ECG -Chapter 10 Teacher Qian’s Frustration

Lin Hao felt that tomorrow he would have to go buy a metronome. Otherwise, having to keep time for this guy every day would probably exhaust him to death.

Looking at Wu Xiaozhou, who had already gotten the hang of the basic notes, Lin Hao smiled and asked him, “How is it?”

“Not difficult!”

“Alright! You’re awesome!”

Lin Hao genuinely praised him. It seemed that he really could make a living in this field!

Wu Xiaozhou was tall and burly, and his palms were huge. Most importantly, his fingers, which were like little wooden mallets, were extremely flexible.

As for rhythm and pitch, although having talent could make things twice as effective with half the effort, with Lin Hao guiding him, it wouldn’t take long before he could train them up anyway.

“Starting tomorrow, from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, you’ll practice at my house every day. Keep doing that until the end of August!”

“What?”

Hearing this, Wu Xiaozhou nearly went berserk. He threw the bass onto the sofa.

“No way! Damn it, even someone serving jail time gets time outside for fresh air! No way, absolutely not!”

“What are you going out for? To mess around with Er Fei and the others again? You still want to get beaten up?”

“Besides, think about it. In the future, endless money and beautiful women—think about it, think carefully!”

Wu Xiaozhou curled his lips. “Damn! Stop using those things to tempt me all the time!”

“I can guarantee that before you even graduate from college, you’ll already be making a lot, a lot of money!”

“I can guarantee that all kinds of campus beauties, school flowers, family flowers, wild flowers… they’ll all throw themselves at you. Every beauty in the provincial capital will cry and beg to have your children. Think about it, savor it, really savor it!”

“…”

Wu Xiaozhou looked full of longing. “No need to savor it. Whether they’re school flowers or not doesn’t matter. I just like practicing!”

Three days later.

Amid the boring ticking sound of the metronome, Lin Hao was half lying on the sofa watching television.

On the table, Lin Hao had brought out the old electric fan from his bedroom. It was slowly swaying back and forth.

But it clearly wasn’t doing much. Wu Xiaozhou was holding the electric bass, his head covered in sweat.

On the TV was a rerun of Stories of the People from Chunhe City Television. The beautiful female host, Chu Yu, said some words paying tribute to fathers.

Then came the footage of Lin Hao singing at the food stall. Not far away from him stood that long-haired singer, Sun Xiaowei.

Chu Yu’s voice-over said:

“This song, Father, is an original song by this young man named Lin Hao. The song expresses the feelings of all the people in the world towards…”

Unfortunately, the footage did not last long before the camera turned toward the tearful father.

Because of the environment, the recording quality of Father was only average.

Lin Hao curled his lips. Information spread wasn’t fast enough in this world. If this were his previous life, things like Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili… as long as someone uploaded it, countless people would come to watch.

However, thinking about it, maybe this was good too. Quietly enjoying four years of college life, then having a truly unforgettable romance—it would be pretty nice!

Then he suddenly thought about how the host had just mentioned the words “original song,” and only then did he remember that he had already sung three songs, but he still hadn’t registered the copyrights for his musical works!

Unfortunately, this world was extremely similar to his previous one. It was still an era when plagiarism, piracy, and cover songs dominated the market.

After all, he had struggled in this industry for so many years in his previous life, so he had a deep understanding of copyrights.

People outside the industry all thought that you only owned copyright after registering it, but that was actually a misunderstanding.

Copyright came into existence the moment a work was completed. It was a natural right, something a creator automatically possessed after creating a work.

The so-called “registration” was merely buying insurance for the work, just like how ordinary people buy commercial insurance. Whether you buy it or not, you’re still alive!

If a dispute happened without registration, it was actually easy to resolve.

As long as the original creator could provide dated manuscripts, recordings, videos, published articles, or even witnesses from a public performance, all of these could serve as valid evidence in court.

No singer would risk ruining their reputation by registering someone else’s song first. After all, the original creator had publicly performed it earlier, while the plagiarism registration came later. From a timeline perspective, as long as there was even a little evidence, the other party would definitely lose!

There were many lawsuits involving songs, but most of them were disputes between singers and their contracted companies over ownership rights. Lawsuits where songs were stolen and registered by others were extremely rare.

In his previous life, it wasn’t until 2006 that the country took strong action to deal with piracy issues. Many KTVs across the nation began removing large numbers of unauthorized original songs.

As for online music piracy, it wasn’t dealt with until around 2015. It was only then that the era of free internet music ended, and people had to start paying to listen online.

However, all of those measures targeted commercial piracy for profit, not the theft of original creations.

He didn’t know what the copyright registration process was like in this world, but no matter what, he still needed to first write down those three songs and record the creation dates for safekeeping. That way, he would have some protection.

In the future, he still needed to register the copyrights. Spending a little money would just be like buying insurance. Then if any disputes really happened, he would have both the original manuscripts and copyright certificates, and he wouldn’t need to find witnesses from the day he performed.

Although the internet wasn’t developed yet and he was currently in a small city, it was still better to buy some peace of mind.

Then he had another thought: if someone did try to register his songs first, that wouldn’t be bad either. If he handled it properly, it could even become a source of income.

Haha!

…

“No way!” Wu Xiaozhou interrupted Lin Hao’s thoughts. He leaned back on the sofa and started acting shamelessly. “Go to my place! My apartment is on a higher floor, and there’s a cross breeze. You can also play on the computer there. Your house is way too hot!”

“Huh?!” Lin Hao’s eyes lit up. Good idea! There wasn’t even a computer at home, so he could go to this world’s internet and check some information about copyright. Besides, if he stayed at his own place, he would have to cook for himself. This Wu Xiaozhou guy ate way too much.

“Fine. Your family providing dinner?” Lin Hao asked.

“……”

Inside a residential house in Hexi, a band was rehearsing.

The bass from two Mustang multifunction amplifiers was muddy and unclear, while the distortion from the electric guitar was so sharp it felt like it could pierce through the speaker cones…

“Clack!”

The drummer’s stick fell.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Qian Yu, with his long flowing hair, stood up from his chair with a serious expression. He raised one hand and shouted for everyone to stop.

All the instruments fell silent.

Qian Yu looked at the chubby bassist. “Wang Fatty, are you even okay? It’s just a KS bass. Why are you acting like someone died? Are you going to keep dragging this on forever?”

Wang Fatty looked miserable and didn’t say anything.

The keyboard player was also a long-haired young man. He lit a cigarette, glanced sideways at Qian Yu, and said, “Old Qian, don’t criticize others. That SOLO you played just now—forget how many notes you got wrong. Starting from the 39th measure, the rhythm completely fell apart!”

The drummer was a short and sturdy young man. His face was covered in sweat as he bent down to pick up the drumstick from the floor and muttered, “I’ve already changed it several times.”

“Alright, that’s it for today!”

Qian Yu’s face was long and gloomy. After saying that, he took off his electric guitar and placed it on the guitar stand.

“Old Qian, both singers will be here tomorrow. We only have half a month before we have to test this venue. Let’s hurry up!” The keyboard player sounded helpless. While packing up the cables and power cords, he spoke to Qian Yu.

Qian Yu responded with a muffled “Hmm.”

Forget Wang Fatty being frustrated—he himself was frustrated too.

Ever since the incident at Bayin Music Store that day, he had no idea how the news spread, but just one day later, two parents had actually brought their guitars over to demand refunds.

In the end, he had to return more than twenty thousand yuan, including the kickbacks and tuition fees. His reputation was almost completely ruined!

The venue they were going to test next was newly opened, and whether they could establish themselves there was very important. One hundred yuan a day might not be much, but as long as it was stable, it would be fine.

If things continued developing like this, his teaching business would be completely finished. In the future, even making a living might become a problem.

On the way back, the drummer and keyboard player were going in the same direction, so the two rode their bicycles together while chatting.

The drummer asked, “What’s going on with Old Qian?”

The keyboard player’s lips curled upward slightly, showing some disdain. “I told you a long time ago, don’t be so greedy! See? Something happened eventually, didn’t it?”

“What happened?”

“You spend every day cooped up at home reading martial arts novels. You don’t even know about such a big thing?”

The drummer shook his head with an honest smile.

“Old Qian went to Bayin to buy a guitar for a student, but someone exposed him on the spot. The student’s parents took the student and left immediately!”

The drummer looked shocked. “Damn! That’s way too embarrassing!”

“He was just too shady! That kind of cheap fake Fender—he sold it to students for nearly twenty thousand yuan. He’s sold several of them already!”

“Damn! That’s really low!” The drummer shook his head.

The keyboard player muttered doubtfully, “I heard the person who exposed him was just a young guy. That’s really impressive!”

“A kid?” The drummer was even more shocked. After all, identifying counterfeit instruments was a technical skill, and the high-quality fakes were especially difficult to tell apart.

The keyboard player nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I heard. They said that kid explained everything clearly right there on the spot and left Old Qian speechless. Hahaha!”

“Liu’er, I don’t want to keep playing with Old Qian anymore. This guy’s character is terrible!” the drummer said.

“Mm.” The keyboard player nodded as well. After staying silent for a while, he said, “What choice do we have? Old Qian has been around here for years. He knows a lot of people and has plenty of connections. Let’s just get through these two years first and see.”

“Mm!”

…

Wu Xiaozhou’s mother rinsed the hand-rolled noodles once with cold water, then placed them into two large bowls and poured tomato-and-egg sauce over them.

She felt very relieved.

Although her son and that Lin kid from the Old Lin family spent every day at home making “ding ding dang dang” noises while playing that thing, and it didn’t really look like proper work, it was still better than him going out every day to fight on the streets.

Besides, if he practiced that thing well, he probably wouldn’t have any trouble making a living playing music in the future, right?

“Dinner’s ready!”

She happily shouted toward her son’s bedroom.