Khaled Abed’s path to the oud started as a child when he was exposed to the instrument through his father, uncle and brother. However, due to various circumstances, it was not until he was 19 that he took one of his brother’s ouds and started to play for the first time. He had already been playing the classical guitar for 4 years, which to this day he continues to play. In 2007, he was fortunate that the Iraqi Maestro Asim Al Chalabi accepted to teach him the oud. He plays an oud by the renowned Iraqi oud maker Yarob Mohamed Fadel.
Khaled Abed considers himself fortunate to be able to carry on the tradition of the Iraqi School, starting from Sharif Muhiddin Haydar through Jamil Bashir and Munir Bashir to Asim Al Chalabi. Khaled Abed’s passion for Arabic music and the art of maqam interpretation in the form of taqasim is revealed in his virtuosity as an oud player, which is characterised by ease, depth of musical feeling and an inner life of every note he plays. He aspires to further develop the approach to teaching the oud by incorporating, for example, left hand techniques, originally developed for the violin by the renowned professor Michael Frischenschlager, the principle of which is theoretically applicable to most string instruments with no frets, and experimenting and developing the right hand technique in the hope of being able to pass on this tradition to the next generation.