Today the Oud is strung with five double strings, of which the three highest are made of gut or nylon and the tow lowest of silk wound with copper wire.

Altogether, the instrument includes a tonal range from G to C (yakah to jawab kurdan)
Some especially great Oud performers even attach a sixth string next to the Kurdan string C, usually tuning it to F mahuran. Iraqi Oud performers, however, prefer the tuning F qarar jaharkah.
The Oud performer holds the plectrum named “rishah”, the quill of an eagle feather, between thumb and index finger. A good oud player is not only celebrated for his large repertoire of maqamat, but also for a well-balanced application of regular and irregular motions when plucking with the plectrum. In style and manner of plucking, a certain individuality of the musician’s personality can express itself. Every Oud player strives to do his best especially in the taqasim. Where he can apply his plucking technique to the utmost. Since the music is not bound to any temporal order. The musician further demonstrates his technical ability in the clean and rapid execution of passages in the high registers of the instrument, in quick change between the high and the low register of the instrument, (usually at an interval of an octave). And in “hocketlike” realization of to or more even three voices. Hocherlike voices lines result when the musician, by rapidly repeated plucking on a high open string- usually the C-string-creates a drone and at the same time plays one or two melodies.

The Oud player occasionally desists from plucking with the feather in the right hand, and instead a stops a string with index finger of the left hand while striking it with the middle, ring, or small finger of the same hand.

The solo repertoire of the Oud is principally made up of the taqasim of the individual Maqamat. In the“Lyaali ” vocal form, the Oud is looked upon as a preferred, if not a completely irreplaceable, accompanying instrument to the solo song.