Maan
Oud Lover
Posts: 22
Registered: 5-24-2016
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EADGBE tuning experiment
Has anyone here every played around with it?
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
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Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Mood: Stringish
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I played on an oud made for this tuning by Faruk Turunz. It was a nice oud and sounded good, but I didn't really see much reason to use this tuning.
The purpose of the third on the guitar is to make open chords and barre chords easier. Since the oud is a melodic instrument, the third does nothing
but make fingerings inconsistent and less logical.
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Jody Stecher
Oud Junkie
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Sure, I use it on guitar every day. But on oud? I can't find a reason why I'd want to do that. I suppose someone might want an oud sound and might
prefer using a familiar tuning.
What strings would you use?A double course of guitar strings would tear the oud to pieces. Any set of oud strings would have the same affect. You'd
have to make up a special set assuming you could find trebles thin enough to go that high without causing the oud to collapse or the bridge to
separate from the soundboard. You'd have to use a short scale oud. Once the right strings were found and the tuning done what advantage would you
have? The double courses and the lack of frets would make guitar music awkward. The tuning would make maqam music awkward. So why do this? The effort
to overcome the new problems would be more than the effort to learn to play in usual oud tuning.
It appears that at least some early proto-guitars were tuned entirely in fourths, the same arrangement as the high courses on an oud. This early
instrument was not designed to play chords. As soon as guitar music required chords the second string came down a half step and so did the first
string. (That's a simplification of what really happened I'm sure but it's pointing in the right direction). If the guitar or pro-guitar had been
been tuned EADGCF, now it was EADGBE. It was the greatest thing ever for making good sounding chords using fingering patterns that were more
comfortable. You can hear the non-chordal All-in Fourths tuning in Constantinois Malouf Music. Listen to the recordings of Raymond or Simone Tamar.
But the oud developed for the purpose of playing non-chordal music. Its tuning(s) facilitates that. Can some chords be played? Of course, but except
as an occasional coloring chords are of limited use in the musics usually associated with oud because chords are not a basic building block of maqam
music. Can the modern oud be used to play other kinds of music? Of course it can. I've used it myself as a sideman in recording sessions of non-maqam
music as part of an ensemble. I played melodic and rhythmic lines. It was effective. I even did it solo many years ago on a TV commercial for a
international shipping service. It was great fun. I got paid too! I used standard Arabic tuning.
The high four courses in any variety of oud tuning is the same as the four low strings of EADG(be). All fourths. So a guitar player already knows how
to play in fourths. But for chords I don't think a fretless instrument will ever be as handy as a guitar.
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Great answer, Jody.
By the way, I was at the WFMU record fair in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago and came across an old record of yours! I thought about getting it but it
was a bit more beat up than I would have liked.
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bulerias1981
Oud Junkie
Posts: 763
Registered: 4-26-2009
Location: Beacon, NY
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Mood: John Vergara Luthier Lord of the Strings instrument making and repair
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I believe it's punishable by law in at least 84 countries to tune E A D G B E on oud. 
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