| Gongche Notation |
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Sheet Music written in this notation is still seen for Traditional Chinese Musical Instruments and Chinese Opera s. However the notation is becoming less popular, replaced by mostly ''jianpu'' ( Numbered Musical Notation ) and sometimes the standard western notation. THE NOTES Basic characters The notation usually uses a Movable "do" system. There are variations of the character set used for musical notes. A commonly accepted set is shown below with its relation to ''jianpu'' and Solfege . Usual variations The three notes just below the central octave are usually represented by special characters: Sometimes "士" ''shì'' is used instead of "四" ''sì''. Sometimes "一" ''yī'' is not used, or its role is exchanged with "乙" ''yǐ''. To represent other notes in different Octave s, traditions differ among themselves. For '' Kunqu '', the end strokes of "上" "尺" "工" "凡" are extended by a tiny slash downward for the lower octave, a Radical "亻" is added for one octave higher than the central. For Cantonese Opera , however, "亻" means an octave lower, while "彳" means an octave higher. Some other variations:
The following are two examples. Pronunciation When the notes are sung in different opera traditions, they do not sound as how the characters are usually pronounced in the respective Region Speeches . Instead, they sound like imitating the pronunciaton in Standard Mandarin . The following is an example in Cantonese opera. THE RHYTHM ''Gongche'' notation does not mark the relative length of the notes. Instead, marks for the Percussion , understood to be played at regular intervals, are written alongside with the notes. Traditionally, Chinese is written from top to bottom and then from right to left. The rhythm marks are written to the right of the note characters. The diagram at the right illustrates how the tune "Old McDonald Had a Farm" will look like if written in ''gongche'' notation. Here, "。" denotes the stronger beat, called "板" ''bǎn'' or "拍" ''pāi'', and "、" denotes the weaker beat, called "眼" ''yǎn'' or "撩" ''liáo''. In effect, we are beating in two, and two notes are sung or played to each beat. If we write the solfege of those notes and mark them, we will see a similar effect: :do do do sol '''la''' la sol '''mi''' mi re re do Using this method, we can only specify how many notes are sung within a beat. The actual length of each note is up to tradition and the interpretation of the artist. Notice that the actual rhythm marks used differ among various traditions. HISTORY AND USAGE ''Gongche'' notation was invented in the Tang Dynasty . It became popular in the Song Dynasty . It is believed to have begun as a Tablature of certain musical instrument, possibly using a fixed "do" system. Later it became a popular pitch notation, using usually a movable "do" system. The notation is not accurate in modern sense. It provides a musical skeleton, allowing the artist to improvise. The details are usually passed on by oral tradition. However, once a tradition is lost, it is very difficult to reconstruct how the music was supposed to sound. Conflict among traditions increased the difficulty in learning the notation. EXTERNAL LINKS
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