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How do you fine-tune your oud ?

fernandraynaud - 9-4-2009 at 04:12 PM

I haven't been able to find this topic, forgive me if it's been handled before. Are people tuning the oud's strings to perfect 5ths (by listening to beats and harmonics, tricky with dual strings), or using a tuner, or a piano, or what?

If you work up in perfect 5ths, you won't land on a perfect octave. If you use equal temperament, like from a tuner, you get perfect octaves but your open strings are a bit out of tune. How do people approach this complex subject?

For harpsichord there are several very different "temperaments" in use, Equal Temperament being considered unacceptably boring, as the best ones give each scale a different "mood". It's not true that J.S. Bach invented Equal Temperament, it's been around forever, and was rejected until the piano ruined everything. Of course on a fretless instrument, we're thankfully only talking about the open strings. What is the oud tradition? What do people do in practice to tune?

And how perfectly in unison are courses tuned? Again, here, on Baroque instruments like the clavichord there's a tradition, and a hair off unison is considered more beautiful.

Thanks

Sazi - 9-4-2009 at 04:36 PM

Hi Fernand, I have seen a few oud players (born into the culture) who simply tuned all the open courses by ear. Which I found to be very quick and a good way of training the ear. If I have to be in tune with other players, I like to get a tuning fork with, for my Fcdgcf tuning, a C and tune the C courses to that, I then tune all the other courses by ear to perfect intervals, so that all the open courses are in perfect 4ths, as it is critical that the open courses are perfect, all other notes being "tempered" by virtue of finger position.

Then again I have also noted players tuning the open strings to the actual pitches of the notes in the particular maqam being used, (an open E being tuned to E "1/4 tone" for instance when playing in Bayati, or other maqamat which depend on such intervals.) Though this seems to be more common among old-school players & on older recordings.

Regarding the perfect unison question, that I think is a matter of personal perception of the sound. I have heard comments on the "too perfect" tuning of strings such as the Nylguts from Aquila, which are all made to exacting tolerances, it seems that the minor imperfections of the strings make for a subtly more "exciting" sound for the human ear/mind, a psycho-acoustic phenomenon.

Cheers, S

Luttgutt - 9-4-2009 at 04:59 PM

This is a very difficult subject : )

For me, this depends on severel factors:

1- what kind of tuning you use (I have used GAdgc for 25 years. But 6 years ago changed to EADgcf).
2- the music you are playing.
3- What other instruments you are playing with.

1- I find the EADgcf tuning much easier, espesially when playing with tempared instruments. While with the Gg tuning, the problem you mention is bigger.

2- Playing the frenshise style from the mid 19 century, you would have to tune the oud different from playing Om kolthum, for example! playing the traditional old school, I would retune for each song!! Often it is the g and c strings that have to be redone.

3- playing with a piano, the EADgcf is easy. Playing with sax, you'll probable have to tune your c a litle lower.. and so on.

p.s.
If you know what style you want to play, you can find an oud player (CD) who found a good compromise (Anouar Brahem is excellent to tune to, if you are playing with western instrument, for instance).

p.s. using tuners (all sorts) doesn't work for the oud (not for me at least).

About your other question:
Long time ago, when playing the "old school" style, I used to tune the upper string a little HIGHER then the lower one (not just a hair off, but TWO!). When the tuning is too colse you get a horrable distortion. So there is a hair tiny interval you would want to avoid. That was never easy

Now I don't play old school no more, and I tune the to strings perfectly together (try at least

the g string is always a pain to tune!

Hope this helps a litle.
But remember this is MY OWN experience.

Looking forward to hear from the others how they do it!

Have a nice weekend everyone
And thanks again for your support

fernandraynaud - 9-4-2009 at 06:01 PM

On unisons, a perfectly perfect unison is impossible, so the phasing on almost perfect takes the volume down at times. The volume is very strong when in phase, then suddenly weaker when out of phase, while with an offset, it's more consistent and sounds thick like a "chorus" effect.

My teacher said he tunes his g sharp for some reason he's not sure of, and that's probably that he's instinctively seeking the true 5th, not the equal tempered one.

Sorry to bother you with harpsichord again, but there's a great demo here. After you've played a harpsichord tuned to optimize e.g. major thirds for basic keys like C,G,D,A,F,Bb, very important in much Baroque music, playing an ET major third on a piano is horrible. But in, say, a Meantone Temperament, the "remote" keys are not as good, the pythagorean comma gets "stuffed" into those remote keys, so if you play e.g. in C#, it sounds bad. What the Turkish "comma" is all about is the offset between a perfect octave and an octave derived by ascending the fifths.

You can hear this very well. Brad Lehman has come up with a compromise temperament that he is convinced Bach used, that sounds gorgeous in base keys, each key has a specific mood, but even the remote keys are acceptable. It's worth looking (and listening carefully) for the issues, he doesn't even bother with ET, but clearly demonstrates the limitations of 1/6 Comma Meantone tuning, and a better compromise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfK3blfKE04

I love the Lehman "Bach" temperament. For C,F,A,d,g the Lehman tuning is identical to a Vallotti, so on any versatile electronic tuner I can use the Vallotti setting to tune my oud as well. If I tune my low strings to E and B, the E is like Vallotti and the B is about 4 cents sharp from a Vallotti. Subtle, relevant, but those wound strings with their "steps" of course are a nightmare to tune. Flour in the windings at the nut on my next set of strings!

I've read posts by violin players who are saying that only by tuning the open strings away from ET can they get nice sounding intervals at standard positions. The oud player can do anything, but the trick is how to tune those open strings to work with other instruments. Let's hear what more people are doing.

fernandraynaud - 9-4-2009 at 08:30 PM

Oh, and what do people do to suppress that gorgeous sympathetic resonance while tuning? The meter will read just a tad low, I touch the peg a hair, pluck one string and the whole enchilada answers like a choir, 10 cents high! Tricky. Use a piece of felt? Mute strings with your hand?

MatthewW - 9-5-2009 at 01:43 AM

As mentioned, perfect unison may not be possible or even desirable...a piano tuner will tune a piano just slightly out of what we might call 'perfect unison or perfict tuning': the reason given that if a piano was in 'perfect' tune it would sound out of tune! All the instruments in a full orchestra anr not in total 'perfect' tuning, but the overall sound is harmony and pleasing. I think if we can train our ears to recognize if our oud is in tune or not then that is a good way to go. For me, I use a chromatic tuner ( a Korg) to initially get tuned. After a few days or so I use my ears to see if it sounds OK, and also use the harmonics at the neck joint to check the intonation between strings, but it's my ear that usually tells me if I am in pitch or not.
For me ts the trick of turning the pegs just enough to get the strings in tune to eachother that I find the biggest challenge, we all know how tight some pegs can be and that even a slight turn too much will give the wrong pitch! If a peg is too tight, I find that by tuning that particular string down, I can then tune it back up easier to the right pitch. Someone posted a funny clip on youtube in the forum recently about some guy trying to tune his oud using pliers on the pegs because they were so tight and squeaky!

)

SamirCanada - 9-5-2009 at 06:23 AM

I usually tune 1 string with the help of a tuned instrument or even midi sound files.
and then I tune the other string by ear to match the previously tuned string.

When playing along with old recordings such as om kolthoum, you have to listen carefully to an open string. once you have 1 string tuned right you can tune the rest of the instruments if you are really familiar with the intervals. I usually pick a violin open string an I tune the oud accordingly. trust me it varies slightly between each song... I was told this is because they used to tune the Kanun according to her voice that given nite and then the rest of the orchestra would tune to the kanun.

jkndrkn - 9-18-2009 at 01:21 PM

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

...but those wound strings with their "steps" of course are a nightmare to tune. Flour in the windings at the nut on my next set of strings!

I'm experiencing similar problems with my new Sukar Model 1 and a set of Daniel Mari wound strings. I've tried placing graphite from a pencil in the grooves of the nut, but this has not helped. It's been very difficult to get the strings in pitch due to this "catching" phenomenon.

What methods can be used to reduce this "stepping" "catching" behavior? Is it recommended to carefully shape or smooth the nut grooves using a file?

Alan-TX - 9-18-2009 at 01:54 PM

I had the same problem on my Sukar oud. I replaced the wood nut with a bone nut and now it tunes up much easier.

Quote: Originally posted by jkndrkn

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

...but those wound strings with their "steps" of course are a nightmare to tune. Flour in the windings at the nut on my next set of strings!

SamirCanada - 9-18-2009 at 04:43 PM

You can also rub some graphite based pencil in the nut's slots. it will improve the glide but ultimately you want to have a nut made of bone or ebony that has finely polished slots. the wooden one that comes on sukar ouds is junk.

Ararat66 - 9-19-2009 at 12:53 AM

What an interesting post - I can almost feel an MA (degree) brewing ... resist resist

)

) I'm not overly technical but could easily be, I find these subtleties really fascinating.

You are right about tuning by ear, also the particular make up of each oud means that subtleties of tuning can really wake up the instrument. There is also your own relationship with your oud, you yourselves are complex energetic instruments. I have found that my oud responds more and more to my spoken voice the more I play - it reverberates and hums, and I think one becomes 'tuned' over time. Also the way the instrument reverberates in you throat, chest belly etc - I really think that playing an instrument can tune you up.

Cheers

Leon

tchandler - 9-19-2009 at 10:31 AM

For what it's worth, I've always tuned by ear, but find that when I'm playing with other people, (upright bass, violin, winds etc) that the guitar tuner can be pretty helpful.
my two cents! Get it, cents?
tom

jkndrkn - 9-19-2009 at 01:45 PM

Quote: Originally posted by tchandler

For what it's worth, I've always tuned by ear, but find that when I'm playing with other people, (upright bass, violin, winds etc) that the guitar tuner can be pretty helpful.
my two cents! Get it, cents?
tom

Yes, I'm considering purchasing one of those clip-on tuners since I can imagine that tuning up 11 strings by ear amid background chatter and noise can be frustrating and time-consuming.

fernandraynaud - 9-19-2009 at 08:14 PM

Well, no question that a bone nut is better, but from trying different ones it seems the shape of the notching is critical too, so you can make a terrible bone nut and you can make a wood nut much better than stock. I don't yet know what the optimal grooving is, but obviously any breaks will cause the windings to catch, so once you have an electronic tuner it's worth trying some filing, some graphite, some flour, and some prayer. Or, toss the tuner and just play.

jkndrkn - 9-20-2009 at 06:46 AM

I'll look into getting a bone or ebony nut made if I can't successfully smooth the grooves on my wound strings.

Quote: Originally posted by fernandraynaud

Or, toss the tuner and just play.

Good advice for solo play, but I do plan on playing in non-Maqam settings with friends at some point and learning to tune up quickly and accurately is an important priority for me :]

patheslip - 9-20-2009 at 07:59 AM

In the old days mandolin bridges and nuts were sometimes made using the bones from the legs of herons. They're protected nowadays. I wonder if anyone on the forum has tried bird bone nuts. Pheasants, pea<b>rooster</b>s, ostriches anyone?

(I've just previewed this post and found the obscenity filter has made a nonsense of the middle bird. Can anyone guess what it should be? It's a good job I don't come from the Cumbrian place not called <b>rooster</b>ermouth. :rolleyes:

Christian1095 - 9-21-2009 at 12:05 PM

Maybe it's just me, but none of my sukars are a hassle to tune (I mean, it's not like a guitar with mechanical tuners - but it's not a total pain in the <<Donkey>> either....

Pathslip, why birds? I would think thier bones would be too light and brittle?