I will be volunteer and hacker in the Barcelona Music Hack Day, which will be organized in 14-15th June 2012, as an event of the SonarPro within the Sónar 2012. You can follow @musichackday or @sertansenturk on Twitter to get live updates of Music Hack Day and Sonar 2012 festival.

Music Hack Day is a hacking session in which participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects. Music + software + mobile + hardware + art + the web: Anything goes as long as it’s music related. Sonar is the world famous festival of advanced music and multimedia art that takes place Barcelona in every June.

Today at 12:00 midnight, I will be live in the programme, Sosyal Medya, in TRT Haber. We will be talking about social media, digital technologies and music…

Beatscape is a mixed virtual-physical environment for musical ensembles where sound objects interact with temporal waves to create rhythmic grooves. Musical outcomes in the virtual world are determined by the ensemble’s actions in the physical world. Part of the ensemble manipulates physical objects representing sounds while the other part triggers the sound objects by generating waves with hand gestures.

Me with Akito Van Troyer, Aaron Albin, Brian Blosser and Oliver Jan have built this instrument in Spring, 2010 as our Technology Ensemble project. By a camera, the system detects objects that are put on top a transparent glass table. Each object has a location, a pitch and they’re associated with different sounds. These objects are projected to a screen. However the objects cannot produce any sound by themselves. There are also waves that can be triggered by another player. The waves can be single, repetitive or continuous. Yet again, they too cannot produce any sound by themselves. It is the collision between the objects and the waves that produces the sound. The instrument requires an ensemble that needs active and effective collaboration with each other. We have written a paper about the instrument which appeared in NIME 2011.

The source code can be downloaded at Google Code under the name audio-sketch.

The instrument has been performed twice: the first is in the concert Listening Machines 2010:

…and the second is in FutureMedia Fest 2010.

(more…)

… Although this new music is being gradually accepted, there are still people, who while admitting that it is “interesting,” say: “but is it music?” Indeed to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn’t like. – Edgard Varèse, 1962

Compositions

A Reproduction of La Espiral Eterna

Taking the side of the weak, the piece expresses the clashes between those in power and those who are oppressed. It acknowledges that the struggle will continue forever; forming an ”eternal spiral”.

Composed in April, 2010; revised in December, 2010.
Original composition for classical guitar by Leo Brouwer in 1971.
Guitar recording from the ”Guitar Recital” album by Dmitris Regginos, 2004.
Samples from freesound.org and Youtube.
Read more…

Automobile

Having a high sensational, perceptual and cognitive capability, human beings rarely think about their limits or errors. They forget that they can be confused or deceived…

Composed in February, 2010.
Samples from freesound.org and Acoustical Society of America.
Read more…

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Instruments and Performances

Guitar

I have been playing classical guitar since 2001. Between 2005 and 2009, I have studied in Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory Half-Time Classical Guitar Program. I had the opportunity to study with some of the best classical guitarists in Ankara, such as the world-known classical guitar virtuoso Ahmet Kanneci. Read more…

Crossole

Meaning crossword of music, Crossole is a musical instrument where music is visualized as a set of virtual blocks that resemble a crossword puzzle. In Crossole, the chord progressions are visually presented by these virtual blocks. Read more…

Beatscape

Beatscape is a mixed virtual-physical environment for musical ensembles where sound objects interact with temporal waves to create rhythmic grooves. Part of the ensemble manipulates physical objects representing sounds while the other part triggers the sound objects by generating waves with hand gestures. Read more…

LOLC

In LOLC, the musicians in the laptop orchestra use a live-coding language to create and share rhythmic motives based on a collection of recorded sounds. The language encourages musicians to share their code with each other, developing an improvisational conversation over time as material is looped, borrowed, and transformed. Read more…

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Sound Design and Engineering

InRock Live

Süleyman Bağcıoğlu – Guitar
Fatih Korkmaz – Vocals
Cem Malak – Bass Guitar
Kemal Ayvalık – Keyboard
Barış Menküer – Drums
Read more…

School, Short Movie

Road to School, Short Movie is a short movie directed by Yiğitalp Ertem in 2010. The movie narrates youngsters’ university period and the life that they are thrown once the school is over. I have done foley, sound design and mixing for the short movie. Read more…

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Other

Interactivity in Contemporary Dance and Music

A journey in interactive contemporary dance and music to apprehend the artistic point of view.

Foley in “Apocalypse Now! Redux”

Foley project in Recording & Mixing course in Fall, 2009.

Transcriptions from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Préludes and Fugues

Transcribed BWV 926, BWV 924, BWV 935, BWV 953 by Johan Sebastian Bach from piano to classical guitar(s) under the supervision of Prof. Ahmet Kanneci.

Sonic Generator

Technical assistance to the Sonic Generator, the ensemble-in-residence at Georgia Institute of Technology, between August, 2009 and May, 2011.

Guthman Musical Instrument Competition

Technical assistance in the annual musical instrument competition, hosted by the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology.

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… Basically, I am a simple guy who still believes the stories he listened to in his childhood and pursues his ideals in his life.

My most idealistic pursuit, the most fun activity and the second toughest challenge is music. I am pursuing an academic career in music technology, specializing in music information retrieval, audio signal processing, machine learning and music perception & cognition. As a part of my endeavors, I want to develop methods and design novel interfaces and instruments to explore new modes of musical creativity, expressivity and interaction.

Currently, I am a member of the CompMusic Project in the Music Technology Group in Universitat Pompeu Fabra, supervised by Xavier Serra. My current work involves computational research on different musical cultures. I have received my MSc. degree in Music Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the advisorship of Parag Chordia and my B.Sc. degree as a honor student in Electrical and Electronics Engineering with a specialty in control engineering from the Middle East Technical University in 2009; I have also completed a four-year, part-time classical guitar program from Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory in 2009.

I have been playing classical guitar for almost 10 years now and I have recently started learning to play the bağlama, a traditional Turkish stringed instrument. I’m also interested in sound design, computer music composition and interactive performances.

Being a politically oriented person, I am also interested in learning about untaught history and understanding different point of views. I enjoy traveling, skiing, swimming and literature (especially Russian and underground).

• My CV