I Ching Music 2

Sheet Music Examples

Play I Ching Music!

Music Theory and
History Links

Introduction:


     For those of you who are unfamiliar with musical notation and the related terms, the following paragraph may be difficult to understand. The words don’t really matter much though; the graphics, colors and sounds, speak quite eloquently for themselves in any language!

     In this system (octaves being a special case), each Trigram represents One Degree in any of the Seven Modes, within any of the Twelve Keys. Taken as a group, the Registers of these Seven Modal Scales are all balanced. The Eight Trigrams are a “musically movable” notation method, which presupposes that the player knows the Key being played, the Mode being used, and the precise Tuning Pitch. The Rhythm is a regular two beats per measure.

     As in all music, the musician must know the material and the instrument well, especially singers. This music is primarily intended to be sung by four male and four female singers together, in an equal balance of Yin and Yang. The words used may be something like Hebrew, Ancient Greek or Sanskrit.

The Seven Modes

The Seven Modes in I Ching Trigrams and Western Musical Notation.

King Wen

The 64 Hexagrams can be arranged in many ways, as is shown in other places on this site. Here are a two different examples of one of these arrangements, translated into music. There are several more examples in my book - The I Ching+.

It's important to know that all this music must be played using "Pure Tones". In other words, no vibrato or strong timber. A "Pure Sound " generator is best, because when using the Hexagram intervals, the Dissonance becomes very pronounced, as with the minor 2nd intervals for example. Fortunately, the Consonant intervals become very clean. Since the music "moves along", it sounds pretty good, once you get used to it. In this first example, even the image resolution is reasonably clean.

It should be noted that every possible interval between two octaves is used, and is used only once!!! Please enjoy!

Music Theory and History Links

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