Pros vs Cons of the Numbered Musical Notation (NMN)

I was sorting through my older posts and suddenly realize that I've posted detailed information about the NMN system; however, I have yet listed the good and bad things of using the NMN system, so here we go:

Pros

Cons

Easy to learn: the concept is easy enough to understand especially when it comes to the notes in a different octave Easy to sight-read: people have contact with numbers on a daily basis; and applying new meaning to a known system is easier than learning a whole new set of symbols Easy to transpose: when in doubt (don’t know the key signature) 1 = C

Complication: when there’s more than one line of music, or when there’s more than one note played at a certain moment, it can become hard for one to read the notation Theory confusion: when notating a piece in minor scale with NMN, the composer will have to put 1 = the relative Major, then start and end the piece with 6, this might lead to unexperienced players to get confused between Major and minor keys

Click HERE to review the post about NMN system.

In conclusion, the NMN system is a great way to start learning how to play music and is a great tool for leisure performers, as it reduces the time needed for "serious learning", and this shall help promote music making amongst people with no prior musical training.

The Five Elements vs the Five Pitches (in the Pentatonic Scale)

           Anyone who has the slightest idea about Chinese culture might know that the Chinese emphasized a lot on the nature, elements, harmony; as a result, they assigned each note in the pentatonic scale to one of the elements, where each of the elements represents a number of different things including the five major human organs, directions, climates, basically everything a person would encounter in their daily life. The Chinese believed everything is interlinked.

Five Tone (Pentatonic Scale)	宮Gong	商Shang	角Jiao	徵Zhi	羽Yu
Scale Degree (Western Diatonic)	1	2	3	5	6
Men & Things in General	Chief, Ruler, Emperor	Minister	People, Public	Affairs of the State	Material Objects
The Five Elements	Earth	Metal	Wood	Fire	Water
Human Organs	Spleen	Lungs	Liver	Heart	Kidney
Directions	Center	West	East	South	North
Climates	Moist	Dry	Wind	Heat	Cold
Tastes	Sweet	Hot	Sour	Bitter	Salty
Mindsets	Meditate	Sad	Angry	Happy	Scared
Body Actions	Sitting	Laying Down	Walking	Looking	Standing

Table 1 Examples of things in co-relation with the 5 elements 

The Chinese believed that “金生水, 水生木, 木生火, 火生土, 土生金” which means “Metal generates Water, Water generates Wood, Wood generates Fire, Fire generates Earth, and Earth generates Metal”. The best way to understand this logic is that the earth is full with Metal elements, and Water at some point in history all started from the earth, so Metal generates Water. Water helps the growth of tree and hence generates Wood; Wood burns to create Fire, Fire burn things to the ground create Earth, and Earth contains Metal.

The Chinese also believed that “金克木, 木克土, 土克水, 水克火, 火克金” which means “Metal damages Wood, Wood damages Earth, Earth damages Water, Water damages Fire, and Fire damages Metal”. Which could be understood as, Metal makes axes which chop down trees (Wood), the trees (Wood) drains the nutrients out of the Earth, Earth can be piled up to block Water, Water (of course) puts out Fire, and Fire can melt Metal.

Combining the two principles above, the Chinese believed that if, for example, someone had weak lungs, the lungs belongs to Metal, so the person should avoid everything that is associated with Fire, and try to acquire more things that are associated with Earth; so sit and meditate, and avoid laughing (imagine someone with asthma laughing real hard without their inhaler, that would be the reason for this). One may ask, how is this related to music? Doctors in ancient China would actually prescribe patients music they should listen to, use the previous example, a doctor would tell a patient with weak lungs to listen to music in the Gong key (Earth), and avoid music in the Zhi key (Fire).

Role of Music in 儒教RuJiao (Confucianism)

Important Note: 

Most Western people know 孔子KongZi as Confucius, which is one of my biggest Chinese-culture-in-Western-world pet peeves; therefore, this is the only time I would use this term when referring to one of the greatest philosopher in Chinese history, so please get use to his proper name: 孔子KongZi, or you can skip reading this post right now!! Same thing with Mencius, his proper name is 孟子MengZi, in case I ever need to mention him in my studies!!

Six Arts as Defined by 孔子KongZi:

1.      禮Li - proper, etiquette, proper manner

2.     樂Yue - ability to appreciate music as both a performer and an audience

3.     射She (pronounced as "shir" without the "r") - archery or sportsmanship, particularly about how one treats his opponent - with 禮Li

4.     御Yu - ability to charioteer a horse carriage, both as a sport and as a means of transportation

5.     書Shu (flat high pitch accent) - ability to read, write, and understand literature; have knowledge of history and politics; and great skills in calligraphy

6.     數Shu (downward accent) - good sense of mathematics (and you people wonder why Asians are good with math...

孔子KongZi emphasized a lot on music when he was teaching his disciples, and a lot of these are referenced in the literature of 儒教RuJiao (Confucianism):

• 四書SiShu (The Four Books):

• 論語LunYu (Analects): mainly notes from 孔子KongZi's pupils
• 孟子MengZi (Mencius): autobiography of 孟子MengZi, and some notes from 孔子KongZi's pupils
• 大學DaXue: thesis and papers written by the students of 孔子KongZi's grandson, about the teachings of 孔子KongZi in terms of higher education
• 中庸ZhongYong (Doctrine of the Mean): states that the best way to deal with all things in life is to take a moderate path.

• 五經WuJing (The Five Canonical Classics):

• 詩經ShiJing (Canon of Poetry): about 305 poems of cultural heritage of 孔子KongZi.
• 書經ShuJing (Canon of History): edited compilation of historical documents up to 孔子KongZi's day.
• 禮Li (The Book of Rites): deals with all forms of human relationships, 禮記LiJi, the one section that extensively talks about the importance of music in interpersonal rites
• 易經YiJing (Canon of Changes): principle of life - 陰陽YinYang ("Yin" is shade, negative, female; and "Yang" is light, positive, male). 
• 春秋ChunQiu (Annals of Spring and Autumn): devoted to a history of 孔子KongZi's own time, supposedly written by himself.

All these literatures shared the authors' views about music and how it relates to their daily life. 孔子KongZi believes that music and universal harmony are complementary to one another, and is hence essential to all humanities.

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The above information is taken from The Music of China, by Bliss Wiant

P.S.: I LOVE this book!! All the interesting information in this post and the last one About Traditional Chinese Music are all from the just the Introduction chapter of this book, can't way to read more!!

About Traditional Chinese Music

Music

Music in Chinese is 音樂 (Yin Yue). 音Yin means tone, which includes pitch and rhythm. 樂Yue means pleasure and joy. Therefore, just pitch and rhythm cannot be called music in China, it has to also be pleasant and provides joy in combination with pitch and rhythm to be considered as "music". Music in ancient China can be classified into two kinds, 雅樂(YaYue) Elegant Music, and 俗樂(SuYue) Common Music. 

Elegant Music 雅樂(YaYue)

• 雅(Ya): elegant, polished, refined, polite
• Monosyllabic
• Appeal to mind and soul
• Sign of self-discipline
• Stimulate man to be his best self
• Used to identify an imperial reign
• Written and performed by well educated people (including some emperors)
• Most commonly used instruments:
• 琴Qin, 瑟Se: stringed instruments with long strings
• 笙Sheng: reed mouth organ
• 胡琴HuQin: two-stringed violin (what I was originally going to learn)

Common Music 俗樂(SuYue)

• 俗(Su): vulgar, common, unrefined
• Melismatic
• Rhythms resembles European folk melodies
• Only pleases the ear and does not have higher meaning
• Too many embellishments to be exactly notated, performers often add their own embellishments to it (just like any other folk music)

Instrument classification:

Chinese instruments are classified by the material it's made out of, other than how the instrument is played, which is how the world of Western music do their classification (I have put the Western counterpart of each example in brackets):

• 金Jin (Metal): generally refers to instruments made out of gold or other metal. Examples: 編鐘BianZhong (a set of bronze bells), 鑼Luo (gongs), 喇叭 LaBa (trumpet), and 鏺Bo (cymbals).
• 石Shi (Stone): refers to instruments made out of stone, especially jade, which is often used with metal in formal orchestral combination. Example: 編磬BianQing - a mallet percussion instrument which consists of a rack of stone plates that are hung by ropes from a wooden frame.
• 絲Si (Silk): silk threads were used for making strings for all Chinese string instruments including, and are further classified by how they are played:
• Plucked: 箜篌KongHou (harp)
• Bowed: 胡琴HuQin (violin) 
• Struck: 揚琴YangQin (dulcimer) 
• 竹Zhu (Bamboo): mainly refers to Chinese wood wind instruments. Examples: 笛子DiZi (flute), 嗩吶SuoNa, and 簫Xiao (Recorder).
• 匏Pao (Gourd): this is a class of instrument which has no counterpart in the world of Western music. Example: 笙Sheng (Click here for an interesting cross over of the Sheng and Super Mario)
• 土Tu (Earth): this family consists of instruments made out of baked earth/clay. Example: 塤Xun (ocarina) *YAY!!!*, and 缶Fou - a clay pot played as a percussion instrument, which was part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony (the count down) 
• 革Ge (Leather): basically drums of all shapes and sizes.
• 木Mu (Wood): most of the wood instruments are percussion instruments of some sort. Examples: 木魚MuYu (temple block), and 拍板PaiBan (clapper made with several pieces of flat wood)
  Fun Fact: the clapper was actually most commonly used for keeping the rhythm for what I would consider Ancient Chinese rap. It was basically a form of story telling, kinda like a stand-up comedy show that rhymes and have a strong sense of rhythm. It was one of the major entertainment back in the days. Essentially, a "story teller" will sit down at a tea house and begin to clap the clapper and start telling tales that was either made up by the "story teller" or mythology stories passed down generations. If a story teller is very good at what he does, and really funny, he would probably rent an opera house and do a staged performance with a drum instead, like this guy.

Functions of Music:

• Western:
• Artistic
• Religious
• Embellishment for life
• Chinese:
• Essential, fundamental to life
• Pervasive

Challenges of Researching about Ancient Chinese Music:

1. 秦始皇QinShiHuang, the first emperor in Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BC), destroyed a lot of literature and state records prior to his rule.
2. Inadequate notation of ancient Chinese music.
3. Written literature (that survived the destruction by 秦始皇QinShiHuang, or written after his time) in the old days did not have much punctuation, which cause difficulty when one's trying to understand and interpret the records.
4. The Chinese created a lot of words over times, a word that had only one meaning in the past, may have five more meanings to it now, or the use of the word can be different then and now.

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While listening to my fellow classmates' presentations, it seemed to me a lot of good music in Western culture were made by poor, lower class, oppressed people, as if upper class people are supposed to be elegant and reserving, when music requires the person to be expressive, as a result, very seldom we have people with high social status compose and perform music. On the other hand, in traditional Chinese culture, music can be elegant and a state of class, even emperors often play an instrument to entertain himself. Instead of making music or not, ancient China use "elegant music" and "common music" to distinguish the people's social status.

That's it for now... Stay tuned for more about traditional Chinese music in near future... I still have much to read, research, and learn!!

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The information in this post was obtained from Music of China by Bliss Wiant with the occasional help of Wikipedia.

The Numbered Musical Notation

The "Actual" Traditional Notation

First of all, this is NOT the original notation system that my ancestors used. Traditional Chinese music, as a lot of you might know, was composed on a pentonic scale, what a lot of people do not know is how they used to notate the music, they used Chinese words "宮(gong)", "商(shang)", "角(jyue)", "徵(ji)", "羽(yu)", to represent "Do", "Re", "Mi", "So", "La" respectively, and they have other Chinese words to indicate the rhythms, and performing technique, as you can tell, that's some heavy "reading", and it's difficult to understand (see Fig.1 below for an example of antient Chinese written music); therefore, the musicians in China started to adapt the Numbered Musical Notation in 1904.

Fig.1 Antient Chinese written music

The Numbered Musical Notation

The Numbered Musical Notation was invented by a French composer named Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century. Despite the fact it was invented in Europe, the world of Western music never really adapt this notation system, when the modern Chinese scholars are trying to organize some ancient written music, they adapted this simple system that is easy for just about anyone to sight-read.  The Numbered Musical Notation is now more commonly known as JianPu (簡譜), which means "simplified notation" in Chinese.

The Basics

1. The Notes
• Rest = 0
• Do = 1
• Re = 2
• Mi = 3
• Fa = 4
• So = 5
• La = 6
• Ti = 7
2. Notating
   Write the base key on the top left corner of the score; for example, 1 = E means the music is in the key of E Major
3. High and Low Pitches
• Base key = just numbers
• Octave above base key = "." on top of number
• Octave below base key = "." below number
• 2 Octave above base key = ":" on top of number
• 2 Octave below base key = ":" below number... the more octave away from the base key, the more dots you add to the number
• Usually the base key refers to the C4 - B4 on the piano keyboard; however, it really depends on the range of the instrument, for instance, if you want to notate an instrument with higher pitches, you lower the base key by an octave when notating.
4. Note values
• Rhythm trees                          
  
  

  Fig.2 Western Music Notation version
  
  

  

  Fig.3 Numbered Musical Notation version
• For dotted note values the Numbered Musical Notation is the same as Western Music Notation, which means, 5. = 5 + 5; however, to notate dotted half and dotted whole, one simply add extra dashes behind the number, for example, dotted half = 5  -  -