Guqin 古琴

[DavidL706]

I'm copying (in part) a post from my own forum to post here because the Guqin is one of my favourite instruments, but I'm too lazy to write up my own post.

 

The Guqin (古琴) is one of the oldest, most eminent and famous of ancient Chinese instruments.

 

It has long been considered the instrument of the literati; Confucius himself was a both a guqin player and composer.  It was considered one of the Four Arts (四藝) of a refined Chinese gentleman - along with Wei-qi (棋, a board game), calligraphy (書) and painting (畫).  Some sayings that are associated with the guqin are "士無故不撤琴瑟" (A gentleman does not leave his qin or se) and “左琴右書" (Qin at the left, books on the right).  The qin was also introduced to Korea, where it became known as "geum", and was used in ritual music.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvG-ib2VQzo

[Edward Phie]

Is it hard to play? I really wanna study it later i china but I'm afraid it's very hard like violin.. I don't have any musical experience nor knowledge..

even try to learning play guitar I'm struggle with it

[roddy]

That reads a lot like a quick rewrite of the relevant Wikipedia article. Perhaps you'd like to post about something you don't feel lazy about?

[DavidL706]

I don't have any experience myself.  I would assume it's at least as difficult as classical guitar playing, since all the fingers of the right hand move independently to produce various melodies.  The guy who posted that thread might know more.  Also you could check out this in wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guqin_playing_technique

 

That reads a lot like a quick rewrite of the relevant Wikipedia article. Perhaps you'd like to post about something you don't feel lazy about?

 

I like the instrument, just didn't want to write a post when I could have used one that someone wrote up for me.

[Hofmann]

So?

 

I play it. I'm not good enough to write anything about it. That's all.

[Ruben von Zwack]

It's one of my favourite instruments, too. The band Zhaoze incorporates it into quite beautiful dark post rock music:  http://youtu.be/05eVA_tI78Y

 

I play the guitar, and while "difficult" is a relative term, and relatively meaningless, I think that on a very basic level the Guqin should be more forgiving than the guitar - or, heavens forbid, violin.

 

Totally exhausted now from typing out so many own thoughts

[DavidL706]

I don't think you can really compare difficulty level, since the method itself is quit different.

 

For the violin there are maybe about a ten to a dozen techniques that you use regularly for the right hand (for instance, regular bowing, martellato, spiccato, pizzicato, and several variations on each), while according to some ancient techniques there are far more basic techniques for the guqin using both hands.

 

I suspect like the Violin, the Guqin is an easy instrument to play, but a difficult one to play well.

[Hofmann]

OK I guess I can write something. I've only played a few pieces on it, with the most difficult thing being a half-assed 梅花三弄. That was 2 years ago and I don't practice regularly. The only thing I practice regularly is piano, which I've been playing for almost 20 years. Then in order of proficiency, violin, voice, qin, guitar. I find qin to be the most difficult. If your intonation sucks, then you'll have the same problems as on a violin (and you can't just look at the dots), but mine didn't so that was whatever. Then there are a lot of things to keep track of such as which fingers to use in which way on which strings. The closest analogy would be if you played guitar, and added thumb stops with your left hand, and allowed knuckle stops on the other four fingers, and removed the frets, and added a string.

 

Also, it hurts at first. I never got to a point where it didn't hurt.

[Ruben von Zwack]

That's actually an interesting analogy, thank you, Hofmann!

 

I just found this page and read a few chapters and found it very informative:

http://www.peiyouqin.com/