My First SoundClip here: Nihawand Consolation

I'm a bit nervous in the presence of so many great oud players here! Although I have been studiously studying my Maqamat, this piece may not be Arabic, but it's a short multi-track Taqsim. Comments and remarks are most welcome, I am especially curious how traditional Arabic musicians will react to this, hence the name "Consolation"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6DAUYlPZtM

Thank you for watching it!

p.s. sorry, the original factory "fish line" strings were still on the Sukar that day.

Sounds awesome.... I thought you did a really good job of capturing the sound of your Sukar... Nicely played...

The oud and bass parts had me sitting here with my mouth open...

Great Tony !

What is interesting here is the texture. I think the bass steal the high-light of the oud, the bass effect is more emotional when it comes from the oud itself... Bravo for the harpsichord, a really nice contrast (better than piano). The oud like an inside feeling of sadness during a magic moment under a porch by seeing the rain falling representing by the crystalline sound of the harpsichord. It's closed to make my tears drop... Your Sukar oud is still too "white", the sound will get richer in time, with good strings it will give a remarkable sound. I hope for more work with the harpsichord

Quote: Originally posted by David.B

I think the bass steal the high-light of the oud,.... The oud like an inside feeling of sadness during a magic moment under a porch by seeing the rain falling representing by the crystalline sound of the harpsichord. It's closed to make my tears drop...

I have to agree with that...

Very nice sense of melancholy there, beautiful tones, lovely improvisational piece

- if I had to be really picky all I could say is that the oud is sometimes overpowered due to mix decisions, but then levels are easily changed...

Looking forward to hearing more

You prefer the old or the new timbre?

Pardon the long-winded considerations, but I guess this is as good a spot as any to raise the following issues on improving the timbre. There's something that's commonly called (much to the despair of some purists) the "mwah" (prononcé "moi") of a fretless bass. They also call this the "Jaco factor", as Jaco Pastorius pioneered this sound. The oud has a more complex timbre than any bass, but one aspect of it is very similar to "Mwah".

The bass' "Mwah" is the desired sound of a well-set up fretless electric, as opposed to a "plunk". It's a sustaining sound that develops over a couple of seconds as if you were working an analog synthesizer's low pass filter, or the human mouth pronouncing "Mwah". Jaco's bass was very often mistaken for a wind instrument.

People have been trying to analyze Mwah, and how to increase it on fretless basses that are "Mwah-deficient". It appears that if the action is low enough, the fingerboard smooth and hard enough, and the strings are wound, you get more Mwah. Jaco slathered epoxy on his fingerboard, and used the dreaded fingerboard-devouring Rotosound steel-wound strings. If the action is higher, you lose the effect, and if lower, you get ugly "Buzz".

I believe there's a slow traveling wave, I think it qualifies as a "soliton", that "flaps" the string (which is vibrating at fundamental pitch) up and down so it is moving towards and away from the fingerboard as the note develops. More high frequency harmonics are produced as the string moves in and borders on outright buzzing, and that's how that gradually evolving "Mwah" component is generated. That's what I believe is happening on the bass, and something similar happens on the oud. If the fingerboard is softer wood it absorbs high frequencies, and if the surface has enough little ridges/hills/valleys, the string windings hit them, and this mutes the harmonics, and shortens the note's duration. Similarly, if the strings are "dull", the fundamental dominates, and the sound is short. So by optimizing the string height, leveling and coating the fingerboard, with shiny new wound strings, you can greatly optimize the sustain and increase the "mwah" factor, which is what the MP3 above shows. New strings and adjusting the action are standard and common sense, so the coating is the deciding factor.

You can simulate some of the effect of coating/hardening your fingerboard by "fretting" with your fingernails, and some players use that technique. Obviously, the timbre of the Sarod is greatly influenced by its smooth metal fingerboard, and the trick for coating a wooden fingerboard is a happy medium that does not make the oud sound too bright (like a sarod), polymerized Tung Oil being my favorite. Sukar's ouds seem to use a specific bracing scheme and overall design that creates a number of sharp peaks in resonance all over the spectrum. This would seem to logically make Sukars very responsive to the effects of fingerboard coating.

The Arabic oud has another important timbre component, the beloved "deep Arabic" sound, and which I hear as a broad low midrange resonance with a sort of "slapback" that might be due to reflections off the walls of the bowl. I wonder if anyone has experimented with polishing and shellac'ing the inside of the bowl to see if a more reflective surface might enhance it.

Finally, if the various mechanical elements are well-coupled and vibrate together easily, a vibrato fingered in sync with that hypothetical traveling wave can coax a very long sustain, which is felt as the whole oud vibrating like a purring cat, almost like an electric guitar held close to its amplifier's speakers. It's like effortlessly pushing a child on a swing, in sync with the pendulum's motion.

It would be very interesting to try to investigate why an oud's sound undeniably changes, "opens up", the more it's played. I forget where I saw the recommendation to break in an oud by playing "like an Egyptian upholsterer", advice I definitely try to live up to.