Qanun: Egyptian musical instrument

The qanun is a string musical instrument that is most played in the Middle East, central Asia, and Southeastern Europe. It is known to be derived from the Arabic word “kanun” which means “rule, norm, or principle”. Qanun’s traditional music is based on magamat. It is a type of large flat box-shaped instrument with a narrow soundboard that has a quadrilateral with two parallel sides. Nylon strings are forcefully extended over a single bridge composed on fish-skin on one end and attached to the pegs that are meant for tuning on the other end.

          The qanun used in Turkey, Armenia, Greek, Azerbaijan, Persia and Arab is made up of 26 courses of strings possessing three strings per course. This musical instrument is known to be played on the lap by pulling the strings with two tortoise-shell picks that is one in each hand by the finger nails; also it possesses a range of three and half octaves from A2 to E6. The Turkish qanun is usually 95 to 100 cm long and 38 to40 cm wide and4 to 6cm high. This musical instrument also is known to have special latches or lowered quickly by the player while the instrument is being played.

           The qanun used by the Armenians is known to have half tones and the Arabic qanun has quarter tones. The usual Turkish qanun divide the equal-tempered semitone of 100 cent into 6 parts producing 72 equal divisions of the octave. Some qanun makers choose to divide the semitones of the lower register into 7 parts instead of 6.

source: tulumba.com

          According to Rauf Yekta, Mandals were carried out about 30 years before he submitted his inventin which is monograph on Turkish music in the 1922 edition of Albert Lavingnac’s Encyclopédie de la Musique et Dictionnaire du Conservatiore. This was meant to fix the date of mandal usage to 1890s beginning with a few under each of the courses.  Before that time the qanun had remained unbending to perform on especially in the case of modulations that a player is required to use thumb fingernail to devaluate on the strings for on-the-fly alteration that come at intervals. Regardless of this, the today’s common equidistant 24- to 72- tone tuning of widespread Arab and Turkish qanun models does not precisely reproduce the traditionally understood interval rations of Arabic magma scales.