ECG -Chapter 39 Relaxation

Cui Gang’s family background was poor, and in his small county town there wasn’t even a teacher for the trumpet.

When he reached the second year of junior high, another middle school transferred in a music teacher. This teacher had majored in music at a normal university and had studied the trumpet.

Cui Gang’s father had pulled many strings before he finally managed to get Cui Gang accepted as the teacher’s student.

Lin Hao sighed. “A lot of our teachers, when teaching Western instruments, focus too much on things like embouchure, hand position, and so on. From the very beginning, they put all kinds of rules and restrictions on the instrument!”

Everyone in the room was reflecting on Lin Hao’s words. After a long while, Cui Gang looked at him somewhat confused.

“Do you mean… you want me to relax?”

Lin Hao burst out laughing and gave him a heavy slap on the shoulder.

“That’s right!”

Cui Gang grimaced in pain.

“Throw away all those rules and restrictions. Relax, completely relax. Just play however feels comfortable for you!”

“Things like having your mouth tilted, puffing out your cheeks, keeping your finger joints slightly raised, or holding it as if you’re holding an egg… don’t worry about any of that! Just do whatever feels comfortable!”

“When you practice, you can even hang the trumpet up. Don’t let your two hands touch it at all. Just place your lips on the mouthpiece!”

“Damn!” Even the usually refined Cui Gang couldn’t help but swear. “Would that even make a sound?”

Lin Hao chuckled. “That’s exactly how I trained!”

“Huh?”

Everyone was shocked.

Wu Xiaozhou’s eyes spun around. This guy Lin Hao had clearly activated some kind of cheat ability. His family didn’t even have a harmonica, and he suspected Lin Hao had probably never even touched a trumpet. How could he possibly have practiced it?

Could this guy really have been struck by lightning?

Or maybe he met some aliens?

This was seriously too strange. Could this be what they called a genius?

Damn it, why didn’t the lightning hit me too? Wuwuwu—

Cui Gang picked up his trumpet and began experimenting according to Lin Hao’s method… but he couldn’t produce a sound at all.

After a long while, he became discouraged and placed the trumpet on the bed.

“No good, I can’t make a sound!”

Lin Hao said, “I suggest you take leave from your professional classes. Go back only when you can relax and produce a sound!”

Cui Gang was puzzled.

“Why?”

“I estimate you won’t be able to make a sound for at least half a month! And if you change your method, your professional teacher won’t agree either!”

“Half a month?” Everyone was dumbfounded. How could it take that long?

Lin Hao nodded.

“Yes, half a month! He’s already been playing for six or seven years. Changing methods is like crossing a huge gap, a barrier! Once you get past it, you’ll succeed! If you can’t cross it, you’ll only be able to continue using the old method.”

Cui Gang silently nodded, making up his mind that tomorrow he would go ask for leave.

He already understood what Lin Hao meant. If he wanted to go further, he needed to use a more scientific method!

Lin Hao was like a worm in Cui Gang’s stomach.

“Are you thinking that the method I mentioned is more scientific?”

Cui Gang nodded.

But Lin Hao shook his head.

“This has nothing to do with science!”

Everyone was stunned. Didn’t you just use a ruler, talk about vibrations, and discuss length and such? Wasn’t that science?

“I’ll explain. The reason what I said earlier sounds scientific is because it was something summarized by people later on. In reality, it’s simply a difference in national culture!”

Everyone in the room looked at each other, not understanding how this suddenly became about culture.

“Many Western instruments, especially brass instruments, when Westerners learn them, some teachers don’t force them to have a certain embouchure or a certain fingering method. Because everyone’s conditions are different. What kind of mouth shape feels most comfortable—that is the student’s own feeling, and even more so, their freedom!”

“For example, with the basic training of wind instruments, as long as your lips can move downward through a five-degree scale and continue as far as they can go, the focus is on relaxing your lips, relaxing your muscles, and forming a stable airflow passage. This way, after you actually pick up the instrument, you can avoid your sound becoming too high or too tense.”

“Once the air passage is stable, when you go up to the high notes in the future, you’ll just need to add a little more air pressure, and the vibration frequency of your lips will naturally increase easily.”

“For example, take the trumpet. If you want to play high notes, you first have to practice playing low notes. The lower you can push the low notes, the more explosive power your high notes will have!”

“Actually, the requirements aren’t complicated at all. They’re very simple. Just do whatever feels comfortable for you. As long as you’re in a relaxed state, that’s enough!”

“Everyone, look—how important are these two words: ‘relaxation’!”

“When playing the piano or playing the drums, if you’re in a relaxed state, or if you’re in a tense state, the results will definitely be different! Think about it, everyone—isn’t that the truth?”

“We’ll find that there are so many jazz masters and rock stars overseas who seem strange and unusual to us. Some play the trumpet with crooked mouths and puffed-up cheeks, some play the piano hunched over, and so on.”

“But none of that prevents them from becoming masters! They become masters because of their music, not because their posture is elegant!”

Boss Gao thought about it and said, “What you said isn’t entirely right. When performing classical music, posture is still very important!”

Lin Hao clapped a few times and laughed. “Please note, what I said just now was about jazz masters or rock stars. Their personalities can be wild and free! But classical music is serious. Keeping your back straight is a form of respect toward the audience below the stage and the piece of music you’re about to perform!”

“But there’s one thing to pay attention to. If your hand position is incorrect, and you feel that playing with your ten fingers flat and straight feels more comfortable, then you can completely play according to the method that feels best for you!”

Boss Gao gave a bitter smile. “What you’re saying isn’t realistic! If I did that, my teacher would beat me to death!”

Everyone burst into laughter.

“What you said is right. In the beginning, the basic requirements for learning piano are very strict. There’s nothing wrong with that. But once you mature, you’ll naturally be able to express yourself freely. At that point, you won’t be restricted by things like hand position or fingering anymore…”

That day, Lin Hao talked a lot. Many advanced concepts about music were completely new to everyone, and they all benefited greatly.

……

The weather grew colder and colder.

One night, light snow was falling outside.

Lin Hao was lying on the upper bunk, writing down the songs he had once sung. Including this period of time and the summer vacation, he had already written more than thirty songs.

No one in the dormitory had a computer. Half a month ago, he had gone to an internet café to check, but the website of the [China Music Copyright Association] was still under construction. He didn’t know whether they were short on sand or cement—the “construction” was moving painfully slowly!

Now that the weather had turned freezing cold, it was probably even harder for them to “work” on it.

Reconstructing the melodies from memory wasn’t a problem, but sometimes the lyrics would get stuck. Sometimes things were just like that—when singing on stage, everything flowed smoothly, but when he actually put pen to paper, his mind would suddenly go blank.

Especially since, if he wanted to register the copyrights, he needed to write the sheet music and lyrics separately.

Whenever he truly couldn’t remember, he could only hum the songs over and over in his head, so the process of writing them down was progressing rather slowly.

After Wu Xiaozhou entered the dormitory, he said mysteriously, “Haozi, do you know what Big White Legs is doing?”

“Big White Legs” was the nickname Wu Xiaozhou had given Bai Zhitao. At first, Lin Hao thought it was a little vulgar, but later he felt it was actually quite fitting.

Wu Xiaozhou couldn’t stop thinking about Bai Zhitao. Unfortunately, students in the music department were all elusive. Even though they were only freshmen, they often disappeared without a trace.

Lin Hao rolled his eyes at him. This guy had started growing his hair long like the other students.

Unfortunately, his hair was currently at that awkward in-between length—not long enough, not short enough—and with his overly sturdy build, he looked like the Golden-Haired Lion King.

That was the good thing about art colleges: they had no requirements whatsoever regarding students’ strange outfits or hairstyles. After all, people doing art were allowed to have personalities.

“What is she doing?” Lin Hao replied absent-mindedly.

He had no particular thoughts about Bai Zhitao. Liking to look at those two long white legs was nothing more than a man’s natural attraction toward beauty.

“She’s singing at a bar!” Wu Xiaozhou said while taking off his coat. He then complained, “It’s cold! Tomorrow I’ll have to wear the military coat.”

For the past two years, for some unknown reason, students at the art college had started liking the old-fashioned military coats. Once winter arrived, the entire campus became a sea of green.

“Oh.”

Lin Hao didn’t think there was anything strange about it. Students from the vocal music department going out to work part-time and earn some tuition money was completely normal.

He turned his head and looked outside the window. Everything was covered in white.

He thought of his father. In weather this cold, his father probably wouldn’t even take a break. Repairing bicycles all day only earned him twenty or thirty yuan.

Last week, his dad had used the second-hand phone that Wu Xiaozhou’s father had recently bought to call the two of them. The call had been made to the dormitory guard’s office.

Lin Hao and Wu Xiaozhou had talked on the phone for quite a while. In the end, they only hung up after hearing Wu Xiaozhou’s mother’s choked voice.

Thinking about what Wu Xiaozhou had said about Bai Zhitao, Lin Hao also began considering things.

He couldn’t just keep eating away at his savings forever!

Should he go out and earn some money?