Brainstorming an oud-ukulele, "oudulele": maybe a fretless 7, 8, or 9-string?
Greetings, first-time poster here. I've been interested in oud since I was a teenager, though don't really have the maqam background to do true ME
music. Took some lessons on fretless dutar in Tajikistan, so have some rough familiarity with some of the scales the Persians use, but overall my
current interest in oud comes from a more experimental side, coming at microtonal music from a Western perspective. To give some illustration, Titi
Robin's use of oud for Breton folk music (including microtonal folks scales) just blows me away.
I've been putting in a lot of overtime in Afghanistan, and though I've ordered a few cool instruments sent back to my place in the States over the
last year (Swedish bagpipe, bandoneon, etc), I'm thinking it would be cool to commission something unusual, something that has microtonal
possibilities. I've always liked fretless nylon-strung instruments, and love my fretless Appalachian banjo. The thought occurred to me that I could
combine my ukulele, fretless, and Middle East interests and build some kind of ukulele-oud hybrid. The oud is an Arabian instrument that's
spread through much of the Islamic world, basically the fretless predecessor of the European lute.
Translating some of the oud stringing possibilities to uke (with a shorter scale and thus higher pitch), there seem to be a few ways to do it:
Three doubled courses and a single bass string
Four doubled courses (like a fretless 8-string tenor uke)
Four doubled courses and a single bass
The first would be a bit limited in scope, the second would be more versatile but wouldn't force the oud-aspect as much since it'd be an easy
temptation to just string it as a uke. The last would be cool, but presumably the added bass string would really up the pressure.
I'm also thinking that, though keeping it closer to tenor tuning, to have it on a baritone body since without re-entrant tuning I'm going to want a
bit more low-end response.
Aesthetically, a bit hard to figure whether to go more pseudo-Arab, more Hawaiian hybrid, or just avant-gardey
Jack Haas, a rather trippy artist and musician, already have a few "oudulele" clips up on YouTube, though using a conventional fretted tenor. I
plan to write to Haas and see whether he thinks a slightly longer and fretless neck would increase the scope of possibilities, get some microtonal
options in there.
Would appreciate any feedback on this idea, and I'm also bouncing the same question off the folks at Ukulele Underground, to get that side of the
hybrid as well.
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