passed, yet Li Chunbo's Xiaofang had received not the slightest movement from the planning department. Word had it that someone inside consistently refused to publish this cassette.
After pondering for quite a while, he finally raised his head. "Don't worry. Wealth should not make us forget our roots; if I make it big, I will certainly not forget a fellow sufferer like you."
"Haha!"
Hearing this, Li Chunbo could not help laughing out loud. "Then I'll wait for you to make it big!"
"I will!"
Zhou Ziheng replied with a smile.
He had already been reborn; even if it was the relatively difficult nineties, if Zhou Ziheng still couldn't make it big,
he might as well just go find a piece of tofu to crash into and end it.
"Right!" Li Chunbo was still laughing when something suddenly seemed to occur to him. "Brother Xiaoqi knows I've been helping you with the cassette.
He told me to let you know that if the cassette is recorded, you can bring it over to show him and let him review it."
"Are you still heading to the China Record Company today? If you're going over there, you can just take it with you. I need to go find Liu Jianguo and pay for the accompaniment recording."
Zhou Ziheng said.
Hearing this, Li Chunbo frowned. "Brother Jianguo is really untrustworthy. He clearly agreed on three hundred yuan per song, but halfway through the recording, he suddenly raised the price. Knowing this, you should have contacted an outside band.
Yangcheng is so big; there are plenty of experienced bands with reasonable prices."
Zhou Ziheng felt somewhat indignant as well.
Originally, he and Liu Jianguo had agreed that their band would help record the accompaniment at a rate of three hundred yuan per song.
As a result, after three songs were recorded, Liu Jianguo used the excuse that bands across the market had raised their rates to directly hike the price of recording the accompaniment from three hundred to five hundred.
It was nearly a fifty percent increase.
In truth, Zhou Ziheng knew why they had suddenly raised the price.
It was simply because Zhou Ziheng's earnings at the cabaret had made them green with envy.
Ever since his debut performance of Wandering Song at the cabaret that night, Zhou Ziheng's tips and earnings every evening had not been low—hitting four or five hundred on high nights, and no less than two hundred on the lowest night.
On average, he pulled in around three hundred and fifty every single night.
After a month, he had straight-up become a ten-thousand-yuan earner.
And precisely because Zhou Ziheng was making more money, Liu Jianguo felt he had charged too little and slapped on a temporary price hike right in the middle of the project.
Finding another band at that stage would not only require getting them familiar with the tunes all over again, but the tracks already recorded couldn't be used because the Speak Truth Band wouldn't agree, meaning they would have to be re-recorded from scratch.
Given how time-consuming and exhausting that would be, Zhou Ziheng ultimately had no choice but to agree to his price of five hundred yuan per song.
"This is the last time! They won't have a chance to work with me again in the future!"
Zhou Ziheng said in a deep voice, handing the cassette to Li Chunbo so he could take it to Chen Xiaoqi.