Sanxian
| Sanxian | |||||||||
Chinese sanxian instrument
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| Traditional Chinese | |||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | |||||||||
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | sānxián |
| Wade–Giles | san1-hsien2 |
The sanxian (Chinese: 三弦, literally "three strings") is a Chinese lute — a three-stringed fretless plucked musical instrument. It has a long fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snake skin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes for different purposes and in the late 20th century a four-stringed version was also developed. The northern sanxian is generally larger, at about 122 cm in length, while southern versions of the instrument are usually about 95 cm in length.
The sanxian has a dry, somewhat percussive tone and loud volume similar to the banjo. The larger sizes have a range of three octaves. It is primarily used as an accompanying instrument, as well as in ensembles and orchestras of traditional Chinese instruments, though solo pieces and concertos also exist. The sanxian is used in nanguan and Jiangnan sizhu ensembles, as well as many other folk and classical ensembles.
Traditionally the instrument is plucked with a thin, hard plectrum made from animal horn but today most players use a plastic plectrum (similar to a guitar pick) or, alternatively, their fingernails. This use of fingers to pluck the instrument often shares technique with that of the pipa and is most commonly used in performance of sanxian arrangements of works traditionally written for the pipa. This allows for pipa techniques such as tremolo to be used. Other techniques for sanxian include the use of harmonics and hitting the skin of the instrument with the plectra or fingernail (comparable to the technique used to play the northern Japanese tsugaru-jamisen).
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Wikipedia