Teaching myself a new tune 憶故人 (yi gu ren)

I'm currently trying to teach myself (the qin is also my teacher) how to play this tune on the guqin: 憶故人 (pinyin: Yi3 Gu4 Ren2). So far, I have memorized until the end of section 4 of this tune. A few more sections to go. I just started self-learning this tune about 2 weeks ago. It may take a few more weeks (perhaps more than 1 month?) for me to completely memorize all the sections of this tune. haha

I'm using the score from this book which I bought from this Taobao shop via www.sgshop.com.sg Customers who are not located in Singapore may wish to consider using another reliable Taobao agent www.taobaoring.com 

Yeah, don't laugh. Check out the little children (aka genius prodigy kids) who demonstrated how to play very difficult guqin pieces in my earlier post.

It's very useful to listen or watch how masters play it. Here are 3 different versions. All are good. There is no right or wrong way to interpret any piece of guqin music. That's the beauty of it. 

In my humble opinion, 'good form' (meaning: good pitch control, and good execution of the playing techniques) is the most important. It would not be unreasonable to claim that it's almost impossible to copy exactly a teacher's or somebody else's playing style anyway.

In my personal opinion, regardless of which version of the musical score, or which school the guqin teachers or students hail from, it can all be considered as a form of 'pastiche' or 'mimesis' in guqin music development, since it may be epistemologically (meaning: how do we argumentatively figure out or know that something is the truth/veritas) almost impossible to establish the ontology (meaning: the what or being or truth (veritas) which already existed that can be known of this thing in the first place) of what was originally played by the very first person who composed and played this tune in high antiquity. hahaha ^_^


Enjoy their playing! ^_^

No doubt about it. Lui Pui-Yuen (originally from HongKong, now living in the USA) is a great maestro. However the instrument he is best at is not even guqin. It's Pipa. He is the famous 琵琶王 Pipa Wang (King of Pipa). Now you know why playing guqin is a walk in the park, a piece of cake for him. He makes it look so effortless! *smile*





It is much easier to see where and how to execute the notes in this 2nd video by Charlie Huang (from London).





Another interpretation of the same tune by Jenny Zhao:



This same tune was also demonstrated by a Grand Master of Guqin (he's not from the Ching dynasty, he's a modern man). His interpretation of this tune is very understated and subtle. I like it. ^_^