Oud ornament

Hi O.S. - Welcome to the forum!

If I'm correctly understanding your question, I think you are referring to the technique "çarpma" (Turkish - pron. charp-mah. i.e. to hit)

This is the grace note, or series of grace notes, attached to melody notes, a held note, or in between each note of a series—say, in a taqsim. There is infinite variation on this and it might be called a part of the soul of Turkish and Armenian styles. In my (limited) experience, I hear less of it in Arabic style.

I'll try to describe my exercise for this...hmmmm).

On the second string, strike the open string once downward with the risha. Immediately finger the second position ("B" in Turkish tuning, "F" in Arabic) with your index finger. This is known many places as a "hammer-on." So, you have just made two notes with one strike. Next, lift your index finger and strike the open string again, then repeat the "hammer-on" with your index finger. Note: depending on how you want your styling, you can make your second strike an up stroke and alternate down/up/down/up/down/up etc. from the start. Or, you can make them all down strokes.

Keep at doing this over and over as slowly and steadily as possible. Never do it faster than you can do it without mistake. Over time your speed will increase until the sound of it shifts into an actual clean grace note between each picked note, just as you have seen on those videos. Note: I have seen and heard it used two ways—with a tone sounding for the grace note, and with the grace note damped, and just sounding as a sort of punctuated stop.

From there, you start fingering notes with your first, second, and third fingers, and using your second, third, and fourth fingers to make the grace notes. (Armenian styling involves doing this with the third finger as much as possible, even on notes only one position apart). In time you will be able to apply this technique anywhere on the neck on any string, and work it into the melodies you play. Your listening will point you to where and how. Best of luck.

If I have misunderstood your question.....nevermind.

-Stephen

never ask a magician for his secrets!

Quote: Originally posted by DaveH

Littleseb's comment is very important. It's very easy to jump to putting in a lot of ornamentation before you've mastered good tone and got the confidence to let a note ring. It's a bit of a diversion strategy to try to cover up poor technique and "feel" with too many notes. If you can play simply and with confidence, ornamentation will actually follow quite naturally, and, if you record yourself and listen back, you'll find it sounds much better playing simply with confidence and feeling, than neurotically packing in grace notes to hide the fact that the basic technique and feel for time aren't there. I know, I've done a lot of the latter.

That's a great advice, I've also experienced it when I was learning guitar.
I'm currently at the stage where I still can't play 100% accurately and am falling into that ornamentation trap. I think we do this to spice up our play a bit because otherwise it gets boring...

Hi,

Naddad, Thank you for the video, it was quite interesting.
DoggerelPundit, thank you for the tripplets information. Concerning tripplets, I learned about it for first time from Marina Toshich's book (The Basics of Oud) where she explains that the tripplet should be done:

Down - Up - Down Down - Up - Down

She explains (according to what I understood) that first note should be "down" to give it more power to it where the next Up and Down should be played softer. Is there any contradiction between the 2 methods or is it according to the feeling of the player?

LittleSeb and DaveH, I completely agree with you concerning the importance of building a strong basis. In general I don't switch to complicate stuff until the base is not done properly. My question about ornament was maybe because I am a bit curious about how complicated things are done (I have difficulty of hearing music and not understand how it is done ) and also to break the monotony created by simple exercises. Now, my self-teaching is organized as:

- Learning Makamat and playing it with Oud (Bayat, nahawand)
- Right hand exercise (according to videos on Mike's site)
- Left hand exercise (walking fingers) - I hate that!!
- Melody playing according to my ear - I love that!

Anyway thank you all for your help.

Regards.

yodaudi or udiyoda ?

Leon

Quote: Originally posted by DoggerelPundit

Thanks Naddad, Just so, and best seen and heard at the multiple "held" notes in the taqsim. A Necati Celik example of this in use by all fingers and integrated into the melody is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-5DlMsA0cw Oud.sounds, you mentioned triplets. Necati's exercise for these is as follows: Beginning on the open first (highest) string, play -down / up / down-, and also -up / down / up-. These three notes are played as a unit, with some space in between each set of three. As before, slowly at first and with a relaxed wrist. Speed will come. (you can see him using this in the video linked above). I heard him say that both "down" beginning and "up" beginning patterns were necessary, so they could be done from wherever your risha might be just before. After accurate triplets can be played on all 6 courses, the left hand can move in to provide different note patterns. He also gave the same method for 4 note patterns, i.e. -down / up / down / up-, and -up / down / up / down- -Stephen

News...

Hello Naddad and Stephen,

Sorry for the late answer. I saw you messages but I wanted to create a video also to show you the progress. Here is it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bxb2ey4_kQ

Please don't pay attention about my seriousness it it because I am so concentrated. In the life I am less serious than that )

Stephen, thank you for taking care about my progress. It is going up and done. Sometimes I think I really progress and other I say to myself that the way to a good play is still far away.
Looking at such maestro videos like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsrPBNmh5Qk

is hurting me. It is so beautiful on the one hand but so difficult on the other hand... I know for sure that I should always go back to very simple exercises to be able to stabilize my play.

Naddad, I got you U2U only today. I did not see that each time I came to this site I was not logged in.
Your exercice sounds good and I think you are on the right way. You have problem of speeds but I do think that your play is clean (You don't miss strings like I sometimes do). Also, you oud has a very nice sound in my opinion.
Concerning the tripplets, as I spoke about previously is generally speaking the fact to pluck the same string 2/3 times with different pressure force. This is actually the ornement I was looking at the beginning. This fills the blanks between 2 different notes.

Hope to hear from you soon. Again don't be afraid to criticise my playing!

See you.

Naddad,

You are correct, in my opinion. Thinking of all the Arabic and Arabic style style oud players I've heard, I hear far less carpma from them than I have from the Turkish and Armenian players. The technique is used, but differently, and sparingly. Regarding your speed, of course it is difficult. If it was easy anyone could do it! -- Seriously, just keep at it slowly and cleanly and the speed and proper sound will come.

The maestro video linked by oud.sounds is really pleasing. It reminds me of a beautiful taqsim recorded by Nabil Safi (son of Wadi Safi) sometime in the '80s. In any case, it is very much in the tradition of Farid Al Atrache. I have seen that right hand technique demonstrated (the part where the camera was pointed at the ceiling--everywhere but on the player!! ) The melody notes are alternated with a triplet on the first course (open). The triplet is always picked "up-down-up," so that the risha hand is set up to strike the melody note downward, and in turn, to begin the next triplet with an "up." At speed, it sounds like a continuous tremolo on the first course. (By the way, I have been trying to master this technique for a long time, with not much success).

-Stephen

Oud type