Dong ting qui ci

[Si]

I heard this piece is very special in the qin cannon. Something to to with its in one scale but played in another. Anyone know WHY.

I could not help thinkg why does some sensible person just transpose it into the correct scale.

Anyway its a damned tricky piece - especially when they call it grade 3 (no way can it be).

[SCWGuqin]

Correct scale? This piece uses a technique called "cenong" (do-it-from-the-side) which is used ubiquitously in qin music. Every piece that is in gong mode but uses the 1st string as gong is using cenong. DTQS is primarily in gong and yu modes but uses the 4th string as tonic for both.

I've seen it first grade 4, then grade 5.

[Si]

yes i should have my hands slapped for saying scale - after your previous very useful post on modes etc.

[charliecharlieecho]

I'm not sure I follow uv2. Dongting Qiu Ci (Si) uses the standard tuning (strings 1 & 2 = nominal C, 2 & 7 = C, 3 = F, 4 = G and 5 = A) where string 3 is by definition gong (but see below). A piece which uses those notes could be in gong, shang, or any other mode depending on which it uses as its tonic.

Ce nong means that a piece uses another string than the 3rd as gong, e.g. the Mei An version of Feng Lei Yin. FLY uses the 1st string as gong. There is no open string jue note, so all jue note so the first jue note above the open gong string has to be played by stopping the 1st string at the 10th hui or the 2nd string by the 12th hui.

[SCWGuqin]

My use of "gong mode", "yu mode", etc. probably does not reflect universal practice, but it does exist in the qin world and is in my view extremely useful. Many qinpu (though hardly all, given the qin's hallmark inconsistency) use this terminology--typically with "yin" for mode, not "diao"--where the pitch specified is the tonic, main note, or resting pitch. (All of these being equivalent.) However the pitches are laid out on a given tuning, whether zhengnong or cenong, a melody is in gong mode if gong is its tonic.

I consider the use of Western pitch notation irrelevant and at times actively misleading in qin music. The fact that string 5 = A (etc.) means nothing for qin music except specifying a rough tuning pitch. For qin practice, what matters is that string 5 in zhengdiao-zhengnong = jiao, and it serves as various other pitches during cenong. If you take string 4 as yu in zhengdiao, like DTQS does, then string 5 falls outside the standard scale. If string 4 is gong, string 5 is shang. If you retune to ruibin and play in zhengnong, string 5 is gong.

"I could not help thinkg why does some sensible person just transpose it into the correct scale." -- that's for slapping much more than scale/mode terminology. Pieces are "laid out" on the qin, specifying tuning and zhengnong/cenong, according to their playability and resonance on the instrument. The results may be inconvenient, but they are proper to the piece as conceived by those responsible for promulgating it.

[SCWGuqin]

I think I'd better formalize this so people can follow more consistently. I do not know that any other player presents things in this way, but I think it is justified as a very useful interpretation of common qin practice.

Where "tuning", "mode", and "scale" are concerned, I think there are three essential concepts.

1. TUNING. Universally called "diao". This specifies how the strings of the instrument are tuned. At this stage the strings get absolute pitches assigned, but it is not appropiate to identify them as "gong", "shang", etc. until we have passed through step 2.

2. NONG. There's no better word for this. There are two kinds of nong: zhengnong and cenong. Zhengnong ("doing it straight") means playing such that all the open strings fall within the scale/mode selected. There is only one zhengnong for every tuning. For instance, in zhengdiao, zhengnong assigns string 1 as zhi, string 2 as yu, string 3 as gong, etc. In ruibindiao, zhengnong means string 3 is zhi, 4 is yu, 5 is gong, etc. While there is only one zhengnong setting for each tuning, there are many cenong ("doing it sideways") settings. Cenong means you array the selected scale/mode on the instrument such that its pitches do NOT match all the pitches of the open strings. By far the most common cenong in zhengdiao takes string 1 as gong. In which case 2 is shang, 3 is "UNDEFINED", 4 is zhi, and 5 is yu. Pei Lan makes the 4th string yu, where in zhengnong it would be shang. Dongting Qiu Si takes the 4th string as both yu and gong. The zhengnong/cenong step is probably the most poorly understood by many players and is usually skipped over, to the detriment of understanding. Guangling San (just FYI) is both non-standard tuning AND cenong in that tuning.

3. MODE. In an earlier post I argued that the most useful understanding of "mode" in qin music relates it to tonic. Hence gong mode takes gong as its tonic, yu mode takes yu as its tonic, etc. Traditionally this is called both "diao" and "yin", somewhat inconsistently. Modulation, or mode-changing, takes place all the time in qin music, and is best addressed as a separate topic. All melodies, considered abstractly, exist in a particular mode. The selection of tuning and nong derives from the composer/arranger's sense of how the melody is best *executed* on the physical 7-stringed instrument.

[charliecharlieecho]

Two points: (1) CE's analysis is very silimar to this in its essentials:

(2) in paragraph 2 of message #5 uv2 writes "By far the most common cenong in zhengdiao takes string 1 as gong. In which case 2 is shang, 3 is "UNDEFINED" ...". It is only undefined in the pentatonic scale. Older qin music sometimes uses heptatonic scales and in the heptatonic 'qing' scale the pitch of the 3rd string in the cenong in zhengdiao in the quotation was known as 'qingjue'.

[SCWGuqin]

That's true; I was simplifying to get the basics out. Generally when you play in cenong, you'll have to play "around" an open string that falls outside the pentatonic scale. Of course, that open string's pitch can be accessed for modulations, and this is a common feature of cenong pieces. Witness Zuiyu Chang Wan.

[Si]

very interesting, but its when i read such posts that I wonder........


.........why all this seems so hard for me to understand.


CCC- I wonder if you might think it a good idea to sort of take the core of that old post were UV2 told us all about his theory on modes etc as well as this info here. Its all well written an will be good to have it taged near the top of the post list.

[Charlie Huang]

I will, provided I find it...

EDIT: OK, someone tell me which thread it is. I am not going to go through all of them one by one...

Also, please note that I will be on holiday from 23rd to 26th so until my temporary return, David is in charge.

[SCWGuqin]

I think the thread Syburn has in mind is "how common are the other scales", currently on page 2 of this guqin forum.

As to why it might be hard for you to understand: everything in music relies on intuition at some level. The tuning/nong/mode/scale distinctions won't really be clear in your mind unless you've explored and thought about them with real interest. Particularly given how unsystematic qin music is, I think a consistent conceptual understanding must be developed independently of what received tradition says.

If you specify what pieces you currently play, we can talk about their tuning/nong/mode/scale properties to make things a little clearer.

[charliecharlieecho]

I think the starting point has to be the pentatonic scale. In thinese music the notes are gong, shang, jue (sometimes called jiao), zhi and yu, roughly equivalent to do, re mi sol and la. In the basic tuning pattern for the qin the scale starts on string 3, string 1 being the zhi below gong and string 2 the yu below gong.

That's the zheng diao, which is by far the most common tuning pattern in the tablature books. The next most common tuning pattern is the ruibin diao, which is used in pieces like Yangguan San Die and Xiao Xiang Shui Yun. To get the ruibin diao you tune the 5th string up until the harmonic at itss 5th hui matches the harmonic at the 4th hui on the third string.

There are then a considerable number of other diiao tuning patterns (well over 20 in some liists, though some of them are probably the same thing under different names), but most of them are rarely used.

Taking the zheng diao as an example, if you want to play Feng Lei Yin there are two ways of doing it. You can:
either tune the third string down by the equivalent of a half note; or
avoid playing the open third string.
If you do the former you will have retuned to the man jue diao, but if you do the latter you will be playing the manjue diao cenong (i.e. playing the slackened third string pattern 'from the side'). The left hand fingerings are different but the musical effect is the same, and there are tablatures for both.

Staying with the zheng diao, it may be that different pieces concentrate on different notes. Meihua San Nong concentrates on gong so it is said to be in the gong mode. Ping Sha Luo Yan concentrates on the yu (most of the time) so it's in the yu mode. Mode has nothing to do with tuning patterns, but only which note is most important in the piece; quite often it is the first note of the piece, as in Mehua and Ping Sha.

So to summarise:
diao refers to tuning patterns;
cenong means not bothering to retune but achieving the same effect by changing left hand fingering; and
mode tells you which note is most important.

[Charlie Huang]

There's an example of someone playing YGSD in ruibin cenong on YouTube:

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfLngrfNno

Note that you sometimes cannot use harmonics (or you can but the effect is messy).

I sometimes play the opening of Da Hujia in Qiliang cenong just for fun when I can't be arsed to tune it up to play the whole piece.

Someone should draw up a table.

[charliecharlieecho]

admin said:

I sometimes play the opening of Da Hujia in Qiliang cenong just for fun when I can't be arsed to tune it up to play the whole piece.

That sounds very difficult for a piece that's in huangzhong diao.

[Charlie Huang]

I only mean the first section and the main theme in the second. It gets tricky after that.

[Si]

never learnt FLY but if its in Zheng diao then I undersand that you dont touch any string (for retuning).

Ruibin you alter the 5th (i know that)

If you specify what pieces you currently play, we can talk about their tuning/nong/mode/scale properties to make things a little clearer.

That sound like a great idea. Maybe if I create some seperate posts for each tune, then it will be easy for others to access in future - for detailed discussions etc.

[charliecharlieecho]

syburn: if you play FLY with the strings tuned to the zhengdiao, you have to avoid playing the open 3rd string. Instead you play its note on the 2nd string stopped at the 12th hui.

[Si]

Ok sorry - i better to comment on it. Maybe FLY is special in some way?

But normaly for standard tunes we dont retune the strings in zheng diao - am i right in saying (I get the feeling the answer will be very complicated hahaha)

[charliecharlieecho]

You're right: if a tune is written in zheng diao we don't retune.

Cenong just allows us to play other diao without retuning. The YouTube example Charlie gave us was a man using the zheng diao but changing the fingering somewhat to play Yangguan San Die, a piece written for the ruibin diao. It was 'ruibin diao cenong'. FLY, which imitates the sound of wind and thunder, uses the same notes 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, but because the normal note 1 in the zheng diao is too high for the sound of thunder, it shifts 1 out to the 1st string.

[Si]

So talking about thoery as mentioned by SCWguqin :-

I see that each passage ends in a 6th string at 9 hui note. So from what you say, this must be important in deciding the Mode.

[SCWGuqin]

Not quite. The fact that each passage ends on that pitch (equivalent to open 4th string) just means that the 4th string is the tonic for each of the sections. The reason DTQS is weird is that the 4th string is sometimes gong, sometimes yu, and sometimes (briefly) shang. Note that the zhengnong value of the 4th string is shang; the fact that it serves as gong and yu means that DTQS is employing two different cenong arrangements.

In other words, the feature you mention does NOT indicate what the mode is. If a piece ended all its sections on the 2nd string, you might think it's in yu mode--but then you'd realize it's Pei Lan and 2nd string is shang instead of yu.

[charliecharlieecho]

A footnote to SCWGuqin's message #20: it's quite possible for the mode of a piece to change from section to section and (in theory, though it may not happen in practice) even within a single section.

It's important, too, to treat mode and cenong separately. Mode is where each string keeps its original note but the weighting of the notes in a piece differs. In some pieces gong is most important, i.e. it's the tonic, in others yu or shang or whatever is the tonic, but the gong, shang, etc, stay exactly where they were.

In cenong you change the fingering so that the note of the string changes. In FLY and Pei Lan the 1st string is gong; in DTQS gong shifts between the 4th string and the 5th; and in all three cases the change is done by altering the fingering instead of retuning.

To give a new,specific example of cenong, Yi Guren uses the zhengdiao tuning but has the 7th string stopped at 6.4 hui. A zheng diao piece, no matter what its mode, would avoid 6.4 and use 6.2 which matches the open 3rd string. The effect of using 6.4 is to shift gong from the 3rd string to the first, and YGL becomes manjue diao cenong, just like FLY and Pei Lan.

If you want to know why the gong is shifted, I'm sure that between us SCWGuqin, Charlie and I can explain it, but I hope that what I've written so far helps a bit.

[SCWGuqin]

So Syburn - does your teacher have anything to say about this?

[SCWGuqin]

By the way charliecharlieecho - I'm becoming more and more curious about who in the world you are. And apparently a private message just wasn't enough to get your attention!

[charliecharlieecho]

That's because I didn't get it.

But I don't really like the idea of putting my name up for all to see as long as so many others hide behind noms de plume.