Sunday, August 10, 2014

alionmind News August 10, 2014

Unfortunately again no new music this time. First this is because of a slight creative block at the house of alionmind and also I have, as already last month, more focused on my activities in creating videos. And here really a lot has happened. So without further ado, let's get right into it:


AlionLive - Spring in Madeira 04 - From Vale Paraiso Parque Ecologico do Funchal
This fourth part is quite short and leads us once again on the trails of my journey in the year 2012. We hiked from Vale Paraiso, near Camacha, to the Parque Ecologico do Funchal. All other information can be read on the AlionLive blog.

AlionLive - Spring in Madeira 05 - Chillax in Funchal
The fifth part of this series was also completed this month. After the partly chaotic events of the previous days, we granted ourselves a day of rest in Funchal. However, we were anything but idle. A detailed description with some images can be found on the AlionLive blog.


Audio Visualization in Blender 01 - Creating a Level Meter - Tutorial
I did it: My tutorial channel on YouTube has been created. It does not yet get very much attention, which is probably caused by the fact that it only contains one video yet. This will change soon. I also have promoted the channel not very much so far. However, the largest share of the lack of audience may have a different reason: The video is unfortunately blocked in Germany because of completely insubstantial GEMA claims, although the video contains only my own music. The background music is from my project Cimelium. Because by now quite a lot of videos on the AlionLive channel contain just the same music at full volume and are available in Germany without any problems, the whole thing is very strange. In addition, some short parts of a yet unpublished work of the Willma Poppen project are included for demonstration purposes. I recommend to the interested viewers in Germany to use the absolutely legal Browser plugin ProxTube or the even better-functioning plugin Proxmate. Ok, and here is the tutorial, which explains creating a simple level meter in Blender. In the next part we will build a 16 band frequency analyzer!


Let's Play Morrowind - The birth of Chlach Tharr
And there's another new video channel! After one or two people recommended to also to create a so-called. Let's Play channel, I've done it. Also not much happens there. And also the first video on this channel is blocked with the typical GEMA message  in Germany. Here I can maybe understand why this is, because the soundtrack of the game Morrowind was unfortunately released on CD and therefore may fall under the reign of terror of the GEMA ;). Nevertheless, the soundtrack was created specifically for this game. And because the publisher of the game, Bethesda, has agreed with the uploading of Let's Plays and their monetization, everything should really be fine. Anyway: Here also ProxTube or Proxmate helps.


Two REAL music videos on the alionmind records Youtube channel
Yes, in this video channel I have invested most of the work last month. Again, however, the number of viewers is relatively small. This may have to do with the fact that I am currently uploading only ancient sound material. I will indeed, as already mentioned, make my entire repertoire available on this channel. In addition, 5 of the 7 (!!!) freshly uploaded videos consist only of a still image, showing the respective album cover, while the music is playing. I've told you that it is not worthwhile to create a proper video for any old track. But I also created two REAL music videos. I will embed them now and the still image videos can be found at the end of this blog.

alionsonny - Message To Planet Earth Music Video
Since this classic from the debut album sounds a lot like running water, I have decided to cut together the best matching sequences from the videos of my trip to Madeira in 2012. In addition I have added some fun color manipulation and also integrated some of my experiments in the field of Audio Visualization in Blender. And by the way: I'll explain the techniques for creating those visualizations in the future on my tutorial channel :). Here's the video:


alionsonny - Victory Dub Music Video
And for another song from the debut album "XperiMental Reggae WorX" there is a music video now! This time it is a pure audio visualization video. To create it, I have decided to use the ZGame Editor plugin, which is included in FL Studio. This plugin makes creating the pure functionality a lot easier than if you want to achieve the same with Blender. The downside is that this tool holds some unexpected surprises that one needs to circumvent. Anyway: I have created something quite good, I think so, as my first attempt of using that tool. Judge for yourselves:


The still image "videos"
For these I have not done more than to throw the particular album cover of the respective album and the particular piece of music in the video editor. This is a work of just a few minutes. So I can showcase those old tracks again to you all while not spending too much time doing it. In total I made 5 of them. I embed them below:






So, that's it for this month! I will try to focus next month more on the production of new music. Let's see if this works ;). See you next month!