When you first look at the dizi, you might think the dizi does not look all that complex. It’s a tube of bamboo with holes poked in it. Once you begin to play it, however, the sound is quite different from what one might expect. It can be piercing or bright, serene or even booming, depending on the player. The main factor behind this unique tone is the dimo, a small membrane inside the dizi. The membrane vibrates as air passes through the instrument, creating the buzzing timbre so characteristic of a dizi.
The dizi has been used in Chinese music for centuries, but music has continued to evolve. Musicians in recent times are performing pieces with more complex notes, various keys, and Western influence. This posed a problem, as the traditional dizi was not initially intended for all of those requirements. And this is where the Taiwanese musician Chen Chung-Shen came into the picture. Chen was born in Yunlin, Taiwan. From a family that has no musical background. He wasn’t simply a dizi player. As his career developed, he became a composer, conductor, teacher, and inventor. But throughout time, what he’s well known for is still his development of the Chen-style semitone dizi. The Chen-style semitone dizi made it much easier for musicians to play notes that were challenging on the traditional instrument.
Chen began to take an interest in music at an early age. While he did not receive any formal musical training as a child, he was exposed to various forms of traditional music in Taiwan as he was growing up. When he was in elementary school, he would frequently go to a classmate’s house to do homework. He would listen to his classmate’s older sister practice the flute, and the sound intrigued him. He later purchased his own dizi with some of his Lunar New Year money and began teaching himself. A simple curiosity soon developed into something that would change the rest of his life.
As Chen’s interest in music deepened, he continued his studies. He went on to attend a national Taiwanese school in Taichung before furthering his musical education at Soochow University. Chen not only studied traditional Chinese music, but also focused on Western flute, composition, and conducting. This provided Chen with both experience with a wide variety of music, as well as a deeper understanding of both the strengths and the shortcomings of the traditional dizi. Which this ombination of both Chinese and Western musical training would prove to be significant later in life, when Chen began contemplating improvements to the dizi.
After he graduated, Chen started a career that took him far beyond the concert stage. In 1979, he became a member of the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, specializing in dizi and xiao. Throughout the years, Chen also became engaged in composing, conducting, and teaching. These various areas of musical engagement helped him gain a clearer perspective of the role the dizi played both as a solo instrument and as part of a larger ensemble. With the increased difficulty and chromatic demand of new music, Chen began to realize that there were limitations to the standard six-hole dizi. This realization in the future led to his quest to expand the capabilities of the instrument without losing its inherent sound.
The traditional dizi was satisfactory for the music it was intended for, but difficult to play for contemporary compositions. One issue was the semitones that lie in between the pitches of a scale. On a conventional six-hole dizi, a musician would often have to resort to awkward fingerings or partially cover holes or employ alternate embouchures to play these notes. Skilled players were able to overcome these issues, but fast sequences involving many semitones could become cumbersome and lose intonation. A musician may have been required to switch from one dizi to another if the pieces were in different keys. Chen realized that these practical considerations posed the fundamental question of whether it was possible to make playing the dizi easier for modern music without compromising the timbre, which was the dizi’s unique appeal.
This realization led Chen to invent the Chen-style semitone dizi. Rather than redesign the instrument entirely, he made it more practical to play a complete chromatic scale. New holes were added with mechanical keys to allow musicians to reach the semitones more directly, without as much reliance on awkward fingerings or half-covering holes. The idea was to give the dizi more flexibility, but to do so without sacrificing the traditional sound of the bamboo instrument. This made the instrument more practical for modern compositions, particularly pieces that made use of faster chromatic runs or more key changes.
The most significant impact of Chen’s semitone dizi was the new flexibility it provided. Musicians were now able to play more modern, and often more challenging, repertoire without constantly having to switch between instruments or finger awkward positions. This was especially helpful for Chinese orchestral settings, where the dizi was expected to play with many other instruments and be subject to much more detailed and complex notation. Chen’s new design also made it easier for students to systematically learn chromatic notes. This instrument did not replace the traditional dizi, but rather offered another option to players interested in exploring new and wider repertoires.
Chen’s invention also reflects on Taiwan’s musical culture. Taiwan has close ties to traditional Chinese music, yet its musical style has also been influenced by Western classical music, local Taiwanese traditions, and contemporary sounds. Since Chen was both educated in and had a career in traditional Chinese instruments and Western music, he understood both. His semitone dizi became an excellent example of how Taiwan more often embraces innovation along with tradition, rather than exclusively choosing one over the other. In this way, Chen was not only transforming an instrument, but he was also demonstrating how traditional music might further develop in a modern setting.
While Chen’s inventions strongly impact Taiwan’s music background, some people might argue that changing the traditional dizi takes away part of what makes the instrument special. The challenging fingerings and the simplistic bamboo structure have been set for generations. Changing the features that make a dizi a dizi would inevitably make the instrument seem less like a dizi and less traditional. I, however, believe Chen’s additions helped preserve the instrument. He did not take away the bamboo body or the special sound the instrument produces. He simply provided a new and more fluid way for musicians to incorporate the instrument into more modern music. I do not believe tradition always has to be static to be of value. Sometimes tradition must be flexible to persist.
The dizi was not designed for the type of chromatic orchestral music that Chen would be exposed to later in life. Instead, it had been used primarily in Chinese folk music, opera, and instrumental ensembles for centuries. There also existed different types of dizi made for specific styles of music. Some had a brighter and more forceful tone while others had a softer, more expressive sound. The development of Chinese orchestras in the twentieth century, however, placed the traditional instruments in a new musical context. Composers began asking them to perform in large ensembles and play more complex pieces of music. The dizi was therefore put into musical situations that its basic six-hole design was not originally intended for.
The dizi is not the only instrument that has evolved either. All sorts of instruments we know today had to go through radical design changes in order to get to where they are. The Western flute, for instance, added an increasingly elaborate key system in order to let musicians more easily play all the different notes. In the same way, Chen’s semitone dizi also proves that improving an instrument doesn’t automatically mean erasing its history. What really matters is whether the instrument still retains the sound, purpose, and cultural identity that made it special to begin with.
As a clarinet player, I can sympathize with the need for these design changes. Keys on the clarinet allow for notes that would be incredibly difficult to reach if I had to cover every hole with a finger directly. For that reason, Chen’s proposal makes a lot more sense to me. Keys don’t necessarily take away from the dizi. Instead, they could allow for more control and make difficult notes more accessible while retaining the instrument’s original character.
Chen Chung-Shen’s tale is an example of how an individual performer can facilitate the ongoing evolution of an instrument. Although he began with the same bamboo dizi his ancestors had used for generations, rather than settling for the instrument’s inherent flaws, he sought ways to correct them. His semitone dizi expanded musicians’ freedom without sacrificing the sound or identity of the original instrument.
What’s significant about Chen’s gift isn’t only that he created an innovation. It’s that he found a way to link tradition and contemporary music. To me, that’s what makes his work particularly special in a place like Taiwan, where the traditional and new constantly coexist. The dizi may start as a plain piece of bamboo, but thanks to players like Chen, its music can live on, reaching new listeners and new forms of music.
By: Foster Chu
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