Does anyone know how to read that kind of music sheet ? It’s supposed to be for an instrument called Guqin

Question

A friend of mine would like to know how to read this music sheet for an instrument called Guqin. Does anyone have ever heard about that kind of sheet ?

Answer 1

Yes, in fact I play guqin myself, although only as a casual hobby level.

Almost none of these are actually chinese characters and aren't read as vocab, but basically chinese acronyms of actions to perform. Each one will tell you which hand, which finger and which movement to do, and for the hand that slides where to place and move the fingers as needed. If there is no new instruction you continue with the previous instruction in every way with new notes-- or continue the same note with new movement instructions, you get the idea.

https://www.peiyouqin.com/notation3.html is a site that lists most of the common commands, if you learn them you can read these too, the only chinese language you actually need is basic numbers and fractions to know where to place your hands relative to the dots on the side, example commands are "on dot 6" or "dot 7.8" ((4/5 the way down from dot 7, just not quite to 8)).

Older texts like this pictured did not in any way notate the tempo etc, like how long to hold a note or how fast to play. Modern notation usually does notate those,although its the same otherwise. example:

Modern music is often tuned to a C like western music in the modern palate, but traditionally a guqin did not have set notes. Traditionally you would tune the strings against each other and against common sounds, usually lower than modernly. Actually many modern ones are steel strings and traditional silk strings would snap way more often tuned so high.

Similar to instruments like violin, modern or ancient, you need to have a good ear for the sounds. Nothing tells you what note you are playing on the instrument itself, and you need to adjust in the moment as required.

Hope this helps. （＾ω＾）