It's hard to write about yourself. However honest you try to be, everyone wants to talk about their good side. And even when we try to be objective, we rarely stop to ask whether we've slipped into the Rashomon effect — the
way the mind, without asking permission, quietly retells the past in our own favor. Akira Kurosawa made a legendary film about exactly that. But if you stay aware of it, and if you have a good, visual memory, you can see your past a little more clearly. So let me try, as honestly as I can, to tell you my story with the digital world. At sixteen, I was offered a job as the keyboard player in a wedding orchestra. That meant I needed something more mobile than the heavy organ sitting in my house. In 1986 there wasn't much to choose from: either a typical organ, or a synthesizer that would shape my future. I searched and searched, and finally, in the music shop I always haunted, I found the Yamaha DX7. I poked at it for a while, but since I didn't know what frequency modulation was, it felt impossibly complicated — back then I didn't even understand amplitude modulation. I asked the salesman how to make sense of it. "I'm sorry," he said, "I couldn't crack this thing myself. So far only one friend of mine, an electronics guy, has managed it." That was the day I decided to study electronics. In those years there was no internet, nothing like it, and information was hard to come by. My only chance was the library in my city, where I worked my way through countless books to build what I knew. The library was my place of worship — I went at least three times a week, riding at least 40 kilometers on my bicycle each time to borrow my books, read them, and bring them back on time. Eventually I got into a good electronics school. By then I'd grown quite good with the DX7 and had started programming Turkish instruments on it. Together with my love of arranging — building live versions of well-known songs for my orchestra — I'd become an experienced technician and bandleader. By twenty-six, even though we were "only" a wedding orchestra, Gelişim 2000 had real success to its name. In 1993, at the POP Show '93 competition, we crowned it by reaching the top ten against far more established musicians. Music was one path; but in those years I decided to follow another — my love of technology. I see the Yamaha DX7 as my first step into digital. I quickly built a reputation in my city as the DX7 and MIDI expert, and taught countless courses on it. I even gave private lessons to one of Europe's most important pianists — a woman who, thanks to those lessons, earned the top grade in the modern-sounds department of her conservatory. While I was still in electronics school, I applied four years running to an important live-sound rental company — and they refused me every time. Years later, after I'd finished school and was working at a mechanical watchmeasurement company, Gelişim 2000 was recording in a studio when the engineer asked whether I wanted to work live concerts. I said yes — absolutely — and that opened my path. The same company that had rejected me for years because I was Turkish now hired me gladly, because they liked the way I worked. The catch: I would earn a quarter of my previous salary. I had a hard time explaining that to my father. Somehow, it worked itself out. Studio M&M in Schönenwerd was something like Switzerland's technology and recording heart. That's where I first saw d&b. My teacher — and my boss — Dani Meyer supported me enormously, and gave me incredible lessons in
vision and in science. It was through him that I finally understood the theory of relativity, though I still struggled to accept that the speed of light is the only constant. At that company I met Jürg Jecklin — the man who created the world-famous Jecklin recording technique — and he taught me the benefits and the future of digital. He wanted me on all of his classical recordings, and the company, not wanting to disappoint him, was willing to send an amateur like me, even though we had no shortage of experienced people. Jecklin recorded classical concerts with a technique of his own, close in spirit to ORTF, and for him teaching was nothing short of worship. In those days — 1994 — he recorded everything to digital media on a Yamaha DM100 digital mixer. The ADATs had only just appeared, and the only digital formats were AES/EBU. I once asked him why he didn't record analog. Because analog's headroom sits below 70 dB, he said, and he wouldn't accept that. I told him Dolby could widen it. But he confessed he believed Dolby — working by compression and expansion — corrupted the very essence of the instruments. At the time, it made sense to me. He had a saying: "Even the best microphones in the world, sadly, have hiss." He would never give up his Schoeps. A while later I began my training at SAE Munich, where they taught the Jecklin technique — and when I mentioned I'd worked with the man himself, I became the favorite of every instructor there. They would hand me their own special microphones when I went out to record jazz. When they taught us his technique, they gave us the rules: the angle will be this, the distance will be that. When I asked Jecklin himself for those numbers, he just laughed, and said:
In recording I have only one rule — my ear. A well-trained ear matters more than building a setup. Sound shifts in dynamics across different spaces and environments, and you have to compensate for them. Lean your back against setups, and you'll never master those dynamics. Forget the silly rules — train your ear, and act on it. Through Jürg Jecklin I didn't only gain my first experience on digital desks; I began to truly understand why I had to train my ear so hard. I could be as orderly as any German — but to be different, the way Jecklin was, I had to know exactly what I was doing, what I was hearing, and what the variables were. As exact a science as acoustics appears, psychological factors complicate every certainty with shifting dynamics. But the aim was never to reach the result — it was to come as close to it as possible. That is why, in our field, you climb the ladder of success not the moment you achieve what you imagined, but the moment you come close to it. In 1994, the Yamaha 01 (ProMix) arrived. None of us at the company was sure whether this little digital mixer was meant for live concerts or for small studios. But I was sure. Gelişim 2000 needed exactly this machine: two effects units, parametric EQ on the outputs, fully parametric EQ on the inputs, and two dynamics processors — perfect for us. Ignoring everyone who insisted I'd embarrass myself in front of an audience, we started using the 01 at our concerts — sorry, our weddings. In the end, as Yamaha's main dealer, I shattered that prejudice and had everyone carrying their own 01 to their shows. So yes — "Digital Yılmaz" fits me for a reason. The years passed. I came to Turkey in 1996 and took the role of Technical Director for the Rumeli Hisarı concerts. I toured the country with countless artists, always on analog desks — only in a few studios did the years go by with a Yamaha 02R. In 1998, military service forced me back, and although it was hard, I somehow restarted my career in Switzerland. In 2000 I returned to Istanbul once more and became Technical Director at the VOICE company. In a short time we pulled the company together and opened its path with new investments. Around then my closeness with Atlantik grew, thanks to the Behringer Sharks — the Sharks had delay, and back then there weren't many delay units on the market. The pillars at the Günay restaurant made delays necessary. That gave me the chance to get more involved with Mackie, and the Mackie SRM450 spread across our country precisely because of it. But the friends who called themselves "professionals" judged by their plastic prejudice rather than their ears, and, as always, dismissed me for going "cheap." And yet the passive monitors — and even the active ones — were so badly tuned that they genuinely hurt the human ear. The SRM450s, even a touch bright from the factory, were nearly flat. I was just as prejudiced at first, but my ear quickly caught their naturalness and honesty. Fine — say I was wrong; but when all those musicians said those monitors had a sound like no other, were they wrong too? The SRM450 took
off, and the rental sector in our country started down a different road. We all witnessed that change — for better or worse. In those days I was hunting for digital-desk alternatives, and the only mixer with plenty of auxes was the Mackie d8b. So we bought one and started using it at the Günay restaurant. When Alp Turaç and Cem Büyükuzun used that desk without the slightest difficulty, I saw very clearly that our future would be digital desks. I toured with Tarık — the star of Biri Bizi Gözetliyor — on that digital desk. Since only 12 of its inputs were suitable for microphones, we added 12 channels of Behringer tube preamps to reach 24, brought the keyboards in on stereo channels, and our 32-channel rig was perfectly adequate for the year 2000. Twelve mixes on the outputs were plenty. Digital patching opened all sorts of new possibilities. Since two effects weren't enough, we added two more from outside; we even fitted some outputs with graphic EQ, shaping the digital future in a single chassis. Back then, the only option for the live sector worldwide was Innovason — and it sat far above our country's budget. You don't always have to use advanced technology at its cutting edge; there is always an economical way to solve a problem. To succeed, you absolutely need a vision — and the heart to carry it out. That, of course, means risk. And without risk, you are neither different nor a pioneer. After I left Voice, they broke the Mackie up as "useless" and sold it to a studio. The digital revolution had stalled halfway. Then, after a long silence, while I was at ATY, I got offers for the Yamaha PM1D; Atempo wanted to support me with very good prices, but my company couldn't pay them. With no return on the investment, I let it go. CTI had started up with the Yamaha DM2000, and in the end Yamaha moved first to Compel, and the PM5D arrived. Compel had my support back then, and I got the chance to meet Yamaha closely. After Ertekin took over the dealership, the PM5D was launched and trained in Turkey. As ATY, after Altınçizme, we bought the PM5D and began using it. Then, after the M7CL launch, Proses acquired the desk — and, as it happened, I was the one who set it up on its first jobs. And when the Yamaha LS9 came out, I used it right away at the Balans concert hall, with Işın Karaca.
Vision, a trained ear, and the heart to take the risk. That's the whole story — and it's still the work.
Yılmaz Yeniyol
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