Tune of Morin Khuur

Remember: the thinner string will be uppermost when you are holding the morin khuur ready to play.

The string of the Morin Khuur are tuned to Bb(an octave and a tone below middle C) and F(an octave and a fifth below middle C). If that sounds complicated, it probably is! But don’t worry. Generally, concert pitch is irrelevant. Mongolia has one of the lowest population densities in the world. The nomadic people are almost always isolated from each other. There is usually only one Morin Khuur in the area.

So it is usually unnecessary for it to be in concert tuning: there is usually no other instrument around for it to be in tune with! So as long as the two strings are properly in tune with each other – that is normally the only “right” tuning!

Tune of Morin Khuur in Octave

An octave is a collection of 8 notes in a scale. In the Mongolian musical notation system, there are 9 octaves.