Mike's Oud Forums

maple oud?

Hasan - 12-14-2014 at 01:22 AM

I've tried two maple ouds before ( just tried, didn't own).
both oud sounds are on the sharp metallic side .. in arabic words صوت حاد يفتقد للعذوبة. that explains it better if you can read arabic.
if you have experience with maple oud, is that a characteristic of this wood?






Hasan - 12-14-2014 at 03:45 AM


intersting
i think this answers the question:

http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/acoustic/features/woods/body-woods/maple

hussamd - 12-14-2014 at 04:48 AM

Maple is on the bright side. Most guitar makers have a wood tone guide and they classify it as such. But that is for solid wood. I am not sure if it applies to Ouds.

http://www.carvinguitars.com/colorandwoodguide/

bulerias1981 - 12-14-2014 at 08:39 AM

Yeah, I have experience with this, I make violins (maple sides, backs, neck/pegbox)

I've made two ouds with bird's eye maple, and for sure the sound is clearly more powerful, bright and punchy. It's also a more difficult to make such an oud, walnut bends much easier than maple in general, especially bird's eye maple.



Jody Stecher - 12-14-2014 at 08:43 AM

In guitars maple starts out being grumpy and uncooperative. It refuses to give out low frequencies or many overtones. But then after being played a bit it decides that it likes being a guitar instead of a tree. And amazing sounds come forth in all frequencies. It also has a smoothness that is not what one would expect from reading the usual descriptions of sharp angular treble sounds.

I have a Faruk Turunz oud braced for Turkish music and tuned accordingly. Its ribs are maple and ebony. It is not over bright by any means. It is balanced between bass, mid, and treble frequencies. Its sound has the characteristic maple smoothness. It is not biting or edgy in sound. It plays well and looks good too.

I am trying to recall if I have ever played an oud that has ribs of only maple. I think I have but cannot say for sure. I have certainly played other bowl backed instruments that do have ribs of only maple. These were Lauoto, mandola, and mandolin. All had plenty of bottom and mids as well as clear treble. These were all instruments that had been well played for some time. It is possible that when new there was some sharpness or brittleness to the sound. I don't know.

Hasan - 12-14-2014 at 10:31 PM

hussam .. "bright" describes the sound well

bulerias1981 - any videos or sound clips for those 2 ouds?

Jody- i think some makers mix maple and ebony or other wood to break the (brightness?) of maple. i'm no expert, just guessing.
i even seen oud backs divided to 3 parts, say maple for the bottom, other wood in the center and ebony for top






bulerias1981 - 12-15-2014 at 07:07 AM

This video demonstrates many ouds for comparison purposes, and the first Majestic model is in there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DKDzGiEQrQ&list=UUw1VAgR9nNFfvc...

This is the newer model https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I774dCoihXU&list=UUw1VAgR9nNFfvc...

Please note, I'm using a zoom video recorder and its actually a really bad audio recorder. I'm looking to get a better recording device. I found that the iphone makes better audio recordings!

jdowning - 12-15-2014 at 04:08 PM

Surely there are physical characteristics of an oud that significantly override the choice of bowl wood in dictating the tonal properties of the instrument - such as bowl air resonance (dictated by geometry and other factors), sound board wood and bracing and string material for example? Try switching from modern synthetic and metal wound strings to all gut or silk to witness a difference in brightness of sound.

As it is impossible to make two instruments exactly alike, drawing conclusions by comparing the acoustic properties of only two ouds is futile. As far as I am aware there have been no controlled tests to demonstrate the significance or otherwise of the relative acoustic effect of different bowl woods.
The luthier world is full of unproven 'hocus pocus' and 'black magic' opinion - fun to speculate nevertheless.

Jody Stecher - 12-15-2014 at 05:46 PM

All true —and yet : something about the sonic properties of different woods can be learned from banjos. A modern banjo is something like a computer, by which I mean it is a collection of compatible components. To be sure some artistry and science and skill is needed to get these components to work together harmoniously in a banjo but it's not to the same degree of artistry as involved in oud making and set up. Any old idiot can do the basic things, even me. If you take a single banjo pot (the round part) and attach a series of maple necks of identical proportions and weight and set it up well with a good tight neck and pot connection, that banjo is going to sound pretty much the same each time (so long as all other components remain the same). Try a neck of rosewood or mahogany or any other wood and you are going to have a different sounding banjo. Replace any of those non-maple necks with another neck of the same wood and you are going to have virtually no change of sound within the wood category. It is well established that the features you have mentioned are more significant in creating the sound of an oud than the type of wood used in the bowl. But I think the wood of the neck of a banjo contributes even less to the overall banjo sound than bowl wood contributes to an oud sound. And yet, any one and everyone can hear the difference and the player can feel the difference in response every time. And every player will describe the difference in the same terms.
Quote: Originally posted by jdowning  
Surely there are physical characteristics of an oud that significantly override the choice of bowl wood in dictating the tonal properties of the instrument - such as bowl air resonance (dictated by geometry and other factors), sound board wood and bracing and string material for example? Try switching from modern synthetic and metal wound strings to all gut or silk to witness a difference in brightness of sound.

As it is impossible to make two instruments exactly alike, drawing conclusions by comparing the acoustic properties of only two ouds is futile. As far as I am aware there have been no controlled tests to demonstrate the significance or otherwise of the relative acoustic effect of different bowl woods.
The luthier world is full of unproven 'hocus pocus' and 'black magic' opinion - fun to speculate nevertheless.

Brian Prunka - 12-15-2014 at 07:21 PM

The way I would think about it is this:

Which will sound more similar among 3-4 ouds:

1) Oud with walnut back by Maurice Shehata
2) Oud with maple back by Maurice Shehata
3) Oud with walnut back by Faruk Turunz
4) Oud with maple back by Faruk Turunz

I would postulate with a great deal of confidence that ouds 1&2 will sound more alike than 1&3, and ouds 3&4 will sound more alike than 2&4. And you could repeat this experiment with any two luthiers.

It's not that the wood has no effect, it is just that the effect is very small in comparison to other factors. I can see why a particular luthier would have thoughts about the different woods—he is comparing them across his own work, not from one luthier to another. Even though it is not a controlled experiment, the anecdotal data are not meaningless, especially if people reach similar conclusions independently.

But any research into Hi-Fi audio component testing will tell you that confirmation bias and general woo-woo are powerful forces in the absence of double-blind experiments.

bulerias1981 - 12-15-2014 at 07:31 PM

I don't see it as black magic hocus pocus, I'm basing it on the many instruments I've come in contact with. Sure every parameter changes things. That is, there are many variables involved, but if the back piece is made from a denser material certainly it would change the tonal properties? If the bowl was made from metal, wouldn't that sound different from a cardboard bowl? I don't have hard data on record, but so far in my travels this is what I've witnessed. But of course you can have a bright sounding walnut instrument. I find the maple matter tends to be on the bright side, and does a "different" kind of job, pushing the sound from inside the instrument.

But after all isn't making an instrument nothing but hocus pocus? Isn't an instrument a magic box?

The fact that one can take the same materials, use the same measurements and make 10 instruments, yet they will all more or less be different, have their own souls.

I would attend the Violin Society of America's conventions. Luthiers, world renowned musicians, acousticians, physicists would gather every year. They would take 6 million dollar Cremense masterpieces such as Stradivaris and Guarneri Del Jesus, take chemical analysis of the wood and varnish, dendrochronology, run them through cat scans revealing details of all thickness and graduations, they would do the blind tests where people had to guess which one was the Strad, hours of data and analysis and more data. And in the end they said "what do we know about acoustics?.. NOTHING"

jdowning - 12-16-2014 at 05:47 AM

No question that instrument acoustics is a complex and not a well understood science but it is an overstatement to suggest that nothing is known about it - indeed some violin makers have demonstrated that they have been able to use the data of researchers like Carleen Maley Hutchins to make violins that are judged by the expert ear under blind testing to be the equal of the renowned old violins acoustically. It should be noted that none of these old violins have come down to us structurally as built by their makers but have been re-necked at some time during the 19th C (?) to allow stringing at higher tension in order to meet the demands of modern orchestral performances (louder).
Note also that violins (and guitars) are different acoustically from ouds (or lutes) in that the flexibility of the back (and front) influences the air resonance response. In contrast the bowl of an oud is very stiff structurally by virtue of its geometry (not so much by the wood used) so that the wood used in its construction will have little if any effect acoustically relative to the prominent air resonance factor. Sound is not reflected from the interior walls of an oud bowl to exit out of the 'sound hole' and the same situation applies to violins and guitars.

I am planning to make a metal bowled lute (a 3 stringed Colascione) to demonstrate how it is done, to provide more air resonance test data for my information and to act as a test bed for my stringing trials (more convenient and less disruptive than messing around with my lutes). This will not, of course, prove anything about the acoustic effect of bowl materials but should be a fun project to report about on this forum.