The ''đàn tứ'' (

chữ Hán ( , ) are the Chinese characters that were used to write Literary Chinese in Vietnam, Literary Chinese (; ) and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region ...

: 彈四) (''tứ'' meaning "four" in Sino-Vietnamese, referring to the instrument's number of strings), also called ''đàn đoản'' (''đoản'' meaning "short," referring to the instrument's neck) or ''đàn tứ tròn'' (''tròn'' meaning "round"), is a traditional

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

stringed musical instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play so ...

, this is short-necked, round-bodied lute derived from the Chinese ''

yueqin The ''yueqin'' (; ; ; or ), also called a moon lute or moon guitar, is a traditional Chinese musical instruments, traditional Chinese string instrument. It is a lute with a round, hollow soundboard, a short fretted neck, and usually four str ...

'', with four strings in double courses. It is little used today. A different instrument with the same name, which is similar to the Chinese ''

zhongruan The ''zhongruan'' () is a Chinese plucked string instrument. The ''zhongruan'' has a straight neck with 24 frets on the fingerboard and 4 strings. It is usually played with a plectrum (guitar pick). It can also be played with fingers (index fi ...

'' but with a rectangular or slightly trapezoidal soundbox, is used in Vietnam's tradition of ''

nhạc dân tộc cải biên ''Nhạc dân tộc cải biên'' is a modern form of Vietnamese folk music which arose in the 1950s after the founding of the Hanoi Conservatory of Music in 1956. This development involved writing traditional music using Western musical notation, ...

''. In around the 1960s, musicians in Vietnam's conservatories improved the ''đàn tứs ability to play Western-style music by creating a rectangular body with longer strings and fretting designed for the Western

diatonic scale In music theory a diatonic scale is a heptatonic scale, heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by eith ...

, which is also called ''đàn tứ thùng'' (''thùng'' meaning "box") to distinguish it from the traditional ''đàn tứ tròn'' (''đàn đoản''). This newer instrument has become much more popular than the traditional version.

References

Lute family instruments String instruments Vietnamese musical instruments {{lute-stub