Guzheng marks: fingering and technique
Enter 顫音, 滑音, 泛音 and the rest on a jianpu score — turn on the Chinese notation template, then use the Expression tab. Every glyph, and what it sounds like.
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The guzheng marks are off by default, because on a vocal jianpu score they would be noise. Turning them on takes one click, and it is the click most people don’t find.
Turning them on
Open the Expression tab. When the marks are off it shows a 颤 上 下 · Guzheng marks button — press it.
That switches the score to the Chinese notation template, which also sets jianpu with Chinese-convention beaming, since the marks only make sense on a jianpu page. Nothing else about your score changes.
The same setting lives under Score → Template → 中文 Chinese, and picking 中文 Chinese in the New Score dialog starts a score with it already on. Choosing Layout → 2 staves (the Right hand / Left hand guzheng layout) turns it on too, because that layout is a guzheng score.
Fingering — 指法
Which finger plucks the string. Select a note, then press one.
| Glyph | Finger | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 大 | Thumb | 大指 |
| 食 | Index | 食指 |
| 中 | Middle | 中指 |
| 名 | Ring | 名指 |
| 小 | Little | 小指 |
Technique — 技法
| Glyph | Technique | Also written | Plays back? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 颤 | Vibrato | 顫音 | Visual only |
| 上 | Slide up | 滑音 / 上滑音 | Visual only |
| 下 | Slide down | 滑音 / 下滑音 | Visual only |
| 刮 | Glissando | 刮奏 | Yes — a fast run of scale steps |
| 揉 | Kneading | 揉弦 | Visual only |
| 摇 | Tremolo | 摇指 | Yes — re-articulates across the note |
If you are looking for 顫音, it is 颤. DomiSol prints the simplified characters throughout; 颤/顫 and the rest are the same techniques.
The marks that are “visual only” are drawn on the score and carried into both the jianpu PDF and the staff-notation PDF — they just don’t change the sound. True pitch-bending is out of scope: every playback voice is a polyphonic synth with private voices, so bending would mean rebuilding the audio engine.
The ornaments everyone gets
These are not behind the template — they are general notation that happens to carry Chinese names, and they are on the Expression tab for every score:
- 泛音 harmonic — a hollow circle above the note.
- 琶音 arpeggio — a wavy line to the left of a chord; rolls the chord’s onsets on playback.
- 刮奏 glissando as a span — click the start, then the end note, and the sweep is drawn between them.
- 装饰音 grace notes — attached to their note rather than sitting in the beat, so adding one never re-bars the music.
Two staves
Layout → 2 staves sets up the conventional guzheng layout, naming the parts Right hand and Left hand. Bars stay locked across both, so an edit to one hand cannot knock the other out of alignment.
For the sound, open Instruments and pick Pluck / guzheng — the plucked-string approximation.