Studio Philharmonico

In 2017 I did have a commission to create a rendition (among others) of Sibelius' "Karelia Suite", as part of the sound track for a documentary film. Now in January 2024 I began to re-work this rendition, to make it a bit more expressive than in 2017, to fix a few notes, to set a more appropriate tempo.  Since Sibelius died in 1957, he is not yet more than 70 years dead - therefore his music compositions are still under copyright. So when looking for a music distributor which would support "cover songs" (music that is performed by someone else who has the music composition copyright), I decided to try DittoMusic  (see my post  Music Distribution Ditto Music ). I first wanted to use Soundrop: a few years ago they were really good at publishing music compositions which were "cover songs", and I had a few releases with them. But recently they had become extremely slow in publishing releases. And there were some problems with my releases: several of them h

Ditto Music www.dittomusic.com  Already many years ago I had tried Ditto Music, but I had not been impressed then, as there were many shortcomings and bug in the upload process. But now I decided to try them again. Their interface is sleek, and they offer more than 150 music distributers.  New Release: Karelia Suite by Jean Sibelius I decided to use them with my new release of the "Karelia Suite" by Jean Sibelius, which I recently had completed to record. Here is my experience with that. Release Type First question: Standard release or electronic/dance release? Why would there be a difference? Should this not be taken into account with the Genre? I chose "Standard release". Genre Next problem: what genre? there is no "classical". The genre classification at Ditto seems to be very woke: there are 3 African and 7 Afro genres, and something exotic like "Original Pilipino Music", but nothing at all relating to classical music: no string quartet, no s

In December 2023 I recorded a few new live piano improvisations with my MIDI keyboard, using the Steinway sample from "Garritan Personal Orchestra 5". I then did a few minor edits and created audio files.  Originally these were mostly kind of "Träumerei" and "Fantasia", but I then did come up with other names: Dreamery Walking Through Sounds Fantasia Powerful Longing Affirmative There was originally a 7th track to be included, but it was longer than 10 minutes, and LevelMusic did have some trouble with that. The seventh track was then published as a single on Soundrop, but is not yet online. I did publish them at LevelMusic, to try out this service. So far I had only minor problems, as described here in one of my previous posts:  Music Distribution: Level Music  . The release is now apparently on 171 online music sites. As of today (27 Jan 2024) the release is online at 6 music sites: (click on the above picture, then the most current list of music sites w

When looking for a suitable outlet for publishing my own new music release, I found "Level Music", never heard from them before, but their offers looked reasonable. So I decided to use it for my new release "Slow Emotions Alive". Quite negative reviews I found out that LevelMusic does have quite many bad reviews, e.g. here on  TrustPilot . But I still decided to try them, to find out for myself if they live up to their own claims: "Easily distribute your music globally on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, TikTok, and more." "Own 100% of your rights and royalties, and easily withdraw your earnings." "Stay ahead of the curve with user-friendly tools like smart release pages, release analytics, and sales data." "Level is non-exclusive and non-committal. Explore and release whenever you're ready." Cost The cost is a flat fee of $20 per year - this sounds affordable. I hope that I can recoup this amount within a year from the li

My "main" music output will be branded as from "Studio Philharmonico". But I do have another music segment, where this label does not fit well. "Studio Philharmonico" implies that the music is crafted very carefully in the studio. pulling all bells and whistles to make the recording as perfect as possible. But I have another kind of music: my live improvisations on the music keyboard. This is what I often do: I sit at the music keyboard and just begin go play. Whatever comes to my mind, to my fingers. All depending on my current mood, events of the day, and my emotional responses to them. A kind of "musical diary". I have done this since January 1980, that time at a real acoustic piano and recording m live improvisation playing with a cassette tape recorder. I still have those recordings, which are true "LoFi" with their non-Dolby tape hiss and the automatic recording level control which makes quiet passages loud and reduces the volume

A new year, a new label. I have decided to publish my music under a different name i.e. label or artist. Since 1998 I have created music "renditions" under the name "Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra". At that time this sounded quite cool and appropriate: not a real orchestra, but virtual instruments would play classical music recordings. Initially only as MIDI, but with the advent of MP3.COM then also as MP3 recordings. But now this name sounds a bit awkward. Also I lost the web site domains, and the abbreviation "VPO" was sometimes confused with that famous real orchestra in Vienna... So now a new name was branded: Studio Philharmonico This name implies that it is music that is created in a studio, not in a real live setting. It also emphasizes that its music style is largely CLASSICAL. Regular conventional orchestra music will be its main domain, but it will also feature chamber music recordings. The main website will be here:  https://www.studiophilharmon