The oud

Hellooooooo Charlie, 

Today i'm going to talk about the oud,

while i'm no oud expert ( I can't even play the oud) it is one the best instruments to ever exist and I’m still going to talk about it.  

First of all a little bit of history, as you have may noticed by looking at the picture, the oud is very similar to the lute, an instrument that you may be already familiar with. Well actually the oud is the direct ancestor of the European lute. It has either 10,11,12,13 string arranged in 5, 6, or 7 courses ( two strings played together, just like a 12 string guitar). The major difference is that the oud doesn't have any frets. 

Frets are metal bars that are going to hold a note, just like on a guitar, for example on a guitar every fret is half step (26.164hz). But the oud has none.

And what does that mean? 

Well western music is made of 12 notes (C, Db, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Ab, A, Bb, B) But in eastern music we use way more notes, we have quarter step, which means we have 24 notes. and that why the oud has no frets, so we can have this micro-tonality that we are searching for. So we have way more options and notes to play with, opening more doors for musicians. Which make the instrument way more difficult to play with the right notes (just like the violin). 

The oud is a very important instrument in the middle East, it varies from country to country (Syrian oud is different from Turkish oud or Iranian oud), it is used in traditional music and modern music, so it is really present in an arabe daily life. 

Here are some of my favorite Oud artists with some of their music ( and if you are reading this, YES M.Leah, you can add some artists) :

Le trio joubran (my favorites ) : majaz https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gozewgc3iSo

                                                  Masar https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0zNxeQkK7DY

Marcel khalifa : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OnwsOcFdhdE

Nasser shamma : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kw6Qbc3TaEU

Enjoy!!