What do you need to prepare to learn pipa?

Pipa's playing techniques are rich and colorful, which can be basically divided into right-handed techniques and left-handed techniques. The former includes playing, picking, rolling, dividing, hitting, hooking, turning, sweeping, waving and nodding, while the latter includes pressing keys, changing handles, jumping handles, crossing strings, playing, singing, rubbing, pushing, pulling and pulling. These complicated and difficult techniques have strict requirements in performance, so it inevitably involves the basic skills and teaching methods of the teacher himself. The cultivation of these basic skills requires not only the professional guidance of teachers, but also the unremitting practice of students after class. In the teaching and training of this skill and technology, every teacher has his own views and methods. Based on my many years of playing and teaching experience, the author will sum up some playing skills and techniques that need to be practiced and mastered in the initial stage of pipa.

First, rebound

In the beginner's stage, the first fingering is "playing", and its importance is self-evident. In order for students to practice "plucking" well in the introductory stage, teachers should first use the right methods to teach and form correct and good "habits". Secondly, teachers must ask students to work hard on timbre. As we know, the timbre of pipa can be divided into "music" and "noise", in which "music" is the most basic sound we use in playing; "Noise" is the sound produced by using special techniques in pipa performance, such as "twisting strings", "playing with sharp sounds", "picking up" and some percussion sounds. I mainly train beginners in two stages in the "flick" part: the first part is "fixed flick" and the second part is "wrist flick". Its purpose is to let beginners better master this playing technique, pave the way for clean and bright timbre, and lay a solid foundation for the development of basic playing skills in the future. Let me talk about the problems that are easy to occur in these two stages of training and the corresponding solutions.

1. Fix the elastic pick

Beginners often have the following problems when practicing and applying this technique: start playing when their hands are not ready; The thumb is separated from the index finger; Use the last joint of the finger when playing, and so on. The appearance of these problems easily leads to the phenomenon that the timbre is thin and hard. Let's take a look at how to bounce correctly.

When playing, first hold the right hand in a circle, and the tiger's mouth is longan-shaped (round), then directly hit the first two joints of the index finger and pop it up to the left panel. After the pop-up, the finger should point to the panel instead of straight ahead. The pop-up sound is thick and clean. Take back your fingers and restore your forehand after playing.

If you want to do this when playing the string, when your right hand is in the circle, the first joint of your thumb touches the string straight and makes a sound. After stirring, the touch of the big finger should not exceed the height of the second string. Take it back after picking it and restore the forehand shape.

The basic skills of "plucking" have been introduced above. In addition, we should pay special attention to it: we must learn to find the relaxed state of fingers after plucking the strings in constant practice, and when playing with this combination, the touch position of nails should be at the tip of nails and the strength should be at the fingertips, so as to make the sound played even and full.

Wave one's wrist

The performance of this technique is based on the practice of "fixed bounce" and wrist bounce. The sound made by "fixed pick" is stiff, while the sound made by wrist pick is crisp and soft.

In the teaching, the author found that students often have the following problems: when plucking the strings with their wrists, their movements are too large, their nails stay on the strings for too long, and their wrists are always in a state of tension and exertion. In this way, the sound played can not achieve the crisp and soft effect.

The correct playing method of wrist plucking is that the finger playing method remains the same, but the wrist needs to be in a relaxed state, so that the wrist rotates slightly like a fan when playing, and the nails should be quickly and decisively played on the string, all concentrated on one point.

It is particularly important to note here. Don't let plucking become playing up and down because of your wrist.

Second, double kill

Many beginners can't make the two sounds neat and light when using the double-play pickup technique, and there is always a phenomenon of "front and back tone". This is mainly because beginners "don't dare to start" when playing double strokes, and their fingers form a pull-down stroke on the strings, thus forming a "pull" stroke, and the pop-up sound will definitely not reach double strokes.