Chinese vocal music probably developed from sung poems and verses with music. Instrumental pieces played on an erhu or dizi are popular, and are often available outside of China, but the pipa and zheng music, which are more traditional, are more popular in China itself.
Chinese music, the art form of organized vocal and instrumental sounds that developed in China. It is one of the oldest and most highly developed of all known musical systems.
The Chinese system concentrates in a similar way on a seven-tone scale but with a five-tone core (wu sheng) plus two changing (bian) tones to accommodate transpositions of a single mode to different pitch levels as well as modulations from one mode to another.
Today, the guzheng is widely considered the most popular traditional Chinese music instrument, and can be considered the equivalent of the piano in Western music, said Luo Xiaoci, director of Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. "The guzheng is a versatile instrument with very broad range of sound.
According to a consumer survey released in autumn 2020, pop music was the most popular music genre in China. About 57.3 percent of the surveyed digital music users in China said that they liked listening to pop music.
Chinese Music Industry
The most popular music genres in China are C-pop, pop, folk, country and soundtracks.
Apple controlled 14% of the Chinese smartphone market in the second quarter of this year, up from 8% in the second quarter of 2020, according to research firm Counterpoint. A monthly subscription for Apple Music costs 10 RMB ($1.56), with Netease charging 18 RMB ($2.82) and Tencent Music's asking 20 RMB ($3.13).
Chinese music is as varied as the people who create it. Chinese music dates back thousands of years and sounds different from Western music thanks to important differences in tone, musical scale, pitch, instrumentation, and individual instruments.
Pipa 琵琶 — the Chinese Lute or Chinese Guitar
The pipa is a traditional Chinese musical instrument with four strings. The instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with frets like those on a guitar. The number of frets ranges from 12 to 26.
Pipa (琵琶 )
The Chinese pipa, a four-string plucked lute, descends from West and Central Asian prototypes and appeared in China during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). Traveling over ancient trade routes, it brought not only a new sound but also new repertoires and musical theory.
The characteristics of ancient Chinese music include classical and elegant lyrics, poetic words, neat and beautiful melody and multi-ethnic musical instruments. It's totally different from the metallic feeling of rock music and heavy feeling of classical music.
In Western music, there are seven different notes in an octave. In East Asian music, there are five; that's the pentatonic scale and one of the main reasons that East Asian music sounds different when compared to Western music, since the relations between notes in a scale are different.
C-pop, or Chinese popular music, is music made by artists in the Greater China region, comprising mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. There are three main subgenres of C-pop: Cantopop, Mandopop, and Hokkien pop.
The eight material groups are: animal skin, gourd, bamboo, wood, silk, earth/clay, metal and stone.
Apart from some instrumental sounds used in Chinese erudite music, which might have a natural relaxing sound, some of the Chinese music can be relaxing due to the used scales that are very logical and provide the listener to a natural resolution of phrases.
di, Wade-Giles romanization ti also called dizi, in music, transverse (or side-blown) bamboo flute of the Han Chinese. Traditional di have a membrane of bamboo or reed tissue covering the hole that is located between the mouth hole and the six finger holes.
The Jiahu gǔdí (Chinese: 贾湖骨笛) are the oldest known musical instruments from China, dating back to around 6000 BCE. Gudi means "bone flute" in Chinese.
The Chinese instruments include the erhu, dizi, pipa, and suona. All Chinese instruments are classified by their material construction into eight categories: jin (metal), shi (stone), tu (clay), ge (hide), si (silk), mu (wood), bao (gourd), and zhu (bamboo).
Western classical music wasn't introduced to the Chinese public until Christian missionaries came in the 19th century, but it quickly gained popularity and prestige as a symbol of the Western “culture of scientific progress and modernization.” The rigors of classical training fit the Confucian value of self-cultivation ...
The Chinese traditional cultural values of harmony, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and filial piety are embodied in China's diplomacy through the concept of harmony, the most important Chinese traditional value.
The three main streams of religion in East Asia—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—all employ music to express beliefs and ideas. Ancient shamanic practices as well as Christianity and Islam also play a part in the musical histories of China, Korea, and Tibet.
Tencent, NetEase, and Baidu are the top names to watch in China's streaming music market. Pandora and Spotify are the most popular streaming music services in America, but neither company has a meaningful presence in China's market of over 650 million streaming music users.
Today music copyright is enforced in China. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry 97% Chinese consumers were listening to licensed music in 2021.
In the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, only royal families and dignitary officials enjoyed music, which was made on chimes and bells. During the Tang Dynasty, dancing and singing entered the mainstream, spreading from the royal court to the common people.