edHelper.com Ancient China Music

Yangqin

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Yangqin
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 6
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	6.38

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		near-squared, reflection, yangqin, traditional, erhu, pipa, original, easily, stringed, lightly, direct, such, performance, musical, history, beneath
	content words:		Middle East

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Yangqin By Vickie Chao

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¹     China has many traditional musical instruments. Most of them, such as the erhu and pipa, have been around for a long time. They can easily trace their origins back thousands of years. But the yangqin is different. Introduced from the Middle East about 500 years ago, this instrument has a rather short history in China.
 
²     The yangqin has many strings stretched across a near-squared soundboard. Beneath these strings are several columns of "bridges." Bridges help support the strings. They also give the instrument a wide range of tunes. Depending on the type of yangqin, the number of bridges varies. The original yangqin had just two bridges. But, a modern one may have 3, 4, or even 5 bridges. No matter how many bridges the yangqin has, the arrangement of these bridges is always the same. Bridges on the left produce higher pitches than those on the right.

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