Yeah, it has been a while since I wrote something new here. This has reasons ;). Currently I am still messing around a lot with the new Willma Poppen album. YES, it will be out very soon! Now I needed a bit distraction, and so I created a little humble music video for a classic. By chance I found a folder full of forest photos on my hard drive, which Malina shot someday. Because I never planned to create a full featured music video for that dusted old track "Brainforest" from my first album "XperiMental Reggae WorX" (2004), I decided to simply use that folder full of photos. I think the result is quite good. Have fun!
The news this time are, once again, that there is actually no news. Well, not really, because even though nothing new has been released, a lot has happened "in the background". And that will soon end the "lean period".
As announced, I firstonce generally stopped the work on video projects in order to fully concentrate on the release of the Willma Poppen album "Willma im Wunderland". And regarding to this, contrary to the first try, I take my time. I should already know that it is not particularly fruitful, but rather ends terribly, when I put myself under too much pressure actually ;).
So what actually happened regarding to Willma Poppen album then? For this I need (or I want) to tell you about my approach to the release of an album. You hopefully know all those pre-release versions that I upload to SoundCloud. These are more or less elaborate song ideas. They are sometimes closer to and sometimes a little farther from the final release versions. Generally I assume that corrections to both structure (composition / arrangement) and the mix have to be made. And that's what happens first when all the tracks are ready for an album in the pre-release version. In general then for each track the following steps are taken:
Create a final composition / a definitive arrangement. Here, all parts of the song are again placed under the microscope, imperfections are repaired, some things get improved and generally a version gets completed, that I regard as suitable for publication, regarding to the structure.
Export all mixer channels (dry and without compression) at 192 kHz sample rate in WaveAudio at 32 bit float resolution.
Import the audio tracks in a project (the mix) with exactly the same mixer channels and effects. For short: The generators, such as Synthesizers, are replaced by rendered versions in WaveAudio.
Now I mix the different channels, so that I get a good mix peaking at -6 dBFS. This mix is rendered as a so-called. PreMaster in 192 kHz WaveAudio in 32-bit float, of course without any compression.
This PreMaster is imported into a completely new project. There I am doing what I call mastering. The result is then the final release version.
So far, so good ... How far am I with the 13 songs for the album? It may sound just like a little, but currently I have the final composition / the final arrangement ready for almost half of the tracks. For each of those tracks I have already exported each mixer track and created an approximate, but not finished, mix version. Not a single track is "mastered" yet. Regarding to this I must say, however, that a good mix reduces mastering almost to the task of increasing the volume to peak at 0 dbfs. So probably for many of the tracks, there's not much to do at the mastering stage.
Why does it take so long? As I said, I take my time and as I said, creating a good mix simplifies everything. So I currently put a lot of emphasis on that the arrangement almost delivers a good mix. Furthermore, I have experienced unpleasant surprises when I opened the project files of some of the older tracks and had to do some unexpected work in creating the final composition / arrangement of the tracks.
Well, and so that this blog post does not entirely come without sound and images, I embed 2 excerpts of the progress at the end as a small video. Well, at the moment this is all what I can give you. I would say that in one month it all will look better :D
Hello, and welcome to the first alionmind news since a long time and also the first in 2015. Why has this blog suddenly been awakened from it's deep sleep? The reason will please the friends of music and the friends of the videos will maybe get a little grumpy: Due to recent events, I have decided to restrict work on videos and finally put more work into creating new music. This is now possible and necessary.
The Situation I had a musical creative crisis, which meant that I could not work on music since last fall. To compensate for this, I then decided to work more on videos section and even started 3 new Youtube channels. For whatever reason - but we are happy about it - it seems that the music crisis somehow "dissolves". Just like that ... And now it would be stupid if I would continue to invest a large part of my time in creating various kinds of videos. The listeners of Cimelium and Willma Poppen music are not just slowly getting a bit grumpy, because they are waiting for ages for the promised albums. And I also do not ommit the fact, that the sales of songs and albums still bring more profit than the advertising revenue on Youtube. So we start again with the music, and that with full force, so you finally get new music.
AlionLive - Spring in Madeira? Friends of the videos, don't be sad. I'll still work on videos from time to time. The "AlionLive - Spring in Madeira" series is completed just to slightly more than 50%, the next Madeira trip is already booked and the series will be finished in any case until the start of the trip. No, I will not tell you the date for security reasons, but let's say I have about 3 months left.
Tutorials? Since this takes a huge amount of time to prepare and create, I'll will restrict this most of all video formats. Currently the channel is indeed amazingly well visited, but not as much that I could say that it would have the highest priority. But it will definitely go on.
Music videos? Since one can always work a bit on those and most of them can be done fairly quickly, there'll be something going on from time to time. Let me surprise you.
Let's Play videos? I guess I'll still do a lot of those. If I work hard on music again, of course I need one or the other hour of leisure that I can spend on a little game. One can then also record the gameplay and we get a lot of nice little Let's Play videos. So this will go on!
Ok, that was it actually for this news. As usual, and as in the previous news, I want to briefly wrap up again the little that has been done at the house of alionmind since the last blog entry. There is only one, somewhat strange, new piece in music, but a lot of new videos.
AlionLive - Spring in Madeira I worked on the video material of a total of two days and created four videos out of it. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it is necessary to divide a day in two videos. For both, day 7 and 8 this was the case. Otherwise, the videos would have simply became too long, and one or the other has already complained that those four videos are still too long, despite of the cutting. Overall these four new videos are a whooping 2 hours, 35 minutes and 22 seconds long!
Day 8 - Part 2 - Bus ride Ponta de São Lourenço - Funchal A veeery long video for the, surprisingly enough, not just a few friends of bus ride videos. More info on the official AlionLive blog!
Tutorials on "Multiversity of Alion" Here we have just the series on audio visualization in Blender still, but it already grew by as much as 4 videos. By now everything is already quite complex. So, if you are able to endure my lousy English, are not completely inexperienced in Blender and want to learn a bit, have fun:
Let's Plays on AlionLiveLP Now, that finally the problem with Youtube blocking my videos in Germany is solved (do not ask how), I have recorded a bit for you again. There's currently no AlionLiveLP blog, but all the info can be found in the video descriptions. A total of 18 (!!!) new videos have been uploaded. If I embed them all here in the usual size, this blog will be totally "unloadable". Therefore I just embed mini previews here. Simply switch to full screen, or just visit the channel ;)
The Forest - English Edition If you want to experience my lousy English again, there's a little "The Forest" series, in which I steal a native's house and defend it against the owners, sometimes using evil tricks. Here are the videos in order:
The Forest - German Edition Yes, if you are able to understand German, there's also a series. Unfortunately, after an update of horror, the game started to stutter like hell. After a time, this was really no fun anymore. However, some funny and some amazing moments happened during this series. See for yourself:
The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind (German) Yes, my very first Let's Play series was also continued. A total of 7 (!!!) videos have been added, of which the first 4 show the rather arduous life of a weak cat in the dangerous Vaardenfell. BUT: The last 3 parts are very "special". Actually I wanted to play while being a little drunk on New Year's Eve, but the glorious idea was then to also record and upload it. Oh well...
alionmind records music videos On the music video channel unfortunately only three new videos have been uploaded. More is in the works. Patience: Sometime the complete alionmind catalog will be available. I promise! Here are the latest 3 additions:
alionsonny - Exploring Alion Forest For this song from the 2010 album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" I have decided to create a video from pictures that Malina and I have taken some time ago in a forest near Hamburg.
alionsonny - Individuality The video for this alionsonny classic from the album "Dub Antiquities" was once more created using the ZGame Editor visualization software.
alionsonny - The Cursed Cemetery For this song, which is also from the album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", I decided to go the easy route and simply cut together some pictures of the official cover art. Not every song needs a complex video ;
And this is the end! Yes, it was more news than I actually expected ;). There could have been just a bit more music. We will change this now. Let's get to work!
