MA Timbral
I want to comment about the sound of the piece "Al Zagareed" My first impression was that is was movie music...(is it?) It sounds like sweeping dramatic music from a black and white film. But it definitely has characteristics of arab music in it, the instrumentation for example. But it also has brass. Maybe from what I feel is "western" about this something can be inferred about my impressions of Arab music. The timbre of western brass instruments changes how I perceive this. Is that fair?
The sound of acoustic strings and ornamented vocal passages are more common to the listening I have done so far. The modes used seem to define a Arab sound more than the instruments used for me.
Justina
I want to comment on the song "Baba L'Rouami" which uses percussion voice, and some plucked instrument which could be similar to a bass (?) .The song is very tribal sounding: drums, singing with lots of feeling by lots of men... Listening to the song it is mistakable for African-Saharan tribal music. I think that the reasons this song would be classified under "arabic music" is because the music is by the Gnawa, a religious organization from Morocco and also, I think that the "Taqasim", the improvising of the plucked instrument at the beginning, is similar to that in other songs (such as Habibi Dyali). Ethnically and a little bit stylistically this song can be considered "arab".
Italic text'manya'
In Al Zaqareed,first of all a westernized instrumentation can be heard that mostly uses the temperate intervals ,and to me its main duty is the preparation of a suitable atmosphere for the solo part which might be counted as an improvisation part in a classical performance.
Mahsa
El beida ,mostly sounds as a popular song in which an electrical key board acts as the role of the whole ensemble.The key board uses some special sound effects,that definitely can't give us the same feeling that we may get from the musical
instruments.
Mahsa
The more that I listen to these musical examples I am struck by how many electronic instruments are used. A good example of this is El Beida Mon Amour. Electronic instruments seem to give the music a more polished and clean sound. It even seems that some type of instrument (keyboard?) is trying to imitate backup singers.
"Patrick"
