Pluck the double strings of a fretless oud and slide between the notes. Mother-of-pearl markers show where each note of the maqam falls, quarter tones included, so you can play Rast, Bayati or Hijaz from the first try, and ask for a taqsim to hear how a maqam unfolds.
Arabic music uses notes that fall between the keys of a piano. An oud has no frets, so it can play them all: that is what this page lets you hear.
The oud has a smooth ebony fingerboard: the note depends only on where your finger lands. Click a string to pluck it, slide along it to glide to the next note, hold still and the note starts to vibrate. Turn off Snap to maqam and the neck is completely free, every shade of pitch included.
Maqam Rast has an E and a B that are neither flat nor natural: they sit a quarter tone lower, a half-flat, written here as a flat with a slash. Pearl markers show where those notes fall on each string, the tonic in copper, so you find them without guessing.
Rast, the reference; Bayati, the warm sound of folk songs; Hijaz and its wide step; Saba, the saddest; Nahawand, close to the minor scale; Kurd, gentle and dark; Ajam, bright as a major scale. Each one changes the markers, the scale and the steps between notes.
A taqsim is an improvisation that explores a maqam, from its lower notes up to the octave and back to the tonic. Press Taqsim and GOONS improvises a new one each time, with tremolo on the long notes; press Sayr for a short characteristic path, Up and Down for the scale.
Oud strings come in pairs tuned in unison, which gives the sound its warmth. GOONS plays each pair as two strings a few cents apart, plucked close to the bridge like the risha, the plectrum once cut from an eagle feather, through the round resonance of the bowl.
Below the oud waits a darbouka. Start the Maqsum rhythm, the most common in Egyptian music, and play the oud over it; or play the drum yourself with the bottom row of the keyboard while the other hand plays the maqam.
Click on any string over the neck: the high strings are at the top, the single bass string at the bottom.
The markers show the notes of Maqam Rast; the copper ones are the tonic, C. Play from one to the next.
Keep the button down and slide along the string to glide; hold still for vibrato.
Press Taqsim, then try Hijaz or Saba in the menu and press it again: the same oud, a new world.
| Type | Arabic oud (fretless short-neck lute), playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Strings | 6 courses tuned C2 F2 A2 D3 G3 C4, the five upper ones doubled; 10 semitones of fingerboard per string |
| Maqams | Rast and Nahawand on C, Bayati, Hijaz, Saba and Kurd on D, Ajam on B flat |
| Pitch | Quarter tones (50 cents) on the markers, free pitch with Snap off; slides, vibrato, tremolo |
| Phrases | Up, Down, Sayr, and a generated taqsim that ends on the tonic |
| Rhythm | Darbouka: doum, tek, ka; Maqsum, Baladi, Saidi, Malfuf, Ayoub; 50 to 200 BPM |
| Sound | Plucked string synthesis, double courses detuned by a few cents, bowl resonance, room reverb |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
The oud is the short-necked lute of the Arab world, Turkey, Iran and beyond: a deep, pear-shaped bowl made of thin wooden ribs, a soundboard with carved rosettes, and a fingerboard without frets. Its name means "wood" in Arabic, and through al-oud it gave its name to the European lute. Tradition credits Ziryab, a musician of 9th-century Córdoba, with adding a fifth pair of strings. In 2022 UNESCO inscribed the crafting and playing of the oud on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
A maqam is a melodic mode of Arabic music: a scale, but also a way to move through it. It is built from ajnas, small groups of three to five notes, such as Jins Rast on C and Jins Rast on G for Maqam Rast; the note where the second jins begins, the ghammaz, is the second home of the melody. Several ajnas contain steps of three quarters of a tone, which is why Arabic music theory counts in quarter tones, twenty-four per octave. In practice, musicians tune these notes by ear, and their exact height changes from region to region.
The oud has relatives across Asia and Europe. On GOONS, try the sitar, whose ragas share the idea of a mode with its own path, or the koto of Japan. To keep the rhythm, open the darbouka.
Yes. The oud at the top of this page is free, with no account and nothing to install. It runs in your browser with the Web Audio API.
A quarter tone is half of a semitone, about 50 cents. A half-flat note sits a quarter tone below the natural note: in Maqam Rast, the E half-flat is between E flat and E. It is written as a flat with a slash through it.
Without frets, the player can put the finger exactly where each maqam needs it, including the quarter tones, and slide from note to note. On this page, Snap to maqam helps you land on the right spots; turn it off to play completely free.
An instrumental improvisation, usually without a fixed rhythm, that presents a maqam: it settles on the lower notes, rises to the ghammaz and the octave, then comes back down to the tonic. The Taqsim button improvises a short new one each time.
From the lowest string up: C, F, A, D, G, C, a common Arabic tuning. The lowest string is single, the others are pairs tuned in unison.
The oud is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds a looper, synths, drum machines and a sequencer that play together - free for 7 days, no card required.
Free on this page, no account. Play the online darbouka →