Today we’d like to introduce you to Two Turtles Duo .
Hi Two Turtles Duo, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing our story. We are Mike Reyes and Rafa Alvarez and we are the Two Turtles Duo. We have been friends and playing together since our time at SDSU around 2013. We would regularly hang out and jam together between classes and quickly became friends. We have been playing and writing music together since then. We both taught lessons at the same Guitar Center for a while. And after the Pandemic we officially formed the Two Turtles Duo and took steps to record and release our first album, “Crossing Over” which came out in May of 2023. We are currently working on writing our second album and hope to start recording it this year.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been a mixed road. Our journey has been a bit of a roller coaster. Musically, we compliment each other really well. We have a lot of similar influences and the writing and arranging has always been really easy. We have been able to adapt and blend our styles seamlessly, even when we have different ideas.
The tough part of our journey has always been the business side of things. As artists we had to learn how to become entrepreneurs. It was a steep learning curve figuring out how to market ourselves and treat our duo as a business and not just a fun hang/jam session. Also Rafa had his first child recently, which was exciting, but that was another learning curve in terms of balancing time and schedules. We have learned a lot in this process, but still have a long way to go.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In short we are primarily a Jazz Duo; although we do have friends we hire for gigs when we want a larger sound. For example at Brew Game Plus last year, (a video game music festival) we hired our friend and resident artist Kyra Recabaren to play bass with us. She is also the one who did the artwork for our album.
Our style is a unique blend of different genres and sounds that we have cultivated over the years of playing together. We specialize in arranging video game music and other pop/jazz standards. We like to blend jazz, samba/bossa nova with funk and rock. Mike and I like to joke around a lot, and you may be able to hear that within our music. For example, we enjoy quoting other tunes in our music, when we can, as little easter eggs for our listeners. The last tune on our album has a pretty big quote in it which we thought was cool.
We are most proud of our album we released in 2023, “Crossing Over.” That took us a lot of work to put together, get recorded and then released. It was well worth it and people seemed to really take positively to it.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
We think risk taking is important in our industry, at least musically. Deciding on how to blend certain styles of music and how complex we want our songs to be is something we think about constantly, because we want our music to be fun and entertaining. We think that if you don’t take any risks musically, your music can end up bland and uninteresting and if you go too far, it can be uninviting or obtrusive to listeners.
On the business end, making our album was definitely a risk for us. It was our first time investing a large amount of money into our band and our art. However, having something tangible, like a CD, is an awesome accomplishment that we are very proud of, and we will continue to make and record music we are passionate about.
Pricing:
- $200/hr as a duo
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.twoturtlesduo.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twoturtlesduo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twoturtlesduo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TwoTurtlesDuo
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/album/0OOPRSQ7PCsZZAFeWriRfC
Image Credits
Kyra Recabaren Mike Reyes Rafael Alvarez Elaire Andrade Sean Collins
