Manisa’s peaceful Saruhanlı plain welcomed Mert Can Selcuk in October 1983. Orange trees rustled, yet a different rustle mattered more—young Mert’s restless rhythm. A bağlama reached youthful palms; strings greeted fresh curiosity. Melody started to steer his horizon, and the schoolyard gained a new soundtrack.
Conservatory Doors, Dorm-Room Nights
Ege University opened its Turkish Folk Dance wing in 2000. Daylight drilled step counts; dusk granted freedom. A spare clarinet in a back closet stole his attention. By 2001, he locked himself inside a dorm room, mapping finger routes with no tutor in sight. Sheet music lay untouched; ear memory carried every pattern. Moonlight poured through curtains, reed tips soaked in black tea for extra softness.
Istanbul: Study Hall by Dawn, Stage by Dusk
A highway coach rumbled toward Istanbul in 2006. Haliç University welcomed him for graduate study. Lecture mornings, nights devoted to studio takes. Beyoğlu cafés squeezed him between poetry sets. Producers listened once and kept calling. Reed’s colours landed on pop, Arabesque, and folk albums within months. Each takes felt art, every phrase alive.
Television Stages — Laughs via Reed
BKM’s sketch hit Çok Güzel Hareketler Bunlar requested his presence. Scripts demanded swift entrances and exits. He answered with trills, squeaks, and sly glissandi. Audience laughter grew; directors grinned. The reed proved a fitting comic sidekick.
Dubai Horizon
Sunset hues over the Gulf mirror his copper keys today. Five-star hotels request Ottoman suites for Friday brunch; waterfront clubs crave Levant grooves after midnight. He easily shifts style—kanun companions one night, jazz guitar allies the next. Turkish micro bends ride each set while Arabic ornamentation receives equal care.
The Pedagogue’s Creed
His opening line never changes:
“Some instruments can’t even touch microtonal sound. They’re boxed in. Others—like the clarinet—find ways around the system. We cheat the keys, distort the expected, and stretch what’s written. On the clarinet, that means changing the air column’s length. You open or partially close a tone hole, and let the air flow shift. And if that doesn’t get you where you need to go, you mess with the pressure inside your mouth. That’s how you bend it.
Players trained inside tempered systems don’t have these sounds laid out for them. They have to remember them. Call them back when needed. That’s hard. Especially live.
In the German system of clarinet, there are alternative positions that give access to these pitches. I teach those. I measure them on a tuner. I match them with reference tones, so the player hears them and begins to expect them. You train your muscle memory until the finger moves before the brain doubts.
Uşşak, for example, gets misrepresented in most of the older theory books. They flatten it or overcomplicate it. Recent work paints a better picture. I work from that—because clarity matters.
And one more thing: clarinet struggles with transposition. Always has. I show how to shift Uşşak to the most playable zones. And I walk through it with tactics, not formulas. I throw in backing material, grooves, and genres—whatever helps the ear adjust.
You don’t learn this through diagrams. You understand it by feeling where the note lives, then learning how to find it again. Every time.”
Lesson Framework
RE root – Uşşak Tetrachord
• Two-step interval drill
• Three-step interval drill
SOL root – Buselik Pentachord
• Two-step interval drill
• Three-step interval drill
Each segment pairs ear repetition with tuner proof. Learners sing the note first, then mirror it on the reed. Transposition practice closes every class; Uşşak shifts toward singer-friendly keys with fresh tactics each time.
Microtone Mechanics Demystified
Hole half-cover, air-column length, and oral cavity pressure form a triangle in his method. When one side falters, the other two adjust. Tempered-tuning instruments stumble here; memory rescues accuracy. The course unveils alternate vent spots on the German system, sol klarnet, and logs decibel snapshots for each shade. Software supplies audio cues, guiding recall. Weekly updates match learner feedback, so content evolves in real time.
Digital Hallway
YouTube is his annex. Viewers locate reed care tips, makam breakdowns, and raw stage footage. Filters stay away; echo chambers stay away—audio arrives straight from the room. Sol Klarnet headlines each upload, yet every clip carries a twist. Comment sections read like notebook margins: “Ear-training gold,” writes one follower. Another claims the channel saved a festival set.
Signature Setlist
• “Nice Sevdi Nice Yandı, Nice Bağlandı Gönül”
• “Söyle Naz mı Bu Kaş Çatış”
• “Öyle Dudak Büktüp Hor Gözle Bakma”
• “Yıldızlara Baktırdım Fallarda Çıkmıyorsun”
• “Ne Olur Akşamları Gelen Olsan Yanıbaşına”
• “Şarap Koy Kadehime, Kan Doldurma Bu Akşam”
• “Gel Sen Bize Akan Yine Mehtap Görünsün”
• “Ayrılık Yaman Kelime”
• “Evelerin Ölü Kandil”
• “Hicran Oku Sinem Deler”
Every title passes through his filter; safe covers never satisfy him. He tilts phrases, inserts ghosted grace notes, ends on unresolved tension, applause riding the delay.
Reed Workshop Essentials
German bore, medium-soft reed, moderate ligature grip. He trims the tip edges for quicker response. Barrel length alters by venue humidity. Stage engineers trust his ear more than meters. One take often seals the track.
Peer Buzz and Press Lines
Singers praise secure intonation during live modulation. Musicologists cite his microtone clarity in journals. Gulf Press labels him “the reed scholar.” A columnist wrote, “Selçuk fuses Anatolia and Levant inside a single phrase.”
Community Footprint
Local learners line up for private slots. Corporate planners book his trio for cultural evenings. Turkish music gains fresh shine within expat circles thanks to his set lists. Charity concerts for earthquake relief raise funds within a single encore.
Voice from the Source
In a recent podcast, he said plainly: “Technique without emotion feels empty; emotion without technique collapses.” That balance anchors his outlook. Audiences sense it. Learners chase it.
Manisa soil planted his rhythm, Istanbul streets refined his craft, and Dubai skyline flashes his signal each weekend. A reed, a breath, a mind wired for frequency—Mert Can Selçuk proves music stays alive, fluid, and fearlessç
