| Pages:
1
2 |
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Random thought
Rast is the King, Bayati, the Queen, Hijaz is the Prince and Saba the Princess.
Sikah is the love.
The Visitors to the court:
Nakriz, Ajam, Nahawand and Kurdi.
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
I had the same kind of thoughts :
Rast -> Oriental king
Ajam -> Occidental King
Nahwand -> The Queen
Bayati -> Court jester, but a clever one, like the one in 'King Lear'
Hijaz -> Spiritual advisor to the King (religion)
Kurdi -> The Knignt
Sikah -> Magician, like Merlin (superstition)
Saba -> Court jester, the sad one
Nakriz -> A courtesan who likes coquetry
...
|
|
|
Ararat66
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1025
Registered: 11-14-2005
Location: Portsmouth, UK
Member Is Offline
Mood: mellow yellow
|
|
So the next question is
Which one are you right now ?
I tend to be a bit Huseyni which I think has a feel of travel about it, observing the world as it unfolds - could be a 'Journeyman' as a character
?
Leon
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
Huseyni -> Journeyman like Ibn Battuta, it sounds good to me 
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Whew!
It is a relief that others have had similar thoughts
I was wondering whether to remove this 'poetic' comment, lOL.
Ajam (meaning Persian) and Nahawand (place in Iran) have
a Persian association for me, Kurdi=Kurdish, and Nakriz; Greek and Balkan.
Huseyni was the favorite mode in Istanbul in the 17th century too.
I have been working with the Hijaz family for over a month.
But over the last few days I have been enjoying the other maqamat.
It is like rediscovering them after just listening to Hijaz family for a while.
The mood at the time of writing was definitly Sikah (Huzzam).
I love Sikah family after about 8pm for some reason?
Thanks, both of you
Your thoughts are very inspiring
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
When I was learning the oud, my teacher told me to only focus on four maqamat; Rast, Bayati, Sikah and Saba.
He said that these maqamat are the heart of Oriental music.
He went on to say that later on I could learn the other modes.
He is a Coptic Egyptian, and certainly has an Arabic / Egyptian bias, but said 'you can learn the Turkish style after the Oriental one; the heart'.
When I was in Istanbul at a Sufi Mawlawi (Mevlevi) 'whirling dervish' 'concert', I complemented the qanun player, as he was amazing.
I said my teacher was from Egypt and that I am learning the oud.
He said' that is no good!, you must learn the Turkish way, the Arabic way is too 'freestyle'.
LOL.
After all this buisness...
I decided that my favorite style was actually the Syrian / Lebanese style, which sits in the middle.
Al Kindi blew me away the first time I heard them.
The album 'Courtly Love' with Adib Al dayekh is one of my favorite albums of all time.
Such soul and tarab!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScO2NY1q-_Y
Adib is up there with Oum Kalsoum in my opinion,
but I prefer the takht small group.
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
i always thought of it in colours and shapes. and mixin and matching colours and shapes.
ajam being a bright blue, a bit like the stroll bare on the right of your screen -----> but more shaped like a narroe stair case. the faster the
taqsim the narrower and steeper.
nahawand is sort of light nutty brown, also shaped like a stair case but more worn out and smoothed around the edges by years worth of feet dragging
themselves up and down.
saba is sort of paisleyish green and yellow with maybe a few blueish dots thrown in, and lots of twists and unexpected turns, shapwise.
hijaz and its relatives are red and yellow, and have a triangular fiery sort of shape to it. kurd is definitely not as triangular as kar, but has the
benefit of being more red and less yellow.
lami is red and brown and a bit like a slowly expanding mass of oily water.
and so on and so on, lol!
peace!
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Very interesting.
What a cool way to think of them
I will try this approach.
Reminds me off Ziryab and the Abbasid guys.
|
|
|
michoud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 383
Registered: 6-2-2006
Location: Spain
Member Is Offline
Mood: in the mooud again..
|
|
well, great idea about the maqamat...let me think about it...
About Al Kindi and his album with Adib Dayekh...for me it is also one of my favorite albums...
When I was living in Aleppo, my friends were surprised that I love Adib singing, not all people knows him, he was not so famous like Sabah Fahri, for
example...for me Adib style is unique...also I´m with you...I prefer takht sharqi, not the big orchestras...
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
I learnt about Sabah Fakhri when I was in Aleppo and got many of his recordings.
Al Kindi was responsible for introducing me to Adib, he is still my favorite although Sabah is amazing too for sure.
I heard he won a world record for singing for 10 hours straight!!
http://www.bashirtarab.net/Tarab_ag/sabah.php
I got a (not official) CD in Aleppo that has about 7 or more hours of Adib singing live with just a nay accompaniment, rough but beautiful.
Here is one:
http://www.4shared.com/audio/1p-qbfOk/adib_al_dayekh_-_ana_ya_souad...
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
gosh, this really is very good. they've really perfected the art of holding back and building up and letting go and building up again and almost
climaxing and holding back again and letting go again and climaxing and holding back again. you really have to be a certain age to pull something like
that off, lol!
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
For sure LOL
I have all their albums, they are one of my favorite groups and I love their work in preserving the Wasla style.
I play the nay also, and Ziyad Qadi Amin is my favorite nay player.
Beautiful!
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
Quote: Originally posted by littleseb  | i always thought of it in colours and shapes. and mixin and matching colours and shapes.
ajam being a bright blue, a bit like the stroll bare on the right of your screen -----> but more shaped like a narroe stair case. the faster the
taqsim the narrower and steeper.
nahawand is sort of light nutty brown, also shaped like a stair case but more worn out and smoothed around the edges by years worth of feet dragging
themselves up and down.
saba is sort of paisleyish green and yellow with maybe a few blueish dots thrown in, and lots of twists and unexpected turns, shapwise.
hijaz and its relatives are red and yellow, and have a triangular fiery sort of shape to it. kurd is definitely not as triangular as kar, but has the
benefit of being more red and less yellow.
lami is red and brown and a bit like a slowly expanding mass of oily water.
and so on and so on, lol!
peace! |
littleseb, you're a repressed synaesthetic, aren't you?
| Quote: Originally posted by michoud | well, great idea about the maqamat...let me think about it...
About Al Kindi and his album with Adib Dayekh...for me it is also one of my favorite albums...
When I was living in Aleppo, my friends were surprised that I love Adib singing, not all people knows him, he was not so famous like Sabah Fahri, for
example...for me Adib style is unique...also I´m with you...I prefer takht sharqi, not the big orchestras... |
I was looking for the signification of Nakriz (to understand the link I made with coquetry), and I came across this note :
"(...) The traditional chamber ensemble (the takht) ideally had only one of each type of instrument. The modern day orchestra (the firgah) usually has
10 to 12 violins. With such a large violin section, the freedom inherent in heterophony could easily result in cacophony. Playing in unisons and
octaves, facilitated by the presence of Western notation, became the norm." AMTMP p. 160
I'm curious to know how many are there because of and for heterophony, and how many because of and for monophony ...
I'm looking for buying this CD :
Thanks for sharing
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
I learned the 'scale' E-b- F G Ab B c d e-b- with the name Sikah! It seems to be common ...
So,
Huzam -> Magician, like Merlin (superstition)
Sikah -> The Lovers
Sikah is connected to something suspended and irrational. As expressions of love, indeed!
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
lol but no, i don't think i am a synaesthetic!
i see maqams and taqsims more like abstract painting. coming to grips with the basic message of a painting in terms of colour effect and mood
(harshness of contrast, shapes etc), and then adding whatever is needed to make it aestathicaly pleasing. too murch blue and too harsh - add a few
dashes. too dark? add red. balance it until it communicates just what you're trying to say.
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
| Quote: Originally posted by David.B |
I learned the 'scale' E-b- F G Ab B c d e-b- with the name Sikah! It seems to be common ...
So,
Huzam -> Magician, like Merlin (superstition)
Sikah -> The Lovers
Sikah is connected to something suspended and irrational. As expressions of love, indeed! |
Very good description!
The artistic approach is also appealing
I was an artist before playing instruments, so can dig that for sure.
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
I took six months of lessons with a portraitist, it's no accident if I feel personalities into maqamat 
By the way, I quited about 10 years ago, music or drawing ... I miss my long sessions in Le Louvre or Le Musée d'Orsay, drawing statues, watching
people and breathing the air of that time, surrounded by masterpieces of art ...
I tried pastels but color is too tricky for me, I came back on charcoal quickly!
|
|
|
David.B
Oud Junkie
Posts: 640
Registered: 9-5-2009
Location: France
Member Is Offline
Mood: Renaissance
|
|
I was looking for the correspondences notes/chords/colors for synaesthetic artists and I came across this on Wikipedia :
"Personification
Main article: Ordinal linguistic personification
Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP, or personification for short) is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers,
days, months and letters are associated with personalities.[7][30] Although this form of synesthesia was documented as early as the 1890s[23][31]
modern research has, until recently,[1] paid little attention to this form.For example, one synesthete says, "T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous
creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his
suavity."[31] Likewise, Cytowic's subject MT says, "I [is] a bit of a worrier at times, although easy-going; J [is] male; appearing jocular, but with
strength of character; K [is] female; quiet, responsible...."[1]For some people in addition to numbers and other ordinal sequences, objects are
sometimes imbued with a sense of personality. Recent research has begun to show that alphanumeric personification co-varies with other forms of
synesthesia, and is consistent and automatic, as required to be considered a form of synesthesia.[7]"
"Sound → color synesthesia
According to Richard Cytowic, sound → color synesthesia is "something like fireworks": voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as
clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends.[3] For some, the stimulus
type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.
Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Some individuals see music on a "screen" in front of their
face. Deni Simon, for whom music produces waving lines "like oscilloscope configurations—lines moving in color, often metallic with height, width
and, most importantly, depth. My favorite music has lines that extend horizontally beyond the 'screen' area."[3]Individuals rarely agree on what color
a given sound is (composers Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colors of music keys); however, synesthetes show the same trends as
non-synesthetes do. For example, both groups say that loud tones are brighter than soft tones, and that lower tones are darker than higher
tones." -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
So, even if it's not pathologic, we can feel the same as synesthetes. And Personification has not be dug about maqamat! Interesting field of study,
indeed!
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
hi david!
first of all - cool drawings! a lot of skill involved i bet! how come you gave up painting? is it really an arts-or-music thing for you? for me it is
very important to counter-act a creative activity with another one. partly to use a different part of the brain (or to let newly acquired skills sink
in), partly to incorporate newly explored stuff into other art forms.
btw - i'm not much of a painter myself, even though i teach art (to autistic people). i'm more comfortable in film making, writing and theatre. but
being a musician my job as an arts teacher make me think a lot about the effects visual- and audio stimuli have on us.
and yes, i'm vaguely familiar with the articles you've linked to. i don't want to get too much into them, as they pretty much speak for themselves,
but they made me think about a few things, mainly things i observe in myself....
i don't know why maqamat take on certain shapes and colours for me, synaesthetic or not. i wonder if maqamat were such a strange concept for me when i
first started studying them that my brain was looking for something familiar to make sense of them, colours being the obvious connection. also - they
don't always or instantly appear. they sort of pop up when i'm in the zone (after hours of playing) or when i do the brain work around them. and they
become important when working on a taqasim. like i said before: say i start with nahawand, which is a nut brownish vaguely reddish worn-out staircase,
and then i think 'to make it work i need some green and silver with twists and turns', so i switch to saba. again, turning something familiar nothing
to do with music into something musical. music is an art form, and art should speak to more senses than one, so to me it makes sense. (might be time
to upload a taqasim soon to show that my way of thinking sort of works, lol).
also - like others have said: isn't a comparison between maqamat and mystical figures a similar approach? adding something to a sound to allow your
brain to draw yet another connection?
a bit like food as well - it's not just the taste (even though taste comes first), but it's also about the texture and the way it looks.
and: what do you mean by | Quote: | | And Personification has not be dug about maqamat! |
?
peace!
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Very interesting!
This is an unexpected but certainly interesting approcah.
Very good artwork!.
I had considered colours melding when maqamat change a couple of years ago, kind of like some of the visuals on media player.
I remember listening to a Rast taqsim by Munir Bashir and thinking that the colours on the visualisation seemed to match the music.
I would like to explore this further.
By the way I am also from a Jazz background, so like to chuck in the odd informal phrase here and there LOL.
'What's cookin' with the oud cats at the mo'.
LOL
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
hi jono
i've tried it the other way around - letting light effects guide a taqasim. i've made up visual films of shapes and colours, getting more fast and
erratic with time, taqasim style and follow them with the oud. it's fun, but a bit restricting.
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Very good idea.
I would like to experiment with this kind of thing.
It would be an interesting idea for a concert.
I might try to organise someting for my final concert.
I am doing performance on oud and researching 'Art Music of the Ottoman Empire' at my Uni' this year.
This afternoon, I have my first concert with Doug and Tim, my percussionist friends.
We are playing a Hijaz suite.
I also have a 'trial run' of my research subject for the year 'Modulation in Art Music of the Ottoman Empire'.
I am a bit unprepared, but I actually prefer not to be too prepared, kind of like a taqsim.
Hope all this goes well, will be good when it's over.
The concert is fine, but I am improving at speaking to an audience, there will be some examples I will play on the oud too.
|
|
|
littleseb
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 10-14-2008
Location: london - uk
Member Is Offline
Mood: high
|
|
cool, good luck with it this afternoon dude!
hijaz suite - didn't you post something along those lines a little while back? might have been somebody else....
you must be the most clued-up sounds-of-the-ottoman-geek in kiwi-land!
anyway. it's always good to read your posts, relly good stuff!
if you want some visuals to jam along to - try liquid crystal experiments. they work for me. a friend of mine's a scientist and a while back made me a
long clip. it's weird but strangely energetic. i'm sure you can find plenty of footage on youtube.
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Thanks!!
Yes it's the same stuff I posted on the member clips section.
Always learning, and adjusting my approach.
Sometimes history, theory, maqamat and modulation, other times tarab and zooming in on one maqam.
And above all, countless hours of listening!
There are not many people here that know what i am on about LOL, so it's very cool to have others to talk to about this.
Some of the classical students gave me blank looks and acted like I was from outer space last time I talked to my classmates, LOL.
Thanks for your ideas!
|
|
|
Jono Oud N.Z
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1119
Registered: 12-14-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
Also, cool idea with liquid crystal experiments!
Awesome idea!
|
|
|
| Pages:
1
2 |
![[*]](images/xmbprobrown/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
