Oud Music Instrument
This instrument is known by the names of Oud and Barbat.
It belongs to the stringed music instruments that can be played with Risha (plectrum).
It is made with walnut, berry, maple, … trees.
Oud and Barbat look the same physically but they have slight differences, too.
Their differences are:
Barbat's body part is smaller.
Barbat's neck is longer.
Barbat has 5 pairs or ten strings but Oud has eleven to thirteen strings.
This instrument is made of these parts:
Body (sound box), soundboard, neck, throat, head (where the pegs are installed), strings, bridge, pegs, plectrum.
Body (Soundbox)
The body of Oud looks like a pear.
Unlike Tanbour, it is not made with a whole piece of wood but rather made with 4 cm wide pieces of wood that are 70 cm long and 3 to 3.5 cm thick.
The length of the body is 48 to 50 cm, it is 18 to 19 cm deep and it is also 36 to 37 cm wide.
Soundboard
It is made of pine trees.
In order to make the instrument resonate sound better, they make a big hole in the middle and two smaller holes on each end of the board.
When the strings are tuned and fastened tightly, the soundboard bears a heavyweight, thus, in order to prevent any damage to the soundboard, they attach smaller pieces of wood on the inside of the instrument called bridge.
Neck, throat, head (where the pegs are installed)
The neck is 19 to 20 cm long.
One end of the neck is attached to the throat. A piece of hardwood is attached to the throat that can be stretched to the whole on the soundboard.
The other end of it is attached to the head where the pegs are installed.
The length of the head is 20 cm and it is as wide as 3.5 cm. It is used to keep the pegs.
String, string holder, bridge
The strings of this instrument are 10 to 13 strings and are elastic. These strings are thicker than the strings of Tanbour, Santur, and Diwan.
Oud has two kinds of bridges. A piece of ten centimeters of wood or plastic is attached to the lower part of the body to keep the strings in their place. The string holder and bridge are the same. The other one is attached to the throat of the instrument.
The bridge and string holder are put upon each other. The string holder has small holes in it to let the strings pass through it tidily.
The bridge on the upper part of the instrument
Bridge
Pegs
Pegs are made of hardwoods.
One end of the string is wrapped around the string holder it passes over two bridges to reach the pegs. The other end of the strings is wrapped around the pegs.
Each string has its own peg and tuning the strings is done by these pegs.
Plectrum
It is made of horn or plastic.
It is held with two fingers of the right or left hand (depending on whether the player is right-handed or left-handed) and moving it on the strings can produce the musical tunes.
