Büselik Makamı: The Ascending Minor on Dügah

Buselik is the transposition of Nihavend from rast up to dugah. The two makams share exactly the same interval pattern -- tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone -- and exactly the same cesni building blocks: a Buselik besli below, a Kurdi dortlu above. Yet Buselik sounds and behaves like a different mode, because the shift in karar rewrites the functional pitch hierarchy and replaces Nihavend's descending-ascending seyir with a purely ascending one.

Attested The name derives from the Buselik perde -- the pitch position at 18 commas above rast (approximately B natural) -- which serves as the second degree of this makam. The word itself comes from Persian buse ("kiss"), though this etymology has no bearing on the makam's musical character.

Cesni construction

Established Buselik joins a Buselik besli (pentachord) on dugah to a Kurdi dortlu (tetrachord) on huseyni -- the standard lower-pentachord-plus-upper-tetrachord construction covered in full in Cesni and Ajnas. The Buselik besli's interval pattern is T B T T (9+4+9+9 commas); the Kurdi dortlu's is B T T (4+9+9 commas). Concatenated -- 9-4-9-9-4-9-9 -- the sequence sums to 53 commas, a full octave, as Holdrian Commas and 53-TET requires of any complete AEU scale.

Established Compare this directly with its transposition partner:

Identical components, identical assembly order, different starting pitch -- and from that single change, everything else diverges.

Scale in Holdrian commas

Established The ascending scale, in commas above the karar (dugah/A):

Established The ascending intervals in commas are: 9-4-9-9-4-9-9. As with Nihavend, Buselik uses only tanini (T = 9 commas, approximately 204 cents) and bakiye (B = 4 commas, approximately 91 cents) steps -- no kucuk mucenneb or buyuk mucenneb intervals appear. This makes Buselik fully playable in 12-TET: A B C D E F G A -- the A natural minor scale.

Functional pitches

Established Every makam designates specific pitches with functional roles that govern its melodic behavior:

• Karar (resting tone): Dugah (A) -- the pitch on which phrases conclude and the makam finds resolution.
• Guclu (secondary center): Huseyni (E) -- a perfect fifth above the karar, the junction between the lower besli and upper dortlu. Temporary cadences (yarim karar) occur here.
• Yeden (leading tone): Nim Zirgule -- five commas below the karar, approaching dugah from below to create the pull toward resolution in cadential passages.

Established The guclu sitting at the fifth degree -- rather than the fourth -- reflects the besli-plus-dortlu construction. As with Nihavend, the pentachord carries the karar and the tetrachord sits above the guclu.

Seyir: the melodic path

Established Buselik's seyir is cikici (ascending): the characteristic motion begins at or near the karar (dugah) and moves upward through the scale. This ascending character is the single most audible difference between Buselik and Nihavend. Where Nihavend begins in the middle register around its guclu and explores both directions -- the descending-ascending (inici-cikici) path -- Buselik opens from the bottom and rises.

Attested The typical melodic development:

1. Begin at or near the karar (dugah), establishing the modal identity immediately.
2. Ascend through the Buselik besli toward the guclu (huseyni), with the whole-step opening (dugah to buselik perde) announcing the mode.
3. Continue upward through the Kurdi dortlu toward muhayyer (the octave), creating temporary cadences on huseyni.
4. Descend back through the scale to a final cadence (tam karar) on dugah.

Practice The ascending opening is diagnostic. A melody that shares Buselik's pitches but begins in the upper register and descends will sound like Nihavend transposed to dugah -- or possibly Kurdi, depending on which intervals fall first. The makam lives in its direction as much as in its notes.

Buselik and Nihavend: same intervals, different makam

Established Nihavend and Buselik are related by sed (transposition). Both deploy the same two cesni in the same structural order. Both use the same interval sequence. Both are playable in 12-TET. Yet everything about how they move differs:

Established This relationship extends further. Sultaniyegah places the same pattern on yegah (D below rast), creating a third member of the same transposition family. The interval content remains identical; only the karar, and therefore the perde framework, changes each time.

Practice Learning Buselik after Nihavend is one of the most efficient ways to internalize the principle that a makam is not its scale. The pitches are the same; the music is not.

The Buselik cesni as building block

Established While the Buselik makam itself appears infrequently as the primary mode for a composition, the Buselik cesni -- both as a dortlu (T B T = 9+4+9 commas) and as a besli (T B T T = 9+4+9+9 commas) -- is one of the most pervasive building blocks in the makam system. It appears as a structural component in:

• Nihavend -- Buselik besli forms the lower pentachord
• Kurdi -- Buselik besli forms the upper pentachord
• Ussak -- Buselik besli sits above the guclu
• Humayun -- Buselik dortlu forms the upper tetrachord

Attested Internal modulations to Buselik coloring -- a temporary shift to the Buselik cesni within a passage -- appear in many makams that do not share its overall structure. This ubiquity as a component is precisely what makes the standalone makam pedagogically valuable: learning Buselik means learning to hear its cesni wherever it appears.

The upper tetrachord: Kurdi and Hicaz flavors

Attested Like Nihavend, Buselik's upper tetrachord (Kurdi dortlu on huseyni) can take on a Hicaz coloring during cadences on the guclu and in passages approaching muhayyer. With the Hicaz dortlu (S A S = 5+12+5 commas), the upper portion introduces an augmented second between the sixth and seventh degrees -- a sound Western ears associate with harmonic minor. This alternation is part of the makam's expressive range, not a departure from it.

Buselik and Western natural minor

Established Buselik's interval pattern -- tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone -- maps directly to the Western natural minor (Aeolian) scale. On dugah (A), the result is A B C D E F G A -- the most familiar minor scale in Western music.

Practice But as with the Nihavend/Western minor comparison, "same pitches" does not mean "same music." The AEU tuning is slightly different from 12-TET (wider whole tones, narrower semitones), and Buselik carries a prescribed seyir that the Aeolian mode does not. A Western natural minor scale is a collection of notes; Buselik is a melodic identity with a beginning, a direction, and a destination.

Repertoire and historical scarcity

Attested Despite its theoretical clarity and its kinship with the enormously popular Nihavend, Buselik has a small dedicated repertoire in the Turkish classical canon. Nihavend absorbed most of the compositional activity for this interval pattern, leaving Buselik as the theoretically acknowledged but practically underused sibling. Feldman's survey of Ottoman court music repertoire lists far fewer Buselik compositions compared to Nihavend or the other major makams.

Practice This scarcity does not diminish Buselik's value for learners. A makam with few canonical examples forces the student to generate melodic material from the seyir and cesni rules rather than memorizing set phrases -- a deeper engagement with the system's logic.

Practice guidance

Practice Because Buselik maps directly to A natural minor in 12-TET, Western-trained musicians can find the notes immediately. The challenge is the seyir. Start every practice session from the karar and ascend -- not from the guclu, not from the upper octave. Dwell on the whole-step opening from dugah to the buselik perde. Arrive at huseyni as a destination, not a passing point. Then explore the upper dortlu, cadence temporarily on huseyni, and finally descend to a full cadence on dugah.

Practice Alternate between the Kurdi and Hicaz upper tetrachord during practice, listening for how each changes the flavor of the descent from muhayyer. This exercise simultaneously develops fluency in Buselik and in the upper-tetrachord flexibility shared with Nihavend.