Maqam Lesson 01: Jins Rast دروس في المقام – جنس راست — Transcript

Hello.

Today we're practicing Jins Rust.

I'm Sammy Abu Shumeis, and before we get started, I want to thank everyone who's supporting me on Patreon.

If you're not yet and you are able to contribute, please follow the link below.

It will help me develop more free lessons for everybody.

The goal of these lessons is to help you embody the ajnas used in Arabic music.

The ajnas are the building blocks of maqam. Each jins uses part of the scale and has a specific mood and melodies that listeners and musicians know.

Whether your goal is to perform or just understand the music better, practicing and listening each go hand in hand.

And if you're an instrumentalist, you still need to sing to develop your ears.

So try these lessons first a few times with your voice before trying on your instrument.

Trust me, it'll make a difference.

You ready?

Okay, it's easy, just repeat after me, repeat on my second repeat of each phrase.

Ya le li.

Now when you're repeating, it's very important to pay attention to the melodic rhythm.

So for example, the difference between 'Ya' versus 'Ya'.

So pay attention to those differences. Also, if there's something that I do in the middle that's a little bit too fast for you or you're not able to get the whole phrase the first time around.

It's important that you don't stop and try to correct in the middle of a phrase, if you do that, you'll train yourself with bad melodic rhythm.

So it's better to go back and just repeat each phrase whole several times and as you do that, you'll start to get more detail.

Ya le li.

Great job. Now, we're going to use several different methods to get to know the ajnas in these videos.

Uh, you pick whichever works best for you.

The first and most important is what we've just been doing, that's learning the basic melodic vocabulary of the jins.

The more you repeat everything we've just done, the better. If you go back and repeat every phrase, it will help you start to memorize this vocabulary.

And it's important to learn this vocabulary just like learning the new words in any new language.

The second thing we're going to do is identify the tonic and the scale degrees of the jins.

Can you identify the tonic of what we were just doing?

Right, the tonic is the note that melodies resolve to.

So for example, if I play something like this.

You can hear the lack of resolution in this note, you hear that it wants to go.

Sing with me and hear the tension in this note, and sing and hear the resolution in this note, so that's how you know the tonic of a jins.

Once you've identified the tonic, I want you to listen for another note that is important.

Was there another note other than the tonic that sounded important? Can you sing it?

You hear a lot of melodies go, so that second note is called the ghammaz.

And we can define the scale for the jins between the tonic and the ghammaz. So we call the tonic one, so first note of our scale, one, and in this case of Jins Rust, we want to count up, one, two, three, four, five, and that's the ghammaz.

So we define the jins scale for Rust as five scale degrees.

And once we've developed a sense of position, the next thing we can do is focus on melodies that emphasize each scale degree.

So why do we want to know what scale degree is?

Well, each scale degree has a particular different feeling, a different kind of tension, a different way of resolving to the tonic. We hear that resolution here.

But if I end a phrase here, right, the ending is different, it feels different than if I do this, and neither note that it ends on is the tonic.

You hear the tension in this note, three, two, one, and the first phrase, four, three, two, one.

So we want to do melodies that are going to help us remember these scale degrees, because then that'll give us not only a sense of position within the jins, but it will also help us as we move towards understanding the maqamat, which are more complex and modulate on more different keys.

So let's start with melodies that emphasize five, the ghammaz. One, two, three, four, five.

Ya le li.

Five.

Ya le li, ya le li.

Ya le li.

And now let's do melodies that emphasize four.

Ya le li.

Ya le li.

Ya le li, four.

And now let's do melodies that emphasize three.

Ya le li, that went five, four, five, four, three.

Can you sing with me those numbers? Five, four, five, four, three.

Ya le li.

Ya le li.

Ya le li, two.

And melodies that emphasize the tonic.

Ya le li.

Ya le li.

Ya le li.

Now, go back and repeat that as many times as you like.

If you're a vocalist, you should use different vowel sounds to help you train pitch control.

For example.

And go and use all the vowels.

If you're an instrumentalist, try using different fingering, right?

Just as you would with any instrument, whether it's oud, violin, whatever.

Now, the next method that we're going to use is also very important.

And that is that we're we want to focus on repertoire.

We want to correlate our understanding of the jins with repertoire.

So, I want you to go and listen to Ghannili Shwayya.

Of course, go listen to Um Kalthoum.

But once you've heard Um Kalthoum, then you have to sing it yourself, just like me.

Ghannili is a great example that shows you, it positions you one, two, three in the jins.

One, two, three, three, four, five, four.

You can use the melody to help hear those notes.

But it also gives you that start.

One, two, three.

Another great example from Syria, you should listen to all the Qudud in in Rust.

There's a lot of them are great, but my favorite is Sayyid al-Sadi.

Actually starts on the ghammaz, so it's a great way to help you identify the ghammaz.

Five, four, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Sayyid al-Sadi.

Addukal Mayyas, we'll get to that one later.

One, three.

Ya le li, ya le li, emphasizing three but going five, four, three.

Ya le li.

Emphasizing four.

Ya le li, ya le li.

Ya le li.

Okay, so visit my Patreon page for the videos in other keys.

Last tip before you go.

Remember that embodiment is essential for learning.

We want to embody the different intervals to train our muscle memory, whether we're vocalists or instrumentalists.

We want to embody the melodies, we want to store them in our memory, and memory is itself something embodied, it's stored in our brains.

We're we're shaping our brains to absorb new information.

And we want to embody the tension in the different notes, the feeling, the mood of the jins.

So, once again.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting me on Patreon, I'm really grateful because it will help me keep developing more lessons.

Uh, and those who are supporting will help me make free lessons for everybody else.

So if you can afford to, please do follow the link below.

Thank you for your time.

And goodbye.