Pipa fits nicely to the melancholic mood. It's not the continuity of the sound that contributes to the feel. Pipa is most often a string of beads as Erhu is a whining stream. Not sure of the exact English term for the special technique - stroking the string? The quavering half note I humbly worship. We also tried that a lot with zhong ruan(a fat, roundish traditional chinese string instrument) but the sounds produced are just different. I always regard zhong ruan as a steady alto. Playing feminine pieces with zhong ruan just doesn't feel right.
Among all those traditional instruments, I can't pinpoint any favourite although I do have several 'ensemble' on my strictly 'no-no' list - erhu ensemble, suo na ensemble. Somewhat atrociously annoying.
Dearest zhong ruan (
Good to know zhong ruan is becoming a popular solo instrument. Usually it's just for chords and background music. *_*
3 comments:
That is a nice sounding instrument. I occasionally hear Chinese music...but I unfortunately don't know the names of any of the instruments.
I do have the House of Flying Daggers soundtrack, by Shigeru Umebayashi. I liked the soundtrack more than the movie, but it's interesting how he melded western and Chinese instruments.
I especially like the track they played for the echoing game, hundreds of drums and yes, accompanied by pipa. That's the instrument they played in the movie ^^
I think my favorite tracks were "farewell no. 1", "beauty song", "The echo game", and "until the end (sounds so tragic)".
I have a hard time identifying instruments in those songs though. Thanks for heads up on "the echo game" though :-)
I think Hero was a better movie, HOFD seemed like Zhang was trying to answer too much of the criticism of Hero. HOFD wasn't bad though...the imagery was pretty.
Post a Comment