The Main Window

The main window of The Oud Tutor consists of the following 6 sections:

The oud view displays the oud fingerboard and part of the oud chest. On the fingerboard, the fingering positions and the corresponding note names are shown. The notes and fingering positions reflect the selected maqam. When music is played, the notes are animated to correspond to the played music. There are also 4 gray boxes over the strings at the beginning of the oud chest. Each box indicate which range of the keyboard key correspond to the string.

The oud toolbar provides various controls and indicators related to the oud. The subsection "The Oud Toolbar" explains the use of these controls and indicators.

The maqam panel allows the user to select a maqam and a maqam tonic. For more information, refer to the section "Maqam Selection".

The file playback panel provides means for opening, filtering, and playing a music file. Refer to the section "Music Playback" for information about the features of music playback in The Oud Player, and about how to use these features.

The note names panel lets the user choose between English and French note names. It also has a button that brings a window where the user can set more note display options. For details, refer to the "Note Display" section.

The more music panel has a hyperlink to a location at The Oud Tutor web site where the user may download more music files.

The Oud Toolbar

The following figure shows the parts of the oud toolbar.

Oud View Selector
The oud-view drop-down list lets the user select how the oud image looks. Four views are possible:

• Right-Handed Player View: The oud appears as if a right-handed player is looking down at it while playing.
• Right-Handed Mirror View: The oud appears as if a right-handed player is looking at it in a mirror.
• Left-Handed Player View: The oud appears as if a left-handed player is looking down at it while playing.
• Left-Handed Mirror View: The oud appears as if a left-handed player is looking at it in a mirror.

It should be noted that a right-handed player holds the pick in the right hand and fingers the oud with the left hand. It is the other way around for a left-handed player.

Oud Tuning Selector
The oud-tuning drop-down list lets the user select a tuning from among different possible oud tunings. Some of the popular tunings are:

• F A D G C F (Arabic/Egypt)
• F A D G C (Arabic/Egypt)
• D G A D G C (Arabic)
• G A D G C (Arabic)
• C F A D G C (Arabic)
• F# B E A D G (New Turkish classical)
• A D E A D G (Old Turkish classical)
• E A B E A D (Turkish/Armenian)
• C# F# B E A D (Turkish/Armenian)

Tuning Shift
This control allows the user to shift the tuning by whole octaves up or down. This can be useful when playing back a piece that is higher or lower than the normal range of the original tuning.

Volume
The volume slider allows the user to control the volume of the played music.

Keyboard Scroll
This allows the user to change the correspondence between the keyboard keys and the oud strings. See the section "Playing the Oud" for more details.

Help Button
This brings up The Oud Tutor help.