A Study Of The Acoustic Erhu As Electronic Sound Trigger And Its Application In Music Composing

As a national musical instrument,Erhu has experienced continue changes for thousands of years,which are featured with its internal development. However, with today's technology software advancement, industrial technology upgrade and innovation industry booming, more and more national musical instruments are considered to combine with technologies, shifting from acoustic instruments to electro-acoustic instruments. However, no study is found in the researches related to the area of electronization of national instruments.This paper focuses on three specific issues associated with Erhu and electronic music: first, the design concept of a MIDI Erhu. The existing MIDI signal converter-Roland GI-10 is used to achieve the real-time excitation of the electronic timbre by MIDI Erhu. Second, issue about the range, timbre, playing skills and matching with the electronic timbre created and real-time performance; the mapping and construction methods shall be found after real-time excitation to treat timbre with the computer software sampler; Third, the existing real-time excitation method of electronic timbre by the acoustic Erhu shall be employed to compose two works for Erhu and[Classroom 513] e-LIVE ORCHESTRA, which is application of previously mentioned technology in composing practices. The composing technology and excitation technology shall be analyzed specifically.The results from the above analysis and research reveal that the real-time interaction between erhu and electronic music can be associated not solely with music composition by traditional methods of sample sampling and sample audio editing. It would be more conducive to electronic music interactive composition by turning Erhu into an instrument of compound functions including sound development, identification and conversion of performance information and parameters improvement of the effecters. These multi-dimensional functions can be achieved during the excitation process in the MIDI Erhu. It can be seen from the above research that the single role of Erhu as a national string instrument can be expanded to the broader and multi-dimensional field of electronic music with more in-depth exploration.