Music notation

There are two types of musical notation commonly used in Chinese Music today, namely, staff notation(五线谱), and numbered notation(简谱).

Staff Notation
Staff notation in China is similar to the staff notation in the West. In Western musical notation, the staff (US) or stave (UK)[1] (plural for either: staves) is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or, in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending on the intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention.

The absolute pitch of each line of a non-percussive staff is indicated by the placement of a clef symbol at the appropriate vertical position on the left-hand side of the staff (possibly modified by conventions for specific instruments). For example, the treble clef, also known as the G clef, is placed on the second line (counting upwards), fixing that line as the pitch first G above 'middle C'.

The lines and spaces are numbered from bottom to top; the bottom line is the first line and the top line is the fifth line.

The musical staff is analogous to a mathematical graph of pitch with respect to time. Pitches of notes are given by their vertical position on the staff and notes are played from left to right. Unlike a graph, however, the number of semitones represented by a vertical step from a line to an adjacent space depends on the key, and the exact timing of the beginning of each note is not directly proportional to its horizontal position; rather, exact timing is encoded by the musical symbol chosen for each note in addition to the tempo.

A time signature to the right of the clef indicates the relationship between timing counts and note symbols, while bar lines group notes on the staff into measures.

The vertical position of the notehead on the staff indicates which note to play: higher-pitched notes are marked higher on the staff. The notehead can be placed with its center intersecting a line (on a line) or in between the lines touching the lines above and below (in a space). Notes outside the range of the staff are placed on or between ledger lines—lines the width of the note they need to hold—added above or below the staff.

Which staff positions represent which notes is determined by a clef placed at the beginning of the staff. The clef identifies a particular line as a specific note, and all other notes are determined relative to that line. For example, the treble clef puts the G above middle C on the second line. The interval between adjacent staff positions is one step in the diatonic scale. Once fixed by a clef, the notes represented by the positions on the staff can be modified by the key signature or accidentals on individual notes. A clefless staff may be used to represent a set of percussion sounds; each line typically represents a different instrument.

Numbered notation
The numbered musical notation (simplified Chinese: 简谱; traditional Chinese: 簡譜; pinyin: jiǎnpǔ; literally: "simplified notation"), is a musical notation system widely used in music publications in China (not to be confused with the integer notation). It dates back to the system designed by Pierre Galin, known as Galin-Paris-Chevé system. It is comparable to the Gongche notation from the Tang Dynasty.

It is also known as Ziffersystem, meaning "number system" or "cipher system" in German. It should be noticed that some other unrelated musical notation systems are also called cipher notations.

The same system or very similar systems are used to some extent in some other countries such as Japan (with 7th being si), Indonesia, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and English-speaking Canada.

Musical notes
Numbers 1 to 7 represent the musical notes (more accurately the scale degrees). They always correspond to the diatonic major scale. For example, in the key of C, their relationship with the notes and the solfège is as follows:

In G:
 * Note:
 * C
 * D
 * E
 * F
 * G
 * A
 * B
 * Solfège:
 * do
 * re
 * mi
 * fa
 * sol
 * la
 * si
 * Notation:
 * 1
 * 2
 * 3
 * 4
 * 5
 * 6
 * 7
 * }
 * 7
 * }

When the notes are read aloud or sung, they are called "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si". ("Si" has been supplanted in English by "ti", for the sake of having a different beginning consonant for each degree.)
 * Note:
 * G
 * A
 * B
 * C
 * D
 * E
 * F♯
 * Solfège:
 * do
 * re
 * mi
 * fa
 * sol
 * la
 * si
 * Notation:
 * 1
 * 2
 * 3
 * 4
 * 5
 * 6
 * 7
 * }
 * 7
 * }

Octaves
Dots above or below a musical note raise or lower it to other octaves. The number of dots equals the number of octaves. For example, "6•" is an octave lower than "6". Musical scales can thus be written as follows: Where there is more than one dot above or below the number, the dots are vertically stacked.

Where there are note length lines (see following section) underneath the numbers, any dots are placed below the lines. Thus the dots below numbers do not always vertically align with each other, since some of them may be moved slightly downward so as not to collide with the note length lines.

Chords
Chords can be transcribed by vertically stacking the notes, with the lowest note at the bottom as with Western notation. Each note has its own octave dots, but only the lowest note has the length lines (next section).

Arpeggiated chords are notated by writing the standard Western arpeggiation symbol to the left of the chord.

Chord symbols such as Cm may be used if the exact voicing is unimportant.

Note length
The plain number represents a quarter note (crotchet). Each underline halves the note length: One represents an eighth note (quaver), two represent a sixteenth note (semiquaver), and so on. Dashes after a note lengthen it, each dash by the length of a quarter note.

A dot after the plain or underlined note works increases its length by half, and two dots by three quarters.

The underline, along with its joining, are analogous to the number of flags and beaming in standard notation. So are dotted notes. But the analogue stops at notes worth three quarter notes and beyond, where dashes are used instead.

Musical rest
The number "0" represents the musical rest. The rules for length is similar to that of the note, except that it is customary to repeat "0" instead of adding dashes for rests longer than a quarter rest. The standard notation for the bar rest is sometimes written as " )o( ". The bar rest of 3/4 time is   and the bar rest of 4/4 time is . For brevity the multi-bar rest symbol used in standard notation may also be adopted.

Undetermined pitch
When notating rhythms without pitch, such as in many percussion instruments, the symbol "X" or "x" replace numerals.

Bar lines
Bar lines, double bar lines, end bar lines, repeat signs, first- and second-endings look very similar to their counterparts in the standard notation. The ending numbers, though, are usually slightly less than half as big as the numerals representing notes.

When several lines of music are notated together to be sung or played in harmony, the bar lines usually extend through all the parts, except they do not cut across the lyrics if these are printed between the upper and lower parts. However, when notating music for a two-handed instrument (such as the guzheng), it is common for the bar lines of each hand to be drawn separately, but a score bracket to be drawn on the left of the page to "bind" the two hands together. This bracket is not the same as the bracket used on a Western piano staff; it's more like the bracket used to bind an orchestral section together in Western music.

If a piece of music for a two-handed instrument has a passage where only one hand is notated, lines of numbered notation without score brackets at the left can be used for this passage. Hence a piece of music may shift between two-handed (with bracket) and one-handed (without bracket) layouts during the course of the piece.

Cadenza-like passages can have dotted barlines, or barlines can be omitted altogether.

It is possible to print a small fermata above a bar line; this represents a brief pause between the measures either side of the barline, as in Western notation.

Accidentals and key signature
The notation uses a movable Do (1) system. The key signature defines the pitch of "1". So   means "C major". Minor keys are based on the natural minor or the Aeolian mode, and the key signature defines the pitch of "6" of the minor key's relative major. So   means "A minor", the tonic of which is written as 6. Naturally, the Dorian mode of D should be marked as   and based on 2. Some people prefer to write "Key: C" or "Key: Cm" instead.

The same accidentals in the standard notation are used, and as in common practice, an accidental is placed before the notes "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" to raise or lower the pitch and placed after the note names "C D E F G A B", which are used for key signature and chord markings in the numbered system. But these accidentals are relative to the diatonic scale (1 2 3...) rather than the note names (C D E...). For example, even though the leading note for the harmonic C minor scale is "B natural", it is written as "♯5".

Key signature changes are marked above the line of music. They may be accompanied by symbols that represent the note's degrees at previous and present key signatures.

Time signature
The time signature is written as a horizontal fraction:  ,  ,  , , etc. It is usually placed after the key signature. Change of time signature within the piece of music may be marked in-line or above the line of music. Some pieces that start with cadenza passages are not marked with time signatures until the end of that passage, even if the passage uses dotted barlines (in which case 4/4 time is usually implied).

Sometimes a piece is written with multiple time signatures simultaneously. For example, it might specify , meaning that the length of measures is irregular and can be 4, 2, 3 or 5 quarter-notes. The time signature of the first measure is always specified first, and the others are placed in increasing order of length.

Usually, the time signature is formatted as two numbers placed vertically on top of each other, with a horizontal line separating them. This is slightly different from the formatting illustrated in the text above, due to technical restrictions.

A metronome mark may be placed immediately after the time signature if the time signature is part-way through the music, or below it if the time signature is at the beginning. If present, this will be identical to the metronome marks used in Western music (this is the only place in numbered notation where Western symbols for note values such as quarter-notes and eighth-notes are used).

Ties, slurs and tuplets
Ties and slurs are curves resembling that in the standard notation, although they are always written above the music line in numbered notation. Ties are much flatter than slurs; usually only the ends of a tie are curved, whereas slurs are curved throughout. Chinese music books often draw ties and slurs with a single thin line, in contrast with the Western practice of making the line thicker in the middle.

In music for two hands, it is possible to write a slur that begins in one hand and ends in the other; this is usually done when the first hand has nothing more to play in that measure and hence there is room to draw the slur in the space which would normally have been used to draw further notes. This is similar to some Western keyboard music where slurs between the staves are possible.

A slur with a small arrowhead on its right-hand end indicates a pitch bend between the notes under the slur, which is possible on some instruments.

Tuplets (such as triplets, quintuplets, etc.) are notated by writing a slur-like symbol over the notes and printing a small digit (3 or 5 or whatever is appropriate) in the center of this symbol, so that the line passes through the digit.

Expression marks and dynamics
Expression marks (including fermatas) are also written above the music line. Special attention has to be paid on the staccato dot since it looks like the octave changer. It is either represented by a bolder dot further away from the music line or by the staccatissimo sign instead, which is an inverted triangle.

Dynamics (p, f, mf, etc.) and hairline crescendos and diminuendos are written below the line of music to which they apply, as in Western notation. The font of the dynamics is usually lighter than the font used in Western notation, so as not to be as heavy as the font for the numbers.

Fingering and other instrument-specific marks
Instrument-specific symbols can be written above notes. For example, in music for stringed instruments it is common to see wavy lines representing rolls. Fingering can be marked using four different kinds of finger symbol, respectively appearing like a lightning strike, the top half of a semicircle, a backslash, and the bottom left corner of a square.

Other instrument-specific symbols that are sometimes used include one resembling three slashes progressing diagonally downward, placed to the lower right of the numeral. This represents a tremolo. Another symbol is formed of a line proceeding from slightly to the right of the top right corner of the numeral and curving upwards, ending with the left half of an arrowhead. This denotes a slide to a higher note (the exact pitch not always being specified), equivalent to portamento in Western music.

If there are slurs or ties and also fingering symbols, then the fingering symbols are written above the slurs or ties. Rolls (wavy lines) and tuplets are usually written below the slurs or ties. However, if a one-off chord results in many digits being stacked on top of each other and also has a roll symbol, it is possible to place that roll symbol above any slur or tie line to save space (to avoid moving the slur or tie any higher than the chord has already needed to move it).

Glissandi
Glissandi are represented by diagonal wavy lines with arrowheads at the end. The glissando symbol proceeds from bottom left to top right for an upward glissando, or from top left to bottom right for a downward glissando. It is used in place of a numeral. For stringed instruments, it usually indicates playing all the notes of the scale in rapid succession.

Note that a pentatonic scale is normally used in Traditional Chinese music, so "all the notes of the scale" in this case are 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.

Extended glissandi (over several octaves) are also possible, usually written with a longer diagonal wavy line that is nearly touching the numbers on either side of it. In this case the numbers on either side determine the starting and ending pitches for the glissando.

Grace notes
Grace notes are notated like normal notes but are written in a small (about half-size) script on the line just above. They are written with octave dots and note-length lines, and they are connected to the main note with a slur that proceeds vertically downward from the center of the note-length line of the grace notes and points toward the main note. Grace notes may be placed either before or after the main note, indicating that they are to be played very rapidly either before the start of the main note or after the end.