A m i r
Oud Lover
Posts: 11
Registered: 12-6-2015
Member Is Offline
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Question about note names
Hey guys,
in this post i'm referring to arabic note names (http://www.oud.eclipse.co.uk/arabnotes.html) although I think the same applies to turkish ones but with some transposition.
I have a question about note names. Let's focus for instance on the note rast. My teacher once drew the middle c (in violin clef like that: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/MusicXML_C_Whole... ) and told me that this note is called rast. He then played the note on his oud. However, when he said that in this traditional system the names
don't repeat at the octave I got confused because he wrote a C4 but actually played a C3.
Him (thus also me) use the following tuning:
F2
A2
D3
G3
C4
So he played the note rast with the third finger in half position on the A2 string - definitely a C3. My teacher said that he learned the western note
writing very late so he is unsure about that, but very sure that the note he played on the oud was indeed a rast note.
Also in the internet i found a lot of sources speaking about the rast note on the violin, which does not have a C3.
So actually what exactly is the note rast now? I can figure out 3 possibilities:
1) C3
2) C4
3) It just means the low one relative to your instrument
Best regards
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Member Is Offline
Mood: Stringish
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All three of your answers are correct to some extent.
Oud is a transposing instrument. It is written (roughly) an octave higher than it sounds. This is exactly like guitar or bass.
Arabic music does not use a fixed pitch system, but a relative one.
"Rast" refers to whatever note is the third finger on the 4th string, basically.
In your tuning, that is C3.
If you tuned down a whole step, that note would still be Rast, but it would now be Bb2.
The range is relative to the instrument, so nay, qanun and violin would all have Rast at C3 and everything would be an octave higher.
The C3 you would have as your first open string is called Kirdan. For Violin, Kirdan would be an octave higher. Arabic music doesn't have octave
equivalence within an instrument, but each instrument replicates the range in their own primary register.
Most musicians don't use these names anymore, but simply use Do, Re, Mi, etc.
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