![]() With an audience of around 200 seated people in the school theater and 100 more watching live streaming online, 14-year-old Xirong paced up and down behind the stage, looking a bit tense, but there were also sparkles of excitement in her eyes. Relax and just focus on your playing,” said Cao Yuanyuan, a young guzheng teacher at Beijing 101 Middle School, while adjusting the collar of Xirong, a girl who was dressed in an elaborate hanfu (a traditional style of Chinese clothing). Melodies consist mostly of single notes, but sometimes they are harmonized by an octave note played by the right hand (the thumb and middle finger play the two notes at the same time).“Sweetie, you are next. Players use the left hand to bend the strings in various ways to produce pitch alterations. Players wear finger-picks made of tortoiseshell or cow horn on the right hand. Traditional Guzheng playing techniques involve the right middle finger, index finger, and thumb to pluck the strings. With this rise in popularity, Guzheng players have created new styles of music, new playing techniques, and new ways of presenting it to the audience. With the expansion of information sharing and Internet media, it is also now the most well-known traditional Chinese instrument on an international level. During the past thirty years, its popularity has increased exponentially in China once more. ![]() The Guzheng was a very popular instrument in ancient China, appealing to both refined and popular tastes (Cao, 1991). Manufacturers finally started to make diatonic-tuning Guzhengs in the early 2000s.Īn Example of Diatonic Guzheng Music – “Under the White Wind” Performed by Bei Bei Diatonic tunings have also been introduced into the instrument’s tonal repertoire in the late 1980s. For example, “Muqam Prologue and Dance” is a Guzheng solo composition based on Uighur music, and the tuning for this piece is D, F#, G, A, C. As seen in many modern compositions, notes outside of the scales are being used and new tonal modes are being formed by non-standard tunings. The rest of the keys in the Western 12-Keys system are used only occasionally due to the complexity of tuning changes required from the common keys.ĭespite its limitation in key usages, the Guzheng has great flexibility for non-standard tunings because of its movable bridges and easy-access tuning pin for each string. Songs are rarely written in the key F major/D minor and A major/F# minor, and even when they are, players often choose to substitute them by playing the piece in the nearest key – G major/E minor. Modern Guzheng music is mostly written in the keys of D major/B minor, G major/E minor, and C major/A minor. The scale repeats four times, and there is an extra D note in the highest octave. For example, in the standard D major pentatonic scale tuning, the notes are D, E, F#, A and B from low to high pitch. It is tuned to four pentatonic octaves by default. Nowadays, the most common type is the twenty-one-stringed Guzheng. 18-String Steel-Stringed GuzhengĪn Example of Steel-Stringed Guzheng – Performed by Ms. They sound warmer and mellower compared to the Steel-Stringed Zheng. With the exception of the Steel-Stringed Zheng, other modern Guzhengs have strings made of steel on the inside with nylon and plastic wrapped outside. ![]() This type of Guzheng is mostly used for playing traditional folk music, especially for playing repertoire from Southern Chinese folk styles such as Guangdong (Canton), Chaozhou, and Kejia (Hakka). Its tonal quality can be characterized as sharp, metallic, and twangy. Unlike the ancient Guzheng with its strings made of silk, the modern eighteen-stringed Guzheng has steel strings and is known as the Steel-Stringed Zheng. Today, modern Guzhengs have a variety of strings ranging from eighteen to twenty-seven (and sometimes more). Recent evidence shows that the ancient Guzheng had only five strings, but sometime later, that number increased to between twelve and sixteen strings (Jin, 1991). The Guzheng was used in both court and folk music in ancient China. People believe that these instruments originated from the Guzheng, especially the thirteen-stringed Japanese Koto, which preserves the shape and form, playing techniques, as well as some repertoire of the Guzheng from the Tang Dynasty (618-907AD) when it was first introduced to Japan by Japanese envoys who visited China (Jin, 1991) (Sun & He, 1991). Although the Chinese Se is no longer being produced and played, the Japanese Koto, Korean Gayageum, Vietnamese Dan Tranh, and Mongolia Yatga are still popular sister instruments of the Guzheng in the Asian long-zither family. The Guzheng and Guqin are considered two types of Chinese zither instruments by Westerners.
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