Traditional Musical Instruments of China

The traditional music in China is played on solo instruments or in small bands of plucked and bowed cords instrument like flutes, and various cymbals, gongs, and drums. The scale is pentatonic, the Bamboo pipes and qin are among the oldest known musical instruments that originated from China; instruments are traditionally divided into classes based on their materials of composition: animal skin, gourd, bamboo, wood, silk, earth/clay, metal and stone. Chinese groups of the tradition consist of the bowed cords, woodwinds, plucked strings and drums.

source of picture: www.foreigners-in-china.com

• Woodwind and percussion which include dizi, sheng, paigu, gong, paixiao, guan, bells, cymbals, bottle gourd silk. 
• Bowed string which comprises of erhu, zhonghu, dahu, banhu, jinghu, gaohu, gehu, yehu, cizhonghu, diyingehu, leiqin. 
• Plucked and struck strings which include guqin, sanxian, yueqin, yangqin, guzheng, ruan, konghou, liuqin, pipa, zhu.

The Chinese vocal music has traditionally been sung in a thin, non-resonant voice or in falsetto and this is usually solo rather than choral, all the traditional Chinese music is melodic rather than harmonic. The Chinese vocal music is possibly developed from the sung poems and verses with music. The instrumental pieces played on an erhu or dizi are famous, and are often available outside the country. But the pipa and zheng music are more traditional, and are more popular in the country itself.

The qin is possibly the most reverse instrument in China, even though very few tribes know what it is or seen and heard one being played. The zheng, a form of zither, is the most famous in Henan, Chaozhou, Hakka and Shandong. The pipa, a type of lute, assumed to have been introduced from the Arabian Peninsula area during the 6^th century and accepted to suit the Chinese tastes, it is the famous in Shanghai and surrounding.