Gabriel Garcia Marquez (6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014)

]]> http://saedmuhssin.com/blog/archives/111/feed 0 http://saedmuhssin.com/blog/archives/105 http://saedmuhssin.com/blog/archives/105#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:44:50 +0000 http://saedmuhssin.com/blog/archives/105 It was an act of great generosity for a master of Khan sahib’s stature to have given so much so willingly to students of limited musical training and little or no knowledge of Hindustani music.

Regardless of their background, Khan sahib took his students seriously and required that they take themselves, music, and the labor of music (practicing, what else) seriously.

During my short time at the Ali Akbar College years ago, I also got to experience the genius of Khan sahib. His instrumental classes consisted much of the time of him composing on the spot, singing the composition to the students in Sargam or playing it on the Sarod, and explaining the theoretical issues that the piece touched on. The students would play back the compositions to him. In the singing classes I have seen him repeatedly pickup an old poetry book, choose a poem, and by the end of the class he will have composed a masterpiece which we will have all learned.

I have also seen the devotion of his students to the music and their great love and respect for Khansahib.

I am deeply grateful for the honor of having attended his classes, if only briefly, and deeply saddened for Khansahib’s passing.

It has never been interesting for me to make the blog a personal thing. It was always and will continue to be about the work. I will make its work more manageable by writing in parts and publishing about once or twice a week rather than daily.

I have a few things in mind I want to work on, but I also welcome your suggestions or question about things to discuss in the near future.

Saed.

So that your words can be read on the particles of dust when dust is all that is left to make kites with..

In this essay, I am going to touch on the different aspects of the form that are of interest both to the performer and to the musicologist.

Those aspects include:

• Compositional details of the form
• Performance practices, their regional characteristics and evolution over time.
• A list of Samais that every performer should know

The Samai form

Naming convention: In Arabic, a typical name of a Samai consists of the word Samai followed by the name of the maqam which the samai explores. Example: “Samai Rast”. Since there could be more than one Samai in a given maqam, the name of the composer is added to the name of the Samai. Example: “Samai Nahawand Masood Jamil”. In some rare cases, a composer would give their Samai a unique name instead of following the naming convention. One example is “Sihr Al-Sharq” instead of “Samai Nahawand Al-Hariri”.
Exercise: Which maqam is “Samai Bayyati Al-Aryan” in and what’s the name of the composer?
Note: In Turkish music, the name of the Maqam comes first and the Turkish name of the form “Saz Samai” follows.

Traditional Uses: Traditionally a Samai appears early in an instrumental or song set. It is part of a series of instrumental pieces that open the set, which may include instrumental pieces in other forms such as Bashraf, Dulab, and Taqaasim. Those instrumental pieces were used to establish the Maqam tonality and relationship with other maqams in the ears of the listeners and singers, and warm the listeners up to the set to come. The singer would typically begin singing soon after the Samai is played.

The Samai Thaqil rhythm: a 10 beat pattern with a 3 2 2 3 subdivision and Dums on beats 1, 6 and 7, and Teks on beats 4 and 8.

The Samai form: A piece in four short movements (each called Khana), each followed by a refrain (called Taslim). The first three movements and the refrain are in the Samai Thaqil rhythm. The fourth is in a contrasting rhythm (most commonly 3 and 6, occasionally 7 and in rare cases other rhythms).

Tonal parameters of the form: Traditionally the first Khana is entirely in the Maqam of the piece, as is the Taslim. I say traditionally because contemporary composers frequently use chromaticism and modulation even in the first Khana. (see the section on modern trends).

The second and third Khanas involve modulation exploring other Maqams. The second Khana stays in the center register, and sometimes explores the bass region. The third Khana ventures into the upper registers. The fourth Khana typically stays in the original Maqam of the Samai. It is often in a lively tempo, sometimes technically demanding, and the energy climax of the entire piece is often achieved in this Khana.

Arabic and Turkish performance practice In the modern period: a comparison

The differences in performance of Samais between Arab and Turkish musicians reflect, for the most part, the audible difference in style between Arab and Turkish art music ensembles. Some differences are unique to Samais, however, namely tempo. Here are the differences that I have observed:

Tempo: Arab musicians typically perform all the 10/8 Khanas in Samais slower than their Turkish counterparts. (In the fourth Khana the speeds are comparable, with Arab performance in the recent period often tending to be a little faster). I compared recordings of 20 Samais performed by Arab musicians, with 20 (different Samais) by Turkish musicians. The tempo range was (eighth note =)90-110 in performance by Arab artists compared to 124-156 in performance by Turkish artists.

Use of percussion: The general tendency is for the Arab percussionist to make extensive use of ornaments and embellishments, and to vary that in a way that interacts with the melodic line, sometimes outlining the form (for example by playing different in the Taslim than in the Khanas).

The general tendency for Turkish percussionists is to play the skeleton, the most basic shape, of the Samai Thaqil pattern, regardless of the melodic line or place in the form.

This is a difference between art-music percussionists in the two styles that does not stop at Samais.

Turkish percussionists also stop when the melody has a rest. This is especially clear at the characteristic phrase endings which occur on the 8th beat in Samais. Arab percussionists tend to continue playing during those.

Melodic ornaments: This is another difference that is not unique to the interpretation of Samais but is rather a general difference in style that is especially prevalent in smaller ensembles. Turkish musicians use fast, fully articulated, usually diatonic, ornaments. Arab musicians use those less frequently, and incorporate other, expression driven ornaments such as: slides, vibratos, grace notes, left hand pizzicato, and, in the case of the Oud, tremolo (Rash) which is virtually non-existent in Turkish Oud style.

Fillers, silences and early birds: Most Turkish interpretations tend to take the rests literally. In a typical Arab ensemble, a musician, two, and sometimes the entire ensemble plays a filler, especially if there is a leap after the silence. Especially common are filling octave and fifth leaps. Early birds fillers that are played at the end of the rest, ahead of the new phrase.

Modern Samai compositions: Contemporary Turkish Samais still adhere fairly strictly to the composition rules as outlined above. Contemporary Arab Samais, however, are a different story. While there are still Samais that are entirely traditional, there are others that push the envelope, typically in terms of tonality. Two examples to illustrate the point.
In “Samai Kurd Dagher” Abdo Dagher added an intro that is not in Kurd (in fact, it is borderline atonal, in the Arabic sense). The Taslim is tonal but it is not in Maqam it is mostly in Bayyati. The other example is “Samai Kurd Shaheen” which features frequent modulations from the start.

A list of Samais every performer of Arabic music should know

• Samai Bayyati, El-Aryan. Featured in many recordings.
• Samai Farah Fazah, Tanburi Jamil. Featured in many recordings, including by Tanburi Jamil
• Samai Kurd, Dagher. Available on “King of Taqasim” recording, in which Dagher plays many of his compositions
• Samai Nahawand, Masood Jamil. Recorded by many, recommended recording: “Turath” by Simon Shaheen which also includes Samai Farahafazah and Samai Kurd Shaheen
• Samai Nawa Athar, Jamil Uweis. Featured in “Remembrances” by Jazayer Ensemble
• Samai HijazKar Kurd, Tatius. Appears in many recordings, including Kudsi Urgener’s Ensemble recording of the works of Tatius
• Samai Mohayyar, Tanburi Jamil. Best recording of the Samai is on the “Yasemin” CD by Necati Celik. The CD is out of print and might not be easy to obtain.

There are many possible reasons. In this post I will list the reasons that I have encountered in the past, and try to give enough information to help you identify why your oud is buzzing.

Fixing the problem is a different story. Some repairs are fairly easy and require no special tools or experience. Others, especially the ones related to the fingerboard, require expertise and/or special tools and, therefore, might require the attention of an instrument repair person. I will try to give enough information for you to make an informed decision about whether you should attempt to do the repair or whether you should hire a repair person to do it.

1- String Buzz

There are several different ways in which strings cause a buzz. These should be eliminated before any further attempts to diagnose and repair the buzz. Common reasons for strings buzzing include

• String excess on the bridge. Once a string is installed, and if there is excess string sticking out on the bridge side, especially if that excess string is touching the face), buzz may occur. Clip the excess string. Tools required, scissors. Expertise required: Ability to operate scissors safely.
• String excess on peg. This buzz is often faint, and comes from the peg box. Repaired by clipping the excess string.
• Wrong string used. Make sure you’re using the correct string for each pitch.
• Defective strings. In this case, another common symptom is that fingered pitches are not in unison even if they are in unison when they’re open.

2- Fingerboard buzz

Possible reasons for a fingerboard buzz are

• If the fingerboard has grooves, cracks, bumps, or other surface imperfections, buzz could occur when you finger the string on or just before (pitch just below) the surface imperfection. Unless you know what you’re doing, and have the right tools, I would give this repair to a oud, violin, or guitar repair person. All of them should have the tools and expertise to fix this one.
• Oil and grime on fingerboard. Once cleaned using rubbing alcohol with and a soft cotton cloth, the buzz disappear.  Do not use harsh chemical cleaners. You should also get in the habit of wiping the fingerboard and strings with a soft cotton cloth after playing. Also important: make sure your hands (at least your left hand) are clean before playing.
• Fingerboard has just been installed and it wasn’t shaped properly (it’s thickness or angle are not good). Take it back to the person who installed it. Better still, take it to someone else who could do a better job.
• Tuning the strings far lower than the oud was designed for (a major second or minor third). For example, a Turkish oud tuned to the very old oud tuning of B, G flat, D flat, A flat etc.. Most Turkish ouds can withstand current Arabic tuning (CGDAFC), but not lower than that. To fix this problem, you usually have to tune the oud higher, unless you want to make major changes to the oud (plain fingerboard, change the nut, redo the bridge, or any combination of the two).
• Fingerboard coming loose and needs to be glued again. Unless you know what you’re doing, and have the right tools I would give this repair to a oud, violin, or guitar repair person. All of them should have the tools and expertise to fix this one.
• If you’ve just installed a new nut, the nut could be too low. This buzz occurs on open strings and disappears when you finger the strings.

3- Buzz originating inside the bowl

Possible reasons

• Dirt inside the bowl. To fix this, get the dirt out, by carefully holding the oud in the air, face down, and trying to get the dirt to come out through the openings in the rosette. Do not use vacuum cleaners, do not drop the oud or shake vigorously.
• Loose braces (studs). This one requires opening taking the rosette out, locating the loose brace and gluing it. You should give this repair to a oud repair person unless you know how to take the rosette out, how work on the inside of the face of the oud without removing it, and how to locate and glue the loose studs.
• Cracks, rib separation, or separation at the seams. Expertise required for this one as well.

4- Ornaments, rosette, and pickguard

These are fairly easy to fix. Here’s what you need to look for.

• Loose ornaments on the face or the peg tips. These are fairly easy to repair. Make sure to use hide glue. Make sure not to use too much glue. Make sure not to use too much weight to fasten the ornament while the glue is drying. Make sure to wipe off excess glue before fastening.
• Loose rosette. This one is fairly easy to fix too. Make sure to use hide glue. Make sure not to use too much glue. Make sure not to use too much weight to fasten the ornament while the glue is drying. Make sure to wipe off excess glue before fastening.
• Loose pickguard. Another easy one. Make sure to use hide glue. Make sure not to use too much glue. Make sure not to use too much weight to fasten the ornament while the glue is drying. Make sure to wipe off excess glue before fastening.

5- Badly fitted Pegs

Visual inspection should reveal when a peg is loose on one side and it’s shape is not complimentary to the shapes of the peg holes. One possibility is that when you restrung the oud, you used a peg that was in different holes. Make sure every peg goes back to where they were. If that doesn’t solve the problem you need to reream the holes and reshave the peg. This can be problematic in that you may make the peg holes too big, and it also requires sharp tools (reamer and shaver). Unless you’re good with these things, give this job to a violin or oud repairer.

6- Bridge coming loose

Before the peg separates, the stress on it from the tightened strings pulls it toward the nut. As a result, the action gets lower (the strings become closer to the fingerboard) and buzzing may occur. When that happens, loosen all strings (to eliminate pull on the bridge) and take the oud to a oud repair person. This repair, although it may seem simple, can be very problematic. Either the bridge has to be reglued, or it has to be removed completely, cleaned up and then reseated and glued. Both require expertise, and tools to fasten the bridge as the glue dries. You could damage the oud if you do it wrong, or (at best) you will not fix the problem.

That’s all I have encountered over the years. If you have encountered other reasons, please share them with us.

However, if you do have the drive, discipline, and interest to do it on your own, you should check out some of the music coursework available online for free.

I visited a few dozen sites, looked at their music course offerings, and have a few recommendations to make. Other than being free and open to the general public, my main criteria for recommending courses and platforms were quality of courses, and ease of navigation. I am confident you will explore these web sites and find many jewels that will be of interest to you. Enjoy and feel free to report back or recommend other free courses and lectures.

1- Berklee School Of Music

One of the top conservatories in the US makes many courses available for free on the web. Not bad, huh. Thank you Berklee. Many courses are available in video, audio or PDF formats. Especially suited for already-trained musicians wishing to explore new things, such as the arranging, improvisation, and education.

Start at the Berklee Shares home page and have a good time

2- iTunes U

A few dozen universities and colleges offer audio and video podcasts of hundreds of courses on iTunes University. This is fairly addictive if you have wide interests as you will find excellent quality podcasts on nearly everything.

Open Itunes, click “iTunes store”, click “iTunes U”. Click “Universities and Colleges”. Choose a school and have fun.

3- Gresham College

Offers transcripts, streaming audio, and streaming video of lectures and talks on many subjects. Here are a few that you might find interesting.

• Music or the vocabulary of music (audio, video, and transcript available)
• Jiuta – an explanation of traditional Japanese music (audio, video and transcript available)
• Chamber music fights back (transcript only)
• Debussy – Quartet in G minor, Op 10 (transcript, and lecture and performance audio and video)

4- Open University (UK)

Lecture notes and course outlines are available. You can also enroll in “units” for free, which allows you to participate in the discussions.

Here is a list of the music courses I found

5- UC San Diego

Makes many current semester courses available via podcasts. The music course selection is not exactly great. In fact, there’s just one: Introduction to Western Music. But the course quality is good. So why not get introduced.

6- MIT Open Courseware.

One of the first that I have come across some time ago. Lecture notes of all courses are available. Student assignments and projects, exams and study guides, and listening and reading lists are also available. Videos are said to be available but I didn’t find any for music courses. Here is the music OCW page.

My point is that it is our job to keep inspired. Sometimes it takes external stimulation to do that. Musicians being a largely autodidact group of individuals (having to learn and practice primarily on our own), and also a group that keeps a problematic schedule (3AM is the best time to do dishes, right?) these courses are a pretty good way to keep inspired. The fact that they are free courses surely doesn’t hurt at all.

Are there things that a musician can do to reduce the damage that their music making causes? Well, I can think of a few, and invite you to participate in this discussion and share your advice.

Here are my thoughts:

1- Use rechargeable batteries for battery operated equipment. NiMH batteries recharge hundreds of times (I’ve been using the same AA, AAA and 9V batteries for over five years and they still recharge and hold their charge). Please remember that batteries (rechargeable and otherwise) are toxic. Don’t throw them in the trash. Rather, take them to your local hardware store or other local business that accepts used batteries and discards of them safely.

2- Buy downloadable music rather than physical CDs where possible. And don’t back it up on CDs. Just back it up on your hard-drives. I am sure you back up your computer hard drive on an external one. So you will have two backup copies of your music database. That’s even safer than having a CD.

3- If you must buy CDs, buy used ones. Sell used CDs that you no longer need.

4- Minimize use of paper, and use recycled paper for intermediate copies of music. Paper has two printable sides. There is no reason why a it should make it to the recycling bin with only one side printed.

5- Repair rather than replace where possible. Many times you can repare rather than replace music stands, microphone stands, foot rests. With a soldering iron you can replace microphone and speaker cables as well.  You can also reshave oud pegs and ream their holes and bingo, your oud tunes smoothly, and somewhere in a forest far away a tree is grateful to you. This step needs some experience but there is plenty of information on the web on how to do it. You can check out Lute, violin, cello, or viola web pages and find several ways to do this.

6- Use virtual rather than physical equipment where possible. There are hundreds of metronomes that you can download for free. There are also many tuners (I am working on an interactive oud tuning page. Later on in the horizon, an interactive qanun tuning page). Even on stage you can use a laptop as a mixing board, multi-track digital recorder etc..

7- If you must use a physical piece of equipment be aware that:

• You can buy used high quality microphones, amplifiers, cables, recorders and even reusable media (dat tapes for example) for a fraction of the price of new ones.
• Digital recorders that record on a memory stick offer extremely high quality recording without using digital tapes, CDs, DVDs or whatever.

8- Minimize use of printed publicity media in favor of email, and web publicity. In additional to building an email database of your audience, you can ask the venue you’re performing at to email your announcement, and you can get on mailing lists and forums of people interested in your idiom. You will not only be able to publicise your concert, but you will learn a lot and connect with other lost souls with musical inclinations (aka networking).

9- Choose a rehearsal location wisely. If your group consists of people who will be coming from different places, choose a rehearsal location that will minimize the total amount of miles traveled, and/or accessible by public transportation.

Got other tips? Do let us know.

Hector, a master wood carver, had all the expertise, tools, and even wood, that I could have dreamt of. Quickly I did some calculations and took some measurements, and gave him the exact specifications of the fingerboard that allows for maximum playability and beauty. He took it from there, he cut the perfect ebony fingerboard, and carved the bottom of it so that it will fit snugly over the imperfections of the warping face. I went home and glued it without a problem, and within twenty four hours I had the fingerboard. The action was exactly as I had invisioned it: under an eighth of an inch at the fifth.

Hector also introduced me to another master craftsman, Giorgio di Costanzo, an expert on antique restoration and wood finishing. I was looking for an approach to do the final cleanup of the face, using materials that would clean the face and then evaporate leaving no trace. Giorgio, immediately identified the different materials that are needed to clean the oils, epoxy, and dirt that had become embedded in the wood.

The result?

Judge for your self:

I would like to close this series by touching on some of the unique characteristics of Arab avantgarde cultural activity in the twentieth century with a focus on music.

In my view, one of the most significant differences between Arab and western avantgarde phenomena is the fact that in Arab societies these pioneering works made their way into the mainstream almost instantaneously. Poetry changed from its classic rhymed, metered, measured, symmetry, to prose poetry. The subject matter changed dramatically and became more personal and more immediate (song lyrics being an exception in that they still obsessed with love, almost exclusively). “Modern Poetry” as it became known, had, by the mid twentieth century, constituted the majority of new poetry works.

Musical theater was introduced (almost single handedly by Sayyid Darwish), and other forms of staged musical performance and musical films became very successful within a short period of time. These were influenced, to an extent, by western musical theater. But they also had unique characteristics reflecting the originality of their makers, and the uniqueness of the conditions in which they appeared.

Musical content changed, incorporating instruments, orchestration techniques, and sounds from other cultures, mainly western European tonal 19^th century music.

Experimental, surrealist cinema followed suit. Youssef Shahine, Egyptian filmmaker, produced a large body of works of experimental, surrealist, and unconventional in narrative. The civil war in Lebanon dealt a heavy blow to similar currents in Lebanese cinema.

Returning for a moment to music, it is worth mentioning here two other distinctions from western avantgarde music, which may help explain why the Arab mainstream culture adopted avantgarde music fairly rapidly. The first was that the greatest composers and performers of the twentieth century were involved in it, listened and studied other traditions in depth, and wanted to do something new. More reflective of the spirit of the times, and the social and political changes all around.

The other distinction is that the introduction of new elements was gradual. None of these great composers produced exclusively avantgarde work. None divorced themselves from the tradition. In fact they were all deeply rooted and schooled in it. None of the avantgarde works were exclusive of traditional elements. In fact, the genius of many of these works lied in the perfect blend and seamless transitions between those elements.

The “tradition” of avantgarde in music still continues today, by the way, although other factors limit its success. Factors like the market demand for spectacle in musical performance (mainly one of sexual overtones)- aka the video clip, and attention span depletion and the need for short sentences and short ideas accessible to the general public on first hearing. Interestingly enough, the movement against the stupification of art is not lead exclusively by an educated elite, but also by ordinary people who see the modern video clip oriented music as a symptom of cultural degeneration and see the artistic revolution that took place in the twentieth century as a symptom of the opposite, the spiritual and cultural awakening of the masses.

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