some quick oud stuff (off looptopix)

[Texture444 <Texture444@aol.com>]

just because there's a minute remaining, afore i go:

paolo said:
>After the show, I couldn't help but mess around with one of the (acoustic)
>ouds hanging on the wall.   The traditional oud design is an interesting 
>take
>on fretless instrument design; instead of having a longer neck like a 
>guitar
>where notes on the higher regions of the neck would have extremely short
>sustain, the neck is kept short so that the only notes available are the
>ones that can have some decent sustain (that is, the area of the 
>fingerboard
>within 6-8 inches of the oud's "nut").   It's as if you took a fretless
>acoustic guitar and expanded the body so that it swallows up half the neck
>so that the non-sustaining notes higher up on the neck are gone and you 
>are
>left with the ones with decent sustain.

actually, the scale-length of the instrument is more about the subtleties 
of
micro-tonal playing (& embellishments/adornments) and a limited note-range
than it is about sustain. in fact, mr. najarian -luthier extraordinaire, in
anaheim hills- installed some foam rubber under the lower strings of my
electric oud in order to dampen them & come closer to the traditional
armenian/lebanese "ideal".
also: the oud that was hanging on the wall @ mccabe's was pretty lousy (&
*certainly not worth what they were asking for it!*) & far from any 
"correct"
tuning.

joe buck said:
>I dunno. The holy grail of tone in electric large bowled string
>instruments (saz,oud,laouto,etc) has yet to match the complexity of the
>acoustic ones. I think this partially because few people seem to care,
>or treat them as guitars.

probably, "few people seem to care".
me, *i* prefer to play the acoustic: am totally in love w/the instrument.
but, it's quite difficult to amplify/loop inna "live" setting (& *so* hard 
to
travel with)! that being said: i bought viken najarian's electric oud -last
thursday- precisely because he seems to be one of the premier acoustic oud-
luthiers in the usa, and 'cause he actually *designed* an electric 
instrument,
rather than putting a crappy (and/or 'top-deadening') pickup on a nice oud.

right up,
dt