How to Play Dizi, the Chinese Bamboo Flute - the Advanced Skills: How to Play Dizi, the Chinese Bamboo Flute, #2

By H.H. Lee

This book will teach you to play the dizi at the advanced learner's level on the basis of the previous book. Various techniques and other kinds of dizis (especially the dadi) will be introduced, whereas a number of sheet music will also be provided for practices. After reading the whole book, you should have a deeper understanding of the dizi and can play more songs by yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: H.H. Lee
• Release date: Jan 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9798215409183

H.H. Lee

H.H. Lee is a Chinese who has played the erhu for around 20 years. Having joined the Chinese orchestra for long, he knows various Chinese musical instruments well and hopes to introduce their elegance to people outside China.

Book preview

How to Play Dizi,

the Chinese Bamboo Flute

– the Advanced Skills

By H.H. Lee

How to Play Dizi, the Chinese Bamboo Flute – the Advanced Skills

Copyright © 2019 by H.H. Lee

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First published on 22 January 2019

Edition 1.2 on 6 March 2023

Table of Contents

Preface

Dizi Techniques

Etudes for Various Techniques

Other Kinds of Dizis

The 7-hole Dadi

Dizi Accessories

Selected Songs

Online Materials

Preface

Upon completion of Book 1, you should have got a basic understanding of the dizi and manage to play some simple songs.  In Book 2, I am going to touch on the skills introduced before in a more detailed manner, so that you can grasp them and play more songs at will.

The skills that will be elucidated include, inter alia:

Legato, tonguing, glissando, trill, run, vibrato, harmonic, flutter tonguing, circular breathing, circular tonguing and overblowing.

Besides, I will introduce the mechanism of the dadi, together with its fingering charts.  Unlike the bangdi and qudi, the dadi has a different number of holes that requires a distinctive set of fingering for it to produce notes.

Without further ado, let us begin with the various techniques of the dizi that add flavor to its timbre.

Dizi Techniques

The table below summarizes all common techniques of the dizi (words in italics are transliteration of the Chinese terms):

Let us start with the most basic one – legato – first (hereinafter all notes are played under the setting of 1 = D with a D-key dizi, whereas the fundamental tone is treated as the solfeggio ):

Legato

Legato/連音 is denoted either by a slur that links notes of different pitches, or a tie that links notes of the same pitch.  Being the easiest technique, it only requires all linked notes to be loud and solid without any noises.

When playing legato (e.g. , consisting of the solfeggi , and ), we have to finish all the notes within a single breath in a smooth manner, so that their volume, intensity and timbre remain consistent; no noises are made between them; as