Christian1095 - 12-1-2008 at 01:17 PM
The other night, I was speaking to my parents... They are coming to visit us for the Holidays and my Mother asked me to learn some Christmas songs on
the Oud... So of course I agreed... Granted, none of those Christmas songs are very difficult from a technical sense to play... but I've heard them
every Christmas since I can remember so it's not like they are foreign to me... So the other night, I picked up the Oud and I was really surprised
just how many I could just play with little to no effort...
At any rate... it got me thinking about how to actually approach learning Arabic music. And since I have almost no exposure to the music prior to
the oud... It seems like the first step would be to REALLY know the song... For example, I can play the songs we did at the Renn Faire pretty much
in my sleep. But in that case I learned by playing the song until it was burned into my muscle memory. However, I was able to play some of those
songs on my saz as well - I'm REALLY new to the saz and it's tuning is different than the Oud's -- So I'm thinking that I was able to have an easier
time on the Saz because I was really familiar with those songs...
I've also been trying to learn songs by playing along with them and using a program called "The Amazing Slow Downer" to work out the hard parts... So
far it's been pretty successful... but I get lost a lot with the keyboards and the Qanun....
So now, I'm trying to learn the following....
Aziza, Zeina, Zay El Hawa, Leylet Hob, Gamil Gamal, Daret al ayam, Alf Leyla wa leyla, Hayarti albi maak, Nebtidi Mnain El Hikaya, Ani fi intazarak,
Batwannis Beek, Tamra Henna, Hebbina, Salamet, Sidi mansour, Ah Ya Zein
My approach so far has been to listen to that play list over and over at work and in the car until the sounds/rhythms/melody just get stuck into my
brain... I've been really good about practicing for 2-3 hours a day (and the wife has been VERY indulgent) For practice, I'm taking 15-20 minutes
just to noodle through some of the parts I remember... Then I go into my list of other song's I'm trying to learn by playing along (where I'll play
along with the song, then play without the song)
Just curious how other folks in the forum have approached learning new materiel....