The Hegit

Yusuf Aykurt

In 1995 he started to carve these traditional musical instruments.He learned many things from a master of baglama Ramazan Güngör. He carved his instruments using musical golden ratio which is generally artisans do not use this method.He carves and details for each with a big care. He lives a calm life in Camlikoy, Fethiye. He works with the great musicians in Turkey.

The Hegit

The hegit is string instrument.It is similar to kemence and some of Turkish string instruments and the lute.

This  Hegit is hand carved. It is from mulberry tree wood.   Our artisan is carving all the musical instruments using musical golden ratio to get the perfect sound. He is a master traditional musical instrument maker and player. Government asks him  to join in fairs and exhibitions to show his best musical instruments. You do not need to use plectrum.

The Best Musical Instruments In Turkey

It is important to make clear that Turkey is a very rich country in terms of musical traditions . Its traditional musical instruments reflect the harmony of the cultures.

The tambur is a kind of long-necked, fretted, plucked lute. It has three double strings with a low isolated one which tuned as A2, D2 (or E2), A2 and A1 for the single low string. You need to use a plectrum and only with the bottom A2 double string, the other strings are used as resonators. It is very curious that the soundboard has neither a sound hole nor braces. It has  the frets are movable and their number may vary. The sound is not so loud but it has a very nice hollow and deep character. Many people admire the sound.

The oud is at the core of all middle eastern music and makam based music. The Turkish oud is a bit smaller than the Arabic oud, When we compare ouds with similar instruments like the European lute is the lack of frets. This characteristic feature allows to play all the complex pitch scales and nuances of the makams. The Turkish oud has five double strings plus a single string at the low end. The five double strings are generally tuned as B2, E3, A3, D4, F#2 (or A2) and the low isolated string, called bam, is generally tuned as C#2 or D2.

The Turkish ney is very popular in Sufi music. It is an end-blown flute and difficult to play in an oblique in order to make it sound. Ney has a mouthpiece that creates a bowl-shaped cavity. It is from water buffalo horn. Ney has six holes in the front and one in the back. The construction of the instrument is quite sophisticated

The Traditional Musical Instruments

The Turkish kanun is like a zither but with twenty-six courses of strings and three strings per course. It is plucked with the fingernails or with two tortoise-shell picks, one in each hand. The performer changes the tuning of the strings during performance and that requires a lot of effort and exercise.

The baglama (saz) is similar to the tanbur but it is mainly  in folk music instrument and in fact is the most common instrument in Turkey.

An interesting hybrid instrument of oud and banjo is the cumbus like the oud is fretles and like the banjo has a metal resonator and a skin body head. It has a metallic resonant tone

All these traditional musical instruments have been evolving within the characteristics of makam music, thus the need for flexible tuning and for expressive monophonic playing