Şed and Göçürme: Transposition in Turkish Makam

Western musicians transpose constantly: move a melody up a minor third, and every interval stays exactly the same, because equal temperament makes all semitones identical. Turkish makam music also transposes — but the operation means something fundamentally different when intervals are not equal, when pitches carry individual names and functional weight, and when a makam's identity is defined by its melodic path as much as by its scale.

What şed means

Established Turkish theory uses two terms for transposition. Şed (from Arabic shadd, "binding" or "tightening") is the older term found in the edvar treatise tradition. Göçürme (from the Turkish verb göçürmek, "to move" or "to transfer") is the modern Turkish equivalent. Both describe the same operation: taking a makam's complete interval structure and relocating it so that the karar (resting tone) falls on a different perde.

Established The critical principle: in a şed makam, the scale is not altered. The intervals between degrees remain identical to the parent makam. Only the karar shifts to a new pitch position. The entire pattern of tanini, bakiye, and microtonal steps moves as a unit to the new location.

Why this is not Western transposition

Established In 12-tone equal temperament, transposition is trivially exact. Every semitone is 100 cents, so shifting a pattern up or down by any number of semitones produces an acoustically identical result at a different pitch level. The operation is lossless — nothing about the internal relationships changes.

Established The AEU system divides the octave into 53 Holdrian commas, using intervals of different sizes: the tanini (9 commas), the bakiye (4 commas), the kucuk mucenneb (5 commas), the buyuk mucenneb (8 commas), and the artik ikili (12 commas). When a pattern of these intervals shifts to a new starting perde, the theoretical interval sequence is preserved by design — the AEU framework provides enough pitch positions at each degree to maintain the pattern. But the perdeler through which the melody now passes are different named pitches, each carrying its own identity and associations within the tradition.

Practice This is where theory and practice diverge most sharply. A perde is not just a frequency — it is a location in the system with its own history, its own associated makams, and its own expressive weight. When Rast (karar on the rast perde) becomes Nisaburek (karar on dugah), the intervals may be theoretically identical, but the performer now navigates a different region of the perde space, with different resonances on the instrument, different timbral qualities, and different melodic expectations from the tradition.

The three categories of makam

Established Modern Turkish theory, following the AEU classification codified by Özkan and taught in conservatories, divides makams into three categories:

• Basit makamlar (simple makams) — constructed by joining a complete pentachord and a complete tetrachord (or vice versa). Özkan identifies 16 simple makams, including Rast, Cargah, Buselik, Kurdi, Ussak, and Hicaz.

• Sed makamlar (transposed makams) — a simple makam's interval structure relocated to a different karar. There are 15 recognized sed makams.

• Bilesik makamlar (compound makams) — formed by combining elements of different makams. These number in the hundreds.

The 15 sed makams

Established The following table shows each sed makam, its parent simple makam, and the perde to which the karar has been transposed:

From Cargah:

From Buselik:

From Kurdi:

From Zirguleli Hicaz:

Other transpositions:

Attested Notice the pattern: the most common transposition targets are Rast, Yegah, and Huseyni Asiran. These are not arbitrary choices — they reflect the practical ranges of Turkish instruments and the structural positions within the perde system where complete interval patterns can be realized.

Mahur: the clearest example

Established Mahur is the most instructive example of transposition. It shares Cargah's interval structure exactly: T-T-B-T-T-T-B (9+9+4+9+9+9+4 commas). The only structural change is that the karar moves from the cargah perde down to the rast perde — a shift of 22 commas (a perfect fourth) downward.

Established Yet Mahur and Cargah are profoundly different in practice. Cargah has a cikici (ascending) seyir; Mahur has an inici (descending) seyir, beginning in the upper register and descending toward the karar. Cargah is rare in the classical repertoire — Özkan notes it was barely used in Ottoman art music. Mahur, by contrast, has over 800 known compositions and has been in continuous use for centuries. The same intervals, a different starting pitch, and a completely different melodic identity.

Practice This is the single most important lesson about sed: moving a scale does not move a makam. The seyir — the melodic path, the directional tendency, the phrasing conventions — belongs to the specific makam, not to the interval pattern. A performer who plays Cargah intervals starting on the rast perde but follows a cikici seyir is not playing Mahur; they are playing Cargah's intervals in the wrong place.

Nihavent: transposition with a familiar sound

Established Nihavent is the sed of Buselik, transposed from the dugah perde down to rast. Both share the interval pattern T-B-T-T-B-T-T (9+4+9+9+4+9+9 commas). Where Buselik rests on dugah with a cikici (ascending) seyir, Nihavent rests on rast with an inici-cikici (descending-ascending) seyir — beginning in the middle register around the guclu and unfolding outward.

Attested Like Mahur relative to Cargah, Nihavent vastly outstrips its parent in repertoire size and historical importance. Buselik exists primarily as a theoretical reference; Nihavent is one of the most performed makams in the tradition. The transposition, combined with a different seyir, created a melodically richer identity.

Naming conventions

Attested Sed makams do not follow a single naming convention. Some patterns are visible:

• Some take the name of their new karar perde: Acemasiran rests on the acemasiran perde, Sultan-i Yegah rests on yegah.
• Some carry historical or geographic names with no transparent connection to the transposition: Nihavent (from the Iranian city Nahavand), Mahur (from Persian mahur).
• Some encode the parent makam: Kurdili Hicazkar signals its Kurdi parentage, Seddaraban embeds the word sed itself.
• Some distinguish closely related transpositions: both Hicazkar and Zirguleli Suznak derive from Zirguleli Hicaz transposed to Rast but differ in their melodic treatment and seyir.

Practice The lack of systematic naming is a reflection of history, not carelessness. These makams were named over centuries of practice, often before the theoretical framework that classifies them as transpositions existed. The names came first; the classification came later.

Instrument range and transposition choices

Practice Transposition in makam music is not just a theoretical operation — it has deeply practical motivations. The range of Turkish instruments, particularly the tanbur and ney, determines which perdeler are physically available. A makam whose intervals work comfortably in one register may become impractical when transposed to another if the required perdeler fall outside the instrument's range.

Attested The concentration of sed makams on the Rast, Yegah, and Huseyni Asiran perdeler reflects this pragmatism. These are the pitch positions that sit in the most comfortable registers for the standard instruments of the Ottoman fasil ensemble. A transposition to an unusual perde might be theoretically valid but performatively awkward — and in a tradition transmitted through mesk (master-student practice), what cannot be comfortably performed does not survive.

When transposition changes character

Established The examples of Mahur and Nihavent demonstrate that transposition in the makam system is never merely mechanical. Moving a scale pattern to a new perde initiates a cascade of changes:

1. Different seyir: the transposed makam typically develops its own melodic path, often in a different directional class (cikici, inici, or inici-cikici) from the parent.
2. Different functional hierarchy: the guclu, yeden, and asma karar positions in the transposed version may emphasize different relationships than in the parent.
3. Different modulation possibilities: because the surrounding perdeler are different, the cesni available for modulation (gecis) change — a transposed makam encounters different neighboring makams in its new location.
4. Different repertoire: over centuries, the transposed makam accumulates its own body of compositions, its own performance conventions, and its own expressive associations — sometimes far surpassing the parent.

Established This is why Turkish theory treats sed makams as distinct makams, not as variants or alternative fingerings. Mahur is not "Cargah in G" — it is Mahur, with its own seyir, its own repertoire, and its own place in the system. The interval structure is the skeleton; everything that makes a makam a living musical identity is built on top of it.