Mike's Oud Forums

Anyone heard of, or used, FastFret ?

DJCrabtree - 11-1-2005 at 02:15 AM

Hi people,

On my last visit to my local music shop, I noticed something on the counter called FastFret, for cleaning strings and fretboards and improving playability. I have a dim recollection that this was mentioned on these boards some time ago, but a search yielded no results. Does anyone use this stuff, and how is it for ouds ?

David

DJCrabtree - 11-1-2005 at 08:56 AM

Guess the answer's no then.

David

SamirCanada - 11-1-2005 at 09:15 AM

Its probably a product that is available from different companies under different names. Iam not familiar with that product my friend but if you look over here in Mavrothis site. you can see the maintenance tips here. http://www.oudcafe.com/maintenance_tips.htm
He uses something called finger ease. But the best advice I could give you is to keep your fingers clean when you play. Actualy what i have done since my family owned a restaurant b4 I keept a couple of bags of those wetnapkins used after eating chickend or something. There handy and I keep some in my case too.
Whatever you do. If your going to put something on the fingerboard and strings, Make shure none of the stuff touches the spruce top and make shure to wipe it down cleanely before playing to avoid getting chemicals on your hands and then getting some on ur unfinished top. Since your oud is brand new... it shouldnt need this product yet. Washing ur hands should do the trick.
Cheers
Samir

Elie Riachi - 11-1-2005 at 09:19 AM

Hello,

I have used it in the past on my electric guitar. I didn't notice any change. It is probably good for cleaning the strings. Regulalrly cleaned strings should last and sound better longer. You might want to check and make sure it is okay to use on nylon strings, the classical guitar forums may have some input.

DJCrabtree - 11-2-2005 at 01:41 AM

Thanks guys,

I used those handywipe things on my old oud (which, by the way, must have been a child's toy, the sound was so un-oudlike) and they seemed to work pretty well. And they smell nice. But you know how it is, you see a 'product' and you con youself into thinking that's what you need, rather than using what's near to hand and just as good.

David

SamirCanada - 11-2-2005 at 07:06 AM

I dunno about puting it on your strings David! :shrug:
I meant to say I clean my hands with them before I play HAHAHA

DJCrabtree - 11-2-2005 at 07:58 AM

Ooooooh ! I understand now. They say music is good for the intelligence. In my case it's not working. Still, the wipes didn't seem to do the strings any harm. Cheers Samir.

David

DJCrabtree - 11-2-2005 at 07:59 AM

By the way, what does 'kollo tamen mean ?

SamirCanada - 11-2-2005 at 08:01 AM

Heheh..
Its in a Egyptian dialect of Arabic and it means
: " Everything is Good "

DJCrabtree - 11-2-2005 at 08:03 AM

Everything, that is, apart from my brain.

David

SamirCanada - 11-2-2005 at 09:24 AM

whatever you say :D I am not shure I get you. But thats only because I just dont have a phylosophical mind.
I sometimes say: in my left brain there is nothing right.. and in my right brain there's nothing left. hehehe makes sence.

Actualy... in general it makes reference to being the awnser to when someone ask: How are you.
in egyptian arabic ( Ezayak ) the awner is everything is good ( kollo tamam)
verry general explanation but you get it Iam shure.
Anyways.
All of those products dont make your fingerboard faster. Its a mather of practicing. And remember that the main foccus is on precision and feeling. I can show you the fastest oud players but when there is no feeling it doesnt have any meening either. Just foccus on getting the right notes and intonation and really feel every note you play. speed comes latter as a bonnus.
Cheers
Samir

DJCrabtree - 11-3-2005 at 01:46 AM

I agree with you completely, Samir. It is when a tasim begins slowly that the oud sounds, to my ears at least, at its melancholy best. And Heaven save us from those 20 minute pieces by the likes of Munir Bashir where the thing becomes an academic exercise in modulation. I know it might be heresy to say such a thing, but I believe such music can only be truly enjoyed by the small number of people who are very well versed in modal theory. I can admire that style, but I can't love it, and love is the essence of all things.

David

Elias - 11-3-2005 at 03:16 AM

Dear David,
personally i think that talking about Munir you choose the wrong musician to explain your point of wiew, that i agree completely for the rest...

Munir STILL represents the essence of music in his playing, it's not just a matter of technical skilll or simply the application of modulation theories...
In his 20mins of taqasim or in 5mins taqasim or composition, or ecc.ecc.he gives you everything music can give you...You have melancholics slow notes, maditations melodies, sweetness, tenderness, anger, passions, high technic passages, incredible modulations and of course love, a lot of love...
By the way this is only my opinion...
salamat
elias

DJCrabtree - 11-3-2005 at 03:42 AM

Actually it was hearing Munir Bashir for the first time that turned me onto the oud - I was stunned by his playing.

My point was very much a subjective opinion and I'm more than happy to concede that the fault lies with me - once any piece of music goes beyond about the 15 min. mark I find myself feeling that it's all becoming a little ... self-indulgent. This might be because I'm a westerner brought up in the rock/pop idiom. I can think of only 2 pieces where I don't feel this reaction - 'Echoes' and 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', both by Pink Floyd.

There you go, I'm just a hippy at heart.

David

Elias - 11-3-2005 at 03:49 AM

Dear David,
also my opinion was subjective...Who knows! maybe one day you will enjoy to listen to Munir's long pieces for hours!by the way...i love Shine on you Crazy diamond!i like Pink Floyd so much and not only the old stuff...
elias

David Parfitt - 11-3-2005 at 04:28 AM

Hi David

I understand what you are saying about Munir Bashir's style. For me, it depends on what kind of mood I'm in as to whether I enjoy it or not. It's certainly not the kind of music you can have on in the background while you are reading a book! Sometimes I find it incredibly beautiful and meditative, but other times I find the long pauses between phrases irritating and pretentious.

I guess Munir Bashir's music is as much in the spirit of Indian music as anything else (long pieces, slow build-up). His choice of style was a conscious break from tradition, and is quite dissimilar from other Iraqi oud music. However, it was the first taste of oud for many people in Europe and he was really responsible for introducing the instrument to the Western audience (hence the number of his CDs you see in the shops). Opinion is still strongly polarised as far as his music is concerned though, and Iraqis I have spoken to in the past rate his brother Jamil Bashir far more highly. I remember at the Oud Meeting in Greece a few years ago, when his son Omar came on stage many people in the audience walked out.

Talking of Omar Bashir, I still can't make up my mind about his music either. I think that much of it, especially recently, has been just commercial crap with the same tunes recycled over and over. I personally really like his Zykrayati, Ashwak and Maqam CDs, but I'm not sure what direction he is headed in now (and he doesn't seem too sure either!)

Anyway, like I say, these are just my opinions, and I don't expect everyone (or even anyone) to agree with them.

Best wishes

David

SamirCanada - 11-3-2005 at 04:38 AM

I didnt meen anything about Munir Bashir by saying that. All I was saying is that you shouldnt come right out and try to play as fast as Farid when your learning because your muscle memory needs to recognize where exactly on the fingerboard the notes are. I was just saying that because I tought you were saying this product fastfret would make your fingerboard faster so you would play faster also. Its not the case too bad for us.
Btw.. Iam not a munir Bashir fan at all. In fact I find his music to western in terms of how its presented. If you think 15 mins is long you should listen to Oum koulthoum :D I absolutely LOVE everything she sang and to this day I can listen to songs over and over and feel a different emotion.
God bless.

DJCrabtree - 11-3-2005 at 05:50 AM

I understand, Samir. If my intonation were consistently accurate I'd be happy to play slowly for the rest of my days !

David, the degree to which you have immersed yourself in this music amazes me, and I found your post very interesting. I knew that Bashir's style was regarded as, shall we say, 'progressive', but hadn't understood that it was radical enough to divide the listening public. I suppose most great artists are capable of eliciting extreme reactions from their audiences, both for and against.

Poor Omar ! To have people walk out on you before you've played a note must be very difficult for any performer to take.

You mentioned the Indian/ raga influence on Bashir's style, and it was probably the echo of that that I picked up on when I first heard him, and made what he was doing seem at least a little familiar. But its my understanding that in the exposition of a raga the musician does not modulate, so that sense of cohesiveness is never lost, whereas with Bashir the listener is pulled this way and that until ... well, as I said, only the cogniscenti can keep up.

All the best
David

David Parfitt - 11-3-2005 at 06:20 AM

Dear David

I would like to get some views on this from Iraqi forum members, but I always got the feeling that players like Jamil Bashir and Salman Shukur were closer to Iraqis' hearts, and that Munir Bashir was more of a 'Western' phenomenon. I'm not sure I know enough about Munir Bashir's music to analyse the degree of modulation in his pieces or the overall structure of them, but you are right that Indian music doesn't really use modulation. (I think his 'Meditations' CD was the most heavily influenced by Indian music.)

It must be difficult for Omar Bashir now that he no longer has his father's guiding hand. I suspect that it must be both a blessing and a curse to have such a famous father, and he will probably always be living in his shadow. It is quite interesting that Omar is experimenting with oud in Hungarian traditional music, particularly as that is part of his heritage. (I seem to recall that Munir Bashir studied for his doctorate in Budapest, possibly with Bela Bartok(?), and Omar has spent all his life there - don't quote me on this though!)

What really annoys me is the seemingly endless flow of substandard recordings of both Munir Bashir and Omar Bashir produced by Chahine & Fils. They seem to be cashing in on Munir Bashir's legacy by dredging up archive recordings and releasing them as cheaply packaged trash. They could certainly take a few lessons from the high-quality Inedit releases of Munir Bashir, or any of the oud CDs produced by the Institut du Monde Arabe. I really think that the future of the oud lies in these top-notch traditional recordings with copious liner notes, rather than cheesy low-budget pseudo-flamenco muzak! (Just my two cents' worth)

Best wishes

David

DJCrabtree - 11-3-2005 at 07:16 AM

'Cheesy low-budget pseudo-flamenco muzak' ! Love it. I can see you frothing at the mouth from here, and I'm 400 miles away.

Take care
David

David Parfitt - 11-3-2005 at 07:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by DJCrabtree
'Cheesy low-budget pseudo-flamenco muzak' ! Love it. I can see you frothing at the mouth from here, and I'm 400 miles away.

Take care
David

:D

DD - 11-3-2005 at 06:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DJCrabtree
Actually it was hearing Munir Bashir for the first time that turned me onto the oud - I was stunned by his playing.

My point was very much a subjective opinion and I'm more than happy to concede that the fault lies with me - once any piece of music goes beyond about the 15 min. mark I find myself feeling that it's all becoming a little ... self-indulgent. This might be because I'm a westerner brought up in the rock/pop idiom. I can think of only 2 pieces where I don't feel this reaction - 'Echoes' and 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', both by Pink Floyd.

There you go, I'm just a hippy at heart.

David


Speaking as a chef (no, I'm not crazy—no more crazy than I have to be in order to be a chef, anyway), I know that often if people don't find the flavors that they're looking for in a particular dish, they think that they don't care for the dish. In looking for and not finding the usual flavors, they don't really taste the ones that are there, other than to note that those aren't the flavors they were looking for, and so they miss out on a lot of potential pleasure. I haven't forgotten what this thread is about, BTW; I'll get to why all of this is relevant, I'm sure. You know how chefs are; just humor me and read on.

For example, it's a fact that the whole spectrum of bitter flavors is scarsely represented in American cuisine, while it's represented in abundant variety in Europe. It's not that Americans don't like the bitter taste; they love it—as long as it's in their coffee, tea, or chocolate. If you incorporate it into their vegetable course, though (and your patrons are unprepared) they'll probably think it tastes 'off' and they'll reach for the salt, the sweet-and-sour sauce, and/or other strong tasting stuff to dress up the subtle bitter elements. While you the chef might have created a masterpiece of culinary art in that dish, your patrons don't know it's there because they don't know to give it a chance to reveal its subtleties and to turn them on to new dimensions of gastronomic satisfaction.

But prepare them with a crash course on forgetting everything they've learned about taste (easier than it might sound, especially if you have the right dishes on hand to prove it), such that they leave their preconceptions at the door of the dining room and just let go and let the flavors be however they are, without judging them as being one way or another, or 'caring' whether they 'like' them or not—and then the magic starts to happen. By the second day, they've 'gotten it,' and instead of your having to take half-full serving trays back from the banquet table at the end of the meal, you're running out of the vegetable course half way through it. Your patrons are craving the complexedly subtle bitter magic that they've been missing all this time, and they can't get enough of it.

Now, in my experience, and this includes people very close to me, pretty much the same thing is true for different sorts of music as for these different sorts of taste, especially some of the very long, subtle, exotic musical performances of the East and West as well as of the Middle East. I've seen the same things happen with exotic music as with exotic food: At first the person is unintentionally listening for something that he doesn't quite find, at least not in the way he expects, and then he sort of 'makes do' with a compromise between what he feels and what he hears until the music is over, and perhaps the experience was 'pleasant,' to say the most. But if the person lets go of listening for anything in particular, doesn't mind about judging what he's hearing as being one way or another, just lets it be however it is and lets himself feel however he feels (including bored or whatever—giving it all freedom to come and go and to change), if he just lets the musician tell his story freely and just witnesses that story honestly, then, again, the magic starts to happen.

My wife, for example, went from "I don't know; there's just something about this music that doesn't resonate with my personality," to "Man, I just never want this to stop...." (and this was with 20th century Western classical music). IOW if you're like a lot of my friends and me, there might be a number of secret, magic keys in the sitar master's midnight raga or the oud master's endless taqasim that can open and unfold another dimension of musical satisfaction for you, thoroughly as satisfying as the vista opened by Shine On You Crazy Diamond, and the keys are free for the letting go of—it might simply be that 'you reached for the secret too soon...." Sometimes you have to let go of magic keys to really get a handle on them ;-)

DJCrabtree - 11-4-2005 at 02:08 AM

Good morning DD

Damn, it's just happened again - my attention wandered off and took a stroll round the block long before the end of your post. Only kidding.

And just to prove I'm not suffering from attention deficit disorder, I was at a recital (what a pretentious word that is) by Vishwan Mohan Bhatt last week as part of the Belfast Festival where the opening number lasted about 70 minutes (and no dry ice, what's that all about !). Yes, it was ... well, it was lots of things; and yes, there were moments where I found myself thinking how good the Ramones had been. (If I'd worked out how to insert one of those cute little smilie chaps, there'd be one here)

All the best
David

DD - 11-9-2005 at 09:41 AM

I was talking to Mimmo Peruffo at Aquila and thought I'd bring the FastFret-etc question up to him with regard to Aquila strings specifically. His reply:

"My suggestion is do not employ such substances: these strings do not need them."

Didn't I tell you I'd remember what this thread was about eventually? :-)

DJCrabtree - 11-10-2005 at 01:35 AM

That's pretty conclusive, DD. Thanks for following up on that.

All the best
David