Mike's Oud Forums

Turkish style

PaulS - 6-4-2016 at 07:30 PM

After some time playing Arabic tuning and style, I have decided to explore Turkish style and tuning.
So a couple of beginner questions:

1) Why is the EABead tuning preferred to the C#F#Bead? I find it awkward to shift from the A string to the B string and leap over several notices. There is more resonance it seems. Is that the main rationale? A lot of the Arabic songs I know rely heavily on the scale starting from the low G (on the F string) and integrate it so... Is something different happening in Turkish music?

2) I need a simple explanation of the notation issue: everything is written in G or A but atypically starts on the D Yegah? Which is actually played as an A (Dugah) is that right? And if so why??
Thanks!

Jody Stecher - 6-4-2016 at 09:58 PM

EABead is an older tuning. It has a particular resonance. It puts the oud player in a frame of mind that allies the oud with instruments all over the world that have a tuning involving a gap of one whole step between adjacent strings. Certain things can be done in that tuning arrangement that do not sound the same in other tunings. EABead is an extension of Abead which itself an extension of bead.

Many Turkish oud players tune C#F#Bead. Why do you think EABead tuning is preferred? and by whom?I haven't interviewed every Turkish player in the world but it does seem to be used more these days than EABead. Personally I prefer BF#Bead and DF#Bead.

What do you mean by "notices"?
What do you mean by "everything is written in G or A"?

PaulS - 6-4-2016 at 11:03 PM

Thanks Jody. I think I hear the resonance. I meant notes not notices. I.e.., from c on the A string to d on the B string. I will play around with it.
It seems that songs are played a fifth beneath the way they are written?

Brian Prunka - 6-5-2016 at 04:05 AM

The standard is for the music to be played a fourth beneath where they are written, not a fifth.
This way, the makams are in the same place as the Arabic maqamat on the instrument, just a whole step higher in tuning.
Example: Rast is written in G in Turkish notation. It is played a fourth lower, on D. This puts the tonic on the fourth (B) string, third finger. This is the same position an Arabic player would use for Rast, but in regular Arabic tuning, the pitch would be C (and would also be written that way).

I think you are somehow transposing twice in your thought process.
When you look at the Turkish note names in a table like the one below, they are assigned to the written pitch. The actual Yegah pitch in Turkish music is normally A (G in Arabic music). This is written as D. There's no other transposition going on.

That doesn't make it Dukah, it's still Yekah, it's just the difference between the written and sounding pitch. Dukah is written an octave higher than Yekah sounds, which is what is confusing you—the note names and makams have to be though of either in terms of sounding pitch or written pitch. But you can't go back and forth between one and the other.

In this system, you really learn to read the music by makam, and play the makam on your instrument, rather than read the individual notes in relation to your instrument. You may find it helpful to think of the note names as describing strings/finger positions rather than pitches. "Girdaniye" is your highest open string. "Neva" is your second open string. "Dukah" is your third open string, "Asiran" is your fourth open string, etc.

PaulS - 6-5-2016 at 04:36 AM

Thanks Brian! That helps so much, I think. Well it seems counterintuitive but that probably because I am starting from a western musical model. I get the idea of focussing on the maqams though and will make a difference. A whole new world to explore. I am curious about how this evolved though. Is because of the shift to Arabic tuning? What could a beginner read about this?

Jody Stecher - 6-5-2016 at 08:51 AM

Quote: Originally posted by PaulS  
Thanks Jody. I think I hear the resonance. I meant notes not notices. I.e.., from c on the A string to d on the B string. I will play around with it.
It seems that songs are played a fifth beneath the way they are written?


The more likely move would be from C on the B string to D on the same string. Just as you would move from B flat to C on the fourth string (course )of an Arabic oud. You don't look for B flat on the fifth string, right? But if when playing an ascending phrase that began on the (Turkish) fifth string you want to delay the shift to the next highest string and play C on the fifth string (tuned to A in this example) you can flatten the finger and get both pitches in the same position on the two adjacent strings. Just as you would do in a barre (bar) chord on guitar.

To answer your question to Brian (who understood your original questions better than I did) about origins of Turkish notation: it had nothing to do with oud. It was intended for whatever instrument the reader happened to be playing. It is not aligned with absolute pitch. That the ouds of Turkey are typically tuned higher than the ouds of the Arab world is a separate issue.

Karl Signell explains in "Makam" that its origins may have been an attempt to align local sonic reality with western staff notation. The makam whose full octave scale most closely resembles the western Major Scale is Cargah. Forget for now that the actual pitch of Cargah on a typically tuned Arab oud is F and that is called Jaharkah and that the Arab Maqam of that name doesn't typically use a major seventh. Forget that the dastgah Chahargah in Persian music is utterly different. If staff notation for Turkish makam music was to easily work, the "major scale" based on the *NOTE* C (not the pitch) could be assigned to the Cargah position on an instrument. By doing that the "major scale" of Cargah would have no sharps or flats or its microtonal variants in the key signature. If Cargah is represented by what we call "F" or Fa then Rast would have to be represented by C or Do. Never mind for now that when we do this on an oud tuned Turkish the sound we hear for Rast is what we call D and the sound of Cargah is G.

My personal opinion is that this notation may have been adopted for nationalist reasons as well. "We do it this way in Turkey". Something along those lines. this is the effect on an outsider anyway. It seems that this notation system made modern Turkey seem more modern and more Western to Turks at the time. It did not have that effect on the rest of the world. This notation system was adapted around the same time that the Arabic alphabet was rejected for writing the Turkish language and around the time that western notation was starting to be used for Arabic music and in which the fingering, notation, and pitch were aligned. I wonder if the Turkish notation was also done to be un-Arab. Or more exactly, no be Not Un-Turkish. this is pure conjecture on my part.

hartun - 6-16-2016 at 02:43 PM

In regard to EABead tuning, this is what almost every Armenian player in America uses especially in the wedding-dance-picnic circuit. Perhaps because many (most?) of the Turkish-style players in the US are of Armenian descent, some sources or individuals might cite EABead as the most common Turkish tuning, although the situation is different in Turkey itself.

Based on my limited experience, 90% of "kef bands" (Armenian bands playing the wedding-dance-picnic circuit) prefer to play in A (i.e. they use the second highest open string as the tonic) though when a band plays a song with a wide melodic range, or an oudist attempts an Ottoman classical piece they will play in E as is standard. Unless you are playing basically Rast or a formal version of Nihavent, the two most common keys are A and E. The low A and E strings, naturally, are used as drone strings/accent strings in these keys (I know they aren't "keys" but I mean when playing the makam "on A" or "on E") And of course it goes both ways as the fourth of A is E and the fifth of E is A, so both low E and low A strings are often used as accents in playing songs in either key. I assume this is the reason this tuning is preferred by musicians playing basically a dance repertoire.

Jack_Campin - 6-17-2016 at 12:26 PM

A suggestion from the Greek, Turkish and Klezmer Clarinet forum: the G clarinet was introduced from the West around 1830, and Turkish notation uses the same transposition convention as the West does for that.

But. I just looked up Charles Fonton's book on Turkish music (published in 1767 in French; I have the 1987 Turkish translation) and the facsimile scores reproduced in it use the same pitch range as modern Turkish notation. So while the adoption of the G clarinet may have reinforced the practice, I don't think it can have started it. And it certainly predates Turkish nationalism by a very long way.

Brian Prunka - 6-17-2016 at 01:22 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Jack_Campin  
A suggestion from the Greek, Turkish and Klezmer Clarinet forum: the G clarinet was introduced from the West around 1830, and Turkish notation uses the same transposition convention as the West does for that.

But. I just looked up Charles Fonton's book on Turkish music (published in 1767 in French; I have the 1987 Turkish translation) and the facsimile scores reproduced in it use the same pitch range as modern Turkish notation. So while the adoption of the G clarinet may have reinforced the practice, I don't think it can have started it. And it certainly predates Turkish nationalism by a very long way.


Yes, that intuitively seems like it should be related, but by all appearances it is just a coincidence.

keving - 6-24-2016 at 12:23 PM

I have been using EF#BEAD for years, though I often detune lowest string to what ever makam tonality as necessary. Tuning it to a low C# makes it feel awfully floppy, so I don't often go down that low.

I have been generally annoyed with the Turkish system of writing the pitches a fourth higher than the rest of the world. It usually requires a talk over with arab players when combining musics, where do you play this? Etc.

That said I am now a virtual expert at quick transposing...

Brian Prunka - 6-24-2016 at 07:39 PM

The only ones that are sometimes an issue are Nahawand/Nihavent and Kurd . . . I've heard some Hicazkar Kurdi pieces played in A by Arabic players, when they should be in C.
Nahawand is very commonly in both C and D for Arabic players, so that is the most confusing. If it's the same fingering it would be in C, but sometimes it is played in D anyway.

Generally it's all maqam-based. Turkish system is to write maqams in their "home" key, but the most common key is actually a fourth down from there. Neither Turkish nor Arabic systems traditionally had a fixed pitch reference, so the idea of "Bayati" is more important than whatever the instruments happen to be tuned to.

If you learn Arabic traditional repertoire, you'll realize that Arabic music isn't really played in the same key it's written in either (up until pretty recently, as people adopted "concert" tuning).

Jack_Campin - 6-25-2016 at 01:53 AM

Kevin - northamptonsufizikr.com has been domain parked.

keving - 6-25-2016 at 03:46 AM

Quote: Originally posted by Jack_Campin  
Kevin - northamptonsufizikr.com has been domain parked.


Jack, by gosh you are correct. Thanks.