Beginning Erhu

[ogie1691]

Hello all. This is my first post on these boards and I have just joined. I am delighted to find such a community of chinese music enthusiasts on the web.

I recently was gifted with an erhu [lucky, right?] from my friend which he brought back from a trip to hong kong.

I deeply enjoy the sound of the erhu and I want to continue my study with it. I have a few questions for the people on this board. I've had the erhu and have been playing on it for almost half a year now with no particular direction.

1. The strings on my bow are severely frayed and I want to know if it's necessary to get another bow or if possible, just another set of strings for the bow.

2. Free, or low-cost learning material is scarce. Is there any place where I can find some?

While I await answers to these questions, I'll peruse the other topics on this board, where I'll probably find some resources. Any input is greatly appreciated though.

Thank you all,

Ryan

[davidmdahl]

Welcome to our forum, Ryan. Yes, the erhu is very satisfying, isn't it?

If your bow is low on hair, the usual course is to get another bow. It seems when playing regularly, it is not uncommon to get a new bow each year. Of course, this simply depends on usage. A new bow can cost $20 - $30, so it is not a major investment. If you really like your bow, you might check with a violin maker. One I know in my area charged a lady only $20 to rehair her erhu bow. I think this can cost a lot more, but it doesn't hurt to ask. If your current bow is very cheap, a better bow will be a lot more fun.

The only effective erhu instruction I know of is from a good teacher. There are some videos in English on the web, such as the free one on Jiebing Chen's website. George Gao sells topical videos from his website. You can see clips of these videos to get an idea of them. There are VCD sets with erhu instruction in Chinese, but I don't know much about most of them. I suspect you could get at least as much use out of the many youtube.com erhu videos.

I hesitate to say that a video is better than nothing. The trouble is that you really need a teacher to see and correct what you are doing. Playing the erhu is not intuitive, and it is easy to develop bad habits.

Best wishes,

David

[ychent]

I agree with David very much on the video-vs-instructor point. I was learning on my own from books and VCD (both in Chinese, sorry) for about 6-7 months (with little progress and a lot of very annoyed neighbors) before I had my first real erhu lesson from a good instructor, and in two-hours time, he's given me more instructions than I got from all those practice on my own. On top of that, it has taken another 2 months to undo the bad habits he pointed out. Kinda sucks, isn't it? You want to start learning but it's so hard to get started without an instructor. Sorry.