it’s a conversation she’s had with taeyeon — yet she didn’t think of it with sunyoung yet. maybe it was because she didn’t feel as if it was her place, because she thought it would get thrown back at her ( and in taeyeon’s case, it was for reasons she couldn’t at first — the one who needed a wake-up call was her ), so maybe, just maybe it’s because tiffany didn’t to hear it again.
she doesn’t want to feel as if she’s being placed on a pedestal again. but there she is, notes in hand, hair messily tied in a bun, and her sweater hanging off her shoulder, appearance disheveled without a single car, in the doorway of the practice room she’s tracked sunyoung to. knocking on the doorframe, she peeks in with a smile, “mind some company? i thought it might be good to practice together. is that okay?”
Rumors abound in networks that trainees can never overhear-- realms of information that only CEOs and privileged upper staff have access to. When Katie Lee hears through this grapevine of So Jiseob’s impending plans for Luxe, her impatience escalates. What better way to make 2018 memorable than the birth of a new girl group rivalry? With this burning motivation, KT’s CEO wastes no time in organizing her own strategy to get Eclipse on the map.
May is spent finalizing her preparations while June begins a new round of responsibilities. After training ends on Thursday, Katie Lee gathers the girls of Eclipse into her office and greets them with a saccharine smile. “Have my girls been working hard?” The question is rhetorical; after speaking it, Katie Lee immediately leans back in her seat and crosses one long leg over the other. “I know the last-minute member change flustered many of you. It happens when trainees are together for a long time and, even worse, when idol members are together for a long time. However, all of you should remember that you are first and foremost professionals. As much as I encourage friendship between you, it’s even more vital that you cooperate as co-workers above anything else.” She sweeps the gleaming mass of her long, dark hair over one shoulder. “Stay focused and stay professional from now on. You are group mates and are expected to work together as a team, regardless of personal feelings.”
Katie Lee lifts her phone and expertly navigates the screen to access her notes. “Your debut song has been decided. In line with the concept photos you photographed in April -- which turned out as lovely as expected -- the softer side of Eclipse is what you will be showing to the public first. Your debut song is entitled ‘Love Whisper’ and you will meet with your vocal coach, Kang Haneul, to learn the parts to this song.”
She goes on to explain that the girls will have two weeks to learn the song as a group, with a professional recording of the song to take place during the weekend of June 23rd and 24th. All members will be recording the song in predetermined parts for the production staff during this session. Only afterwards, once the head producer has analyzed which vocal parts suit which girl, will the official line distribution be chosen for the final version.
For this evaluation, you will be learning and professionally recording the parts to Eclipse’s debut song, “Love Whisper.” During the recording session, the girls are expected to perform their parts as many times as the producer requests until the vocals are of the highest quality. The full song recording session will last 8 hours, with the first hour at 8AM devoted to microphone set-up, the second hour to warm-ups and practice as a group (with the coaching aid of Kang Haneul), and then the girls will enter the studio individually to record their parts. Each girl will have one hour to record all her sections of the song. It is unlikely that someone’s first recording will be perfect on the first try, so anticipate being asked to re-record multiple times until the producer is satisfied. You are encouraged to be experimental with your attempts but the producer’s word will be final in all instances.
Write one four post thread or one 300+ words solo about your time spent learning the debut song either on your own, with your group members, or in session with Kang Haneul for +3 SINGING POINTS and +2 DEBUT POINTS.
Write one four post thread or one 300+ words solo about the day spent recording the debut song for +3 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE AS YOU WISH, +1WK RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT and +2 DEBUT POINTS.
The tag for this evaluation will be #eclipse:juneval and posts should be up by midnight EST at the end of June 30th. Eclipse members are told not to share the information given to anyone outside of KT or else they’ll risk losing their place on the debut team.
ECLIPSE JUNE EVALUATION (for the July 4 verification form)
PREPARATION
PROOF OF ACTIVITY: [ x ]
+3 SINGING POINTS
+2 DEBUT POINTS
NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:
RECORDING THE SONG
PROOF OF ACTIVITY: [ x ]
+3 ___ POINTS
+1WK RELEVANT ACHIEVEMENT (NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN + CURRENT LEVEL)
+2 DEBUT POINTS
NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:
❝ i will send my heart on a cloud and tell you — ♡
one of her concerns was that the song was too sweet, too innocent for someone like her but the truth is that not all love songs have to be romantic. a beautiful song about listening to and keeping yourself open to love itself, to the memories and wonderful stories.
it takes courage and strength, and tiffany feels as if she’s finally found both after years of trying. everyone has their bad days but she believes she’s had more good than bad these days, even with her break-up nearly a year ago. she can’t bring herself to hate him, to hate what happened or regret their relationship.
what she does regret is not having the courage eclipse is going to sing about for their debut. it makes her wonder what if and before she knows it, she’s happy this is their debut song.
because without singing it, without hearing the final product yet, she knows it’ll touch people’s hearts, that it’s relatable even for someone like her. this too is a leap of faith for all of them, in the changes to the group, to the interesting concept they have, and in katie lee for making such decisions. from now on, the ones walking hand in hand on the flower path with be them. she sings for the future but most of all, she sings for herself and eclipse.
because of that, she only accepts perfection too. within the first few minutes of mic set-up, she feels as if she’s already annoying the technicians.
“i’m sorry, could i try this mic one more time?” because her own personal mic preferences might not translate to the way she’ll have to record the song, the tone and range already seemingly higher than hers naturally.
as much as she’s told to try a line again, trying it in various ways, she’s quick to ask too, “could i do that one more time?”
her studio time is quickly filled with trial and error until she feels somewhat satisfied and even when it’s nearly over and she’s made it through most of her lines, she’s worried, fiddling with her notes. “i hope at least one take works perfectly, especially with the girls. if we have to record again because of me, i’m sorry. i’ll do better, trust in me. just one more try!”
( i can hear it from anywhere
if i open my eyes
when i open my eyes
to the T R U S T that you have in me )
where you lead, i will follow — she’s humming the first few bars of one of her favorite tv show theme songs when she comes across yeri on her way to find a practice room for the night. restless more nights than most, especially with the upcoming recording of the debut song, she hasn’t been going home as often, opting to stay at kt to practice.
truth be told, she’s fairly certain all of them are feeling the pressure and it’d be lying to say she isn’t worried about everyone, about their states of mind, about how they feel now that they have a debut song and lines to sing for the final recording already. before eclipse was announced, it felt as if they’d been waiting forever, but now that things were in motion, she couldn’t help hoping they could have more time to adjust, especially with recent changes.
because of it, the two youngest are who she worries about most. coming up behind her and wrapping her arms around yeri once she reaches her, tiffany hugs her tightly, chin resting on yeri’s shoulder. “here you are! i feel like i haven’t seen you in so long,” a classic exaggeration. “i’ve been feeling so lost without you,” she grins, letting go and taking yeri’s hand instead as she walks beside her. “were you heading home?”
June is a whirlwind of activity after the lack thereof in May- The girls are swept into a meeting room and suddenly, they’re recording a debut song. (Not that It’s unexpected- there’s always that that comes in preparation for debut, but so soon?) Sooyoung is understandable overwhelmed and stressed out- which her mind rationalizes to be fair penance for not regularly working on improving her singing skills while she had time. Now, there’s no time, and as she rehearses the preliminary lines given she realizes that her voice is naturally softer, calmer; a contrast to the strong and sometimes overbearing personality that she has, but maybe oddly fitting for such an innocent song.
It’s not that she’s a bad singer, on the contrary, KT has made a really good one out of her as she never really sang before signing (and the MGAs before that), but that she’s not exactly confident in it. Faking it? Sure! Her false confidence almost gives her the real kind- she’s the oldest, she can’t let them down now, definitely not now. Because surely Katie Lee wouldn’t hesitate to cut her if she felt Sooyoung wasn’t doing enough, working enough towards this.
She was. In all her soul she wanted to be seen as worthy- It’s what she had worked for since she joined the company, since the uproar with the signing results of the mgas were loosed, and people called for another team member to have been signed instead of Sooyoung, who seemed to have so greedily stolen such a precious slot at fame.
So she works day in and day out, until her throat really is sore, and the song is etched in her brain, working on harmonizing with the other members’ voices, praying her own matches well enough to be rewarded something, anything other than a dancer who doesn’t sing. Because debut has come much too soon for her to feel prepared, and lately, with the absence of her own solace and relief as he studies abroad, the stress builds itself up and everything seems just a little harder than it should be, because god, she’s trying, and it feels like she’s drowning while smiling proudly all at the same time.
While Sooyoung, full of nervous laughter as she stands in the recording studio by herself asks to try everything again until it sounds just right, she reminds herself that it’s overcoming her own fears and insecurities she has to do- even if it’s just for everyone else’s sake. Even if it means accepting that this time, she won’t get anything, that she’ll have to earn it later. Everything is foreign to her- what should be new and exciting simply being new and scary, especially for someone who (and won’t admit it and instead always fakes it) hasn’t conquered stage fright- not then, and not now, but hopefully, with time.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ JUNE EVALUATIONS :
RECORDING LOVE W H I S P ER
she isn’t really sure what she thinks about the song itself.
it wasn’t too much of a surprise -- everyone knew of kt’s style and on top of that, katie lee herself gave the girls a hint about it whenever she revealed eclipse’s concept. but even then, sunyoung was never really sure about how she would fit in to the cutesy melody that was their ‘day’ style; although there were other girls that were the same age as she was, she feels like she doesn’t look as young and fresh as she did whenever she first joined the company at 20. her personality, although definitely toned down than what she was at the latter age, still didn’t feel as feminine and elegant as they ( most likely ) want her to be. and her voice, a deep timbre for a woman, that to her sounds a little awkward trying to raise her tone to the higher pitch that’s needed for the song to work.
sunyoung thought that being chosen for debut, that maybe her insecurities would seem silly in the end, and decrease; when in fact, they only bloomed, became so much worse.
( welcome to the big time, she guesses. )
and it starts to manifest within her in terrible ways, coming out at the absolute worst time; she finds herself making rookie mistakes whenever she’s in the booth, either being off pitch and voice cracking while she tries to bring her tone up to the high manner that the producer asks of them. sunyoung doesn’t remember how many times she’s told the higher up “sorry,” whenever a line doesn’t go the way that they want it to go, and instead of thinking about her lines and notes and being in the moment, she’s far away, lost, wondering if all those times they brought her in the booth were just a waste of time -- since, you know, they allowed her to practice so that she wouldn’t fuck up so badly when it was actually time to perform, or so she wouldn’t embarrass the kt name and --
“get out of your head, and relax.”
it’s that phrase that causes her to look upwards from her stand and towards the glass, to see the expression of the producer and it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be ( wasn’t exactly pleasant either, but she would take that over a scowl ), and he tells her to breathe -- something that she’s forgotten that she can do since she’s walked inside the booth. he instructs her to breath, big swooping hand motions included, and she follows them to the tee -- mimicking his motions as well.
the little break that sunyoung is offered helps a bit, and she does try to think of it as just that -- a break instead of contemplating about how much time she has used up and whether the other girls have taken their full hour of time or not; regardless, she finds that she’s singing at a better level than she was just minutes ago, and with quick flits of her eye she notes that the producer was bobbing his head to her sounds, so that had to be a good sign. he still directs her just as much -- sunyoung finds that the man is rather meticulous about every note and she tries her best to follow his instructions, a wide grin blooming on her face whenever the praises start to come, which in turn makes her sound more stable; singing with more confidence within her tone.
she finishes up her final line and the man thanks her for the time in which she bows in return with mutual pleasantries, and it’s only when she gazes up at the clock does she realize that she used up the entire time given to them. the only thing sunyoung can hope is that she isn’t penalized because of her prior mistakes in the beginning.
Settling into the studio, Taeyeon knew a long day was going to be ahead of her and the rest of the trainees that had been chosen to be part of Eclipse. A recording session was no laughing matter, and recording for an actual debut was going to be even more serious than the few times she’d been in a studio before. It still seemed crazy to her that they were actually recording their debut song, but here they were, doing just that. She had practiced day and night to try and get the lines down and memorized. She knew which ones had been assigned to her to remember, but just in case, she even practiced other ones. She figured the producers would determine who sang what, so if they thought she might fit another part better, she was willing to do it.
Her first run through, despite her saying she wasn’t, Taeyeon felt a little nervous and fumbled a couple words here or there. A drink of water and some encouraging words from the staff and she was ready to give it another try. This time her practice came through and she was able to make it through the parts she was asked with a bit more confidence. That didn’t mean it was perfect, of course, so she was asked to go through it again, taking direction as to different ways they wanted her to try making it sound. Despite the struggle, Taeyeon wouldn’t have changed any part of it for the world. She loved singing and this was a big part of what she wanted to do with her life, so any time she could be in a studio singing, she felt at home, even if she was singing the same things over and over again. This was for their debut, this was something bigger than she could have imagined, so she did everything the producer asked, giving it everything she had. She was going to show that the last four years had been building up to this and she was going to make it the best she could.
thinly veiled concern and affection brings her here, head on sooyoung’s shoulders as they lean against the practice room wall. “i really did come here to check on you,” she murmurs, lashes still brushing the tops of her cheeks as she struggles to keep her eyes open. “i thought your shoulder would be less comfortable with how thin you are,” she teases, lightly poking sooyoung’s side before letting her hand rest between them.
but after she says it, after she mentions wanting to check on how sooyoung’s doing with everything going on, she suddenly can’t sleep. the grains of sand fall away and she’s restless instead. eyes open and sitting up, she rests her temple against the wall instead, turning to face sooyoung. “i’m really happy you made it here, you know. during the mgas, i . . . ”
she still couldn’t bring herself to admit that a part of her strongly believed sooyoung had a better chance after joining taeyeon’s team instead of hers; maybe she would’ve done better there from the beginning. “it feels like we’re living in a different world now compared to then.”
