Introduction to Chinese Musical Instruments: Bayin 八音 - a musical instrument categorization system

This series provides fundamental information on Chinese musical instruments, their history and cultural identities. This episode introduces Bayin 八音, a musical instrument categorization system from ancient China. In the West, musical instruments are classified according to how sound is created on them. In China, a system of categorizing musical instruments according to the materials they are made from, called Bayin, was created between the 12 and 8th century BC. "Ba" is Mandarin for 8, and "yin" means sound. Bayin refers to the 8 categories of Chinese music instruments.