coyootie - 12-5-2009 at 06:57 AM
greetings fellow oudophiles! just done, and we took it to Albuquerque to give it a test drive. Our driver was none other than Rahim Alhaj. Rahim was
very impressed with it and asked me to build one for him with some other design ideas. All I can say is that I was very humbled and extremely happy to
hear a wonderful virtuoso of his depth and dedication give me such a positive response, and this was my first oud.
Rahim said this is a soloist's instrument, not loud but with clarity and tone, and plays right. He wanted the string spacing at the nut and bridge
close so I'll take care of that today, not a difficult re-do. The personal tastes and preferences of all oud players are, well, very individualistic,
and what I like will never be the same thing another does, but I wanted to make a good instrument according to my understanding and instincts.
In our long and very lively discussion of ouds and playing various maker's ouds we covered a huge area. It's obvious that there are so many
particulars about an instrument , and exactly how an oud will sound in the hands of different players , that this essay would go on forever, so I will
assume all oudophiles know this and understand how personal our ideas of Sound are!
I'll continue this in the next post with pix.