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157-421: The guqin ( [kùtɕʰǐn] ; Chinese : 古琴 ) is a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument . It has been played since ancient times, and has traditionally been favoured by scholars and literati as an instrument of great subtlety and refinement, as highlighted by the quote "a gentleman does not part with his qin or se without good reason," as well as being associated with

314-438: A cello , but raspier. The above four figures are from an old handbook. Written qin music did not directly tell what notes were played; instead, it was written in a tablature detailing tuning, finger positions, and stroke technique, thus comprising a step by step method and description of how to play a piece. Some tablatures do indicate notes using the gongche system, or indicate rhythm using dots . The earliest example of

471-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where

628-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and

785-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and

942-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese

1099-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of

1256-407: A civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to the other elements to determine the age of the record. The records also had the inscription "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times" hand-etched on its surface. The inscription was located in the "takeout grooves", an area of the record between the label and playable surface. Since this was not in

1413-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of

1570-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only

1727-502: A few notes, a single character could represent one note , or sometimes as many as nine. This notation form was called jianzi pu ( 減 字譜) (literally "reduced notation") and it was a major advance in qin notation. It was so successful that from the Ming dynasty onwards, a great many qinpu (琴 譜 ) (qin tablature collections) appeared, the most famous and useful being "Shenqi Mipu" (The Mysterious and Marvellous Tablature) compiled by Zhu Quan ,

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1884-419: A few players who are paid to exclusively play and research the guqin professionally and nothing else. Qin players can also be well-versed in other cultural pursuits, such as the arts. Or they can do independent research on music subjects. Often, players may play other instruments (not necessarily Chinese) and give recitals or talks. During the performance of qin, musicians may use a variety of techniques to reach

2041-533: A fixed rhythm throughout the entire piece. While acoustics dictated the general form and construction of the guqin, its external form could and did take on a huge amount of variation, whether it be from the embellishments or even the basic structure of the instrument. Qin tablatures from the Song era onwards have catalogued a plethora of qin forms. All, however, obey very basic rules of acoustics and symbolism of form. The qin uses strings of silk or metal - nylon and

2198-537: A free string with the fingers of the right hand. The second type, made by plucking a string with the right hand and gently tapping specific note positions on the string with the left hand, will create a crisp sound named fan yin ( 泛音 , lit. "floating sound") or overtone harmonics (the equivalent technique in Western music is the string harmonic or flageolet ). Important scale notes, called hui ( 徽 ), are marked by 13 glossy white dots made of mica or seashell inset in

2355-555: A greeting by Sagan's six-year-old son, Nick ; other human sounds, like footsteps and laughter (Sagan's); the inspirational message Per aspera ad astra in Morse code ; and musical selections from different cultures and eras. The record also includes a printed message from U.S. president Jimmy Carter . The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white, and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities,

2512-571: A half octaves. The style of singing is similar to that used to recite Tang poetry . In order fully to appreciate qin songs, one needs to become accustomed to the eccentric singing style adopted by certain players of the instrument, such as Zha Fuxi. Traditionally, the qin was played in a quiet studio or room by oneself, or with a few friends; or played outdoors in places of outstanding natural beauty. Nowadays, many qin players perform at concerts in large concert halls, almost always, out of necessity, using electronic pickups or microphones to amplify

2669-432: A leisurely basis. The main purpose of qin societies is to promote and play qin music. They create opportunities to network and learn to play the instrument, to ask questions and to receive answers. Many artists down through the ages have played the instrument, and the instrument was a favourite of scholars. Certain melodies are also associated with famous figures, such as Confucius and Qu Yuan. Some emperors of China also had

2826-584: A liking to the qin, including the Song dynasty emperor, Huizong, as clearly seen in his own painting of himself playing the qin in "Ting Qin Tu". The classical collections such as Qin Shi , Qinshi Bu and Qinshi Xu include biographies of hundreds more players. Contemporary qin players extend from the early twentieth century to the present. More so than in the past, such players tend to have many different pursuits and occupations other than qin playing. There are only

2983-480: A message aboard—a kind of time capsule , intended to communicate to extraterrestrials a story of the world of humans on Earth. This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University . The selection of content for

3140-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as

3297-526: A one-string qin, and the Wuzhi Zhai Qinpu contains a picture and description of such an instrument. The modern ichigenkin apparently first appeared in Japan just after that time. However, the honkyoku (standard repertoire) of the ichigenkin today most closely resembles that of the shamisen . The Korean geomungo may also be related, albeit distantly. Korean literati wanted to play an instrument

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3454-447: A playable form. Since qin tablature does not indicate note value , tempo or rhythm , the player must work it out for themselves. Normally, qin players will learn the rhythm of a piece through a teacher or master. They sit facing one another, with the student copying the master. The tablature will only be consulted if the teacher is not sure of how to play a certain part. Because of this, traditional qinpu do not indicate them (though near

3611-400: A recording as a reference. In addition to learning to play established or ancient pieces very well, highly skilled qin players may also compose or improvise , although the player must be very good and extremely familiar with the instrument to do this successfully. A number of qin melodies are program music depicting the natural world. Dapu (打譜) is the transcribing of old tablature into

3768-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate

3925-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin

4082-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with

4239-406: A third audience. But in fact, there is sound, the sound coming from the fingers sliding on the string. With a really good qin, silk strings, and a perfectly quiet environment, all the tones can be sounded. Since the music is more player-oriented than listener oriented, and the player knows the music, he/she can hear it even if the sound is not there. With silk strings, the sliding sound might be called

4396-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c.  1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct

4553-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than

4710-437: A very quiet sound. For some players, this plucking isn't necessary. Instead of trying to force a sound out of the strings one should allow the strings to emit the sounds to which they are naturally predisposed. Some players say that the sliding on the string even when the sound has disappeared is a distinctive feature in qin music. It creates a "space" or "void" in a piece, playing without playing, sound without sound. In fact, when

4867-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which

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5024-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,

5181-409: Is generally interpreted to mean C D F G A c d, but this should be considered sol la do re mi sol la, since historically the qin was not tuned to absolute pitch. Other tunings are achieved by adjusting the tension of the strings using the tuning pegs at the head end. Thus manjiao diao ("slackened third string") gives 1 2 3 5 6 1 2 and ruibin diao ("raised fifth string") gives 1 2 4 5 7 1 2, which

5338-404: Is heading toward any particular star, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years ' distance of the star Gliese 445 , currently in the constellation Camelopardalis , in about 40,000 years . Carl Sagan noted that "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space , but the launching of this 'bottle' into

5495-431: Is of raw lacquer mixed with powdered deer horn, and the finishing process could take months of curing to complete. The finish develops cracks over time, and these cracks are believed to improve the instrument's sound as the wood and lacquer release tension. An antique guqin's age can be determined by this snake like crack pattern called "duanwen" (斷紋). According to tradition, the qin originally had five strings, representing

5652-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of

5809-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate

5966-513: Is round to represent Heaven and the bottom board flat to represent the earth. The entire length of the qin (in Chinese measurements ) is 3 chi , 6 cun and 5 fen ; representing the 365 days of the year (though this is just a standard since qins can be shorter or longer depending on the period's measurement standard or the maker's preference). Each part of the qin has meaning, some more obvious, like "dragon pool" and "phoenix pond". Until recently,

6123-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles

6280-484: Is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0.70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom . The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record—about an hour (more precisely, between 53 and 54 minutes). The information in

6437-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,

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6594-466: Is the second-longest excerpt included on the disc. The reason to select a work played on this specific instrument is because the tonal structure of the instrument, its musical scale, is derived from fundamental physical laws related to vibration and overtones , representing the intellectual capacity of human beings on this subject. In 2003, guqin music was proclaimed as one of the Masterpieces of

6751-466: Is then wrapped around a frame and immersed in a vat of liquid composed of a special mixture of natural glue that binds the strands together. The strings are taken out and left to dry, before being cut into the appropriate length. The top thicker strings (i.e. strings one to four) are further wrapped in a thin silk thread, coiled around the core to make it smoother. According to ancient manuals, there are three distinctive gauges of thickness that one can make

6908-455: Is to the complex ones of the qin. As the qin never gained a following in Korean society, the ritual geum became the fossilised form of it and to all intents and purposes unplayable for a qin player. The Korean scholars never adopted the qin but instead created their own instrument, the geomungo (玄琴), which adopted much of the qin's lore and aesthetics and essentially taking the qin's place as

7065-405: Is transposed to 2 3 5 6 1 2 3. The guqin is nearly always played as a solo instrument since its quietness of tone means that it cannot compete with the sounds of most other instruments or an ensemble . It can, however, be played together with a xiao (end-blown bamboo flute), with other qin, or played while singing. In old times, the se (a long zither with movable bridges and 25 strings)

7222-541: Is tuned in accordance to traditional principles. Ancient guqins were made of little more than wood and strings of twisted silk. Ornaments included inlaid dots of mother-of-pearl or other similar materials. Traditionally, the sound board was made of Chinese parasol wood firmiana simplex , its rounded shape symbolising the heavens. The bottom was made of Chinese Catalpa, Catalpa ovata , its flat shape symbolising earth. Modern instruments are most frequently made of Cunninghamia or other similar timbers. The traditional finish

7379-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because

7536-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for

7693-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it

7850-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while

8007-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system

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8164-480: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in

8321-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with

8478-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and

8635-590: The Solar System and its planets, DNA , and human anatomy and reproduction . Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, insects, plants and landscapes. Images of humanity depict a broad range of cultures. These images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day-to-day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of chemical composition . All measures used on

8792-551: The Warring States period , which gives all the details using ordinary written Chinese characters . Later in the Tang dynasty , Cao Rou and others simplified the notation, using only the important elements of the characters (like string number, plucking technique, hui number and which finger to stop the string) and combined them into one character notation . This meant that instead of having two lines of written text to describe

8949-455: The cello . Sounds are produced by plucking open strings, stopped strings, and harmonics . The use of glissando —sliding tones—gives it a sound reminiscent of a pizzicato cello, fretless double bass or a slide guitar . The qin has 13 "hui", which represent the different position in one string. Pressing different "hui" produces different sound keys. The qin is also capable of many harmonics, of which 91 are most commonly used and indicated by

9106-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c.  1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded

9263-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at

9420-414: The qi or "life force" of the music. The really empty sounds are the pauses between notes. However, if one cannot create a sound that can be heard when sliding on a string, it is generally acceptable to lightly pluck the string to create a very quiet sound. As a symbol of high culture, the qin continually appears in many forms of Chinese popular culture to varying degrees of accuracy. References are made to

9577-667: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Voyager Golden Record Although neither Voyager spacecraft

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9734-512: The 17th son of the founder of the Ming dynasty. In the 1960s, Zha Fuxi discovered more than 130 qinpu that contain well over 3360 pieces of written music. However, many qinpu compiled before the Ming dynasty are now lost, and many pieces have remained unplayed for hundreds of years. Qin pieces are usually around three to eight minutes in length, with the longest being "Guangling San", which is 22 minutes long. Other famous pieces include "Liu Shui" (Flowing Water), " Yangguan San Die" (Three Refrains on

9891-438: The 1950s, when silk string production stopped. Traditionally, the strings were wrapped around the goose feet, but a device has been invented, which is a block of wood attached to the goose feet, with pins similar to those used to tune the guzheng protruding out at the sides, so one can string and tune the qin using a tuning wrench . To string a guqin, one traditionally had to tie a fly's head knot ( yingtou jie ) at one end of

10048-426: The 20th century, qin music is generally printed with staff notation above the qin tablature. Because qin tablature is so useful, logical, easy, and the fastest way (once the performer knows how to read the notation) of learning a piece, it is invaluable to the qin player and cannot totally be replaced (just as staff notation cannot be replaced for Western instruments, because they developed a notation system that suited

10205-510: The Chinese guqin was selected as an Intangible World Cultural Heritage. In 2006, guqin was listed in the List of National Non-material Cultural Heritage in China. In 2010, a Song period guqin was sold for $ 22 million, making it the most expensive musical instrument ever sold. Legend has it that the qin, the most revered of all Chinese musical instruments, has a history of about 5,000 years, and that

10362-727: The Guangling school). There is a difference between qin schools and qin societies. The former concerns itself with transmission of a style, the latter concerns itself with performance. The qin society will encourage meetings with fellow qin players in order to play music and maybe discuss the nature of the qin. A gathering like this is called a yaji ( 雅集 , literally "elegant gathering"), and takes place once every month or two. Sometimes, societies may go on excursions to places of natural beauty to play qin, or attend conferences. They may also participate in competitions or research. Societies do not need strict structure to adhere to; they can operate on

10519-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though

10676-469: The Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO . As with any other musical tradition, there are differences in ideals and interaction between different people. Therefore, there exist different schools and societies which transmit these different ideas and artistic traditions. Many qin schools known as qin pai developed over the centuries. Such schools generally formed around areas where qin activity

10833-524: The Red Chamber and various others. The qin is also used in many contemporary Chinese novels, notably the 2016 novel Mo Dao Zu Shi , as well as the 2019 live-action series adaptation, The Untamed , in which the qin is used as a spiritual tool of protagonist Lan Wangji. Behind-the-scenes footage of the production of the series revealed that several actors were given qin lessons prior to filming to prepare them for their roles as characters that played

10990-451: The Sun" was not seriously considered for inclusion. In July 2015, NASA uploaded the audio contents of the record to the audio streaming service SoundCloud . In the upper left-hand corner of the record cover is a drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary notation

11147-552: The Voyager Record in the epilogue of Sagan's final book Billions and Billions (1997). To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the record, Ozma Records launched a Kickstarter project to release the record contents in LP format as part of a box set also containing a hardcover book, turntable slipmat, and art print. The Kickstarter was successfully funded with over $ 1.4 million raised. Ozma Records then produced another edition of

11304-723: The Yang Pass Theme), "Meihua San Nong" (Three Variations on the Plum Blossom Theme), "Xiao Xiang Shui Yun" (Mist and Clouds over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers), and "Pingsha Luo Yan" ( Wild Geese Descending on the Sandbank). The average player will generally have a repertoire of around ten pieces which they will aim to play very well, learning new pieces as and when they feel like it or if the opportunity arises. Players mainly learn popular well-transcribed versions, often using

11461-401: The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius . It is sometimes referred to by the Chinese as "the father of Chinese music" or "the instrument of the sages". The guqin is not to be confused with the guzheng , another Chinese long stringed instrument also without frets , but with moveable bridges under each string. Traditionally, the instrument was simply referred to as the " qin " (琴) but by

11618-490: The book Cunjian Guqin Zhifa Puzi Jilan , there are around 1,070 different finger techniques used for the qin. Thus the qin is possibly the instrument with the most playing techniques in both the Chinese and Western instrument families. Most of the qin's techniques are obsolete, but around 50 of them still appear in modern performance. Sometimes, guqin can be played with a violin bow . It has a tone similar to that of

11775-459: The changes of dynasty and so today the normal qin is used. In Japan, the qin was never adopted into ritual music, but for a time in the late Edo period the qin was adopted by some scholars and Buddhist monks. The guqin was later adjusted and adopted into general Japanese folk music as the Koto (琴). When the qin is played, a number of aesthetic elements are involved. The first is musicality . In

11932-426: The constellation Camelopardalis , and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248 , located in the constellation of Andromeda . In May 2005, it was reported that Voyager 1 had entered the heliosheath , the region beyond the termination shock. The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between

12089-443: The cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." The Voyager 1 probe is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth . Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached interstellar space, the region between stars where the galactic plasma is present. Like their predecessors Pioneer 10 and 11 , which featured a simple plaque , both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA with

12246-581: The diagram was also changed: on the Pioneer plaque, the man is waving, while on the "Vertebrate evolution" image, the woman is waving. The pulsar map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the Pioneer plaque . The 116 images (one used for calibration) are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16 + 2 ⁄ 3 revolutions per minute. Jimmy Iovine , who

12403-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which

12560-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of

12717-435: The dotted positions. By tradition, the qin originally had five strings, which represent gong, shang, jue, zhi, yu in the ancient Chinese music system, but ancient qin-like instruments with only one string or more strings have been found. The modern form has been stabilized to seven strings. There are more than 3,360 known surviving pieces of guqin music from ancient and imperial periods. On 7 November 2003, UNESCO announced that

12874-418: The duration of one of the "picture lines", about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered "interlace" to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster , showing that there are 512 (2 ) vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on

13031-464: The emotion or the feeling of the player, and how they interpret the piece. However, some melodies have sections of fixed rhythm which are played the same way generally. The main theme of Meihua Sannong , for example, uses this. Some sections of certain melodies require the player to play faster with force to express the emotion of the piece. Examples include the middle sections of Guangling San and Xiaoxiang Shuiyun . Other pieces, such as Jiu Kuang has

13188-468: The end of the Qing dynasty, a handful of qinpu had started to employ various rhythm indicating devices, such as dots). If one did not have a teacher, then one had to work out the rhythm by themselves. But it would be a mistake to assume that qin music is devoid of rhythm and melody. By the 20th century, there had been attempts to try to replace the "jianzi pu" notation, but so far, it has been unsuccessful; since

13345-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by

13502-609: The ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of

13659-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable

13816-509: The five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Later, in the Zhou dynasty , Zhou Wen Wang added a sixth string to mourn his son, Boyikao . His successor, Zhou Wu Wang , added a seventh string to motivate his troops into battle with the Shang. The thirteen hui on the surface represent the 13 months of the year (the extra 13th is the 'leap month' in the lunar calendar ). The surface board

13973-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has

14130-447: The front surface of the qin, occur at integer divisions of the string length. The "crystal concordant" (perfectly harmonic) overtones can only be evoked by tapping the strings precisely at these hui . The third type is an yin ( 按音 / 案音 , lit. "pressed sound"), which is sometimes also called shi yin ( 實 音, lit. "full sound") or zou yin ( 走 音, lit. "changing sound"). These comprise the major cadences of most qin pieces. To play an yin ,

14287-436: The full expressing potential of the instrument. There are many special tablatures that had developed over the centuries specifically dedicated to qin for their reference and a repertoire of popular and ancient tunes for their choice. The tones of qin can be categorized as three characteristic "sounds". The first type is san yin ( 散音 ), which literally means "unfettered sound". It's the fundamental frequency produced by plucking

14444-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although

14601-437: The guqin's strings were always made of various thicknesses of twisted silk , but since then most players use modern nylon-flatwound steel strings. This was partly due to the scarcity of high-quality silk strings and partly due to the newer strings' greater durability and louder tone. Silk strings are made by gathering a prescribed number of strands of silk thread, then twisting them tightly together. The twisted cord of strings

14758-420: The heliosheath and entered interstellar space , although it still remains within the Sun's gravitational sphere of influence. Of the eleven instruments carried on Voyager 1 , four are still operational and continue to send back data. It is expected that at least one science instrument will remain operational through 2025 and that engineering data could be transmitted for several more years afterward. Most of

14915-415: The images used on the record (reproduced in black and white), together with information about its compilation, can be found in the 1978 book Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record by Carl Sagan , F. D. Drake , Ann Druyan , Timothy Ferris , Jon Lomberg , and Linda Salzman . A CD-ROM version was issued by Warner New Media in 1992. Author Ann Druyan, who later married Carl Sagan, wrote about

15072-403: The instrument. The electric guqin was first developed in the late 20th century by adding electric guitar–style magnetic pickups to a regular acoustic guqin, allowing the instrument to be amplified through an instrument amplifier or PA system. The Japanese ichigenkin , a monochord zither, is believed to be derived from the qin. The qin handbook Lixing Yuanya (1618) includes some melodies for

15229-400: The instruments well). There is a saying that goes "a short piece requires three months [of dapu to complete], and a long piece requires three years". In actual practice, it needn't be that long to dapu a piece, but suggests that the player will have not only memorised the piece off by heart, but also have their fingering, rhythm and timing corrected. And afterwards, the emotion must be put into

15386-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into

15543-524: The last two surviving aak melodies from the importation of yayue from the Song dynasty emperor Huizong in 1116, including in the ensemble the seul (se) and geum (금; qin). The Korean geum used in this context has evolved to be slightly different when compared to the normal qin in that there are 14 instead of 13 hui and that they are not placed correctly according to the harmonic positions besides other different construction features. The finger techniques are more closer to gayageum technique than it

15700-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses

15857-467: The legendary figures of China's pre-history – Fuxi , Shennong and Huang Di, the " Yellow Emperor " – were involved in its creation. Nearly all qin books and tablature collections published prior to the twentieth century state this as the actual origins of the qin, although this is now viewed as mythology. It is mentioned in Chinese writings dating back nearly 3,000 years, and examples have been found in tombs from about 2,500 years ago. The exact origins of

16014-465: The lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the Solar System with respect to 14 pulsars , whose precise periods are given. The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that

16171-478: The metal-nylon strings, possibly in imitation of Western catgut strings. The sound is similar to the metal-nylon strings but without the metallic tone to them (one of the main reasons why traditionalists do not like the metal-nylon strings). The nylon strings can be tuned to standard pitch without breaking and can sustain their tuning whatever the climate, unlike silk. The strings have various names in China, but they are advertised as sounding like silk strings prior to

16328-531: The modern shorthand tablature survives from around the twelfth century CE. An earlier form of music notation from the Tang era survives in just one manuscript, dated to the seventh century CE, called Jieshi Diao Youlan ( Solitary Orchid in Stone Tablet Mode ). It is written in a longhand form called wenzi pu ( 文 字 譜) (literally "written notation"), said to have been created by Yong Menzhou during

16485-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including

16642-482: The music. Northern schools tend to be more vigorous in technique than Southern schools. But in modern terms, the distinction between schools and styles is often blurred because a single player may learn from many different players from different schools and absorb each of their styles. This is especially so for conservatory trained players. People from the same school trained under the same master may have different individual styles (such as Zhang Ziqian and Liu Shaochun of

16799-468: The musician stops a string at a specific pitch on the board surface with the left thumb, middle or ring finger, strikes the string with the right hand, then they may slide the left hand up and down to vary the note. This technique is similar to playing a slide guitar across the player's lap. However, the manipulation of qin is much more multifarious than that of a guitar, which has only around 3 or 4 main techniques. ( Listen to Pei Lan ). According to

16956-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with

17113-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in

17270-474: The notation is arranged. Throughout the history of the qinpu, we see many attempts to indicate this rhythm more explicitly, involving devices like dots to make beats. Probably, one of the major projects to regulate the rhythm to a large scale was the compilers of the Qinxue Congshu tablature collection of the 1910s to 1930s. The construction of the written tablature was divided into two columns. The first

17427-452: The nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included. However, the record does contain "Diagram of vertebrate evolution", by Jon Lomberg , with drawings of an anatomically correct naked male and naked female, showing external organs. The person waving on

17584-662: The original specifications, the record was initially rejected, to be replaced with a blank disc. Sagan later convinced the administrator to include the record as is. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of Pluto in 1990, and left the Solar System (in the sense of passing the termination shock ) in November 2004. It is now in the Kuiper belt . In about 40,000 years, it and Voyager 2 will each come to within about 1.8 light-years of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star Gliese 445 , located in

17741-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of

17898-709: The pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the universe . The musical selection is also varied, featuring works by composers such as J.S. Bach (interpreted by Glenn Gould ), Mozart , Beethoven (played by the Budapest String Quartet ), and Stravinsky . The disc also includes music by Guan Pinghu , Blind Willie Johnson , Chuck Berry , Kesarbai Kerkar , Valya Balkanska , and electronic composer Laurie Spiegel , as well as Azerbaijani folk music ( Mugham ) by oboe player Kamil Jalilov . The inclusion of Berry's " Johnny B. Goode "

18055-435: The piece. Therefore, it could be said that it really does require three months or years to finish dapu of a piece in order for them to play it to a very high standard. It has already been discussed that qin music has a rhythm and that it is only vaguely indicated in the tablature. Though there is an amount of guesswork involved, the tablature has clues to indicate rhythm, such as repeating motifs, an indication of phrases or how

18212-471: The qin in a variety of media including TV episodes and films. Actors often possess limited knowledge on how to play the instrument and instead, they mime it to a pre-recorded piece by a Qin player. Sometimes the music is erroneously mimed to guzheng music, rather than qin music. A more faithful representation of the qin is in the Zhang Yimou film Hero , in which Xu Kuanghua plays an ancient version of

18369-576: The qin in the courtyard scene while Nameless and Long Sky fight at a Xiangqi parlour. It mimed the music played by Liu Li, formerly a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. It is suggested that Xu made the qin himself. The qin was also featured in the 2008 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony in Beijing , played by Chen Leiji (陳雷激). The qin is also used in many classical Chinese novels, such as Cao Xueqin 's Dream of

18526-472: The qin is called The Lore of the Chinese Lute , the guqin is sometimes inaccurately called a lute . Other incorrect classifications, mainly from music compact discs, include " harp " or "table-harp". The guqin is a very quiet instrument, with a range of about four octaves , and its open strings are tuned in the bass register. Its lowest pitch is about two octaves below middle C , or the lowest note on

18683-562: The qin is still a very much continuing subject of debate over the past few decades. In 1977, a recording of "Flowing Water" ( Liu Shui , as performed by Guan Pinghu , one of the best qin players of the 20th century) was chosen to be included in the Voyager Golden Record , a gold-plated LP recording containing music from around the world, which was sent into outer space by NASA on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. It

18840-456: The qin, its sound must be mellow and not overwhelm the qin. Thus, the xiao generally used for this purpose is one pitched in the key of F, known as qin xiao 「琴簫」, which is narrower than an ordinary xiao . If one sings to qin songs (which is rare nowadays) then one should not sing in an operatic or folk style as is common in China, but rather in a very low pitched and deep way; and the range in which one should sing should not exceed one and

18997-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,

19154-453: The record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction. Color images were represented by three images in sequence, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image. A color image of the spectrum of the sun was included for calibration purposes. The drawing in

19311-490: The record took almost a year. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images (one used for calibration) and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals (including the songs of birds and whales ). To this they added audio content to represent humanity: spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, including a spoken greeting in English by U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and

19468-415: The records were plated they were mounted in aluminum containers and delivered to JPL. The record is a copper disk 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter plated first with nickel and then gold. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238 . Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible (e.g., via mass spectrometry ) that

19625-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for

19782-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without

19939-533: The scholars' instrument. In China, the qin was still in use in ritual ceremonies of the imperial court, such can be seen in the court paintings of imperial sacrifices of the Qing court (e.g. The Yongzheng Emperor Offering Sacrifices at the Altar of the God of Agriculture , 1723–35). The qin also have many variations with a different number of strings, such as during Song Taizong 's reign, but these variations never survived

20096-426: The second section of "Pingsha Luoyan", for example, the initial few bars contain a nao vibrato followed by a phase of sliding up and down the string, even when the sound has already become inaudible ( Listen carefully to the sliding sounds of Pingsha Luoyan ). The average person trained in music may question whether this is really " music ". Normally, some players would pluck the string very lightly to create

20253-463: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by

20410-511: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language

20567-543: The song is cited as one of the legal challenges faced by the team compiling the Voyager Golden Record. In the book, Sagan said that the Beatles favoured the idea, but "[they] did not own the copyright, and the legal status of the piece seemed too murky to risk." When asked about the obstacle presented by EMI with regard to "Here Comes the Sun", despite the artists' wishes, Ann Druyan said in 2015: "Yeah, that

20724-594: The sound. Many qin players attend yajis , at which a number of qin players, music lovers, or anyone with an interest in Chinese culture can come along to discuss and play the qin. In fact, the yaji originated as a multi-media gathering involving the four arts : qin, Go , calligraphy , and painting . Being an instrument associated with scholars, the guqin was also played in a ritual context, especially in yayue in China, and aak in Korea. The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts continues to perform Munmyo jeryeak (Confucian ritual music), using

20881-478: The sounds of humpbacked whales from the 1970 album by Roger Payne , Songs of the Humpback Whale . The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan. During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love. After NASA had received criticism over

21038-538: The stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300–700 km/s (670,000–1,570,000 mph) and becomes denser and hotter. In March 2012, Voyager 1 was over 17.9 billion km from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6 AU per year (approximately 61,000 km/h (38,000 mph)), while Voyager 2 was over 14.7 billion km away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000 km/h (35,000 mph)). On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had left

21195-427: The string, and slip the string through the twisted cord ( rongkou ) which goes into holes at the head of the qin and then out the bottom through the tuning pegs ( zhen ). The string is dragged over the bridge ( yueshan 『岳山』), across the surface board, over the nut ( longyin dragon gums) to the back of the qin, where the end is wrapped around one of two legs ( fengzu "phoenix feet" or yanzu "geese feet"). Afterwards,

21352-420: The strings are fine-tuned using the tuning pegs (sometimes, rosin is used on the part of the tuning peg that touches the qin body to stop it from slipping, especially if the qin is tuned to higher pitches). The most common tuning, "zheng diao" 〈正調〉, is pentatonic : 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 (which can be also played as 1 2 4 5 6 1 2) in the traditional Chinese number system or jianpu (i.e. 1=do, 2=re, etc.). Today this

21509-640: The strings. The first is taigu [Great Antiquity] which is the standard gauge, the zhongqing [Middle Clarity] is thinner, whilst the jiazhong [Added Thickness] is thicker. According to the Yugu Zhai Qinpu , zhongqing is the best. The currently used silk string gauge standard was defined by Suzhou silk string maker Pan Guohui (潘國輝). Although most contemporary players use nylon-wrapped metal strings, some argue that nylon-wrapped metal strings cannot replace silk strings for their refinement of tone. Additionally, nylon-wrapped metal strings can cause damage to

21666-546: The three-disc LP vinyl record box set that also includes the audio content of the Golden Record, softcover book containing the images encoded on the record, images sent back by Voyager , commentary from Ferris, art print, turntable slipmat, and a collector's box. This edition was released in February 2018 along with a 2xCD-Book edition. In January 2018, Ozma Records' "Voyager Golden Record; 40th Anniversary Edition" won

21823-782: The time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures. Blank records were provided by the Pyral S.A. of Créteil , France. CBS Records contracted the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, Colorado to cut the lacquer masters which were then sent to the James G. Lee record-processing center in Gardena, California to cut and gold-plate eight Voyager records. After

21980-568: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to

22137-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in

22294-522: The twentieth century the term had come to be applied to many other musical instruments as well: the yangqin hammered dulcimer, the huqin family of bowed string instruments, and the Western piano ( gangqin (钢琴)) and violin ( xiaotiqin (小提琴)) are examples of this usage. The prefix " gu- " (古; meaning "ancient") was later added for clarification. Thus, the instrument is called " guqin " today. It can also be called qixian-qin (七絃琴; lit. "seven-stringed qin"). Because Robert Hans van Gulik 's book about

22451-442: The upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to analog television (in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines). Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and

22608-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese

22765-412: The viewer looks at the player sliding on the string without sounds, the viewer automatically "fills in the notes" with their minds. This creates a connection between player, instrument and listener. This, of course, cannot happen when listening to a recording, as one cannot see the performer. It can also be seen as impractical in recording, as the player would want to convey sound as much as possible towards

22922-405: The way their Chinese counterparts played the qin. The repertoire was largely the geomungo parts for melodies played by the court orchestra. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by

23079-402: The wood of old qins. Many traditionalists feel that the sound of the fingers of the left hand sliding on the strings to be a distinctive feature of qin music. The modern nylon-wrapped metal strings were very smooth in the past, but are now slightly modified in order to capture these sliding sounds. Around 2007, a new type of strings were produced made of mostly a nylon core coiled with nylon like

23236-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until

23393-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with

23550-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,

23707-483: Was controversial, with some claiming that rock music was "adolescent", to which Sagan replied, "There are a lot of adolescents on the planet." The selection of music for the record was completed by a team composed of Carl Sagan as project director, Linda Salzman Sagan , Frank Drake , Alan Lomax , Ann Druyan as creative director, artist Jon Lomberg , ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown , Timothy Ferris as producer, and Jimmy Iovine as sound engineer. It also included

23864-574: Was frequently used in duets with the qin. However, the se has not survived, though duet tablature scores for the instruments are preserved in a few qinpu , and the master qin player Wu Jinglüe was one of only a few in the twentieth century who knew how to play it together with qin in duet. Lately there has been a trend to use other instruments to accompany the qin, such as the xun (ceramic ocarina), pipa (four-stringed pear-shaped lute), dizi (transverse bamboo flute), and others for more experimental purposes. In order for an instrument to accompany

24021-496: Was further divided into about three lines of a grid, each line indicating a varied combination of lyrics, gongche tablature, se tablature, pitch, and/or beats depending on the score used. The second column was devoted to qin tablature. Western composers have noticed that the rhythm in a piece of qin music can change; once they seem to have got a beat, the beats change. This is due to the fact that qin players may use some free rhythm in their playing. Whatever beat they use will depend on

24178-498: Was greatest. Some schools have come and gone, and some have offshoots (such as the Mei'an school, a Zhucheng school offshoot). Often, the school is originated from a single person, such as the Wu school which is named after the late Wu Zhaoji . The style can vary considerably between schools; some are very similar, yet others are very distinct. The differences are often in the interpretation of

24335-433: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half

24492-461: Was one of those cases of having to see the tragedy of our planet. Here's a chance to send a piece of music into the distant future and distant time, and to give it this kind of immortality, and they're worried about money ... we got this telegram [from EMI] saying that it will be $ 50,000 per record for two records, and the entire Voyager record cost $ 18,000 to produce." However, this was denied in 2017 by Timothy Ferris ; in his recollection, "Here Comes

24649-485: Was still early in his career as a music producer, served as sound engineer for the project at the recommendation of John Lennon , who was contacted to contribute but was unable to take part. Sagan's team wanted to include the Beatles 1969 song " Here Comes the Sun " on the record, but the record company EMI , which held the copyrights, declined. In the 1978 book Murmurs of Earth , the failure to secure permission for

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