The Dautar and Dawoud's other tools of his art.
The Dautar
The First Steps
For years, Dawoud imagined an instrument that did not yet exist—one that could be plucked like a guitar, bowed like a cello, evoke the expressive nuances of the sitar, and venture into entirely new sonic territory. After numerous experiments, he approached Jeff Slatnick and Andy Dowty of the Limulus Musical Instrument Company. Together they refined the concept, and Andy Dowty built what would become the Dautar.
The name "Dautar" reflects the instrument's hybrid nature. It is neither a guitar, a cello, nor a sitar, but an original instrument with its own voice and identity. Dawoud essentially named the instrument after himself (Dan = Dawoud. Tar = Persian word for string).
Nuts and Bolts.
The basic body design of all the instruments that Limulus builds is a solid body instrument with a thin vibrating top that reacts with the bridge and strings. This allows for a full acoustic sound. They have a solid through-body construction carved to create a thin face allowing for the most interaction between the body, the floating bridge and the strings as possible. The headstocks are finely-carved in the tradition of any fine stringed instrument. Instead of the scroll you will find on violins, these headstocks have a cup shape on the top that echoes the shape of the body.
Dawoud’s additions were a new challenge to the luthiers of Limulus. He required an instrument that could be bowed as well as plucked. This necessitated a curved bridge and fingerboard. The pickups are a piezo mounted on the ebony bridge, and a modified humbucker. Each pickup has its own volume control (Dawoud later found that the piezo works best for bowing and the humbucker works best for plucking). They share a single 1/4" output.
There were originally seven strings, but Dawoud removed one (there's no telling what he will do). The tuning (low to high) is F#, B, E, A, D, and G. The fingerboard is a hybrid; the four highest strings have a curved scalloped fretboard, and the two bass strings are fretless.
After some experimentation, Dawoud prefers to use a 1/4 size fiberglass German bass bow with horsehair (synthetic hair doesn't react as Dawoud likes).
The instrument is done in a purple finish. The finish already bears the marks of performance, mostly from years of bowing. Dawoud considers these not blemishes but battle scars—the visible history of an instrument that has been played rather than preserved.
Playing it.
One problem Dawoud needed to overcome was playing technique. Since nobody else plays the Dautar, there were no books, teachers, or established techniques. Everything Dawoud plays on the Dautar has been developed through experimentation, persistence, and imagination. Techniques from guitar, sitar, bass, and especially the Indian dilruba have influenced his approach, but ultimately the Dautar demanded that its own language be discovered. The Dautar is not an imitation of another instrument. It has become its own voice.
Dawoud's Guitars
Dawoud 's first love was the guitar. He began playing shortly after Jimi Hendrix' passing. He has since evolved through several stages in his approach to guitar. He has studied and experimented with jazz, rock, and many other styles. He often uses guitar as a compositional tool.
Mention must be made of Dawoud's bass guitar. Dawoud's relationship with the bass began when he was 19. He joined a band that needed a bassist. He'd never played the bass before, but became intrigued. He learned the band's entire repetoire of 36 songs in three days.
Presently he owns a 1990 Paul Reed Smith VC Custom, an Ovation slim body acoustic, a Michell 12 string acoustic with a Fishman pickup he installed, and a Squire 5-string J-Bass.
The list of guitars that Dawoud owned over the years are fairly exhaustive. Some of the more interesting specimens include a vintage Gibson Les Paul, a 1982 Rickenbacker 4001 bass (both instruments were stolen), and a heavily modified Washburn with a scalloped fingerboard and some exotic wiring.
Sitar and Dilruba
When Dawoud was 13 years old, he saw Ravi Shankar on the TV. The sound of the instrument and the music made a big impression on him. On his 18th birthday, he bought a 1970s Beena sitar from an Indian import store on the north side of Milwaukee. His initial efforts were unimpressive: he had no teacher other than a book and a few Ravi Shankar records. Many years later, after having abandoned it during his move to New York City, he reopened his interest in the sitar, and began studying with Jeff Slatnick, a former student of Ali Akbar Khan. It became the center of his musical life.
In addition to the Beena (which he still owns) he has owned a few electric sitars. He also indulged his restless imagination and experimented with a lot of non-classical uses of the sitar. He developed techniques to play jazz and other western things on it (including outfitting it with chromatic frets), and modified a Roland GK pickup, which allowed him to trigger synthesizers with the sitar. He has found that K&K cello pickups work well for amplifying the acoustic properties of the sitar.
Some time around 2006, Dawoud was in a musical instrument store in the East Village in Manhattan when he happened upon a dilruba. He picked it up and his hands immediately knew what to do with it. He bought one, and found the only dilruba instruction book in the English language - and found he'd been doing it right all along. The dilruba soon became the centerpiece of his musical life. And as with sitar, he could not resist doing a lot of experiments with it; primarily regarding playing techniques, but also running it through effects. He uses a K&K Cello pickup to. amplify it.
The only dilruba he'd every owned is a Monoj Kumar Sardar.
Effects / Stomp Boxes, Recording Gear, & Other Instruments
Dawoud's pedalboards are constantly evolving - by the time you read this, he'd probably already changed something. He uses a combination of traditional guitar effects, granular processors, synthesizer pedals, pitch processors, delays, reverbs, and loopers to create the wide range of sounds heard in his recordings and live performances.
His collection of effects pedals is interesting. As of this writing, he owns a Keely compressor, Boss GE-7 equilizer, Hologram Chroma Console, Chase Bliss Mood, Death By Audio / Earthquaker Devices Time Shadows, Chase Bliss Lost & Found, Vongon Ultrasheer, Mooer Tone Capture, Boss SY-1, Enzo Meris, TC Electronics Quintessence, Electro Harmonix Canyon, MXR Distortion +, MXR Phase 90, Flamma FCO5, Strymon El Capitan, Boss DD-3, and Red Panda Bitmixer. In the past he's also owned a Boss SY-200, Earthquaker Devices Rainbow Machine, and Electro Harmonix Ravish.
For live solo performances, he uses a 2019 Macbook Pro with Ableton Live 10. He manipulates the Ableton with a Korg Nanokontrol 2.
Dawoud's home recording setup is modest but effective. His main computer is a 2022 Mac Mini with 32Ghz RAM. His primary DAW is Reaper, and he also uses Ableton Live, Audacity, FL Studio Producer Edition, and Dorico 6 by Steinberg. His outboard gear includes a Focusrite Clarett 4Pre, DBX 286a mic preamp, Furman PM-8DM power conditioner, AKG C-3000, AKG C-1000, and several ElectroVoice mics.
While Dawoud makes no claims to mastery of the keyboards, he often makes use of the Roli Seaboard Rise 25 and Seaboard Block, and the Arturia Keystep. These are used to trigger virtual synthesizer apps on his computers, such as the Roli Equator 2, Animoog Z, Moog Model D, GeoShred, Soundpaint, Sunrizer by Beat Street, Korg iMS-29, and iVCS3 by apeSoft.
Technology has never been an end in itself. Dawoud uses electronic tools for the same reason he experiments with unusual instruments: to expand the expressive possibilities of music while preserving the immediacy of live performance and recording.
He has also enjoyed dabbling with a variety of other instruments. These include the mbira, North African raita, wooden flutes, Peruvian whistling vessel, and a 1954 Stradivarius copy viola he inherited from his mother.