The Chinese Instrument Guqin Part 1 - Journey To The East

Hi guys, welcome to Off the Great Wall. I'm Felicia. And I'm Mia. So some of you might have seen our previous episodes of The Journey to the East. Yep, so if you guys haven't seen them, check out the links in the description box. And this is a must-watch episode, guys, because it'll basically make you thank your parents that they made you learn piano or violin instead. Yeah, we're talking about the guqin, a classical Chinese string instrument, which is also one of the oldest Chinese instruments. In Chinese culture, music and spirituality have often been closely linked, and this bond can be seen in the guqin, which is a classical Chinese string instrument. It's one of the oldest Chinese instruments, so when playing the guqin, sit upright, feet firmly planted on the ground, arms and hands relaxed. According to legends, it was given by the gods to humans to enrich our hearts and elevate our minds. And the only known records of how it was invented were from over 2,000 years ago. All right, enough talk. Let's take a look. In Chinese culture, music and spirituality have often been closely linked, this bond can be seen in the guqin, a classical Chinese string instrument. As a new generation of guqin masters emerges, the culture and traditions of the past are finding a home in the modern world. The guqin is one of the oldest Chinese instruments. According to legend, it was created by gods and given to humans to enrich their hearts and elevate their minds. In China, to be a scholar was to be an artist. When I was young, my teachers wanted us to return to the life of the ancients. So we had to learn how to play the guqin and play calligraphy. Of course, at my age, I can't do it all by myself. But when we played the guqin, we would make up for it ourselves. I made up for all of this. Ancient Chinese scholars had to master the four arts. The guqin is the first of the four arts and considered the most important. The sound of the guqin is said to inspire contemplation. It was the instrument of choice for many of Chinese great philosophers and poets. Confucius is said to have been one of the greatest guqin players of all time. The most distinctive feature of guqin music is Taoist philosophy. Taoist philosophy focuses on returning to nature and impermanence. There's a saying from Laozi, The greatest sound has almost no sound. Guqin music has a very low volume. But how loud is loud? When you play it in a very quiet room, the sound that comes out from the qin will touch your heart. You will never forget it. And that's the greatest sound in your heart. Though the music may sound effortless, it takes a lifetime to master the guqin. But guqin also has a fourth sound, called yun, or sound outside the string. It is an inner feeling, an essence, that the player brings to the piece. Guqin music has its own system of notation. Divided into traditional and simplified, these characters tell not only the notes to be played, but also the details of how to play it. This is very troublesome. In the Tang Dynasty, a man named Cao Rou invented the simplified notation system. What is a simplified notation system? It is a system in which certain strokes in Chinese characters are taken out and re-combined. The word that is re-combined is the qin. For example, this character, the word on top of it is open string. It means open string. The word in the middle comes from the Chinese character gou. Gou is the middle finger of the right hand. The number in the middle represents which string it is. So this is the meaning of open string.