alionmind News May 2017 - The progress, so far

Yes, it is already June, and I wanted to post this alionmind News blog since a few days. The reason why this didn't happen is, that I hoped to get the alionmind website up and running and also a new AlionLive video uploaded. This issue of the alionmind news would have been far more impressive then. So, before we dive into the things that have been accomplished in May 2017, we get into the things that haven't:

Website(s)?
I had to learn about a lot of things in May, regarding to webdesign. The internet has changed somewhat since I dived into the depths of webdesign, web programming and all that for the last time. Thus my recent websites always looked not just a bit oldschool...in a bad way ;) And also, websites have to be flawlessly viewable on a lot of different devices today. Mobile is a must. Another thing is, that people are used to fancy multimedia elements on websites these days. And these are just the few things I can tell you about, without drifting into the tech details. So I had to learn about new web standards, features of new versions of software frameworks and last but not least, new tools. Aside from the ongoing learning process, I had to come up with a new concept for the website(s) and also re-write all of the text content, as the old content doesn't meet my current standard. A last, but not very unimportant fact is, that I do not just build one website currently, but actually five. The work, I am currently doing, is not just used to create the main alionmind records website. It will be re-used for the sites of alionsonny, Cimelium and Willma Poppen also. So, once the alionmind site is finished, which will happen in a few days, all the other websites will also be finished in about 2 or 3 days. Enough about that ;)

Another AlionLive video?
Yepp, and while having the illusion of getting the website(s) done, I also thought that I might be able to finish the last real part of the 'Spring in Madeira' series. Simply no time for it. The raw cut is done, but I have to write tons of subtitles, do hundreds of transitions. Nope, didn't happen. I'll work on that video, once the main workload of the website(s) is finished. May take a bit of time. After that last part, I'll record a short, but necessary aftermath and then the eternal series will finally end.

The 'Madeira' album by Cimelium is OUT!
If you follow me on Facebook or read the Cimelium blog, you'll already know it: The third album by Cimelium in total and the second alionmind album this year is out in the wild. You can buy it in all well-sorted online shops for music, for example GooglePlay (CLICK!) and iTunes(CLICK!). And if you are stingy and if you don't want me to get rich, you can also stream it on all well known streaming platforms, such as Spotify (CLICK!). So finally, after all the other backlog has shrunken a bit, I'll be able to work at another alionsonny album. So, friends of the weird kind of Reggae, be ready. By the way: did you know, that the alionmind records portfolio now has 14 album releases? Yepp, time for a 15th. :D

AlionLive is alive with a new video!
As I already mentioned, I wanted to get out another one, because it is about time. But I am glad to announce also here, that after over a year of silence, the 'Spring in Madeira' series has finally a new part. It was uploaded about 3 weeks ago, so I suppose, some people will already be grudgy again, because they think I broke my promise of continuing AlionLive again. Folks: Making videos is NOT my main job. If I would get paid properly for it, my output would be larger. But currently, making music is quite more rewarding. Once I get more subscribers and a significant increase of views, I could put more focus on AlionLive. Ok, but here's the new video. It is the next to the last real part of 'Spring in Madeira'and we go hiking again. The sountrack is completely from the 2009 alionsonny album 'Reggae?'. You like the music? You can get the album on GooglePlay, iTunes and everywhere else. Streaming is also possible on Spotify. And here's the video:

What's next?
Well you know already, and EXACTLY in that order:
1. Finishing the website(s)
2. Finishing the 2014 Madeira video series
3. Starting to work at the new alionsonny album 'Phoenix'
4. Starting to work at the 'Bike ride to the North Sea' video series
So, let's work!

New music video: "Brainforest"!

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!

alionmind News February 10. 2015 - Rising from the ruins ;)

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.

Willma Poppen - Ding Dong Merrily On High
Quite unnoticed, because not announced on the official Willma Poppen blog, I created a little christmas song, just for fun. It's a pop-techno version of the old Christmas song that I've already dished out sometime ago for the alionsonny project in a Reggae style. I think it is, despite the creative crisis, quite well done ;) The song is available for free download on Soundcloud, so: Grab it!

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 7 - Part 1 - The Fortress
At the beginning of the 7th day, we visited the fortress "Fortaleza de São João do Pico". More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Day 7 - Part 2 - ART!
Then we went into the old town to extensively visit the artists' quarter. More info on the official AlionLive blog!

Day 8 - Part 1 - Ponta de São Lourenço 2014
This video shows a wonderful hike in best weather at a place we visited in absolutely bad weather already in 2012. More info on the official AlionLive blog!

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!

alionmind news November 9th, 2014

After I already "skipped" the October news, I want at least let you know, why there's no or just little news. First: No, I didn't give up on creating music. And also the "AlionLive - Frühling auf Madeira" video series will be continued. I just have an ongoing motivation problem. You know: To work several hours on something and then see, that is enjoyed just by a handful of people does not create great motivation to carry on.

Anyways: Today I will finally continue with the video tutorial series on audio visualization in Blender. There's a special reason for this: Yesterday I visited my little Youtube tutorial channel for the first time since, I think, 1 month. I had almost given up on this, because after uploading the 2 first videos, I got so little views on them, that I thought, it is not really worth all the work and nobody was really interested in that stuff. When I visited the channel yesterday, I got to know that meanwhile over 100 people have watched the 2 videos, I got some "likes" and one nice person even wrote a comment, that he liked my style of doing tutorials. While drinking 2 bottles of good wine I did the math, took a look at the statistics and... found out that this tiny little Youtube channel, with just 2 videos on it (which are blocked in Germany) and 11 subscribers, is the most successful of all my projects. Yeah, if you do the math, this channel is performing even better than AlionLive with it's 80 videos, 64 subscribers and over 20.000 views. It is BY FAR performing better than the alionmind records music video channel... not to talk about the gaming channel. As a plus, this channel exists just for a bit more than 3 months and has been unmaintained since at least one month. If I leave the AlionLive channel (exists since more than 3 years) unmaintained for 1 month, the view count drops to 3 views per day. Seems we spotted a pattern here ;)

And also, with a bit of math, it turns out, that if I would put the same amount of work into new tutorials as I put into creating music, this Youtube tutorial channel would generate even more cash than I get from sales and streams of my music on iTunes, Amazon etc. BOTTOM LINE: Creating music is unprofitable! Period! At least if you are not one of those "magic beings" you can hear on the radio who generate money out of thin air aka popular music ;). As I said, this doesn't mean that I stop creating music. Impossible! But it shifts the priorities not just a bit. I could ignore what I just found out and just carry on, scattering my time equally between all the projects... with foreseaable results. Of cause i do the things I do mainly, because I like to do them and not just for the money. But I can't afford the luxury of 100% doing this, or I would risk being homeless etc.

So I will create more tutorials, because there seems to be a real demand for this, contrary to my music and other "products". Sounds harsh? You bet it does! So, there's no new music now for almost 2 months. The last AlionLive video has been uploaded more than 1 month ago and it's the same with the alionmind music video channel. What has this guy done since then? Not much. I tried a lot of new things, which will probably one day will inflate my portfolio of skills even a bit more ;) The only visible results are a few gaming videos, I will embed below. So, if you like to watch some twisted gaming action, this is most probably something for you.

Yeah, sorry for the lack of "look at all the stuff I finished". I also wish I had such a big list as "back in the days". But i am sure things will get back to normal soon. Stay tuned! And here's the gaming videos. Enjoy!

alionmind News September 14, 2014 - AND WHAT NEWS !!!

I think I have to organize the alionmind news differently this time. There is in fact so much to report that it is otherwise difficult not to keep track of everything. Let's start with the topic that was quite underrepresented during the recent editions of the alionmind news: MUSIC. Only the alionsonny project got no new sound material this time, but:

Cimelium
Here a piece of music for both, the more friendly album "Madeira" and a dark one for the psycho album "Ad Hominem" was produced. Nevertheless, we still lack two pieces of music for "Madeira" and for "Ad Hominem" we have almost 50% of the tracks finished. So the release of a new Cimelium album will probably take some time, but one will still be released this year.

Cimelium - Queimadas
Fitting for the recently uploaded part of the "AlionLive - Spring on Madeira" series, the latest title for "Madeira" album describes the picturesque location Queimadas. As quite often recently it is in a "semiorchestral" style, even though at about 50% of the playing time a fairly unexpected pop rhythm section drops in. It is again a nice positive track for the lovers of the more beautiful music ;). Listen for yourself and read more details on the official Cimelium blog.



Cimelium - Nihil Verum
Nothing is true ... if this does not awfully sound like "Ad Hominem" ;). Well, the new addition to the dark album in my opinion is not sounding very dark. Rather once again spiced with unusual and funny filter experiments. Someone already said, the piece would be too happy. Well, people always have to exaggerate :). Listen for yourself and read the details on the Cimelium blog.



Willma Poppen
The Friends of danceable madness and Funfair Techno (TM) jubilate and rejoice, because finally it's done: All 13 tracks needed for the album are complete in their first version (pre-release version). Now we just need to polish it all. Yeah, keep talking... Joking aside: There is still a good piece of work ahead, but a release date is now inside a foreseeable time range.

Willma Poppen - Liebe
Strange title? Yepp! And a beautifully fitting song for "Willma im Wunderland"! Because I didn't count correctly, I actually thought that this would be the last song for the album and thought, "What a great finishing track!". Well, but then there was still one missing. Learn more about this a little further down. And you can read more about the song "Liebe" on the Willma Blog.



Willma Poppen - Abendspaziergang
...and no: This is not a "Strandspaziergang reloaded", even if some folks say this and actually a certain amount of inspiration flew from one song to the other. No, it is an absolutely new song and a great capstone for the album. Read more on the Willma Blog.



AlionLive - Spring in Madeira 06 - Santana, Queimadas, Faial
Where there is fullness on one side there must be a lack on the other side. The music lovers really had to experience this during the last months. This time it is the other way and there is only a single AlionLive video. But what a video it is: This time we went hiking again in the north of the island. And before I now describe the whole thing again, read the AlionLive blog for more information.

Audio Visualization in Blender - Creating a Frequency Analyzer - Tutorial
Although all videos are blocked in Germany on my two new channels by default because of nonsensical GEMA claims by Youtube, I do not give up. This time I show you how to build a working frequency analyzer in Blender.

Three new Let's Play videos on Morrowind
Yes, and both the first part and these 3 were blocked by Youtube promptly because of nonsensical GEMA claims. This is especially great because videos in German language that are not available in Germany make incredibly much sense ;). I still do not give up and keep going. I hope more and more people use ProxTube, Proxmate & Co. to show Google that this is not ok. Here are the latest Morrowind videos.

The Forest Gameplay - Welcome to Novo Funchal!
Also blocked in Germany, but in  English language and therefore less tragic ;). Actually that was just a test shot of the Early Access Games "The Forest". But then everything went wonderfully out of hand and I did not have the heart to deny you that ;). WARNING: VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND STRONG LANGUAGE!

alionmind records music videos
As many as four new of them we have again. And thus the alionmind music video channel grows at least in terms of available videos. Regarding to viewers it is unfortunately still a bit meager, but the channel is not even six months old and currently I upload exclusively antique material. So there is still room to grow ;).

alionsonny - 80s 4 Ever (Electronic Space Rock)
This was real madness. In the context of training for my tutorial channel I had modelled a classic VU meter in Blender and then also uploaded a little video of it on Facebook. This video got such a great reception that I was so crazy to render a 5 minutes video of an animation of it. Result: 120 hours of rendering time. My pretty quiet laptop rendered a whole week during the night hours. Sorry: NEVER AGAIN! ;) However, the result fits very well with the, incidentally very popular, track "80s 4 Ever" from the album "Electronic Space Rock".

alionsonny - Exploring Alion Forest (Alion - The Original Soundtrack)
Somewhere I had a few photos, taken during a little walk in the woods in northern Hamburg, on the hard disk. I decided to create some kind of a music video in the style of the video for "Autumn" out of them. And actually it fits very well for the song "Exploring Alion Forest" from the album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack".

alionsonny - Individuality (Dub Antiquities)
This is the only one of the four videos that you actually can really call a music video. Once again I used the visualization plugin ZGame editor, integrated in FL Studio, and the result is in my opinion very good. And since this visualization software works quite well with the old dubby alionsonny sound, "Individuality" is another track from the album "Dub Antiquities" which has a fitting music video now.

alionsonny - The Cursed Cemetery (Alion - The Original Soundtrack)
The video for the classic "The Cursed Cemetery" from the album "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" is the simplest: I just put together the images from the cover art set of the album and some private graphic experiments in a slideshow and the result is quite nice :).

Ok, and this is the work of the past month, plus 5 days. I think: Not bad! But let us see if we can beat it all the next month ;).

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!