A minor key in jianpu is 6 = A, not 1 = C.

The rule in one line

A jianpu key statement names the note that the music treats as home, not simply the note that happens to be called 1. Most of the time those are the same thing and you write 1 = C. When a piece centres on la instead — which is what a minor key is — you write 6 = A.

Why 1 = C is the wrong label for a minor piece

Jianpu is a movable-do system. The numbers are not pitches; they are positions in a scale. Write 1 = C at the top of the page and 1 sounds as C, 2 as D, 6 as A. Write 1 = G and the same digits sound a fifth higher, without a single one of them changing on the page. That is the whole appeal of the notation: the melody is written once and can be sung in any key.

Now take a tune in A minor. It uses the same seven pitches as C major, so if you label it 1 = C every note you write will sound correct. Nothing is out of tune. The recording would be fine.

But you have told the reader something false. A key statement is not only a tuning instruction — it is a claim about where the music rests. 1 = C says this piece comes home to do, and your piece does not; it comes home to la. A singer reading it will phrase towards the wrong note, a director will hear cadences landing somewhere unexpected, and anyone transposing it will keep the pitches and lose the point.

6 = A fixes that with no other change at all. The numerals stay exactly where they were — A is still written 6 — and the statement now says what is true: 6 is the tonal centre, and it sounds as A.

The five Chinese modes

This way of naming a key comes from Chinese modal practice, where it is not an edge case but the ordinary way to describe a piece. 五声 (wǔshēng) is the five-note system underneath most traditional Chinese melody, and each of its five degrees can act as the centre. A mode is named for the degree it sits on, so there are five of them, and only one is built on 1.

Degrees 4 and 7 are missing from that list on purpose. They are not part of 五声 at all — they are the auxiliary tones that fill it out into a seven-note scale, and no mode is named for either of them. A piece does not come home to 4.

How to tell which mode a piece is in

There is a rule you can apply without knowing any theory, and it is the one working musicians actually use: look at the note the piece ends on. Chinese melodies come to rest on their tonal centre with great reliability, so the last note tells you the mode.

I did not get this from a textbook. A jianpu musician wrote to me to say DomiSol was labelling his repertoire wrongly, and when I asked how to tell, he sent the rule along with two well-known pieces for each mode to check it against — the examples in the table above are his. That is why I trust it, and it is why this page exists at all.

The mode is judged by the final ending note — 宫 ends on 1, 商 on 2, 角 on 3, 徵 on 5, 羽 on 6. This is the music-theory classification, not the traditional Chinese five-tone health classification, which shares the same five names.

五声, 清乐 and 雅乐

Once you go past five notes there is more than one way to fill the gaps, and the choice has a name. All three systems below share the same pentatonic core; they differ only in the two notes they add.

• 五声 — the bare five: 1 2 3 5 6. No 4, no 7.
• 清乐 (qīngyuè) — adds a natural 4 and a natural 7. The result is identical to the Western major scale.
• 雅乐 (yǎyuè) — adds a raised 4 (变徵) and a natural 7.

Combine those with 羽调 and you get the three minors you will meet most often. 五声羽调 is the bare pentatonic minor — la do re mi sol, no semitone steps at all, and the sound most people think of as "Chinese". 清乐羽调 is the natural minor exactly as a Western musician would recognise it. 雅乐羽调 keeps the raised 4, which lands a whole tone above the fifth degree of the mode and gives it a brighter, almost Dorian colour.

All three are written the same way at the top of the page — 6 = A — because all three centre on la. What separates them is which notes appear underneath, and 雅乐 is the only one that needs an accidental.

Writing it in DomiSol

Open a score, go to the Score tab and choose Tonal centre. Pick 6 · la — 羽调 and the header changes from 1 = C to 6 = A. All five modes are there: 宫调, 商调, 角调, 徵调 and 羽调.

It changes the label and nothing else. No note moves, no pitch changes, playback is identical, and the bar lines stay where they were. This matters if you are looking at a finished score and wondering whether it is safe to touch: it is. Setting the tonal centre is a statement about music you have already written, not an edit to it.

You can also skip the theory entirely. DomiSol reads the last note of your melody and offers you the answer — ends on 6 — 羽调? — which you accept with one click. If the melody uses only the five notes of 五声 it will name the Chinese mode; if it uses a 4, a 7 or any accidental it will tell you the ending note without claiming a mode it cannot verify.

Questions people ask

How do you write a minor key in jianpu?

You state the key on degree 6 rather than degree 1. A piece in A minor is written 6 = A, which tells the reader that the number 6 sounds as A and that the music centres on la rather than do. The notes themselves are unchanged — jianpu is movable-do, so every number is already relative to the tonic.

What does 6 = A mean in jianpu?

That the numeral 6 sounds as the pitch A, and that A is the tonal centre of the piece. It is the la-based way of writing what Western notation calls A minor. The equivalent major statement would be 1 = C, since A minor and C major share the same seven pitches.

What are the five Chinese modes?

宫 (gōng), 商 (shāng), 角 (jué), 徵 (zhǐ) and 羽 (yǔ) — the five modes of the 五声 pentatonic system, built on degrees 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. Degrees 4 and 7 are not used as modal centres: they are the auxiliary tones that extend the five-note scale to seven, and no mode is named for them.

How do you tell which Chinese mode a piece is in?

By the note the piece ends on. A melody ending on 1 is 宫调, on 2 is 商调, on 3 is 角调, on 5 is 徵调 and on 6 is 羽调. This is the music-theory classification, and it should not be confused with 五音, the five-tone correspondence used in traditional Chinese medicine, which shares the same names.

What is the difference between 清乐 and 雅乐?

Both are seven-note systems built around the same pentatonic core. 清乐 adds the natural fourth and seventh, making it identical to the Western major scale. 雅乐 instead uses a raised fourth (变徵), so a piece in 雅乐羽调 needs one sharp and sounds close to the Dorian mode.

Can I write Chinese modes in a free online editor?

Yes. DomiSol lets you set the tonal centre to any degree, so a score can state 6 = A, 5 = G or 2 = D rather than only 1 = C. It also reads the mode off the note your melody ends on and offers it, so you do not need to know the theory to label a piece correctly. Free to write, play and share.