Sheng: China musical instrument

The Chinese sheng is a mouth-blown free reed musical instrument that is made up of vertical pipes. The sheng is one of the oldest Chinese musical instruments. The images portraying its kind dates back to 1100 BC and there are really musical instruments from the Han era that have been preserved today. Traditionally, the musical instrument has been used as an accompaniment musical instrument for solo suona or dizi performances. The sheng is one of the main musical instruments in kunqu and some other genres of the Chinese opera. This musical instrument is also found in some traditional small ensembles, like the wind and percussion groups the northern china. The musical instrument is also used for both melody and accompaniment instrument in the modern day Chinese orchestra.

source: haunty.hubpages.com

The sheng has been in the work of some composers from china. Including; Lou Harrison, Tim Risher, Daniel Bjarnason, Brad Catler as well as Christopher Adler.

Chinese free-reed wind musical instruments named he and yu were first mentioned in bone oracle writing that was traced back to 14^th century to 12^th century BC and were recognized in later text as types of the sheng instrument. The first appearance of the word ‘sheng’ is in few poems of shijing that was traced back to the 7^th century BC. Ancient musical instruments with gourd wind chambers, differing numbers of pipes, with bamboo or metal reeds have been seen in archaeological finds at the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in the present day Hubei region and the Han tombs at Mawangdui in the province of Hunan.

In the 8^th century, three versions of yu and three versions of sheng were sent to the Japanese court and these have been kept and preserved in the shosoin imperial repository in Nara. All the musical instruments had seventeen pipes with a long curving mouthpiece and are very analogous to the traditional version of the sheng in use today. Meanwhile, versions of the instrument with different numbers of pipes and chromatic musical instruments have been noted over the centuries.

The reeds of the musical instrument vibrates at a fixed frequency, different from the single reeds, double reeds and pointed free reeds that vibrate at pitch according to the length of the fixed air column. Covering a hole on the pipe of the musical instrument causes the whole length to resonate with the frequency of the reeds.

The sheng instrument is performed by interchangeably blowing and inhaling. The player of the musical instrument can manufacture a continuous sound without pausing. The traditional playing style of the instrument is to sound 2 or 3 notes at the same time by adding a fifth or octave above the main body of the main melody note of the instrument. When a higher note is not present, a lower note a fourth beneath the main melody note can rather be performed. The sheng instrument can be categorized into traditional sheng and keyed sheng. The keyed sheng have just been developed in the 20^th century.

The difference between the traditional version of the musical instrument and the keyed version of the musical instrument is on the mechanism. On the traditional sheng instrument, the holes on the finger pipes are pressed directly by the fingers of the player. On the keyed version of the musical instrument, the hole on the finger pipes are opened and closed by a means of keys or levers. In the absence of keys, the number of pipes and the size of the larger instruments make it impossible to be performed by hand.

The traditional sheng instrument used in the northern chinese ritual music, kunqu and the Jiangnam sizhu ensembles commonly have seventeen pipes but only 13 or 14 of the pipes are active. The scale of the traditional version of the musical instrument is primarily diatonic, for example the 17 pipe sheng instrument that is used in Jiangnam sizhu can be tuned:

a′ b′ c″ c♯″ d″ e″ (2 pipes), f♯″ g″ a″ b″ c♯″′ d″′ or

A4, B4, C5, C♯5, D5, E5 (2 pipes), F♯5, G5, A5, B5, C♯6, D6

With the development of the guoyue music that came up in the 20^th century, the sheng instrument went through a series of change in china and these changes increased the range and volume of the musical instrument. The guoyue sheng instrument had all its 17 pipes fitted with reeds, then the number of the instrument’s pipes was increased to 21 and the metal tubes were fixed to the bamboo pipes to amplify the sound. The other change was the invention of the keyed version of the musical instrument.

The chromatic 24 and 26 pipe keyed sheng instruments were popular during the 1950s, but current versions of the instrument often come with about 36 pipes. There are four main ranges of this version of the sheng instrument, forming a family of the soprano, alto, the tenor and the bass. All are chromatic all through their range and all are tuned to the equal temperament scale.

• Gaoyin – is a 36-pipe sheng that has a soprano range of G3 to F#6
• Zhongyin sheng – is a 36-pipe sheng that has an alto range of C3 to B5. Perfect 5th lower than the gaoyin sheng. It has an additional row of about 12 keys colored in black that when depressed performs all 3 pipes corresponding to the same note in varying octaves. e.g., pressing the black "C" can cause the notes C3, C4 and C5 to be sounded concurrently and it uses treble and alto clefs.
• Cizhongyin – is a 36-pipe sheng with a tenor range of G2 to F#5. One octave lower than soprano sheng. It uses alto clef or treble clef transposed down an octave. The cizhingyin sheng can as well be used as diyin sheng.
• Diyin sheng – is a 32-pipe sheng that has a bass range of C2 to G4.

Much larger versions of the keyed sheng instrument include the ‘da paisheng’; a large floor standing instrument that is like an organ with foot pedals and the ‘baosheng’ that is performed resting on the lap of the player or on a stand.