Uskudar (by ear, first take)

while i feel i already knew the melody somehow, i only stumbled upon this song 2 days ago, and immediately fell in love with it. This is Alan Shavarsh Bardezbanian's version of Uskudar--I only figured out how to play it last night (by ear), and first attempted to play along with the recording only moments before capturing this video, so you're seeing what is essentially only my second full playthrough of the song... As such, there are plenty of little mistakes-- especially at the end when the tempo really picks up. So don't judge too harshly...But I'm convinced with a week or two of practice, I'll be able to nail it! (I hope!) Ultimately, i think it would be a great exercise to learn how to play exactly all the little improvisational fills that Al plays in the original, as they are clever and delicious, though i didn't really attempt that yet here-- i did a few of my own little ornamentations, and those could also use some work... but it's a beautiful, haunting piece of music and it's very satisfying to be able to capture the main features of the melody Uskudar is a melody that is played by peoples across the middle east, balkans, levant-- a song that is familiar to and played by Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Arabs, among others, with its origins in the ottoman empire

• #music
• #armenian
• #oud
• #greek
• #turkish
• #ottoman
• #armenian_traditional
• #turkish_traditional
• #ottoman_traditional
• #arabic_music
• #nico
• #getz
• #nico_getz