Longa Ajam Si bimol

tldr

My recording of Longa Ajam Si b, written by Abdel Wahab Bilal. The piece is written in Ajam Si b but the second part modules to Hijaz Re. The first 30 seconds or so is an improvisation I play to sort of align myself to the key and maqam of the piece. The piece itself begins at around 0:33.

Yallah, emshee!

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-Analysis-

• Watching myself play the piece, the first thing I notice is the positioning of my right arm, it’s far too removed from the body of the oud. My teacher had mentioned this a few times previously but I’ve only really just realised what he meant by his feedback. My main take-away from this video is to improve upon my posture to make sure that I’m playing as ergonomically as possible.

• I played this piece in a bit of a rush, and what I mean by that really is that I ignored the repetitions I was supposed to play. At the time I thought it was more important to capture the melody of the piece as a whole but listening back to it now it doesn’t feel ‘complete’. I definitely would have preferred the way it turned out of I included the repeated bars.

• There were a few instances whilst recording where I struggled to to see the music sheet and being to play the wrong section, or pause slightly while I try to confirm the note I’m supposed to be playing. This, more than anything, is a limitation of my set-up i think. Having the music sheet flat on my desk makes it difficult to follow along with at times.

• I’m really happy with the way my tremolo and picking are coming along. I may have to take a couple of steps back and relearn some technique after forcing myself to play in a more ergonomic position, but generally speaking I’m happy with the progress I’m making on this front and I hope a change in arm positioning won’t set me back too much.