Cengiz Koroglu
About
Hi everyone I'm Cengiz, I fell in love with the guitar and music at the age of 10. I've been learning and playing ever since, 40+ years of performing and 14 years of teaching. I performed in many countries from UK to Australia, and in studio recordings of countless pop-rock songs and albums, 100+ millions of listens and views.
I'm actively teaching since 2012. My foundation is classical guitar but I specialize in pop, rock, blues, indie and alike. Big majority of my students were long term, 3-6 years. I've helped 100+ students grow both their technical skills and understanding of music, and collaborating with different instrumentalists in a band. This was exclusively in Istanbul Drama Sanat Akademisi, where I taught in both 1on1 and in a group/orchestra settings. Since the pandemic in 2020 I continue to teach online.
I also do studio productions, arranging, mixing, mastering. Some examples can be found on my Spotify playlist named "Cengiz Koroglu Productions".
More background in the credentials section.
Teaching Style
I'm a relaxed, friendly person with lots of patience, but I take my job seriously. Whether you are a beginner or intermediate I will listen to you, understand where you want to go, but then put in front of you the requirements in order to get there.
I will teach you at your own pace, guide you to develop strong technique, equip you with enough theory for the style you may be interested in.
No matter what style, you will need a good technique in order to sound good, and enough understanding of music language (theory) in order to avoid hitting a brickwall later on.
Although I will not turn down a student who only wants to learn a few easy songs quickly, I recommend at least a basic foundation of theory which underlies all western musical styles.
Curriculum
No particular one, but there is a basic foundation though. We set the goals together with the student, then I tailor the subjects according to those goals. I want to see my students "killing it" in live band performances or production audio/video recordings.
I can come up with special exercises on the spot, like a special cure to help overcome difficulties with technique. Even if you play just one note, it has to sound good right?
Either me or the student may insert any kind of document or video related to the subject at hand. I might share screen with Logic Pro. I like to use digital whiteboard and draw/write concepts by hand. I do write charts of songs we learn and/or analyze in MuseScore. I encourage learning songs by ear, without seeing any scores or tabs, and then we write the chart together, I find its an excellent way to develop the ear.
For students who are more serious I like to start with explaining the phenomenon of the sound itself, and how it becomes a note, a scale, a chord, a progression, than music.
I also encourage students to learn all what the "circle of fifths" holds, at least. It's the core of all western music, it's a perfect tool for understanding the language of music, for understanding the ingredients of which music is made of, understanding the thought process of people who wrote the music, how concepts evolved etc... One who learns to play chords and solos without understanding the underlying music language, surely will hit a wall later on, when it comes to do more serious business.
With intermediate students we can go deeper into scales/modes, harmony, progressions, soloing or improvisation.
Credentials & Affiliations
I became a guitarist at that magical moment when I saw this guitar teacher Petar Rakiç playing an unbelievably beautiful Lobos piece. I was 10, I became his student and graduated from part time music school in then Yugoslavia, now Kosovo.
In my 3rd year, in 1986, I won the competition for classical guitar at the national level of Serbia. I played a 45 minute recital at my graduation. Immediately afterward I formed a pop-rock band and switched to electric guitar.
I studied and graduated from İstanbul University Faculty of Mass Communications (Radio-TV-Cinema) while working extensively in the music field. From 1992 up to around 2012 I worked mostly as a gig + studio session + touring guitarist, a producer of many hit songs including for SONY BMG, and broadcast sound mixing engineer for TRT Music channel in Turkey.
From 2012 to date (14 years) my focus is on teaching. Although I still do studio productions, teaching is something I find sacred. During my work in "Istanbul Drama Sanat Akademisi", every year (except for pandemic years) I did a closing concert showing the progress of students, where I play with them in various band settings. You can find tens and tens of those videos on my YouTube channel (Cengiz Koroglu)