The word Odeum reflects the kind of space I want my instruments to evoke: intimacy, focus, and pure performance. With a background in composition and a lifelong fascination for classical music, the several years I've spent working closely with professional players made me obsessed with finding ways to capture the beauty of orchestral instruments myself.
I began this solo adventure with a modest budget. The first recording sessions were rather short, careful, and sometimes a little chaotic, but I was incredibly fortunate to collaborate with exceptional musicians from the start. Since these experiments were entirely self-funded, every session had to be meticulously planned, even with the generosity of the players and engineers who helped make this first phase possible.
By late 2025, those tests had turned into new collaborations and larger recording sessions, giving me enough material to explore new sampling concepts across multiple instrument families. And little by little, Odeum Sounds was becoming real before I even knew it.
For roughly another year, I made use of what I had learned and built on the core ideas that had worked, to hopefully turn them into a fully realized project. Arion Strings is the major step that started it all. As my first release, it represents significant investment, countless hours of work, and, I'll admit, the quiet anxiety of stepping into the unknown as a 27-year-old independent VI developer.
In a music industry increasingly flooded with AI, my process remains basic: every sample is edited by hand, every instrument is self-coded, and every graphical element is homemade. The tools I rely on (like Kontakt) are all proven industry standards; where I aim to innovate is in my exploration of recording techniques, and in the way I source samples from specific performances to reach high levels of playability, consistency and realism.
There is no team behind Odeum Sounds, just me and lots of ideas I can't wait to explore. When you purchase a library, you support an independent developer and help fund new recording sessions, prototypes, and the future expansion of the Arion Series. So thank you for being a part of this journey. This is just the beginning.
Julian
Founder of Odeum Sounds