ŞAN DERSİ
Türkiye’nin “en çok öğrencisi olan müzik öğretmeni”.
EMRE YÜCELEN
Bir proje aklıma geliyorsa yapmak için hiç vakit kaybetmem.
Babasının hediye ettiği klasik gitarla müziğe başladığında ortaokul yıllarındadır Emre Yücelen. Beste yapmaya başladığı lise yıllarında ilk müzik grubunu da kurar. İzmir 9 Eylül Üniversitesi Opera – Şan bölümünü ve aynı dönem Kocaeli Üniversitesi Jeoloji Mühendisliğini kazansa da buralardaki eğitimi çok sürmez. Gönlünde yatan müzik eğitimini almak için İ.T.Ü. Türk Musikisi Devlet Konservatuarı Ses Eğitimi Bölümünü kazanır. Mezun olduğunda gitarın yanında, piyano, bağlama, ud ve ney çalmaktadır.
Çok yönlü çalışmaları olan Emre Yücelen çağın gelişmelerine ve dijital dünyanın zenginliğine müzikal birikimini kısa sürede adapte eder. Türkiye’nin interneti yeni tanımaya başladığı yıllarda internet üzerinden müzik eğitimleri tasarlar. Derin müzikal birikimini paylaştığı “Emre Yücelen Şan Dersi” ismini verdiği YouTube kanalı sadece Türkiye’de değil Dünya genelinde beşyüzbine yakın insanın takip ettiği devasa bir eğitim kanalına dönüşür.
Çağı yakalayan bilgi ve tecrübesi ile yüzbinlerce insana yol gösteren değerli sanatçıya müzik, dijital dünya ve müzik eğitimine dair merak edilenleri sorduk. Mehmet Cihan Oyuktaş Sanatçı ve eğitimci kişiliğiniz yanında müzik ile ilgili çok yönlü sayısız çalışmanız var. Siz Emre Yücelen’i nasıl tanımlıyorsunuz?
Sanki kendimi bir yabancıymış gibi tanımlayamam. Hayatım boyunca müzisyen olmak istedim. Müziği bilerek, zevk alarak hissetmek istedim. Eğitimci bir yanım da olunca aslında her ikisinin birleşimi oldu benim çalışmalarım. Kendimde en keyif aldığım özellik üretken oluş biçimim. Bir proje aklıma geliyorsa yapmak için hiç vakit kaybetmem. Bahane üretmeden, olduğu gibi yapmaya odaklanmam her şeyin çıkışı diyebilirim.
Her şey youtube kanalıma gelen bir soru mesajını cevaplamamla başladı.
I love nature, humanity, sharing and being productive.
Your online lessons are closely followed up by a great deal of music enthusiasts from different cities and some has the means and some not. At a time when internet was something new in our country, your online page (muzikdersi.com) was selected as the 2nd Best Educational Web Site in Turkey at 2006 - Golden Spider Web Awards. How did you foresee that music could be taught online?
It must be in 1991 or 1992 if I am not wrong... I was at my senior year at the secondary school. Walking back home, a question popped up on my mind: "How can one teach guitar lessons or all other music lessons simultaneously in Turkey? How can one teach music to whole country? These questions remained unresponded back then. So, I started my adventure by picking a poetry book at the library to read out to my friends in the neighborhood, and teaching them how to play the guitar. I found answer to my questions in the 2000s when the internet came into our life. I worked on it constantly and repeatedly. These questions were my triggering dynamics. I do not know how the question appeared in my mind, tough. We have teachers in our family. Probably it is a work of the genes.
You are identified with your Youtube channel, “Emre Yücelen Şan Dersi”, which has nearly half a million followers. You began to share posts to teach music seven years ago or so. You came up with a number of teaching videos and all of them are different. Why did you do this demanding job?
I am never bored of any of this. Making good efforts and working hard takes energy of love from the bottom of one's heart. I have a passion for music, so getting tired is only permanent. I love nature, humanity, sharing and being productive. The channel brings me so much good vibes from so many nice people that I cannot think of stopping. As I always say, everything started when I answered one simple question that I received on the channel.
Do you think that you are "a music teacher with the most crowded classroom" in Turkey?
When they see me, they sweetly complain that they can no longer listen to music. Maybe I am just confusing their mind. The more I teach the more I learn. I learn from this country, and all the people that follow my YouTube channel around the world teach me new stuff actually. I nearly have eightyfivethousand followers in foreign countries. Let's say, learning altogether is so much fun.
At your lessons and sessions you give several explanations on how to sing. What are the three factors that are sine qua non for signing?
Passion, faith and ability, of course... You have actualized precious projects but there is one of them that we would in particular like to ask about. You made azan records in original acoustic of the mosques in different modes with different muezzins at seventeen mosques around the city; you made interviews with the muezzins. Considering that azan is recited five times a day in our geography, how do you evaluate it in the history of Istanbul and what can you tell us about the richness of the mode?
I designed a lot of projects about Istanbul including computer game Sultanahmet Camii - Sultanahmet Mosque soundtracks, nature
Sultan I. Ahmet 1609-1616 sounds, city sounds, sound maps, mosques, streets and all... When scrutinizing the culture, azan, which holds a crucial space in cultural dynamics, is to be a milestone. The sounds that we listen to five times a day are important for us as much as the voice of the reciter...
Reciting the azan at the Blue Mosque, in Taksim is very difficult and definitely requires a special skill because the audience is millions of people on a daily basis and they are from all parts of the world. For this reason, devising a project about the mosques and muezzins was an exciting experience for me. What was really beautiful and I will alway recall is that I had a unique chance of listening to and recording the centuries-old magnificent acoustics under a single overhead light when the doors of the mosque were closed at night. I still remember. Those modes are our ancestral heritage.