The grand dame of plucked stringed instruments, the pipa is one of the most expressive instruments in the Chinese orchestra. Its techniques are applied to almost every plucked stringed instrument and its concepts have been borrowed for the reformations of various plucked stringed instruments.

The term pipa used today refers to the lute-shaped instrument which comprises of four strings and a fretted soundboard of 20 to 25 frets. In the ancient Chinese dynasties of Sui and Han, the term pipa was generic for any instrument that was plucked or had a plucked string aspect to it.  The word pipa is made up of two Chinese characters –  pi and  pa.  The words describe how the instrument is played and the sounds it produced.  The forward plucking of the string using one’s right hand was termed pi, and the backward plucking of the string with the right hand was termed pa.

Although greatly associated with the Chinese, the pipa is not native to China; the instrument was introduced to China by Asia Minor over 2000 years ago.  As the instrument is foreign, its counterparts in the forms of lutes and mandolins can still be found in Central and Western Asia.

The Tang Dynasty was believed to be the golden age of the pipa, when numerous developments were made on the instrument, its playing methods and its compositions.

Because of these drastic reforms, there were great breakthroughs in pipa techniques and performances.  Besides developing as an accompaniment or lead instrument in dances, the pipa now showed great value as a solo instrument. 

In the 1950s, the pipa, went through reformation to meet up with the demands for the Western scale system.  As such, more frets were added – a total of 24 (possibly more) frets and six xiang (bridge) frets.  The steel string replaced the original silk string and artificial acrylic nails were introduced to pipa performance, creating improvements in the tonal colour, texture, technique and dynamic range of the pipa.