Bringing the Bağlama into the composition

When seeing the desert I had the idea of using my Turkish Bağlama. My favourite thing about the instrument is how it’s tuned. The frets line up with that of a western guitar, but with extra frets in between, meaning you can play in standard western and Turkish tunings.

For this piece, i tuned every string to the same note, D#, creating a rich texture whenever I strummed.

I wanted something simple to go on top of the piece, not being too obtrusive yet still in the front. Playing a standard melodic minor scale, but swapping the 2nd for a 2nd half flat.

I used a contact microphone to pick up the Bağlama.

I used a Neural DSP Plini plugin to create a richer sound, reverb and delay to the thin sound of a contact microphone to boost how it sounds.

later in the piece, I use the same recording with distortion and heavy reverb.

I might rerecord what I played, but the general idea stays the same