Thursday, 8 January 2009, 07:38
Hi! I'll just be posting on what I've learnt in the past couple of days :D
In the past couple of days, we learnt about the history of the chinese orchestra! Learning about the chinese orchestra has been pretty interesting for me. Before this, I thought it was all just opera and nothing else, and that it was for old people to enjoy! Little did I know that there were young people like Mr Ye and Jonlin playing the dizi and the erhu! :D
According to Mr Ye, there hasn't been much development in the chinese orchestra. At the moment, the instrument with the most number of people playing it is the erhu, which we'll be making in the third week.
We also learnt to play the dizi on the second day, and the erhu on the third day. The dizi was difficult to play and gave us headaches, mainly because it required lots of practice to blow the air at the right place, at the mouth of the dizi, forward and not downwards. But once we got the hang of it, it was quite easy.
Yesterday, we learnt how to play the erhu! Pressing on the metal strings hurt our fingers, and its more difficult than piano, because there are no fixed places or "keys" to put your fingers at. The best you can do is to guess where the next note is. Only after years of practice do you really get the hang of it.
I'm sure we're having a lot of fun learning about the chinese orchestra and learning how to play the instruments, we'll be learning how to play the percussions and the guzheng tomorrow :D
Labels: Elaine
Music, AWESOME
