Mike's Oud Forums

The oud isn't an instrument

luan - 10-28-2014 at 04:32 PM

I know it is, but let me explain:

Think about the differences of an oud and a fretless guitar.
You may think about the number of strings or stuff like that.

But really, is that what distinguishes one instrument from another?
When you think about how a guitar (fretless or not) or an oud sounds like, do you think about the risha, the pick, the bowl, the fretless neck?
Or do you think about how music sounds when played by a great musician on each instrument?

There is something happening which I don' like, and that is people who get an oud and just plays it the way they can because 'it is just another instrument'.
That is totally superficial and not true.
The difference of a fretless guitar and an oud is not what they play, but rather how they play.
Its not even about scales or maqams.
It is about techniques and resources.
Unless you take lessons with good oud players and/or transcribe and listen a lot to oud music, you will be playing a fretless guitar with a risha.

I like what Mehdi Haddab does with his group Speed Caravan, because even if he plays his electric oud with distortion, wah and delay, the guy sounds like a great oud player, not an electric guitar player. He still plays oud techniques, resources and ideas. He has all of that down.
A great player can use the major scale and still sound like an oud player.

Marcus - 10-28-2014 at 10:55 PM

Hi luan:wavey:

Sorry,I do not agree!! The oud is just another instrument. Yes, it is very special-no matter if it is played like it "should be" or not.
As long as there is a musician who gets something nice out of it and people who like it, it is ok.

If all artists only play instruments like they "should be played", there`ll be no inovation,no fusion between different styles of music.


Cheers
Marcus

Jody Stecher - 10-29-2014 at 07:51 AM

I disagree with both Luan and Marcus. And I agree with both.

I do agree with Luan that the oud does not respond well to poor technique and do not agree with Marcus that this can ever be "something nice". If the tone is like three rats trying to bite their way out of a burlap sack, how can this be musically valuable? This is not innovation or fusion. It is carelessness.

I do agree with Marcus that the oud *is* a musical instrument and as such has potential beyond the musical limits of its engendering cultures, however rich those cultures may be. But successful innovators and "fusers" (fusioneers?) do not come upon their new music because they are not capable of playing traditional oud technique very well. Consider the original music of —for instance —Khalid Mohammed Ali or Joseph Tawadros, or Ara Dinkjian. They are all excellent traditional players. The root of their innovation is not the lack of ability to play the music of the past, and it is not a limited technique. The root cause is perhaps the need to express the complexity and totality of being a person living now in a world that is not insular. In earlier times the same or similar was true of —for instance — Sunbati, Mohammed Abdel Wahab, and Qassabji before them. Was the cause of their innovation a lack of appropriate oud technique? No.

Luan has written that the problem is not *what* is played but *how*. There is no problem with the transfer to the oud of melodies and forms of musics not normally played on oud. However I do not agree with Luan that the identity of this "how" is guitar technique. If someone bites the strings on an oud as his basic oud technique and then tries a guitar for the first time and bites the guitar strings, is that applying "oud technique" to the guitar? I don't think so.

The guitar can sing like a living being if the player is attentive to the voice of the particular guitar being played and attentive to how each guitar needs to be touched. It’s the same with the oud.

The horrible way that some people play guitar when transferred to oud will sound horrible, no doubt, but no worse than the unmusical sounds such techniques produce on a guitar. An unskillled guitarist’s way of playing the oud will produce sounds that are as un-guitar-like on a guitar as they are un-oud-like on an oud.

I also do not agree that much of what passes for fusion is fusion at all. To use a chemical analogy true fusion is a compound. What passes for fusion is usually a mixture instead. it is usually either a European version of American pop music with exotic sound effects, or else it is the reverse, a basically middle eastern folk-pop sensibility onto which is grafted western musical artifacts.

SamirCanada - 10-29-2014 at 09:52 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Jody Stecher  
. Consider the original music of —for instance —Khalid Mohammed Ali or Joseph Tawadros, or Ara Dinkjian. They are all excellent traditional players. The root of their innovation is not the lack of ability to play the music of the past, and it is not a limited technique. .


couldnt agree more :)

Lysander - 10-29-2014 at 10:46 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Jody Stecher  

I also do not agree that much of what passes for fusion is fusion at all. To use a chemical analogy true fusion is a compound. What passes for fusion is usually a mixture instead. it is usually either a European version of American pop music with exotic sound effects, or else it is the reverse, a basically middle eastern folk-pop sensibility onto which is grafted western musical artifacts.


Jody, this is well put. I agree that for music to be a true fusion, it must be so on a 'molelucar' level, to use your chemistry analogy. Fusion music must be seamless so that you don't notice the techtonic plates.

To give you an example, my wife was recently talking about how she hates any music termed as "fusion", to which I replied that she must be defining fusion musics in a limited way. I reminded her that we often listen to Azam Ali's "Portals of Grace" album which we both really like. I explained that this album is excellent fusion music because Azam sings in a Middle Eastern style, and there is an exoticism to the sound, but a lot of songs are classical Western medieval. The fusion is so well stitched together that as a listener you don't 'notice' it.

This is a far better definition of fusion that just throwing lots of different influences into a song and watching them jut out.

Marcus - 10-30-2014 at 12:34 AM
Quote:

If the tone is like three rats trying to bite their way out of a burlap sack, how can this be musically valuable? This is not innovation or fusion. It is carelessness.


I totaly agree ! The tone have to be ...good,nice, smooth,oud-like(?)
Quote:

The difference of a fretless guitar and an oud is not what they play, but rather how they play.


How they play? Do you mean the technique or the sense?

hans - 10-31-2014 at 03:22 AM

My teacher has been invited to play a bach cantate on a bach festival in france. When he just played the notes from sheet music, it sounded to me a bit like a guitar that was slightly out of tune, and without the warm sound that comes from a good guitar;probably because i associate a bach piece on a plucked string instrument with a guitar. Then he started to play the way he plays the oud, with embellishments, and it became wonderful, it became a bach oud piece