Advancing Slowly
By onezero on March 16, 2014 8:22 pm
Time to change it up from the synth pieces of the last few weeks, and based a piece on the cheapest instrument I own: a cloth-stringed cigar-box guitar given to me by a friend a few years ago. After getting it, I found that if I tuned it the right way, it sounded a lot like a sintir, and it kicked off a bunch of Moroccan-inspired pieces for a concept-band operating under the name الجلباب يصم الآذان الفجر. So this, apparently, is that project's re-emergence.
The cigar box is tricky to mic. Very quiet, so you'll hear breaths and room noise along with it. Drum samples are single-hit samples of an Indian drum I have, and a free handclap library. I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I put on two tracks of electric guitar, my Kalamazoo KG-2 into the Focusrite preamp/D/A. A lot of electric North African guitar relies on overdriving little amps and piling on the phase shifter, so one of these guitars is more heavily phased than I'd ordinarily do. Also, the tuning of the cigar box guitar is, um, approximate, so I found myself continually retuning the Kalamazoo while playing to match it. Turns out, I was off, so I fiddled with the fine-tuning in Live to try to bring it back. Maybe it adds a kind of international flavor.
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nice job!