#guqin

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: What is the difference in sound between a 1‑string guqin and the most common 7‑string guqin when played? (cr 庆炳古琴工作室)

[19silvermirrors]

Sounds of music 🎐

[peekofhistory]

Guqin (古琴)

Guqin introduction

Buying your first Guqin!

Guqin lengths, styles, tables

Workshop/Studio Tour

Guqin with mic vs no mic recording comparison

Lacquer allergy experience:

-> Part 1 (scroll down) / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Summary

-> Second allergy

Baby Guqin + giveaway

- Baby Guqin update

- Baby Guqin update 2

- Baby Guqin update 3

- Update 4

- Update 5 - sanding down the accessories

Making Guqin silk strings

Making Guqin

- Full list of all steps to make Guqin (updated as needed)

Preparing lumber

Introduction to Guqin + drafting the stencil (scroll to bottom of post)

Digging the belly + wrapping in fabric

Creating the stencil + digging out the belly + shaving down the top

Burning the belly

Playing Guqin

How to tune Guqin

Basic finger structures Gou and Tiao (勾挑)

Basic finger structures Mo and Ti (抹踢)

Basic finger structures Da and Zhai (打摘)

Basic finger structures pt 4 Tuo and Pi (托劈)

Reading the Guqin score - Jian Zi Pu (减字谱)

Guqin left hand

Guqin score vs. Five Line staff

How to count beats

Song of the Taoist Immortal (仙翁操/Xian Weng Cao) Parts 1-6 + follow-up

Autumn Wind (秋风词/Qiu Feng Ci) Parts 1-3 (being updated)

[Back to Masterlist]

[fuzzysquidink]

Baby Lan Zhan's first guqin lesson

[supernini235]

Somewhere in the Cloud Recess, there are cultivators doing this

https://youtu.be/55sPrAWQiX0

[panther-os]

I have discovered a thing! How guqin are made (9m41s)

[honghongyue]

Wangxian as the guqin player and fisherman from "Flowing Water," a guqin piece that dates back to China's Spring Autumn Period.

The piece describes a close friendship and conversation between the two, with each of their personalities and skills juxtaposing the other (serene, musical guqin player v. the rough and free-spirited woodcutter). The composition itself draws more on the process of flowing water, the notes describing the stream of river down mountainsides.

do yall see the wangxian parallels lmaoo

[asideoftrashplease]

hey! i'm late with this ask, but i hope it's not a bother!

so, i wanted to ask you about learning the guqin. i have a degree in piano performance, so i know how to practice and all, but i still have some questions.

how is the notation? i saw that there's a notation with chinese characters that doesn't account for durations, but i also saw western notation with chinese characters under. i'm very confused about this, can you tell me more?

where do you actually buy a guqin? i know about bamboo grove, sound of asia and sound of the mountain, are those trustworthy? is shipping safe? i think right now i can spend up to 800€, do you think it's enough for a good instrument (not a forever one, of course, but neither one i'll have to replace in a few months)?

i don't think i can find a guqin teacher near me or in a reasonable radius, are there good learning resources online? the few things i found i can't say if they're good or not given that i've got no experience, so if you have any advice i'll take it! i'm also open to recources in mandarin, i'm still just a beginner but i can look at those when i'll learn.

last question: i can't understand from videos if guqin is played with fingertips or fingernails. if the former, does it leave callouses? i need to have smooth and soft fingertips to play the piano. if the latter, can i use those removable artificial nails to play? i also need to have short nails.

thank you a lot for your patience!! have a nice day <3

GUQIN NOTATION:

As far as I can tell, there are three commonly used kinds of notation. Traditionally, guqin notation looks like this ⬇️ as you said with little indication as to tempo save for the Chinese period/full stop 。which indicates the end of a phrase. This notation is known as 减字.

I've been told that back in the old days, you'd need a teacher or to hear the song to know the tempo, but also in general tempo wasn't THAT important and it was sometimes up to interpretation. If you look up traditional guqin songs sometimes two different interpretations can sound completely different as a result 😅 so you can sometimes find different scores of the same piece.

However, there's now modern notation which tells you what the tempo is, with the traditional notation (减字) underneath. These are the types of scores used for learning nowadays. There's two kinds that I commonly see, one is used for other traditional Chinese instruments too (I've seen it used for guzheng and dizi scores) — the numbers 1 to 7 indicate do re mi fa so la ti

Finally, the last kind which I assume you'll be most familiar with (and which I mostly use when learning) is the usual western notation with the 减字 underneath. Don't try to use scores without the 减字 because you won't know how to play the piece without the 减字.

I recommend you use either the second or third type for learning the piece. If the 减字 is too small or messy and you can't even fucking see what the hell is written (which happens often because a lot of guqin scores have handwritten 减字), you can look up the first type of notation which is larger and clearer.

I'm sure you will be able to find online resources for interpreting the 减字 but just in case you can't, I typically refer to a Chinese language cheat sheet which I can send if you want, but for an English resource, my teacher also recommended Standards of the Guqin when I first started out, in which you can find an English breakdown of the notation. The book is available on Google Books here. I don't use this book so err, I can't vouch for how accurate it is. But my teacher recommended it!

BUYING A GUQIN:

Tbvh, I think I can't answer on this one 😅 it's very much dependant on country. I happen to live in a Chinese-majority country in Asia so it's not difficult to get a guqin here (in store or online). My mother and I share two guqins both of which were bought from the school where I learn. You'll have to ask someone in your region about where to buy and how much it costs.

I will say though that when we purchased our first "starter" guqin, the studio told us that $800 local currency (which is equivalent to about 500 euros) would get you a "toy guqin". My mother started before me and has the spending power, so based on that advice, she shelled out the equivalent of 2.5k euros for her starter guqin 😬 I was a little scandalised at the time but it was a GOOD qin.

She later sold it back to the studio because she didn't want a steel-stringed qin, but I happen to know the lady who bought our first qin. She paid half what we did, so about 1.2k euros, and she STILL has it now, nearly 5 years later. It's still her main qin (she has two others, I don't know why, we have two because one is silk-stringed and the other is hybrid, silk encased in nylon I think, but for her, ALL her three qins are steel? and they are all jiaoye qins?? so they don't even have different "cuts" 😭).

Anyway, tldr; if you can find a secondhand seller, you might actually be able to get a reasonable "forever guqin" that's within your budget. If you can find an in-person store, I'd recommend it over online so you can quality check. For online sellers, you have to ask someone in your region.

EDIT: Just to clarify, you can probably still get a reasonable trial guqin for your budget if bought firsthand, but a "forever guqin" might be possible at your budget if bought secondhand, though it's hard to tell as prices are region-specific. That said, over here at least, the better guqins have resale value so you can recoup some of the cost when switching. Guqins don't generally wear out easily (the decent ones at least) so they retain their resale value for a long ass time. If you take care of your secondhand guqin, you can still sell it thirdhand to someone else.

NAIL LENGTH FOR GUQIN:

You pluck the strings with the fingernails of your right hand, and do the slides / harmonics / pressing with your left hand. As such, the nails of your left hand must be trimmed short, but you need to keep some nail length on your right hand for plucking. I'm not sure if that'll be a problem for you because it might clack a little on piano keys.

However, I searched quickly and see that there artificial nail options for guqin specifically. Get the guqin specific ones if you have to. Guzheng nails are DEFINITELY too long. The strings are very close to the body of the instrument so if the artificial nails are too long you can't play properly. I can't advise if the guqin-specific nails will fall off or change the sound though since I don't use them.

GUQIN CALLOUSES:

Because you pluck with fingernails on the right hand, you won't get callouses on that hand, but because you slide and press on the left hand, you will get callouses on your left hand if you practice intensively.

But because guqin sliding and pressing technique is a little eccentric, you probably won't get them on your finger pad, so I don't think (???) it will affect your piano playing? Anyways here's a quick diagram of where you're most likely to get your callousess so you can assess for yourself.

MOST LIKELY: (1) the SIDE of your ring finger (2) the side of your thumb joint. These are the two most common fingers used for pressing and sliding.

LESS LIKELY: Side or perhaps the pad of your middle finger, depending on how you slide. The scores I've learnt in general default to sliding on ring finger or thumb, and middle finger is like the "back up" finger e.g. you just finished a slide on your ring finger or thumb, and it's difficult to get to the next string unless you use your middle finger. You probably won't get a callous on your middle finger unless you are practicing a phrase with middle finger usage very intensively.

VERY RARELY: You MIGHT get this WEIRD ASS callous on the knuckle of your ring finger because of this HELLISH and PAINFUL technique called 跪指. You typically only use this technique when you're playing very close to the bridge because the pressing points (hui) are too close to properly reach if you don't "halve" the length of your finger by pressing with your knuckle instead of your fingerpad.

Typically in the easier songs you don't use this technique a lot, so you don't have to worry about it until you get to the harder songs. And you'll only get it if you're practicing the particular phrase that uses this technique very intensively. Either way, I don't think this callous will affect your piano-playing???

SELF-LEARNING GUQIN ONLINE:

Tbvh I might not be much help in this area either since I learnt in person at a studio from a teacher. I HAVE noticed that online tutorials tend to focus on specific songs past the initial bit though, so I can give you the sequence of songs I learnt and if you follow this sequence and it will introduce new techniques gradually and start easy to hard.

So basically, for the tutorial (learning the notation as well as plucking / harmonics / sliding and pressing techniques) you're on your own. Once you're done with those and are ready to move on to songs, you can look up tutorials for these songs in this order (I might have flipped one or two but it shouldn't matter) if you can't find tutorials for specific songs on YouTube, search Bilibili:

仙翁操

小白菜

秋风词

双鹤听泉（听泉吟）

阳关三叠

良宵引

玉楼春晓

招隱

酒狂

关山月

凤求凰

忆故人

修禊吟

平沙落雁

碧涧流泉

普庵咒

长门怨

神人畅

欸欠

醉渔唱晚

This song list should take you from beginner all the way to the start of the "advanced" module at my guqin studio. Unfortunately, that's how far I've gotten so I can't give you the song list for the advanced module. Take your time, it took me nearly 5 years to get here with fortnightly in-person classes, but I'm also NOT musically inclined at all.

You should be able to find the scores just by searching online, but if you can't find the western notation version, if you send me an ask, I can help search or send you a copy of my score as long as you don't mind getting a horrendously annotated version with my notes scrawled all over it.

CONCLUSION:

Hope that helps, sorry for the extremely long answer, and I really hope you can get started! Guqin is a really fun and interesting instrument with lots of cultural heritage, history, and philosophy behind it. If you became interested in guqin because of cdramas though, I must warn you that traditional guqin music is a bit of an acquired taste 😅 Also, if you're coming from a western music background, you might also find the musical phrases and the song structure a little strange at first.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest listening to a few TRADITIONAL guqin pieces to see if you even like the sound of traditional guqin music first, or you won't have fun learning. My palatable favourites from the song list are 长门怨 on the more difficult side and 关山月 on the easier side. 酒狂 is quite melodic also. 神人畅 and 忆故人 I recall are some of the more "eccentric" pieces which you might find strange from a western perspective, so I recommend listening to them too. For a taste of true Guqin Melodrama, 欸欠 starts off slow but the climax is really something. (It will also wreck the skin of your thumb joint.)

For "pop" guqin covers, in my experience, a lot of them don't make full use of guqin techniques and also kinda erases a lot of what makes guqin unique and charming. Soundtrack pieces also often use other instruments to hide the "texture" of the instrument because unfortunately lots of people find it unpalatable 😮‍💨 so if you listen to those you won't get a sense for what guqin music actually sounds like, and they aren't good for learning technique either. You'll be able to find scores easily but I don't recommend using them for learning or exposure.

However, there are two soundtrack pieces from Genshin Impact that kinda amazed me because (1) they are solo guqin pieces?? (2) they use a fairly good range of guqin techniques (3) you can hear the texture, especially for the first piece 😭 if you ever want to take a break from traditional pieces and learn any "pop" guqin pieces, you can see if you can find scores for Mountains of Mist (solid A+, great texture) and On a Remote Trail. You might have to search the Chinese titles tho, which you can probably find on the Genshin wiki.