Do you name your instruments?

[ziman]

Just wondering if any of you give your instruments names. I tend to do that, just for fun. Usually, the names I come up with are meaningful, and relate to either the instrument's tone, the circumstances under which I acquired or tend to play it, or something engraved on the instrument.

My trusty ol' DXH xiao, for example, is named 幸甚詠志 ( meaning roughly "the great fortune of being able to express one's ambitions"). I gave it that name because:

1. It's rather loud for a Northern-type xiao. You could say it has an ambitious tone
2. In the ancient "music bureau format" (yuefu) poems (樂府詩), the stock phrase "幸甚至哉，歌以詠志" was used to mark separations between different poems (rather like a fancy dividing line). The name I gave my xiao is an abbreviation of this phrase, meaning more or less the same thing. Giving my xiao this name thus recalls the ancient Music Bureaus, quite an appropriate association for a Chinese instrument.
3. Moreover, the poem engraved on my xiao is itself a music bureau-format poem, Facing the Raging Sea (觀滄海) by Cao Cao (曹操). Being the gifted poet that he is, Cao Cao likes to incorporate that stock "dividing line" phrase 幸甚至哉，歌以詠志 as an integral part of his music bureau poems, so that the poem and the "divider" blend seamlessly as one without feeling awkward. (It helps that most of Cao Cao's poems are about his grand ambitions...). Therefore, giving my xiao the name 幸甚詠志 is also a nod to Cao Cao and his poem engraved on the flute.

I have two other xiaos that are not yet in my hands right now (a friend of mine bought them on my behalf while on a trip back home to China, and will bring them to me the next time we meet). They are composite material xiaos by the maker Ren Jin (任瑾), one in G, and one in F. I'm planning to name the G xiao 小鬼 ("little ghost"), since its intended use is as an instrument I can carry and play all the time. It'll follow me like a little ghost, basically. And I plan to name the F xiao 雪韻 ("Snowy Tones"), because one main reason I bought the composite material xiaos is so that I can play outdoors in the bitter cold that is the Minnesotan winter. Try that with a bamboo xiao and you'll end up with a paperweight in no time. [g]

Of course, whether I'll actually name them that will depend on how they sound like. I can't wait to play them!

The guqin I am currently using does not belong to me; it is borrowed from my teacher. If it did belong to me, I would name it 夢磬 ("Dreaming of Chimes"), because the main foible of this particular qin is that it can occasionally emit a transient metallic sound, like someone striking metal somewhere.

What about your instruments? Do they have names, and how did they get them?

[Flolei]

What an interesting and funny topic! Very original! Thank you!

No, although I gave names to all my dolls when I was a little girl, I didn't do that with my instruments. I didn't think about that and now, when I'm thinking about it, I still don't want to do it. I think it is because the principal idea in my musical training is to forget the instrument, to make it be a part of me, almost a part of my body. It's interesting especially with Chinese music that I play with many different flutes, not with the same one as in Western music. I have to forget to each one and be able to adapt automatically my embouchure and finger position. I don't want any flute to exist beside me, so they should not have any name, any identity outside of me. I know it can sound egocentric, but I really think that it's a pedagogical perspective which helps me to improve and doesn't allow me to name my flutes or consider them as persons.

Have a nice day!

[Blue]

What type of composite materials are you talking about? Do you have a link?

If you want something portable, maybe you can consider a 短簫 either pitched in F or G. Example

item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=16514603537&ali_trackid=2:mm_11472660_0_0:1371927411_3k3_25378398&spm=a230z.1.5634029.62.8UK8NN

Why don't you use Chinese pet name conventions to name your flutes such as 小黑 for purple bamboo flutes, 小黃 for a yellow-colored xiao, 小青 for a green colored jade flute, 小胖 for a large diameter flute, and 來福 for a flute that brings you good luck? No need for complicated names.

[Blue]

Providing names to more than 14 xiaos is too much for me, BTW . . . . . .

[ziman]

Jun 22, 2013 19:02:04 GMT Blue said:

What type of composite materials are you talking about? Do you have a link?

I'm not exactly sure; it looks like some kind of fiberglass-ceramic composite from the micrographs of cross-sections shown by the maker, Ren Jin, on his page: www.renjinxiaofang.com/newsdetail.php?id=177

The composite was devised by the maker himself, who aimed to make the material as similar to bamboo as possible in terms of its acoustic characteristics.

Ren Jin comments about this material that its strengths are that it is acoustically very similar to bamboo, and like other synthetic materials, it is not vulnerable to temperature and humidity fluctuations. Meanwhile, the chief weakness of this material is that it is brittle-- "treat it as if it were a porcelain flute", Ren Jin notes.

My main reason for acquiring these composite xiaos is not portability; rather, I just wanted good-playing instruments that I could play outdoors in the Minnesotan winter without risk of cracking. (And no, I don't like plastic flutes... ) I don't yet know how good these xiaos are; that'll need to wait till September when my friend gets back from China and brings me the xiaos.

That said, I was confident enough to buy them sight-unseen because: 1. Ren Jin enjoys a very good reputation in China, it's just that his output is very small(he works alone) and he hasn't marketed his flutes outside China yet; 2. These composite xiaos are really cheap-- like $15 each, compared to his bamboo xiaos, which start at $245 and can fetch prices several times that amount. The reason he could make the composite xiaos so cheaply is, he has access to CNC fabrication tools, which enable him to mass-produce the composite xiaos while still ensuring that each is precisely made. He could not do CNC fabrication of bamboo xiaos because unlike synthetic materials, bamboo is not uniform and each piece of bamboo varies from others.

[Blue]

Unfortunate that is is so brittle . . . . otherwise, would have added that into my collection!

[junwong]

My guitars are...
Bloody - blood red body
Hollow - Yamaha Silent Guitar with a hollow body
Matilda - named after Sean Connery's gun in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

My erhu is named 小会. I just started the erhu so 我不会啦二胡. (I do not know how to play the erhu)

会 means Know. Since I don't know how to play and I'm still learning. She is called 小会, loosely translated as Little Know.

[Halle]

Just browsing around the site and saw this thread.

I have a keyboard, but I didn't name it.

I named my C-key dizi 形态 (Xing Tai), which means shape. I've been doing martial arts for about eleven years (five years of Aikido, now in my sixth year of karate), and I view whatever I'm practicing as a kata. Kata doesn't really translate into Chinese, so I looked up the words for shape and form, which is essentially what a kata is.

As for my G-key...I don't really play it much, so it doesn't have a name.

[jock]

May 29, 2014 21:13:38 GMT Halle said:

Just browsing around the site and saw this thread.

I have a keyboard, but I didn't name it.

I named my C-key dizi 形态 (Xing Tai), which means shape. I've been doing martial arts for about eleven years (five years of Aikido, now in my sixth year of karate), and I view whatever I'm practicing as a kata. Kata doesn't really translate into Chinese, so I looked up the words for shape and form, which is essentially what a kata is.

As for my G-key...I don't really play it much, so it doesn't have a name.

I also think it is a funny thing to name our instrument. It seems that we ragard them as something alive.