How is an oud tuner

Practicing in front of a mirror helps you to have a glimpse of the positions of the left and right hands, how you are actually seating, and how the audience will see you during a performance. It also boosts your confidence by helping to overcome stage fright. The string base is made of wood to hold the strings from the bottom of the Oud. The strings Base is useful for holding the strings in position. It is actually the part over which the strings pass to help vibrate the sounds by the strings or transmission to the sound box.

By principle, the thinner the face of the Oud, the better the quality of the sound produced. The sound quality is measured by how delightful and open the sound is. Thus, it is very important for the Oud makers to apply great care when designing the face of the Oud. As shown in the picture, there are no frets on the fingerboard. That is what makes the Oud an Oud. This is the one major difference between the Oud and the Guitar.

The reason for this is to enable the player to produce a monochromatic range of sounds on an open frequency without any limitation. Here in this article, we have used different syllables such as C, E, D etc for labeling different pitches.

Besides that, we have used different numbers such as 1, 2, 3 etc as subscripts. Here, higher numbers stand for higher octaves. Tuning of an Oud in Arabian method has a special feature. In most of the cases, tuning starts from low notes to high notes as mentioned below: D2 G2 A2 D3 G3 C4 What is all the more interesting about Oud is that it offers a certain level of flexibility to its players. Though G2 is commonly used in the above mentioned sequence, you can try F2 as well if you are in mood of adding some variety in your performance.

Some Oud players, who hail from the Iraqi school, even advocate for the use of 1st string just before the 6th string. Those, who are following Western sheet music for learning various aspects of Oud tuning, should be careful about octave. Remember one thing that the sound of an octave is lower in case of Oud as opposed to other popular western musical instruments.

The differences between all these tunings, could be found especially on the fifth and sixth string bam. Some musicians tune them the strings in spaces of four like the tuning of rest strings, and others like «isokrates» meaning always the same tune.

The «isokrates» tuning is performed by tuning the fifth string and the second string to have the same tune and the sixth with the third also the same tuning. Before Turkish and Arabic musicians adopted the Western notation system, they used unique names for every note.

These names are still used today, but because music is written on the Western staff, either the Western note names or their solfege equivalents are more commonly used. One good thing about learning the Turkish and Arabic note names is that unlike with Western note names and written notation, there is no difference between where the Turkish and Arabic notes are typically played on the oud.

So for example, what is written as a 'G' in Turkish notation has the note name rast. This is written as a 'C' in Arabic notation, and is also called rast. The note rast is typically played on the third position of the fourth string on both Turkish and Arabic ouds.

So, there is no conflict between what a note is called and where it is played if you use the original Turkish and Arabic note names.

Because there are a different number of notes in Turkish and Arabic music theory however, some of the names do not match, and additionally, some of the names are different. Although makams in Turkish and Arabic music are typically written in the same key all of the time, they can be transposed and played in any key. In Turkish music theory there are names for each transposition.

They are referred to as "tunings", but in fact they are on-the-fly transpositions, as the tuning of the oud is not changed.

The most common Turkish transposition is called Bolahenk , which is where the music is played a fourth lower than it is written, as noted above. In Arabic music transpositions are referred to as they are in Western music. Music that is written in the key of D is typically played in the key of D, but can also be played in any other key. When it is played in another key, it is simply stated as being played in that alternative key. I'll end here with a quote from my oud teacher, Mavrothi Kontanis :.

Turkish vs. Arabic Tuning The difference in actual concert pitch between Turkish and Arabic tuning is not difficult to understand. On Arabic ouds the tuning from the fourth to the first highest pitched course of strings is: A, d, g, c On Turkish ouds the tuning from the fourth to the first highest pitched course of strings is: B, e, a, d The two bass string courses are where different varieties of tuning are used in both Arabic and Turkish tuning.