Oud in the context of "Barbat (lute)"

Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and "a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body".

The lute family includes not only short-necked plucked lutes such as the lute, oud, pipa, guitar, citole, gittern, mandore, rubab, and gambus and long-necked plucked lutes such as banjo, tanbura, bağlama, bouzouki, veena, theorbo, archlute, pandura, sitar, tanbur, setar, but also bowed instruments such as the yaylı tambur, rebab, erhu, and the entire family of viols and violins.

Pontic Greek folk dances are a group of over ninety dances traditionally performed by Pontic Greeks (Pontic: Ρωμαίοι). Dance has been an integral part of Pontian culture since ancient times. Dances vary based on region. Today, few Pontians remain in the Pontus region, but those living in the diaspora worldwide still perform folk dances to preserve their cultural heritage and group identity. Dances are accompanied by traditional music. Some traditional instruments include the lyra, daouli, zurna, dankiyo, tulum, and oud. The instrumental music may or may not be accompanied by singing.

All dances are traditionally performed in lines or circles with participants linking hands. The circle may shrink and expand during the dance, or it may move clockwise or counterclockwise. Pontic Greek dances can be distinguished from other types of Greek dance because of their unique style. Pontian dances are characterized by shoulder tremors, abrupt pauses, synchronized arm swinging, knee bends, and precise steps. Shimmying—the flexion and rotation of the torso—is also characteristic of Pontian dance. Some dances are only performed by women, others only by men; many dances can be performed by both.

A qanbūs (Arabic: قنبوس) is a short-necked lute that originated in Yemen and spread throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Sachs considered that it derived its name from the Turkic komuz, but it is more comparable to the oud. The instrument was related to or a descendant of the barbat, a (possibly) skin-topped lute from Central Asia. The qanbūs has 6 or 7 nylon strings that are plucked with a plectrum to generate sound. Unlike many other lute-family instruments, the gambus has no frets. Its popularity declined in Yemen during the early 20th century reign of Imam Yahya; by the beginning of the 21st century, the oud had replaced the qanbūs as the instrument of choice for Middle-Eastern lutenists.

Yemen migration saw the instrument spread to different parts of the Indian Ocean. In Muslim Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei), called the gambus, it sparked a whole musical genre of its own. Nowadays it is played in the traditional dance of Zapin and other genres, such as the Malay ghazal and an ensemble known as kumpulan gambus ("gambus group"). In the Comoros it is known as gabusi, and in Zanzibar as gabbus.

In organology, a course is either one string or two or more adjacent strings that are closely spaced relative to the other strings, and typically played as a single string. The strings in each multiple-string course are typically tuned in unison or an octave.

Normally, the term course is used to refer to a single string only on an instrument that also has multi-string courses. For example, a nine-string baroque guitar has five courses: most are two-string courses but sometimes the lowest or the highest consists of a single string.

The music of Iraq or Iraqi music, (Arabic: موسيقى عراقية), [Romanised: mūsīqā ʿirāqiyya], also known as the music of Mesopotamia, encompasses the music of a number of ethnic groups and genres. Ethnically, it includes Mesopotamian Arabic, Assyrian, Kurdish and the music of Turkmen, among others. Apart from the traditional music of these peoples, Iraqi music includes contemporary music styles such as pop, rock, soul and urban contemporary. Instruments used include the oud, Iraqi santur and rebab.

The cythara is a wide group of stringed instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe, including not only the lyre and harp but also necked, string instruments. In fact, unless a medieval document gives an indication that it meant a necked instrument, then it likely was referring to a lyre. It was also spelled cithara or kithara and was Latin for the Greek lyre. However, lacking names for some stringed instruments from the medieval period, these have been referred to as fiddles and citharas/cytharas, both by medieval people and by modern researchers. The instruments are important as being ancestors to or influential in the development of a wide variety of European instruments, including fiddles, vielles, violas, citoles and guitars. Although not proven to be completely separate from the line of lute-family instruments that dominated Europe (lute, oud, gittern, mandore), arguments have been made that they represent a European-based tradition of instrument building, which was for a time separate from the lute-family instruments.

In the 9th century, one of the instruments that cythara was actively used to name was a large plucked or strummed instrument; pictures show it being played with a plectrum. Pictures of the instrument illustrated in the Stuttgart Psalter all have the word "cythara" near the instrument in the text. The players hold the instrument in a distinct manner similar to the way that citole players were shown to hold their instruments, resting the instrument on the playing arm, and bringing their forearm and wrist to the strings from underneath the body of the instrument. In contrast, players of lute family instruments, such as the gittern, mandore, or lute did not hold the instrument this way. Instead of keeping their arms below the instrument, they allowed their arm and wrist to move parallel to the soundboard, as a guitar player does today.