Resources / Getting Started
Getting Started
Meshk is an interactive study app for cümbüş and oud players — and for anyone studying Turkish makam music — built around real, historically-attested tunings and makams on a fretless neck. It plays them with physically-modeled (Karplus-Strong) plucked-string synthesis and shows exactly where microtonal pitches fall between the fixed semitone positions, instead of quietly rounding everything to twelve-tone equal temperament.
Quick start
The fastest way in:
- Click a tuning chip above the neck to set the instrument's strings.
- Pick a makam from the dropdown to light up its notes on the neck.
- Click any dot — or press
Play the makam— to hear it.
That's sound in well under a minute. Everything else on the page just goes deeper into one of those three steps.
Two ways to explore
Where to go from here depends on what you're here for.
If you're new to the material — Pitch systems → Çeşni and ajnas → Makam catalog
If you're building on this app — Using this app → Tuning overview → Tuning catalog
Both paths, and everything else in the catalog, are on the Resources index.
What's here
- An interactive fretless neck — six doubled courses, spaced the way pitches actually fall on a fretless instrument rather than evenly like frets.
- Historically-attested tunings, each carrying a source citation and a confidence badge instead of an unsourced assertion.
- Makams built from çeşni (tetrachord/pentachord) construction, with karar, güçlü, yeden, and seyir direction named explicitly.
- Koma-accurate microtonal markers — perdeler that fall between the fixed semitone positions get their own marker, placed exactly where the pitch lands rather than snapped to the nearest key.
- Karplus-Strong plucked-string synthesis, with a sound design panel for shaping the tone and saving presets.
- Saved patterns — play an authored phrase for a makam where one exists, or tap out and save your own note sequence.
Where to go next
For control-by-control detail on the neck, tuning chips, makam and karar selection, the sound panel, and pattern playback, see Using this app.