Yun Gong, also known as "Yun'ao", "Xian'ao" and "Qiong'ao", is a rhythm-compliant musical instrument, that is, a musical instrument that does not change its pitch due to the playing technique. In the big family of traditional Chinese percussion instruments, the cloud gong is a common and special existence. It has been continuously simplified in the arrangement and combination of phonemes, gradually becoming the palace tone framework of traditional music.
The earliest records about Yun'ao can be traced back to the myth in "Han Wudi Neizhuan": "Mrs. Shangyuan played the cloud forest by herself." "Yangzhou Painting Boat Record" records 20 and 24 cloud gongs of different specifications. Ten-faced gongs appear on the "Trademan" painted by Su Hanchen from the Song Dynasty and the murals of Yongle Palace in Ruicheng, Shanxi Province.
A cloud gong, together with the crisp sound of the cloud gong, and even the ancient music troupe that goes with it, have been plucking the heartstrings and continuing the memory in the country ceremony over the years and cycles. In ancient times, for intellectuals who have read the scriptures, culture may be a vast sea of literature and classics, but for the hard-working common people, culture is the one after another at the door of the house.
Today, cloud gongs are mainly used in the performance of local music and national orchestras. In Xi'an Drum Music, there are double cloud gongs (two small gongs with 10 sides each) and square box (one small gong with 6 sides). There are nearly 100 "concerts" in central Hebei, such as Gegezhuang Concert, Beidayang Concert, Duzhuang Village Concert, Kaikai Village Concert, etc. Ten-faced gongs are still an indispensable musical instrument in the music club. . Some contemporary composers also use cloud gongs in their creations, such as the cloud gong concerto "Extreme" composed by composer Jia Daqun, which uses a total of 24 kinds of percussion instruments. , using 33 pitch levels.

Musicologist Zhang Zhentao, after comparing the phonemes and choreography of the fangxiang and the cloud gong, believes that the latter partially inherits the former, and the fangxiang that originally had 16 phonemes has been reduced to the existing 7-phone ten-sided gong. Therefore, the palace tune system carried by Yunluo today must follow the pattern of Fangxiang in the Tang and Song Dynasties.
The musical instruments, ancient books and audio-visual materials collected by the Art and Literature Museum of the China National Academy of Arts can be found in the notation information about the cloud gong, which provides an important reference for us to analyze the palace tune theory of traditional music. According to the literature, there are three kinds of heptatonic scales in traditional Chinese music, which are called the orthonic scale, the Qing-Shang scale and the lower-level scale. However, there has always been controversy over whether the Qing-Shang scales exist. It was Yun Gong who "set the tone with one click" and gave the answer. In 1958, the Music Institute of the China National Academy of Arts discovered a ten-sided gong that had been incorporated into its possession. On the gong plate were written ten notation characters such as "Shang, Chi, Gong, Fan, He, Si, Yi". In 2019, some music research scholars discovered that when the concert in Hanzhuang Village, Zhanggang Township, Xiongxian County, Hebei Province played "Pipa Theory" and "Four Seasons Alang", the "chi" was used as the "palace", and the words on the gong were used. The order of arrangement is the same as that of the Miaofeng Mountain Cloud Gong in the collection, but it presents the Qing and Shang scales. So far, the existence of the Qing-Shang scale has finally been confirmed. Among all traditional Chinese musical instruments, only the cloud gong with a fixed tempo and seven tones on all sides can fully present the palace tune system with three scales gathered together.
It can be seen that the structure and shape of musical instruments are manufactured according to the different needs of people. For thousands of years, from the bell to the ringing of the square, and then from the ringing of the square to the cloud gong, the luxury that used to be like a series has been gradually simplified, and the golden sound and the jade Zhen have turned to the busy sound of the market. Changes in the identity of the owner of the musical instrument, changes in the function and scene of the musical instrument, make the phonemes attached to the musical instrument simplified and simplified, and the terms are integrated into one. The wisdom and wisdom of folk musicians allowed them to make pragmatic choices under limited conditions. The story of Yun Gong has given us a deeper understanding of the development history of musical instruments and traditional music. Do you feel a little different the next time you hear the cloud gong playing?