René Amtenbrink was born 1982 in Germany. Starting 1990 he received a 10 year private classical education for drums and percussion at the Music and Arts School in Bielefeld, including playing the vibraphone occasionally. He joined a group of the school's percussion ensemble Bi-Cussion, that attended national music competitions. Highlight of this journey was touring through Poland for 10 days, where René gave his first autographes in diaries of young music students.

For the first three decades of his musical career, René focussed on playing drums. He started to play and professionally record a first song with a band when he was 14 years old, while pursuing a non-musical career path besides. As a young adult, he deepened his skills for several years with professional drum teachers and attended international drum workshops. Overall, he served a dozen bands as a drummer playing around 800 gigs in total so far in numerous styles (Funk, Soul, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Blues, Rockabilly to name main genres. Additionally being a HipHop DJ at some stage and serving the military for one year as a drummer).

After experiencing a personal crisis in 2012, he started his journey into the spiritual world. His career path with a first job graduation in IT and a diploma degree in applied studies of business administration seemed no longer suitable after a burn-out as a Call-Centre Manager of 100 employees. He got back into playing and teaching music for a living for several years and occasionally gave autographs onto the bodies of some groupies.

After some experiments, he was unintentionally and suddenly pulled into a rather unpleasant extraordinary state of being that no doctor could explain to him. Later, some alternative healer gave him an explaination, that the brain circuit number 5 opened and if this happens, it is normal for strange things to happen.

Feeling the need to understand everything, he took a one year training in basic medical education and found good guidance with a mentor for a decade. After many books, seminars and travels, René became able to sense energies for the first time in 2019 at the Bosnian Pyramids.

Chilling with the group of volunteers at the top of the pyramid after digging in the tunnels. Click to enlarge.

What was just theory before, started to become a reality here. Later he also learned to establish a deep connection from heart to heart and soul to soul with exercise partners for specific practices, both in person and remotely across the distance of countries. However, there was not much room to apply it and so there was little reason to pursue it further for now.

During his drumming career he recorded several albums of music (CDs) with various bands, explored several studios and home recording setups and got picked as the drummer for the fastest bassist at that time (around 2005). At some recording situation, another musician chose somehow to rest in the room where the drums were recorded. He later said something like "The drums were so harmonious, I fell asleep and had a really good rest". That was one of the most interesting compliments. René worked for a cajon manufacturer, gave cajon group workshops and played at music fairs. He taught drums several years at a music school in Germany, besides giving private lessons. He was what is called a working musician.

René's badges from 11 musicfairs (left, +2 visitor passes as a guest on gigs) His "non-music"-career and some memories (vertically) 5 badges as a sound and light engineer (mid-right) 9 badges as DJ and 10 badges as drummer (right, +1 lanyard with the latest events as musicteacher and choir-member in Sweden). Click to enlarge

And so came the time, where it all seemed to be enough of everything. When you work with music, you sometimes say yes to things, that seem to be alright at first. "I somehow stopped drumming for myself - I only played when I had a reason to. A bit later I woke up and realised: I cannot do this anymore." After a few years since the first crisis in the non-music career path, the joy in making music was gone, leading to feeling unable to continue. The second personal crisis.

In 2020 he put his drumming career in Germany to an end and moved to northern Sweden to take a break from everything, enjoying the stillness of the surrounding nature with huge forests and countless lakes. He considered himself a retired musician. He found himself in a rented house with an old piano and a bass guitar with two out of four strings left on it. At first, René started playing with only two fingers on the piano, remembering the bits and pieces from his days playing the vibraphone.

During the past decades, nothing in René resonated with those melodic instruments and he had a hard time learning melodies. He was only able to understand drums with their structure in rhythm and being the time keeper in the band. Now also the melodic and harmony part in music was accessible, which felt like becoming whole not only regarding musical capabilities, but also on a personal level, developing the side that seemed hidden and missing for so long.

And so, after a while, he became friends with the piano, that offered to develop René's own improvisational style, eventually with all fingers. His approach differs from the usual way of playing the piano, due to transferring a lot of phrasing from the rhythmic components of drumming for example. With those things learned, it was time to get back into music. René became a music teacher at a public school in Sweden, mainly giving 1:1 lessons in drums, piano and guitar.

In March 2021, René received the message while meditating, that now is the time to buy one of those blue handpans. He wrote the company to ask if they would be available in 432Hz as well and got the reply: "You are able to order it (they were released for Special Order just a few days ago)! ... Would you like to reserve yourself one of the first such instruments?"

They were not yet on their website. And so René began to go out in nature to explore the handpan, while getting inspiration from and connection to nature.

In 2022, when he tried to express on the piano a lot of inspiration he had received at a recently attended seminar, something happened that enabled him to go far beyond his current possibilities of piano playing. The resulting music was recorded and published as an album under the title "Birth of Something". This was his first Piano-Channeling Session.

Combining this way of piano playing with what he had learned in the spiritual world, René started experimenting with friends and played piano for them online and offline. They not only seemed to like it, but often got remarkable reactions in this connection. One friend was even able to notice a white light entering René's head when playing and then radiating out of his heart towards hers, while sitting across the piano in front of him.

While for many people this realm is not accessible, René's Piano-Channeling is translating the spiritual realm into music to make it audible for everyone. Here something like a feedback loop is established and can touch the listener in unexpected ways. In this way, the audience can use the piano music as a mirror to connect with their essence and feel themselves, which may express in an individual way. This experience shows up surprisingly well both during 1:1 sessions as well as in groups. Listening to the recordings of sessions, while giving a general taste of it, can only represent a fraction of the experience. The heart to heart and soul to soul interactions only happen live.

In June 2023, René played his first public concert as a multi-instrumentalist. Here he is in the middle of the shift in mindset as a musician: While he was a team member in a band as a drummer before, serving the other bandmembers and playing along the song chosen, he is now the only one on stage. Now he needs to decide just by himself: Which song to play? And with what instrument? At this stage it was somehow boring to play more than one song with the same instrument.

This is tremendously fun to explore everything, there is only one issue: It needs a lot of equipment. For a 30 minute concert, René used some guitars, some parts of a drumset, a cajon, a keyboard, a vibraphone, loudspeakers, amplifiers, cables, microphones and some lights to make it pretty. The handpan was left home though.

And to just make it a bit more fun, this was held underground, which means the equipment needs to be transferred into another car, that is approved to go into the active mining site. Which has luckily not just the same size, it is the same car. And somehow for a number of reasons, I felt a bit at home there.

And it sounded like this (all instruments you here in the background are recorded previously by myself) - playing that old song from my early days at the music and arts school and enjoying the wonderful acoustics in the underground church.

After two years of being a music teacher, it was time for René to apply what he learned on all the new instruments: The fun in music was more than back. His mother gave him to the music and arts school, because he was drumming with his fingers on tables and stuff. It is just inside and wants to be expressed.

And so, there was the opportunity to play in an iglu, before leaving the northern hemisphere. Also a rare thing to do and to explore. What to play there? And wearing a jacket would most certainly look boring. I spent two days recording several ideas. Besides the drum video on my main-page, I recorded also the following one. I realize, I get tired of writing about me in the third person.

At this time I entered a circle of people, where we support each other as mentors, starting with the first phase of finding the fire within us and learning how to communicate our dreams. This helped me phrasing the title and the end of the video.

Playing with the heaviest sticks that I have and being in an environment below 0 degrees Celsius, led to breaking my first ever drumhead. Recorded in this video.

In May 2024 I already gave my goodbye concert in Sorsele, as finishing the schoolyear in a month brings in a lot of things to do at once and people go into holiday immediately after. So I organised me a nice room (named Filadelfia) in town with a lovely grand piano. There was most often a lot of support for my music ideas here.

On this grand piano, I have played piano in public the first time spontaneously a while before, while we were having a event with the choir amongst others. I somehow did not know what to play, I just knew I wanted to play solo piano here. There was no time to test the piano before. So I just started slowly improvising some first notes, that developed into a beautiful song. I got good feedback for it, one woman said while she was listening to my song, she had images coming up inside her, that she shared with me. That was the first moment I realized, how much potential my improvising may have.

And so I gave my first own piano-concert 5th of May 2024 - this time with just a few other instruments. Here I gave also the first Piano-Channeling on stage in front of an audience. I tested several ideas, mainly around the piano, with and around some of my favourite melodies that came up so far. Many people suggested, I should play the tunes longer to get better into their feeling. After the concert, I was allowed to have the room a bit longer myself and so I used the setup to record several ideas. At the very end of the day, I entered a flow state and channeled "Filadelfia Flow" at a length of 25 minutes.

After having played in nature through all the seasons with the handpan, recording in an underground church, challenging myself plaiying in an iglu and playing on my first grand piano, I felt I have done everything that was on offer for me on this kind of large music playground. Thanks for every bit of that, Sweden. And now I have found "my thing": Piano-Channeling.

In September 2024, René moved to Cyprus to escape the cold and dark winters in Sweden. To foster his solo-musical career, he first focused in editing and publishing music with various instruments recorded previously in the northern hemisphere. In November 2024, René took his Piano-Channeling to the spiritual well-being exhibition "Mind Body Spirit" (MBS) in Limassol. This was the first live test in public, playing for people he had never met before. Playing 23 sessions for individuals here, he received more than enough wonderful feedback to start offering this unique experience to a wider audience.

Today René has more than five hours of music with all the instruments on streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, which add up to more than 50 released tracks. He is invited to play live around Europe as well as for online groups and individuals.

When releasing his first own music in 2023 he needed some kind of artist name to publish it under. Here the name "music for gods" was given to him. René plays from the divine part in him, to the divine part of you, which translates to the level where we are all connected - whether you prefer to call it the universe, the quantum field, divinity or something else - this is up to you. With this art, René is giving autographes on soul-level today for those who are on their journey to become more whole and want to elevate their consciousness and awareness.

I am art.