Songwriting with Dennis A.

"Dennis Aydemir (he/him), aka 'Deniz of the Bees', is a singing-songwriting frontman in the indie\art rock genre, and the director and producer for the documentary series ‘Time Travels Through Sound’. Dennis is a quadrilingual Berklee College of Music graduate whose creative impulsions are rooted in language preservation, nostalgia, nature and sound. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon and travels across the US, Japan and Europe to make music while doing organic farming." I believe in a holistic approach in the learning/teaching process of songwriting. The path to writing a good song is not a highway. It is a vast grassland, a sea, a desert, a tundra. Together we will learn to navigate the streams of emotions to get to our truths and find a unique voice(s) to express these truths. As the son of an English teacher and an archeological translator it is possible that the joy of teaching and linguistics is intrinsic to my family. That joy is the fuel that drives my passion for teaching songwriting. It's very rewarding to teach harmony, guitar, throat singing, songwriting and lyric writing to students and then get to watch as some of these individuals make music with artists from all around the world! During my Berklee years I focused on some wonderful concepts such as microtonal music, harmony in Brazilian song and lyric writing with legends such as David Fiuczynski, Pat Pattison, Simon Shaheen among others. Although this period helped shape my ideas as a musician, it wasn't until I started traveling the world to learn from and film folk musicians of dying traditions that I truly gained perspective on what songwriting really means to humanity as a whole. Some of my professional achievements include playing solo guitar with a symphony orchestra, opening for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for an audience of 15K+ people, and touring Japan as a solo artist. As a lyricist I am definitely influenced by, but not limited to, artists such as Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell and similar musicians from the 60s-70s, and contemporary artists such as Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, and Porcupine Tree. However, I listen to an eclectic mix of music from Mali, Japan, Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, Bulgaria, Tuva as well as classic rock, psychedelic rock, indie, art rock and so on.