The lute is made up of the head, neck, and abdomen. There are also two parts, the head and the body, which are the head above the head and the body below the self. The head mainly includes the headstock, string groove, string shaft (string shaft), etc.; The neck includes the mountain pass, phase, neck, pillow, phoenix platform, etc.; The abdomen includes the fret, the surface, the back, the strings, the whisk (also known as the double hand, the covering hand) and so on. The current pipa is a tune, a four-string, and a pear-shaped resonance box, and it is played directly by hand with a vertical hug. In the course of historical development, there have been many types of pipa, such as ringing pipa, moon pipa, high-pitched pipa, nanyin pipa, electric pipa, crystal pipa, five-string pipa and so on.
The pipa is a traditional Chinese plucked instrument. Scholars generally believe that the popular pipa evolved from the Zhixiang Pipa (also known as "Qin Pipa" or "Qin Hanzi"), which originated in China during the Qin and Han dynasties, and the Quxiang Pipa (also known as "Hu Pipa") that was introduced to China through Qiuci (present-day Kuqa, Xinjiang) during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
The first pipa that appeared in China was the straight pipa of the Qin and Han dynasties, which was made of wood, straight handle, round resonance box, four strings and twelve columns, and was called "Qin pipa". Transformation, the original lower abdomen was changed to a large belly, the twelve-tone column was changed to a thirteen-tone column, and the resonance box was enlarged. The transformed straight pipa is called "Nguyen Xian" or "Nguyen".
Roughly during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Quxiang Pipa was introduced to China from Persia via Xinjiang. It is a musical instrument with a tune, four strings and four columns, a short neck, and a pear-shaped resonance box, and a plucked instrument horizontally.
The Tang Dynasty was a peak in the development of pipa, and the various forms of pipa were gradually integrated and transformed with each other, retaining the shape and pronunciation characteristics of the pipa in the quxiang, absorbing the advantages of the Qin pipa, and developing the four-column pipa into a multi-column pipa, which greatly expanded the vocal range; Gradually abandon the plucked pipa and follow the way of playing the straight pipa by hand; The performance was changed to the horizontal hug of the pipa to the vertical hug of the straight pipa. This new style of pipa is called "Quxiang four-string multi-column pipa".
After the Tang and Song dynasties, the pipa shape system continued to improve. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the pipa shape system was basically stable, the rhythm system and string setting were very close to the modern one, and the grade was increased to four phases and ten frets or four phases and twelve frets (that is, fourteen or sixteen columns, and the phase was combined into a column), and the vocal range was further increased on the basis of the thirteen columns.