sharkey
Oud Lover
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Registered: 6-13-2004
Location: pennsylvania
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tuning an oud with floating bridge
I recently bought a Shehata oud, ebony, with a floating bridge. Beautifully made, and interesting that it has a light finish on the soundboard, like
that on a lute. My other ouds have the usual unfinished face.
My guitar luthier told me that the sound of a guitar is enhanced by the downward presure on the saddle and bridge of the strings. The traditional oud
don't have that setup. The oud with a floating bridge has downward pressure, and needs enough pressure to produce sound. At the Arabic tuning
D-G-A-D-G-C, very little sound is produced. Tuning two notes higher to F#-B-C#-F#-B-E I get a much better sound.
Is there a recommended tuning for this type of instrument? Should I tune it higher? I certainly don't want to strain the structure. Love to hear some
advice.
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oudplayer
Oud Junkie
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hi sharky
from what i gather its true but with the whole tunning prosses it dependes on how u play and what u wanted it tuned to.
thx sammy
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palestine48
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I have a floating bridge oud too and I tune mine CFADGC which is how marcel khalife tunes his.. you can also do CEADGC.
from my understanding, to get that sound you are thinking about you would want is to tune your oud FADGCF. I beleive that is the right tuning if i
remember correctly. it should be practically the same as CEADGC. Many people would call the FADGCF iraqi tuning and since floating bridges were
related to iraqi style ouds they go hand in hand. but my opinion is that this higher tuning is used for various reasons and maybe more common than
just limiting it to iraqi or munir bashir style.
my uncle uses the higher tuning because some traditional composed arabic songs are pretty high pitched so it allows him to play and compose using
only the first half of the finger board, closest to the peg box.
marcel tunes it lower because he wants to use the whole fingerboard and if he needs to step up an octave he can just play down the fingerboard.
I doubt ud strain the structure, im sure shehata knows what hes doing when he builds the ouds. but that is my two cents. i prefer the lower octave
tuning because it alows more flexibility and is probably meant for more improvisation, but my uncle likes to play structured songs so he tunes it
higher to his needs and its more convenient for him to stay on one part of the fingerboard.
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sharkey
Oud Lover
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My question about the tuning isn't that I want a particular sound, but at a lower pitch doesn't really produce enough sound. At a higher pitch it
produces a good quality sound with good performance. Seems from it's responce that it should be tuned higher.
The distance between the bridge and the nut are the same on both Shehata ouds, so I infer that the difference is that the transferance of vibrations
with the floating bridge requires more pressure on the sound board than the normal bridge.
The sound is good, so I'm happy with that. I just hadn't heard of this issue.
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samzayed
Oud Junkie
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Hey guys,
It's not so much the tuning or pitch as it is tension. Sharkey, when you raised the tuning of your oud up 2 steps, you raised the tension against
your oud significantly. If I did that on a traditional oud, I would definitly damage it. From what I've heard from various sources, for the
floating bridge to sound effective, you need enough tension. That's why most people who use floating bridge ouds customize their strings to get
desired tenisons for their prefered tunings.
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sharkey
Oud Lover
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Raising the tension on the face of the oud was what I assumed was what I needed. But I have assumed things before, and you know what that can turn
into. So I thought I'd ask, to see if there were guidlines for tuning it correctly.
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LeeVaris
Oud Junkie
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My understanding is that you can use a string tension of 40-45 Newtons with a floating bridge design. This is a bit higher than a traditional oud
which generally uses Newton range of 30-35. The best way to insure that you have the right tension string for the pitch that you're after is to order
custom lute strings from a distributor like Matthias Wagner : http://www.music-strings.de... You have to poke around a bit in the site but he has assembled some oud sets for specific scale lengths and pitches
and tensions for various ouds. If you can find it there is a PDF that you can download with all the oud sets. You can also configure custom sets for
different pitches - email Matthias at:matthias_wagner@music-strings.info
I use a custom set of Pyramid lute strings for my 7-course Samir Bashir oud (high to low):
note string Newton
f' PYF 044 44
c PYF 057 42
g PY 1006 40
d PY 1012 42
A PY 1020 42
F PY 1029 42
C PY 1441 43
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sharkey
Oud Lover
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Registered: 6-13-2004
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Lee, thank you for the information. Can you give an idea about how much note spread is involved in the tension ranges you mentioned? The oud is Arabic
length.
For all, I haven't seen a reaction to the fact that the oud has a lute-like finish on its face. Is this common with higher end instruments?
Thanks to all,
Sharkey
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