This incredible instrument deserves to be better known

oh wow would it be possible to write a piece of music that has any value at all in just 5 minutes especially if you'll be composing for an instrument you've only just been introduced to and experienced for the very first time that was the idea I had with my composing pal Zoe Maro when we visited man Toom a Chinese American artist who plays a Chinese Hammer doer instrument called the yangqin as well as getting to meet Manta and their amazing and really beautiful instrument we got down to work scribbling out a couple of quick ideas and Manta was kind enough to perform them for us at the end I think you'll probably agree that 5 minutes is a crazily short amount of time I think we'd probably make it a little longer next time no way that is so short but that's what we settled on and to be fair I think you'll be surprised just how how much we got done in that [Music] time pleased with that was that right did I get those notes nice I'm pleased with that too that was so [Music] cute so tell us bter what have you got under that blanket ooh I've got a Yang chin here also known as the Chinese hammer damer and it's a descendant of the santour which comes from Persia Mesopotamia so percussive string what we have here is 144 steel strings and I strike them with these bamboo mallets which have a rubber tip at the end so you get this very colorful [Music] sound there's a couple of different playing techniques so I can flip the mallets to get a brighter sound we call it fandu so flipping yeah Flip Flip the mallets and then we've also got B which is to [Music] [Applause] [Music] pluck so each string we've got three strings there and that's just three of the same note is it yeah each note has between one and five strings depending on the pitch so it's kind of like a piano in that way where there's multiple strings per note I'll play a bit of a Cantonese folk tune um this one's called Hanan Le Thunder after the [Music] drought [Music] manwoman mentioned the Persian origins of the instrument that's Modern Day Iran and the instrument known as the santor it's thought they first made their way to China via the maritime Silk Road so by boat rather than over land arriving first in the Guang dong Province but variations of the instruments spread all over the world there are over 60 countries each with their own unique version of it amongst the most famous are the Indian santour which is smaller than the [Music] yangin and the Hungarian symbolum which is [Music] larger the anent itself is popular not just in China but throughout East Asia for example in Korea and Japan collectively these these instruments are known in the west as hammered damers the name coming from the words for Sweet Melody which I think you can really hear in its sound but as man tooman suggested there they do also have a lot in common with the piano they have essentially the same method of sound production series of tight steel strings which are hit by a hammer or a mallet and are used as a similar multi-purpose instrument as a soloist as part of a larger Ensemble or perhaps most typically as an accompanist like here in some Chinese narrative singing from sesan but compared to the piano they also have one added challenge if you play Yang chin you have to tune it yourself if I want to tune one note I just move the roller if I need to clean up a note and do one string I use this tuning wrench to adjust I can't even begin to imagine the tuning of this thing yeah it's basically being C all the time so we've got middle C there C5 C6 so that's a B6 and then down here I guess that's a D2 that's a big range actually but you you don't see in this cabinet of magic how actually condensed isn't it yeah a piano we've got about 60 61 pitches depending on how you tune it so basically between that D2 and that B6 you have almost all of the chromatic notes save for a couple up top and a couple down here yeah and there are actually some pitches that are repeated on the instrument so the way it's organized roughly is we've got a whole tone scale in the column vertically yep and then also here yeah so whenever we're playing a normal scale say we're in [Music] D so each time there's a half step I switch to the other column I mean the best I can sort of convey is that it's really 2D the scale is very 2D compared to a keyboard which is a bit more linear more 1D which makes playing arpeggios really easy um on this instrument CU you can just really move across the scale in these angular ways pretty fluidly so that was a sort of slightly pentatonic arpage yeah yeah so like oh wow but you know it is it is chromatic Etc this is a more contemporary piece um called Spirit of the yellow Earth composed by a professor of mine named [Music] tuang [Applause] [Music] so if we go into something um a little more contemporary are there some I bet you've got some spooky sounds yeah yeah yeah there's some spooky sounds um yeah one of my favorites is O ooh [Music] um yeah we this one would be I'm loving that I absolutely love that do you pluck the strings at all yeah so we can do a bit of plucking not with your fingers with my fingers yes yeah so oh oh that's like the Z oh hello that's cute now that went somewhere totally else yeah it's different it's very soft and is there something that you can do where there's harmonics of the string like a oh there is that's how that would normally sound and [Music] then love it by now Zoe and I were desperately trying to scrape together ideas for what we would compose in our 5 minutes and we had one last opportunity to learn with a bit of hands-on experience with the instrument so something like that yeah so you want to kind of cup the okay so do you actually touch the back of the hand of it or um yeah you let it sort of Bounce against the [Music] thumb yeah exactly for me I was focused on how many of the pieces we heard alternated mallets perhaps one hand staying still while the notes on the other hand interlocked oh I didn't expect that [Music] [Music] note Elric guitar mhm whereas I think Z was far more interested in the weirdest sound she could find on the [Music] instrument oh love that so that was it we rushed off to our separate rooms and tried our hand at speed composing I had two ideas in mind firstly using that interlocking idea I found a couple of arpeggio shapes I imagined these panimo but using the brighter sound of the flipped mallets and then I wanted a big loud arpeggio gesture to end I imagined three chords but I didn't quite have time to write them down no way that is so short so I explained what I was after to man in the rehearsal Gest sort of thing something like that yeah perect okay what's the mood what's the mood what's the mood ceremonial Zoe meanwhile was using pen and paper she'd actually done her homework and learned a bit of the notation used by yanin players a simplified numerical notation she also used a cipher of note names she had to help her get started m is e a is an a n looking on my trusty ciphers chart n is an F those are my five pictures a cuz we've got it twice that could be a flat could also be a sharp okay how to start um let's have full on E there needs to be something to announce it yeah wood Trill Zoe then also had her own short session with man going over everything in the score love it and then that whole gesture leads to a w on can you do a and then it was time for our very short concert so does it have a title since your name is Manta I think this should be Mania oh or mantasia depending mantasia mantasia mantasia it sounds like like a stripper movie how did you know this is going to be a whole new Vibe Tasia love it love it okay the world premere of Mont [Music] here [Music] [Music] [Music] for oh my God you're amazing than oh good oh that was a bit how did you do that in 5 minutes ex me God God God very textural meaning to I was meaning to think of my title joing your piece and I got too absorbed in the music so oh um my my piece is going to be called study number one for [Laughter] [Music] yangin [Music] thank you so much to manwoman and to Zoe marlu for taking part and for being such a good sports I've linked to all their profiles below so do check them out I'll post a few more clips and reactions over on my patreon so do sign up there if that's of interest and you'd be also supporting the channel and do let me know what you think about the 5 minute time frame drop me a like if you think it works or if not drop me a comment tell me what you think it should be 10 minutes 15 an hour 24 hours and also I'd love to hear if you've got any suggestions for instruments or combinations that we could use next time thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next [Music] time um Zoe's piece attacked she's cuz I'm having to just adjust the tuning effect it's great though it is a battle is a b after do whatever you have to [Music] do Bruce

Channel: David Bruce Composer

Views: 78,043

Keywords:

Id: QyV8ck6pTUU

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024