The Rotating Qianjing Trick

Qianjing is an important part of the Erhu. If your Qianjing is worn out, you might find that the Erhu goes out of tune easily, the pitch is different when you pull and push the bow although playing the same note and there is increased wolf tones.

But what do you do if you do not have any string to tie a new Qianjing or do not know how to do it?

Well, you can purchase a roll of Qianjing string at our online store, and learn how to tie the Qianjing from this video.

But if you're in need of a quick fix, try this rotating Qianjing trick:

You rotate the Qianjing string to a fresh new spot.

Might not work if the Qianjing is wound too tight though.

Talent - Born or Bred?

Recently I attended a 3 day band conference in Singapore. One of the speakers was Professor Shuichi Komiyama (who is by the way an excellent and inspiring speaker) from Montana State University.

He shared with us a story of one of his students. This student has attention deficit disorder and whenever he comes to Prof Shuichi's class he would say, "I wanna play hockey, I wanna play hockey". He can never focus on one thing for more than a few minutes. But this person went on to the University of North Texas and graduated as the 1st tenor in the top Jazz band in the University.

The message that he wanted to bring across is that talent is bred and not born. If he had given up on the student, the student would not have become what he is today.

I shared this little story with my wife the other day. We both concluded that Prof Shuichi must have been able to identify the in born music talent in that student. Without that the student would not have gone that far as well. She asked me to imagine my brother-in-law, who is quite tone deaf, as a music arranger. He can put in hours of hard work to learn about song structures, come up with his own fixed systems of "hi-hats come in second verse", "strings come in the chorus" etc. But his work will be cookie-cutter type, lacking in that X-factor. He can be good at it, but he'll never be excel at it.

But in life, a person can only be excellent at one or two things. So if good's good enough, good's good.

There are still a couple of more things I want to be good at....

Changing Strings on the Erhu

Someone asked me if I could do a video on how to calibrate or tune the Erhu. My first reaction was, isn't that pretty straightforward thing?

I guess I've been doing that so much so that I've taken some things for granted. Thus I decided to do a video on how to change Erhu strings as well as tune it.

When I finished the video, I realized that there are certain aspects you need to take note of, else your Erhu might end up looking and sound weird.

So here it is: How to change strings (on the Erhu)

Erhu Rolling Vibrato Video

Ok this is what I've been busy with lately. After much thinking and discussion with some Erhu instructors, I've created a video on how to do the rolling vibrato. The video is divided into 3 steps: (1) finger movement (2) bowing (3) combining finger movement and bowing.

Each step should be mastered before moving on to the next. And master each finger first before moving on to the next. It is a slow and tedious learning process but it beats having a convulsion every time you do vibrato.

And there is no substitute for a face to face lesson with a Erhu teacher. You should get a teacher to tweak your moves whenever you have the chance.

Here it is:

4) How to do rolling vibrato on Erhu


The rest of the earlier videos are here:

1) How to hold a Erhu Bow
2) How to bow the Erhu
3) How to play the Erhu - Left Hand Position

Bridges Over Troubled Snakeskin

I did an interesting experiment with different types of bridges to test how different bridges affect the tone of the Erhu.

The Erhu used in this experiment is a Shanghai Dunhuang aged Rosewood Erhu.

All other factors remained the same, although I would prefer to vary the thickness of the felt dampener according to the height of the bridge, because the tension of the dampener on the snakeskin affects the sound. But to compensate for that, I try to choose bridges with the same height as much as possible.

Click on the individual bridges to hear the sound clips:

Ebony * Rosewood * Whitewood

Violet Sandalwood * Young Sandalwood * Ebony Sandalwood

Violet Sandalwood * Small Leaf Sandalwood * Mystery Bridge

Clearly there are some subtle differences in the tone. Some high notes ring out more, some have more volume, some sound more hollow and some sound cleaner.

Would love to hear some comments from you.