Kurdish Songs on Piano: A Beginner Sheet-Music Guide

The piano wasn't built for Kurdish music, and yet more and more Kurdish learners want to play the songs they grew up with on it. The good news is that many Kurdish folk melodies work beautifully on piano, and some are simple enough for your very first week. This guide shows you which songs from KurdNote's free library to start with, how to read the sheet music, how to add a left hand, and what to do about the notes the piano simply doesn't have.

What you need before you start

• A piano or keyboard. Any keyboard with full-size keys is fine for this guide.
• Basic staff reading. You should know where the notes of the treble clef sit on the keyboard. If not, read our guide to reading Kurdish music notation first. It covers the staff, time signatures, ornaments and repeat signs used in Kurdish scores.
• The recording. Every note page on KurdNote has an MP3 preview. Listen before you play. Kurdish songs live in the voice, and the recording tells you things the page can't.

How KurdNote's scores are written

Before choosing a song, it helps to know what you'll see on the page. We checked the MusicXML files of the Kurdish folk songs in our library, and three things are true of all of them:

1. They are melody scores. Each score gives you the tune, not a piano arrangement. There are no chord symbols, so you'll build the left hand yourself (see below).
2. They use ordinary sharps and flats only. None of the files uses a half-flat or half-sharp sign. Every note on the page exists on the piano. Where a singer might sing a note slightly lower, the score writes the nearest standard pitch.
3. They sit in a comfortable range. Most melodies stay between the G above middle C and the E or F at the top of the treble staff, often within a single octave. Your right hand will rarely need to move far.

Each note page also offers the MusicXML file. Open it in free notation software such as MuseScore, and you can slow the playback, transpose the song to an easier key, or print a larger copy.

Choosing your first songs

We've grouped songs from our library by how many different notes they use, measured from the scores themselves.

Level 1: three or four notes

• Asê (Kurmanji). Eight bars in 2/2 using only G, A and B. If you've never played a Kurdish song before, start here.
• Ba Wabê (Sorani). Sixteen bars in 4/4 on just three notes: G, A and B♭. It teaches you the flat that appears in most Kurdish scores.
• Baran Barane (Sorani). Twenty bars in 2/4 using only C, D and E, the easiest possible keys.
• Ava Sor Gula (Kurmanji). Eight bars in 4/4 on F♯, G, A and B.
• Berbanekê (Kurmanji). Just four bars on B, C, D and E. Good for practising a short phrase until it flows.

Level 2: the sound of maqam Kurd

These songs use only four notes, D, E♭, F and G, which are the first four notes of maqam Kurd on D. The half-step at the bottom gives them their dark, tender colour, and every note is on the piano.

• Ay Lê Nurê, in 6/8.
• Elle Elle, in 4/4.
• Akh Hinarê Hinarê, in 2/4.

Akh Loloy Zava uses the same pattern starting on A (A, B♭, C, D) and is only eight bars long.

Level 3: longer songs and the Hijaz sound

• Barane (Sorani). Thirty bars in 2/4. Look for the jump from A♭ up to B: that wide step, an augmented second, is the signature of maqam Hijaz. On the piano it's three semitones, and it sounds right.
• Arami Giyanim (Sorani). Twenty bars in 4/4, one of the gentlest Sorani songs. It's a good first "real" song once you're comfortable.
• Bay Shemal (Sorani). Forty-two bars in 6/4 with four flats in the key signature. Save it until you read flats easily.

Our Sorani folk for beginners playlist is a good way to hear more songs before you choose.

Reading the score, step by step

1. Check the key signature. Most of our Kurdish scores have one or more flats. B♭ is by far the most common. Circle the flats on your printout until you remember them.
2. Find the time signature and count it out loud. Kurdish dance songs are often in 6/8 or 2/4; slower songs in 4/4 or 6/4. In 6/8, count "1-2-3-4-5-6" with a stress on 1 and 4.
3. Clap the rhythm before you play. Kurdish melodies often repeat a short rhythmic cell. Once your hands know it, the notes come easily.
4. Play the right hand alone, slowly. Use a metronome at a speed where you make no mistakes.
5. Sing along. It sounds strange at first, but singing the melody while playing tells you where the phrases breathe.

Adding a left hand

Because our scores give only the melody, the left hand is where you make the song your own. Western harmony can easily sound wrong under a Kurdish tune, so start simple.

Stage 1: a drone. Hold the tonic, the home note of the song, low in the left hand, or play it with the fifth above (for a song on D, play D and A together). This imitates the drone of instruments like the tanbur or the steady ground of a daf rhythm and never clashes with the melody.

Stage 2: a rhythmic bass. Play the tonic on the strong beats in the song's rhythm. For a 6/8 dance song, play the low note on beats 1 and 4. You'll feel the song start to move like a govend circle dance.

Stage 3: simple chords from the maqam's own notes. Only when the first two feel natural, build chords from notes that are in the melody. For a song on D in maqam Kurd, D minor, G minor and C major (or B♭ major) work well. For Hijaz on D, D major with the F♯ fits the character. Avoid the dominant-seventh "classical" cadences that pull the song towards a Western major key.

The quarter-tone problem

Here's the honest part. A piano divides the octave into 12 equal semitones. Many Kurdish songs use maqams such as Bayati, Rast and Saba, which contain a half-flat: a note roughly halfway between two piano keys, often called a quarter tone. In Bayati on D, for example, the second note is neither E♭ nor E, but in between.

The piano can't play it. You have four practical options:

1. Play the written note. As we saw, KurdNote's scores already choose the nearest standard pitch. In Arami Giyanim, which is in Bayati on D, the score writes an ordinary E.
2. Choose the "better wrong" note by ear. Listen to the recording. If the singer's note sounds closer to E♭, try E♭ and see which you prefer. Different pianists make different choices.
3. Hide it with ornament. A quick grace note from the note above can blur the pitch. Singers and oud players bend into the note; the piano can at least suggest the movement.
4. Use a keyboard with a quarter-tone setting. Many modern arranger keyboards, sometimes sold as "Oriental" models, let you lower selected notes by a quarter tone at the press of a button. There's history behind the idea too: in the 1950s the Lebanese pianist and tuner Abdallah Chahine built an "Oriental piano" whose extra pedal shifted the keyboard to strings tuned in quarter tones.

For a clear explanation of which maqams fit the piano and which don't, read our beginner's guide to maqams. The short version: start with Kurd, Hijaz and Hicaz Kar songs, which need no half-flats, and come to Bayati and Rast songs once you know how you want to handle the missing notes.

Ornaments: less is more

Kurdish singers decorate their melodies with turns, slides and quick repeated notes. On the piano:

• Keep trills and mordents light and fast, as small grace notes rather than full notes.
• Don't imitate every vocal slide. The piano can't slide. A single grace note is more convincing than a cluster.
• Use the sustain pedal sparingly. Kurdish melodies are clear, single lines. Too much pedal turns them into a blur.

A four-week plan

• Week 1: Asê and Baran Barane, right hand only, then with a held left-hand drone.
• Week 2: Ba Wabê and Ay Lê Nurê. Learn the flats and add a rhythmic bass.
• Week 3: Elle Elle or Akh Hinarê Hinarê with a full drone-and-bass left hand.
• Week 4: Barane or Arami Giyanim. Listen to the recording and decide how you'll handle any half-flat notes.

Keep a notebook of your choices. That's how every Kurdish pianist develops a personal style.

Where to go next

• If you like the piano's classical side, read our biographies of Mozart and Chopin. Chopin, in particular, turned the folk dances of his own country into piano music.
• If you want to understand the history of how Kurdish songs came to be written down, read the history of Kurdish music notation.
• If you want to write your own songs at the piano, our piece on Billie Eilish and how she writes songs looks at how a modern songwriter works from a few chords and a melody.

Sources

• Abdallah Chahine, Wikipedia
• The Oriental Keyboard, Maqam World
• Arabic maqam, Wikipedia
• Equal temperament, Wikipedia

Ready to play? Open Asê, download the PDF, press play on the preview, and put your right thumb on G. Then explore the rest of our free Kurdish sheet music.