The response from my friends have been overwhelming, I reached 110+ ‘like’s within the first 24 hours. I really wasn’t expecting this, I don’t know how to thank all of you. For starters, I promise not to fill your facebook news feeds with irrelavant spammy crap:)

There is some video material I am trying to prepare from live shows in the spirit of a “music video”. That is exciting for me, I hope it will be enjoyable for you when you see it, too.

I have received feedback from friends about not letting them know when my shows are. So I will also start posting my shows on the facebook page.

And now I really want to finish my EP.

The set contained a lot of pop and folk songs that were way out of my comfort zone. But I think that added to the thrill of the experience.

As in every live show, various unexpected technical difficulties manifested themselves. Like a guitar string not breaking but stretching to the point of uselessness, monitors having completely uneven sound etc. But the sound that was heard by the audience was really good, and the engineers there did a great job setting up a 7 piece band (with 4 additional performers coming in for one song) in around 15 minutes. I am very greatful to those guys.

I must also express my gratitude to my fellow band members. They made this challenging experience fun and fulfilling.
- Baris (drums) for introducing me to the band and the great fills in “Cayir Cimen”
- Berk (bass) for providing the backbone of the music and his performance on two of my favorite songs (Yaz Yaz and Bir Derdim Var)
- Batu (keys and management) for the solo piano at the end of Uzun Ince, for patiently working with me while we reverse engineer the new songs and teaching me the old songs. Also managing the not so visible, but impactful management side of things
- Mert (vocals, percussion) for being a kick ass male tenor with a bass color (my favorite type of male singing voice) with plenty of “majun*” skills and sharing his great energy in studio and on stage.
- Asli (vocals) for her peaceful and welcoming attitude, her emotional performance on “Bu ask fazla sana”, her patience with Opeth and for connecting me with a fellow metal head Alper.
- Gunes (vocals, flute) for her greatly fun attitude in studio, for her Jethro-like flute, for the better-than-Funda-Arar performance of Arap Saci and for the tattoo parlor suggestions.
- Tamer (percussion) for rekindling the Turkish rhythm in me with his darbuka.

I would also like to send a final greet to my dear wife Seval and dear friend Simge for shooting many videos and photos from the event.

I am planning to write a more detailed “behind the scenes” post for my Turkfest experience. Check back soon.

*Majun (macun): an informal term used in Turkish music scene to refer to melodic embelishments in Middle Eastern scales.

For your musical entertainment, I will be playing two solo shows in September:

- Come hear me at SiS Showcase at Spotted Cow in Mill Creek on Sept 2 Friday at 7.00. I host this showcase and I take the stage the last. There is a great group of performers each with a 30 minute set: Bob Kopatich, Ed Moda, John Apolis and Leo Lie will be there.

- You can also check out SiS Showcase at Faire Cafe in Capitol Hill on Sept 8 Thursday at 9.00. This is gonna be a good show in a great location.

I plan to do some of my regular songs and some looper instrumental wizardry at these shows. So hopefully see you guys there

Last weekend we had a SiS BBQ at Chris’s and it was so much fun. About 20 Seattle Songwriters gathered under the nice weather for food and music. Met a few new musicians and had a great time.

I also started playing in a band last month. It is a really unique band called “Sehr-i Seattle”. It is a Turkish Cover band that plays Turkish Pop/Folk/Rock songs. Talk about niche The band has 7 other musicians with unique talents. Except for the few rock songs in the set, most of what we play there is way out of my element. But that is why I wanted to play with them in the first place. There is a lot to learn from every genre of music.

So I am gonna have a show with the band in October. More info on that later. Right now we are trying to get ready for the show and there are many new songs to learn for me.

This whole thing made me realise how much I have missed playing with a band. Doing solo acts is fun too, but the live interplay of a bunch of instruments, the energy of a band playing together is something else.

Anyway enough update for now.

- I met a ton of talented musicians that I enjoy listening to

- I met a ton of talented musicians that I enjoy chatting to, sharing ideas with, trying to solve common problems that face all of us.

- I got many opportunities to play live shows and even songwriting together.

Last month the awesome David Rix anounced that he wanted to take a break from hosting the Spotted Cow showcase and I ended up inheriting the job. This is so cool for me since now we have many more showcases but the Spotted Cow was the first one and the longest running. In other words, if SiS showcases were vampires, the Spotted Cow Showcase would be the eldar charismatic vampire that ruled the clan or something

So this month we have really great performers there. Ron with his silky tenor voice will open the night. Guitar virtuoso Cris and deeply sincere voice of Kate Lynn will flow through you. The contemporary energy of Umber will surprise you and Leo will take you to a journey on a C Major landscape.  I will also play a set.

So come get your monthly fix of healthy / organic / homemade / awesome / local / hip / original music. Spotted Cow is located at:

15118 Main St

Suite 700

I am also going to be hosting Songwriters in Seattle Showcase at Spotted Cow on July 1st Friday.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

You can go to my bandcamp site and download hi-fi versions or just stream. I will upload them on various other sites soon (like Revebnation and Soundcloud).

Enjoy and feel free to use, share, remix, etc as long as you mention my name for the original

But another unexpected and delightful surprise was there for me. Cesar Cui a mostly unknown musician’s piece called Orientale, that later got orchestrated by a mid 20th century successful Hollywood composer Carmen Dragon (never underestimate film music) was so mesmerizing for me that I got goose bumps. And now I want to at least let you all know of its existance. Below is the best freely available online version of the orchestrated version I could find. Nowhere near the live experience but enjoy.

(Originally written in Feb 22, 2011)

In the past three weeks I have started to attend meetups by a local group of musicians called “Songwriters in Seattle”. This has been a very exciting and fruitful endeavour.

SiS is a very welcoming and passionate group of musicians from whom I have already started to learn from. There are musicians from many different genres. Other than the obvious benefit of networking opportunities, the group actually provides much more. Different types meetings happen with different focus areas (which I think is very efficient).

There are business meetings that focus on sharing info about the business aspects like marketing, online presence, etc. There are networking meetings with a focus on sharing music and giving constructive feedback. Then, there are the monthly showcases where members can take the stage and play. Overall I feel like this network of different meetings increases one’s progress as a musician on many fronts simultaneously.

If you live in the Greater Seattle area and you are a musician that wants to develop or just have fun, I suggest give SiS a try. You can search for it in the meetup.com. I wish I had thought about doing this search on the meetup much earlier.