Pipa making

Pipa is one of the traditional Chinese musical instruments, and the technological process of making it is very complicated, which needs to go through many processes to complete. Here is a brief introduction to the production process of pipa.

Step 1: Select materials. Pipa is mainly made of wood, horn, bamboo and silk strings. Among them, wood is the main material for making pipa, and commonly used are pine, phoenix tree and maple. Pay attention to the quality and texture of materials when selecting materials to ensure the sound quality and appearance of pipa.

Step 2: Make the piano body. The first step in making pipa is to make the body. Cut the selected wood into the appropriate size and shape, and then polish it into a smooth surface with a plane and a knife. Then, you need to open the piano body and install the strings, tuners and other components.

Step 3: Make the piano head. The piano head is an important part of pipa, which needs to be made of hard horns or bamboo. When making the piano head, it is necessary to cut the material into appropriate size and shape, and then polish it into a smooth surface with a plane and a knife. Then, you need to open the piano head and install the strings and tuners.

Step 4: Install the strings. Pipa generally has four strings, which need to be installed in the body and head. When installing strings, pay attention to the tension and pitch of strings to ensure the sound quality of pipa.

origin

The so-called pipa in history not only refers to musical instruments with pear-shaped sounding boxes, but also refers to a variety of plucked instruments, so the "pipa" at that time was similar in shape and different in size, such as Ruan and Ruan, which can all be said to be pipa instruments.

Pipa is the main plucked instrument with a long history in China. After the improvement of the performer, the shape tends to be unified, and it has become a four-string pipa with six phases and twenty-four products. Pipa has a wide range, its playing skills are the first of national instrumental music, and its expressive force is the most abundant instrument in folk music.

When playing, each finger of the left hand presses the string of the corresponding grade, and the right hand wears a fake nails plucked string made of celluloid (or tortoise shell) for pronunciation.

Around the Qin Dynasty, a round musical instrument with a long handle began to circulate. Because there are two main ways to play: popping forward is called "batch" and picking it up is called "ba", so people call it "batch ba". Later, in order to write in a unified way with Qin, Qin and other musical instruments at that time, it was renamed Pipa.