devinrevin
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Maqams in native instruments kontakt middle east collection
I recently bought the Kontakt middle east collection vst. It lets me choose different maqams to play microtonal stuff which is cool, but I am not
familiar with all of these maqams. I have attached a picture. I can choose between rast, hijaz, hicazkar, hicaz, suzinak, nihavend, huseyni, kurdi,
buselik, nawa athar, segah. I am familiar with arabic maqams, but there are some that I want to use that are not available like bayati for example. I
believe some of these included are turkish, like huseyni. Are there equivalent turkish maqams to arabic? Like could I use one of these instead of
Bayati? I was also under the impression that Hicaz was the same thing as Hijaz just because of the spelling, but that does not seem to be the case.
There just seems to be less resources online in english for turkish makams online than arabic maqams.
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ZaphodB
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You can find a list of the most used Turkish makams on this website: http://www.eksd.org.tr/makamlar/
The makams are divided into three categories according to the Turkish music theory: basic (basit), transposed (sed), and combined (mürekkeb).
Clicking the name of a given makam will lead you to the page dedicated to that makam, where you can find basic information on its seyir (scale,
tonic/dominant/leading notes, melodic progression).
There are many places where you can find extensive libraries of Turkish music searchable by makam, rhythm, form, composer, etc. One of them is Neyzen
(https://www.neyzen.com/ney_klasik_eserler.html). You can get familiarized with makams this way.
You can also type the name of a makam and type "fasil" next to it on YouTube to find a suite of compositions in that makam. Another idea is to type
the name of the makam and then a form next to it. E.g., Saba pesrevi, Hicazkar taksimi, Nihavend saz semaisi, Hüseyni sarki, etc.
Suites of songs in the most popular makams have been recorded as separate albums as part of the "Bir Sarkidir Yasamak" project. You can find it on
YouTube.
Oudist Baha Yetkin has recorded a series of introductory videos on makams on YouTube. Some of the videos have English subtitles which you can enable.
Here is the first one in the series: https://youtu.be/HziMNzMwE_s
Those are just some of the many resources on Turkish makams you can find. There are also videos around from one of Ross Daly's seminars on makams,
where he speaks about them in Greek and English.
The difference between the Arabic and Turkish styles is a complex subject. Some makams share the same name, scale, and rules of melodic progression,
but differ in intonation. Arabic Hijaz and Turkish Hicaz are like this: they are for most intents and purposes the same, but differ slightly in the
intonation of some notes. Turkish and Arabic Bayati have the same scale, but the Arabic Bayati has much less strict rules for melodic development, and
so from the Turkish perspective it would be like a combination of many makams, the most popular of which in Turkish music would be Ussak and Hüseyni
(though Arabic theory usually does acknowledge Hussaini as a separate makam).
Are there programmable scales in that VST? It is strange that the developers would omit Bayati but double up on the Hicaz. They seem to have taken a
very superficial approach.
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Brian Prunka
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In addition to the great in-depth answer above, it helps to be aware that the "typical" key/transposition of most Turkish makamlar is one step higher
than the "typical" key/transposition of most Arabic maqamat.
This is of course a simplification, as the concept of a universal tuning standard is primarily a Western one and it's more a matter of reference pitch
than actual transposition.
So, while I'm not familiar with the particulars of this software instrument, it's possible that the "hicaz" is simply set to be in the standard
Turkish key of E rather than the standard Arabic key of D hijaz. Segah would be F half sharp (or 5/9 sharp? I forget what the interval is considered
in Turkish theory) rather than E half flat, etc.
It appears from the manual that you can set the key/reference pitch for any scale via the scale selection tool. Perhaps the default is just C, rather
than the "typical" key?
Also there appear to be collections of Arabic scales available, so you just need to choose from the appropriate menu (bayati is listed in the manual
under Arabic).
Further, there is a scale editor which will show you how the scale is defined and let you change it.
look at the section on selecting and editing scales:
https://www.native-instruments.com/fileadmin/ni_media/downloads/manu...
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