As fragile as the breath itself; carries the texture of the air rather than a clean attack — the Turkish instrument closest to a human voice.
The ney is an open-ended reed flute made from giant reed (Arundo donax), with six finger holes on the front and a thumb hole on the back. Pitch is controlled entirely by embouchure angle and breath force — there are no keys or levers — which makes it one of the hardest Turkish instruments to learn; producing a clean first tone typically takes weeks of practice.
The body is reed; the mouthpiece, called the başpare, is a flared piece traditionally made of water-buffalo horn, ivory, or ebony (plastic is common today). Roughly eight different sizes exist — bolahenk, davud, şah, mansur, kız, yıldız, müstahzen, sipürde — and a player chooses among them to match the key the piece calls for.
The başpare is pressed against nearly-closed lips, and a narrow air stream is blown from the centre of the mouth; pitch is shaped by adjusting the angle and force of the breath, with more forceful breath producing higher pitches. A skilled neyzen can draw close to a hundred distinguishable tones from a single ney across a range of roughly two and a half octaves.
The ney holds a central place in the music of the Mevlevi Sufi ceremony (semâ), and the famous opening lines of the Mesnevi describe it as a voice cut from the reed bed, crying out in separation. In the classical fasıl ensemble it appears both as a solo taksim (improvisation) instrument and as an ensemble voice.
Performance: Niyazi Sayın — "Ney Taksimleri" (MEGA MÜZİK OFFICIAL). Shown via YouTube's own player under its embed licence. Watch on YouTube →
Instruments from the same family, sharing a similar way of making sound:
The ney is an open-ended reed flute made from giant reed (Arundo donax), with six finger holes on the front and a thumb hole on the back. Pitch is controlled entirely by embouchure angle and breath force — there are no keys or levers — which makes it one of the hardest Turkish instruments to learn; producing a clean first tone typically takes weeks of practice.
The başpare is pressed against nearly-closed lips, and a narrow air stream is blown from the centre of the mouth; pitch is shaped by adjusting the angle and force of the breath, with more forceful breath producing higher pitches. A skilled neyzen can draw close to a hundred distinguishable tones from a single ney across a range of roughly two and a half octaves.
The ney holds a central place in the music of the Mevlevi Sufi ceremony (semâ), and the famous opening lines of the Mesnevi describe it as a voice cut from the reed bed, crying out in separation. In the classical fasıl ensemble it appears both as a solo taksim (improvisation) instrument and as an ensemble voice.
Listen for a soft, breathy onset rather than a clean Western-flute attack, and long, melismatic legato lines. That airy texture is the clearest giveaway that you are hearing a ney rather than any other Turkish instrument.
This page is written from more than one source; where sources disagreed or a technical detail (an exact string count, an exact tuning) had only a single unconfirmed figure behind it, we left it out or described it in general terms rather than publish a number we could not confirm.
Back to the Turkish Instruments tool for all instruments; for the melodic side of Turkish music see the Makam tool, and for rhythm the Usul tool.