PeppeOud - 12-3-2008 at 08:31 PM
Hi! I was wondering about what finger do you prefere to play the half flatted D (hicaz)... Personally i feel more confortable with my little finger
but, as a mainly self taught player, i'm always asking myself "i'm doing the right thing? There's an "official" way of doing it?"
DaveH - 12-4-2008 at 12:36 AM
EDIT: sorry, I'm not very familiar with turkish tuning and I think I may have been completely wrong on the note you refer to as D half flat. If the
post makes no sense, please ignore it! My original post referred to an E above this D half flat. That should have been E flat, now corrected.
All depends on the music, Peppe. Normally as you say, playing in first position the little finger would be the preferred one. I usually try to
"collapse" the hand rather than extend it, using the little finger brought back towards the nut for the top D/b (E/b in arabic tuning) and the first
finger brought forwards, away from the nut for the bottom D/b. This is definitely the most comfortable and the easiest to be precise with. But I was
taught that you should also practice stretching the hand to use the 3rd finger for the top D/b and the 2nd for the bottom one. Essentially you
practice all possible solutions and when you're playing for real you use the one that's most efficient.
In the second position (ie where your first finger would naturally stop the string a whole tone up from the open string) I would usually use the third
finger to stop the top D/b and then stretch the little finger up to the top Eb. There's often quite a lot of action in saba between the D/b and the
Eb, so I end up spending quite a lot of time in this position.
Hope this helps - I'm no expert.
adamgood - 12-4-2008 at 01:12 PM
Peppe,
Just a couple of variables come into play, assuming the tonic pitch is an open string as it is in the case of bolahenk or kiz tuning and assuming you
use your 2nd finger for the C natural, I like to use my 4th finger (pinky). It was actually suggested by my teacher. It's working nicely, the Db
should be a bit higher than a full Db for saba since you are playing some hicaz from C natural. 4th finger is easier to push up there for those tight
intervals.
Check out Bestenigar as well, it uses some saba but typically the Db for Bestenigar is even higher than that in saba and 4th finger is good for
this.
of course there's no official way of doing it, maybe I don't think I saw Mehmet Polat play any saba or bestenigar but I imagine he's using his 3rd
finger for the Db since he's a finger stretcher.
Adam