Today we’d like to introduce you to Alen Konakoglu.
Alen, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am a Drummer, Music Producer, and Engineer. I was born in Istanbul/Turkey. My musician journey started as a Rock music Drummer at the age of 16 influenced by the Queen’s drummer the great Roger Taylor. After a couple of years, I started to play with Turkey’s popular artists and bands.
I have always loved the engineering part of the music business. I have played drums in many tracks, but in particular one, I didn’t like my drum sound, and I thought to my self “I must learn how to record and mix good sounding drums and I have started to search Recording Engineer programs in the USA.
In 1999, I came to Los Angeles for Recording engineering program in Musicians Institute Hollywood. After graduate, I started as an intern in Chick Corea’s previously owned famous Mad Hatter Recording Studios. During that time, I also worked with Legendary names Steve Smith, Scott Handerson, Victor Wooten, Virgil Donati as a Recording Engineer.
In 2000, I returned back to Turkey and started to work as an audio engineer and drummer in various studios. In 2010, I opened my own recording studio in Istanbul and started to produce record mix music with popular artists of Turkey.
In 2011, I produced a song Called “Tuttu firlatti ” sang by popular artist “Gokce,” and it went platinum. after that I produced tv series theme song written by another successful singer “Aydilge,” and the song won 20 awards for best tv series theme music category.
I also had the chance to work with Grammy Winning saxophone player Eric Marienthal, Keyboardist Vahagn Stepanyan, Anthony Crawford, Eric Moore, Melvin Lee Davis, Feodor Dasumov, Percussion Guru Richie Gajate-Garcia.
In Jan 2018 came to Los Angeles to do a mixing session for legendary bass player Melvin Lee Davis’s album called “Genre: Music Chapter 2.” In October 2018, I moved to Los Angeles to collaborate and create music with American and International Artists.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Like every musician’s story, My journey wasn’t easy. It was full of disappointments, arguments, challenges, struggles, etc.but I love the challenge. It is not easy to be a musician and eventually raising yourself as an artist. Being an artist requires a lot of inspiration to create art and the world these days won’t let you find the right inspiration you need. But LA is a very inspirational city for artists I’m loving it.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
The Kulube music productions was founded by me in 2010 in Istanbul/Turkey. I have produced a bunch of hit songs in the Turkish music industry. My productions past over 300 million views on YouTube.
I am specialized in planning creating music recording and mixing. Usually, the client comes to my studio with a vocal melody and lyrics. I blend them with my ideas and melodies, or I create for them.
I transform these melodies and lyrics into a fully arranged recorded and mixed music. As a multi-instrumentalist, I can play guitars, bass, drums, percussion, and keyboards. That means I don’t need to wait for session musicians and I can easily lay down my ideas into these instruments as I want.
That is also a benefit for the client because the result is always fast, good and efficient. I produce Rock, Metal Poprock, Pop, and Ethnic Music.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
In my future plans, I want to build a new recording studio in the LA. Also, I started to work on my album. It is gonna be re-arranged Rock versions of old/new pop songs with the original singers from Turkey.
I already released three songs on YouTube then I decide to do an album all songs will be re-arranged and played by me. Also, I will Produce five songs for Turkish Artist with American Musicians.
Contact Info:
- Website: alenkonakoglu.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alenkonakoglu
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alenkonakogluofficial
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alenkonakoglu
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