Chapter VI Aspects of Change in the Music and Culture of Yuping Xiaodi Musical Instrument119
4. The Change of Craftsmanship and Technique
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Figure 82 The carving workshop of Yuping Xiaodi Factory Photo: Li Xingchen
In August 2021, the researcher personally visited the Yuping Xiaodi Factory during fieldwork. Through an interview with the key informant (The director of Yuping Xiaodi Factory), Mr. Wu Jihong, he said that in April of this year, the original Yuping Xiaodi Factory was relocated and moved to the new address. At present, the development of Yuping Xiaodi Factory has encountered many problems and difficulties. For example, insufficient development funds, insufficient production workers, machines to be updated, single product sales channels, etc.
125 Yuping Xiaodi has been produced for hundreds of years in Yuping County. Before Yuping County officially established the Yuping Xiaodi factory at the end of 1955, the production of Yuping Xiaodi was made by many private workshops, and there was no uniform production standard to regulate production. And the product is simply one kind of Xiao or one kind of Di.
Without unified standard, the products of all Xiao & Di clubs are in their own way, and the products vary from good to bad.
Soon after the establishment of the factory, Mr. Zheng Huizheng, who was born in 1922, served as the factory director. After he and the veterans of flute production reached a consensus on the necessity of formulating Xiao & Di production standards, Mr. Zheng Huizheng went to Beijing to set up. The Chinese Musical Instrument Research Institute soon learned about the national wind music standard system, and the research institute has just issued the Chinese bamboo wind instrument production standard. After further improvement in the early 1960s, the standard was promulgated and implemented by the Ministry of Light Industry, collectively referred to as Quality standards for Xiao & Di production.
On the basis of the Chinese bamboo wind instrument production standards, the older generation of artists based on the production experience accumulated and passed down on the Yuping Xiaodi for hundreds of years, and formulated the quality standards for the first Yuping Xiaodi production enterprise.
The implementation of the new Xiao & Di craft quality standard has ended the original production model of Yuping Xiaodi that has been followed for hundreds of years. The 13-law tuning form derived from the twelve-tone equal temperament has strict regulations on the inner diameter of each different tuning product, the opening distance of the blowing hole and the sound hole, and the diameter of each hole.
These standards are the necessary means to complete and control the tune of Xiao & Di products, and the Xiao & Di products produced under this standard further have the performance function as Musical Instruments. For the production history of Xiao & Di, this is an epoch- making revolutionary progress.
On September 6, 2007, Guizhou Provincial Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision issued the Local Standard of Guizhou province -- Yuping Xiaodi, which detailed the
126 classification, varieties, specifications, requirements, labeling, packaging, transportation and other contents of Yuping Xiao and Yuping Di.
2) The improvement of model making process
The model making process is the forming process of the Yuping Xiaodi. This process is complicated and sequenced. It has gone through the process of selecting materials and cutting materials (divided into Xiao and Di materials), roasting and straightening more than ten processes. These processes basically follow the traditional hand-made methods, and only part of the processes such as jointing, drilling, cutting, etc. use part of the mechanical processing.
Intonation and timbre are the main technical indexes of Musical Instruments, both of which are completed in the model making process. However, as a bamboo wind instrument, the stability of timbre and intonation is always a bottleneck. The Yuping Xiaodi is made of bamboo, and the fiber structure and fiber compactness of bamboo are easily affected by climate and humidity and heat, so the intonation and timbre are easy to change. These factors restrict the stability of the intonation and timbre of bamboo flute instruments, and this difficulty is common in all Xiao & Di manufacturers in China.
Shanghai National Musical Instrument Factory, Suzhou National Musical Instrument Factory and Guangzhou Musical Instrument Factory took the lead in the research. According to the physical reasons that bamboo products are susceptible to climate change and humidity and heat change, they proposed to control the intonation and timbre of the products by adjusting them.
The effect of this reform is quite obvious and very successful. China has a vast territory, and the geographical climate, temperature and humidity gap between the north and the south is very large.
As a result, Xiao & Di products produced in the south cannot be used normally in the north. The regulation function of Xiao & Di products solves this problem.
In order to keep up with the research pace of other musical instrument factories in the quality control, Yuping Xiaodi factory sent Mr. Liu Zesong and other makers to Guangzhou musical instrument factory to learn the production technology of regulating Di, the product soon formed mass production, gradually formed the main products in the factory. The change of model making process greatly improves the quality of Yuping Xiaodi products.
3) The innovation of production technology
127 During the fieldwork, the researcher interviewed the key informant Mr. Liu Zesong. The interview question was whether there was any innovation in Yuping Xiaodi production in recent years. Mr. Liu Zesong said that his own production has been the use of pure manual traditional production techniques, in the innovation of this aspect of the research is less, but there are innovations. For example, in order to increase the volume of the Di, Mr. Liu Zesong added a pair of sound holes at the end of Di, which can increase the volume of the Di without affecting the intonation. The researcher tried to play this particular Di, and did increase the volume. The following figure 84 and figure 85 are the innovative and improved Di instrument made by Mr.
Liu Zesong.
Figure 83 The innovation of of Yuping Di made by keyinfomant Photo: Li Xingchen
We all know that the role of bamboo membrane is to optimize the tone of Di, whether there is a bamboo membrane, or the quality of the bamboo membrane directly affects the tone and quality of the instrument. In order to optimize the tone of the Di, Mr. Liu Zesong made improvements and innovations on it. He added a membrane hole below the original membrane hole in order to change or optimize the tone. The researcher tried to play it, and it was really effective.
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Figure 84 The innovation of of Yuping Di made by keyinfomant Photo: Li Xingchen
Mr. Liu Zesong said that he decided to put these two kinds of Di pioneered by him into the market, depending on the effect, if they are popular, then he will continue to make and put them into production. At the same time, he will continue to experiment with changes in the making process. Such changes must be of great significance to promote the development of Yuping Xiaodi products and culture.