Video – Mr Yuan Jung-ping performs “Lament of Departure” with Guqin

Here’s a recent video piece I shot and edited. It’s a series of promotional videos for Chung-dao Tang and Guqin in general. Chung-dao Tang is a Guqin music society founded by Mr Yuan Jung-ping. This particular Guqin is a “Chung-dao Qin,” produced with 100-year old wood and using silk strings, as opposed to most modern metal strings.

Anyway, I shot this video in Chung-dao Tang in Catskill, location owned by Yuni Han, an amazing chef who also have the eyes for building amazing room[s] for playing musical instruments and recording. I shot it using the photo cameras that I use to shoot weddings [Canon 5D mk2s], and recorded using an external audio recorder. Edited using Final Cut Pro.

More rambling info if you are interested: Mr Yuan is a Guqin college instructor in Nanhua University of Taiwan. It’s a music university where all students are required to learn Guqin, the one and only college that has such a requirement.

Guqin was considered the top art of 4 arts a scholar had to learn in ancient China [4 arts being: Qin, Chess, Calligraphy and Painting]. It encompasses much of the essence of Chinese culture. Guqin is one of the few, if not the only, ancient Chinese instrument that have hundreds of surviving scores written in its own language: “tablatures.” It first gain international recognition when the ancient piece “Flowing Water” was included in the Voyager 1 and 2 [V'GER!!! Star Trek reference, sorry] that NASA launched into deep space in 1977.

There are tons of random Guqin pieces on youtube. But many of them have very low production quality, and often were ripped from other productions, or just slideshows mated with random photos that do not go with the music, and most of them use metal strings that were designed to be LOUD [which, in a way, destroys the essence of Guqin, but that's a rant for another time]. I think a refined instrument such as Guqin deserves some more respect and refinement from the production.

I made these videos [more to come] so I can bring some higher quality Guqin videos to share with other music lovers and open more channels of dialogue. I am learning new things as I do this.