Mike's Oud Forums

Best Arabic Resources to Teach Music Reading?

John Erlich - 3-1-2018 at 04:01 PM

A question for you Arabic-speakers out there:

What are the best generally available (free) resources to teach Arabic speakers who know solfège how to read musical notation ("notat"). Are any of the Arabic oud books freely available in PDF (Mashaal, Basha, Jabakji, Bashir, etc.) better than the others? Are there any preferred YouTube videos? This issue has come up a few times, and I want to be able to point to resources for Arabic speakers.

Alf shukran in advance for any feedback or ideas!

-"Udi" John

Oudistan - 3-6-2018 at 02:23 AM

I don't know about "the best", but for music reading, Jamil Bashir's "The Oud Teaching Method" is more than sufficient.
The book is freely available in PDF.. (I actually just printed it out tonight for the exercises), the first few pages explain music reading in detail.
I have volume 1 of the book, send me a U2U.

MattOud - 3-6-2018 at 04:58 AM

Here is a link to what Oudistan is referencing!

http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=6257

John Erlich - 3-6-2018 at 10:08 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Oudistan  
I don't know about "the best", but for music reading, Jamil Bashir's "The Oud Teaching Method" is more than sufficient.
The book is freely available in PDF.. (I actually just printed it out tonight for the exercises), the first few pages explain music reading in detail.
I have volume 1 of the book, send me a U2U.


Thanks. Yes, I have 4 Jamil Bashir books and several others I listed. I was curious among Arabic speakers which one they think is the best written and clearest copy. The PDFs of the "basics" sections of all the books generally and freely available as PDFs tend to make my eyes bleed. But I know only a little Arabic. Of these books, the Khaled Basha book has the clearest manuscripts, but his music reading section is quite perfunctory.

I did find a couple videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7HepgxPFgg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5QEmFRJp9A

Brian Prunka - 3-7-2018 at 09:47 PM

My expectation would be the best books to teach music reading are focused on Western Classical music, not traditional Arabic music. There are a great many Arab musicians who play western music, so I expect that these resources exist in Arabic.

Most Arabic music books have rather simplistic and perfunctory introductions to music reading, and the exercises are not pedagogically organized to really teach reading, they are organized to teach maqam and oud technique.

John Erlich - 3-8-2018 at 10:50 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  
My expectation would be the best books to teach music reading are focused on Western Classical music, not traditional Arabic music. There are a great many Arab musicians who play western music, so I expect that these resources exist in Arabic.

Most Arabic music books have rather simplistic and perfunctory introductions to music reading, and the exercises are not pedagogically organized to really teach reading, they are organized to teach maqam and oud technique.


My experience with Arabic music books generally matches yours, Brian. I was just wondering if one was better than the others out there.