Oud Lessons: Oud For Guitarists-The Making

by Navid Goldrick on July 19, 2013, no comments

Oud Lessons For Guitarists

Oud For Guitarists all began with one simple desire, to make learning Middle Eastern music easy for people with a western background in music. There is a lot of exotic mystery surrounding Middle Eastern music even today, but there is an ever growing interest in Arabic, Turkish and Persian music, particularly music played with the Oud. Many people are intrigued by lack of harmony in Middle Eastern music, others are interested in exploring the world of microtones and quarter tones in an effort to add a new dimension to their own music. So we began with this in mind, and it is almost finished. Soon there will be Oud lessons for the benefit of Guitarists and anyone with a western musical background. It’s easier than it seems, and you won’t have to spent a lot of time to understand the concepts.

Guitarists

It’s easy to see why many Guitar players turn to the Oud when dabbling in Middle Eastern music. The Oud is the progenitor of the European lute, which in turn is the progenitor of modern Guitars. Most modern models also have six paired courses of strings making it easy for Guitarists to relate to the instrument. A few issues that Guitarists face when they learn the Oud is that it is fretless, so that automatically makes it difficult to play their beloved chords they are so used to playing. This causes a few stumbling blocks for Guitarists who are learning the Oud. So we have kept these issues in mind when creating the teaching material, and we are confident that we have dispelled some of the mystery surrounding quarter tones and provide specifics on how to find these quarter tones. We’ve also included tips and tricks to help you tune notes that you play without the benefit of frets.

Creating Meaningful Content

The most challenging aspect of this project was creating content tailored specifically to people who already play an instrument be it guitar or whatever. We wanted to create a product that gets you acquainted with the Oud so that you can start playing the Oud as you like, whether that means playing traditional music or playing your own music. The content also teaches a hybrid of Arabic and Persian notions so that when you become more familiar with a certain type of music you have a better foundation to process what you are hearing. The content was also created so that you can break free from traditional conventions, but also obtain valuable techniques from traditional music to develop whatever technique is desired. Hopefully, this will be just one installment of several Oud learning materials that will assist aspiring Oud players to learn more.

 

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