Intimate, plaintive, sincere. Common in folk and Sufi music.
Uşşâk is one of the most-used makams in Turkish folk and Sufi music — intimate, plaintive and sincere. It joins an Uşşak tetrachord on the karar to a Bûselik pentachord on Neva and resolves on perde Dügâh (A).
From perde Dügâh, the Uşşâk dizi runs through these degrees across one octave. A degree is labelled with a core perde name where it lands exactly on one, and with its degree number otherwise. The letters are the koma value of each interval: T = tanini (9), K = büyük mücennep (8), S = küçük mücennep (5), B = bakiye (4), A = artık ikili (12). Press play the scale — every perde sounds at its true position in the 53-koma octave, microtonally, not rounded to a piano key.
The dizi lands on these named core perdes: Dügâh, Segâh, Çârgâh, Nevâ, Hüseynî, Gerdâniye. The degrees in between carry no core perde name and are shown by number.
Turkish music is written for one reference tuning (Bolâhenk); differently sized instruments transpose it down — Süpürde by a whole tone, Kız by ≈ a fourth, Mansur by ≈ a fifth. The written perdes don't change, only the sounding pitch.
The same seven steps drawn against the core perde lines, so you can see the melodic shape and exactly which degrees sit between the piano keys.
Each dot is a degree's true koma height above the karar. Reddish dots don't sit on a core perde — they fall 'between the keys'. Turkish scores write these with the koma / mücennep accidentals.
Uşşâk makam is assembled from the Uşşak tetrachord below and the Bûselik pentachord on Neva above, meeting on one shared perde. What defines the makam is not only the scale but its karar (Dügâh), its güçlü (Nevâ), and its seyir (ascending).
Uşşâk is ascending and centres on the güçlü Neva. Its second degree — perde Segâh, a neutral step of büyük mücennep (8 koma), roughly three-quarters of a tone above the final — is the makam's signature and the subject of a long-running debate about its exact height.
A minor-ish scale whose second degree is 'in between' — neither a clear whole tone nor a half step above the final.
Intimate, plaintive, sincere. Common in folk and Sufi music.
Heard in: many hymns and folk songs.
Makams from the same family — they share material and are told apart by seyir and güçlü:
Uşşâk is one of the most-used makams in Turkish folk and Sufi music — intimate, plaintive and sincere. It joins an Uşşak tetrachord on the karar to a Bûselik pentachord on Neva and resolves on perde Dügâh (A).
In the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek system the koma steps are 8 + 5 + 9 + 9 + 4 + 9 + 9 — 53 koma in all, one full octave. Named: K – S – T – T – B – T – T.
Uşşâk makam resolves on perde Dügâh; its secondary centre of gravity (güçlü) is perde Nevâ. Its seyir (melodic path) is ascending.
A minor-ish scale whose second degree is 'in between' — neither a clear whole tone nor a half step above the final.
Uşşâk is grouped here under "Resolving on Dügâh", and shares material with Bûselik, Kürdî, Hüseynî, Nevâ, Karcığar, Bayati. These are told apart not by their scale but by their seyir and güçlü.
This scale is given in its standard Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek / conservatory form and is checked to close the octave at 53 commas. There is always a small gap between what the theory writes and what a performer plays.
Back to the Turkish Makam tool for all seven çeşni, the perde ruler and the 20 makams; for the history of makam and maqam see the Middle Eastern Music lesson; for Western scales, the Scale Library.