First time Erhu !

[Nikki]

Hello all.

What a wonderful forum.

I am new here, and on Monday I get my first Erhu, more about that later.



(I sometimes have trouble writing English.

But I will do my best and it will probably go better.

But already sorry for any mistake in my writing.)



Monday comes my first Erhu, and I can hardly wait to try it out.



I've been playing cello for 5 years now and I'm curious what it's like to play Erhu.

Will my cello background help me to play the Erhu?

And will the Erhu help me improve my cello performance?


I look forward to learning from your knowledge and sharing my experiences with you!

[d̗̰̗͆͘ǎ͔̱͈̰̬̫ͨ̌ͮͥ͗ͭ̕vid]

Welcome to the forum, Nikki

My English is not that great too
I'm grade 4 English at school
Hopefully it won't be too distracting

I don't have much experience with cello, so please take my words as a grain of salt...
The erhu uses a different bow hold than the cello, because you transfer between different strings(bow hair is between strings)... It's like playing with one string. Because you have played a bowed string instrument, moving from cello to erhu should speed up your progress. Inotation and the flexibility of your note playing(left) hand should be a breeze... Most Chinese pieces are written in jianpu, a numbered musical notation, although there are songs transcribed in staff notation too. Also the cello is used in the Chinese orchestra in the low range/pitch, therefore you can try out some Chinese pieces on cello too.

There are a lot of sliding techniques and shifting on the erhu. I am not sure if they are executed similarly or not. The vibrato is a bit different because the erhu is fretless.

The playing techniques differ a little, but I'm sure the different Chinese style/techniques can help you on some cello techniques that are used not as frequently...

Good luck ∠( ᐛ )