Saib.
MUSIC . October 1st, 2015Interview with the maroccan beatmaker, Hamza Saib aka Saib.
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Who are you Saib.?
My name is Hamza Saib, I’m 19 years old living in Casablanca, Morocco.
Currently I’m third year computer engineering student in university.
How did you get into music production?
My brother got me into music production, at first I was only interested in playing the guitar but later on he told me that I should add drums and other instruments with my guitar, so I started learning music production since last september.
Are you part of any label?
Currently I’m not exclusive to any label, I’m just releasing projects with a few here and there.
You released your last Ep – Ipanema few months ago, can you talk about this work and the time you spent on it? The atmosphere is sunny, warm and catchy, did you found your inspiration in brazilian music?
Ipanema was the fruit of my love for Brazilian music. When I was a child I used to hear bossa-nova in the tv but I never knew what kind of music was that. Few years later I discovered it was brazilian music then I started listening to it more and more. Moreover, I think that each track represents a certain mood : “Souvenirs” makes me nostalgic while “Space Cowboy” makes me energetic and happy.
Surprisingly, it took me less than two weeks to make the EP. It was during my exams period in college (I know I should be studying but I was so dedicated to finish the EP) and everything went smoothly. I also wanted to thank Cult Classic Records for the opportunity and their huge help for the release, without them “Ipanema” wouldn’t have this much success.
What’s your equipment and why this choice?
Currently I’m working with Ableton Live as DAW, A Maschine Mikro Mk2, a guitar and a Zoom G2.1 NU, I use my Zoom Multieffect as an USB interface to record my guitar while I make drums and sampling with Maschine.
The population of beatmaker on soundcloud is quite huge nowadays. With which of them would you love to collaborate?
SoundCloud is definetly full with a lot of amazing bedroom artists, but I would love to collaborate with Shungu and BeatBoxBandit, those are my favourite beatmakers I found on SoundCloud.
Your skill as guitarist and your guitar are probably your best partner to compose, it gives the feeling that a story is told, during your song. When you start a new track, do you, firstly, start with your guitar?
When I’m composing with my guitar, I always start with the melody. I usually spend a lot of time looking for the best chords and melodies I can create before even considering recording a song.
In view of your songs’ cover, do you like japanese culture? Is it also a source of inspiration?
I am a huge of Japanese culture. Before starting making music I was interested in Animation soundtracks, composers like Yoko Kanno, Joe Hisaishi, Shiro Sagisu and Yuji Ohno would amaze me in each track. I also love watching Studio Ghibli movies, the combination between the story and the amazing soundtrack would inspire me in making new songs.
In Marocco, how is the environment of beatmaking? Moreover do you sample traditional/old song from your country?
I consider myself the only beatmaker in Morocco who uses jazz, bossa-nova or japanese samples in tracks (I wish there would me more people though). The music scene in Morocco is still growing and unfortunetly bedroom beatmaking is still not present in this scene.
I sampled once a song with Moroccan vocals, it is from “Cowboy Bebop” Soundtrack called Hamduche. It’s hard to sample something from my country because most of the traditional music is based on percussion instead of melody.
What’s next for you? Live/Set?
I’m currently learning how to use Maschine for a Live Set, but I’m also working in a Cassette release, as well as two other albums, one regrouping my guitar compositions only while the other will have a mixture of jazz, traditional chinese music and bossa-nova.
What are you going to do just after having answered to this final question?
After this question, I’m going to start working on new songs, I have a lot of tracks unfinished so whenever I have time I try to fix them and see if they’ll good enough for release.
Thank you Saib!
