The Concise History of Chinese Musical Temperament - Episode 1: Formation of Tones

This episode covers the formation of the Chinese understanding of tones and temperament in early history, providing the foundation to the topic and the basic facts on the subject.

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Check out the original text passages cited with dictionary references at CText!
Guanzi: Diyuan
Lu's Annals: Mid-Summer
Late Summer
Records of the Grand Historian: Sheng Zhong Fen

Music used:
Lead In and Lead Out: Gufeng Cao (Guqin), from Standards of the Guqin (CD)
Chinese Court Music (Confucius Homage Ceremony)
Zhaoping zhi Zhang
Xuanping zhi Zhang
Jiaping zhi Zhang

Da Huo

[idonnow]

13:28 Glad to see ancient Chinese scales giving us good trans representation

[samusbros]

Found this while i was studying microtones, really amazing stuff, can't understand why the low views, truly gold material!!

[KaneyoriHK]

Man, I've been wanting something like this series for a long time, I appreciate the hell out of this.

[RechtmanDon]

Just a suggestion: When describing the up and down leaps, add a keyboard graphic (such as the one at the end) and animate the leaps on the keyboard to provide a strong visual for the ways the temperament is created.

[fotgjengeren]

What a wealth of knowledge! Thanks so much

[khalilal-bukhari]

I am still watching, thank you for this content!

[nicholassmith]

非常感谢! This is seriously good stuff! Thanks for including the original Chinese texts as well!

[gummiesbear]

Great job! This is really thoughtfully presented and very enriching!

[JoshWunderlich]

This video is incredible, had no idea I would find a video on this topic on YouTube!! Thank you for putting the time into making this!

[mikeloOdium]

I'm dying to hear what's next. I'd like to help you on patreon, but unfortunately I can't atm, but I will do in the first opportunity I have.

Thanks for your hard effort! Please keep on doing these videos!

[blitheringape]

i am impressed with your oration, kudos

[stevenzheng]

Wow, your presentation is very clean and concise!

[p.]

I started looking for guqin music and ended up finding your channel... once I took a look into it, I kept watching video after video. The way you explain things is so nice and clear I can't help but keep on wanting to learn more. I've always been interested in eastern music but had no idea about its history nor temperament, so these series of videos are pure gold to me. I'm seriously learning a lot and I do believe, as you said in the previous introductory video, knowing and understanding the very basics and origins of this wonderful music makes all the difference, both to play it and to enjoy it. Thank you very much for all the dedication and hard work you put into these videos, which can absolutely be classified as seminars, really.
Lots of love and admiration from Argentina.

[mattyregelmaessig]

Really great set of videos. I use these as recommended viewing with my Musical Acoustics class when we get onto world tunings and temperaments.

[Isxiros]

This is an amazing video!

I love your intro and your explanation of different music substrates and culture understand of sounds and music.

Wish you could tell my friends who despise my chinese an middle eastern music playlists!

[alcyonecrucis]

Love it. Very helpful for us who want to compose and also love the classics

[paulmeland]

Awesome video! Quick question: when C# is recategorized as a "female" tone, wouldn't all the subsequent tones also need to be recategorized since their direction from the previous tone would be reversed?

[Taporeee]

Could you compare synergy, influences and differences between chinese, japanese, south asian (Indian Raag etc) and Middle Eastern (Maqqam based) classical theories with this wonderful Chinese explanation.

Maybe collab witj similiar youtube creators?

[almishti]

Very nicely done! I have to watch a few segments over again to grasp some points, but overall this was pretty easy to follow and nicely narrated. Looking forward to watching the rest of the series.

[alcyonecrucis]

Watching further, this was hilarious and very beautifully made. I will share it widely