Here’s another piece that combines orchestral and mideastern instrumentation, this one of a more martial and driving character.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Clash of the Emirates

There is a long Hollywood tradition of attempting to shoehorn ethnic folk music in orchestral format. Actually, it predates Hollywood; 18th and 19th century symphonic composers were fond of tossing a triangle into an otherwise perfectly Western-sounding movement and dubbing it “Turkish”.

I’m not one to turn down a chance to engage in a little cultural imperialism myself. This cue from Empire Earth 2 opens with a solo from a Armenian wind instrument called a duduk (film composers love it for its sinuous sound, and often use it as a shorthand for “attention audience: we’re now in Damascus”). The music then transitions to a more traditionally symphonic crescendo, meant to evoke the vastness of the desert and civilizations long past. Now if only I had remembered to add a triangle…

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Sands of Arabia

This moody and lyrical cue features soprano sax, a recurring modal piano ostinato, and string orchestra.

I’ve always liked using the saxophone as an orchestral voice, in distinction from its traditional role as infantryman in the jazz army. (Or in the case of the soprano sax, the easy-listening army.) In its upper register, the instrument can function almost like an oboe, but with a somewhat smoother and less pinched tone.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Dennis Alone