Kürdî Explained

Kürdî is a scale in Turkish makam music. It is in 53 Tone Equal Temperament.

Kürdî in 53-TET

Note!Western Note!Steps to following note!Cents from Durak note!Function

Kürdî tetrachord	Dügâh		A	B (4)	0	Durak
	Kürdî		B♭	T (9)	90.56
	Çârgâh		C	T (9)	294.33
	Neva	-	D	T (9)	498.11	Güçlü
Buselik pentachord		-
	Hüseyni/Hisar		E	B (4)	701.89
	Acem		F	T (9)	792.45
	Gerdaniye		G	T (9)	996.23
	Muhayyer		A	-	1200.00	Tiz Durak

The Kürdî makam has a higher extension, starting from Muhayyer, with the steps of the Kürdî tetrachord. The notes in that case are Muhayyer, Sümbüle, Tiz Çârgah, Tiz Neva.

This is equivalent to having a Buselik makam on top of Neva.

Comparison with Western scales

Since the makam is based on 53-TET, it is impossible to directly tie it to 12-TET Western scales. However, using the 48-TET model, while worse than many other models in approximation,^[1] allows for such comparisons.^[2]

The approximation of Acemli Rast within 48-TET would be: Phyrgian

Notes and References

1. Bozkurt . Barış . Yarman . Ozan . Karaosmanoğlu . M. Kemal . Akkoç . Can . March 2009 . Weighing Diverse Theoretical Models on Turkish Maqam Music Against Pitch Measurements: A Comparison of Peaks Automatically Derived from Frequency Histograms with Proposed Scale Tones . Journal of New Music Research . en . 38 . 1 . 45–70 . 10.1080/09298210903147673 . 0929-8215 . free . 11147/2853.
2. Note: This is because 48 is divisible by 12.