Making full use of all ten Ampex tape recorders available to him at Columbia, his approach to composing electronic music was for immersion, with his seamless blending of vocals, electronic tones, tape manipulation such as speed transposition, and music looping, giving "Leiyla and the Poet" an "unearthly quality" that made it influential among many composers at the time. The number of musicians who have acknowledged the importance of his recordings to their work range from Neil Rolnick, Charles Amirkhanian and Alice Shields to rock musicians such as Frank Zappa and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. The "organic textures and raw energy" of "Leiyla and the Poet" in particular inspired many early electronic music composers. "Leiyla and the Poet" also featured a "sonorous, echoing voice, sonar signals, distorted ouds, percussion that sounds like metal," and "shadowy, shifting dream music." Other works he composed there include the 1959 pieces "Meditation in White Sound", "Alcibiadis' Monologue to Socrates", and the chimey, rhythmic "Electronics and the Word", as well as the 1961 piece "Venice" which is reminiscent of Steve Reich's field recording experiments in the mid-1960s. El-Dabh also helped introduce an "Egyptian folk sensibility" to Western avant-garde music. A definitive collection of El-Dabh's electronic work was restored by Mike Hovancsek. This CD, titled "Crossing into the Electric-Magnetic", includes a collaboration with Otto Luening, environmental recordings, and wire recordings that the liner notes cite as "arguably the earliest example of electronic music."