Arabic Folk Music

[Schwarzenyaeger]

I was presented with the opportunity to record a group of people that do Arabic folk music.
Very professional people. One or two are from Cambridge, another one or two teach ethnomusicoligy at universities.
One of them actually played Arabic percussion instruments on Led Zepplin's "No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded". The bloke even has his own Wikipedia page.
Of course, this is the one guy that couldn't make it on the day
I would have loved to meet him.

My contact person told me that five people were coming and seven showed up. It was all done live in a medium sized room.


So no, this is not homerecorded. Sue me.

I'm just as unfamiliar with this genre as any of you most likely are but maybe there is that one soul out there who can help.

Version 2:


How's it doing?

 

[Btyre2013]

it sounds really good, great performance from the group it has to be said, they sound very professional

 

[Schwarzenyaeger]

Yeah real props to them.
They all showed up fifteen minutes early. I've never seen a musician do that.

 

[gecko zzed]

You've captured the flavour of the genre well.

I can certainly hear the room, and I'm picking up a resonance around 800hz or thereabouts. It's more dominant at the start, but gets buried a bit when the bass instrument comes in.

 

[dobro]

Okay, hate me, but I'm going to diverge from most of the opinion so far. I think it sounds like it was recorded in a crummy room. That drum sounds like it needed to be recorded way closer/drier. Some parts sound slightly out of tune. Maybe you have to be really adept to handle quarter tones. Dunno.

Next time, why not put a bunch of gobos up between the players and cut down on the bleed? I'd like to hear everything recorded drier/closer up. I get how folk music is often recorded with everyone clustered around one or two mics. That works for bluegrass. Not so much for this stuff.

I think it would sound better with tabla as well. Probably blasphemy.

 

[Schwarzenyaeger]

I think I could address some of those issues, guys.
Thanks for listening in.

I tried a version without the overheads. There was a slight resonance around 750, which I notched out a bit. I turned up the percussion mic that was really dry. I could probably turn it up even more.
I do agree that it sounds less muddy now.

dobro, everybody had at least one close microphone on them. The trickiest part was getting them to stay right where we'd put throughout the performance. There are some of the viola parts that I had to boost by a lot to get it to be the same volume as others, unfortunately also bringing up the bleed.
We did our best to use heavily directional microphones and sit people in each other's rejections.
We'll do more baffle experimenting next time.

Love you guys <3

 

[Chili]

I listened last night. I thought there were some timing issues that I had a hard time getting past. Not sure if you can nudge around the close-mic tracks to get them better aligned.

I also thought the room did the recording an injustice. I just didn't have any idea of what to suggest to help, but Dobro's idea on gobos sounds like a good one. To me, most of the instruments shared the same freq range and the room reflected them well. I got fatigued listening before the end of the song.

Very cool to do something different like this.

 

[RAMI]

I think it sounds like it was recorded in a crummy room. That drum sounds like it needed to be recorded way closer/drier.

I also thought the room did the recording an injustice.

I agree with both of these statements. Everything, and especially the percussion, sounds too distant. I listened to a lot of this type of stuff since I was a kid and growing up. Those drums should be way less room-y and more in your face. The strings can sound distant, but not the percussion. Percussion needs to dominate this genre.

I wish I could upload some of this stuff, but it' all on old cassettes here. I went to Youtube, and the only "Arabic" music I could find was shitty "modern" crap with fake drums, or a bunch of "Techno-Arab" noise.

 

[FoulPhil]

I can't really comment on it because I'm not sure how this is supposed to sound. Maybe I've heard similar music in movies or something. And it does sound like the little I've heard of this type of stuff. My personal opinion is that I think it sounds cool.

 

[heatmiser]

It's a great piece and I enjoyed the listen.

I agree with prior comments that the percussion should be drier and more up front, and also that the mix as a whole is slightly boomy and could be lightened up a bit. I wanted to hear the violin/viola more, but I see there were bleed issues there, so...

There is good clarity though and the tones are pleasing to me. I just think if the percussion was drier maybe that would make the whole thing sound a little tighter, which in my limited experience with this music, is important.

I bet it was pretty fun to record something like this! Good job.

 

[Schwarzenyaeger]

I've noticed that most of the boominess comes from the Kanun tracks.

I'm going to see if I can convince that guy to come in and overdub his tracks. His instrument isn't audible in the bleed of the other tracks.

Here is a version with the Kanun muted.
If you A/B them, you can feel the cloud being lifted.

 

[robgreen]

Hey, like others have said, this must have been fun to record and a great experience. I enjoyed hearing something so different on here.

Plenty already been said about the percussion, the only other thing that struck me was that maybe the vocals could do with a gentle boost somewhere around the 3kHz+ range to give them a touch more clarity and help them shine above the instrumentation?

 

[TripleM]

I thought it sounded good. Sound quality was good to my ear. And quite dry. I like songs the way I like martini's.

Where I descent is in the performance. At least in the intro. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be, but the playing/timing seemed a little sloppy. Whatever instrument is on the right side, it was lagging the tempo in spots. Especially in the intro. Maybe I'm the only one...