Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
Henrik Norbeck writes: T:Two Fountains Reflect the Moonlight T:The Moon Reflected in Er-Quan With my minimal knowledge of Chinese I would say both titles are translations, but the second one only partial. Er is Chinese for two. My dictionary says one meaning of quan is spring, well. Aha! This explains a third translation of the title, which is The Moon Reflected on the Second Springs. By the way, the composer, Hua Yen-Chun, known as Blind Abing in his later life, is much more interesting than might appear from my short description, which I suspect is what is taught in the schools. See Jonathan Stock's page: http://www.shef.ac.uk/music/staff/js/AbPref.html This includes some musical analyses of Abing's solos, and an interesting discussion of how the Cultural Revolution's unique interaction of art and politics forced an intellectual tightrope-walk by Abing's biographer. Stock's humor is dry and cutting. You can look it up yourself, but I can't resist quoting a couple of sideswipes which apply to Western as well as Chinese music: On a form of musical analysis due to Herr Schenker: Devised for use on Western classical music, this form of analysis can be useful elsewhere also, though certain modifications are necessary. (Herr Schenker probably wouldn't agree. His thoughts on Chinese music do not appear to have been recorded, which is probably just as well; we do know that he believed all music from France and Italy to be unnatural and degenerate). When speaking of Abing's biographer---and Stock casts strong doubts on his accuracy (too PC, Maoist version)---he writes: In all this, Yang was immeasurably assisted by the fact the Abing had died before the publication of his material. (As a general rule, musicologists do rather seem to like their composers dead.) Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a general music notation? Replying to John and Bert's suggestions that this is either tablature or solfege, I think it's the latter, and the numbers indicate the notes of the scale, from 1 to 7. (With the occasional puzzling zero.) At least the tunes seem to sound ok with that interpretation, tho that's hardly a foolproof test! They use western sharps and flats for accidentals, so I don't think they write out cross-fingering. (There are a number of western symbols mixed in: time signature, tuplets, and trills, for instance, and even some western characters, e.g. f, pp, mf, etc. No key signature needed---these are six-hole flutes, no keys, and they come in sets, so you just pull out another flute to change keys.) Time values seem to be indicated by note-position within a measure. On the other hand, there are single and double underlines, and various shapes of dots above and below the notes, and occasional dots following notes. I think the dots above the note indicate a second octave, but I'm not sure of the rest. Toby Rider writes: Scan a copy of the instructions and send them to me. I can read a moderate number of characters and my mother is fluent. So we can tell you what it says. Excellent! It'll take me a day or so to get within range of a scanner, but I'll try the first couple of pages. Cheers, John Walsh To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
Here's a Chinese piece* for the Erhu ... which uses some ABC constructs I've not seen before. BarFly guesses that P means an inverted mordent, but offers no suggestions about what J is. Clue us in? Oops. That was from the private tune-cellar. Hadn't expected to send it out, so I forgot to check for non-standard (to others) abc when I did. P is for emphasis and J is a slide up. (Thought that one was generally accepted.) When using constructs that go beyond abc 1.6 it's a good idea to describe them in the header. Agreed. And as a corollary, I hope that people writing playback programs make it possible to reassign the letters H-Z, or at least disable the defaults. I know Abcmus does. It's a real drag to hear emphasis interpreted as an inverted mordent with no way of changing it. Cheers, To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
John Walsh wrote: The reason for the two titles is that a friend gave me the first, which I figure is probably correct, and the second was on the CD I transcribed it from. T:Two Fountains Reflect the Moonlight T:The Moon Reflected in Er-Quan With my minimal knowledge of Chinese I would say both titles are translations, but the second one only partial. Er is Chinese for two. My dictionary says one meaning of quan is spring, well. Er-Quan would be a place name, meaning Two Fountains. Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a general music notation? Henrik Norbeck, Stockholm, Sweden [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/ My home page http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/abcmus/ AbcMus player program http://home.swipnet.se/hnorbeck/abc.htm 1600 ABC tunes http://surf.to/blackthorn Irish trad music band http://www.rfod.se/folklink/ Links to Swedish music To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
John Walsh wrote: Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a general music notation? I once bought a simple plastic flute during a trip to China once. It looks like a recorder but has six holes, just like an Irish whistle (the same fingering, too). The accompanying note that demonstrates the fingering uses a similar (maybe the same?) notation. I don't know whether it is a commonly used notation or one reserved for the flute. What I could make up from the pictures (unfortunately, I don't read Chinese) is that '1' probably denotes the root of the scale (an F in the case of my flute). Notes from the higher octave have a dot above the number, those from the lower octave a dot below. Does this help at all? bert -- Bert Van Vreckem If Bill Gates had a penny for each time Windows crashed... Wait a minute! He does! To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
bert wrote: | John Walsh wrote: | Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out | much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese | introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know | anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a | general music notation? | | I once bought a simple plastic flute during a trip to China once. It | looks like a recorder but has six holes, just like an Irish whistle (the | same fingering, too). The accompanying note that demonstrates the | fingering uses a similar (maybe the same?) notation. I don't know | whether it is a commonly used notation or one reserved for the flute. | What I could make up from the pictures (unfortunately, I don't read | Chinese) is that '1' probably denotes the root of the scale (an F in the | case of my flute). Notes from the higher octave have a dot above the | number, those from the lower octave a dot below. This is similar to a whistle tablature that you see in some tutorials. There are several variants, but the most common uses one or two numbers. The first number is the number of the top open hole (0-6). For split fingerings, the second number is the count of holes closed below the top open hole. This turns out to be sufficient for whistles, since more complex split fingerings are not really needed. For recorder, you'd need a more complex system, since there are useful split fingerings that are more complex. Sometimes a '+' is used to indicate the upper octave. Thus, on a D whistle, the =c note would be 6 3 or 6 4, depending on your instrument. The top hole (6) is open, and the next 3 or 4 holes are closed. Players quickly learn that you can always make a note slightly flatter by closing some holes further down the tube, so you can casually ignore this well-known fact in the tablature. I've also seen an inverted form of this notation, counting closed holes from the top. Thus on a D whistle, ^c would be 0 (no holes closed), and D would be 6 (all holes closed). I'd suppose that people who don't understand zero would add one to the first number, or they would use some special symbol for no holes open/closed. There are counting systems still in use that don't have a true zero symbol, but there's always a negative term available. In any case, I've also seen a numeric Chinese notation. It's based on counting notes from the tonic, of course. I've seen examples of Chinese and Japanese songs many centuries old, in which the words were marked with numbers that gave the melody. It's a lot like solfa, really. I don't know much more about it, though, or how standardized it was/is. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
Scan a copy of the instructions and send them to me. I can read a moderate number of characters and my mother is fluent. So we can tell you what it says. Toby John Walsh wrote: Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a general music notation? I once bought a simple plastic flute during a trip to China once. It looks like a recorder but has six holes, just like an Irish whistle (the same fingering, too). The accompanying note that demonstrates the fingering uses a similar (maybe the same?) notation. I don't know whether it is a commonly used notation or one reserved for the flute. What I could make up from the pictures (unfortunately, I don't read Chinese) is that '1' probably denotes the root of the scale (an F in the case of my flute). Notes from the higher octave have a dot above the number, those from the lower octave a dot below. Does this help at all? bert -- Bert Van Vreckem If Bill Gates had a penny for each time Windows crashed... Wait a minute! He does! To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
Here's a Chinese piece* for the Erhu ... which uses some ABC constructs I've not seen before. BarFly guesses that P means an inverted mordent, but offers no suggestions about what J is. Clue us in? When using constructs that go beyond abc 1.6 it's a good idea to describe them in the header. Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a general music notation? I think it's general - I've seen it before (for the ch'in?) Does Grove not have a description of it? === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
John Chambers writes:
Do we have people here who are transcribing Chinese pop
music? Actually, I'd be more interested in the traditional
music, but new music is more interesting as a test case.
From what I know of traditional Chinese music, I don't
think there would be many problems putting it into abc
form. Since it's mostly still pretty close to pentatonic,
there aren't many problems with scales.
Here's a Chinese piece* for the Erhu, the Chinese two-string
fiddle. (I've always thought of it as classical, but I suppose it could be
called traditional, too.) It's usually played as a duet with the pipa
(Chinese lute.) I wrote it out for the pipes, which is why it's in D mix
instead of the original A mix. (I could say I arranged it, but a better
description would just be sloppy transcription.) Surprisingly enough,
it does work well for the pipes, and the rule of thumb has it that it
would also work well for the flute, since good pipe tunes usually suit the
flute and vice-versa. (Caveat: as with any music lifted from someone
else's tradition, I continually have to go back to the original to remind
myself of how it really should sound. The dots are a help, but they only
indicate which way the tune goes, not how it should get there.) I may have
changed a couple of notes to fit, but hopefully not too many. The main
changes are omissions: the erhu is made to slide into and out of notes,
and there are many important slides in the piece, both up and down. I only
noted a few of the slides up and none of the slides down (can't do them
well enough on the pipes.) Trills are another problem: one needs to be
able to say where they start and when they stop. I just wrote tr.
The reason for the two titles is that a friend gave me the first,
which I figure is probably correct, and the second was on the CD I
transcribed it from.
Question: does anyone here know how much latitude there is for
improvisation in traditional Chinese classical music? I have two
recordings of this tune. They agree for the first time thru, and
subsequent repeats are variations which I suspect might be traditionally
left to the performer. (The particular recording I transcribed had five
repeats. I wrote out two.)
Second question: I have a Chinese book of flute tunes, written out
much like abc, but in numbers, not letters. If I could read the Chinese
introduction, I probably wouldn't have to ask but...does anybody here know
anything about this notation? Is it particular to the flute, or is it a
general music notation?
Cheers,
John Walsh
* A story goes with it, and I'll pass it on, exactly as it was told to
me:
It was composed in the 1940s. The composer was a poor young man
who suffered greatly from the ruling class and Japanese troops. When his
lover, a folk singer, was taken away from him by evil forces, he was
extremely sad. Not long after, he became blind. One night he sat lonely
beside a stream, playing the erhu. He was in extreme grief and
indignation. Two Fountains Reflect the Moonlight was composed at this
moment.
snip snip-
X:1
T:Two Fountains Reflect the Moonlight
T:The Moon Reflected in Er-Quan
C:Hua Yen-Chun
M:4/4
S:Chang Jui, Erhu
Z:John Walsh 09/99
L:1/4
Q:1/4=140
K:DMix
B/A/B/|G2 G F/ Hz/|E4-|E4|PE2 JEF|D2 (DE)|F4-||F2 .F .A|B2 A2|BA Bd|
JA3 F|A2 AF|E2 B2|(AB) (DE)|F4-|F4|EF Ad|BE FA|D4-|D4||
d2 (Bd|Jf2) fe|d3 JB|de ff|e2 (dB)|JBd ef|A4-|A4|
a2 fa|ba bd'|Ja3 f|Ja3d'|b2 b2|ab aa|af2A|(a2 f) a|
ef ed|Bd dB|Jd4-|d3 z/ e/|Jfa de|fa f b |a4-|a4||
.Az .dz|BA Bd|(A3 F)|A3 F|EF Ad|BE FA|D4-|D4|
d2 Bd|f2 fe|d3 B|Jde ff|e2 d2|Bd ef|A4-|A4||
.Az .az|fa fa|b4|d'2 d'2|(af) {a}fa|ba d'b|(a3 f)|Ja3 d'|b2 b2|ab aa|
(af)-f d|a2 fa|ef ed|rallBd dB|(Jd3 B)-|Jd3 e|Jfa d2|fa{g}ab|a4-|a4||
A2 AB|AA FA|trB4-|B4-|{A}B4-|{A}B4|b2 d'2|ba bd'|Ja3 f|Ja3 d'|b2 b2|ab
aa|(a f2) d|a2 (af)|ef ed|Bd dB|d3 B|d2-de|Jfa d2|fa gb|a4-|a4||
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[abcusers] Chinese tunes
In some other fora, there has been much discussion lately of the Great Firewall of China, which is blocking Chinese access to all sorts of things on the Net. Among them are most of the search sites, especially google.com, and all of mit.edu. The folks at MIT are somewhat bemused by this, of course. It's not like there's all that much Chinese political stuff on mit.edu machines. Not much porn, either. Maybe they're afraid that Chinese school kids will find the MIT Open Course Ware project and become engineers? Something that has occurred to a few of us is that, with the search sites in general, and my abc tune finder in particular blocked (because it's at MIT), this means that Chinese owners of music would have a lot of trouble discovering copyright violations. So we should try to get some current Chinese music on the Net in abc form, and see if anyone over there notices. Of course, China is more known for doing the violating, but there's lots of new music coming out of China these days. Do we have people here who are transcribing Chinese pop music? Actually, I'd be more interested in the traditional music, but new music is more interesting as a test case. Looking through my index files, I don't seem to see much. From what I know of traditional Chinese music, I don't think there would be many problems putting it into abc form. Since it's mostly still pretty close to pentatonic, there aren't many problems with scales. Ornaments have intonation all over the place, of course, as with most kinds of music, but the usual practice seems to be to use the common Western ornaments, and You just have to know how to play them. As with most music. I wonder if Falun Gong has a nice anthem about the joys of exercise in the park at dawn? ;-) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Chinese tunes
In some other fora, there has been much discussion lately of the Great Firewall of China, which is blocking Chinese access to all sorts of things on the Net. Among them are most of the search sites, especially google.com, and all of mit.edu. The folks at MIT are somewhat bemused by this, of course. It's not like there's all that much Chinese political stuff on mit.edu machines. Somewhat bemused is a quaint way to describe your weaseling jobsworth Noah Meyerhans's attitude to malicious users hosted by MIT. MIT is no position to take any moral high ground over censorship when its anonymizing spamsite nym.alias.edu conducts denial-of-service attacks on public forums by drowning them in crap - just scan through all postings made to rec.folk-dancing with paths leading through lcs.mit.edu, the site Meyerhans manages. Dictatorship by a gang of Ivy League frat boys is not one whit morally better than by the Chinese gerontocracy. with the search sites in general, and my abc tune finder in particular blocked (because it's at MIT), this means that Chinese owners of music would have a lot of trouble discovering copyright violations. There can't be any. Last I heard China wasn't party to any copyright treaties. It neither recognizes nor enforces copyrights, and there's nothing in international law that says they have to. So they have no rights that could be violated. I suspect Hong Kong retained some special status, otherwise its film industry would have gone down the toilet by now. Do we have people here who are transcribing Chinese pop music? Actually, I'd be more interested in the traditional music, but new music is more interesting as a test case. I have The East is Red in the modes tutorial on my website; apparently the tune is traditional. I could put the rest of the book up, I suppose (most of the tunes presumably composed in the Fifties). The Chinese official attitude to it, if they ever found it was there and actually cared, would more likely be that they'd want it taken down as a political embarrassment drawing attention to abandoned principles than any concern over lost royalties. (And getting totally OT: there was a programme on Radio 3 a while ago which I only heard part of, comprising letters from a woman worker in an infernal toy factory in the Shenzhen free enterprise zone; like an update on Charles Denby, Satoshi Kamata or Gunter Wallraff for the new millennium. I presume they've been published as a book; anybody know what?) === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
