"Sweeping" is one of the common skills in guzheng performance. In modern zheng music, it plays the role of decoration, embellishment, highlighting the melody, shaping the emotional image of the music and enriching the theme color. Sweeping is a special technique derived from the guzheng shaking finger technique.

From the materials of some zheng songs, we can see the following notation symbols and performance characteristics of "sweep and shake":

"Battle Typhoon" swipe fingering pops up in a pair of three. It highlights the melody and renders the intense musical mood, and the effect is very imposing. It is represented by the swipe symbol, that is, the middle finger strums two strings continuously, and the big finger shakes the first split finger at the same time, and the string tone remains in an octave.

In "Dongting New Song", except for the second, sixth, and seventh bars, the sweeping fingering is played one-on-one, and the others are played one-on-three. Except for the swipe symbol, the sound name is recorded as an octave high and low, which looks clear at a glance. The swinging angle enhances the theme color and creates a warm atmosphere. One-to-one, one-to-three combination fingerings make the melody more flexible and unrestrained.

Swipe-prone problems

In the process of teaching or playing, the problems that are prone to occur with swept are:

First, the sweeping and shaking cannot be combined organically, the middle finger sweeping angle is not good, the resistance is large, and the sound is uneven;

The second is that the sound of the big finger shaking the string is hard and the noise is heavy; the sweeping and shaking are disjointed and uncoordinated.

It is not difficult to see from the examples that this technique has a common point in the application of zheng music. Most of them are used in the climax of the music. The expression marks vary from f to ff. The speed is fast and the intensity is strong. The application of speed and strength in sweeping skills, in training, students often neglect these two problems, and sweeping skills will not achieve satisfactory results.

How to practice sweeping and what to pay attention to

The usual middle finger strumming rule is that the tick symbol is ⌒, and the middle finger plays the string inward; if the tick is connected, the symbol is ⌒... The middle finger goes from the outside to the inside and from the bottom to the top, and plucks the strings in sequence.

The rule of middle finger strumming is different from the former. Strumming, that is, playing two or three strings in the middle finger at the same time, or even playing more strings as needed, is called strumming. Hook and sweep are different in terms of sound effects. Relatively speaking, the former is pronounced as a dot, and the latter is pronounced as a piece.

In the swipe technique, the shaking of the strings with the big finger is different from the shaking with the big and index fingers in general. General finger shaking, according to the music mood, ideas can be sparse or dense, and there is no restriction on the number of ideas. In the swipe technique, there is a specified number of ideas that can be shaken by the finger. The completion of a sweep technique, or One-to-one, or one-to-three, to form a regular sound group.

When practicing, you should also pay attention to the issues of strength and speed. The strength and speed of strumming is an important factor in musical performance, and it is also the basis for strumming. As far as thumb shaking is concerned, speed refers to the process of how fast the finger touches the string, and strength is the force of the finger on the string. The strength and speed are correctly applied to the sweep to determine whether it is uniform and dense during the sweep process. The strength of the shake is coordinated.

Then comes the question of elasticity, which is actually an organic combination of strength and speed, and it can also be said to be an inherent capacity method. In our daily life, we flick the dust off our clothes with our hands. This feeling happens to be something that students can learn from when they practice sweeping. It requires both elastic strength and a natural feeling of relaxation. That is, the big middle finger relaxes naturally before the sweep, the moment when the string is touched is fast and powerful, and then it relaxes immediately after the string is touched. This kind of looseness, the force is organically adjusted in a very short period of time.

When practicing, it should also be noted that the big and middle fingers should be connected with the qi and blood of the wrist and arm when swiping. The quality of the skill is closely related to the feeling of the whole body and mind. Such a phenomenon often occurs when students practice sweeping. In a short time of sweeping, the finger force and finger feeling are competent, but if the sweeping time is a little longer, the big finger and the middle finger are sore and difficult to support, and the sweeping cannot be used freely. The reason for this is that During the sweep, the middle finger and the wrist joint forearm and forearm cannot be well adjusted and organically follow, the qi and blood are not connected, and when they bounce, don't move.

In short, the process of mastering the practice of sweeping skills requires the combination of correct methods and scientific attitudes in order to achieve the training effect.