What is guzheng

Guzheng is a Chinese plucked string instrument with a more than 2,500-year history. The modern guzheng commonly has 21 strings, is 64 inches (1.6 m) long, and is tuned in a major pentatonic scale. A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the more familiar heptatonic scale that has seven notes per octave. It has a large, resonant cavity made from paulownia wood. Other components are often made from other woods for structural or decorative reasons. Guzheng players often wear fingerpicks on one or both hands.

The music notation for guzheng

Guzheng music isn’t written in regular Western music notation. Instead, it uses numbers! 1 = D, 2 = E, 3 = F#, 4 = G, 5 – A, 6 = B, 7 = C# (D major pentatonic scale). The dots above or below a number show what octave the note is in. Rhythm is shown with lines and dots similar to Western notation. Other symbols show details, e.g. which finger to use, whether or not to play an octave chord, glissandos, pitch bends, vibrato, etc.

Guzheng sheet music conversion

I convert piano sheet music (from .midi file) to guzheng sheet music in these major pentatonic scale (D, G, A, B-flat, C, E-flat, F). You can see some samples (To Zanarkand, With You With Me)

See guzhengalive for the tuning charts of all major pentatonic scale

Playability of the score includes:

1) percentage of the notes being 4 or 7 or sharps (playing them require pressing a string to change the frequency).

2) minimum time interval between pressing two different strings

3) The highest note (To ensure the highest note is within the playable range of guzheng, I lower every note by the same factor.)

Incoming updates

I will be providing further details on the creation of the code.

I will be patching errors in my code (Currently, a tempo change causes minor error into the leading zeros of a measure.)

To Zanarkand

Piano sheet music from musescore

Playability of this guzheng score are as follows:

26.53% of notes requires pressing strings

0 is the minimum time interval between pressing two different strings

This occurs at line 8, time signature 6

Preview of the guzheng score:

With You With Me

Piano sheet music from sheethost

Playability of this guzheng score are as follows:

13.21% of notes requires pressing strings

Preview of the guzheng score:

紅昭願

midi file from midishow

Playability of this guzheng score are as follows:

15.17% of notes requires pressing strings

0 is the minimum time interval between pressing two different strings

This occurs near the end of line 7

Preview of the guzheng score:

Fur Elise

Piano sheet music from musescore

Playability of this guzheng score are as follows:

31.01% of notes requires pressing strings

Preview of the guzheng score: