Guofeng: a pentatonic melody that slides and shakes, guzheng and pipa, a pop band and the gongs of Peking opera

Take the loop apart

Press Play and let the eight bars loop a few times. Each row is one track of an Ensemble Set: Drums on T1, Bass on T2, Guzheng on T3 and Dizi on T4. All four parts are original MIDI written for this lesson, and the Ensemble instrument plays them live in your browser. The guzheng is a Physical string model and the dizi is the Sample engine’s flute, standing in for the real instruments.

The sections below build the loop up one layer at a time. Use Solo and Mute in the player as you read. Edit sound opens a part’s Ensemble editor on this page: turn a knob while the loop plays to hear what it does. Reload the page to get the lesson’s settings back. The other examples in the list are explained further down.

1. Five notes: the Yu mode and “1=G”

Solo Dizi. The whole melody uses five notes: E, G, A, B and D. These are the Chinese pentatonic, called gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu (宫 商 角 徵 羽). Chinese musicians write them in jianpu, numbered notation, as 1 2 3 5 6. Here 1 (the gong) is G, so the key is written “1=G”. The loop ends on E, the yu, so it is in the Yu mode on E. The player’s facts line shows this as “E Yu pentatonic (1=G)”.

There are no 4ths and no 7ths, so there are no half steps, only whole steps and minor thirds. The minor thirds, G down to E and D down to B, are where the tune sounds most Chinese. In the DAW the song’s scale is set to this mode: the piano roll highlights the five notes, and the Control Bar shows “1=G” next to the scale.

2. Slides, vibrato and a trill

A Chinese melody is not only its notes; it is also how each note is shaped. The dizi here never plays a plain note on a long note. Every ornament is written as note expression, a pitch curve on that note in the piano roll, made with the Chinese Techniques tool in MIDI Tools:

• 上滑音, slide up: bars 1 and 5 start a step or a minor third below and slide up into the note. 下滑音, slide down: the long E in bar 4 falls away at its end.
• 吟揉, vibrato: every note of two beats or more starts straight, and then the vibrato fades in, about 5 Hz and a quarter of a semitone deep.
• 颤音, trill: the high A of bar 6 alternates quickly with the B above it.

Mute the vibrato in your head and the tune turns into a plain pentatonic exercise. Because the curves belong to the notes, transposing or moving a note takes its ornament with it.

3. The guzheng: open strings and a glissando

Add Guzheng. A guzheng is a zither with about 21 strings tuned to the pentatonic, here to G A B D E. So the guzheng can only play the chord tones its strings have. Over C it rolls E, G and D; over D it plays D and A in open fifths; over Bm it plays B, A and D. Each bar runs up and down the strings in 8th notes.

At the end of bar 4 the player’s hand sweeps across the strings into a high G on bar 5. That is a 刮奏, a glissando: Chinese Techniques writes it as a fast run of scale notes only, 32nd notes over two octaves. On the last note of bar 8 the left hand presses the string behind the bridge, which bends the pitch up and back. This is 按吟 (press vibrato), and it only bends upwards.

4. The pop band underneath

Add Drums and Bass. Underneath, this is an ordinary soft pop band. In bars 1–4 the kick plays on 1 and on the “and” of 3, a side stick on 2 and 4, and the hats in 8ths. In bars 5–7 the snare takes the backbeat. The bass holds each root for a dotted quarter, then plays the 5th and the octave. The chords are the progression most Chinese pop ballads lean on:

• Bars 1–4: C – D – Bm – Em, 4–5–3–6 in G major (the “royal road”), ending on Em, the Yu tonic
• Bars 5–8: C – D – G – Em, the same start, then home through G

The chords use notes the melody avoids: C is the 4 of the scale. That is typical of guofeng pop. The melody stays pentatonic while the band plays Western chords.

5. Luogu: the gongs and drums of Peking opera

Listen to bar 8. The groove stops after two beats, the toms roll in 16ths and get louder, and the crash on the next One answers them. This is a pop band’s version of 锣鼓 (luogu), the percussion section of Chinese opera. In a Peking opera band four players lead the action: the bangu (a small, dry clapper-drum, the conductor), the big gong, the small gong and the cymbals. Their patterns are written as syllables. Each syllable names which instruments strike:

• 仓 (cang): big gong, small gong and cymbals together. 才 (cai): cymbals (with the small gong). 七 or 切 (qi): cymbals, muted.
• 台 (tai) and 令 (ling): small gong, full and light. 顷 (qing): big gong, light.
• 大, 八 (da, ba): one stroke on the bangu. 嘟 (du): a roll on the bangu. 0 is a rest.

The patterns are called 锣鼓经 (luogu jing) and every one has a meaning on stage: 急急风 is running and fighting, 四击头 is an entrance and a pose. Two examples below play them as published, with one track per instrument. The gongs’ pitch moves after the stroke: the small gong sweeps up and the big gong sinks. The examples copy this with a pitch curve on every gong note. The scores write 急急风 one beat to a bar (1/4) and 四击头 two beats to a bar (2/4). The DAW groups the same beats four to a bar, so its bar lines fall elsewhere, but every stroke stays on its beat.

6. The sound

TuttiDAW has no samples of Chinese instruments yet, and we only ship sounds we may license. So each Chinese instrument here is an Ensemble sound that stands in for it. Edit sound shows every value, and the same project opens in the DAW. A value written as 40/127 is the knob’s stored number on a 0–127 scale.

Drums (T1): the Drum engine, DRUM KIT

The DRUM KIT sound on its STD kit. Notes follow the General MIDI drum map: 36 kick, 37 side stick, 38 snare, 42 closed hat, 45, 47 and 48 the toms of the roll, 49 the crash. TONE goes down from 70/127 to 60/127 and DECY from 64/127 to 60/127, for a softer kit. The reverb send goes from 20/127 to 22/127.

Bass (T2): Duo, a round finger bass

SQR BASS on the Duo engine with WAVE set to SAW. CUT goes down to 40/127, RES to 20/127 and DRV to 10/127, for a round tone that stays under the guzheng. The envelope is 0/60/40/24 (ADSR, each /127), the filter envelope +30, and VCE is MONO with no glide.

Guzheng (T3): Physical, PLUCK

PLUCK on the Physical engine is a modelled plucked string. To sound like a guzheng it is brighter (BRIT 104/127) and plucked near the bridge (POS 14/127), with a little pluck noise (EXC 14/127) and a long release (96/127) so the strings ring. STRC 32/127 and DAMP 120/127 keep the string in tune from its first milliseconds. It sends 15/127 to the delay and 45/127 to the reverb, and sits a little to the left.

Dizi (T4): Sample, FLUTE

The Sample engine’s FLUTE set, with a quicker attack (ATK 20/127) and CUT 120/127 for brightness. A real dizi buzzes through its membrane, the 笛膜; the sample has no such membrane, so this is a flute playing dizi lines. The notes never overlap, so each slide and vibrato stays on its own note. It sends 18/127 to the delay and 45/127 to the reverb.

The set’s shared effects

Guofeng mixes are wet. The four parts share the set’s Reverb, a HALL with SIZE 80/127 and DAMP 60/127, and its Delay, a dotted 8th with FDBK 35/127, which gives the dizi its echo. The chorus (CRT 30/127, CDP 50/127) is barely used. MASTER is lowered from 127 to 110 for headroom and LOWCUT stays OFF.

7. More examples

The list under the player holds seven more examples. Four are variations in other modes and moods. The guzheng ballad is in A Zhi with 1=D, the guzheng’s own tuning. Guofeng rock has the pipa’s five-finger tremolo (轮指, lunzhi). Guofeng electronic is half-time. In opera-style pop (戏腔, xiqiang) the Voice engine sings opera-style ornaments, and the percussion pattern wujitou breaks in. Each one has its own tempo, key and sounds, and each opens in the DAW with its own featured part.

Two examples are pure Peking opera percussion: 急急风 (jijifeng), and an entrance made of 冲头, 四击头 and a roll. Each has one track per instrument, like a line of the score. The last one is a reference study: the theme of “Caiyun Zhuiyue” (彩云追月, 1935), a public-domain tune by Ren Guang, rebuilt from published jianpu scores.

Try this in the DAW

Open in TuttiDAW loads this exact project into the browser studio. The Dizi track is selected and armed, and its Ensemble editor is open. Open the dizi clip and look at the pitch curves on its long notes. Then try these changes:

1. Take the ornaments off: open the dizi clip, select all of its notes (Ctrl+A), switch the piano roll to its MPE tab, right-click one of the notes and choose Clear All Envelopes. Applying Chinese Techniques again would only add to the curves. Without them the tune sounds like an exercise.
2. Add the missing notes: set the clip’s scale to Qingyue Yu (清乐羽调式, seven notes). The piano roll now also marks C and F♯, the qingjue (4) and the biangong (7). Play them in passing and hear how the tune moves from Chinese towards Western minor.
3. Write your own glissando: select a long guzheng note, choose 刮奏 (glissando) in Chinese Techniques and apply it. Try the Span and Direction values to sweep up or down into the note.

Your edits stay in that temporary project. They do not change this page.