On Mei Yueqiang's Guqin Cultivation
Guqin is a national musical instrument with a long history in China. The ancients praised it as "the voice of the sage ruling the world, and the thing that the gentleman cultivated." Although the praise is excessive, the anecdote of guqin recorded in Historical Records does have its touching charm. For example, Yong Men playing the piano can make Meng Changjun sad; Biography of Historical Records of Sima Xiangru records the love story of Sima Xiangru and Zhuo Wenjun, the daughter of Zhuo Wangsun. In Qin Ji, written by Yi Xue in the Tang Dynasty, the function of guqin is summarized as: "You can observe the wind and teach, you can think calmly, and you can die with courage ...". When people smell it, they all admire Guqin. However, the artistic charm of guqin is the crystallization of persistent scholars. Through years of hard work, research and insight into the artistic conception of piano music, and comprehensive display of its own connotation cultivation and skilled skills, this is not an artistic accomplishment that every pianist can show.
Guqin has been regarded as an elegant musical instrument in China for thousands of years. Therefore, there are many people who study guqin art and write guqin works, such as Liu Xiang (79-8 BC), Xue (725-800 BC) and Leng Qian (0/268-65438 BC). Most of them discuss guqin aesthetics, operating norms, maxims and artistic styles. Because the predecessors used concise words and implicit statements, plus the rendering of longing, for example; In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Quan once said in the Complete Works of the Moon: "Although the lyres and harps have wonderful sounds, they have no wonderful fingers, so it is difficult to make them extremely." He only said that one fingering was difficult, and he found out where the competition was difficult. How to overcome the difficult fingering and obtain a wonderful timbre has not been carried out, and future generations can only get news when playing the piano. Another example is: The Love of Western Hills Qin discusses 24 situations of playing the guqin (namely, harmony, quietness, clearness, remoteness, antiquity, lightness, quietness, elegance, beauty, brightness, mining, cleanliness, decoration, garden, firmness, macro, delicacy, smoothness, health, lightness, heaviness, slowness and speed). Although each situation is elaborated in detail, for example, in Jing, he concluded that beginners are busy with their fingers when playing the piano, and they are afraid that they can't catch up before and after, so it is difficult to be precise if they want to extend the beat. The existing problems are very practical. However, how to solve these problems is still at the end of the analysis. How to popularize Guqin and help people learn Guqin well today is still unknown. Give piano learners the concept of "unattainable". Therefore, based on decades of amateur guqin teaching experience, the author summarizes the problems that piano learners are prone to, and discusses the cultivation of playing guqin.
First, the cultivation of "advanced consciousness" in guqin performance
People who know and play guqin have a common feeling, that is, it is not difficult to play a piano piece, and it is not easy to express the artistic conception of the piano piece with emotion. Often, players only know how to fiddle the strings with their fingers, and as a result, their hands are contrary to their wishes, and the sound is not what they want, which sounds boring.
Music is an artistic language, which expresses the author's thoughts and yearning through artistically processed sounds. This is the essence of "artistic conception". Therefore, anyone who plays a piano piece must first understand the emotional content of the piece, and when playing, it is the first condition to integrate the emotions inspired by himself with the emotions that the piano piece must express. However, if there are only internal emotional conditions, and the forms of expression are not free, meaningful, harmonious and unified, it is impossible to have good results. So playing skills are also very important.
There are more than 100 fingering on the guqin, which is a unique musical instrument in the world with rich fingering and strong expressive force. It is precisely because of its numerous and meticulous fingering that it is easy for players to attend to one thing and lose sight of another. Pay attention to fingering, forget the beat, pay attention to fingering and beat, forget the number of strings and phonemes, and master the intonation and lightness, heaviness, slowness and illness. It is not easy to grasp the feelings of piano music. Therefore, it is said: "Guqin is difficult to learn and remember, and it is difficult to learn and practice." Then, there is a problem of "feeling ahead" in how to combine feelings with expression methods and play wonderful piano music.
The sense of advance is very extensive, and we should discuss it from preparation to completion:
(a), the preparation of advanced consciousness. When teaching students piano skills, predecessors first emphasized the word "quality", that is, clothes should be neat, sitting posture should be correct, and you must calm down and wait until your breath sinks before playing the piano. In fact, this requirement is not harsh, because untidy clothes hinder beauty and fingering; Improper sitting posture hinders the cooperation between left and right hands; If the heart is not quiet, the artistic conception will not come out; If you are angry, you can't control your momentum. In addition, in order to make the sound smooth, you must start the sound in your head before playing with your fingers, just like singing. The advantage of doing this is: 1, which can calm your mind. 2, help to stimulate feelings, 3, there is a voice in my heart. Although the reason is simple, it is also a necessary artistic accomplishment for players.
(2) Yitong Sanhui. Yitong Sanhui is an advanced practice to deal with the coordination between voices. In every bar (sentence) of a piece of music, there are differences between sounds and between two tones of harmony. This is common sense. When you play, you should master three notes, that is, the first note will reverberate in your mind after it passes. When you pronounce the second note, you should consider the inheritance relationship with the previous one and what kind of strength you should use. At the same time, you should consider the advanced preparation of the third note (ideologically and fingering), just like painting, you should have intention first, and then use a pen, so as to draw a work that conforms to your subjective intention. Ancient rhyme; This is the truth that "Wu Daozi paints before painting". This cultivation of "knowing three skills" is an important form of expressing inner feelings by fingering. If you don't understand this, it will be difficult to play the piano music that conforms to your pursuit of "artistic conception".
(3) the "sense of being ahead" in the whole music. Every music has its theme, and the whole music has its main part to express the theme. The theme part must be set off by other parts. If there is no flesh-and-blood connection between sentences and paragraphs when playing Qin Qin's music, then the theme can't stand out. Therefore, the overall concept of playing music is essential. Dealing with the relationship between the past and the future, we must also have "advanced consciousness" in order to play a complete and good piano music.
"Advance consciousness" is easier said than done. It is the crystallization of the player's physique, temperament, technology and other qualities. Just like calligraphers' writing, whether you write in block letters, running scripts, cursive scripts or fast and slow pens, you can master the rules of writing, and you can write a word smoothly and in one go. When practicing calligraphy, you should blaspheme more, read more, write more and study hard. You should listen more, play more, learn more, think more, and cultivate your sentiment. If you play guqin for a long time, you will reach a wonderful place.
Besides studying hard and practicing hard, it is also a good way to cultivate "advanced consciousness". It is when the teacher teaches the piano that he plays the melody of the piano and sings silently. When practicing by himself, he will repeat the memorized melody, so that his fingering can keep up with the rhythm of the melody. Don't worry if he can't keep up with fingering or doesn't follow the rules at first. You can change the tone slowly, and the natural voice will be sonorous and solid after proficiency. However, some piano learners often say that they have a bad voice or can't sing and don't want to sing (including silent singing). Actually, it's different from singing. You don't need to sing well or move. If you can't sing well, you can hum along with the melody. Follow the sound and exercise your inner feelings. This is the correct way to learn. With the passage of time, the correspondence between heart and hand, meaning and subtlety is natural, and we can't just pay attention to fingering. Without sound things to regulate in your mind, forming habits will go astray. Some people have played guqin all their lives, and experts say "they can't play". It is an important reason that they can't master the method of learning guqin correctly. Of course, the correct teaching methods of teachers are also important reasons. Therefore, the cultivation of "feeling ahead of time" is an essential quality for players who play guqin, and it is a heart lock that combines inner feelings with external playing and internal playing.
Second, the sense of urgency of playing guqin
With a sense of advance in thought, the general techniques can keep up with the sound. In case of an emergency phrase or fingering that must be expressed on sixteen sounds, such as (bean), (sudden) and (pick-up), it refers to the action that fate expresses instantly, which requires not only the sound to be clean and neat, but also to keep in touch with the subsequent sounds, so that the phrase is "integrated" and clear and smooth. Hand movements can only be completed properly with the melodic movements in the mind, because pianists pay more attention to fingering, and often don't listen to the melody when they think of fingering, which will delay and make it impossible to play the correct effect instantly according to the beat. As a result, he either ignored the fingering or ignored the beat, which affected the emotional playing of the piano. It is also a factor that guqin is difficult to learn and master. How to cultivate his sense of hardship? 2. When playing, we should get rid of this concept of fingering action ideologically, let fingering be integrated into our mind, and make it naturally integrate with the harmony (beat) of thought, so as to pop up a good effect. Such as; The fifth paragraph of Plum Blossom Three Alleys by Guangling School is the second sentence describing plum blossoms swaying in the wind in a small sound area with three different techniques. The main difference between it and the two phrases before and after is the urgent bean on the sixteen tones, which should be done neatly and connected with the six emblems and nine emblems. If you don't give full play to the expressive force of fingering, you can't meet the artistic requirements of plum blossoms swaying in the cold wind and the wind blowing in the snowstorm. It is not easy to do this phrase well. You must master the correct fingering and integrate it into your mind at one go. Therefore, "sense of urgency" is an indispensable accomplishment in playing guqin.
Third, the consistency of playing guqin.
Playing guqin is an instrument that alternately expresses musical feelings by mastering three timbres: scattered tone, overtone and bending tone. The main playing technique is bending tone. Judging from the characteristics of these three timbres and the fluctuation of the sound, the scattered sound and overtone can maintain the aftertaste of a certain time value because there is no object collision after the strings vibrate. And pressing the sound depends on the left hand pressing the string and the right hand playing the string to make a sound. When the right finger plays the string, the left finger must be pressed against the string to keep the rhyme. If the fingers of the left hand leave the strings, the rhyme disappears, so there is another problem of how to keep the rhyme.
Guqin is a musical instrument with seven strings, and each string has three sets of sounds. Because of the different thickness of the seven strings, the phonemes of each string with the same scale are not fixed on the same emblem. In order to give full play to the beautiful timbre and wide range of guqin, composers adopt the method of tonal scale when arranging music and arranging fingering. So when playing, they must constantly change the phonemes of the strings, and there will be a beat when the two sounds are far apart. Why? The most fundamental problem is to enrich Qin Le's emotional adaptation and expression ability; At the same time, it does not rule out the need to adapt to the convenience of multi-tone playback. Besides the sense of urgency, how to effectively connect the sounds of different strings and phonemes will inevitably produce a sense of connection, so the sense of connection is also a kind of accomplishment that guqin players must attach importance to.
The most common fingering mistake of pianists is to attach importance to "sound" and ignore "rhyme". That is, when the finger moves on the strings, the previous fingering is right and the next fingering is not good, so the finger is busy preparing for the next fingering, so that when there is a lingering sound (rhyme), the sound is broken, which leads to the disconnection between sounds, and a "○" rest is added between sounds, which destroys the integrity of music. Another fingering disease that is easy to commit is improper fingering, and you can't master the method of changing fingers. In order to make the piano sound mellow, smooth, clean and beautiful, it is necessary to cultivate a "sense of coherence" in playing techniques.
Four, cultivate "continuous consciousness" should pay attention to the following issues:
1, be quiet and not impetuous, and you can't just listen to the sound without rhyme.
2. Fingers should be slow, that is, when two fingers press the strings successively, try to make the last sound not appear, press the finger of the previous sound without moving, and organically connect with the latter sound while maintaining the lingering sound.
You can't use two fingers alternately. When you have to start changing phonemes, you can use the previous tone (note below) and the latter tone (note above). Its purpose is to make the former tone weak and the latter tone naturally connect from weak to strong, so that the connection between sounds will not be stiff and uncoordinated, and at the same time, it can avoid sudden interruption and pause.
4. The problem of multi-string continuous sound acquisition is a technical problem, which is generally handled by means of "pressing multiple strings with one finger" and "crossing the sound through a labyrinth".
Generally, there are two kinds of pressing multiple strings with one finger. One is a continuous tone with two adjacent strings, sliding up and down or playing two notes with one finger; The other is more than three strings, and fingers can press multiple strings at the same time, so that the sound effect is naturally coherent and seamless.
Snake and crane step is a kind of fingering that imitates snake and crane step. Snakes, generally used in big fingers, continuously collect sounds through multiple strings at the same time. Crane step is a method of picking up sound at intervals of more than two emblems, because the finger length is not enough, and it must cross like a crane. But beginners are prone to make mistakes:
1, after rushing out, I couldn't control the strength of my fingers, not only the sound of playing the piano, but also the harmonious timbre. How to solve this problem? First of all, we should have a sense of thinking ahead, so that our fingers are not nervous before stepping out. At the same time, it is necessary to look at the phoneme and press the strings against the piano surface with your fingers instead of hitting the piano surface, so as to achieve good results. The predecessors said, "Fingers are as heavy as Mount Tai and as light as a feather." That's the truth.
2. To solve the problem that stepped fingers can't press phonemes correctly, we should first be familiar with the harmonious relationship between phonemes and dispersion, homophony and octave, such as the outer emblem, the twelve emblem, the ten emblem, the nine emblem, the seven emblem, the six emblem, the eight emblem and the five emblem on the seven strings of the common orthodox tune (1 = f). Double chord harmony (minor chord separated by one chord) and major chord (chord separated by two chords). Spanning strings (strings separated by more than three strings). After being familiar with phonemes, there is a simple and accurate method to locate phonemes, which is especially helpful for beginners. Just try it. That is, when you need to press a phoneme, look at the phoneme with your eyes instead of your fingers, so that your fingers can basically press it accurately (pitch problems need to be fine-tuned by hearing). This truth is simple, because all the functions of the human body are directed by the brain. The information observed by the eyes is transmitted to the brain, and the brain then directs the movements of the hands. This kind of unity is human instinct. As long as the eyes are not misread the phoneme, the hand will not fail to press the phoneme.
3. There are common fingering actions such as "Two Up" and "Two Down" that don't remember phonemes. Beginners often go up or down casually for the second time, and there will be a "yellow" sound (no sound), which will cause hearing differences over time, so pay attention. Why not write phonemes on the piano score? This is a basic common sense problem in music theory, because guqin is treated according to the pentatonic scale, and the second one is the upper two tones and the lower two tones, that is, after taking the sound from the six strings and nine emblems, the upper seven emblems are divided into nine points and then the seven emblems and seven emblems. It is precisely because this is common sense in music theory that people who play the piano must understand this truth and deal with it seriously when playing, otherwise there will be problems with intonation, let alone playing.
The cultivation of persistence is very shallow and may not be easy to use. It requires skillful fingering and inner belief cultivation, and the heart and hand are consistent when playing, in order to play a good effect.
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