Resources / Rhythm / Usûl and iqa' — rhythmic cycles

Usûl and iqa' — rhythmic cycles

Two systems, same idea

Established Turkish usûl and Arabic iqa' are both cyclic rhythmic patterns defined by the placement of low and high drum strokes. The cycle, not the bar, is the unit.

Stroke vocabulary:

The pattern of düms is the skeleton. Everything else is elaboration.

Turkish usûl

Established Named cycles, classified as küçük (small, ≤15 beats) and büyük (large, >15 beats). Classical repertoire uses cycles of extraordinary length — some over 100 beats — but folk and dance repertoire lives in the small ones.

The ones worth knowing first:

Aksak means "limping," and the asymmetric groupings are the defining feature of Turkish and Balkan rhythm. A 9/8 grouped 2+2+2+3 is not a compound meter — it is four beats, three short and one long.

Uncertain Precise stroke patterns (which beat carries düm vs tek) vary between sources and between regional practices. I have deliberately not transcribed them here rather than risk propagating a wrong pattern — this is a research task. See 07-research/open-questions.md.

Arabic iqa'

Established The commonly encountered cycles:

Karsilama and Sama'i Thaqil appearing in both lists is not coincidence — the Ottoman period left shared rhythmic vocabulary across the whole region.

Playing over a cycle

Practice Phrase endings land on düms. That's the basic rule, and it's most of what a melodic player needs to internalise.

With Saidi, the two düms in the middle pull the phrase toward the centre of the bar rather than the downbeat, which is why Saidi feels different from Maqsum despite both being 4/4 with similar densities.

Finding these on a keyboard

Practice Arranger keyboards with an "Oriental," "Arabic," "Turkish" or "World" style bank generally include Maqsum, Baladi, Saidi, Malfuf and Ciftetelli, often under alternative spellings (Maqsoum, Baladi Pop, Şiftetelli). Also check "Belly Dance," "Greek," and "Rai" banks — they get filed inconsistently.

A cautionary note

A previously encountered AI-generated answer claimed that "Şurmat" is the name of a rhythmic usûl, specifically a variant of Sofyan, and cited a Turkish academic journal for it. No such usûl could be found in any source. The claim appears fabricated along with its citation.

The lesson generalises: rhythm names in this field are a common target for confabulation because they sound plausible and are hard to check. Verify against a named published source before entering any usûl into the app's data. See 06-repertoire/surmat-research-log.md for the full case.

App implementation notes

• Represent cycles as stroke arrays with positions in beat units, not as MIDI patterns
• Support asymmetric groupings natively — a 9/8 must be able to render as 2+2+2+3 with visible grouping, not as nine equal beats
• Audible playback with distinguishable düm/tek timbres
• Adjustable tempo with a wide range; wedding tempo and study tempo differ enormously
• Let the user loop a cycle under makam practice — melody and rhythm should be practisable together

Sources

• Wikipedia: Usul (music) — düm/tek/ke vocabulary and cycle structure
• Wikipedia: Iqa'
• Wikipedia: Rhythm in Turkish music
• Habib Hassan Touma, The Music of the Arabs, trans. Laurie Schwartz (Amadeus Press, 1996)
• Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays, Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Karl Signell, Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music (rev. ed., Usul Editions, 2008)