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Miras-ı Saz

About

Miras-ı Saz is a web platform built to learn makam music in the browser by playing, listening and reading. Our goal is to keep this heritage, passed down from generation to generation, alive in the digital age and bring it to learners everywhere in the world.

How it began

Miras-ı Saz is the product of years of experience gathered in software, countless attempts, and no small amount of stubbornness. Between sleepless nights, tea going cold on the desk, code rewritten from scratch after every “this time it's really done,” and no small dent in our own pockets, we've honestly lost count of which version we're on. Somewhere around who-knows-which release we finally got to say “this is it,” and so we're presenting Miras-ı Saz to you, lovers of Turkish music.

What does it offer?

  • Instruments you can play in the browser: kanun, santur, oud, tanbur, bağlama, cümbüş, ney, classical kemençe and more; most with real sound recordings, following the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek system that divides the octave into 53 commas.
  • Sheet music archive: more than a thousand works by composers whose copyright has expired; real notation, usul accompaniment, difficulty level, and a step-by-step “Learn this piece.”
  • Makams: the scale, tonic and dominant pitches, and melodic path (seyir) of more than 150 makams.
  • Eras: composers across the centuries and the periods they lived in.
  • Learning: ear training, a makam music glossary, and tools (usul metronome, comma tuner, pitch and çeşni finder, manuscript paper and more).
  • 16 languages: from Türkiye to Central Asia, from the Middle East to the Balkans.

Who is it for?

For students, academics, performers, and every music lover curious about makam music. Miras-ı Saz is currently free and available to everyone in 16 languages. To keep the project sustainable, some sections may move to a paid or membership model in the future; if that happens, we'll announce it in advance.

Sources and thanks

  • Score data: the SymbTr collection (Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
  • Work, composer and recording data: MusicBrainz and ListenBrainz (CC0), Wikidata.
  • Instrument sound recordings: Freesound (CC0 and CC BY), University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios and VCSL; sources are listed with each instrument's recording information.
  • Instrument photos: Wikimedia Commons; the author and license are noted under each photo.
  • Score rendering: Verovio (LGPL).

Verification

Makam presets, usul patterns and translations have not yet been reviewed by an expert. If you spot a mistake or would like to contribute, write to us via the contact page.

Our journey

Miras-ı Saz struck its first note on 15 January 2023; after a long preparation it went live at mirasisaz.com on 25 September 2026. The journey goes on: development continues every day, and we weave stitch by stitch to be worthy of the centuries-old heritage of makam music. To everyone who has corrected a note, reported a bug, shared an idea, opened the door to a source or touched a string of this saz with their heart, and to all who will lend a hand tomorrow: our heartfelt thanks. This heritage belongs to all of us. Below is the site's story, version by version, and at the very bottom the detailed day-by-day list of changes. Spotted a bug or have an idea? Write to us.

15 January 2023 · The first pluck

  • The idea of Miras-ı Saz was born: an open, multilingual platform that teaches makam music by playing and listening.
  • It had no name yet, only a question: can a kanun be played in a browser?

2023–2026 · Years of preparation

  • Reading and research on makam music sources, Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek theory and the 53-comma system.
  • First experiments with the makam engine and a virtual kanun that plays in the browser.
  • Many trials, many deleted lines. Nobody saw this part, and that's for the best.

v0.1 · 25 September 2026 · Curtain up: mirasisaz.com

  • Miras-ı Saz went live at mirasisaz.com.
  • A virtual kanun that plays in the browser: real kanun recordings, mandals, and a makam engine that divides the octave into 53 commas.
  • The first makam lessons, ear training, a usul metronome and a tuner.
  • 16 languages from day one. Yes, Japanese too. Modesty was postponed to the next version.

v0.2 · 26 September 2026 · The score takes the stage

  • The first 28 pieces in the sheet music archive: the kanun plays as you read, and the cursor glides along the line.
  • Save your melody and share it with a link; play the kanun on your computer keyboard.
  • Makams went from 8 to 28. It was not going to stop there.

v0.3 · 28 September 2026 · The big expansion

  • The sheet music archive grew; usul, form, glossary and Eras pages opened.
  • A notation writer, a makam finder and the "Which piece has this melody?" tool.
  • The usul metronome put on walnut wood and a golden lattice; tap the bendir to set the tempo.

v0.4 · 29 September 2026 · Fussing over the notes

  • Staff check: 442 000 notes in 1079 pieces compared one by one with the source, zero errors. A copyist's rigour, a machine's patience.
  • Score submissions from the community; a share cover for every piece.
  • The usul ensemble: kudüm, bendir, tef and darbuka playing together.

v0.5 · 30 September 2026 · The learning path

  • A learning path of 4 units and 19 lessons; your progress is kept in your browser.
  • Every tool can be installed on your phone as its own app; four new tools, the meşk player among them.
  • The kanun put on its star-and-crescent rose with the "ornate" look.

v0.6 · 1–2 October 2026 · Composers' lives

  • Sourced biographies of 170 composers, in 16 languages.
  • PDF scores of all 1079 pieces became downloadable; pieces were sorted into beginner, intermediate and advanced.
  • Each of the 14 virtual instruments became an app of its own.

v0.7 · 3–4 October 2026 · Collections

  • Makam-and-form collections such as "Hicaz şarkıs"; a showcase of the most downloaded scores.
  • Composers' birth and death years checked one by one against İSAM articles.
  • A "search to listen" shortcut for pieces with no recording.

v0.8 · 6–7 October 2026 · Play, sing, find

  • Play a piece by following it on a virtual instrument: every pitch of the score lights up on the instrument.
  • The "Which makam are you?" quiz and "Sing the scale" with your microphone.
  • The site got faster; 96 makams joined the glossary.

v0.9 · 8 October 2026 · Sourced and open

  • Composer memories and the Memories and stories page; the first guest is Tanbûrî Cemil Bey's spider.
  • MIDI, abc and Scala export; "Cite" (İSNAD and APA); today's 72-equal-division tuning on the kanun.
  • Sourced seyir for 76 makams; the Editorial principles and this very page were born.

v1.0 · 9 October 2026 · Story time

  • Stories play as scene-by-scene animations, with a narrator in your browser's voice if you like.
  • Lyrics laid out line by line; source citations across the whole site now follow one rule.
  • Listen to a makam scale on eight instruments, from kanun to santur. Not bad for a site that started with a single kanun.

v1.1 · 11 October 2026 · Editions

  • A filter by lyricist; links to other permitted editions of a piece.
  • Score covers are now in Google Images.

v1.2 · 12–15 October 2026 · Follow me

  • "Follow me" on the piece page: you play, the microphone listens; play the right note and it moves on to the next one.
  • Usuls are now in notation: the pattern on a single-line staff; pass the 8-level usul test and earn the "Usul master" badge.
  • "Which piece?" in ear training; makam selection in the tuner; usul accompaniment and live MIDI output on the virtual instruments.
  • The ud now plays with Miras-ı Saz's own recordings.

v1.3 · 16–20 October 2026 · Bolâhenk and kudüm

  • The ney, ud, tanbur, kanun and other Turkish music instruments now play in Bolâhenk, thanks to an ud player's tip.
  • New tool: Usuls of Turkish Music. Kudüm, bendir, tef, darbuka and davul strike with source-based hand patterns.
  • Usul pages rebuilt: play bar, tempo and mertebe settings, full screen. Usuls moved up to the main menu.
  • A classic pendulum metronome; the cards now show how many times each tool has been downloaded.

v1.4 · 22–24 October 2026 · Meşkhâne opens

  • Meşkhâne (3D): a courtyard, a şadırvan fountain and the rooms of ten masters; in the browser, on the phone, in a VR headset.
  • Real public-domain 78 rpm records play in the rooms (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica); Tanbûrî Cemil Bey plays his own taksim.
  • In Hacı Ârif Bey's room, his student Kânûnî Eymen Talha Efendi plays the kanun.
  • Usul tapping measures and subtracts the device's audio latency; the metronome can also be stopped from the lock screen.

v1.5 · 25–28 October 2026 · Ney and kabak kemane

  • Ney simulator: cover the holes, blow, find the perde; with a sourced fingering chart.
  • Itrî's room renewed with its dome, tiles and fireplace; in Alâeddin Yavaşca's room his student plays the kabak kemane.
  • Solfège with a human voice, a tie that stays on and a one-time dot in the score writer: all three were your suggestions.
  • Miras-ı Saz is now on YouTube and Facebook too.
  • What's next? Write to us and let's decide together.

Day-by-day detailed changes

28 October 2026

  • Score writer: "Solfège" in the instrument list: notes are sung by a human voice as do, re, mi. "Dotted" switches off by itself after one note; "Tie" stays on until you turn it off and links the notes you write like a chain. All three are visitor suggestions.
  • Meşkhâne: Alâeddin Yavaşca's room gets a gramophone, an Istanbul Radio plaque, a banker's lamp, an ud showcase and a pendulum wall clock showing the real time; rooms open faster.
  • Glossary: a link from the "Meşkhâne" entry to the 3D Meşkhâne. Footer: our Facebook page.
  • Fixed download counts in the tools directory appearing empty for a while.

27 October 2026

  • Meşkhâne: Alâeddin Yavaşca's room; touch his student Kemanezen Ali Ensar Efendi and he plays the kabak kemane, with a Hicaz lesson on the blackboard.
  • Meşk player: the A–B loop keeps running while the tab is in the background.

26 October 2026

  • Ney simulator: a "Holes" view on the virtual ney; close or half-close the holes, hold "Blow", change harmonics with the breath; makam perdes and a target-perde exercise.
  • Meşkhâne, Itrî's room: İznik tiles up to half height, a painted dome, a corner fireplace, a hanging prayer rug and a hilye; the neyzen plays with the traditional hold.
  • Score writer: "~" linking different perdes is now written as a legato slur and the notes are played separately.

25 October 2026

  • Meşkhâne: touch Tanbûrî Cemil Bey to hear the Hicaz taksim he recorded himself; a ney taksim in Itrî's room.
  • Usuls tool: fixed playback stopping when the usul was changed while playing.

24 October 2026

  • Meşkhâne: in Hacı Ârif Bey's room, his student Kânûnî Eymen Talha Efendi plays the kanun.
  • Usul tapping: "Measure latency" measures the device's audio latency once and subtracts it from every tap. The metronome and the usuls tool can be played and stopped from the lock screen.
  • Instrument galleries: new images for 13 instruments; new recordings for the violin.
  • A small "Add to desktop" card at the bottom right on computers; Instagram and YouTube in the footer.

23 October 2026

  • Meşkhâne opens: Library > "Meşkhâne (3D)". Step from the courtyard into the masters' rooms; real public-domain 78 rpm records play in them. Composer pages also lead to the rooms.
  • A four-step guide on the first visit: look, walk, touch a door, touch a master.

22 October 2026

  • The first Meşkhâne: a courtyard, a şadırvan fountain, Itrî's room and eight masters' rooms.
  • MIDI and abc files kept out of search engine indexes; early blocking of harmful crawler requests.

20 October 2026

  • Piece player: a single-line bar on landscape phones and small tablets.
  • Usul page: the tempo button in the bottom bar opens like the volume control; at most two lines on phones.

18 October 2026

  • New tool: Usuls of Turkish Music. Usuls with a kudüm animation; tempo, velvele, full screen, installable as an app.
  • Usul pages: a play button left of the pattern, sticky bars; the animation changes with the instrument (kudüm, bendir, tef, darbuka, davul).
  • Metronome: a classic pendulum metronome (/araclar/metronom/): draggable weight, meter and accents, sound type.
  • Menu: Usuls in the main menu, Tools under Library. "The makam's family" on makam pages. Install counts in the tools directory.
  • Visitor suggestions: shorter usul count-in; in usul tapping düm on the right, tek on the left; karar perde selection in the backing track.

17 October 2026

  • Bolâhenk: the ney, ud, tanbur, kanun, santur, cümbüş and classical kemençe now play by default in the standard tuning of Turkish music (Nevâ = A 440), thanks to an ud player's tip.
  • Score correction: three wrong octaves in Bir Gonca-femin fixed after a visitor's report.

16 October 2026

  • Virtual instruments: two octave rows of keys and octave shift on the fret keyboard; ahenk selection in the playing settings.
  • Kul Mehmed's Hüseynî peşrev added to the archive; security and display fixes.

15 October 2026

  • Follow me: on the piece page with the microphone; play the highlighted note and the score moves on.
  • Ear training: the "Which piece?" game and redesigned exercise cards. Tuner: makam selection.
  • Virtual instruments: usul accompaniment and live MIDI output. Makam and usul pages: a new layout following the learning order.
  • Sounds: the ud with our own recordings, the violin with new recordings; a real human voice for solfège.

14 October 2026

  • Usul page: the pattern in notation (single-line staff, velvele), usul profile, other usuls with the same number of beats.
  • Usul test: 8 levels in the usul tapping tool; pass them all to earn the "Usul master" badge on the learning path.

12 October 2026

  • Glossary: sample pieces from the archive on term pages.

11 October 2026

  • Filter by lyricist: the sheet music archive can now be filtered by lyricist (searchable, like the composer filter).
  • Another edition: a piece’s page can link to its notation in another source used with permission, with a summary of the differences. The first is Tanburi Cemil Bey’s Nikrîz Longa (neyzen.com, with Mehmet Yücel’s permission).
  • Keyboard on virtual instruments: fret-keyboard instruments now play with the same keys on non-Latin and Turkish F keyboards.
  • Preview on the download card: the download card on a piece’s page now shows a cover image with the first lines of the notation.

9 October 2026

  • “Lyric vocabulary” in the glossary: old lyric words from the stories (mutrıb, zevk-âşinâ, gonca-fem, ankebut…) were added to the glossary; tap a word in a story to see its meaning, and go from the glossary entry back to the story.
  • Story animations: the Çeşmidilber, Bir Gonca-femin, Ey Mutrıb and Geçti o gamlı eyyâm stories can now be watched as scene-by-scene animations; the narrator is optional and turns on with the speaker button.
  • Source research for the stories: the sources of the Çeşmidilber, Bir Gonca-femin, Ey Mutrıb and Geçti o gamlı eyyâm stories were re-examined; reliability labels and texts were corrected. The new “What do the sources say?” section on the cards separates what is in the documents, what the biographies tell and what is unknown.
  • Story narrator: story animations are now narrated aloud; turn the narrator on or off with the speaker button at the top of the window.
  • Download the notation: every piece in the archive now has a ready MIDI (AEU tuning) and abc file.
  • Small fixes: a “New” label for Memories in the menu; section spacing on the score archive and makam comparison pages.
  • Sources at the end of the page: wherever a source is cited, a small marker sits next to the text; the sources are listed in small type at the very bottom of the page, numbered when there is more than one.
  • Hear the scale on an instrument: on a makam page the scale can be played with kanun, ney, oud, tanbur, kemençe, bağlama, violin or santur sound.
  • How to say the makam name: in languages other than Turkish, the makam name is shown syllable by syllable and can be listened to.
  • Last updated: makam, glossary, composer and person pages show the date their content was last updated.
  • Kanun tuning options: besides the default 72 equal divisions (6 mandals per semitone), kanuns that divide the semitone into 5 or 7 mandals can be chosen.

8 October 2026

  • Quick ear test: a new tab in ear training; 5 questions, 2 minutes. At the end it suggests which exercise to start with; it also opens from the learning path page.
  • Editorial principles: a new page (in the footer): order of sources, reliability of stories, the copyright rule, use of AI and corrections. Learning path on the makam atlas: makams on the path have a ring that fills as you progress. On makam pages, the key signature in abc notation.
  • Memories and stories: a new page (under Library in the menu); 18 stories, 10 composers. Each shows its source and how reliable it is (Documented · Memoir · Tale); stories of pieces appear on the piece’s page, memories on the composer’s page. The glossary has moved from the menu to the Tools page.
  • Memories: a new “Memories” section on composer pages; the first is Tanbûrî Cemil Bey’s spider story, with a scene-by-scene animation (presented as a tale, with sources).
  • New: a “Recently viewed” strip on the home page; a letter index in the makam list; a table comparing 53 commas with 12 equal divisions in the 53-comma circle (cents, nearest Western note, deviation); glossary entries for the Pythagorean comma, the Holdrian comma, tuning system, neutral second and flexible pitch.
  • Sheet music archive: the filters show the number of works next to each option; several centuries can be selected together.
  • Work page: "Cite" gives a permanent link, an ISNAD 2 footnote and bibliography entry, and an APA 7 citation; download the score as MIDI (in AEÜ tuning) and abc; a sourced note on 14 works whose composer is disputed; expert commentary on 17 works from the Hicaz family.
  • Makam page: the cent deviation of each perde in the scale from the Western note, a Scala tuning file (.scl), and a "Pitch usage in the archive" chart.
  • Composer pages: teachers, students and family (the meşk lineage; Wikidata and the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam).
  • Kanun: the low courses (A2–E3) now play real recordings; the hiss at the end of the recordings has been removed; the default tuning is the 72 equal divisions of today's kanuns (6 mandals per semitone), with AEÜ 53 komas as an option.
  • Usuls: sourced velveleli patterns by İ. H. Özkan for 17 usuls.
  • Glossary: Ebced notation corrected; Cantemir notation added; the ahenk table corrected to a Mansur basis.
  • Instruments: 16th–17th-century information for 20 instruments (Evliya Çelebi, Revânî); the information is now on the page instead of Wikipedia links.
  • Makams: sourced seyir for 76 makams; the güçlü of 34 makams corrected according to the sources.
  • Usul pages: "Listen to the pattern". Learning path: lesson notes in the lessons. Archive: spelling corrected in the titles of 188 works.

7 October 2026

  • Follow a piece on a virtual instrument: the piece plays on the real perdes of the instrument you choose; a mandal indicator on the kanun.
  • "Which makam are you?", a knockout quiz you take by listening; "Sing the scale": sing the makam's scale in your own vocal range and get a score through the microphone.
  • Saved practice sessions in the usul metronome; preset references in the tuner (415, 432, 440, 442, 466 Hz).
  • 114 makam and 16 instrument entries added to the glossary; spelling of the Irak and Hisar perdes corrected.

4 October 2026

  • Collections by makam and form (e.g. Hicaz şarkıs); the most downloaded scores; reporting an error in a score.
  • The years of 9 composers corrected according to the sources after a search of İSAM articles.

2 October 2026

  • PDF scores ready for all works; collections by century and level; lyricist pages.
  • Short sourced biographies for 151 composers (16 languages); the years of 17 composers corrected according to the sources.

1 October 2026

  • Each virtual instrument and each tool can be installed as a separate app; close-up view and a redesigned soundboard on the kanun.
  • 46 usul and form terms added to the glossary.