Episode 3: Rooftop at Sunset, Meeting of Three Instruments

Late afternoon the day after the audition, on the rooftop of an old five-story red brick commercial building in the old city center. A huge red sunset was spreading across the horizon of Neon City. Magenta, orange, and deep navy blue colored the sky in a fantastic gradation, and the little incandescent light bulbs hanging awkwardly along the rooftop railing began to glow a warm yellow light one by one. In the center of the rooftop, a vintage drum set with peeling paint, an old analog synthesizer on a stand, and Sarah's turquoise bass amp were placed facing each other in a triangle shape.

“Hey, slow bassist! Are you really on time?” The young man sitting on the drum stool, twirling the drumsticks between his fingers and grinning, was ‘Jinwoo Kang’. A twenty-year-old wolf beast. The pointed wolf ears sticking out from his shaggy black hair, the bandage on his cheek, and the strong forearm muscles exposed under his old black and blue denim vest gave us an idea of ​​his wild drumming skills. He once worked as an idol session drummer for a famous agency, but he was a rebellious musician who left after feeling tired of the commercial music system that required him to play the same thing without soul like a metronome machine.

And the girl who was carefully wiping the synthesizer keyboard with a dry towel turned her head. ‘Han Yuna’. A nineteen-year-old fox beast. Her sensuous fashion stood out with her red-tinged short hair, large fox tail, yellow overfit knit, and checkered pleated skirt. Although he was a classical piano prodigy, he was a genius keyboard player who could not endure the shackles of standardized scores and found freedom through street synth pop busking. Sarah stood in front of the two people and bowed her head.

“Hello... These are the people I saw at the club yesterday, right?” “Oh my gosh, don’t greet me so stiffly! I couldn’t sleep a wink all night after listening to your song yesterday.” Yuna ran over and grabbed Sarah’s hand. “That bass line... How on earth do you create such a deep resonance? When I put my synthesizer pad on that melody, it seemed like a truly fantastic universe would open up, and I thought my heart would burst!” Jinwoo also grinned and lightly hit the snare drum with a drum stick, ‘Tap!’ I hit it.

“I liked your beat. Kids these days are all busy splitting the beat to show off on their own, but you were as solid as a stake driven into the ground. I was confident that no matter how fiercely I ran behind you, as long as I had your bass, you would never fall apart.” Sarah felt something heavy building up in her chest. Throughout my life, the word 'slow' has always been a synonym for ridicule and reprimand. But now, the two people in front of her were looking at her ‘slowness’ and ‘firmness’ as valuable.

“Thank you... Then, shall we try the song we sang yesterday?” Sarah took out a turquoise base from her gig bag and put it on her shoulder. The blue straps of her techwear jacket fluttered in the evening breeze, and her white cat ears perked up in concentration.

“The name of the song is... ‘Turtle’s Song.’ The tempo is 74. It’s not fast. But you have to play it with the feeling of going down to the bottom of your heart.” Jinwoo grinned, showing his wolf teeth. "BPM 74... It's been a while. This is a speed that only guys who really know the groove can hit. Okay, give me the count." Sarah suggested the tempo by tapping the floor of the rooftop with her toes.

"One, two, three, four..." 'Dung-dung-dung----.' The turquoise Fender bass fired its first note into the sunset-colored rooftop sky. It spread out into the evening sky in waves much wider and deeper than in the basement yesterday. The next moment, Jinwoo's right foot heavily stepped on the kick pedal.

'thud!' The raw hitting sound produced by the 22-inch bass drum head of an actual acoustic drum, not a speaker, trembling. Sarah's bass line and Jinwoo's drum kick overlapped into one perfect breath. 'Thump, thump, thump-thump-.' It was a combination of a heavy and perfect rhythm section where the heartbeat and the throbbing of the earth became one. And above the sea of ​​heavy rhythm, Yuna's hands landed on the vintage analog synthesizer keyboard.

'Shhhh- long----.' The warm retro analog synth pad sound spread through the air like a sunset fog. As the rich chords, full of the sensibility of 80's city pop and vintage pop art, overlapped with Sarah's bass notes, the entire rooftop was instantly transformed into a universe of fantastic sound.

“My shadow reflected in the moonlight... Footsteps moving at a slow pace...” Sarah began singing into the microphone. The sunset dyed her silver hair red, and her blue eyes, revealed through hair blowing in the wind, shone more brilliantly than ever. Jinwoo's cymbals glided like silver waves.

'Chang- Chichichi Chang-.' Yuna's keyboard drew arpeggios and fell like shooting stars in the night sky. It wasn't a song I recited alone while walking down an alley. The drums that supported his back reliably and the keyboard that embraced his melody were breathing together. For the first time in her life, Sarah experienced the ultimate joy of perfectly connecting souls with others through music.

‘It’s exciting... this is a band! This is the solidarity of turtles running together!' Her fingers moved more and more freely across the fingerboard. Beyond the simple playing of root notes, a soul-stirring melodic bass line stretched out towards the sunset-colored skyscrapers of the city without hesitation. Cars driving on the busy roads of Neon City stopped at the traffic light and began to roll down their windows. This is because the strangely beautiful and heavy sound of the band flowing from the rooftops of the old city center reached people's ears through the noise of a city filled with acrid exhaust fumes and honking horns.

“What does that mean?”

“Where are you going to perform live?”

“Wow... the bass sound is no joke. It makes my heart flutter.” Passersby passing under the rooftop railing stopped one by one and looked up at the rooftop. Under the red sunset, three young musicians playing instruments with their whole bodies, illuminated by fairy lights. Jinwoo was drenched in sweat, opened his mouth, and hit the snare like a roar.

Yuna played the keyboard and cried out in happiness. And at the center, the silver-haired cat girl Sarah was singing, fluttering the bass like the freest butterfly in the world. "The slow turtle keeps going! It doesn't stop and runs until the end! The countless stories engraved on my black shell are the stars of my life! No matter how slow it is, it goes to the end! The turtle doesn't give up!" When the highlight chorus was reached, the three people's sounds exploded into one huge storm.

'Quaaaaaang!' The lingering sound of the last cymbal broke long into the cool air of the fall evening. When the performance ended, the three people sat down on the rooftop and gasped. The eyes of the three people who were looking at each other's sweaty faces met. And without anyone taking the initiative, I started holding my stomach and bursting into laughter.

“Puhahahaha! Did you see that? Yuna, you almost hit the keyboard earlier!”

“What! Jinwoo oppa was so excited that he almost made the tempo go faster!”

“Hey, that’s because Sarah’s bass is driving people crazy!” Jinwoo shook his head and looked at Sarah. There was sincere respect in his wolf eyes. "That's amazing. I've never heard a bass that touches my heart like this in my entire life. Kid, you're a real treasure." Yuna fell down on the keyboard and gasped, then raised her head and glared at Sarah. But her red fox eyes were filled with tears of emotion.

“Hey, slow cat. You... that’s really foul. How did you keep this melody hidden to yourself?” Sarah smiled brightly, clutching the blue fish doll ‘Popo’ held to her chest. Her white cat ears twitched in delight.

“How about our band name... ‘Slow Turtle’? No matter how fast and ruthless the world is, we become turtles that walk to the end at our own pace.” Jinwoo and Yuna looked at each other's faces, then clenched their fists and thrust them into the air as if they had made a promise. Sarah also put her small fists together.

'Thump, thump, thump.' It was the moment when the three people's fists clashed and the miraculous band called 'Slow Turtle' was officially born under the incandescent light bulb on the rooftop. Far above the night sky of Neon City, the North Star, hundreds of millions of light years away, was shining brightly above their heads. Their first steps, slow but not stopping even for a second, were finally taking a powerful step toward the world. As time passed, the sunset on the rooftop of the old city center became deeper and more reddish-purple. The high-rise skyscrapers of Neon City in the distance were covered with flashing LED lights, showing off the majesty of a cold future city, but the rooftop where the three people were gathered was heating up with a romantic and simple fever, like the scene of an analog rock festival in the 1970s.

“Now, everyone, let’s start by setting the tone of the instrument properly.” Jinwoo took out a felt mute ring from an old leather stick bag and placed it on the snare drum. “Studio drummers these days use a gate plug-in to artificially cut out the reverberation like a knife. But I love the natural resonance of sound dispersing in space. It creates a heavy impact that hits the heart without harming the warm midrange of your bass.” When Jinwoo stepped heavily on the kick pedal, vibrations traveled up through the concrete slab of the rooftop to the soles of Sarah's feet.

'thud-.' It was as if an ancient giant sleeping deep in the earth opened its eyes and its heart began to beat. Yuna also turned on the chorus effect switch for her analog synthesizer ‘Juno’. 'Shaaaaang—.' Along with the unique analog noise emitted as electric circuits heat up, a brilliant chord that embraces the space in three dimensions spreads.

“Sera, about the intro to your song... How about the bass leading the 4 bars alone, and then my synth falling like raindrops on the 5 bar? You lay down the darkness of the night sky, and I shine the light of dawn on it.” Sera nodded to Yuna’s suggestion. Her white cat ears perked happily and she felt the wind. The layers of sound that I could not have imagined when composing alone were being completed into a dazzling landscape through the hands of my colleagues. When the performance began, the rooftop was instantly transformed into a sanctuary for music.

Sarah's left hand moved up and down the maple neck of the Fender bass. The blue straps of her oversized techwear jacket fluttered in the evening breeze, and her silver hair flickered like a burning silver flame in the red glow of the sunset. 'Dung-dung-dung-chi, dung----.' Sarah's fingering was solid without a single drop of water leaking out. Her fingers hit the strings hard, like hard ebony wood, not just flesh, and the clanging sound the strings made as they hit the frets instilled a strange sense of tension. Jinwoo's drums took center stage like the eye of a storm.

His wolf ears perked up, and a wild smile played on his lips. Rather than trying to show off with flashy techniques, she only pushed the huge waves from behind so that Sarah's bass line could move forward without any wavering. And Yuna’s synthesizer. Her ten fingers were flexible and dazzling on the keyboard, like a red fox flying over a sunset sea. The harmony, which exquisitely combines the sensibilities of jazz, classical music, and pop art, gently embraced Sarah's rough bass.

“The slow tortoise keeps going! It doesn’t stop and runs until the end!” Sarah's voice echoed over the rooftop railing and into the air of the city. It knocked on the windows of the forest of buildings and fell on the heads of tens of thousands of exhausted people pouring into the subway entrance on their way home from work.

'What does that mean?'

‘Is it radio? No, it's calling directly from the rooftop!' People walking on the street stopped one by one and began to look up at the rooftop. City people who walked with their heads glued to their smartphone screens every day, looking straight ahead like zombies, looked up for the first time in their lives and looked at the red evening sky and three young people playing musical instruments beneath it. It was the first beautiful deviation in this huge metropolis in decades, and the first signal that the slow turtles fired to the world. When the last chord died down, leaving a long lingering sound in the air, the three people lay down on the rooftop floor, drenched in sweat.

The feel of the cold concrete floor of the rooftop ran down my spine. Before they knew it, the first star had risen in the night sky and was looking down at them. "Ha... it's killer. It's really fucking good." Jin-Woo lay down with his arm pillowed and muttered as he looked up at the night sky.

“During the idol sessions, I couldn’t breathe for even a second. The producers were just yelling at me to beat the drums like a machine in sync with the click sound. But today… for the first time in my life, I played the drums with the sound of my heart.” Yuna also smiled brightly, hugging Sarah's arm tightly.

“Me too. Even without sheet music, I think I could play to the ends of the earth with like-minded friends like this. Sarah, you are truly our little treasure.” Sarah looked at the North Star in the night sky. Like the starlight that reached Earth through the darkness hundreds of millions of light years away, I could feel with my whole body that the time I spent running slowly but never stopping was not in vain.

“We... never give up no matter what trials we face in the future. No matter how much the world laughs at us and asks why we are so slow... we walk to the end at our own pace.” “Of course. Turtles don’t look back.” Jinwoo's deep voice and Yuna's clear answer were scattered in the wind on the rooftop. The oath that the three turtles made that night was the beginning of a great legend that would later shake up the entire history of Korean music. The night breeze passing over the rooftop was cool, but the heat from the vacuum tubes emanating from the three people's instrument amplifiers enveloped the entire rooftop in a cozy warmth.

Jinwoo lightly tapped the snare head with a drum stick and told stories about his past. “Me, when I was 17, I joined a famous agency and worked as a trainee for an idol debut team for three years. I played the drums for 14 hours a day. But what they asked of me wasn’t music. All I wanted was to break the beats with machine-like precision, with 0.001 second errors, and to practice winking at the camera on stage.” Jinwoo's pointed wolf ears drooped bitterly.

“One day, I suddenly looked in the mirror, and I felt like I was not a person, but like a screw in a music factory. Why I started drumming, all the excitement of the first beat that made my heart pound disappeared. So I threw away everything, including the down payment, and ran out. People pointed at me and said I was crazy, but I don’t regret it. Today, in these heavy 4 beats that I played on the rooftop with you guys, I felt alive for the first time in three years.” Yuna also spoke quietly, leaning her forehead against the synthesizer keyboard.

“I am similar. My family is a third-generation classical pianist. From the age of five, I had to play the Chopin Etude hundreds of times a day. If I got even one wrong note, I would get slapped in the palm of my hand. Music was a prison for me. But one day, when I heard the harsh synthesizer sound of an indie band busking on the streets of Hongdae, tears welled up. Even if you are that clumsy and rough, you can freely express the color of your soul. “I wanted to make music that exudes energy.” Yuna looked back at Sarah and smiled sweetly.

“And today, when I heard your bass, Sarah, I was convinced that the freedom we were looking for was completely contained within the shell of this slow turtle.” Sarah felt her heart heating up. A place where wounded souls gather to soothe each other's wounds with the harmony of musical instruments. That was the band, and it was the most sublime salvation that music could give to humans. As the night deepened, passersby passing under the rooftop railing began to applaud toward the rooftop.

“Encore! One more song!”

“I love the song! What’s the name of the band?!” Yuna, who was looking down, waved her hands excitedly and shouted. “Our band’s name is ‘Slow Turtle’! We are turtles who walk slowly but walk all the way to the end!” People on the street cheered and waved their smartphone flashlights. Dozens of small stars twinkled in the dark back alleys of the old city center. Sarah looked at the sky blue fish doll ‘Popo’ placed on top of the amplifier. Popo's cloth eyes were sparkling as they caught the small starlight.

Sarah once again strummed the 4th string of the turquoise base. 'ridge----------.' The sound was a warm lullaby spreading through the city's cold forest of buildings, and a friendly cheer song dedicated to all the slow-movers in the world. The three turtles on the rooftop played their own brilliant universe all night long. The rooftop of a 5-story commercial building in the old city center was open on all sides, so the noise of the city and the evening wind blew in without hesitation. Acoustically, the rooftop was closer to a 'free sound field' where sound waves spread freely in all directions, unlike indoors where sound bounces off walls.

In particular, bass guitars, which are responsible for the ultra-low frequency range below 100Hz, tend to have their energy rapidly dispersed if there is no reflection from the wall. However, Sarah's performance resonated throughout the rooftop floor, as if mocking the limitations of space. “What’s the secret, Sarah?” Yuna asked with surprised eyes as she turned the synthesizer's analog filter knob.

“It’s a rooftop with no walls, so how does your base shake the concrete floor like this?” Sarah pointed to the equalizer knob on the amplifier. "If you raise the bass knob, the sound becomes muddy and cannot extend far. The key to the bass that extends really far is the 'low-mid' band between 400Hz and 800Hz. This solid mid-bass must be centered so that the thick bass can break through the wind and fly all the way to the city." Jinwoo clinked his drumsticks in admiration.

“This guy is a walking sonic dictionary! Where did you learn that?” “When I was young... when I was lying in my room with heartache, I studied the vibrations of pile drivers coming from my neighbor's construction site every day. As I realized the principle of sound penetrating through walls, I taught myself the physics of bass sounds.” Yuna's heart sank at Sarah's calm answer. The loneliness and tears of his sickly childhood were sublimated into this unique musical insight. Yuna set the LFO (low frequency oscillator) rate of the synthesizer 'Juno' to match Sarah's heartbeat.

'Shaaaaang—.' As the warm waves created by the analog oscillator overlapped with Sarah's bass line, the sunset light pouring over the rooftop fluttered brilliantly like the aurora of living, breathing music. As midnight approached, the temperature on the rooftop of the old city center became even colder. Yuna poured steaming citron tea from a small thermos and placed it in Sarah's cold hands. The sweet and spicy scent of citron gently enveloped the cool autumn night air.

“Sera, you added a 3/4 beat-like polyrhythm on top of the 4/4 beat in the 3-verse bridge earlier. What did you think of that?” Sarah took a sip of citron tea and smiled shyly.

“When a sea turtle swims... its two front fins move forward while slowly cutting through the water, but its back fin balances itself by flapping three times in time with the whirlpool of the current. Although it appears to be infinitely slow and sluggish on the outside, the two different rhythms are intricately interlocked in the water, allowing it to ride the waves in the most stable manner.” Jinwoo stuck out his tongue and scratched the wolf's ears.

“You may be the only bassist in the world who describes polyrhythms as turtle flippers. But when you listen to them, they fit amazingly. When you twist the rhythm with that off-beat, it magically opens up space for my kick drum.” The three people leaning on the rooftop railing looked down at the night sky of Neon City in the distance. The headlights of cars on the endlessly speeding road were like red blood vessels running through the city's concrete maze. There, millions of people would be wasting their lives trying hard to be even a second ahead of others.

However, on this old rooftop, the three people were fully enjoying their ‘own time’, which was more valuable than any wealth or fame in the world. “We… we’re going to be a really cool band.” Yuna leaned her head on Sarah’s shoulder and whispered. Her red fox tail fluttered pleasantly in the autumn breeze.

“No matter how quickly and mercilessly the world rushes at us, let us never lose our own beat.” “Yes... I never lose it.” Sarah smiled at the Milky Way in the night sky as she hugged Popo, a light blue fish doll held to her chest. The first night of the sloth turtles was deepening into a warmth that would never be erased.