String Instruments In Ancient China

Since the beginning of the 12th century, the guitar has been noted as one of the most popular Western musical, string instrument; it is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. However, on the other hand, most people cannot easily recognize the Western guitar’s Eastern counterpart – the Gu Zheng. Originally found during the Warring States Period in Ancient China (475 to 221 BC), the Gu Zheng gradually became a prominent musical instrument within Asian culture. However, though Western culture has recently been adopting different types of musical instruments, C. Waltham stated that “string instruments from other cultures have not had much attention from the musical acoustics community.”1 Nevertheless, from learning basic acoustics in string instruments and applying physical explanations of the features of the Gu Zheng, I found that the Gu Zheng – my favorite Asian instrument, which is why I wrote about this topic – is a plucked string instrument. As a result, though history has separated Eastern and Western styles of music, my research and analysis show that the Gu Zheng is quite similar to the guitar, another plucked string instrument. The remainder of this report will discuss the …show more content…
As a player of the Gu Zheng, I have realized that there are certain points of the strings where sounds do not resonate as clear as other points. In addition, the Gu Zheng has fixed-fixed strings which makes it possible for us to hear all harmonics, rather than just odd or even. This does not state that the Gu Zheng’s sound is periodic. In fact, the Gu Zheng’s sound spectrum is quite inharmonic, which is somewhat similar to that of the guitar. Therefore, although the Gu Zheng may look different and originate from a different culture, its sound, methods of playing, and construction is quite similar to the