This makes playing one a tender experience. But where a guitar has a flat back, an oud has a domelike form that presses backward against the belly or chest. Ouds resemble lutes, which in turn resemble guitars. I keep a small oud in the kitchen, and sometimes, between e-mails, I improvise with it. I’ve become a compulsive explorer of new instruments and the ways they make me feel. (Duduks are the haunting reed instruments used in movie soundtracks to convey xeno-profundity.) There are many more instruments in other rooms of the house, and I’ve learned to play them all. A reproduction of an ancient Celtic harp sits near some giant penny whistles, a tar frame drum, a Roman sistrum, a long-neck banjo, and some duduks from Armenia. There’s a Baroque guitar some Colombian gaita flutes a French musical saw a shourangiz (a Persian instrument resembling a traditional poet’s lute) an Array mbira (a giant chromatic thumb piano, made in San Diego) a Turkish clarinet and a Chinese guqin. I feel them even more when I’m learning a new instrument.Īs I write this, on a laptop in my kitchen, I can see at least a hundred instruments around me. I played it with extreme force, sometimes bleeding onto the keys. Afterward, I was both boundlessly angry and attached to the piano. When I was just a boy, she died in a car accident. She taught me the piano by holding her hands over mine, bending my fingers into arches above the keys. She was a concentration-camp survivor-a prodigy concert pianist in Vienna who was taken when she was only a girl. The Chinese Zither has always been considered as the first place among the four Chinese high culture activities(Chinese Zither, chess, calligraphy and painting).It is more of an individual instrument for solace and personal appreciation.“Waves Only Get Real When They Break,” by Colin Farish (piano), Jaron Lanier (guzheng), and Jhaffur Khan (flute). Playing the Chinese Zither in snow was a favorite pastime for ancient artists, which could be fitter than playing it midst white snow A moonlit night was also considered ideal for playing the Zither. Stopped strings represents the human beings.Ītmosphere is an important aspect in playing the Chinese Zither. Open strings represents the sound from the earth. Harmonics represents the sound from the heaven. There are 3 category sounds produced by the Chinese Zither. The 7th string was added by King Wu when he encouraged his soldiers to participate in the war. The 6th string was added by King Wen when his son was died. The first 5 strings represent 5 elements: metal, wood, water, fire and the earth. There are 7 strings in the Chinese Zither initially. You can find a lot of symbols about Chinese history around this instrument. It also looks like the human body, with head, neck, shoulder, waist and feet etc. The whole body of the Chinese Zither is like the body of phoenix which is a bird of wonder. The bottom part is flat, representing the earth. The top part is round which represents the sky. The measurement line of Chinese Zither is 3 feet 65 inches representing the 365 days in a year. The beautiful melodies helped to maintain peace and balance of the mind. Ancient Chinese literati considered the Zither as a prerequisite for their cultivation. The Chinese Zither is a plucked-string musical instrument with over 2400 years of history.
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