He Muyang: Images make music more humanistic and human.

From "Love is a Lonely Lie" to "Above the Moon" and "South of Colorful Clouds", from "Phoenix Legend" and "Power of China" to Xu Ganya's album, his music style is unique and deeply rooted in people's hearts. He is known as the "father of modern folk songs" in China's music industry, but he never makes high-profile publicity, only keeps trying and exploring on the road of music. He is the music composer He Muyang. There is no typical long hair of ordinary musicians, but short hair and neat head. Although he looks "northeast", he is actually an out-and-out southerner. At the beginning of the chat, He Muyang sighed: "If I hadn't become attached to music at the beginning, I wouldn't have insisted on creating these music works all the way." Similarly, if he didn't get attached to digital images, I'm afraid there wouldn't be any subsequent interviews.

Jieyuan music

He Muyang's hometown is in a county town in Yiyang, Hunan. Born in 1970s, he was influenced by his parents who loved literature and art since childhood, and was deeply impressed by China traditional music. When I was in junior high school, He Muyang's concept of music began to change. Several young colleagues from my mother's unit brought a dual-card recorder and some tapes from outside. He Muyang was very moved when she heard Teresa Teng's song and Cheng Lin's kiss for the first time. He Muyang recalled: "I thought these songs were so beautiful at that time, and sometimes I was embarrassed to always go to other people's homes to listen to them, just waiting for them to listen to them under the windowsill when they played the tape." He Muyang gradually fell in love with pop music, and with his slightly melancholy personality as a teenager, he always found sustenance in music. In the second day of junior high school, my mother gave He Muyang his first guitar and supported him to learn guitar. Slowly, He Muyang, who has mastered some playing skills, gradually developed creative ideas while practicing the piano. In his hometown where there is not much pop music atmosphere, he found a way of music creation through his own exploration. "I was listening to a music broadcast in Taiwan Province Province-Zhongguang Pop Network. In the mainland where popular information is still relatively backward, Zhongguang Pop Network has brought a lot of the freshest music information in Asia. At that time, while listening to the program, I recorded small excerpts on the tape, and then let myself write down the music score through repeated listening, which was an important accumulation of my later music creation. Let me have a certain understanding of various music styles. "

In the late 1980s, He Muyang began to compose music. In the early 1990s, China's pop music began to recover. As one of the cradles of modern pop music in China, a number of works and singers have emerged in Guangdong. Immediately, Hunan also started the original music movement. At that time, Hunan Satellite TV had a program called Variety 20, and some of He Muyang's early works, such as It rains in Changsha tonight, appeared in this program. However, due to the slow development of Changsha's original music, He Muyang wanted to go to Guangzhou to find his own musical ideal, so he came to Huacheng with some of his works. However, because they didn't understand the operation and situation of the music industry at that time, He Muyang and his friends who went with him were only encouraged by the leaders of the record company, and they didn't get much. They returned to Hunan with these works. He said: "After returning to Hunan, I worked as a band for a while and had some other experiences. After all this, I feel that I should leave the environment at that time and have a new beginning. " 1997, He Muyang went south for the second time with the goal of finding his dream, and came to Shenzhen, the special zone. Because economic development comes first, Shenzhen has more opportunities than the mainland. When He Muyang first arrived in Shenzhen, he intended to find some business opportunities and do some business, not to create music, but fate made He Muyang return to the road of music creation. "In fact, fate dragged me back, and later I found that what I wanted to do most was music." At that time, there was a saying that Shenzhen was a "cultural desert". There are very few people who really create music in Shenzhen, and even fewer people live entirely by music creation. He Muyang's road to music in Shenzhen was not smooth, but also experienced a very difficult period. One Spring Festival, a music company that He Muyang worked for closed down because of poor management. At that time, he and a friend moved from the city to a small bungalow outside the customs. Because of lack of money, the house they rented has been without water and electricity for a year. At the same time, through contact with radio stations and artists in Shenzhen, I slowly found some music-related jobs to make a living. He Muyang sighed with emotion, "In retrospect, I actually lived by music for so many years. I think this is a very difficult thing. "

During this period, He Muyang almost switched to TV. When I was in Shenzhen, I was exposed to corporate feature films, MTV and low-cost advertisements, and served as a director. "Before, I also had some interest in the TV industry. At that time, I was a director by myself. I even wanted to turn my focus to this aspect. " After successfully shooting the corporate propaganda film and corporate MV of Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station, He Muyang found that hearing and vision can actually communicate with each other. "In fact, there is not much boundary between vision and hearing, and it will eventually return to aesthetics. Musicians judge whether the music is good or not in monitor headphones, and the director monitors the picture in front of the monitor. When editing later, the director should have his own ideas, which is similar to writing lyrics for songs, and the creator needs a certain literary foundation. It happens that I usually like reading books and read a lot of miscellaneous books. The content in the book can help the creator to sort out the inspiration smoothly. And I will find professional photographers and post-editors to solve technical problems. " In this way, He Muyang has been working on her image for nearly a year. According to the situation at that time, making images may be more practical than making music. However, he recalled that he came out from his hometown to pursue his musical dream. In order not to regret, He Muyang chose to return to music creation. In 2007, He Muyang came to Beijing at the invitation of a friend. He feels that Beijing has a richer musical atmosphere, more complete talents and richer resources. This change from south to north has brought He Muyang more spiritual openness, but the internal creative source has not changed because of the change of external environment.

Create with thinking.

Some people say that He Muyang's music works are easy to remember, and the melody and lyrics are catchy. He Muyang also said frankly: "I have been thinking about a problem, which is the direction of China's music. A musician should not only reflect his own personality when creating, but also consider something, that is, have some thoughts on society and the times. " With the development of China's music at this stage, due to the continuous strengthening of China's national strength, the soft power of music and other aspects should also be improved. As a relatively advanced position in the whole cultural trend, pop music should find something that can represent China. Through Phoenix Legend's first album "Above the Moon" and Xu Ganya's first album "South of Clouds", He Muyang hopes to combine China's more fundamental elements with humanistic lyrics and some international arrangements to form a music type, which He Muyang calls "modern folk songs". This is an exploration, and there will be more explorations in He Muyang. "I want to explore a' China rhythm' recently. For example, Jamaica is a small country, but it originated from a popular music form-reggae, which originated from R & B China's music always gives people the impression that it is more emphasis on melody, but the rhythm is weak. I hope to find some representative rhythms and rearrange and summarize them again. When asked which work he was most satisfied with, He Muyang said, "The most satisfied work is always the next one. "The song" How Far is Lhasa "currently being produced is He Muyang's latest masterpiece, sung by singer Xu Ganya. Songs reflect the lack of self-belief of people in today's material society. He Muyang said: "As two musicians I admire very much, Cui Jian and Tayu Lo, most of their works were created in the context of social change. At present, the environment we live in is prosperous, but in this prosperous era, I think some people should still be able to stay awake. How far is Lhasa? How far is Lhasa? The word "Lhasa" more represents a belief or an understanding of the true meaning of life. "It is understood that this song will be released at the same time with a group of photographs by Taiwan Province photographer Mr. Yan, so that music and vision can interact.

The next stop is happiness.

Recently, singer Xu Ganya's new song "The Next Stop is Happiness" quickly became popular on the Internet. This song not only made He Muyang have a new attempt in genre, but also made him become a director again, shooting MV for his own works. The next stop is Happiness, which was written by He Muyang when he went to Xinjiang for a tour. This work also incorporates many thoughts of the author. It explores people's journey to find happiness in life. At the end of 2009, the new year is coming. Every year, Spring Festival travel rush has become a major event of national concern. As a phenomenon of great population migration, He Muyang felt that this had a lot to do with the ideas expressed in the song "The Next Stop is Happiness", so he suddenly had a plan to make a version. He said: "In fact, many of my previous works wanted to shoot an MV, but I always felt that shooting an MV required a lot of array, including finding many people to do it, so I never mentioned that God would do it. My own studio just bought a Sony PMW-EX 1, and I want to shoot some performance materials and some simple MVs. So I want to make an attempt with "The Next Stop is Happiness". " He Muyang thinks EX 1 is better because he has used Sony's PD 100 DVCAM series before. After having an idea, he made an appointment with singer Xu Ganya, found a good recording studio and started shooting. In the recording studio, a group of singers were photographed singing, and some photos were found from various aspects to show their scenes of returning home during the Spring Festival. Through simple post-production, a more humanized MV was completed.

Melodious melody, simple lyrics and some touching pictures made this MV reach millions of hits in just a few days after it was released online. Many viewers responded that this song was very touching and sang the kind of expectation and hard work of going home during the Spring Festival. He Muyang said: "This song, combined with the background of Spring Festival travel rush craze, embodies some great humanistic things and pays attention to some people's livelihood issues." At the same time, he also realized that in today's increasingly low-cost and high-performance equipment, shooting MV is no longer a "big move". He Muyang said: "We didn't use more other lights when shooting this photo of the singer singing in the studio, but only used the spotlight in the studio. EX 1 performs very well in low illumination, and the picture texture is very good. In addition, the storage medium SXS card of the device is also very convenient to use. High-speed transmission, stable quality and compact design all make the process of shooting MV material easier and faster. Full manual operation performance, rich menu adjustment function and full IT production process also enable it to complete more shooting needs of creators. "

With the first practical achievement, He Muyang filmed another version of the MV "The Next Stop is Happiness". He tried to shoot a MV in the simplest way: shooting several scenes with several staff members. At present, the new version of MV is being edited and matched in the later stage, and will meet the audience soon.

Image-aided creation

With the start and gradual development of MTV in China in 1990s, MTV has become an important bearing form of music and songs. A good song should be broadcast on TV media, and it should be accompanied by a nice MV. Contrary to the mass production of commercial mvs in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the emergence of different styles of MVs filmed by mainland directors, there are very few domestic MV broadcasting platforms. Sometimes, you may only have a chance to enjoy the MV of a musical work when you order a song at KTV. He Muyang thinks this may be the unfavorable side of the development of China's music.

He Muyang said: "Hearing and vision are the two greatest feelings of human beings. If a good song can be accompanied by a good picture, it will be better interpreted and even enhance the artistic conception of the song. Let the audience have a more intuitive and touching feeling. " Picture sense is actually the basic quality that a creator should have. If you have a sense of picture in your mind when creating, it is easier to organize the shooting of MV. Not all musicians will pick up DV, but more and more musicians and creators will use images to assist their creation, because they complement each other. In the era of information explosion, a flexible and convenient camera device can help musicians realize more creative dreams. And maybe one day, the camera will become an indispensable creative tool for musicians.

We have seen the picture strength of Sony PMW-EX 1 in the movie "That's It" which recorded Michael Jackson's last life journey and Zhang Yimou's New Year blockbuster "Three Guns Surprise". Musician He Muyang is also going to use this equipment to shoot more MVs for his works. Images make music more humanistic, while portable high-definition devices give musicians more special "musical instruments".