The Oudmaster is Faruk Turunz . He was born to a civil serving family on 28 June 1944. After attending several schools of Ankara and Istanbul Universities he became a primary school teacher in 1970. Worked at villages in several parts of Anatolia. He resigned from teaching and started constructing ouds in 1984. His first oud came out on March 1984 after a long period of research studies. His original guide and teacher is Mr. Cafer Acin (Chief of the Musical Instruments Construction Branch of Istanbul Technical University Conservatory) who backed Faruk Turunz in his commitment to build an oud and showed him how to prepare a mould and some basic features of the fine instrument.

Faruk Turunz created an original method which he named "The Brace Tuning System" He declared this method to the public at a symposium held by The Center for Inter-Mediterranean Cooperation S.A. in the island Crete, Greece, on 25^th May 2002.

"After constructing  three oud like objects, I became fully convinced that luthiery is a profession far beyond fine carpentry. Stopping my construction studies for a year  I concentrated on experiments.

When starting my experiments, I divided my work into two steps: 1- The experiments on the acoustical parameters of the soundboard, 2- The acoustical parameters of the body (especially of the back properties).

I re-braced the soundboards of many experimental ouds again and again by taking off the beams and changing them with some others; or I destroyed the soundboard totally. I can divide my experimental studies  in to three stages due to the hypothesis I accepted  as a base :

1. The stage at which I designed the soundboards, only organizing the braces in accordance with the specific sounds they gave or produced when they were dropped horizontally on a cement block whose sound might be neglected. By organizing the specific frequencies of these beams (braces) in fourth scale, I was able to make some 50 40 possibilities of different compositions theoretically or mathematically. But of course some of the braces were gaining dimensions far out of reasonable intersections. So, approximately one third of the 50 40 possibilities were nearly unrealizable for this reason. But alas.. how could I try the rest?

2. The stage that started  after I could manage to discover a mathematical formula being organized between two braces' dimensions: The equation based upon the interrelation between the lengths , maximum heights and the  specific frequencies of two braces.

f1/f2 = d1.l²2/d2.l²1

f refers to the frequency; d height and l, length. The quota of the specific frequencies of two braces can be shown as the equation above. So, by the help of this equation I could eliminate some of the possibilities on paper.

3. The stage that I accepted a practical formula for mixing the specific frequencies of the beams with the S.F.s of the points that take place in the middle of the lines where the braces are glued on.

Meanwhile I am constructing soundboards using this technique and trying to write a versatile program to calculate easily the numeric values of the physical properties of the soundboards."

May 2002, Istanbul

Address: Egitim Mahallesi, Kasr-i Ali Caddesi    No: 69   Kuyubasi-Kadikoy/Istanbul TURKIYE

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Opinion (kamal): " i just don't know how to explain the beauty and integration of the sound of this instrument!...i didn't expect the result to be at the same time so 'spectacular' but still very warm and personal...really the sound coming out of this instrument tacles frequences of all degrees..from very low end bass to screaming highs..but its best part is the middle tones where i feel like as if i'm just talking naturally while playing them!!..its been a very successfull collaboration with master Faruk that i hope will lead us to other ones..with some more unexpected  ideas!"

In May 2005 - Kamal has just commissioned Master Turunz to build a special Concert Oud for him, made out of special woods. The body was finally made out of a selected piece of Walnut wood, and the sound board from a special Canadian Red Spruce that looks similar to Red Cedar wood. The nice story behind it was when Master Faruk sent the first images of the body - been built of a usual straight grained Walnut, Kamal didn't hesitate to express how passionate he was for wavy Walnut, and so generously but  immediately Master Faruk insisted to search for such kind of wood and to re-build the whole body again from zero..expressing his high respect for an artist's vision and reflecting his belief in the special relation that should be born between the musician and his instrument.

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