Gongche notation
| Gongche notation | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | |||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | gōng chě pǔ |
Gongche notation or gongchepu is a traditional musical notation method, once popular in ancient China. It uses Chinese characters to represent musical notes. It was named after two of the Chinese characters that were used to represent musical notes, namely "" gōng and "" chě. Since the pronunciation chě for the character "尺" is uncommon, many people call it gongchi notation or gongchipu by mistake.
Sheet music written in this notation is still used for traditional Chinese musical instruments and Chinese operas. However the notation is becoming less popular, replaced by mostly jianpu (numbered musical notation) and sometimes the standard western notation.
The notation usually uses a movable "do" system. There are variations of the character set used for musical notes. A commonly accepted set is shown below with its relation to jianpu and solfege.
The three notes just below the central octave are usually represented by special characters:
Sometimes "士" shì is used instead of "四" sì. Sometimes "一" yī is not used, or its role is exchanged with "乙" yǐ.
To represent other notes in different octaves, traditions differ among themselves. For Kunqu, the end strokes of "上" "尺" "工" "凡" are extended by a tiny slash downward for the lower octave, a radical "亻" is added for one octave higher than the central. For Cantonese opera, however, "亻" means an octave lower, while "彳" means an octave higher.
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