红军哥哥回来了 (The Return of The Chinese Red Army）

Watch me play 红军哥哥回来了 （The Return of The Chinese Red Army).:)

Happy Mooncake Festival!

The most challenging technique in this piece is the "碗碗腔（Wan wan qiang)", a type of chinese glissando~ as you can listen to it in this video~ 

How to install the Erhu bow.

Photos below show that the step-by-step of installing the Erhu bow.

So, the key of installing is the screw.

Basically you just have to make sure that the bow hair doesn't twist and everything will be fine. :)

Done~ good luck~

Great Wall Capriccio (2nd Mov.) The War

This particular piece depicts the scene of the war around the Great Wall.

Enjoy~

The Best Rosin for Erhu

In my opinion, the best rosin for erhu is Pirastro's Schwarz Rosin. It's black, as shown in the picture below.

Why do I say so? Well, it's based on my experience of using different types of rosins on Erhu. 

The Pirastro's rosins I've used on erhu before were the Eudoxa, Gold and Gold Flex. None of them were very suitable for Erhu steel strings if compared to the Schwarz. Furthermore, they are more expensive. 

I don't want to describe technically how good it is, but at least to tell you that Schwarz rosin is specially made for steel strings, and I just feel comfortable and easy to control. 

Cheers~

Open Strings of Huqin

Almost every huqin only 2 strings, one inner, one outer. And for Erhu(Terra), the inner string is D4 or d¹ and the outer string is A4 or a¹. For Gaohu(Terrin), the outer string is G4 or g¹ , the inner string is D5 or d². For Zhonghu(Terron), the open strings are one octave lower then Terrin’s, they are G3 or g(outer) and D4 or d¹(inner).

So, generally, the pairs of open strings of huqin are as follow:
Erhu       (Terra): DA - exactly the same D with Terron
Gaohu   (Terrin):GD
Zhonghu(Terron):GD - 1octave lower than Terrin.

Erhu(Terra)

 Gaohu(Terrin)

Zhonghu(Terron)

The Bridge

The bridge acts as a sound wave conductor on Erhu. It transmits the vibration from the string to the vibrating skin. The efficiency of wave transmitting plays an important role in determining the quality of the sound produced, whereas the types and structures of the bridge determine the tone colour of the sound.

Generally there are two types of bridge, that's the white one and the black one. The difference between them is that the black one is fried by using boiling oil but the white one isn't. The sounds produce by two of them are also different, black one's softer and more delicate, while the white one's louder and rougher.

Here's the pictures of the black and the white bridges.

Besides, there are still other types of bridges for Erhu which don't look similar to this, I will share them on this blog some other day. Cheers~

The Vibrating Skin

The vibrating skin plays a very important role in producing erhu sound. Its quality and the skill of the Erhu maker determine the quality and the characteristic of the sound.

Most of huqin's vibrating skin is made of Python skin. How to differentiate a good skin from a bad one? Despite of just using words to explain, I would like to show you 4 pictures of the snake skin.

This one looks tidy, smooth and the sizes of every piece of scale are almost even, and it shows certain degree of yellowness. Such properties shows that the skin is mature and quite good for Erhu making.

This one looks a bit messy, rough, slightly worn, the scales are uneven and small (from small snake), and its colour is dull. Such skin is bad.

This one.... well, just look at it, it has wrinkles and the colour is dark, this shows that it's from an old Python. Some players like it as the sound is much sadder or deeper(not in terms of pitch) than the young python skin. And most of them are more expensive. For me, I prefer mature but not old one.

This one looks ugly and almost distorted. So, bad skin it is.















Although the original vibrating skin of huqin is made of Python skin, but due to the protest of environmentalists and law enforcement, more and more artificial vibrating skins for Erhu begins to emerge on the market. The photo below shows the artificial vibrating skin, design and manufactured by Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra Research and Development Department.

Usually the skin is made of some kind of plastic. The advantage is that it's louder and eco-friendly....so called, I'm not sure, as it involves chemical process, which will normally leave some toxic residue. The disadvantage, is that the sound characteristic become so awkward that it's not Erhu sound anymore.











So... the arguments continue among the professionals. In my opinion, Erhu should stay what it is, because that's what makes it an Erhu. Otherwise, let's call the evolved Erhu as Terra! Haha!