keving
Oud Maniac
Posts: 52
Registered: 5-27-2011
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playing it other positions up the neck
so, I play turkish style and recently been working with a kanun player who is studied in arabic maqam. We've been bumping up transposition challenges
and I am wondering what other folks experiences here may be.
My oud is tuned (western concert pitch) E F# B E A D and some the makam we're working on, such as Kürdîli Hicazkâr, leave very little open strings
for me to access to, challenging my intonation skills (which were weak to begin with..). In this instance, in this particular piece, for example, I
find myself playing in what would be third position up the neck.
When I play that far up the neck, literally using no open strings, I find the sound to be much different, naturally. Since I haven't been properly
trained by a traditional oud player, I am wondering if I am missing something. I have fat little fingers which give me a smudgy kind of intonation.
Should my finger tips be perfectly perpendicular to the neck, perhaps?
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1354
Registered: 11-5-2011
Location: California
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To what pitch is the kanun player tuned? If he/she is playing Kürdîli Hicazkâr from European C you might find it easier to tune your oud down one
whole step. However if you have a look at Turkish oud players on youtube, you will see that so much of what they play is in closed positions even when
open strings are an option. My final piece of advice is to play an octave or two octaves below what the kanun plays. That will keep much of what you
play on the part of the fingerboard that overlies the neck.
By the way, one of the remarkable things about my Faruk Turunz Turkish oud is that even on the wound, thicker strings, the high positions on its
extended fingerboard do *not* produce a different sound from the positions near the nut. It has a remarkably uniform voice.
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Mood: Stringish
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Also, it would be easier for the qanun to transpose than the oud . . .
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