Beginner pipa songs?

[danny]

Hi there. I just got my pipa in the mail yesterday, so I'm trying to immerse myself in pipa music...I downloaded a couple Liu Fang albums, but the stuff she plays is way over my head for the moment...

I have a background with guitar, so I'm able to just screw around on the pipa and have fun with it (since 2 pairs of the strings, A-D and E-A, are in 4ths like the guitar), but I'm looking for advice on some easier pipa music to learn, especially for developing the unique picking technique.

Cheers!

[edcat7]

Hi Danny, welcome to the forum.

Why did you choose such a difficult instrument to learn? Where abouts are you as I know of a pipa teacher in London.

With a guitar background the natural Chinese instrument to learn would be the zhongruan and liuqin.

[xindi]

Hi Danny,

wow. You bought a pipa?!!

I wonder what kind you went for? I've played around with about 10 pipas ranging from low to high end. I could only say that 3 of them stood out, and they were all sadly in the high end range.

I'm not a guitar player like you, but the technique is very different - so I learnt in the lessons I had in that (more of that in another post). In any major scale of the four strings, you have a minor fourth, and in the E string, this minor fourth occurs at a different fret position.

I presume you got the plectra too - best thing to do, is find the words for pipa and learning in chinese, and plug them into googlechrome youtube or tudou websites and you will find tutorials in chinese. The english language youtubes aren't anywhere as good.

You can play jingle bells on pipa - this is fairly easy. I learnt it in my 2nd lesson (not performance standards of course lol) or any other jian pu music. You will probably have to learn jian pu to get the most out of your pipa. If you are hoping to just transcribe western music, and learn the techniques by mimesis (imitation) from video clips, it might be rather frustrating, but that's just my take on it as a non-guitar player.

Ed's love for the zhongruan and liuqin reflect the single plectrum plucking or strumming styles of the western guitar, although I've heard pipa players mention some affinity with the classical Spanish guitar and its intricate finger plucking methods.

It makes a great and wild sound! I presume you've heard the classic "Ambush" and "Dance of the Yi" on pipa.

[danny]

I have a bit of a fascination with "foreign" instruments, and the pipa just seemed to stick out for me! I'm in San Diego though, quite far from London...

The pipa that I got (the PP201 from Carrot Music: www.carrotmusic.com/servlet/the-47/Model-PP201-Intermediate-Pipa/Detail) seems pretty nice, tuning isn't as easy as on guitar but it is manageable. I have the finger picks on right now, it makes it difficult to type...the pipa came with 3 sets of finger picks, and a DVD which is in Chinese. I will watch the DVD soon hoping to learn as much as I can without understanding the spoken words!

If anything the finger picking style of the pipa will be beneficial to my guitar playing as well!

I found a couple albums online by Liu Fang, so yes I have heard "Ambush" and "Dance of the Yi". Also "Red River Valley" is a very nice song, very melodic.

[xindi]

Hi,

the link seems not.to work for me.

If anyine is even thinking of getting the cheap Shanghai Dunhuang one, its a light lute with a very thin sound. They have better intermediate ones. Oh..i see.. I removed the ) from your link and could see the Carrot one. Its about the same price as the entry Shanghai Dunhuang. I must say.. Carol of chinesezither.net has some great prices on her pipas.

Like chinese calligraphy ... stroke movement and direction is part of the essence of the art. So my ferocious pipa teacher tells me, erstwhe looking like he's going to amputate yet another one of my fingers for executing an inelegant fingering manoeuvre.

Anyway, I got nowhere trying to learn the fingerings by imitation of players or books, which is why I ended up taking lessons. Having to familiarise myself with learning in another language is rather headbanging and the formal method of jian pu which I never learnt (exc. self taught) lacks the nuances.

Some of the better learning scores come published by

www.smph.sh.cn where you can find my Iorecommendation for Shaonianertongpipajiaocheng (sorry..but that is how the book spells it) and pick up the lower years book which is blue. The pipa sems to be great for transcribng 'bat out of hell.'

Im still not sure if I want to learn yet anothsr instrument when I could be concentrating on flute...

[edcat7]

Jan 5, 2012 18:36:33 GMT xindi said:

Hi Danny,

wow. You bought a pipa?!!

I wonder what kind you went for? I've played around with about 10 pipas ranging from low to high end. I could only say that 3 of them stood out, and they were all sadly in the high end range.

I'm not a guitar player like you, but the technique is very different - so I learnt in the lessons I had in that (more of that in another post). In any major scale of the four strings, you have a minor fourth, and in the E string, this minor fourth occurs at a different fret position.

I presume you got the plectra too - best thing to do, is find the words for pipa and learning in chinese, and plug them into googlechrome youtube or tudou websites and you will find tutorials in chinese. The english language youtubes aren't anywhere as good.

You can play jingle bells on pipa - this is fairly easy. I learnt it in my 2nd lesson (not performance standards of course lol) or any other jian pu music. You will probably have to learn jian pu to get the most out of your pipa. If you are hoping to just transcribe western music, and learn the techniques by mimesis (imitation) from video clips, it might be rather frustrating, but that's just my take on it as a non-guitar player.

Ed's love for the zhongruan and liuqin reflect the single plectrum plucking or strumming styles of the western guitar, although I've heard pipa players mention some affinity with the classical Spanish guitar and its intricate finger plucking methods.

It makes a great and wild sound! I presume you've heard the classic "Ambush" and "Dance of the Yi" on pipa.

For me an instrument has to be portable and secondly easy to learn. The hulusi is dead easy, the dizi is Ok; I thought the erhu with only 2 strings can't be that difficult to learn.

I had a few lessons in classical guitar in the past and I thought the liuqin/zhongruan with only four strings and 1 pick had to be easier than the Spannish guitar.

Thirdly, the instruments had to be unusual....at least to a British audience.

I suppose learning any instrument, at least to intermediate level, if one has enthusiam and dedication isn't that difficult.