|
Post by maaltan on Mar 3, 2006 22:27:32 GMT
the qainjin? a set of strings bracing the strings halfway down the neck? very important piece. it allows you to custom taylor the spacing of the notes on the neck and also keeps the strings pressing against the bridge properly. starvoid.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=Erhu&action=display&thread=1139775245this is a thread on here about how to tie it. Its really no big deal once you get the hang of it. any medium weight cotton thread will work. If your's has none at all, you should loosen your strings down a bit before you tie it or you risk snapping a string. the finer points of placing it has been mentioned in this thread and others in this fourm
|
|
|
Post by davidmdahl on Mar 3, 2006 22:30:39 GMT
If I understand your question correctly, you are referring to the qianjin. I googled on this and found several useful articles, including: www.omnisterra.com/scgi-bin/view.pl/Main/QianJinTyingThe qianjin is of critical importance on an erhu as it provides one of the end-points of the strings, the other being at the bridge. Best wishes, David
|
|
|
Post by sitorimon on Mar 4, 2006 13:36:11 GMT
Superb, many thanks to both of you
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 7, 2006 1:00:16 GMT
I finally got the bow and new "high end" bridge from cadenza . It makes all the difference in the world. the notes are brighter, clearer, and more solid. The high notes especially have improved significantly.
I am still only doing D in first position. I can play a passible version of tian yuan chun se. I am currently working on zi zhu diao i can almost play the intro part and first few measures at full speed.
I am trying to decide which direction I should go next. Should i learn the next octave of D (requiring 3 positions) or move to G(requiring 2) ?
-------------------------------
also, off topic, Does qianjin have another definition? For those familiar with the short lived US series "firefly", there is chinese intermingled with the main dialog.
I am rewatching the pilot on dvd and I am almost certain one woman says qianjin when someone knocked on the door. It might have been "come in",but the close captions say "<speaking chinese>".
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 7, 2006 13:54:46 GMT
maaltan, Just my opinion: when playing zi zhu diao, you may want to play it without the "flowers". A flower is when you see the main note with a small note before and after it -- this is a common technique in Chinese folk music.
When my teacher started me on "G", he gave me songs that stayed within the first position because I was also learning songs in "D" which used the second position. Same approach when I moved to "F". Think in the standard hand positions and not in octaves.
In general, play everything slow so you can get the finger positions accurate -- speed will come later.
Regarding the qianjin -- it means 1000 lb(kg) weight, so the qianjin on the erhu is holding down the strings like a heavy weight. I didn't see the movie you're referring to (I busy practicing!) but in Chinese, when someone knocks on your door, and you want them to entry, you would say "Qing Jin" which means "Please enter".
Regards, Paul....
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 8, 2006 14:50:38 GMT
maaltan, Just my opinion: when playing zi zhu diao, you may want to play it without the "flowers". A flower is when you see the main note with a small note before and after it -- this is a common technique in Chinese folk music. When my teacher started me on "G", he gave me songs that stayed within the first position because I was also learning songs in "D" which used the second position. Same approach when I moved to "F". Think in the standard hand positions and not in octaves. In general, play everything slow so you can get the finger positions accurate -- speed will come later. hmm my copy of zizhudiao does not have flower notes. is a proper translation to western notation a "grace" note? It's a note that steals time from the next note in the piece. This is what I have been using to simulate it in midi. But why should i ignore Octaves? I found a wonderful property of the erhu. All the major scales are the same! Start on the note you want to do a scale in with your first finger then skip an cm or two (depending on qianjin position) use 2nd finger, skip another space and use third finger, then skip half the spacing you were skipping and use fourth finger. switch to outside string and repeat and you have a 1 octave scale. I have even been doing wierd scales. like a A one and a half sharp major. Also the spacing between notes gets closer together with at logaritmic rate. Using a tiny needle i was doing a pretty awful d13ish scale. Of course the instrument does not resonate at all at that frequency but it was still fun. Regarding the qianjin -- it means 1000 lb(kg) weight, so the qianjin on the erhu is holding down the strings like a heavy weight. I didn't see the movie you're referring to (I busy practicing!) but in Chinese, when someone knocks on your door, and you want them to entry, you would say "Qing Jin" which means "Please enter". Regards, Paul.... Then thats what she said. I can read chinese better than i can hear it. I know about 10 characters now (whooh another 5990 and i can read a newspaper) I wish the closed captions had the characters and/or pinyin. Then again im SURE they are using vulgarities and they want to hide it as much as possible.
|
|
|
Post by davidbadagnani on Mar 8, 2006 20:08:12 GMT
Flower notes ("jia hua") involve elaborating a basic melody without changing the melody's structure. So they're not grace notes.
Basic melody of "purple bamboo melody":
6 61 5 3 6 61 5 3
With added jia hua:
6561 5653 6561 5653
Some others here might be able to explain it better, or give more examples.
So you're basically "filling in" long notes or rests with adjacent notes. It takes time to learn how to do this the "right way," especially being able to add them on the spot in an appropriate way, without reading everything from the page. It's part of the improvisational spirit that makes Chinese instrumental music so much fun.
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 8, 2006 20:34:59 GMT
........ But why should i ignore Octaves? ......................... Maaltan, Sorry, I didn't mean to give you the impression that you should ignore octaves, only to concentrate on the fingering patterns (which tend to include an octave) as this will train your hand. Later, you will find music that deviates from the basic fingering. Also, davidbadagnani gave a good explanation of the "Flower notes", but for your midi tools, yes these would be considered grace notes -- only that there would be two grace notes -- one before the main note and one after the main not. I don't know if you can do this with your midi tool. Regards, Paul.....
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 8, 2006 21:39:40 GMT
ok, I think these flower notes are written as normal notes in my book maybe. here is the first few bars (after the intro) 6.1 53 | 6561 5643 | 2357 6532 | 1.2 1765 i thought you meant notes written as: 5 3 \3
|
|
|
Post by sanmenxia on Mar 8, 2006 22:18:10 GMT
I think it's a good idea to practice different versions of a tune. What you should avoid at the very begining though are things like slides, trills, upper mordants etc, in the case of zi zhu diao, you need play all those decorations to get the full "flavour". Zi zhu diao's got a particular slide from 5 to 3, it's very characteristic of music from the Jiangnan region (area south of the lower Yangtze River).
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 9, 2006 0:30:38 GMT
ok, I think these flower notes are written as normal notes in my book maybe. here is the first few bars (after the intro) 6.1 53 | 6561 5643 | 2357 6532 | 1.2 1765 i thought you meant notes written as: 5 3 \3
The way you have "5" positioned is the left part of the flower -- the right part should be positioned the same except for being to the right of the main note. Something like this (if I can get this damn html tagging to work): 5 3 \3/5
Regards, Paul...
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 9, 2006 0:31:57 GMT
I didn't do it right -- sorry.....
Regards, paul...
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 9, 2006 0:49:55 GMT
The way you have "5" positioned is the left part of the flower -- the right part should be positioned the same except for being to the right of the main note. Something like this (if I can get this damn html tagging to work): Regards, Paul... oh, my copy of it does not have any of that stuff (slides,etc). In fact tian yan chun se (the song before it) is more decorated than that with 2 inverted mordant and exactly what i typed above. This occurs in the first three bars and the rest is undecorated except for a decrescendo and crescendo(sorry for spelling). is this one of those cases where you are supposed to take the feel for the piece in first few bars and improvise the rest from that example?
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 9, 2006 19:34:29 GMT
Not necessarily, but as you improve, you will develop your own style of playing. Once you learn how to [mechanically] play a song, you will be able to augment it with your own stuff and give the song a version of its own.
By the way, playing songs in "D" and "G" are a good place to start as "F" and "Bb" tend to be tricky since your "starting" point is away from the qianjin. A pretty song in "F" is Kanding Love Song which will give you many opportunities to embellish on the melody.
Regards, Paul...
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 15, 2006 4:11:40 GMT
I finally found some light rosin. Super sensitive brand like my dark.
I didn't fully clean the bow of the dark rosin before i added the light rosin so my results might be skewed.
So far the notes seem clearer and easier to produce, but it might just be the air quality or I'm channeling the proper erhu gods. I notice sometimes i can play a song all the way through and it sounds great and next time i play it squeaks , howls, and my fingers get all twisted.
I was going to make a recording of me playing tian something (田园春色), but my ears must be broken or something. I thought I played it pretty good but the recording made it sound like i was juicing a live cat. I prefer not to subject you all to that quite yet.
|
|
|
Post by sanmenxia on Mar 15, 2006 13:24:48 GMT
I was going to make a recording of me playing tian something (田园春色), but my ears must be broken or something. I thought I played it pretty good but the recording made it sound like i was juicing a live cat. I think that's really common for many erhu learners! including me It's weird how the recording always sounds worse. Anyway, recording yourself is a really useful tool for learning the erhu. I'm sure we'd all love to hear your recording.
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 15, 2006 13:43:30 GMT
I was going to make a recording of me playing tian something (田园春色), but my ears must be broken or something. I thought I played it pretty good but the recording made it sound like i was juicing a live cat. I prefer not to subject you all to that quite yet. maaltan, This is analogous to the time when we were all kids and first tape recorded our voices. I don't remember anyone of my friends (including me) being happy about the way we sounded. Anyway, you can use the excuse that I always use -- "my playing sounds good to me so it must be those cheap quality computer microphones!!" Regards, paul....
|
|
|
Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 16, 2006 9:35:38 GMT
That's the same for me when I record my guqin playing!!!
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 22, 2006 4:49:46 GMT
all right its up. please dont be too brutal, but be realistic . maaltan.freewebpage.org/erhu/metian.mp3See if you can recognize the tune also, what does Ma Yi La translate to? I havn't midi-ized it yet, so i might be missing a subtle quality. it is in D key and has lots of looooong d5s in it. They are tied for 6 beats. From what i've played of it, it feels like a slow sad song. It looks like a good song to practice vibrato and other flourishes on.
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 22, 2006 13:22:02 GMT
maaltan, Can't check out your tunes. I can get as far as the erhu directory then get errors when trying to get the mp3. Is anyone else having problems or am I the only "problem child" here?
Regards, paul...
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 22, 2006 14:52:16 GMT
dang it. it was there last night
uploading again.
people so uptight about music and movies over here now that i wouldn't doubt someone deleted it. As if someone could accedently mistake my playing for a top 10 metallica song or some crap.
edit
apparently the free site has a max file size of 900kb. what is the point of having 150mb space. you can host a verrry large chunk of even microsofts site in 150mb. no free user can use that up with that limit.
anybody have any suggestions where i can host it?
|
|
|
Post by paulv on Mar 22, 2006 17:19:31 GMT
Does your ISP provide you with space to do your own web hosting? I guess I should have first asked you how you access the 'net.
Regards, paul...
|
|
|
Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 22, 2006 18:06:31 GMT
Try www.megaupload.com it stays there until no-one downloads for 30 days. Good for non-permanant uploads.
|
|
|
Post by maaltan on Mar 23, 2006 0:44:37 GMT
Does your ISP provide you with space to do your own web hosting? I guess I should have first asked you how you access the 'net. Regards, paul... Yeah. Unfortunately they like to spam my personal information around. the address is something like VA.isp.com/town/lname/fname Bit to much info for my tastes. I'm overly paranoid though. Ill try that. Well, other than pop-in ads blocking the interface and confusing the heck out of me, it works. I guess let me know. www.megaupload.com/?d=L90SYIZ3
|
|
|
Post by Charlie Huang on Mar 23, 2006 14:55:54 GMT
My work computer is blocking me from opening the page, so I'll check it out when I get home this evening.
|
|