This article and video is going to teach you how to take a simple melody and turn it into a trail blazing explosion of serious Van Halen inspired chops!
And this Oud technique only involves three parts:
1. Hold down a note on fingerboard and play a down stroke
2. Pull-off that note with your left-hand finger to allow the open string to sound
3. Then play the open string again with an up stroke
Once you learn how to do this, you can take a boring melody and spice it up. What you are really doing is playing a down stroke followed by an up stroke, but adding a pull-off in between to make it sound like you’re playing a triplet.
Using this technique will improve your hand dexterity and also your aim on the fingerboard. Try playing it up high on the fingerboard to practice hitting very high notes in tune with the open string.
One thing you must remember is that you can only effectively use this technique when the open string you are playing is in the same Maqam or the starting point for the Maqam you’re playing.
Hope you enjoy the video:
I hope the video was informative and easy to follow. Pretty soon you’ll be rockin’ like Van Halen on the Oud taking melodies and making them fun and full sounding.
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Have any questions, ask them! Want to see something here, tell me! I hope you have fun playing your Oud.
– The Oud Geek
Hey Navid. Thanks for the great tips, and easy to follow instruction. 🙂
Hi David, happy to hear it!! You’re welcome.
Hello Navid
I have seen the Dervish playing this instrument in Capadocia recently got enchanted with the sound of it and got one in Istanbul. I’m 62 year Brazilian lawyer musician and here we got strong influence from African, European and Arab music since we where colonized by the Portuguese. The Oud is similar to the Alaude European medieval instrument that seems to come from Al Oud and the beautifull Portuguese guitar is a late development of it. I use to play blues improvise solo on eletric guitar and it seems to fit very well the Oud technics. Your lesson is very enlightening and simple. Tanks want to learn more from your great Oud technics. Let us all keep playing, music will lead us to a better understanding our cultural differences and consequently to peaceful world. After all we are all just human trying to survive our daily difficulties with different solutions. Music is the only true universal language.
Thank you for your comment. This is all very true. Thank you for finding my page. I look forward to hearing from you again. I will try my best to upload more videos with some techniques.