Searching for New Sound - Music Composition ideas

 Chinese calligraphy calls a double articulation in reference to pictorial art: the vocabulary correlates to the represented object, on the other. For instance, the character for the sun (日)is based on a sequence of brushstrokes that follow a systematic and combinatorial order, while it suggests an actual image of the sun. As a Chinese language user, the picture is inherent in our language which can transpose to composer's notation in Chou's music. Chou is also an accomplished calligrapher. According to Everett (2007), the process of writing the word, the brushstroke in calligraphy, is affecting the look of the character even the same character. Chou treated calligraphic stroke as a type of articulation: with the same note, we can have different articulation to play it, same as brushstroke. The rhythm of music is the speed of a brushstroke. The structure of the character is the texture in music. It has great potential by reading the calligraphy as a score, which echoes the wes...

Guqin or qin ( 古琴 ) is a plucked seven-string Chinese zither. Chou music is inspired by qin music. To dig deep into Chou's music understanding its aesthetic is critical. I would use a thesis, The 24 Sprites of Qin  (溪山琴況)  by Xu shangying ( 徐上瀛 ,1582-1662) in 1641 to explain the aesthetic of qin. A picture of qin 7 open strings on qin The origin of qin according to Xu (1641), the myth origin, the deity made qin as a tool to cultivate human beings, to combine one's morals and spirituality. This echoes my previous articles about the function of music in China. Xu organized 24 sprites as the basis of the aesthetic of qin. His thesis is long, people summarised the 4 most important points from his thesis. Harmonious (和), the instrument has to be well-tuned. The primary rule is open strings have to harmonize with each other, then the pressed notes come to secondary. The harmonics and pressed should be referring to each other, which implies that the tuning should fit into the h...

Know thyself was the most famous first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The original idea of this proverb was about the self-reflection and self-referencing of the person, the inner search of one's identity. In Chou's (2007) article, "Whither Chinese Composers?", he is asking a bigger question, the collaborative identity of Chinese composers. The concept of composer did not exist or inherently developed within Chinese culture before the western composition idea impact every Chinese musician. In China, the performers had great freedom of improvising the existing materials, serving part of composing role, the origin of the materials was not important. The music in China was very functional, pure entertainment, working, ritual service, cultivation, and education, they are all about serving the need then done, without polishing the craftsmanship. The artistic concept did not exist in music, on the other hand, painting...

In qin notation that I have discussed in the previous article , for either a single pitch or a complete sonic event. Chou (2007) interrupted the qin notation, the components of each ideogram-like symbol specify not only pitch, articulation, timbre, dynamics, and so on, but also additional information such as vibrato or other forms of pitch modification after the articulation.  Chou did not explain how the Jianzipu tablature indicates articulation or dynamics. Since my books about Chinese music have arrived. So I have can explain better. In western notation, we use symbols for articulation like staccato, accent, marcato slur etc; for dynamics, we use text f, p, mf, mp, etc.  The western notates the result. On the contrary, the  Jianzipu notates the   method, no dynamic or articulation is directly notated.  In  Jianzipu   the information in each ideogram contains: which finger on the left hand (at the left upper corner of the ideogram) position of ...