Zither vs Yangqin

I was so happy to have purchased my very own zither in this SOLO trip. It costed me 800,000IDR which is less than 130SGD.

Learning to play this sweet little thing makes me happy. I used to think I can never make any obvious link with gamelan and yangqin. But hey! during the learning and practising process, I realised the very strange similarity: both the siter(as spelt in Indonesia, like you sit on it) and yangqin requires coordination of left and right hands and nothing much more. I mean, it isn't quite like the piano where you need to use all 10 fingers in some ocassions. The hardest part for me was that both hands are positioned differently and different actions are used for playing and damping, resulting in more than 4 possible manouvres. But I was glad I am slowly getting used to it and loving the sweet tingly sound it produces.

When I was playing the siter, I have the picture of myself on a rope swing. I don't really know why this happens. The rope swing is carefully cushioned with dusty(I don't mean the powderish dirt) pink satin to make it more comfortable. The swing moves gently back and forth, and somehow I have to keep playing, passing the melody from hand to hand and sometimes each hand being the suport for the other, all for the sake of keeping the clockwork momentum going and not stop.