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Gongche Paper

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In most cultures, there are many ways to write and express music. Here in America, there are chant notations, staff notations, solfege, and many more. China has another form of notation called Gongche. Gongche is written in traditional Chinese characters that represent the note or part of solfege that should be played. However, recently there are forms of writing music called Jianpu, which are numbered notations that represent the note that needs to be played. Jianpu is a simplified version of Gongche, however, instead of using Chinese characters, numbers are used to represent a solfege. In standard American staff notation, there are different notes that are placed on a series of five lines that represent different notes. At the beginning of the line, there are symbols that show …show more content…

In gongche, every character represents a note, which makes up their solfege. To tell how much strength each note should be played for, there are accents placed on top of the characters, and a tiny open circle placed under them. The accent on top of the note means that it is weaker than a normal note, and the open circle means that it is stronger. This is done to assist with the rhythm of the overall piece. These marks are made for the percussion, instructing them to take the rhythmic lead. In the simplified, Jianpu notation, the numbers represent the notes’ position on the solfege. The scales that are represented here are major and minor. When the dot is placed on top of a number, it means it should be raised to the higher octave, and underneath means a lower one. In this system, the length of the note played is shown to the musician by dashes placed underneath the number. This indicates an equivalent of half and quarter notes. There are also zeroes that can be found on the musical piece, this means that there is a rest. Similarly to staff notation, the meter is established by the vertical line after a certain number of

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