Arabic Reggae

An Arabic / Reggae Fusion with live Saz Baglama and Darbuka (Turkish Drum)

Composition Background

This composition fuses Arabic themes with Reggae beats and rhythms with a deep Reggae

bass pattern. My aim was to fuse a reggae track with live Saz Baglama, Dumbek and use the Ney

As a sampled instrument.

Composition Structure

The structure is very straightforward, being

Composition Development

I started by using an EZ Drummer reggae drum pattern to which I added an amount of delay.

I then overlaid this with a live Dumbek drum recording.

The bass is played on my Jazz bass with a boost to the lower frequencies to accentuate the reggae feel.

The rhythm guitar uses a "chop" pattern on the offbeat with an amount of reverb added to create a feeling of space.

The guitar riff is played on the bottom strings of the guitar and boosted with reverb.

The Saz melody line is doubled and one of the tracks shifted down an octave to produce a fuller sound

There are two string tracks using the "Arabic Strings" VSTi, one of them is lowered an octave.

The Ney track is created by a sampler instrument based on me recording a number of notes on my Ney.

This is then doubled up using the "Eastern One Mejwiz" VSTi.

Finally, I dropped in a couple of dub samples at the start and end of the track.

Reflection

Reggae is one of my favourite genres to work on, so this was always going to be an enjoyable task.

I felt that the Saz melody and the the counter melody played on wind instruments worked effectively in creating this fusion.

An Arabian Adventure