Hal Leonard Oud Method Paperback – 6 Feb. 2006

Basic but good for a guitarist moving to Oud

This is a useful little introduction to the oud but it suffers from three common failings of these kinds of books:1. It assumes you know nothing about music so several pages are taken up with "boiler plate" stuff on musical notation, scales etc.2. Having assumed you know nothing it then switches to assuming you can sight read music and dispenses with all guidance on what string and position you should use for a given note.3. Many of the tracks on the accompanying CD have arrangements that go beyond the associated notation in the book.As I say, these are common failings of almost every tutorial book I've bought so this particular book is neither good nor bad by the general standard.I found it useful to understand my new instrument and the CD helped me understand the style of music that suits it but I'm not sure it really helped me "play" the instrument.

Very basic, with little or no information that is not easily available online. It may just as well have been a book about the guitar just minus the frets. There does not seem to be much "method" here. The major failing is that it assumes that oud music is played in Western diatonic equal temperament scales - no mention of makams/maqams and their microtonal intervals. There is a little information on Middle Eastern rhythms.Save your money.

Very summarized and only for western notation.while oud is not for western music.. The notation is entirely different for oud.For more [...]