Melbourne
Oud Junkie
Posts: 354
Registered: 10-9-2006
Location: Mlebourne, Australia
Member Is Offline
Mood: راحة الأرواح
|
|
Not really oud....
I dont know if anyone has seen this, but its damn good - the closest you'd get to an arabic sounding classical guitar. Such familiar sound but with a
very foreign technique... 
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaCedgdyJXE&mode=related&sea...
|
|
|
zalzal
Oud Junkie
Posts: 747
Registered: 12-9-2005
Location: Nîmes France
Member Is Offline
Mood: still alive
|
|
very interesting, thank you, exactly what you said.
I tried to search for fretted ouds played in a classical guitar way, but did not find anything yet.
|
|
|
oudipoet
Oud Junkie
Posts: 190
Registered: 1-3-2006
Location: los angeles
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
hi guys the player is turkish and he is playing in turkish style guitar playing it s kind of mixture of turkish classical , folk, arabesk and there
are some deep ethnic tones in that taksim ussually i call this style "ERKAN OGUR" style because he was the first turkish maybe the first person the
planet" i am not sure about that one just gussing" that played a fretless guitar and crated his own style which i really love classic fretless guitar
sounds really great and u can play any thing u want on it from western music to more advance turkish or arabic music.ERKAN OGUR has some videos on
youtube as well your should check them out you would really undertsnad what i mean.
|
|
|
Lintfree
Oud Junkie
Posts: 171
Registered: 2-9-2007
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Erkun Ogur
Erkun Ogur also plays the fretless electric guitar with an
E-Bow and it sounds EXACTLY like a ney. Not close but EXACTLY. It's the scariest thing you ever heard. When he played a concert in Koln, Germany he
almost caused a riot. His technique on fretless steel-string guitar is like nothing I've ever before. He is totally unique.
|
|
|
Melbourne
Oud Junkie
Posts: 354
Registered: 10-9-2006
Location: Mlebourne, Australia
Member Is Offline
Mood: راحة الأرواح
|
|
Not sure though how a fretted oud would sound like, probably not as interesting as a fretless guitar...To unfret a guitar is to give it a wold of
endless possibilities; but to fret an oud would only cause limits I would imagine.
|
|
|
al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
Posts: 364
Registered: 6-8-2005
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
There is an assumption that the oud was always unfretted, which is not the case. Ouds in the Middle East were fretted until the 16th century, and in
some parts of the region even later (in Tunisia into the 20th century). Descriptions of ouds in medieval books describe how to tie the frets on the
neck and the intervals used. Frets are limiting, but with all the bad intonation one hears from many oud players they also have some advantages.
|
|
|
Hosam
Oud Junkie
Posts: 180
Registered: 12-6-2005
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Any idea how many frets were used on pre 16th century ouds and their locations?
Did the oud started fretless then the frets were added on a later stage before it was removed?
My understanding is that the calculations for the exact fingering position on the fretless oud neck to produce different notes were not accurate even
at the beginning of the 19th century.
|
|
|
al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
Posts: 364
Registered: 6-8-2005
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
The earliest Arab ouds that we know about had frets. In the 8th century they had four frets (whole tone, half-tone, half-tone, whole tone). The tone
system changed in the following centuries, when some new microtonal intervals were adopted, and more frets were added. Ibn al-Tahhan, who was an
accomplished oud player and court musician in Fatimid Cairo (mid-11th century), describes six frets used on ouds in Egypt in his time. One of them was
a neutral third called wusta al-‘arab. Then he adds that there was another tone between the wusta al-‘arab and the major third called wusta
Zalzal, but most people did not use it, although it was played by the Persians. He says that he knows how to play this wusta Zalzal without needing to
add a fret for it, but that it can be difficult and therefore not recommended for beginners. He is describing two sizes of neutral thirds, a lower one
common in Egypt and a higher one played in Iran, but we have no way of knowing the exact intonation of either of these two "half-flats."
Theorists have had different calculations for the size of the microtonal intervals since the medieval period. Al-Farabi (10th century) assigned the
neutral third interval (C-E half flat) a ratio of 27/22, which is equivalent to 355 cents, or the ¾ tone of current Arab music. Al-Urmawi (13th
century) assigned to this interval a different ratio equivalent to 384 cents, which corresponds to the current Turkish 8-comma interval. Other writers
sometimes spoke about such tones by name or fingering position on the oud, but we have no way to know their exact intonation. Modern theorists have
produced their own tables with different interval sizes.
|
|
|
Hosam
Oud Junkie
Posts: 180
Registered: 12-6-2005
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Thanks al-Halabi, what do you recommend for further readings about the same subject during the medieval period?
|
|
|
al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
Posts: 364
Registered: 6-8-2005
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
|
|
Habib Touma, "The Music of the Arabs," Amnon Shiloah, "Music in the World of Islam" and George Sawa, "Music Perforrmance Practice in the Early
'Abbasid Era" have chapters that summarize medieval theories. More detailed is Owen Wright's "The Modal System of Arab and Persian Music, A.D.
1250-1300." A facsimile of the medieval manuscript of Muhammad Ibn al-Tahhan ("Hawi al-funun wa salwat al-mahzun") was issued in Germany in 1990, but
it may not be easy to find (the English title is "Compendium of a Fatimid Court Musician"). There is a lot written in Arabic on the medieval
theorists.
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xmbprobrown/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
