Sunday, June 09, 2013

Converting songs into 二胡 music

There were numerous songs which were converted into instrumental music. Songs like "Ständchen" ("Serenade") by Schubert is transcribed superbly by Liszt into piano piece. Chinese songs has been converted in the same way using traditional instruments like 二胡. 

Due to its structure, 二胡 can play the whole music spectrum of violin. Westerners used to call it Chinese violin. I can still remember one Chinese movie where one actor challenges a professor who despises Chinese Instruments. He won on the very high notes which a violin cannot cover. 

Although 二胡 can be played in jazz, pop, even rock, I can't really appreciate most of them anyway as I am more of a traditional Chinese music lover.

I can accept a pop song being converted to a 二胡 music. However, you can't just convert any song into  二胡 music. The song must have the kind of rhythm to be played smoothly on the instrument. 二胡 music are continuous streams of notes (拉弦乐器). It is most suitable for quiet and sad musics. A master piece of such music is 二泉映月. You can actually feel that the instrument is crying. Many songs are more bouncy with notes that bounces and pauses between words which is best played on guitar or piano (弹拨乐器). It just won't sound right if played in 二胡. It end up sounding like dragging the words rather than let the words bounce individually. 

Songs like 真的好想你, 枉凝眉 can be played superbly on the instrument. You can't imagine that it was originally a song. On the other hand 情人的眼泪, 淚光閃閃 simply cannot be played smoothly like a 二胡 music it still remains a song in essence. This is especially true for the latter. It was a Japanese Okinawan song that uses Sanshin (三線 similar to Shamisen) to enhance the bouncy sound. They are better off being played on a piano instead. In actual fact, the two song were played very nicely on piano.



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