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There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other? Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine
through to your work, please.

I do several things in music: I compose, I produce, I teach, and I run a small electronic music label named GERYON. So, every day is quite different than the other when it comes to its contents.

But I do have my rituals: I wake up sometime between 8-10 AM. I have my morning coffee and watch Turkish news commentaries for about an hour. Check my emails (and decide if I should reply immediately or not much later) and then start working.

Work can go until 5 PM or 2 AM, it depends on the type of work. But I try to finish as early as possible and have dinner with my wife Diana, watch TV or Youtube videos together and cuddle. That’s the happiest part of the day!

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that’s particularly dear to you, please?

It’s always different but briefly, it’s bringing together a lot of flashbacks and projections, and the “now” - which is your mental state, your existence at the moment.

I always start with feelings. It’s mostly darker, melancholic feelings. It’s not pessimistic, though, it’s just poetic. These feelings make me hear certain sounds, sometimes melodies and gestures, or a certain rhythm, or simply a sonic space I can’t yet point out with musical terminology. Then I make sketches - either on paper, in a notation software or in my DAW. But I can’t just go ahead and compose my feelings - I have to create a story, a concept, I have to name the feeling, find objects, words, stories, myths that can embody those feelings.

That’s when what some composers call “the pre-compositional research” begins. I just look for inspiration everywhere, make mood-boards, draw larger forms on graph paper, temporalities informed by different stages of a ritual I create in my mind. I always listen to and “test” what I write - in my head, on a keyboard, in a DAW, notation software, or guitar. It needs to communicate the feeling, the “vibe”.

Look at SWAN, that’s coming out on the Dal Niente CD. It’s full of symbols. Swan is a symbol, tiger is a symbol. Drones, the Turkish pop-trance, the bird calls, the monophony, the imam at the end… they’re all very symbolic. Same with Râh, which I wrote for the Spanish Vertixe Sonora, which I call a magic carpet ride through time (even more magical than a plain magic carpet ride).

The title, the score, section titles, expression markings, the sounds in it - everything has symbolic value. They create a universe unto itself, and it’s all the result of this intuitive, conceptual thinking / research, and creating temporal and sonic structures informed by it.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I create music in several different contexts, and each comes with challenges and rewards.

When it comes to my concert music I prefer to (and need to) be alone. I become this very solitary person who completely focuses on the work. I have to go all in. I enjoy the solitude and deep thinking but I’m not the most communicative or the most positive person to be around (like I said: dark feelings).

I’m part of a techno duo named “Molaq” with my long-time collaborator Marek Poliks. We make records and perform live on occasion. That’s a completely different experience. We’re both childly ambitious, excited, and stubborn when we’re in the studio, but when we both feel the same thing, it’s magic! An extremely rewarding experience.

When I work in producer or engineer capacity on someone else’s music, it’s a more collaborative scenario, and it goes smoothly when everyone focuses on what they do best. Honestly, that’s when I’m happiest: when we manage to put something out nice as a team! I miss each mode of creating as I give long breaks to them, though.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Music fills many roles. It can deliver a message / work as propaganda medium, it can mobilize people, make them dance, it can facilitate religious services, prepare armies for battle, or it can just be / exist as an aesthetic object. It doesn’t have an assigned mission, it’s about what people hear in a piece of music and how they react to it.

My music, hopefully, makes people close their eyes and experience new spaces, new sceneries, and new chemistries that were previously unknown to them. My music’s relation to the real world is that it’s sort of an escape from or an alternative to it. And making music, for me - as a player, composer, or a producer - is a spiritual / religious activity.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

One major concept I consciously (and I believe subconsciously, too) deal with in my life and music is death. The music I listened to through years helped me transcend our physical reality, and feel bodiless, eternal and immortal. I am drawn to music that sounds like death - both in religious or an atheist contexts.

I am more curious about the negative side of life, and I try to imagine it. I romanticize death, I miss it. Listening to and making music is a way for me to get closer to it - it is a religious activity, it is getting closer to God (or lack thereof - a nothingness).

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

As long as it can take me to new, magical places, help me transcend, I’m open to any type of aesthetic experience materialized by any form of consciousness - be it another human, a collective, a machine, or any automated generative process. Everything relates to the human experience.

I met a lot of musicians and engineers who lose their shit because “machines can do their jobs”. It’s an irrational fear. Those who program those machines (or make them program themselves) are humans. A hundred years later, when most creative processes may be automated, everything will still be part of human creativity. Technocracy is very human. Probably the most human thing ever existed. Gods / the universe prophets talked about is a self-generating algorithm, we’re just getting closer to and more integrated with it.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee?

For me they’re different because I’m a musician, not a barista, but I can’t generalize. It depends on what you feel as the maker of the music or the coffee (or the one who’s served the music or the coffee). If you can feel the same excitement, satisfaction, inspiration; then, yes, they can be very similar activities / experiences.

Actually, when I think about it, I can’t tell if I appreciate a great piece of music or a great cup of coffee more.

What do you express through music that you couldn;t or wouldn't in more "mundane" tasks?

The desire to disconnect from our world’s reality, transcend it, get closer to God / death. I can’t express these in most daily tasks.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

We've been living in the global village for the past three decades or so. So, regardless of where they live, people know more about “the other”.

Apparently, though, music - with its sonorities, rhythms, formal aspects - is very different from culture to culture. Its messages, too, are shaped by the culture that surrounds / generates it: The geography, the climate, daily lives and habits of the people, the language, the level of / access to technology, the religions etc.

I am one of those people who believe music is not a universal language because different groups don’t entirely understand what other’s music communicates / symbolizes unless they share a very similar culture. So, it’s about how explicit the program of that music is - in its title, its visual components, its lyrics etc. Then people start to create their own narratives around it.

It is a universal phenomenon, but not a universal language. It’s complicated. I don’t know!


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