Let's try the first part of MAQAM HIJAZ TAQSIM “Homage to Munir Bashir”
The Maqam Hijaz family is one of the most commonly used flavours in Arabic music. In fact, the jins Hijaz is the first type of tetrachord any musician from out of the Arab world uses to evoke the Arabic sound.
Homage to Munir Bashir is a Taqsim based on Maqam Hijaz. It is a homage to the great oud player Munir Bashir. I highly recommend you to become familiar with his work if you are interested in learning from some of the finest Arabic music masters.
A Taqsim is one of the most important musical forms to work on when learning Maqam. It contains all the ingredients to create and master it. It is a presentation of the main colours and modulations available. Performed in a free tempo type of metric it can fool many musicians by the thought of, since it is free tempo it will be easy to master. As it happens in many other styles of music when we have free tempo type of performances these tend to be the most difficult because it is very easy to break the musical phrases in the wrong places.
In this performance we find the jins Hijaz built over G. Then on the fourth degree, the note C, we have the ghamaz connecting jins Hijaz with jins Nahawand. That gives us Hijaz using G, Ab, B, C and Nahawand using C, D, Eb, F, G.
Among the modulations available in this Maqam we will be using jins Rast on C and jins Bayati on D.
The microtonal notes involved in the whole piece are E sikka placed on the fourth string between the second and third frets. And another E sikka on the second string between the fourth and fifth frets.
And now let's play Arabic Music on Guitar
Here is a video so you can listen and watch the full Arabic taqsim on guitar.
Now you can follow the guitar score and tabs…
This article comes from the book “ARABIC MWQAM MUSIC ON GUITAR by Fernando Perez”.