This chapter is about diving into Piano-Channeling and taking it to a next level also in visuals and marketing.

What is Piano-Channeling?

Hear me sharing the story, how it came to me getting into Piano-Channeling, while having two sound examples of live Piano-Channeling sessions.

I was sceptical at first if a digital piano can achieve what I want, enjoy and need for Piano-Channeling. I loaded my preferred piano-sounds into it and adjusted it to 432 Hz, which I checked sounded good before I bought it. I am very happy with this digital piano. Apart from a ready-to-record sound, the feeling when playing it comes very close to the feeling when playing the keys of an acoustic piano too. And it is always in tune. Time saving. And easy to transport. Yeah!

My friend Kira filmed all of this footage and gave valueable tips how to tell this story, when she visited me in Cyprus.

Exhibition Mind Body Spirit

16.-17. Nov 2024 - just after finishing the previous video - I played at the spiritual wellbeing fair "Mind Body Spirit" (MBS) in Limassol, Cyprus. This was the first real test in public, playing for random people that I have not met before. I may publish some of the songs later.

About half of the sessions got normal good feedback. People smile after it and so on.

And the other half were sessions with more connection, quite specific for the recipient. Some of the feedbacks:

A) One of the most surprising sessions: I somehow played things that had a lot of disharmony and it was pretty much against my music style and taste. Yet I felt for me like continuing to play that way. These are the moments where one can get unsure, but I learned to trust a process like this. This session got the following feedback: "I heared my inner world and understood it. It was a marvelous mess. Loved every second." It was the 13th session for me that day and when I saved the song, he said "13 is my lucky number.".

B) I played the first time for a "non-adult", an eleven year old girl. "In a few words, it felt magical" she wrote. Find her feedback on the first page with her attempt of writing english. Cute. Her mother helped her correcting it a bit.

C) "Feels like you played a bit of every part of my life. It moves things on so many levels."

D) A musician said: „it was very specific and like a poem sonata about my inner world and emotions. I would not write this music myself but it was so much for me.. I loved the scale and the chord progressions you chose.“

E) One woman was not feeling ready to go after the session. Some moments later she cried a bit and I stayed present to hold her. She was very thankful for everything.

F) In one case the session was able to unblock something stuck. I felt that his energy came so much more to life and he smiled all over the place afterwards. So grateful to see I can do such shifts.

G) "You can probably help me"

Find some more written feedbacks in the pictures.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

Usually I needed to explain a bit about what it is to the people coming by. But people also talk to each other .. so one came and just sat down for a session without asking a thing. One came back for a second session. I could not be happier with all this feedback.

It is now a tested, profound, unique experience.

The two days at the exhibition also included two people expressing, they are not ready for it. Which is good to be able to hear your inner voice and take only the experience you need in the moment.

Oh and I was wondering how exhausted I would feel after such a trip. Somehow I was not exhausted. I would have liked to play more sessions even at the end of the two days. Even the last one was with a good connection. My brain was quite full with all the impressions, but somehow this seems irrelevant for the quality of the sessions. And I got better with every session in establishing a link to the person.

Later I selected 11 out of those 23 sessions played at the exhibition as album:

The album cover is taken from the hotel room there.
11 songs, adds up to 49 published piano songs in total so far.

Piano-Channeling Interview with Anastasiya

A bit later, I met Anastasiya in Cyprus, reaching out for a massage, which I gave her in combination with Piano-Channeling afterwards. This video combines an interview with a full Piano-Channeling Session online.

In the next months, I gave a number of Piano-Channeling sessions for groups and individuals, while I was wondering what to do with all the music coming out of it. If I would put this on my existing Youtube or music-streaming-channels, it would just flood it and one would barely find the music released earlier.

And how to name those? Should the name reflect that it is sessions, like "Soul 1, Session 3" so the listener can start with a neutral position of hearing it, to see what it does for her or him? Should I cut a session into different parts so you can skip to the favourite parts or just release it as one 20-30 minutes piece of music, to keep the meaning of the session as a whole?

In February 2025, when I was finished with releasing all the music recorded in Sweden, the plan was to get into marketing it, to drive traffic on those songs. I knew otherwise not much is going to happen with them. I had bought myself some course about how to make it on spotify/online and I would have been ready to try the strategy suggested there: Buying ads on spotify or meta, until the algorithm on the streaming platform kicks in and delivers the song further. To reach that point for an unknown artist, this can take close to 1000 USD. Most give up after spending just a few hundreds and never get their money invested back. Without the algorithm's boost, your song will not get profitable and the key is to get enough data (about listeners who like the song), so it can work for you (and it does want to distribute new good music). And it was also made clear, that the song has to be good, a bad song will only fail faster with advertising and not be profitable. Which means as well, that you have to find the right audience.

Meanwhile I was invited to play in the Netherlands in July and preparation of marketing was starting there. I knew it will be tough to get people to a concert for an unknown artist like me. Thankfully the organizer found another artist who has a similar story regarding life and music as me, travelling all the way from Bali to Amsterdam. And a bit later, she got another artist from the Netherlands to support with guitar. Together in this setup with the organizer, it felt really good to go for it. So, let's see, how this works out.

And so, as I felt ready to go for the next level and focus on advertising, I asked somebody with experience in the online music industry I met in Cyprus, what she would suggest, before I put money into advertising. She suggested the music is too diverse, I would need to split every type of music into different accounts (one for handpan, one for piano, etc) in order to find the audience for each. Otherwise it will be too confusing for people, which also leads to a situation where the algorithm can not deliver help. And ads are too expensive, there is other ways like playlisting and collabs and organic growing through social media. Well.

Together with some other advise from her - to go for professional visuals, which represent the vibe of the music - that meant more or less: Starting from scratch again, at least in terms of marketing. I have never thought much about who my audience really is, why specifically they would like to listen to the music and where exactly I want to go with the music myself. Hm. My music mentor also suggested to focus on just one music project, otherwise it is not possible to become really good at something. My music probably needs to be one level better - and yes, my music is not too professional, it is DIY. I don't like to hear that, but it is good that I hear that. Because it is pretty complex to do all of it at once and I can get lost in trying to do all the things. Some artists also just focus on either the online world or playing shows - which again is already working in completely different ways.

So, after a bit of debating with myself, I decided to follow her advice and create new accounts for Piano-Channeling on Youtube and Streaming-Services. Before I was like "I don't want to split it, it creates even more complexity to manage for me". But now I know this is key to make it work. Which means, I also need to restrict myself and stay focused on one thing. Experience tells me, for me it can get boring after a while and I need something else occasionally in terms of making music, but for now I go all in on Piano-Channeling.

This was a process going over two months and with that decision made, my first Piano-Channeling concert was coming up in April. 10 days before the event, just one ticket was sold, and the venue wrote me an email that they are worried. I knew from other artists, that people decide late about going to a concert. So let's stay calm. A bit later I had a few more tickets sold and so I went for asking somebody to film it properly.

Then it was time for the concert itself. I was happy to have 14 people in the evening, which were mainly laying down on the ground, which was exactly what the small room could handle. Maybe "concert" is not the right word for this, maybe it is more a soundjourney, but I have to get used to this for myself ... for this stage I still think in terms of a concert for such an event.

Prior I made some thoughts on how I want the setup to be for this ideally and it was a first try on many levels. For example I decided to rotate the grand piano, so I can look straight to the audience. Which is something odd in the regular world of playing piano. The lid had to be opened as there was some rattling noise at some notes in the middle, otherwise the piano distributes the sound well even if the lid would be closed.

In this location, the piano was in a small extra room attached to the main building, which sounded a bit boomy and made the recording difficult to mix. So, I got into mixing pianos ... asking my trusted sound engineer and Chat-GPT, watching Youtube-Videos and experimenting with a bunch of plugins and settings. Starting with the question "What sound is suitable for my music?" and ending with a pleasant sound in my ears.

This took a month to develop for me. But I forgot to check how it would sound on a mobile phone (once in a while, when I try not to be too perfect): there was an issue with the high notes I found out when the first video was first released - it produced very unpleasant sounds on such small speakers, you just want to click it away ... so, one more round of adjusting and getting deeper into piano sound editing. Oh and then I also gave it a try to change the color from purple (stage light, old recommendation) to blue (new preferred color), while not messing up too much with the skin color and so. After some hours of tweaking, I was finally happy. Just to give you an idea, what is behind a short piece of music video like this:

This is the first released video at my new Youtube-Channel, dedicated entirely on Piano-Channeling.

I got pretty good feedbacks from the concert (testimonials to be found at my Piano-Channeling page). So I decided to do another one, in a different town in Cyprus.

Here I wanted to try, what marketing would do - I hired the crew who organizes the spiritual wellbeing fair that I went to. Also some people may know me from the fair nearby to the place I picked.

I also invited some friends for the second concert, but left the advertising mainly to that crew, as I also had not many contacts in that town. I was happy to see it in their newsletter and they have done a bunch of other activities. But: zero people came to the concert because of that.

The concert itself went well and I tried a few other new ideas, like using my voice and sing to the music of the piano. All the 4 people who showed up were really happy.

But in terms of marketing and financially it was frustrating. I had to pay for the room and the marketing - it is a loss even before counting in anything from my time preparing, driving there and playing. That means: I cannot continue like that.

I spoke to many people regarding marketing then: how to communicate Piano-Channeling, how to name it, where to find people interested in it. I was wondering which form I should focus on (online, offline, groups, 1:1, music streaming, youtube) and every other aspect. When people give me such good feedback ... something should be possible with it, or?

The thing is: everybody will suggest something else, from their perspective. My first mentors suggested: Have a link at your photo of social media accounts, to tell people where to find out more and where to buy. My music mentor suggested: No links in those photos, this is the place to focus on getting the vibe across. You always have to ask yourself: What suits me in the end of the day. Or the other way around: What suits the audience? It seems to be a complex thing to get right.

Besides, I developed a concept for cover art for my music out of Piano-Channeling with all the ideas I have learned regarding marketing my music in a meaningful way together with my artist friend Barbara. While it is also fun to experiment with this, it takes time and effort - in this case it was a process about 2-3 weeks of bouncing ideas, also speaking to / checking with some friends how they feel with the resulting images, before calling it done.

After I found a number of videos blaming on a larger music distributor that my music mentor recommended me for a start (they are somewhere else, but you need a high volume before you can go there), I decided to stay with my smaller swedish one and upgraded to a level where you can have multiple artist profiles. And after uploading the music, it got rejected by an automatic filter, who suggested my music was AI generated. It is just those details that sum up in extra effort and slow down the process. Everything takes longer than you would hope for. And those extra loops can take away the flow and motivation.

I explained to them, that I can imagine a digital piano may look similar to a software looking for AI-generated music and stated, I played it myself. And they were happy to take a look at this immediately and published it a few hours later. This would be something you cannot expect from some of the biggest distributors, so I am very happy with mine (named amuse).

And so, I went for releasing the first session from a Piano-Channeling for a friend with my new account for this music: Piano-Channeling by René. I split the session into 4 parts and Barbara was happy to contribute names for it again. That felt good - a technical naming was not looking right (that would be "Session 1, Part 1-3"), so here it has the costume of regular music, yet it is a soundjourney. This was shown earlier at this page in the order of recording - "a taste of purple" just before the concert.

Well and then I was at a workshop where some other marketing pro's looked at my persona and gave me tipps for a suitable design for my being. For example, as I have a calm energy, the color blue would match it best (and some other ideas in visual styling for homepage etc.). Which meant: Starting over with homepage design, artwork and videos. And that lead to me not feeling ready to spent serious money in advertising for the Netherlands and my music online combined - if I am in the middle of a rebranding, this is not the time to start serious marketing. It was too much effort, took too long for me to get finished prior to the concerts - but the invitation to the Netherlands helped me trying my best to get as much done as possible for me.

So, in the end I only took minimum effort for advertising concerts in the Netherlands, posting in a few local Facebook groups. The organizer put up posters at the venue. The other artist joining the evening spent money on some instagram ads for local people. And because of all of that: pretty much nobody came because of those efforts. Just about 20 people came to the first concert in Den Haag from personal contacts of the organizer and guitarist who were local. Those people were very happy afterwards and refused for a while to stand up and go home, so we continued playing, it was beautiful.

Yet it became clear already during rehearsal, that a Piano-Channeling does not fit energetically after the mantra singing the other artist was guiding, so I just went for basic piano-improvisation where the two other musicians could sing ontop - also nice but a different thing. During mantra singing, I played cajon - as soft as I could to be not too loud in this setup, which was really a challenge to be precise at that low soundlevel. And so, it did not suit to play the other concert planned in Amsterdam and I went home to Germany earlier, a bit frustrated again.

In between, I played a Piano-Channeling at a Beach Bar in Den Haag. The organizer and a friend of hers came. And two people joined spontaneously out of the 10 that I talked to around the beach bar. Good to gain experience, but another story of the room costs being already higher than what I got from the people for playing. And that lead to having not much motivation for a while to go for another round of event in such setups. It felt like for 1 hour of playing live, it would take 100 hours of all the preparation and marketing in advance (or the equivalent in money). And even then, you have the risk of not getting enough money back through ticket sales. And I miss just making music. This has turned into being a business I realized and it will not be profitable in the beginning as the experience from other artists suggests as well. It is completely different things to do now - sitting a lot in front of the computer doing things instead of music. Do I actually really want this?

The opportunity in the Netherlands was good motivation to push myself through all the marketing things that were suggested to me and also start with the new design (blue instead of purple and a few other details). I have done most of the things by now, but at the time of the concerts in July, my homepage was still in the middle of the redesign (only the background color was quickly set to blue, many other elements did not match visually etc), I just had one release at my new spotify account dedicated for Piano-Channeling and the only video released on my new youtube channel had still an issue with the sound on mobile phones, while also being in the "wrong" color (still purple). Not the stage to go for serious marketing. Yet I had prepared a lot and I felt I am almost there. I would not like to take this marketing-journey and work another time, but I can see how it has a chance to work out with my music now. Later it was such a wonderful feeling, when I released the first video in blue with better sound (from the concert in Paphos), while putting all the other elements at my homepage together as well in September 2025. Finally! Relieving.

But before that I needed a break from music marketing after the results from the Netherlands and so I mainly enjoyed for a while visiting friends and places in Germany that I have not seen for years and taking care of some local duties. That was the summer of 2025 for me. I enjoyed playing for some friends in my German home town while at the same time streaming it, my largest Piano-Channeling group with online and offline combined so far (about 9 people online and 9 people offline). After it, I got invited to play after a yoga session, which I also liked trying. That was easy to organize, I could go with my bike there, a piano was already set up and I got paid for it, while I did not have to make any advertisement. This is how it can be fun. And profitable.

This page may not be updated with each release. This chapter 3 of the diary appreciates the 5th year of my journey with the piano.

See my youtube-channel for latest videos and other instruments maybe.

If you want to support me: Pick your favourite songs of mine, create a playlist for them and listen to those often. Then I do not only get a small royalty, but the algorithm has also a chance to learn and find people that like my songs too, based on your overall taste of music. And/or maybe forward a song or this crazy long page to a friend. Thank you!

Find more information on the dedicated page for Piano-Channeling.