Yangqin

Hammered dulcimers of various types are now very popular not only in China, but also Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, Iran, and Pakistan.

A professional musician often carries several sets of beaters, each of which draws a slightly different tone from the instrument, much like the drum sticks of Western percussionists.

At a glance, the Silk Route stretches almost 5,000 miles reaching from China to the Middle East, including Iran (Persia).

The ships from this region bought back precious stones, slaves, exotic wares, fruits, spices, etc.

Along with trade, businesses, ideas, philosophies and scientific knowledge were exchanged, including religion (principally Buddhism).

Music historians report that the salterio, a hammered dulcimer, was played in Portugal, Spain, and Italy during this period.

Historians say it is possible that the yangqin originated when the Portuguese, the English or the Dutch brought a dulcimer player to China who performed for locals.

[1] As the yangqin is a type of hammered dulcimer, it shares many elements of construction with other instruments in the hammered dulcimer family: Modern yangqin usually have 144 strings in total, with each pitch running in courses, with up to 5 strings per course, in order to boost the volume.

Furthermore, some songs require the use of "雙音琴竹" (shuāng yīn qín zhǔ), literally "double-note yangqin hammers".

These specially-constructed hammers have 2 striking surfaces, allowing the player to play up to 4 notes simultaneously (or even 8 notes, if the strings of the "left bridge" and "tenor bridge" are struck at a point where they intersect each other), resulting in a rich, powerful tone, which is especially pronounced in the lower registers due to the strings' long echoes.

林沖夜奔 (Lin Chong Flees In The Night), composed by 項祖華 (Xiang Zu Hua), is a representative solo piece which utilizes 雙音琴竹.

Numerous other techniques, such as portamento – a glide from one note to another (accomplished through 2 methods, both involving the lengthening or shortening of strings: the first is by sliding the fine-tuning devices on the sides of the instrument by hand, and the second is by wearing a metallic "ring" – known as a 滑音指套 [huá yīn zhǐ tào] – and sliding it along the length of the indicated string) – are also used.

The pitches are arranged so that in general, moving one section away from the player's body corresponds to a transposition of a whole tone upwards.

These are only rules of thumb since the arrangement has to be modified towards the extremes of the pitch range to fill out notes in the chromatic scale.