Qian Jin

[soundspiritual]

Hi Everyone

This is my first time on the forum! Here's a question that I need help with:

I've been playing erhu for a number of years but never experimented with the qian jin, which I'm sick of slowly unravelling, or going brown from my sweaty left hand.

I remember my teacher (whom I've lost touch with over the years after moving interstate) saying that you can use cloth for the qian jin instead of string, so I've made one from a tough piece of black fabric. Have gone to a lot of trouble shaping the fabric into a ring, sewing it up and sliding it down the mast after taking off the pegs and putting everything back together again.

It sounds OK, but I'm wondering if the old string method is better after all. I've got a metal qian jin but people say it doesn't sound as good.

Any comments or thoughts on the matter greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[calden]

sound:

I've never heard of a cloth qianjin but the erhu is such a versatile and flexible design it wouldn't surprise me to see it tinkered with in a number of ways as practicality dictates. I would think that the basic tried-and-true string qianjin has benefits that other methods don't, and it has become the defacto standard because of that.

But if your homemade cloth qianjin sounds fine, great. The only thing I can think of that would degrade the sound - or change it - is that a cloth pressure point wouldn't be as sharp or hard or clear as a neatly tied string. The open string might sound softer or less focused.

I know that George Gao has made a sliding out of what appears to be plastic:

www.georgegao.com/qqqianjin/

Who knows what that sounds like.

In any case, this instrument is poised to attain world popularity, and innovation and change cannot be far behind, especially in the hands of Americans who can't tolerated leaving things alone and must tinker.

Carlos

[sanmenxia]

I think the smaller the contact area between the string and qianjin, and the harder and firmer the qianjin material the brighter and clearer the open string sound. So my guess is that a metal qianjin would give the brightest and clearest sound, and a large piece of cloth a more muffled tone. I’ve heard people say the metal qianjin gives a tone that’s too harsh. I’ve seen one player who had a tiny piece of plastic or rubber between the string and the metal hook on their metal qianjin. I suppose a metal qianjin’s got some advantages over a string one; it doesn’t move, although that would be a disadvantage for people who move it up and down for fine tuning, also it’s easier to change strings but that’s not a huge advantage.

[dsouthwood]

The George Gao qianjin is actually a capo for the erhu, so you can play in different keys without learning new fingering. I'd like to hear what it does to the tone of the instrument, but not at that price. Of course, if you play in the key of G by sliding that plastic bit closer to the bridge and using the D fingering, you lose the low notes you would otherwise be able to play.

Folk guitar players use the capo extensively, which generated this joke:

Q: Why did the banjo player put a capo on the dashboard of his car?
A: So he could park in the handicapped zone.

[maaltan]

i found a pattern that allows me to play the first octave of any key without much practice. Of course the hand positions are not "traditional". But then again ive noticed that most songs dont use the traditional positions that much.

I cant really see the purpose of that plastic thingy. you lose the low notes and it ends up being a crutch .

Well i take that back. If you tune your erhu to a/e or g/d for erquan type songs that little thing could bring you back up to standard d/a quickly for more normal songs without retuning in a concert environment.

Then again a "micro" qianjin with one or 2 loops tied under the main one might do just as well. Just slide it down to where you need it like the gao erhu.



That reminds me...now for the completely unrelated comment of the day:
I have found that the company "yahoo" (雅虎 ) is roughly represented phonetically in chinese as is google (谷歌). While microsoft is represented ideallogically as micro and soft(微软 wéi ruǎn). the characters used also mean small and flaccid. make your own conclusions. Of course google provided the translations so they might be tainted.