Guitarist, Mixing, Mastering

Q: What are you working on at the moment?

A: I'm recording guitars for a 10 song album of a singer.

Q: What's your 'promise' to your clients?

A: I'll tell you in what way I can enhance what you already have, I'll also tell you if I think I can't add anything useful.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: The feeling and the atmosphere. The music itself. Being able to create feeling and atmosphere, to see people being affected by it. Also good performances of artists / musicians.

Q: What type of music do you usually work on?

A: Pop-Rock songs mostly.

Q: What do you bring to a song?

A: Of course quality and precision, but most importantly; Hopefully enhancement of the intended feeling and emotion of the music/song.

Q: Describe the most common type of work you do for your clients.

A: Most commonly I receive a composed song recorded say as guitar + voice and make it into a finished product with full backing track, mixed and mastered. But very often I get hired for adding guitar tracks, mix and master already produced projects.

Q: Analog or digital and why?

A: Digital. I come from analogue days when the only digital was a computer running MIDI sequencer. There was a period where digital was struggling to even play 4 tracks simultaneously, but today it can do it all, both emulate the analogue equipment and go much beyond it. As Andrew Scheps likes to say, I'm lazy, I like the smallness of the setup, the convenience of having everything in a compact computer, being able to have full recall quickly and easily, being able to jump between different projects at any point of progress etc etc.

Q: What's the biggest misconception about what you do?

A: I'm not a magician :)

Q: What questions do you ask prospective clients?

A: Because it's not easy to explain music with everyday language, I try to understand as deeply as possible what kind of end result the client/artist has in mind. I find that more often than not the end result is born from the interaction between me and the client (and sometimes + somebody who they trust).

Q: What was your career path? How long have you been doing this?

A: I started as a classical guitar student at age 9. Formed my first band at age 15. Went to study in Turkey at 19, quickly got accepted to the circle of leading musicians, played a lot of local gigs. In the year 1995 started to play less gigs and work as an assistant in a then leading studio (FT) in Istanbul Turkiye. There I gradually became more and more competent as a recording and mixing engineer. I also learned a lot about production process from A to Z. At year 1999 started my own studio where I produced many albums which had many hit songs still listened to today. Around 2007 got rid of the analogue equipment and went all ITB.