Chapter 20 Castrato singers have dominated the Western music scene for 300 years
During the third round of selection, Shen Xiyin personally handed the microphone to Fang Xing and asked: "What kind of team members will Captain Fang Xing choose this time?"
Fang Xing glanced at the people around him. Everyone was good at something different.
Guo Keda can play guitar and dance, so he has no problem being the dancer in the team.
Shao Yu has solid singing skills and strong harmonies.
The structure of the team has been formed, but something is still missing.
In fact, in terms of sound, the men's team audition will lack high-pitched harmonies.
Since there are no female vocals, when a boy band makes music, it is basically impossible to touch the five sets of high notes.
Especially when doing harmony, without the female voice, it cannot be as vivid as possible.
Fang Xing thought about it and decided: "I need a child's voice, that is, a falsetto tenor, the kind that can sing up to G5 or even A5."
If it were on Earth, Fang Xing could actually call him by name. What he wanted was Zhou Shen's childlike voice.
Yes, Zhou Shen introduced himself as a falsetto-like tenor in the first season of "Voice into the Heart", but in fact he has a child's voice.
What is a child's voice?
When human beings are young, the thickness and length of the vocal cords of little boys and little girls are about the same, so the timbre of children's voices are high, sharp, and bright.
When boys reach the age of 12 or 13, they enter puberty, begin to secrete male hormones, and slowly develop Adam's apple. At this time, they will enter the voice-changing period.
During the voice change stage, the male throat area enlarges, and the vocal cords become wider and thicker.
In terms of voice production mechanism, the head voice area is the main area of voice production during childhood. When the voice changes, it will gradually change to the chest voice area.
Therefore, when a man becomes an adult, his voice is usually deeper and thicker than when he was a child.
What is a child's voice?
Speaking of this, I have to mention the church choirs in Europe in the 16th century.
Church choir, also called the choir.
For countries with faith, churches are very sacred places.
The church canon stipulates that "women should remain silent in church", so the female voices in the church choir are replaced by boys.
However, little boys will grow up, and once their voices change, they will no longer be able to sing.
At this time, the church needs to find a new boy to replace him.
But then you have to train again.
Therefore, the church has another cruel method, which is to castrate the little boy before his voice changes.
In this way, the little boy will have no male hormones, will not have a period of voice change, will always maintain a childlike voice, and will continue to sing in the choir.
At the end of the Renaissance, castrati also emerged, which dominated the Western music scene for 300 years.
There is a film "Farinelli Castrato" co-produced by Italy, Belgium, and France, which was translated into Chinese as "The Enchantress" and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1994.
The film tells the legendary story of a French castrato. The film shows the castrato's voice as perfect as the sound of nature.
Because no one can reproduce the castrato's singing voice, the singing voice in the film can only be produced by using modern computer technology to mix several different male voices, female voices and children's voices.
Of course, all this has become history.
There is no such cruel thing in modern times.
However, men occasionally go through a period of voice change, but their voices do not change much.
This is a child's voice, which has a higher range than ordinary male voices and can sing the female voice's parts.
Zhou Shen has a childlike voice.
This is the voice that God chases after you to feed you.
A more professional one is called a falsetto tenor.
In fact, when Zhou Shen first started singing the cover of "The Whale in the Lonely Island", his voice quality was not high enough and sounded very much like a female voice.
However, he did not choose to hang around in the entertainment industry, but went to study at a well-known music conservatory in a northern country.
After professional training, the texture of my voice has been qualitatively improved, and I can control more songs.
Later, during the "Singer" period, Zhou Shen had smoothed out his voice changing points, and ordinary people could not find his voice changing points.
Fang Xing just wanted to find a similar child's voice, so that when dividing the parts, the music could be expressed vividly.
……
When Shen Xiyin heard Fang Xing say that he wanted to find a student who could sing up to G5 or even A5, his eyes widened immediately, then he flipped his hair and joked:
"Captain Fang Xing, the person you want is not me, right? After all, the only person here who can sing A5 is me."
A5 is already an absurdly high scale for male voices.
Except for special cases like Vitas and Zhou Shen, ordinary male voices will never be able to sing A5.
You know, Pavarotti, one of the three great tenors in the world, sings High C at C5.
(The five groups of scales are C5, D5, E5, F5, G5, A5, B5, so A5 is five notes higher than C5.)
Five groups of trebles, that is not the battlefield for male voices, it is the battlefield for female voices.
A5 is difficult for female voices, let alone male voices.
That's why Shen Xiyin makes such a joke.
Fang Xing also joked: "As long as the director team doesn't object, I really want it."
Shen Xiyin put on a regretful expression and said: "Actually, I also want to cooperate with Captain Fang Xing. The prelude of "Nocturne" has already knocked me down. However, the rules do not allow it."
Fang Xing looked at the trainees outside the field and began to search for the sounds he heard two days ago: "The day before yesterday, the day before yesterday, early in the morning, I heard a person speaking loudly in the corridor, and he drove to A5. I also I said hello to him, now I want to ask him if he would like to come to my group?"
Fang Xing looked around, but he couldn't find it.
After looking around again carefully, he finally pointed at a student in the last row of people: "That Lu Ming."
This practitioner was a little bit small. He was sitting in a crowd and was blocked by the people around him. I really didn’t see him at first glance.
The student whose name was called slowly stood up, pointed to his nose and asked, "Are you talking about me?"
"You should be able to sing up to A5, right?" Fang Xing asked directly.
The student named Lu Ming waved his hands quickly: "No, that's too high and the voice is too shrill. I just opened my voice that day, not really sang."
"That's not important. I'm just asking if you would like to join my group." Fang Xing heard him open his voice and play the A5 scale that day, and the quality of his voice was actually pretty good.
"Of course...of course."
Lu Ming was a little dazed, because he was from Class D and was most likely at the level of a second-rounder.
Now the captains of each team are competing for students from Class B, and Class D has no chance to join the team.
Fang Xing, however, did not follow common sense and went directly to Class D before he had finished grabbing all the ones from Class B.
However, this is not the most unconventional place where Fang Xing plays his cards, and the next one is even more unconventional.
After Fang Xing selected Lu Ming, he directly announced: "Okay, my team is complete."
"What...what?"
Everyone at the scene was confused again, this time even the program team was a little confused.
