Turkish lyricist Alper Tuzcu shares his world of music
Alper at a session at the Sooriya village. Pic courtesy facebook.com/thesooriyavillage
Alper Tuzcu has studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he now resides. Having begun his music career studying classical guitar, later he crossed over to play more popular styles such as rock and blues, finally settling on jazz. Now Alper describes his style as a “fusion of his Mediterranean roots with more of the eastern world and a little bit of the western world.”
Alper believes that musicians should compose their own songs from the writing of lyrics and composition all the way through to the final product.
“A song writer should be in charge recording and production. I want to give people an idea of all of these concepts. You should have an idea of the creative procedure even if you wrote the song but don’t intend to record the song,” said Alper.
The workshop on lyric writing consisted of techniques on how to prepare and how to find ideas for song writing. Alper taught students how to go deeper in to one’s conscience to come up with extract ideas. “We talked about ideas from daily life, past experiences and dreams. Good ideas come from the things that you don’t pay attention too, like when you wake up in the morning. There are a lot of songs from daily life experiences. I want to show people how to think about the things in their lives that are interesting.”
Lastly Alper explains about the structure, rules for writing and composition and how to put the all the elements together.
In the music production content of the workshop, Alper explains how rhythms, melody, harmony and cords hopefully will have a happy marriage to make the lyrics fit together. “People will have an idea how to get from the beginning to the middle to the end, but not the absolute end. It takes a long time to get a song ready for recording but they will get an idea of the procedure. The songwriter knows best what the song should sound like. It all comes down to the craft and how much you work on a song,” said Alper.
Alper also says that collaboration with other musicians and producers is important. It is much easier for musicians to start and finish songs on their own due to the availability of software. With his workshop equipped musicians with the necessary skills and competencies to finalise their pieces.
While in Sri Lanka Alper expressed an eagerness to learn from native Sri Lankan music, having spent time in Valencia, Spain learning about flamenco music through Berklee College. “In America listeners are always looking for new sounds,” said Alper.
To round off his trip he spent an afternoon teaching a free workshop for school children. “If I was a child I would first of all like to hear about rhythm, this is the first thing humans pay attention to when they listen to a band. If they like the rhythm they concentrate on the melody and then harmony. A good song comes from a good rhythm. First rule of a song is how to make your lyrics fall into a good rhythm,” said Alper.
Sooriya Village will continue its monthly residency with a bass player from Colombia in December, a Grammy award winner in January. More information can be found on www.facebook.com/thesooriyavillage.