A steady pedal tone shows every intonation slip: play or sing against it and listen for beating. Set it to the karar of a makam in your instrument's ahenk, or to any Western note.
1. Choose the karar of the makam you are working on — Dügâh for Uşşâk, Hicaz or Hüseynî, Rast for Rast and Nihâvend, Segâh for Segâh and Hüzzam. 2. Choose your instrument's ahenk: Bolâhenk is the written pitch; a Mansur ney, for example, sounds a fifth lower. 3. Start the drone and play the makam's scale slowly. When a note is in tune with the drone the sound is calm; when it is off you hear a slow wobble (beating) that speeds up the further off you are.
The Western mode does the same for any note at any A4 reference — the classic way to practise intonation on violin, cello or voice.
Perdes follow the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek 53-koma system from Rast = 196 Hz in Bolâhenk — the same pitches as the Turkish Makam pages — and each ahenk lowers everything by its fixed number of komas. The added fifth is a pure 3:2 ratio rather than an equal-tempered one, so the drone itself never beats.
Which perde should I choose for a makam?
Its karar (final note). Most common makams — Uşşâk, Hicaz, Hüseynî, Bûselik, Kürdî, Saba,
Karcığar — rest on Dügâh; Rast, Nihâvend, Mâhur and Sûzinâk on Rast; Segâh and Hüzzam on
Segâh.
What is ahenk?
The transposition level of an ensemble or instrument. Turkish music is written at Bolâhenk
pitch, but neys and tanburs of different sizes sound lower — Süpürde a whole tone lower, Kız
about a fourth, Mansur about a fifth.