Technique Questions on the Arabic Oud

Quote: Originally posted by jkndrkn

Thanks Chris. It does seem like posture is very personal. I'm sure I'll eventually settle into something that suits me. I'll keep watching videos for advice. An aside: I ran into Le Trio Joubran recently. Would their music be categorized as strongly western-influenced? Are ensembles of Oud players common in more traditional Arabic music?

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka

It's strongly influenced by tradition as well, but there is a significant western influence. However, given the history of the orient and occident, influence has been flowing both ways for centuries, so the question of "purity" or "authenticity" is itself a little presumptuous.

Hi, JD,

Forget the perpendicular to the floor issue. If you look carefully at videos you'll find more good players than not looking at their hands a lot, and many hold the oud at almost a 45 deg angle. It looks very proper and imposing, and it sounds best, when you play with the oud frontally facing the audience and not the ceiling, and with the player making intense eye contact with the audience. It's like Couperin's totally specific recipe for playing the harpsichord, he says the right foot a little forward, the torso slightly to the right, and they'll rap you on the knuckles with a 2 by 4 if you start making like Stevie Wonder an' groovin'. Here is what I've heard from good players: Just play how it feels right, look at your hands if you like that, you'll come to your own comfortable way of playing in front of people as you go.

Those carpet backings that prevent slipping are GREAT, a little 3" x 6" piece on your right knee is all it takes, keeps the oud from scooping and sliding.

On tremolo it will suddenly start working. At first it will only work with your hand relaxed a certain way, and with the risha just so, for me it's there being a good 1cm of thin working surface on the risha parallel to the strings, then it works more often, and then after a few weeks you can do it with a credit card while standing on your head. Like Marina says in her book/DVD, don't worry it at first it's "like this" .

p.s. but close that mouth, JD, and the reason they recommend holding the oud vertical is so you stop drooling saliva inside.

Quote: Originally posted by jkndrkn

INTONATION: Developing intonation has not been much of a problem since I'm used to playing untempered instruments. This is a matter of simply playing scales, arpeggios, and octaves up and down the neck while constantly checking against open strings and easy intervals (fifths and octaves).

Be careful I made the same mistake ! A maqam is not an European scale ! In 19 century Mashaqah described the maqamat with melodic patterns. This is the European intrusion since Napoleon which simplify and compared the Arab music with European's one. In fact the first "genre" (jins) is the soul of the maqam, the second one is changeable and allowed modulations. So no arpeggios and no octaves (for exemple Saba does not duplicate at the octave, you've got a jins Hijaz on the high register [c db e f]), no transpositions either, this is helpful when you modulate : each maqam had a name which corresponded to a "tonic" (Shahnaz : D, Hijaz kar : C, Shadd `Araban : GG).
The best to learn that is to remember phrases from your favorites takasim which contains the soul of the maqam.

About the position : I think you should see 11 strings in 1 when you play on oud, the neck is short and you don't need to see your fingers because your thumb is supposed to be stuck closed to the nut or closed to the ribs. Unmovable marks.
Also you should hold the oud only with the arm which hold the risha to allowed quick movements with the other hand. For example you can train yourself by playing tremolo-s on open strings without the left hand (if you hold the risha with the right) to support the neck. If you cannot, it means your position is wrong and you will be stuck when things will get harder !

Sorry about my English : poor one
Anyway, I hope it helps a little bit

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

What David is pointing out is that the whole concept of Western music since the disease of Equal Temperament took over, is that everything is transposable and boringly regular,

Quote: Originally posted by David.B

Be careful I made the same mistake ! A maqam is not an European scale !

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

No, I don't think the composers you like do anything to compensate for the deficiency I was mentioning. I wasn't saying that the music is boring, it's that all scales have precisely the same boring intervals, transposition is mathematically the same in all keys. If you tune a keyboard, instead of in Equal Temperament, using one of the older tunings, like Meantone that optimizes some keys while making others unbearable, or one of the Well Temperament systems like Vallotti or Lehman that allows all keys to be used, suddenly a whole new dimension appears in that every key has subtly different intervals and "feeling". Transposition no longer produces the same thing, "just a few half-tones up or down". The expediency of Equal Temperament was rejected for ages until the 19th century, for very good reasons, there is nothing brilliant about ET. If you play e.g. harpsichord tuned in one of the older temperaments, returning to the piano is a painful experience: all scales sound equally poor. The Arabic system carries things even further in "personalizing" the notes and intervals of every tone row.

Considering the overwhelming dominance of ET it doesn't hurt now and then to point out its weaknesses.

I find ET repulsive, nauseating, a musical catastrophe. So there.

With the double strings and the sympathetic resonance, I can't tune by beats on the oud at all. So I have been tuning my ouds using my Korg OT-120 set to Vallotti, since I use that preset for harpsichord. For the notes we care about, C, D, G, A and in my case a low E instead of an F, Vallotti is the same as meantone, i.e. these are perfect 3:2 intervals. With the A being the same 440, the C strings in particular are markedly different from ET, like almost 15 cents sharper, but D and G are different too, and with the open strings tuned this way I DO get the perfect fourths/fifths I might get by nulling out beats if I could hear them, and the oud sounds much better to me than using ET intervals. Of course that's just on open strings, but it also affects sympathetic resonance, and I don't think it's insignificant.

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

Considering the overwhelming dominance of ET it doesn't hurt now and then to point out its weaknesses. I find ET repulsive, nauseating, a musical catastrophe. So there. With the double strings and the sympathetic resonance, I can't tune by beats on the oud at all. So I have been tuning my ouds using my Korg OT-120 set to Vallotti, since I use that preset for harpsichord. For the notes we care about, C, D, G, A and in my case a low E instead of an F, Vallotti is the same as meantone, i.e. these are perfect 3:2 intervals. With the A being the same 440, the C strings in particular are markedly different from ET, like almost 15 cents sharper, but D and G are different too, and with the open strings tuned this way I DO get the perfect fourths/fifths I might get by nulling out beats if I could hear them, and the oud sounds much better to me than using ET intervals. Of course that's just on open strings, but it also affects sympathetic resonance, and I don't think it's insignificant.

Of course, I don't advocate using ET for Arabic music; and you're entitled to whatever opinions you wish to espouse, no matter how foolish.
I agree that the improved resonance of using just intervals suits the instrument and the music better, as I described in my earlier post.

Since strings are in fourths, they should be pure 4:3 intervals.
I'm confused somewhat by your statements, because with pure fourths, the C should be flatter , not sharper, than ET. An ET P5 is 2 cents flatter than a pure 3:2 5th, thus an ET 4th is 2 cents sharper than a pure 4:3 4th.
If A is the reference, then C should be 6 cents flat relative to ET. 15 cents sharper than ET is actually 21 cents sharper and the pure interval, which is far more offensive than ET's being 6 cents sharp.

As I said before, the Arab standard is to use G as a reference, which makes the D and C each 2 cents off relative to ET, and the A 4 cents off.

If you mute the strings you're not tuning, the sympathetic resonance doesn't interfere. You can also use harmonics and play one string at a time, which may help.

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

With the double strings and the sympathetic resonance, I can't tune by beats on the oud at all.

Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud   ...I have been tuning my ouds using my Korg OT-120 set to Vallotti, since I use that preset for harpsichord. For the notes we care about, C, D, G, A and in my case a low E instead of an F, Vallotti is the same as meantone, i.e. these are perfect 3:2 intervals. With the A being the same 440, the C strings in particular are markedly different from ET, like almost 15 cents sharper, but D and G are different too, and with the open strings tuned this way I DO get the perfect fourths/fifths I might get by nulling out beats if I could hear them, and the oud sounds much better to me than using ET intervals. Of course that's just on open strings, but it also affects sympathetic resonance, and I don't think it's insignificant. Since strings are in fourths, they should be pure 4:3 intervals. I'm confused somewhat by your statements, because with pure fourths, the C should be flatter , not sharper, than ET. An ET P5 is 2 cents flatter than a pure 3:2 5th, thus an ET 4th is 2 cents sharper than a pure 4:3 4th. If A is the reference, then C should be 6 cents flat relative to ET. 15 cents sharper than ET is actually 21 cents sharper and the pure interval, which is far more offensive than ET's being 6 cents sharp. As I said before, the Arab standard is to use G as a reference, which makes the D and C each 2 cents off relative to ET, and the A 4 cents off.