Wu Fei's Music Daily

Good morning everyone, I just created this solo guzheng piece ten minutes ago after a long weekend of Memorial Day in the U.S.. The birds are chirping as you can hear in the recording. The white campion blossoms are still there in the early morning. I noticed them yesterday evening while I was taking a stroll. The flowers seemed to pop out of no where all of a sudden. The white campion is native t...

This counterpoint composition was created and recorded yesterday on half-prepared guzheng. I prepared my guzheng with a bandana which semi-muted some of the strings. All the 21 guzheng strings are open strings. The resonance is one of the main characters that make a guzheng sound enchanting. However, I like to have more rhythmic approach on the instrument. I have found an effective way to mute the...

This composition was created and recorded on two track guzheng, performed by me. I continue to explore tone colors in this piece by tuning the guzheng in two different scales in free tempo and time signature in each track. Tempo is the speed in music. The inspiration came from a beautiful afternoon I spent with family in Leipers Fork, Tennessee (photo below). Hope this piece brings you a moment of...

This multitrack guzheng composition was created and recorded yesterday, inspired by a photo by my husband in taken Tibet in January, 1997. He rode a bike (photo below) by himself for a year from Pakistan to Xinjiang to Tibet and Nepal. I envy him to this day. The music started from double tremolos plucked by my thumb and middle fingers back and forth in a rapid speed. In music, tremolos create a t...

This composition was created and recorded yesterday on multitrack guzheng, performed by me. Recently, I have been thinking about traditional compositional structures. The common ones are: * A B A * A B1 B2 A * The sonata form * Rondo ( A B A C A D A) * Theme and variations etc. I realized that I had been using these forms subconsciously because of years of music training. In this piece, I purposel...

This guzheng étude was recorded yesterday at 165 beats per minute (BPM). BPM measures how fast or slow the music is. A song with a BPM of 120 would be considered relatively fast, while a song with a BPM of 60 would be considered relatively slow. In this track, I plucked four times per beat in the tempo of 165 BPM throughout the piece, with occasional pauses. It means I plucked 660 times every minu...

I composed and recorded this piece yesterday on prepared guzheng. A prepared instrument is that instrument has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings. I used five keychain rings in this piece (photo below). This way of playing and making music has had about one hundred years of history. Important composers...

This solo guzheng composition was created and recorded yesterday, performed by me. The Amur honeysuckle are blossoming everywhere in the forest near my home in west Nashville, Tennessee. The Amur, or Heilong Jiang (black dragon river) forms the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The Amur honeysuckle, is a species of honeysuckle in the family Caprifoliaceae that is native t...

This night song was composed and recorded yesterday, performed by me. Hope this track start your week with a moment of calmness. I would also like to share an album review of the duo record “ Wu Fei and Abigail Washburn ” released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2020. The review was written by musicologist Jay M. Arms (University of Pittsburgh, PA), and published in the Yearbook for Traditio...

This multitrack guzheng piece was created and recorded yesterday. Every track was played by my left hand. The inspiration was from the wild flowers that are blossoming all over west Nashville. The colors of the flowers are stunning. The best way to give my eyes a break from the screen is to gaze far into the forest for a long time. You should try it too if you haven’t. I am a right handed person....

This multitrack guzheng composition was created and recorded yesterday, performed by me. I saw a broken eggshell in the middle of the hiking trial (photo below). It wasn’t there the day before. I wonder if it’s a bird or a tortoise. Or could it be a snake? Whatever it is, I hope it’s growing strong and taking on the world with bravery! Hope this piece brings you a moment of joy. Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeim...

This three-track counterpoint guzheng piece was recorded yesterday. The quarter-dotted note theme is throughout the piece. Everything else is an extension of the theme in an non-strict canon style in terms of compositional structure. I did not intend to develop the piece this way when I started the first track. Hearing what I had come up with from the first track drew me into an irresistible force...

This composition was created and recorded yesterday on multitrack guzheng. I was inspired by a painting from the Song Dynasty China called Lady Su Hui and Her Verse Puzzle (photo below). It is a collection in The Met . “This scene appears in a later copy of a Tang-dynasty painting illustrating the story of a literary legend, Lady Su Hui, who was supposed to have lived in the late fourth century. T...

This piece was composed and recorded yesterday. Maestro Ahmad Jamal, the legendary jazz pianist/ composer passed away yesterday at age 92. I am beyond grateful for his brilliance, beauty and inspiration. Words are weightless to say what I want to say how much joy and wisdom his music has brought to my life. He was a treasure of our time. Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeimusic.com This is a public episode. If you'...

The guzheng (古筝 lit. 'ancient zheng'), is a Chinese plucked zither. The modern guzheng commonly has 21 (most common like the one in the recording), 25, or 26 strings, is 64 inches (1.6 m; 5.3 ft) long, and is usually tuned in a major pentatonic scale. In this piece, I tuned it completely different from the traditional scale. It was inspired by Arabic music. Guzheng has a large, resonant soundboa...

This solo guzheng improvisation was recorded yesterday, inspired by German composer, pianist, and piano teacher Clara Josephine Wieke-Schumann (1819 - 1896). I had known about Clara Schumann as the talented wife of Robert Schumann, another German composer. But yesterday, a coincidence online led me to discovering more of her work. I was amazed to discover details about her compositions, her marria...

The early azalea (photo below) is here in Nashville. They smell amazing already. Can’t wait for the full blossoms! Wishing you all a beautiful weekend. Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeimusic.comTwitter @wufeiInstagram @wufeimusicYouTube @wufeimusic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wufeimusic.substack.com/subscribe

Yesterday, I heard the passing of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. I grew up listening to his music in films ( The Last Emperor ), animations and video games. As a composition student in a conservatory in China in the 1990s, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music was like a fresh ingredient to my sonic learning book. This piece is dedicated to him. RIP, maestro. Thank you for composing all the music that fil...

Wish you all a healthy and romantic weekend with this new piece! Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeimusic.comTwitter @wufeiInstagram @wufeimusicYouTube @wufeimusic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wufeimusic.substack.com/subscribe

This piece was created and recorded yesterday. I plucked the strings on both sides of the bridges on my guzheng. One side is tuned in multi-pentatonic scale, and the other side is in all microtones. The blend of the two scales gives an interesting tone color and timbre that is seldomly explored in the traditional way of composing and performing. I find it very satisfying to create music like that....

This solo guzheng piece was created and recorded yesterday after seeing a rue-anemone (photo below) on the hillside of the forest. When I looked up this little flower, an interesting fact was that the rue-anemone was often confused with the similar species, the false rue-anemone. Both plants have white flowers that appear in early spring and grow in wooded areas. However, the false rue-anemone is...

I wrote this piece yesterday and recorded it on multitrack guzheng, performed by me. Spring has arrived. The bunnies are out again in the forest. Each year, the cute furry animals become less scared of us. Now, when I step out of the house to put food leftover in the compost bin, the bunnies don’t run away any more. Instead, they hang around like in the photo below and wait for sweet peas and lett...

This composition was created and recorded yesterday, inspired by the memory of my concert residency at the UNECO World Heritage Zollverein in Essen Germany last November (photo below). Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeimusic.comTwitter @wufeiInstagram @wufeimusicYouTube @wufeimusic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wufeimusic.subst...

This composition was created and recorded yesterday, inspired by a smart bass (photo below) that has been living in the pound near my home. A dear friend caught it yesterday & threw it back in the lake. I had fun watching him fishing. Hope this piece brings you a fun moment into your weekend! Wu Fei 吴非 Wufeimusic.comTwitter @wufeiInstagram @wufeimusicYouTube @wufeimusic This is a public episode....

I composed and recorded this multi-track guzheng piece yesterday morning after hearing the beautiful eastern towhee birds in the forest. I didn’t get a good photo of the birds. You can listen to their callings on: All About Birds of The Cornell Lab . It has become one of my favorite websites to learn about the birds in North America! Hope this piece brings a moment of joy into your weekend! Wu Fei...