Mike's Oud Forums

Laz Bar (Picking technique)

ArmoOudist - 9-17-2021 at 02:38 PM

The other day I put up a post asking about sore wrists while playing the oud. Some brought up the fact that it could be connected to poor right hand technique. It's been a while since I posted anything on here, so I'm going to post a video focusing on my right hand. I'm playing "Laz Bar," a traditional Armenian dance from the Black Sea region in 7/8 time. It's a pretty lively dance, and even though I don't have the speed up yet, I'm still playing pretty quickly. This is an example of a piece where I can get a sore wrist after playing for too long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcXir0xgTfk
Any constructive critiques would be welcome.

Jody Stecher - 9-17-2021 at 03:41 PM

The way you have your thumb angled away from the rest of the hand looks painful even without movement. I suggest you study the right hand of skilled oud players, Armenian or not. And emulate that. Look in the mirror and adjust your hand until it looks like what you see in videos of your favorite oud players. This is a wild guess: Are you trying to emulate the hand of Cinuçen Tanrikorur? I can't understand how he played with that unusual grip. He sounded good too. Anyway, I suggest you study the hand of Ara Dinkjian or Richard Hagopian. Pain is less likely with a hand like that.

naf - 9-18-2021 at 12:50 AM

I am not an expert, I am learning just like you. From the video you posted, it seems that your hand is so much angled and curved. One old oud player once told me that, my thumb should be firmly pressed on the plucktrum while my wrist should be completely relaxed and at ease.
I linked a video showing the hand of Monir Bashir while playing.
https://youtu.be/XLp7x6LIl98
Take a look at how his right hand is much more straight than yours. But as Jody said, your hand position looks very tense and painfully curved.
I wish you the best of success in your learning experience and hope that you would never suffer any injuries or pain. If you have any teachers around you, they could help you a lot in your hands positions and handling the instrument in relaxed none stressing way. You should have control but at the same time be relaxed and comfortable.

ArmoOudist - 9-18-2021 at 03:25 AM

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.
I've noticed myself how awkward my hand is. It just seems a little hard for me to reach the strings properly unless I do that. I'm going to spend some time today watching videos of oud players (such as the one naf posted), and trying to model it in a mirror until it looks as close as possible.
I do see a teacher about once a month, so next time I see him, I'll talk to him about this as well.
Thanks!

Brian Prunka - 9-18-2021 at 08:18 AM

Your picking actually looks pretty good overall, but like others have suggested your wrist angle is quite extreme.

I agree 100% with Jody's suggestion to watch videos closely and try to imitate what you see. This is often underutilized — humans are really amazing imitators (we're just fancy monkeys anyway) and you will pick up a ton of information subconsciously from close watching that is impossible to convey analytically. There is an incredible wealth of video evidence nowadays of excellent technique so just watch. In my experience, it's better not to try to analyze or figure out what you're seeing right away—just spend a lot of time observing. With enough observations, patterns will begin to emerge on their own.

A lot of things can be okay technique generally but become problematic if one is "locked" into that technique with tense muscles and it's used exclusively. One thing I've observed from master players is that their body and hands are quite loose and relaxed and they are fluid, constantly making slight adjustments to their positioning and technique. So even someone like Tanrikorur, who had a rather extreme wrist angle, is actually very relaxed in his wrist if you watch him closely and his is moving and changing the angle constantly. He's not just stuck in a locked position. One thing I've found helpful is to think of all techniques as a range of movements rather than one "correct" movement. Then I try to work with the whole range, and use the middle of the range as a reference point to come back to.


Here's something you can try. Without the oud hold your hand out with your wrist straight. Close your eyes. Make a light fist, and very slowly bend your wrist. As you bend the wrist, see if you can notice the exact point at which a tiny bit of pressure or tension arises. This is extremely subtle, but if you pay very close attention to your body's signals, you can feel the point at which your wrist is bent enough to cause stress. Make a note of this angle and try not to use a sharper angle than this when playing. For me, over about 45° is slight stress and over 60° starts to be much more noticeable. You appear to be using almost 90°, which seems highly likely to be part of the problem.

Observations and opinions that may or may not be heplful:

• the tighter your grip, the more tension arises as you bend the wrist (i.e., the angle at which there is tension occurs sooner). I can't tell from the video how tight your grip is, but lightening the pressure with which you grip the pick (which is usually a good idea anyway) may also help.

• your basic stroke is quite "heavy." It's like you are playing with an accent on every single note. While this is okay to some extent and common in players who are used to playing in loud parties and for dancers (since they're always pushing to be heard), it can be fatiguing to listen to and it's better to develop a more neutral stroke as a reference and use accents and loud playing only as needed for the musical situation. You learn more control this way and also are less likely to be tense and injure yourself (you can also play more 'neutral' in a sound check and still have a lot of loudness in reserve later in the evening). This can be a little tough to develop awareness around; personally, I struggled with this for years and Simon Shaheen critiqued me for relentlessly in our lessons before I eventually understood what he was getting at and how to play with a more relaxed sound. A lot of physical and technical problems just went away when I worked on this.

• You seem to hit the face of the oud rather hard pretty frequently. While it's a hazard of playing the oud that one will occasionally hit the face of the oud (that's why whe have pickguards) this also fatigues the ears and creates an unpleasant effect. This is probably partly because you are playing so hard but also by issues with the angle and position of your pick/hand/arm. You don't need major changes I don't think — as I said, your basic technique looks pretty good. Most of these things are a series of relatively minor modifications, moving the hand 2mm farther from the face, changing the wrist angle 5%, moving the starting position of your arm up 2cm, things like that. Really it's just focusing on managing the space above and below the strings more precisely.
This is very difficult to explain in text, but there is a combination of angles that make it so that the arc that your stroke travels in does not intersect with the face, if you can find that then the face is not in the way of your stroke and you rarely hit it even when playing hard.

• you are not using a rest stroke when you play: your "starting position" for every stroke is in the air and you wait in the air between strokes. I cannot stress enough how important it is to overcome this habit. When you are not engaged in a pick stroke, you should be resting the pick on the string below the one you just played (or the 2nd/neva/nawa course as a starting point when you first pick up the oud). Fixing this will help with most of the issues above and many others as well. Do not "wait" in the air.

ArmoOudist - 9-18-2021 at 12:05 PM

This is definitely going to be something that takes time. I'm glad to hear that I'm on the right track, even though I have some bad habits I need to break.
I definitely see a bit of a wrist turn to oud players I watch (Harry Minassian for example), but nothing near as extreme as what I do. It has to do with the way my hand reaches around to the oud. I'll have to bring this up next lesson.

ArmoOudist - 9-18-2021 at 12:13 PM

Chick Ganimian definitely plays with a little bit of a more pronounced angle here, but again, nothing as extreme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Xh7BZjF40

Jody Stecher - 9-18-2021 at 02:41 PM

Quote: Originally posted by ArmoOudist  
Chick Ganimian definitely plays with a little bit of a more pronounced angle here, but again, nothing as extreme.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Xh7BZjF40
[/url]

It's not any old angle that is the problem. The problem is wrist angles that cause pain. Look at his thumb. It's pretty much parallel to the strings. That is comfortable and musically effective. It's funny (by which I mean "interesting") that you've broight up Chick Ganimian in light of what Brian said about humans monkeys closely imitating what they see. Chick Ganimian was one of the first oud players I saw play up close (in Ajdin Aslan's record shop). And my oud playing wrist looks something like his. I didn't realize it until now. By the way, I know he looks scary in the video and there are many stories about him. But when I met him he was friendly and helpful and also enormously intense. There were just a few of us in the shop, a couple of teenagers like me, and some of the usual Albanians who regularly hung around. He would tell us about each piece he played. "Now this one is from Azerbaijan". And *this* one it's in the key of Hijaz". He recognized everyone's genuine interest and he wanted us to know about the music.

ArmoOudist - 9-18-2021 at 03:59 PM

Quote: Originally posted by Jody Stecher  
Quote: Originally posted by ArmoOudist  
Chick Ganimian definitely plays with a little bit of a more pronounced angle here, but again, nothing as extreme.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Xh7BZjF40
[/url]

It's not any old angle that is the problem. The problem is wrist angles that cause pain. Look at his thumb. It's pretty much parallel to the strings. That is comfortable and musically effective. It's funny (by which I mean "interesting") that you've broight up Chick Ganimian in light of what Brian said about humans monkeys closely imitating what they see. Chick Ganimian was one of the first oud players I saw play up close (in Ajdin Aslan's record shop). And my oud playing wrist looks something like his. I didn't realize it until now. By the way, I know he looks scary in the video and there are many stories about him. But when I met him he was friendly and helpful and also enormously intense. There were just a few of us in the shop, a couple of teenagers like me, and some of the usual Albanians who regularly hung around. He would tell us about each piece he played. "Now this one is from Azerbaijan". And *this* one it's in the key of Hijaz". He recognized everyone's genuine interest and he wanted us to know about the music.


Wow, you got to meet Chick Ganimian! That must have been quite the experience! And yeah, he definitely seemed the most "intense" out of that whole generation of oud players. I've talked to John Berberian quite a bit, and he seems like a pretty laid back guy. Ganimian seemed like the type of guy who'd throw a fit if you got one note wrong, at least from the stories I've heard.

Brian Prunka - 9-18-2021 at 04:56 PM

Quote: Originally posted by ArmoOudist  
Chick Ganimian definitely plays with a little bit of a more pronounced angle here, but again, nothing as extreme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Xh7BZjF40


thanks for sharing this — looks like Souren Baronian on clarinet! Souren is a great guy and musician, still playing around NYC.
The angle of his wrist there looks fine, it looks like about 50% ish. I think if you aim for that you're be in good shape. Not also the position and orientation of his arm, and where his hand falls over the pickguard. Playing in front of a mirror can be helpful in noticing your own habits.


Jody, love the story about you meeting Chick! Sounds like a "character" :)

Jody Stecher - 9-18-2021 at 07:24 PM

More on meeting Chick Ganimian: I had heard of him but I thought his surname was Chickanimian. New Yorkers talked fast, you know. Ajdin Aslan had a little shop below street level on W 29th street (If I remember right) near 8th Avenue. It was called the Balkan Record Shop. Ajdin (pronounced Eye Dean) was an Albanian multi-instrumentalist (including oud) who had transferred some of his Albanian and Greek and Turkish 78 rpm record collection onto LPs which he sold in his shop. He may have had other things for sale as well. It was a long time ago. It was a small space and there always were a few Albanians hanging out. They came from a rough background and looked dangerous but they were always friendly to me. One time I went in to buy an album and I accidentally left my wallet on the counter. About 10 minutes after leaving I realized I didn't have the wallet in my pocket. I rushed back, and as soon as I entered one of the hang-outers handed me my wallet with a gentle kind smile. Everyone laughed with relief. Lost item retrieved by the rightful owner. This was the neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen. Had I left it in any other shop the money in the wallet would have been taken instantly. Not that there was a lot of money there to take. But I could tell these guys were *guarding* it for me until I returned.

So I went in Ajdin's shop one time, with a friend, and there was Chick Ganimian playing oud. He was both tense and intense. He was talking a mile-a-minute and very distraught. I may have misunderstood but what I think had happened was he had just been robbed at knife-point at the butcher shop where he worked. He had come in to Ajdin's shop to be in a comforting environment. He explained all this to me. We all understood that playing oud would be therapeutic after this experience. I may have mixed up some details. This was in the mid 1960s. 66 or 67 maybe? I have no memory of what oud he played and whether it was tuned Arabic or Armenian/Turkish. But I can tell you that this live informal off-the-stage music was different from his recorded music. It was more complex, more raw, and stunning. And it was solo music, not arranged band music where the oud has a supporting role. Wha else can I tell you? Well, his music was burning, it was tuneful, and I felt each stroke in my body. It shook me up, you know?