The Netherlands

Çağlayan Yıldız went to the Netherlands in 2000. At Amsterdam Conservatory, he studied jazz guitar, bass, composition and arranging between 2000 and 2002. Finding that the guitar department’s bebop focus and the bass department’s pop-jazz and funk emphasis did not fit his interests, he turned towards composition and arranging. His studies included work with Misha Mengelberg and Theo Loevendie. Big Bad Bug Band was one of the ensembles of his Amsterdam years.

In Utrecht he studied composition with Henk Alkema, completing his bachelor’s degree in 2004 and his composition master’s in 2006. He also completed the EMMA master’s at Utrecht University’s KMT in 2006. His electronic-music teacher was René Uijlenhoet, whose classes he attended at Rotterdam Conservatory.

Alongside studying, he taught at Amsterdam Muziekschool Aslan and worked as a music copyist and editor at Molenaar Music in 2004–2006. He gave workshops in Rotterdam and Utrecht. His composition Thingy in Three Movements was first performed by Ensemble Ziggurat at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw in 2005.

His designed free improvisation with ODD-TETT brought written passages together with music created in the moment. In Signs for Improvisation, written and graphic signs helped define the decisions left to performers. His 2006 thesis, Standard Guitar Tuning: A Historical Mistake?, turned the all-fourths tuning he had adopted in the nineties into a systematic comparison. Some questions behind his later educational tools had thus been explored both on stage and on paper.

What the thesis counted

The three-note chord voicings compared required 12 shapes in all-fourths tuning and 36 in standard tuning. This was not a measurement of learning speed. Yıldız also considered standard tuning’s advantages for certain open-string chords and existing repertoire, examining what a tuning makes easier for the music a player wants to make.

Two notes from Amsterdam and Utrecht

Big Bad Bug Band received the Amsterdam Conservatory Original Group Award in 2001. Yıldız completed his composition bachelor’s degree in Utrecht cum laude in 2004.