Guqin - Tuning

Tuning

To string a qin, one traditionally had to tie a fly's head knot (yingtou jie) at one end of the string, and slip the string through the twisted cord (rongkou) which goes into holes at the head of the qin and then out the bottom through the tuning pegs (zhen). The string is dragged over the bridge (yueshan 『岳山』), across the surface board, over the nut (longyin dragon gums) to the back of the qin, where the end is wrapped around one of two legs (fengzu "phoenix feet" or yanzu "geese feet"). Afterwards, the strings are fine tuned using the tuning pegs (sometimes, rosin is used on the part of the tuning peg that touches the qin body to stop it from slipping, especially if the qin is tuned to higher pitches). The most common tuning, "zheng diao" 〈正調〉, is pentatonic: 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 (which can be also played as 1 2 4 5 6 1 2) in the traditional Chinese number system or jianpu (i.e. 1=do, 2=re, etc.). Today this is generally interpreted to mean C D F G A c d, but this should be considered sol la do re mi sol la, since historically the qin was not tuned to absolute pitch. Other tunings are achieved by adjusting the tension of the strings using the tuning pegs at the head end. Thus manjiao diao ("slackened third string") gives 1 2 3 5 6 1 2 and ruibin diao ("raised fifth string") gives 1 2 4 5 7 1 2, which is transposed to 2 3 5 6 1 2 3.