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Post by joepip on Jan 3, 2014 23:52:00 GMT
Though the pipa is a traditional Chinese instrument, playing native Chinese songs/tunes can be tough, partly by technical means but also fact that there is not a lot of instructional material in English on it....which is the cause of both an exciting and sometimes stressful endeavor of learning the instrument. Does anyone know of any resources that can help with this? Forum user 'a1424344454' has started a website in English for pipa learning which is good. As I am an American, I think one way to get Western audiences into more Chinese music/instruments is to play some tunes that they are used to hearing in Western music. Anyone have any videos of some Western songs played on pipa. Erhu has already broken that ground which is great. I have been giving it a try so far on my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/CivilHuqin/videos
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Post by davidmdahl on Jan 4, 2014 0:27:00 GMT
I don't remember running across any videos of Western music played on pipa, but if you are looking for something to play, I suggest checking out folk music. When I was green on the erhu, I frequently found Western tunes such as Oh, Suzanna and Oh, My Darling Clementine written in jianpu. Western folk music is often modal and fits quite well on traditional Chinese instruments. Tunes by Stephen Foster also work well on Chinese instruments.
I have seen videos of Western musicians playing Chinese music on banjo (see Abigal Washburn). Maybe you could return the favor, and play Bluegrass on pipa.
Best wishes,
David
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Post by Minh on Jan 4, 2014 1:10:59 GMT
Hey Joepip, I love your videos! I am one of your subscribers hihi You can find many different people playing flight of the bumblebee on the pipa, or liuqin on youtube. Mozart on a few chinese Instruments www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4iS0lc2qOYSuper Mario? www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoRL8E0vjKA or you can get silent night, but then you played it hahaha You might not find a lot of materials in English but you can find a few videos of people showing the techniques, you can learn by imitating them, or even one or two with English subtitles, just not sure how good they are. Minh
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Post by joepip on Jan 4, 2014 1:26:07 GMT
Thanks for the info David, folk tunes are a good idea. And thanks Minh haha, glad my videos interest you. I've seen one or two flight of the bumblebee on pipa videos, though that's pretty advanced for my current experience (1 year so far). That Super Mario cover was the bomb though.
On a side note, I have long fingers, so while that's an advantage for left hand fretting, I feel like for the lun technique on the right hand my fingers take a little more momentum to move and I may not be get the full visual appeal of the technique since my fingers won't be extending all the way out...but that's just a little qualm.
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Post by Minh on Jan 4, 2014 3:13:51 GMT
Your videos make me want to learn the pipa hehe. I guess you can just play everything on the pipa, just a matter of practice and finding the scores, or transpose them. As long as you can make the sound really good and not in a bad way that it hurts your hand after, I don't think it should be a problem with long fingers or not I don't know if you've seen those yet or not but i'll still post the links for whoever who haven't www.youtube.com/user/samuelwongpipa/videos It has some tutorial with the Eng subs. www.youtube.com/channel/UCSlYSwXRMrzFmAmZh1_yFSg/videos This one has videos that shows the different techniques being used
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Post by joepip on Jan 4, 2014 4:11:45 GMT
The first link has the videos that were actually on the instruction cd that came with my pipa, though they didn't have subs which made me angry initially lol. I was a resident assistant at the time and ended up asking one of my residents who was from China to help me translate, but she said she couldn't really understand the terminology, but it was definitely worth a try haha. I was happy when I found those videos a while ago with the subs.
And your second link is extremely helpful in showing me the many pipa techniques I've only read about, as well as for the erhu. Thanks a million Minh!
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Post by Minh on Jan 4, 2014 15:17:32 GMT
You are welcome, although all I did was youtube it hihi, anything to have more videos from you! I once asked a friend to translate a cantonese video about the erhu too and while she understood the general idea, she didn't get all the terminology, so I understand how that is haha. You sound like one busy little bee www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4j4B15Iq7g&list=PLE1290B74DBAB388C&index=16 Oh and this is old too, so maybe you've seen it, but I did learn a lot from watching the erhu version of it, mostly because they wil the left hand really close and it's easier to see.
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Post by joepip on Jan 5, 2014 2:35:18 GMT
I try to stay busy, wished I had started earlier with these instruments, but better late than never. I've seen that video before, but never actually watched the whole thing, but I will. I'm at the point now that I should start focusing more closely on my playing techniques and try to pick up new ones, while it's still early on.
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Post by Minh on Jan 5, 2014 7:31:24 GMT
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Post by sutong on Jan 5, 2014 21:39:53 GMT
Hello,
I'm learning pipa in Belgium for half a year and found you on youtube. Good videos! I like the Silent Nacht version. Not many foreigners learn the fingering well without lessons so I play mine like a guitar fingering for a few months and it was no good.
Now I learn by youtube and find that there are two Lun: clockwise and anti-clockwise. I think you use three fingers for lun strokes, which is not a 4 finger + lun, nor a 5 finger * lun. Maybe 4th/5th finger strengths are not strong enough yet and need more practice.
About music for pipa - I don't know chinese number music but the fingering moves have been translated. With Solfege, it is slow to work out music. I would like to play Snow Patrol or Radiohead and ACDC on pipa soon.
Is the angle of the finger pick to the outer A string in your video correct? You have much pick noise. This is the problem I have too. I find that after 3 months, my fingers are stronger and I can do lun stronger. This hides the pick noise.
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Post by sutong on Jan 5, 2014 21:42:06 GMT
And which Shanghai Dunhuang pipa are you playing?
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Post by joepip on Jan 7, 2014 5:58:35 GMT
Hey Minh, I've ran across a few of those videos before, but many of them I haven't seen. Yet, you do show that the pipa has been puttin in work in the Western repertoire haha. More so than I thought. I'll have go back and watch a few of those. The little pipa concert with Max and his pianist friend was pretty great. The first time I saw the video I was kind of amazed yet inspired.
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Post by joepip on Jan 7, 2014 6:19:51 GMT
Sutong, nice to meet you and welcome to the forum! Congratulations on picking up the pipa. It's a tough instrument, but we'll get there eventually. Thanks for visiting my channel and I'm glad you like the Silent Night video. By playing your pipa like a guitar you mean picking "in" like on a guitar string rather than "out/forward"? With the longer and thicker finger nails one uses to play pipa, playing like a guitar can be tough. I tried it also and it's hard to accomplish anything. I know there's different types of lun techniques, from 3-finger to 4-finger to full 5-finger lun. I haven't heard of the anti-clockwise type. Do you mean with the thumb and index finger, because the thumb would be the only finger rotating in the opposite direction of the others. When I look at my fingers my thumb goes clockwise at its angle and my other 4 fingers go counter/anti-clockwise at their angle. The Chinese number music is called jianpu. And I haven't really grasped it fully yet either, mainly the time signature comprehension, like Western staff notation. You can still figure out the notes easy enough just by assigning notes to the number values after you know the Key of the song (like if the song is in the Key of D then D=1 and E=2 F=3 G=4 and so on, if that's what you meant. And I think the angle of my hand/fingers should be mostly right. It maybe could be a little more accurate to be honest. Today I actually shorted the length of the artificial nail over my real fingernail (just by positioning it farther back), so there was less nail sticking out. Not only did that make my picking a little quieter, but it made it slightly easier to do the lun technique since there was less resistance from a "longer" artificial fingernail. And yeah, the 4th and 5th fingers take the longest to strengthen, but practicing the technique often and accurately will get you there. Sorry I wrote a lot
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Post by joepip on Jan 7, 2014 6:23:29 GMT
And the pipa I'm playing is the Dunhuang 'Yun' brand pipa. It's a step above starter/student grade. I got it a year ago and the price was $250 online. It came with rosewood tuning pegs, but I accidentally broke one and bought another set of them on eBay.
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Post by Minh on Jan 7, 2014 16:48:04 GMT
I love the Max guy and friends video, I honestly didn't expect to find that many, but I was on a roll so I found all of those haha. I always feel so inspired when watching others play. You have all the notes there, I'm sure if you really want to you can play anything, or you can also tune them differently, might make it easier to play western music maybe? Oh well good luck and have fun with the pipa! (and erhu, dizi, xiao and guitars hahahha)
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Post by joepip on Jan 8, 2014 0:30:41 GMT
Haha definitely
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Post by thebamboogrove on Jan 8, 2014 13:29:47 GMT
Joepip,
Minh and I have an idea for chinese new year. Shall we do a mix of a simple cny piece? I will do the backing track to follow, and do the final mix down.
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Post by edcat7 on Jan 8, 2014 13:46:27 GMT
I can't wait to hear it, it should sound great! I love playing along with my teacher. When I further improve in a few years time I'd like to team up with my teacher and other of his students to put something together.
When I was having liuqin/zhongruan tuition, my then teacher did a backing track of Jasmine Flower using my zhongruan and I played along on the liuqin. Simple but highly effective.
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Post by thebamboogrove on Jan 8, 2014 17:11:58 GMT
We need a zhongruan, maybe you can play 2 instruments. Liuqin as well. lets work out who is interested. I will post the method along with the free software and instructions along. if we have a few more people.
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Post by edcat7 on Jan 8, 2014 19:38:58 GMT
I only had three months of tuition so am not confident playing anything more complicated. But I will brush up my liuqin/zhongruan. I have more difficulty on the computer though
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Post by thebamboogrove on Jan 8, 2014 23:42:36 GMT
long as your computer has a microphone, internal or external doesn't really matter that much, till we are ready to release a platinum single labeled "Zhengyun Qin Guan - Musicians on Forum... featuring musicians from UK, USA, Malaysia, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and more!" This one is just a fun thing.
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Post by sutong on Jan 9, 2014 0:13:11 GMT
Hello Joepip, That's exactly right. The tough technique of the pipa play is attractive for me. I notice straight away, the tone colour difference when playing at the xiang level, second ban or third ban. Its tone colour is very broad. My classical guitar is very same tone for any fret position. I asked a friend to translate clockwise and anticlockwise lun. He says it is called 'shang 上 lun' or 下 xia lun' and clockwise/anti is not a good description. The thumb direction always goes opposite to the fingers in lun. Shang lun, starts fanning with the thumb, index, middle, ring and small finger. Xia lun starts fanning small finger, ring, middle, index then thumb. Thanks for explaining Jian Pu. I am still confused. If I use the key of G: strings 5, 1, 2, 5. When I tune to G, E, D, G, it sounds wrong? So I try tuning A, E, D, G which sounds better, but the bass string makes a poor sound. I have a student Shanghai Yun too. Maybe it is no good for richness in low notes. In the key of G, when I tried the strings G = 1, so the four strings should be D G A D? I tried this and broke three strings. The tension is too great. Then some music in key of C - should the strings be tuned G C D G?
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Post by joepip on Jan 9, 2014 1:20:39 GMT
Sutong, you broke three strings?! I'm sorry to hear that happened. When I was referring to jianpu, it was for the Key of a song and in reading the way jianpu is formatted for any particular song. It looks like this: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/AmazingGraceNumberedMusicalNotation.pngI didn't mean the pipa strings themselves. The pipa is fully chromatic which means that it can play in all the different Keys (for example Key of A, Key of G, Key of F) in its standard tuning, for any particular song. The standard tuning for pipa strings is "A D E A" from the thickest to thinnest string. You don't need to change the pipa tuning for each different song you play. I've very sorry for the mix up it caused you.
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Post by joepip on Jan 9, 2014 1:24:35 GMT
And Minh, Ching, and Ed, making a mix for the Chinese New Year sounds like a great and fun idea.
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Post by edcat7 on Jan 9, 2014 1:36:55 GMT
And Minh, Ching, and Ed, making a mix for the Chinese New Year sounds like a great and fun idea. As my teacher said to me when he showed me a video of his bawu performance in Hungray, using my bawu: "You the man!"
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