How Hard Is It to Play the Oud?

Last Updated on June 22, 2026 by folkstrings

Short answer: harder than guitar in some specific ways, easier in others. It depends what you’re comparing it to and what “hard” means to you.

What Makes the Oud Genuinely Difficult

The oud is fretless. That’s the single biggest adjustment for anyone coming from guitar — there are no frets to tell you where a note is, so pitch accuracy is entirely down to muscle memory and ear, the same challenge violin and cello players deal with. It takes real time to land notes cleanly, and there’s no shortcut around that.

The other genuine difficulty is the music itself. Arabic maqam scales use quarter-tones — pitches that sit between the notes on a piano or guitar. If you’ve only ever played Western music, retraining your ear to hear and reproduce those intervals is a real, separate skill from learning the instrument’s physical technique.

What’s Actually Easier Than You’d Expect

The right-hand technique (playing with a risha, a long pick) is more forgiving than fingerstyle guitar to start with — you’re producing sound with a single point of contact rather than coordinating multiple fingers. And because the oud is tuned in courses (pairs of strings, mostly tuned in unison), you’re fretting fewer independent pitches than a 6-string guitar for the same melodic range.

Where Do You Actually Buy One?

This is the part most guides skip. Real ouds do exist on Amazon — contrary to what you might expect for a niche instrument — but the market looks different from buying a guitar. Almost everything is a small-batch handmade import from Turkish or Arabic makers, which means review counts are genuinely low across the board, not just on weaker listings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the oud harder to learn than the guitar?

In terms of physical technique, yes — the fretless neck demands more from your ear and muscle memory than fretted guitar. But the picking technique and string-pairing arguably make the right hand easier to pick up than fingerstyle guitar.

Do I need to understand Arabic music theory to play the oud?

Not to start. You can learn the physical technique and basic scales first, the same way you could learn guitar without knowing music theory. But the maqam system is where the instrument’s actual musical identity lives, so you’ll want to get into it eventually.

Can I tune an oud like a guitar?

No — the oud has its own traditional tunings, and most are tuned in courses (paired strings) rather than single strings, which is a different system from standard guitar tuning entirely.

Conclusion

The oud is a genuinely different instrument to learn, not just an exotic-looking guitar. The fretless neck and quarter-tone scales are real obstacles, but the picking technique is more approachable than people expect. If you’re curious about other instruments outside the usual guitar/piano path, my guide to Asian stringed instruments covers several others in the same spirit.

Author Profile

Daniel Johnstone

Daniel Johnstone is an English writer and folk musician who has been playing stringed instruments for over twenty years. He started on guitar as a teenager before working his way through cavaco, tenor guitar, autoharp, mountain dulcimer, and harp. He founded Folkstrings.com to provide practical, experience-based buying advice for folk instrument players at every level — the kind of guidance he always wished had existed when he was finding his feet.

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