CHINESE TWO STRINGED INSTRUMENT SKIN

This sounding methodology is what gives the yangqin its characteristic reverberating quality. The bridge peak that supports each group of strings help create tension, so that striking the strings produce a note. The Chinese yangqin is sounded by using bamboo sticks with hammer tips to strike its strings. A single bridge may contain from seven to ten peaks. Each are typically of wood, and possess peaks and cavities to fit the strings resting on it. Currently, the yangqin possesses four bridge sets.

However, following China’s liberation, the yangqin was reformed - the revolutionized yangqin that we know today has since become a staple of the Chinese orchestra. By the 1960s, the model of guzheng we use today was set: 160.5 centimeters long and 33.5 centimeters wide with 22 strings. It was consequently popularized throughout the whole of China, even through areas as far as Tibet and Xinjiang.īack in the past, this Chinese dulcimer merely had two bridge sets and three rows of strings this severely limited the range of the instrument. In the 1950s, the design and manufacturing techniques of guzheng went through a major transformation, highlighted by an enlarged soundbox and the addition of metal strings which enabled the stings to produce a louder sound. The yangqin is believed to have originated in Central Asia, but was in fact first brought to China by sea-faring European traders at the end of the Ming Dynasty (around AD 1600) - this is evident from how popular the yangqin is in the coastal trading regions around Guangdong. Long bridges with plastic, ivory or metallic tips are used to support the strings. The erhu (Chinese: pinyin: èrhú), also called nanhu (, 'southern fiddle'), and sometimes known in the West as the 'Chinese violin' or 'Chinese two-string fiddle,' is a two-stringed bowed musical instrument, used as a solo instrument as well as in small ensembles and large orchestras.

In the shape of a trapezium, the yangqin is stringed in groups each group consists of four to five individual strings that are tuned to the single same pitch. Two famous artists Hua Yanjun (1893-1950) and Liu Tianhua (1895-1932) made an exceptional contribution to the improvement of the erhu, and it was indeed due to the latter that the erhu, an instrument mainly for accompaniment in an opera, becomes a solo instrument.

CHINESE TWO STRINGED INSTRUMENT SKIN

Yangqin - Chinese Plucked String InstrumentĪlthough classified as a plucked string instrument, the Chinese yangqin is in fact a hammered dulcimer, played with rubber-tipped sticks. Chinese fiddles (bowed lutes) tend to have a skin belly and, like the banjo, an open back.

Chinese two stringed instrument