The ud has no frets, so every perde has to be found. Pick a makam: the map shows where each note of its dizi is stopped on each course of a Turkish ud, measured from the nut for your instrument's string length.
| Perde | Course | Komas above open | Cent | mm from nut |
|---|
The map uses the Turkish ud tuning in written AEU notation, from the thinnest course: Gerdâniye, Nevâ, Dügâh, Hüseynî Aşiran, Kaba Bûselik and Kaba Geveşt — each a perfect fourth of 22 komas below the one above. The default string length is 58.5 cm, the usual Turkish ud; Arabic ouds are longer, about 60–62 cm, and a zenne ud shorter.
A position is the string length minus the length that still vibrates: L × (1 − 2−k/53) for a perde k komas above the open course. The map shows each note of the dizi on every course where it lies within a fifth (31 komas) of the open string — the stretch most of the playing happens in. The karar is red.
The perdes come from the same Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek data as the Turkish Makam pages. Ud players place some of them — Segâh and Eviç above all — by ear and by tradition, slightly away from the theory; use the map to find the region, then the Makam Tuner or your teacher to settle the exact spot.
My ud is tuned differently. Does the map still help?
The map assumes the standard Turkish tuning in fourths. If you tune one course differently,
the positions on the other courses stay the same; only that course changes.
Why are some notes shown on two courses?
Most notes can be stopped on two neighbouring courses: high on the lower course or low on
the higher one. The map shows both so you can choose the fingering.
What does the ahenk menu change?
Only the pitch you hear: written notes stay where they are on the neck, and the sound drops
to the ahenk your ensemble plays in.
Is the sound a real ud?
Yes — single notes from recordings of a Turkish ud played by Hamza Zeytinoğlu and by a
Beyoğlu music-shop owner, made in Istanbul in 2011 by Xavier Serra (Music Technology Group,
Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and shared on Freesound under
CC BY 4.0. Six notes are cut out where they ring alone and retuned to the exact frequency of each
perde. Recordings:
oud.wav (115399)
and
oud.wav (115226)
by xserra.