Yin and Nao

[Si]

Wow, its really hard to do yins continuous whilest playing several different notes on the right hand. Feel I need to brains.

Any tips to help practice this so i can do effortles yins.

[SCWGuqin]

One problem here is that vibrato/yin/rou (not nao) are all ill-defined. The descriptions I see written seem to bear no relation to what I hear masters doing.

As for how to do effortless anything...uhhh, do it some more? For a long time?

[Charlie Huang]

"rou (not nao)": It is nao. According to Taiyin Daquanji, it should resemble an ape (yuan) climbing a tree, hence, the action is swinging.

GY said there is only really two vibrato, yin and nao. The other varieties are not important to him; i.e. ding yin, chang yin, fei yin, da nao, luozhi nao, etc. This maybe because of his conservatory training where the other sorts of vibrato don't really change anything and appear similar (there seems to be no distinction in different sorts of vibrato in Western music).

For me, I make an effort into defining each vibrato I play. Since the ancients defined different sorts of vibrato, I assume that it has some meaning and is not something fanciful. Another thing is that vibrato differs from school to school. It really is a personal take.

For your average yin nao:
Yin, from the pressed point, gently move down a few fen, then up pass the original point for a few fen, then return to original point. Do this around three four times. The distance should not exceed 2 or 3 fen from the original position and should go from large to small.
Nao, from the original point quickly go down and then slowly up back to the original point and pause; do this three times. The distance should not exceed 4 or 5 fen, initially large, then small.

When doing yin nao, the action should be from the wrist and not the arm (for the thumb; for the rf, it is from the finger joint).

For other varieties of yin nao, we'll get to them when you need to. For now, concentrate on the two standard yin naos.

[Si]

When you say the action should be from the wrist, but the arm most move a bit too. If the wrist moves like "waving bye" then the yin will not move straight up and down the sting.

Yours saw wrists and confused.....

[Charlie Huang]

Of course your arm moves a bit. The thing I'm saying is that the action shouldn't come from the elbow (i.e. your wrist does not move and you are just dragging your hand up and down the string and so you tire your arm). Your hand should flick, not the entire arm. It is difficult to describe unless I actually show you...