To musicians versed in western music tradition and theory, Chinese music can sound bewildering. But look underneath the hood and you will find the foundations of the music are remarkably similar. So similar in fact, that French musical theoreticians in China, during the 18th and 19th centuries, speculated that Chinese music with its five to six thousand year tradition was the ancestor of western music with its two to three thousand year tradition.
How is it that music that is built on the same underlying foundations can sound so different? Maybe you already know that Chinese music is mainly pentatonic. This book will introduce you to the many techniques, starting from the pentatonic scale, that form component parts of the Chinese music tradition and theory.