The earliest example of the modern shorthand tablature survives from around the 12th century CE. An earlier form of music notation from the Tang era survives in just one manuscript, dated to the 7th century CE, called "Jieshi Diao: You Lan" (Solitary Orchid, in Stone Tablet Mode). It is written in a longhand form called "wenzi pu" (literally "written notation"), which gives all the details using ordinary written Chinese characters. Later in the Tang dynasty, Cao Rou and others simplified the notation, using only the important elements of the characters (like string number, plucking technique, "hui" number and which finger to stop the string) and combined them into one character notation. This meant that instead of having two lines of written text to describe a few notes, a single character could represent one note, or sometimes as many as nine. This notation form was called "jianzi pu" (literally "reduced notation") and it was a great step forward for recording qin scores. It was so successful that from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) onwards, a lot of qinpu (qin tablature collections) appeared, the most famous and useful being "Shenqi Mipu" (The Mysterious and Marvellous Tablature) compiled by Zhu Quan, the 17th son of the founder of the Ming dynasty. In the 1960s, Zha Fuxi discovered more than 130 qinpu that contain well over 3360 pieces of written music.
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