The Road To 'Söyleme'

A SPECIAL RELEASE PARTY, JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS 12/28/2006 On Saturday night, December 16, 2006 the release party for Söyleme took place with a special list of invitees who got the first few copies of my second album. There was an unveiling ceremony after which I gave a short speech. While we were listening to the album, I distributed and personalized signed copies of my CD to my friends. Söyleme has come a long way and this is only the beginning. The sales and distribution of the album were finally launched, the website is up and running and the journey into the unknown sea is just getting off the dock. My compass is my experience with Popular Lane, but I’m certain that this sophomore release is going to take a different route. Please click here for the photos from the release party.

WE MADE IT! IT’S HERE! 12/01/2006 The past few weeks have been very hectic and we have been pushing forward to meet the deadline that we set to ourselves to release the album by the end of 2006. I’m happy to say that we’ve accomplished this task a month ahead of schedule! The CD will be up for sale on the website within a couple of weeks and we will be having a release party for it coming soon. Let’s take a look at the past month or so in more detail. Upon completing the occasionally gruesome task of editing and post-production, I was debating whether or not we should put Söyleme to the top of the album. I shuffled the songs to listen to almost all of the combinations and the beginning of Aglarim sounded most fitting to introduce this album. At the peak of the fall season we jumped out of the house for a few different photo sessions. We were looking for something dramatic, i.e. something that will give the person looking at the CD an idea about Aglarim, which literally translated means: I’ll cry. As this album picks up in tempo and excitement, I didn’t want to emphasize the dramatic effect too much. The combination of an emotional profile with bright fall colors in the background made for a unique combination that spoke a thousand words about Söyleme. Now that the CDs are here, we can plan to throw the release party within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for it, coming soon.

ATTENTION PLEASE: RECORDING SESSION IN PROGRESS 10/20/2006 The preparations for the album Söyleme are moving forward much faster than I had anticipated. The structured and organized tasks, which I wrote down at the very beginning of this new project, take about half as much of the time that we spent on Popular Lane. Selim and I are moving forward steadily, rapidly and diligently as we are focused on releasing it in 2006. We spent the last two weekends in the studio recording the voice for Söyleme and Aglarim (my new song) and transferred all of the instrumental songs from my Korg Triton to the computer for further editing. In the meantime, Selim and I have agreed to release this album with 5 songs. After going back and forth on the selection of songs, the final decision is to put 2 songs with Turkish lyrics and 3 instrumental tracks. About the song Söyleme: In the fall of 2003, after a great vacation in Cancun, Mexico I came back with the energy and motivation to write an uplifting dance tune. Just for fun, I put down some melodic layers and started improvising Turkish lyrics to it. Soon enough the improvised words settled and I ended up sitting quietly to complete the lyrics. As this was my first shot at a Turkish song, I hesitated to mention it to my friends and re-wrote the song several times over the years. Upon getting compliments from my manager, I decided to play it live at my second concert at Grog & Tankard in June 2006. It was exciting to see the strong, positive feedback from the audience and to hear all of the compliments about it. So after three years, I finally have a song that I’m proud to put onto an album as the featured song.

3-2-1-GO, WE HAVE LIFT-OFF FOR PROJECT SOYLEME! 08/15/2006 A new beginning, a new project, a new album. As difficult as it may seem to start a new album from scratch, it’s actually exciting to sit in the valley of another mountain that has to be climbed. Armed with the experiences from my debut album, I can see most of the tasks ahead of me and I also recognize the fact that there will be some unforeseeable events that may push the release of the new album into 2007. I created a list of tasks that need to be completed. In short, I need to come up with the format of the album, select the songs, edit lyrics and melodies, come up with designs for the cover and back, work on post-production and ship it in for duplication. And breathe out, phew! This project is centered on my first Turkish song Söyleme and its orbit has to entail other songs with Turkish lyrics and melodies. I have a second Turkish song, which is a work in progress. I’ve been playing the acoustic version of it for the past couple of days, but I will expand it with a few instruments. I’m also going to edit the lyrics while I work on adding instruments. This mountain shall and must be climbed as I already had the exhilarating feeling of standing on top of another one.