alionsonny's Blog - English

AlionLive Madeira - Here we go!

2012-01-27T22:59:00.001+01:00

Hello, dear friends! About two months have passed and many asked me, when AlionLive Madeira will finally start. Finally now! The long time you did not only hearnothing about AlionLive Madeira, but generally did not hear much from me has several reasons. One of them is, that I caught a very bad cold after returning from Madeira and another is, that I finally got rid of my depressions and am currently in a state of reorganizing my whole life.
Now, here it is: The first part of AlionLive Madeira and it is just a little introduction, because I simply filmed nothing during the first day. In this part I describe to you what happened on that first day, the day of arrival and show you the hotel where we stayed. Much Fun!

AlionLive in Madeira! Become a sponsor!

2011-10-30T00:25:00.002+02:00

NO! I do not want YOU to sponsor my trip;)

If you have not noticed my joy dances on the Internet: Someone is actually so nice to invite me for 2 weeks to the beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira. I always wanted to go there and now I'm invited to go there, including flight, hotel, etc. Just great!

Now not only I came up with the idea that it would simply GREAT, if I would shoot a AlionLive episode on Madeira. The previous episodes were always day trips and therefore has the capacity of my memory cards for the camera somehow always been enough. But on a two week travel, I will not be able to even shoot a fraction of the journey, before my memory carda are full, probably not even the highlights.

And here it is where YOU can help me: I'm going to buy my self another 2-3 16 GB memory cards and a generous donor, Mr. Markus Prell, has already donated a 16 GB card. THANK YOU MARK! But even that will not be enough. To make it short: The more space I have, the more AlionLive of Madeira will be. A 16 GB SD card currently costs around your € 20-25. Of course, smaller cards will also do the job, but less than or 4 GB are not really fun, since I'm more at changing cards than actually film stuff ;)

So if you have some money left over and want to sponsor this episode, then send me one or more SD card(s) to the following postal address:

Jürgen Wolther
Anklamer Ring 58
D-22147 Hamburg /Germany

The camcorder is compatible with regular SD cards (SDHC) from 4 to 32 GB and SDXC card with 48 or 64 GB. The latter are, according to my information, very expensive, so I do not expect that someone sends one of them ;)

YOU will, of course, be mentioned in the episode of AlionLive as donor when you donate. I can also advertise your website, your blog, your business, your company, etc. Advertising has never been so cheap:) Just tell me if and how you want to be mentioned and I'll do it!

So I can plan a little bit, please send your donation card before 15 November, so that they reache me in time. Thanks in advance!

Alion Meditations is becoming a seperate project!

2011-09-18T20:27:00.002+02:00

Dear friends! During the creation and release of the first five parts of the scheduled concept album "Alion Meditations" it became more and more obvious to me, that I couldn't keep "meditation music" approach alive. Not just, that the term "meditation music" has a bad taste, because of releases by monetary oriented late hippies. Also the musical direction my releases (particularly the parts 6 to 9) for the planned album changed into a way, which made it close to impossible to keep the original approach alive. It simply didn't fit into those well known and stupid terms, such as "Ambient", "Chillout" or "Ethno", anymore... if I would love those terms loved by the music INDUSTRY at all.
Well, as I announced some time ago, I don't want to release music with no regard to the musical genre under the well established name alionsonny anymore, but split the project alionsonny to a few seperate genre specific projects. The new child project will release music of a calm, experimental kind, using folk influences and partly folk instrumentation. Additionally it partly will show the typical love for effects extravaganza, which had lead me to the Dub Reggae. The name for the new project has allready been chosen, but will not be published now, for "surprise purposes" ;). All existing songs of the project, namely "Meditation One" to "Meditation Nine" will get new names. The remaining four songs of the (traditionally) 13 song album are allmost finnished. The first album of the project will still be released in 2011.

AlionLive Episode 4 - In the Lueneburg Heath

2011-09-07T13:39:00.004+02:00

This episode of AlionLive is, compared to the previous episodes, quite short. It is just one part with a runtime of nearly 15 minutes. The reason is, that the filmed video material was not enough for more. Why did I film not more? Well, the Lueneburg Heath of cause provides a lot of very nice impressions, but there is a difference if you are on a videotrip all by yourself or there's somebody with you who does not like to be filmed at all. And exctly that was the case. And it is not very nice to run around with the camera in your face, totally ignoring the person you are with. However: I hope you like that short, but very nice episode of AlionLive:

Progress at the alionsonny webshop - complete redising of alionsonny.com

2011-08-24T16:54:00.002+02:00

Yes, it all takes a bit longer than I expected. First I had not thought about some things and had to find solutions for a variety of obstacles, relating specifically the synchronization of the main site and shop. I honestly admit that I had thought of some things not at all so far, such as a safe way to use a single database for both sites. Now everything is conceptually clear and must "only" be implemented.

I wanted to build the shop based on the PHP class library of alionsonny.com so far. Why reinvent the wheel? When I was at the point of letting the shop take shape, I noticed that in the PHP-class collection, from the alionsonny.com over the years a lot of redundant code garbage has accumulated . This would ultimately lead to delays and confusion over and over again and make the whole anything but efficient.

For this reason I decided to make a blatant cut and redesign the class library based on my present knowledge and remove remnants of earlier days rigorously. This will make the code a lot more efficient, manageable and better. For this purpose it is necessary, to review each and every bit of code, just to see where it makes sense to make changes. Most likely a large part of the whole stuff will be kicked into trash and reprogrammed.

And while we are at reworking the classes for the shop, why not also give alionsonny.com a complete overhaul? Good idea! I have long thought about giving alionsonny.com a nicer appearance. Also, the CSS is pretty loaded with artifacts of past days and years and rather confusing. So that's just when you add something new all the time. At some point, quite simply a whole lot of stuff is inside, which is no longer either used or is redundant. So I will take a close look at just about everything from HTML to PHP code, CSS style sheets to the graphics and rework it.

Visitors to alionsonny.com I can reassure: It is not an "open-heart surgery.", because the whole thing is just too extensive. Instead, I will tinker with all the changes first here on my local development environment and then upload. So you'll most likely see nothing of the whole thing until I've finished it all. Then, one day, you will visit the site again and BOOOM: Everything will be new, nicer and better;)

The adventure of getting my free downloads off the web

2011-08-21T21:29:00.003+02:00

Yes, it's done! There should be no free downloads of my music available online anymore. Well maybe, I missed one or the other, but I don't care. Der majority, especially the many songs I uploaded to various music upload sites myself, is gone. Some pages offered the possibility to convert the free downloads into pay-downloads and I did this wherever possible. But most of those sites want a quite big fee and because I do not accept anything below 50 cent as my share, the downloads are quite expensive there. So you better buy the downloads directly from me, because that's the cheapest way for you to get alionsonny music.

Like said, there's now no music of me available for free on the web. Try it yourself: A Google search for "alionsonny free download" just results in dead links, error messages or fakes. And here it is time for a serious warning: PLEASE do not download any EXE-files from websites, where they promise you free alionsonny music downloads! There's a russian company, which has dozens if not hundreds of websites under different names scattered across the web. And behind the "music download link", there's in fact a EXE-file. I tested it and my malwarescanner screamed in pain. So don't be fooled by folks telling you that it is a "free accesstool" which gives you access to free downloads. Well, actually I would not feel very sorry for people who are NOW trying to get my music for free and catch trojans, virusses etc., but I'm not as evil as you may think. But now you have bben warned and it is your own fault if you still try it.

Well, it was quite an adventure to get all those downloads off the web. As an example I want to name former site called Garageband. I uploaded some music there from 2004 to, I think so, 2006. Then I somehow forgot about it. While running thru my music upload bookmarks I ran across that old thing again. Garageband somehow got sold meanwhile to a site called ILike and I like again was somehow merged with Myspace. On all sites I tried to at least keep the possibility for people to stream (listen to) the music and only take down the ability to download for free. But at that former Garageband and now ILike site I had no choice. Because the admin tool was only half functional, I had to delete all the songs there completely. Well after that I would have liked to get rid of the now completely useless ILike account. But to my surprise the "Delete Account" link took me to the page of Myspace where I could delete my Myspace account. And at this stage I didn't want to do that. But soon after, that should change. So I was at the Myspace account administration page and thought, that it would be a great idea to deactivate the free downloads of songs I had uploaded to Myspace. But to my surprise, Myspace no longer has the possibility to make songs available for streaming only. If you upload music to Myspace, you are forced to give it all away for free. I didn't find that very funny, especially as Myspace NEVER informed me about this serious change. So I simply canceled my Myspace account while I was at deleting stupid useless shit. And I hoped that the stupid useless ILike page (powered by Myspace Music) would now also vanish automatically, but it still was there after my Myspace page was allready toast. So I put a heavy rant on the page instead of my artist biography and uploaded a "Fuck You"-finger as the artist picture. So I hope that if some day somebody respomsible stumbles across this Web 2.0 ruin, he will kill that useless account.

But that was just the most prominent case of a Web 2.0 ruin or abandonned website. On countless sites the only thing I could do was just take down all stuff, because the sites had become abandonned, not longer administrated website ruins, where the admintools have been taken over by kiddie hackers, who have their, sometimes cruel, fun there. Some of the sites were hijacked and wrecked so much, that they distributed trojans, virusses and other flavors of malware in big discount family packs. Good if you only go on such pages well prepared with security features enabled. Still I let my virusscanner do a full system scan after it all.

Well, but in the end only one thing really counts: Mission accomplished. Now I can really start building the webshop for you.

Finally: A new alionsonny musicvideo!

2011-08-19T15:32:00.000+02:00

Yes friends, it is done. After a whole year, or maybe a bit more, there is finally a new alionsonny musicvideo And we take a big leap from "Meditation" One to "Meditation Nine". STOP: That doesn't mean that the parts 2 to 8 of the Alion Meditations series will be forever without a video. It just did fit so well this time. Enough words for now. Let the sounds and the images do the talk. Enjoy my new video:

AlionLive Episode 3 - Bikeride City of Hamburg is now complete and online!

2011-08-13T17:51:00.001+02:00

Yes, it is done! Roughly three weeks after I filmed the whole thing, now all 8 parts (rughly 2 hours) are edited and uploaded. Why it all took that long is explained in the aftermath, which is this time "just a bit" more detailled. Again it was much fun to film it all and edit it. I hope you have at least as much fun watching it. There will be no new AlionLive for quite a time now, because the weather doesn't fit and I have to make some music again. And then my musicshop must be finnished. Much fun with AlionLive Episode 3!

News & what's happening?

2011-08-10T13:31:00.004+02:00

Some of you may have noticed that something is going on again here. 2 days ago, the 4th part of episode 3 of AlionLive was uploaded on Youtube. Finally I know how many parts it will be, because, thanks to the now fully functional work computer, I managed to edit, cut and subtitle all the stuff finally. After all it will be seven parts, so there are three still missing. Two of those are edited and rendered and one of them will be uploaded today. For the senventh and last part I have to record an aftermath. I will do this tonight and upload it on the day after tomorrow.
Why did that all take so long? The attentive readers of this Blog and friends on Facebook and Twitter maybe know, that the days around my birthday up to now were a time of bad luck for me. First there was that total faillure of my maincomputer, then I had some personal / private issues and in the end, about a week ago, a harddisk blew off, which fortunately had nothing valuable on it, but was neccessary for video editing etc. Well, not very great, but now everything works again as it is supposed to do.
Some of you asked, when the webshop for buying music will be ready. Answer: I'm working at it and it will take as long as it takes. I came across obstacles, and I have to learn some new stuff, to get it all done. So please have a bit of patience. Then everything will work great in the end, because: Planning and thoughtfull realization is better than sluggish stuff which doesn't work in the end.
What else? Not just the AlionLive stuff is close to be finnished. Also, after a looong time, a brandnew alionsonny musicvideo will be released soon. Apropos alionsonny: That's where we are at one of the biggest changes soon to come. Formerly I released many kinds/genres of music under the name of alionsonny. That caused more problems than it did solve. First, because most music upload sites require to enter a genre for an artist. This was until now impossible. So I had to chose "Miscellaneous", if possible. That was, for example, not possible on Reverbnation, were I have chosen "Reggae". If I choose "Miscellaneuos", people who search for Reggae will not find my music or at least have a hard time to do so. If I choose "Reggae", people complain that I have chosen the wrong genre, once I release, for example an orchestral sountrack track or a Techno track. Another, but quite simmilar problem is, that if a listener found some music he liked by me and I release music of another genre he most probably says "Hey, your songs so far were great, but I hate that new stuff!".
The solution is incredibly simple: I simply become many. Since quite a time, I release Pop-Techno music I do with friends under the name "Willma Poppen Project" or short "Willma Poppen". I will simply do the same for all styles of music I create. Under the name alionsonny, only Reggae, reggaelike and Crossover stuff will be released, because that's what alionsonny mostly is known for. All the other music, like Techno, Electronica, Soundtrack etc. etc. will be released under new project names with own wesites etc. So everybody can pick his flavor and completely concentrate on that project without being distracted by "alien" music. Let me know what you think about it!
Ok, that's it so far!

All music is available for listening again!

2011-08-02T21:52:00.001+02:00

It is done! Unfortunately Archive.org deleted all my music from their Servers, instead of disabling downloads only, as I told you in the last blog posting. Now I found a quick and efficient solution to make the songs available for listening again. Since 2004 I use Soundclick.com. No free downloads are available there now, but Soundclick offers songplayers for single songs and also for my complete song catalogue embeddable into websites. On the music summary page I now embedded a player containing my whole backcatalogue of 163 songs. You can listen all songs in one list there. Additionally all 163 songs are available for listening from my songlist on alionsonny.com now.
On Soundclick you can also buy songdownloads for 0.75 US Dollars of which 0.52 US Cents go to my account. I want to offer songdownloads in my own shop for 0.50 US Cents or 0.50 Euro Cents in the future. But if you do not want or cannot wait you can now buy them on Soundclick, as it will take some time until my own shop will be available.

Sorry, all music offline currently!

2011-07-30T18:51:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry to inform you, that not just not music is any longer availble on this site for download, but also all song streaming/listening is not possible anymore. This means basically, that there's no music on alionsonny.de/alionsonny.com anymore.
In the past I hosted all my music on archive.org. All downloads & streams came from there. Bacause of my decision to not give away my music for free anymore, I asked the folks at archive.org, to make my music streamable only and remove the download links. Obviously the folks at archive.org were angry about my decision and informed me that all my stuff has been removed completely.
So i am very sorry, that the music is now not even available for listening. I couldn't foresee the harsh reaction of the folks at archive.org on my decision to no longer allow unlimited downloads.
I promise that I will find a solution which will make it possible for you to listen to my music soon. Just give me a bit of time to find a solution. If anybody out there has a bit of webspace available for about 150 to 200 MP3s, please get in touch with me. I'm currently busy building the new musicshop, so it may take a bit of time for me to get it all up and running again. Sorry for any inconviniences.

No more Mr. Niceguy! No more free music from me anymore!

2011-07-26T17:29:00.001+02:00

Yes, dear folks, you are reading right. This is the end of an era and I gently tried to prepare you for this day and every time it was a try to not let this day come. I have recorded a little video in which I tell you the how what and why. At the time the video was recorded I was quite trashed. So please excuse my absentmindedness and the chaotic flow of words.

I'm specifically interested in a productive discourse with you. Constructive comments are more than welcome. Bullying, baseless innuendo and the like will be deleted rigorously. So let's see how we can eventually develop a new operational approach.

Progress at alionsonny.com / alionsonny.de

2011-06-19T23:33:00.001+02:00

Ok, not really much has happened. I fixed some stuff at the database backend which bothered me since quite a time. One of the most annoying things has been fixed also. I regularly got complaints, mostly by idiots who wanted to show how "smart" they think they are. Why I think this? Because those complains came mostly as replies to forum posts I wrote some idiots didn't like so much. They came like "hey, before you say anything, why not fix your buggy website" etc.
It was not really a big thing, because most people were able to view the website without a problem, including me. Still those folks showed me sometimes screenshots etc. and first I thought it was a browser specific problem, eventhough I wondered how a browser specific problem could cause PHP or MySQL errors. Yesterday a friendly person gave me a hint in the right direction. He said, that the trouble happens, if the site is browsed by entering ,for example, alionsonny.com without the www. part. From that moment on I pretty much knew where the error was caused. But seriously: I never browsed a website without entering the www. part. So to make it short: That strange error should be fixed now. If you find any more errors, glitches, bugs or other ugly stuff, please let me know.
I allready know about the trashed CSS layout on the song detail pages. I'll fix that next.

AlionLive Episode 2 is now completely online!

2011-06-17T13:13:00.003+02:00

Oups, nearly I forgot to inform you about that here, Most of you probably know that there is a second episode of AlionLive and have viewed it more or less completely. Yeah, the editing and uploading took a while again. Well, it is 6 parts with a runtime of roughly 15 minutes each. So it is roughly 1 1/2 hours. Most of the time took the creation of the english subtitles.
I love it to see the number of viewers increasing slowly but steadily. This of cause encourages me to film more episodes and create new ideas for AlionLive. Many thanks to all of you again who let me know via mail, Facebook and Twitter, that they liked it. And here's the full second episode of AlionLive. Have Fun!

Musicians wanted for AlionLive!

2011-06-14T18:09:00.001+02:00

Today I have something very different for you than usually. Many of you might know my new video format AlionLive. If not, then have a look at it now. Each part of an episode of AlionLive is due to the maximum upload size of Youtube just under 15 minutes long and so far I have always accompanied it with my own music. Yesterday I got the idea to now also offer the possibility to other musicians to get their music featured in AlionLive episodes, and gain additional people to get to know about the music of rather lesser-known artists. And if I know one, then it is that independent artists who do not have a major record deal, can not have enough, namely promotion. And this I would like to provide to you, dear reader, if you are a musician. If you are concerned that unscrupulous people then just steal the music from the video and may no longer buy your MP3s, I can reassure you. Since I more or less talk over the music, the whole would be more of a mixed blessing ;). So what are you waiting for? Your music could already be presented in the next AlionLive episode. On request, a link to your website is displayed or a purchase link to the MP3. So you can directly gain new customers from AlionLive. The whole thing is very simple: You send an email to alionsonny@alionsonny.com and possible high-quality version of the song you like to have presented at AlionLive. We will discuss everything else then. I look forward to your mail! Ah, and by the way: This is all for free!

Updates and work at alionsonny.com

2011-06-13T20:05:00.001+02:00

First I want to apologize to the visitors and users of alionsonny.com for som inconviniences, which occured during the past weeks. Somehow the songlist was not updated correctly, and because of that my entry for the Leah Rosier Remix Contest aswell as my Teddybears cover "Punkrocker" did not appear. Somehow that had to do with some databasetable and I don't want to bore you with technical details. This should be fixed now. I took the opportunity to work a bit further at the website. Since quite a time there are some not so nice problems with the site, which are actually quite serious security leaks in conclusion with our all the time beloved hackers. I am not talking about real and serious hackers here, but rather about so called script kiddies who feel very cool, if they manage it to break into a private website and fuck something up. So I fixed some fat problems connected to the main database core classes, which caused at least some ugly PHP error messages.
Ok, and during the next weeks I will fix some minor problems, which for example fuck up the CSS regularly. And I will extend the website. Yes, right: There wil be NEW STUFF on alionsonny.com. I seriously think about implementing optional registration for user accounts, to supply, for example a newsletter for REAL fans. Let me surprise you!
I'll close this posting with apologies upfront for any inconviniences which may occur as result of the work at alionsonny.com. It is no "work at the open heart of the site", because I have a quite good development environment here, which allows me to test the modules before I put them online. But minor errors and bugs are allways possible. I ask you explicitly, to send me mails if you come across stuff which doesn't work or look like it should over a longer period of time. That way I eventually get to know about errors which I did not notice. Thanks in advance for your patience and help!

New song "Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover)" is out & more...

2011-06-01T00:06:00.001+02:00

Well, my listeners really has to wait a long time since my last song release. But as some kind of a compensation for this, the new release is really something special. Some time ago a friend pointed me to the music of a swedish band, called Teddybears and I quickly learned to love their music. Especially I liked a song they had released with one of the founding fathers of Punkrock: Iggy Pop. It was a song titled "Punkrocker". If you dont know the original track and want to give it a listen, just go to Youtube and search for Teddybears and Punkrocker. I would have liked to embed a video here, but the last time I linked to a video of that song either the video had been taken down or there was that familiar message, that the video was not available in my country. So, go and search for yourself and you'll find.
Well, and because I liked that song SO much und I started to re-create the instrumental part in my sequencer software, I thought to myself "Hey, why not do a coverversion?". And if you think, that my version like most of my songs will be instrumental, i can and must surprise you. No, it is not an instrumental version, and now for the surprise: I sing it myself! Yes, this is quite a rare thing, and I'll do it again very soon. On can say that I found my vocalist voice once again.
The song is NO on-to-one copy of the original. It has the typical alionsonny sound & flavor. At least this is, what the first reactions by listeners told me and I think they are right. They said that this track has the typical alionsonny sound, just a bit "different".
Well and now enough words, here's the song:

and as allway the eternally working links at Archive.org:
Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover) - LISTEN
Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover) - DOWNLOAD

To celebrate the end I want to mention that the next episode of AlionLive has been allready filmed yesterday. It features a biketour to the Sachsenwald, a forest near Hamburg / Germany. Alltogether I filmed about four hours of video material. This is roughly 1/3 or 1/4 of the material filmed for episode one. However, I will NOT use the ful about four hours of material, but only the highlights. This will be a funny and lengthy video cutting session. The episode is, as announced in german language, but will have english subtitles.
Well, and that's it. I'm off for cutting video!

AlionLive - New Videoshowidea - First Episode is online!

2011-05-20T23:57:00.000+02:00

Here's something new from me again. This time you can see me live, private and in colour on video. I know that this will be a shocking experience for some of you, but I love it soooo much to surprise, baffle and sometimes shock you all out there. So, what's it all about? It is some kind of a lifevideoshow, in which I want to show you a bit of the stuff you don't know about me so well. Well, some of you folks complained about that I am too alien and unaproachable, even tho I am quite open in my communcation online. But with those videos which go under the working title "AlionLive", I want to even more become your "musician next door". The whole thing is planned as a mix of information, comedy, music and purest madness.
The first episode has allready been published on Youtube and the filming began 1 1/2 weeks ago. It shows in four parts a walk thru the nature reserves in the north of Hamburg / Germany, of cause spiced up with some of the best alionsonny music. So here's episode one of AlionLive. Have Fun!

New service by alionsonny: The "alionsonny random Song of the day"!

2011-05-01T21:29:00.000+02:00

This idea came to life because of a listener, wondering about all the songs I had released since July 2004, and he didn't know abut most of them. Well, some people seem to have major problems visiting and browsing the songs section of alionsonny.com. For all those people and those who are simply too lazy to browse thru the huge load of songs which stacked up since 2004, I created a new service: I'll daily randomly pick one song as the "alionsonny random Song of the day" and post it on the social network sites I am on, especially on Facebook. So I hope to get especially my older songs to my new listeners and friends. So here we go with the first "alionsonny random Song of the day". It was first released on February 27th 2007, and it is "Progress (feat. MC Dubbel-U Bush)":

Progress (feat. MC Dubbel-U Bush) - LISTEN
Progress (feat. MC Dubbel-U Bush) - DOWNLOAD

New song and my entry for the Leah Rosier "Irie" Remix Contest is out!

2011-04-15T13:33:00.004+02:00

Yeah, some time has passed since my last song release. This is due to some other projects I am working at and, I confess, some kind of lazyness. But I am back with something special. There's a great Reggae vocalist from Holland and her name is Leah Rosier. I REALLY advise all of the reggaelovers amongst my listeners to check out her music. YOU WILL LOVE HER!
Leah and Dubbhism started a remix contest on her song "Irie" recently and as I found the vocals really great and felt like doing a remix at all, I gave it a try. Well, first my other projects kept me from working at it most of the time, but then, 3 days ago, I wanted to finnish it. What I had on my mind when I first listened to the accapella was the "Ghetto People" or "Lalabella" riddim. When I listened to the accapella on it's own, imagining what bassline etc. could fit for it, there was allways the bassline of that riddim. Strangely after a time, there was also another thing which came to my mind: The chord progression of Blue Oyster Cults "Don't fear the Reaper". When I told friends about that, they said "Sonny, you did far too long listen to that accapella. You must have audio hallucinations!" ;)
Ok, so I had the idea, that somehow I would put at least influences of both of those songs into it. Then I had the idea to go even further and put modified (or like some friend said malformed/mutated) versions of 2 other classic riddim basslines into it: The Slengteng Riddim and my beloved Alibaba Riddim. I f you hear closely to my version of Leah's "Irie" you will hear them for sure.
Well I got hooked on that accapella and I will publish another version which will be very different from the one I have done yesterday. Yes, the remix has been released yesterday allready. The contest rules say I may not upload this song anywhere than on Soundcloud until 17th of April when the contest ends. After that I will for sure upload it on alionsonny.com and all the other music upload sites on the great wide web. Until then, you find the song ONLY on Soundcloud, but you may also download it for free from there, just as allways. Enough words, here's the music:

Why is nothing happening here? Where's the music?

2011-03-29T01:35:00.000+02:00

No, dear friends of my music, dear listeners, I am not lost without trace and of cause I have not given up making music. As my true fans know, I am quite versatile and do loads of different stuff. And amongst all that I am a programmer / software developer and currently I am on that path again. I am working at an old dream of mine, my fractal generator AlionFractal. Only a few folks know about the first version of that software which I made, for several reasons, only available to a assorted group of people. Now I am working hard on version 2 of AlionFractal, the first official version. I am having loads of fun working at that project and so I simply didn't find the time to work at new music. Of cause I am working at some songs from time to time, but it was not enough to publish a song. Well, currently I am approaching a milestone in my software projects development, and once that milestone is reached, I'll for sure publish some new music. So you really don't have to wait very long for a new release. If you want to read about my progress at my software project, just visit my software development blog (currently ONLY IN GERMAN), by following this link.

Part eight of the "Alion Meditations" series has just been released!

2011-02-20T21:34:00.001+01:00

Yepp, and on we go, friends of the calm and meditative sounds. The eighth part of the "Alion Meditations" series is here! Some listeners told me, that the recent parts of the series were a bit to rythm oriented for them, so this part comes alomg without any drums and percussion instruments. The whole song floats nicely along, thanks to the magic of audio filters and ping-pong-delays. This time the song is also a bit longer. Instead of the traditional five minute playtime, it is about six minutes long. Is there another thing to say about this song? No! So here's the song

and as allways the indestructible links at Archive.org:
Meditation Eight - LISTEN
Meditation Eight - DOWNLOAD

New Song "Drunken Joe... in Love" has been released!

2011-02-12T22:31:00.001+01:00

Yes yes, once more a new song release is announced relatively late on alionsonny.com. But, well, better late than never. The new song is a Reggae production, to be exactly, the fourth part of the "Drunken Joe"-Saga. It all began in the year 2004, the year in which the alionsonny project was born with the song "Drunken Joe on his Journey home" and was continued in 2005 with "Drunken Joe at the Dancehall" and 2006 with "Drunken Joe in Space". Since then, many listeners asked, when the "Drunken Joe"-Saga will continue. Well, now it happened and as many listeners allready told me, it is a 100% fitting new chapter of the "Drunken Joe"-Saga. As allways there's a bit of a story behind this song which tells an episode of the life of Drunken Joe. Since the beginnig of Joe's journey through the world of heavy drinking, Joe was looking for a woman who could keep up with him at the art of heavy drinking. The problem allways was, that the women he met allways failled miserably in keeping up with his drinking behaviour. A short while ago, Joe met Josephine, a woman who starts with three bottles of whiskey as an appetizer. Joe is now absolutely happy to have found his true love. Together they now stumble thru the colorfull world of high grade boozerism. And this new chapter of the saga is a perfect soundtrack for their love. Enough words, here's the song:
Drunken Joe...In Love (The Adventures of Drunken Joe - Chapter 4) by alionsonny
and here the indestructible links at Archive.org:
Drunken Joe...in Love - LISTEN
Drunken Joe...in Love - DOWNLOAD

New Reggae Song "Bullet Proof" has been released!

2011-01-18T00:52:00.001+01:00

Once again the new song was actually released days ago, to be more precisely, it was 2 days ago. Because some stuff has gotten out of control here, such delays are unfortunately unavoidable. And once again, I note that my loyal "followers or friends" on Twitter and Facebook already knew about the release from the moment when it was first released. So if you are registered with one of the two networks and would like to be informed promptly, you should not miss to follow me or to add me to your friendlist.
Despite the lack of main part of the promotion, the song got a quite astonishing number of listens and downloads. It looks as if this is the most successful reggae song I've ever published. I'm really curious how the statistics develop from now on.
Stylistically, the song is located in the Reggae field, it is a steppers riddim with a good portion of Dub. It was really about time for the release of a new Reggaesong, because if you look at my list of publications, you will notice that the last Reggaerelease of mine, "Going Bonkers", was already at least half a year ago. Because of this, it is obvious why my reggae-oriented fans were getting a little restless and impatient;)
The new year is really going on fiercely creative. Almost 2/3 of January, is over and I already released three songs. If this continues, it will be a very fruitful year. But I always had a good feeling for 2011 after 2010 was a really bad year. Well, let's hope the best.
And here he is, the first reggae song, after half a year, "Bullet Proof". IMPORTANT NOTE: SOMEHOW THE COMPRESSION OF THE SONG AT SOUNDCLOUD HAS COMPLETELY GONE WRONG THIS TIME AND THE SOUND WAS HEAVILY DAMAGED. IF YOU LIKE THE SONG, PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE SONG FROM THE LINK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS NEWSENTRY. THIS IS A MUCH BETTER QUALITY!

and again the immortal Links at Archive.org:
Bulletproof - LISTEN
Bulletproof - DOWNLOAD

The seventh Chapter of the "Alion Meditations" series has been released!

2011-01-11T21:49:00.001+01:00

Actually this song has been released four days ago and my followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook know about it since then, unless the message drowned in the endless digital buzz. The reason why the visitors of alionsonny.com/alionsonny.de get the news that late is the following: Some other things got into my way and I didn't find the time to update this site and additionally I wanted to test how the downloads and streams of the song go, if I use promotion via social networks only.
But now for the new song: After about four moth since the last chapter of the "Alion Meditations" series was released, it was about time to release a new chapter. It was especially about time, because many of the folks who enjoyed the previous chapters were strongly demanding a new chapter. Because of that I halted all other projects and ideas. AND HOW GLAD I AM ABOUT THIS NOW! Somehow I had exactly the right ideas, mood and inspiration for it at the day I created "Meditation Seven". The whole song was created in about 6 hours and it took additional 2 hours to get the mix cleaned up and to remove some oddities. And it was woth the work, because the first feedback I got for the song was all positive and encouraging, sometimes even euphoric. I am also more than satified and happy with the result and the work at the song gave me quite a lot of inspiration for future works. Here it is, "Meditation Seven":

and as allways the indestructable links at Archive.org:
Meditation Seven - LISTEN
Meditation Seven - DOWNLOAD

First song in 2011, "Fireworks" has been released!

2011-01-04T20:02:00.001+01:00

Yepp, it's done: The first song in 2011 is out. And it really rocks the planet! I am currently developing a new style of alionsonny music. I call it Digipunk because it is meant to be punkrock in a digital style. Ok, it still sounds a lot like Synthpop, but I am still learning to do it right. The next part is perhaps a little more punky. This means that it will most probably sounds a bit more "dirty". Let's see ...
Incidentally, it was quite a fiasco to upload the song on my current main platform for music uploads, SoundCloud. Dozens of times I've tried it and got a nice error message that the upload failed and I should make sure that this is really an audio file. At first I thought that something had gone wrong with the encoding of the MP3. But that would be quite funny if all the other music sites accept the file without a problem. I then uploaded the wav file .. with the same error message as a result. So I mailed the support and got the info that the problem could be the title, because recently some IDIOTS uploaded music that was not theirs. Therefore, the filter would reject a lot of uploads recently. In the next mail I was told that the word "Fireworks" was actually in the filter list. I was asked to rename the song. So I've renamed the MP3 file in freworks.mp3, and entered "Freworks" as the songtitle and voila: It worked! Then I just renamed the title to "Fireworks" and everything was fine.
So let's face it: What is this shit? Why must any stupid idiot upload commercial shit on platforms such as SoundCloud, which are designed for musicians to upload their music? Are there not enough One-Click-Hosters for such crap?
Ok, but now everything is all good and the song is, as always, available for free download and listening:
Fireworks by alionsonny
and here the indestructible links at Archive.org, where you get the song, if I need to delete it one day because of my limited space at Soundcloud:

Fireworks LISTEN
Fireworks DOWNLOAD

My Christmas Song for 2010, "Light A Candle", has been published!

2010-12-12T15:53:00.001+01:00

Yes, this year too there's a christmas song by me. This time it is again a genuine own composition by me. First I wanted to cover an old classic christmas carrol like last year, but I just found it to be too boring... and soon dropped the idea. Then a friend of mine suggested to just compose my own christmas song and, not only because I had done this allready in 2005, I found it to be a great idea ;) Just that I didn't want it to be a reggaelike song this tim, but rather one of the typical solemn and moving songs. So I started to work somewhat before noon and at noon I allready had the maintheme and a quite elaborated concept ready. I spent most of the afternoon taming the quite hefty wall of reverb. This turned out to be a quite challenging task, as there was REALLY a big mess of interfering frequencies to be handled. From the first view, a muddy sound swamp was unavoidable. I confess, that I never before drenched a musical work in reverb like this time. But somehow magically the de-mudding of the track was rather easy and until the evening I had some time to work at some variations and glitter. Around 8:00 pm everything was done. Even selecting a songtitle, which usually nearly drives me nuts, was only a matter of a few minutes. I can safely say, that there has never before been a song which went so smooth thru all parts of its creation. Sometimes you just have a great day ;)

And here is the little gem. I is titled "Light A Candle". Enjoy!

Light A Candle - LISTEN
Light A Candle - DOWNLOAD

New things on alionsonny.com!

2010-12-01T17:23:00.003+01:00

Yaeh, some stuff has changed and there's a lot more about to happen. Because of a little flu-attack I was not able to accomplish as much as I wanted during the past 1 1/2 weeks, but I want my dear readers and listeners to know about what was still done.

In the main menu you now find an item titled "Sponsoring", which takes you to a page where you can find out about how you can support the alionsonny musicproject. Currently the only option offered is the sponsoring of single songs, but there's more about to come and because of that, this page is currently under permanent development. So it pays to check back from time to time.

Now that is interesting for all of you, who have a business, a product, a website, a blog etc. to advertise for. You just have to donate a VERY SMALL amount of money via the donation page, to be exact ONE EURO and your advertisement will be placed for a whole month on the page which opens for the sponsored song to play and download it. I don't think you find a cheaper way to advertise anywhere. I confess that this is a special offer to get things running. Once it all works, the price will most probably go up, so take your chance while it is still that cheap!

In the course of making songsponsoring possible, I had to make the process of listening to or downloading songs a bit more complicated. But due to the fact, that the idea regarding voluntary donations from listeners didn't work, I had to do this. Download- and streamingbuttons for the songs have completely vanished from the song list page. Instead of using them, you have to now click on the titel of the particular song, which takes you to a page where (if there's a sponsor) the sponsors advertising and a donation reminder is shown, a Flashplayer and also Stream-/Downloadlinks.

Well. that's it so far. Because of the fact that I will work a lot at alionsonny.com in the future, be prepared for some tough changes, surprises and of cause bugs and faillures. Bug reports are allways appreciated, because I cannot find all glitches myself. So if you report them to me, you help me to make alionsonny.com better.

Planned new features on alionsonny.com and other news...

2010-11-22T14:18:00.003+01:00

Some time ago I informed my beloved listeners and readers about the fact, that I will increasingly put a focus on how to get some cash out of my works such as making music. To put it exactly: In the long run I want to make a living out of my works solely.

As part of this strategy, I am now about to change some parts of alionsonny.com. Some of the changes will please everybody and some of the changes will piss people off. But you cannot imagine how little I care about that ;) As a first step, statistics will be collected about the number of plays and downloads of songs. The reason is, that, using the currently used technique, I have not the slightest clue about how many times the songs get streamed or downloaded. Notice: No personal user data will be collected, so your privacy remain untouched. The implementation of the statistics collecting also allows me to implement annoying little windows which pop up when a download is started, which remember the forgetful amongst you of the fact, that donations are more than welcome. Furthermore, this creates the basis for another income concept, the Song-sponsorship, which I will describe in a separate blog for interested individuals and business people.

One interesting and certainly most welcomed change is that it will be possible to buy my music in the future in high sound quality. For this, I will work on a separate shop, where my albums can be downloaded as CD images. There will be alionsonny merchandise available, such as the the often asked for T-Shirts, but also stuff like mugs etc. For this I will most probably use external service providers such as Spreadshirt and Cafepress.

So far for now. If you have any comments or questions about those new features: Feedback is allways highly appreciated!

New album "Electronic Spacerock" has been released!

2010-11-18T16:05:00.004+01:00

This has been never before since the alionsonny project has been launched in 2004. What? Simple: Never before I released two albums in one year. And now it has happened: After the (at least fo me) overwhelming success of "Alion - Original Soundtrack", I release today, Anno 2010, another album titled "Electronic Spacerock". And this album is also a brandnew thing, because it is 100% different from all albums I published before. No Reggae, no Soundtrack Music, but only synthesizer music, influenced by the sound of 1980's syntheszizer music, categorized by others often as Synthpop or Electronica. I call it Electronic Spacerock, because the concept of this music is to create rockmusic usually played using a typical rockband setup with synthesizers only. A additional part of the concept is to tske advantage of techniques which can be only be created using synthesizers and especially sequencing, such as drumpatterns impossible to play for a drummer or keyboard lines, which are not really playable for a keyboarder because they are, for example, too fast to be played by a human being. The album contains mostly songs from 2009 to 2010 but also songs which are from the years 2006 to 2008. To be exact there are five songs from 2010, three from 2009, one from 2008, two from 2007 and also two from 2006 on this album. Enough words, here's the album, of course FOR FREE. The complete album, including high resolution coverart, will be available in form of a RAR-archive on my limited webspace for a time. Just use this link to download it. You can also view the coverart and something about how it was created on my graphics blog. Just click here to get there. If you just want to check out the music and don't want to download the whole package now, you can also find it for listening on this page on LastFM.

I am allways glad if you spread the word about my releases and I am even more glad about short or long reviews on your Blogs. Just let me know if you do one and I'll be sure to mention them on my blogs and provide backlinks to your blogs.

HAVE FUN!

New Song "80's 4 Ever" has been released!

2010-11-05T19:16:00.000+01:00

Yes, again it took a bit of time, but a new song titled "80's 4 Ever" has been released. To be exactly, it has been released yesterday allready and all who follow my news on Twitter, Facebook etc. were the the first to know about it. Why does the news appear here one day later? Well some stuff happened... There's not much to say about the new song. The title "80's 4 Ever" says it all. Again it is 80's style Synthpop music. Yes, I do quite a lot of music in that style recently, but don't worry: All my other styles will be back some day. Currently I have lot's of fun doing 80's style Synthpop music, that's it. But there's some more about the release of this new song. It is the last song I needed for the release of a brandnew complete album with music of that genre. This means, soon a new alionsonny album will be released. The working title (and most probably the final title) will be "Electronic Spacerock". The album release may take some time as I have to do some nice covergraphics first. The concept for the graphics is allready finnished, so I just have to create it.

But enough words, here's the new song. Again I embed the Soundcloud player, which will no longer work once I have to delete this song from my limited space at Soundcloud to free up space for another one:

If this happens, the old trusted links below will still work:
80's 4 Ever - LISTEN
80's 4 Ever - DOWNLOAD

Let's talk about MONEY!

2010-10-21T15:46:00.001+02:00

After I published my statement titled "Why I give away my music for free" several nice people contacted meby mail or Messenger, to discuss how I still could make money with my music and other creative activities, yes, maybe even how I could live of it.

Especially in a messenger conference, people suggested a lot of interesting ideas to me, which I want to tell you about and discuss with you. Here are, among other things, by a group conference on Messenger, some good ideas come about, I would like you of course not denied. I would be very happy if more of you would connect with me in constructive dialogue in order to perhaps develop additional concepts.

Some of you probably know nothing about my financial situation and I will now describe it briefly: I am currently Hartz IV recipient.

That means that I get, if the unemployment office is not busy harrassing me as it is currently the case, unemployment benefit. It all happened like this: By mid 2009, I was a self-employed IT consultant. Unfortunately, it went all down the drain when, because of the economic crisis, I lost all my contractors one by one. One day I saw no other chance than repoting myself as unemployed. In addition, my health went bad and I am diagnosed by the doctors as unable to work since December 2009. Unfortunately, there are folks at the unemployment office who love to harrass unemployed people and delay or cancel the payment of unemployment benefit just for the sake of it. Therefore the payment of unemployment benefit II is anything but regular. I had several cases in which I got no money for some months, and therefore could not pay my rent. This is the case currently again. So much for my situation.

Since I would be VERY HAPPY to live again of my self earned money instead of the unemployment benefit and my chances to find a regular job are rather bad, I am looking for ways to live of what I do anyway, such as making music. As I said, I discussed with nice and benevolent people about ways to achieve this. The current status is this: Although many people seem to like my music, but fail to send a donation from time to time. Except for a one great person who supported me for months, I get almost no donations. That is, in the face of thousands of downloads of my music, very depressing. This has shown very clearly that the idea about voluntary donations does not work.

The logical consequence would be to follow the opinion of my discussion partners, to take down all free downloads of my music from the Internet, and to demand money for each download. As I described in my statement, that is not at all compatible with my principles. A discusion partner said the following: "You have to be able to afford principles". He is most probably right with that statement. Therefore, I think reserve the option to make my music available for cash only as a last resort. But before I take such a crass step which conflicts with my priciples, I'll still try a few other ideas. If those ideas fail like the idea regarding voluntary donations, I'll definately take the last option an make all my music available for cash only.

In the coming blogposts I will explain to you the ideas I've collected for the future with my supporters and launch a survey on these ideas. As a little incentive to you to participate in the planning / discussion, I will be giving away multiple downloads of individual songs and entire albums in high quality uncompressed format. Do not miss this chance, because MP3 is nice, but not really good. So stay tuned.

Why I give away my music for free

2010-10-20T13:42:00.002+02:00

In the past six years, since I started releasing music under the artistname alionsonny, one question has been asked over and over again: Why do I give away my music for free instead of selling it? I want to answer this question in this article.

First of all: Some nasty folks claimed that the reason is, that my music was so bad, that I had no chance at all to sell it. Of cause I do not share that opinion. What sense would it make to release music if I had the opinion it was bad music? Additionally, the many thousands of downloads of my music speak louder than words. Because it is possible to listen to every song before downloading it, it is also not true if people claim that those downloads were just made to check the music. Who would download a song, if he thinks it is bad after listening to it?

The main reason that I give away my music for free lies in the fact that I am firmly convinced that it should never be mandatory to pay for being able to enjoy art and culture. The artist has never payed a single cent for his gift to be able to create art and so it is simply not ok to to mandatory require money for the fruits of this gift. There are many people who can not afford to pay money for music. My opinion is that the decision whether or how much to pay should be left to the people. I once referred to me as the "busker of the Internet". I have spent some time as street musician and felt it to be extremely nice when people have voluntary gave a donation for my work to me. I feel this voluntary giving as a much greater confirmation than as if I had forced the people to pay.

I also think that if one sees art as some kind of a dayjob, creativity, and thus the art itself is no longer the main driving force of creating art. This kills creativity and thus the art. Take for example the music industry. They usually publish only "what sells". This means that only what a large majority is willing to buy is to be published. The majority of the record companies will produce only sign an artist, who produces so-called mainstream music. The record companies decide what will be produced and published, based on sales experience of the past, because nobody can predict what will possibly sell good in the future. But how can a music of the future can be created if the record companies solely decide based on sales numbers of the past? I have seen many artists who started with promising concepts and great creativity, which had one or two big hits and after they signed with a record label, they were forced by the label to produce slightly modified copies of those hit singles instead of really new songs. You can not even blame the record companies for what they do. Record companies are profit-oriented businesses. For them everything depends on sales and not on artistic standards and creativity.

However, this has a fatal consequence: The music industry has such a market power, that artists who did not sign a contract with a big record label have little or no chance of being noticed by the audience. What most of the people are listening to and buy is, what is on the television and radio etc.. Radio and television stations are also business enterprises and require loads of money for artist promotion. And the music industry has the money to pay them. But no unsihned independent artis has so much cash. No independent artist can keep up with the monetary power of the music industry. No independent musician has a million budget for advertising. My favorite comparison is between a poor and a rich merchant in a market. The rich merchants has an expensive sound system with which he can draw attention to its products, while the poorer merchant relies solely on his voice. The products of the poorer trader can be as good or even better than those of the rich merchant and he may also have a very loud voice. Against the sound system he just can not compete. So he remains poor, because buyers do not even notice him and his products.

Because of that situation, some of my critics are right when they say that I have no chance against the overwhelming uniformity of industrial productions. I can not keep up with the aggressive marketing of the industry, which is backed up with large advertising budgets. I can do as much as I can much to make my music known to the public, it will not change the big picture. And yes, those who say that I allready capitulated. IF I wanted to make a living with my music, I must somehow get a minimum of money out of my works which enables me to pay my rent and food. And if even not that small ammount of cash comes in, what sense does it make to make it mandatory to pay for downloading my music.

For this reason, I ask all those who love my music, to donate some cash from time to time. It shows me the fact that you like what I do. It is very easy because you can donate via Paypal. If you do not like Paypal, or don't want to use it for any other reason, you can also transfer the donation to my bank account.

*** CLICK HERE FOR THE DONATION PAGE ***

New song "Never born to follow" has been released!

2010-10-11T11:21:00.001+02:00

Well, that was about time, eh? Over a month of silence between two song releases is not really a thing that should happen, but I needed the time for myself. Not that it is any of your business ;) but I started to take the treatment for my depression into my own hands and stopped taking those stupid pills. The result can be only described as full SUCCESS. Once I finnished the whole process, I'll maybe let you know about it all. But I can here and now safely say, that I am out of the biggest mess. A clear sign for that is my latest work "Never born to follow". I uploaded it on assorted websites on Thursday and Friday allready and the feedback is overwhelming. The audience allready confirmed, that this is maybe the by far best song I ever created. That's what I think too. The song has again a very strong influence of 80s music and also EBM, Techno anhd Synthpop. But why am I trying to describe how it sounds while you can listen to it yourself? This time I'll embed the Soundcloud songplayer for convienience:

The player will vanish someday, because my space on Soundcloud is limited and because of this I give you also the well known links which will ALLWAYS work:
Never born to follow - LISTEN
Never born to follow - DOWNLOAD

Late Update: New song "Rise & Shine" is OUT!

2010-09-14T11:43:00.004+02:00

No, it's not because of lazyness, that I update this blog about the release of my latest song "Rise & Shine" 2 days after it has been released. It is, because I didn't want to push the news about the release of the "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" album off my Homepage. As you know, only the latest blogposting is shown on my homepage and this posting pushes away the album release posting. Meanwhile there were over 7000 downloads of the album. So I think it is safe now that another news post replaces the album release post.
So far for this. Two days ago, I released a the new song "Rise & Shine". This time it is no Reggae track, no part of the "Alion Meditations" series and no orchstral soundtrack title, but nice and pure 80s synthpop with a touch of Techno. "Rise & Shine" seems to be much appreciated by the audience, because I got very nice reviews and comments on the various music upload sites where I uploaded it. Thanks for all the nice feedback! So here it is, "Rise & Shine":

Rise & Shine - LISTEN
Rise & Shine - DOWNLOAD

Alion - The Original Soundtrack is finally released!

2010-09-07T13:13:00.002+02:00

Yes, it is done! After a year of work the music album "Alion -The Original Soundtrack" is out. This is my first album with 100% NO Reggae influence in it but mostly orchestral arrangements. Those of you who read this blog frequently will most likely know what I am talking about, if I write about the "Alion Original Soundtrack" project. Those who, for what reason even do not, should follow THIS LINK to learn about it. The album contains, like its predecessors, 13 tracks and this time there's not just a single image to stick into the frontslot of a jewelcase, but a complete set of coverartwork mostly created unsing Blender 3D with a little help of the GIMP. Have a look at it on my AlionVisualArts-Blog.

This artwork is also included in the album rar-archive which you can download from this link: DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM. As allways, this album is available for completely FREE DOWNLOAD. I'll keep it on my limited webspace for quite a while.

It is currently also available on LastFM and later it will be available from each and every good music download site on the web. So grab your copy, enjoy and let me know what you think about it.

The last song of the "Alion Original Soundtrack" album is OUT!

2010-09-02T15:41:00.004+02:00

Yes, after over a year of work the last song, song #13 of the Alion Original Soundtrack project is finnished. This took some time because of my little recent creative blockade and also because this was a very special song to create. It is a reprise of the "Theme of Alion" which will be track #1 on the album. It is nearly the same compostion and arrangement as the original theme, except for that it is a stripped down version for two Grand Pianos. It was quite difficult for me to get this song sound good with such a tiny number of sound possiblities. It is compltely different if you have the choice of a whole orchestration or just two pianos. It was a challenge and I think I mastered it very well. So let's go straight to the music. Here's "Theme of Alion Reprise"

Theme of Alion Reprise - Alion OST - LISTEN
Theme of Alion Reprise - Alion OST - DOWNLOAD

New Track "Meditation Six" is out!

2010-09-01T16:22:00.001+02:00

Well, that took quite some time again. As some of you know, some major changes took place in my life and for that reason I was down and had a huge creative blocking which kept me from doings any creative work. Well, I think and hope this is over now. My first release after that little pause is the sixth track of the "Alion Meditations" series. It is REALLY unusual and I suggest that you do not listen to this track if you are on ANY drugs. I tried to put my current state of mind and feelings into this one. This is why this is no realy composition. It has no real melody, no fancy hookline. In fact I am not sure if it is music at all. But I WANTED to do this and so I did. If some of you or even one single listener on earth enjoys it, I am glad about it. If notm I don't even care. I want to do more just for the sake of doing it. So here's "Meditation Six":

Meditation Six - LISTEN
Meditation Six - DOWNLOAD

News from the Willma Poppen Project

2010-07-09T04:16:00.003+02:00

First I want to shout out to all of you who think that there's not enough happening here "SO WHAT? ARE YOU PAYING ME?". Well that did good ;) Ok, seriously: Actually I am allways working at one of my various projects and if some of you are unable to keep track of it all after I posted the links to my projects several times, it is not my problem. The really cool ones of you ;) are allways up to date via Twitter at all and the other, well, they have to wait. And while we are talking about my various projects: There's news from Willma. Wilma who? Willma Poppen, aka the Willma Poppen Project. Still no clue? This website will help you.
And the Willma Poppen Project has released a new song. After two years of total silence, those of you who enjoyed the tracks from 2008 will be very happy, I think. Well, so we stop the talking and let the music do the talking:

Willma Poppen - Herores of the Popp-Culture - LISTEN
Willma Poppen - Herores of the Popp-Culture - DOWNLOAD

On we go with the "Alion Meditation" Series!

2010-06-21T01:09:00.000+02:00

Many have asked when a new song für the "Alion Meditation" will be published again. Ok, two moths have passed and I know a lot of you folks out there love, for whatever reason, that series. I know this from all your nice mails AND the download stats on various music upload sites. "Alion Meditations" seems to be BY FAR my most successfull music project so far. Well, I don't get it ;) So here's part 5. It is not as strange as, for example, part 1, but I think you'll still like it. Soon I'll publish some "behind the scenes information" which will give you an idea about the connection of the music to my "meditative experiments". But for now have fun with another relaxing, chilling piece of alionsonny music:

Meditation Five - LISTEN
Meditation Five - DOWNLOAD

Finally a new "reggaelike" Track - "Going Bonkers"

2010-06-05T01:00:00.000+02:00

Yes, rejoice my children! The wait is over. Here's a new "reggaelike" alionsonny track. May the purists rant and rave, may they curse and rotate in highspeed. The big Reggae Blasphemer has done it again. Friend to whom I showed the track before releasing it say that it IS Reggae and that there's no doubt about this. But hey, I love it to sa that it is just reggaelike and it is in my unique style. I am unable to do simply Reggae. I create AlionReggae! That's a totally different thing and it is good that way. So now you maybe ask yourself: Why that title of the song. Well, I just say so much: It reflects my current mental state. Nuff said, listen to the music:

Going BONKERS - LISTEN
Going BONKERS - DOWNLOAD

"Shadows Of The Past" - Track # 12 for "Alion Original Soundtrack" project has been released!

2010-05-30T17:48:00.000+02:00

After our heroes have mastered all the dangers of the old mine, in which the former archmage of Alion live, they stand before him face to face at last. As expected, the old man is anything but enthusiastic of their visit. He understands, however, that someone who is willing to face all the dangers on the way to him, must have a good reason to stand before him.
Impatiently, he asks what leads the uninvited visitors to him. Our heroes describe as detailled, but also as brief as possible what has happened at Alion Castle. With each detail they describes, his face gets darker and when they ask him if he know what is possibly going on and if he knows a way to stop the evil, he breaks out in a rage which completely baffles our heroes. "Do I know what is going on? Of course, how could I not know? I warned the fools at Alion Castle for years that just that will happen one day! What do YOU think made me leave behind my life as the archmage and high priest of Alion? One does not just say: Ok, I'm gonna live out in the wilderness, leave behind the life I used to live just because of I don't know! No I was sick and tired of being treated like a fool just because I tried to warn the blockheads at the court of the king of the evilwhich was lying ahead. But... how can I expect you to understand, what even the most educated people at the kings court were not able to grasp?
When the old man finishes his outburst, with some evil curses, he asks, "So, the king, the old fool on the throne of Alion I dead?". His forehead wrinkles got even deeper and he remarked quietly, "Not for long, he will not be dead for long. Well, not really dead... but ...".
Our heroes of course do not understand a word of what the old Archmage tells them. And they ask him if he can tell them this all from the beginning. The old man frowns and says softly, "Well, then I'll try. I will tell you the whole story. Not that I would have even the slightest hope that of ALL people YOU are able to understand, but an attempt can do no harm... "
He then tells a long story about an old threat that he once, when he explored the history Alion. discovered and how he had tried to warn the king and the elders of Alion. This new track of the "Alion Original Soundtrack is the music for this story.

NOTE I started to write this story, but it proved to be too long to put it in this song description. I will soon publish the entire history of the heroes of Alion and of cause a detailled version of the part about the causes of the threat, which I just described briefly in this text. I'll do this in form of a new Blog, titled "Tales of Alion". Yes I plan to become a writer :D Stay tuned, because this wioll become exciting!

Shadows Of The Past - LISTEN
Shadows Of The Past - DOWNLOAD

"Mystic Caves": A new track for the "Alion Original Soundtrack" project has just been released!

2010-05-23T16:39:00.003+02:00

Yes, and on we go, heading towards finnishing the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project. As all alionsonny albums, the album "Alion Original Soundtrack" will contain 13 tracks. And as this is track number 11, there's only 2 tracks to go until that megaproject can be released. I am allready working at some nice coverart. Stay tuned on Twitter to follow the development.
And now, as for all songs, here's the story for this track titled "Mystic Caves" which is rather short compared to the stories behind the previous tracks: After our heroes arrived at "Elven Grove" they are told by the elvens living there, that the hermit former archmage they came to see is not living at "Elven Grove" but in some caves nearby. Even "Elven Grove" was not solitary enough for him and so he decided to live in a abandoned mine. The elven warn our heroes that it would not be very easy to speak with that man, because he secured the caves with loads of traps and magic spells to keep away unwanted visitors. In fact each visitor seems to be unwanted at this place. This track of the soundtrack reflects the mysterious and dangerous caves atmosphere and feeling.

Mystic Caves - LISTEN
Mystic Caves - DOWNLOAD

New song for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-project is out: "The Elven Grove"

2010-05-17T21:12:00.001+02:00

It took some time, but track number ten of the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-project has just been released. Somehow I had some kind of a creative block during the past week, but now it is done and I finnished a new song.
Time to tell the story behind this song. As you maybe remember, "Alion Castle" is under a siege of a enemy army of unknown origin. Right after our heroes saw the massive ammount of troops around the city walls from a watchtower, a messenger approached and told them, that the priest of the local temple who is also the archmage urgently needs to speak with them.
So our heroes enter the great temple of "Alion Castle" and the archmage tells our heroes that they have to find out what is happening and why those troops are attacking "Alion Castle". He says, that he can imagine just one person in the world to know more about it and what to do now.
This person is the former archmage of "Alion Castle" who is currently living at "Elven Grove", the place where the Elven of the forest are living. He says that this man will not not be very glad to be disturbed because after being the archmage of "Alion Castle" he decided to live as a hermit in the forest with the Elven. But he also says, that whatever it takes, our heroes have to speak with this man. So out heroes sneak out of the castle using a secret tunnel and also sneak thru the siege. They see that everything around the castle, farms and houses are burned down. Carefully they travel back thru the "Alion Forest" until they arrive at "Elven Grove". This song you are about to listen to is the theme for the "Elven Grove"-settlement, where the Elven live in treehouses and other small wooden houses.

The Elven Grove - LISTEN
The Elven Grove - DOWNLOAD

New song "The Siege" for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project has just been released!

2010-05-05T20:39:00.002+02:00

This is track #9 for the "Alion Original Soundtrack". The story for it is as follows: After the assasination of the king (Track "A Kings Funeral"), our heroes needed a bit of distraction and did a bit of sightseeing and visited the city which surrounds Alion Castle (Track: "Alion Castle Theme"). But they did not get much time to relax, because at the evening of the day, they got to hear that a big army is gathering around the city walls. Nobody knows who those troops are and where they came from, let alone who is their leader. One thing is sure: The assasination of the king was just the prelude for much more trouble to come. As our heroes get up on a watchtower from where they can see the area in front of the city gates, they see a horrifying scenario: from the city wall to the horizon they see hundreds, if not thousands of armed troops preparing to attack Alion Castle or at least for a long siege of the city and the castle. And this scenario they face is what this song is reflecting.

The Siege (Alion OST) - LISTEN
The Siege (Alion OST) - DOWNLOAD

alionsonny.com under construction!

2010-04-30T16:15:00.004+02:00

This is to inform you about the fact that alionsonny.com (and now alionsonny.de) will be under heavy construction for several hours. As this will be an "open heart surgery", it is most likely that you'll experience strange, weird and maybe funny effects which are related to the reconstruction. So why is it? I am happy to announce that I got the alionsonny.de-domain, which will be now a starting page for all german speaking people to the alionsonny-website. My provider upgraded my webpackage without charging me more cash and included are 4 four additional domains. I will have now to change the language dfriven part of the websites underlying system to make it all work. I'll also take this as an opportunity to improve some of the php-code and site features. Stay tuned and bear with me in the times of change.

Track #8 for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project "Alion Castle Theme" is online!

2010-04-28T17:48:00.000+02:00

Yes, I've done it again! Another song for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project is ready for you to listen and download for free. This song is for exploring "Alion Castle" and the city of "Alion" that surrounds it. This song is meant to sound very majestic, reflecting the beauty and greatness of the castle and the city. This time I completely ommited a drum or percussion part. For my taste, the instruments add enough rythm and accentuation to the song. If you are really missing any drums and percussion in this song, there'll be more than enough in the next song ;)

Alion Castle Theme (Alion OST) - LISTEN
Alion Castle Theme (Alion OST) - FREE DOWNLOAD

New song "Aurora Borealis" has just been released!

2010-04-26T18:42:00.000+02:00

After a very creative week during which I released 3 new songs, I needed a little break. But now a brandnew song has been released. This time it is hard to describe what kind of music it is. I would call it chillout music, but I'm sure that there will some people out there who will disagree with that. But no matter in what genre you think this new song fits, it is of cause a typical alionsonny production. Enough words, here's the music:

Aurora Borealis - STREAM
Aurora Borealis - DOWNLOAD

"Nero d' Avola" on the genuine alionsonny "Nero d' Avola"-Riddim is OUT NOW!

2010-04-16T22:35:00.002+02:00

Finally a new alionsonny Dub-Reggae production. This song is dedicated to my favorite red wine the great and unique "Nero d' Avola". This song is on a genuine riddim by alionsonny, the "Nero d' Avola"-Riddim! Some folks will most probably again complain, that "this is not really Reggae" or no Reggae at all. Well I don't care. For me it is Reggae and this is what counts in the end. So here it is, my latest REGGAE production:

Nero d' Avola - LISTEN
Nero d' Avola - DOWNLOAD

"Alion Meditations" - "Meditation Four" is out now!

2010-04-14T19:25:00.000+02:00

YES, this is a very creative week. 3 songs in 3 days, that's not bad ;) After releasing two new songs for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-project, I wanted to do something without orchestral soundtrack arrangements, something to relax. And what's better for that, than a brandnew track for the "Alion Meditations"-project of which I know that not just a few people like it and are waiting for more tracks? Many thanks to the folks out there who wrote me very positive and encouraging comments and mails for the previous parts. So here it is, track number four:

Meditation Four - LISTEN
Meditation Four - DOWNLOAD

"Alion Original Soundtrack" - "The Kings Funeral" out now!

2010-04-13T15:32:00.002+02:00

Seems I am in a springtime creative rush these days. Just yesterday I released the battle theme for the "Alion Original Soundtrack" project and just one day later, today, another track for this epic album is ready. This may also be, because I have developed a new way of creating harmonics, melodies and arrangements. This is a real breakthru. Ok, it would take really too much time to explain it to you and I would most probably not be able to do it at all as it is all free floating in my head. I just can say that much: It is a new way of viewing and understanding musical theory which suits my mindset a lot more than the well known schemes.

Ok, what's the story for this track? Here it is:
After the attack at the Alion River Valley, the head of the Alion Cityguard tells our heroes, that the attackers were not just walking by and thinking "Hey, lets attack those people!", but were fleeing from the City Guards men, because some time ago they carried out an attack right on Alion Castle and most probably tried to murder the king. He says that he must urgently return to Alion Castle to see of the king is ok. Our heroes join him and when they arrive at Alion Castle, they get to know that the king was wounded that much in battle, that he had died. This song is the theme for the kings funeral which occurs within three days after his death, as the tradition tells it shall be done.

People, seriously, I had not only one time tears in my eyes when I did this track, because I had pictures of that fictonal funeral in my head while producing it and I crafted the several parts of this track according to those pictures. I think this track sounds beautiful and strong at the same time. But it also is quite full of sorrow in some way. I think I must do a happier tune for the next track ;)

The Kings Funeral (Alion OST) - LISTEN
The Kings Funeral (Alion OST) - DOWNLOAD

... and on we go with the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project: Battle Theme 1

2010-04-12T13:38:00.004+02:00

After quite a long time it finally goes on with the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Project. I have to confess that I underestimated how difficult it would be to create a battle-them for a soundtrack. I NEVER thought that this would probably be the most difficult part of the whole project. Well, because I follow a well defined storyline, the inability to compose the battle-theme in a suitable way, blocked all further steps. This is why nothing happened for such a long time. I have to say, that I am quite glad, that I decided to do that fictional soundtrack prior to search for any real challenges at soundtrack project to work at. I allready learned a lot during this project, for example, that a battle-theme is not as easy to do as it ought to be.

This is track 6 of this project, which is planed to have 13 tracks and as I said allready, I learned a lot while doing those 6 tracks. I am excited and at the same time horrified when I think about what teachings and frustrations will come my way during the process of composing the 7 tracks still to do. Because of the fact, that the battle-theme blocked me for such a long time, I allready have at least 3 of the tracks folloing it in more or less advanced state of completion. So it will (hopefully) go on swiftly, so that I am hopefully able to release the album prior to my 42. birthday. This album will not be only downloadable for free as low quality MP3's but also be available for purchase in high quality format at all well known commercial online music distributors.

Now the story for this battle-theme:
In the last chapter (The River Valley), Our group of heroes was busy decimating the wildlife population at the Alion River Valley. Suddenly they are disturbed by a group of fighters approaching, immediately drawing their weapons, which are strangely allready quite breathless. Anyway, a fight is unavoidable. At the time when our heroes allmost defeated the enemy, another group of fighters approaches on horses. The armor and the coats of arms on it identify them easily as members of the Alion Cityguard. The rest of the enemies flee because of the obvious predominance of their opponents. Cityguard? What are they doing here? Are they comming to help a group of wandering heroes who were attacked while hunting? There must be something else....

To be continued in the next chapter...

Battle Theme 1 (Alion OST) - LISTEN
Battle Theme 1 (Alion OST) - DOWNLOAD

alionsonny's Music in 7 Youtube-Videos of other Youtubers

2010-04-01T17:48:00.001+02:00

Recently, when I was told by a "worried fan", that "somebody was using my music in his own videos", I had the idea to enter my artistname into the searchbox of Youtube to find out if there were more videos using my music as a soundtrack. Well, I was quite surprised, that there were at least 7 videos on Youtube with my music, which were not produced by me but other Youtubers. I say at least because I am quite sure that there are at least 7 more videos with my music on Youtube where the makers didn't bother giving me credits. Shame may be upon them. But my "worried fan" can safely stop worrying, because I published all my songs under a Creative Commons License NonCommercial No Derivs. And because of this, it is 100% ok to use my music in own videos as long as they are not commercial and the music is not altered, remixed, cutted etc. But if somebody wants to advertise a business or a commercial product, he should better get clearance upfront (eg. ask me for permission) or the video would be taken down very quick. ;)

In all other cases, for example the 7 videos linked below, I feel very honored, because it shows again that there are people out there who like what I do. And I want to encourage all who read this and hesitated to use my music in videos to do so. And PLEASE let me know about it! I apreciate that! Ok, and here's the 7 Youtube Videos I found so far using my music as a soundtrack. If you know more, please let me know.

Road Movie Clips - Destined for the bin by Bevoin1970

Tesori d'Orlando - 4 - Villa Piccolo e Castello Bastione - Capo d'Orlando by DigiLabStudio

Hamburg / Alionsonny by WhiteRosePl

St Paddy's Day Party in Second Life by Larkworthy

mountainbiking on mars - alionsonny (sidewalk art - julian beever) by cwd543

Cable Dance by juwimuwi

350 Make a Choice by MuskokaDreamscape

New song "Meditation Three"

2010-03-25T17:17:00.001+01:00

It was just 2 days ago when I released my song "Sunrise" and, yes, here's another song. You see: Springtime and sunshine make me creative. The dark winter days are over and I'm back in full force. The song is part 3 of the "Alion Meditations" Series. This time it is even more strange and "spacy" than the first 2 parts. Most of you know me to put much time into melody composition, but this time it is different. It is maybe a step back into my early days of producing music in 2004-2005 when I put more time into "dubbing" and effects use. There's no fancy melody/hookline this time but just 6 minutes of effects freakout. I had a real hard time taming all those filtered sounds and if the limiter had been never invented, I would have to invent it for this track ;) It is a REAL soundmonster and I have 2 advises for you: 1. Dont listen to this if you are on ANY drugs and 2. think twice before you turn the volume up. There's some parts in this track where I think you would be sorry afterwards for doing so.

Much words, let the sounds speak:

Meditation Three - STREAM
Meditation Three - DOWNLOAD

New Song: Sunrise

2010-03-23T19:40:00.000+01:00

I have spend most of the time recently working at the musicvideo for "Meditation Two" in Blender, a really epic project. But still I found the time to get a new song, called "Sunrise", ready for release.

It is what people call Chillout- or Ambientmusic these days, and so it is a very calm and relaxing song. First I thought about making it part 3 of the "Alion Meditation"-Series, but after all I decided that it would not fit that good.

But enough words. Let the music speak for itself:

Sunrise - STREAM
Sunrise - DOWNLOAD

A few words for those who are worried about the fact that nothing happened at the projects "Alion Original Soundtrack" and "Classic Reggae Riddms Orcastrated". I am of cause still working at those projects, stay tuned...

New Song "Green Hills"

2010-02-23T17:43:00.003+01:00

Well, I INDEED forgot to mention the new Song here on my own homepage out of all pages on the web. Is this still excusable? Well I think so, because I am only accountable to my self. And I think this is completely ok. And, hey: Better late than never, eh? And here it is: My latest song. Again it is somthing "reggaelike". Some folks allready said in forums or via mail, that this is indeed real Reggae. But, folks, I don't fall for that anymore. How often people told me that a song of mine was real Reggae, and then when I called it Reggae myself in forums etc., the result was the old and very well known "this is not really Reggae". ;) And know what? I don't really care if it is actually Reggae or not. It is my music, which you like or don't like. So all what's left for me is to hope that you like this new song. And if not? Well, dammit, that's how life goes :D

But now after all those words, let the music speak for itself:
GREEN HILLS STREAM
GREEN HILLS DOWNLOAD

New song release: Hava Nagila

2010-02-15T17:26:00.001+01:00

My latest song is an old jewish Klezmer (Folk) song I wanted to cover for quite a looong time. Last week I finally had an idea how to do it in a new style. And the result is a reggaelike track again.Strangely after I had the basic melody done, it was less work than expected. The ideas were there right when I needed them. I would say, I did this track in less then a tenth of the time I usually spend on producing a song. Still it is, as I think, one of the best mixed and arranged productions I ever did. I think I must do more jewish folk music. In fact I have allready some songs of that kind on my list. But on the other hand, I have at least an album of other songs which need just some polishing to be ready for release. We'll see... For now have fun with "Hava Nagila":

STREAM
DOWNLOAD

New song "Meditation Two" out now!

2010-01-30T12:36:00.003+01:00

Yes, it's been a while since I released my last song. Over a month without a song release by me drove some chronical worried folks to write me mails, asking what has happened to me and if everything is allright. And now, on the occasion of releasing this new song, I can give the answer to this question to you all: Yes everything is ok so far. I'm still depressed and unemployed, but I'm alive. What have I done all the time? Well I worked at songs, what else? And I started programming in C++ again and that's what I spent most of the time with. Those who want to be up to date what I am doing in that field, may visit my brandnew blog I set up just for that purpose:

The Alion Code

Currently it is just in german language, I am sorry. But if I keep each and everything bilingual, I can make blogging my fulltime job... but nobody would pay me a friggin' cent for it. So learn german or use google translate *LOL* If you look into that blog frequently, you'll also be less worried about what's up with me while I am not making music but code.

Well, but now to the song I promised you. A while ago I announced a new themed musical project in which I want to produce music by and for meditation. I instantly released the first song for the project back then and a short while after, I released a suitable video for it. Here's the second song of the project with the very inventive title "Meditation Two". This time it is not just a bit more rythmically:

Meditation Two - STREAM
Meditation Two - DOWNLOAD (Richtclick and "Save as")

"Reggae?" has been reviewed by Steve Gilmore!

2010-01-23T08:45:00.003+01:00

Well, that was a surprise! When I looked in my E-Mail early this morning, I got to know that the Top Reviewer of SoundClick.com and great musician , Steve Gilmore, reviewed my latest Album "Reggae?" in his outstanding music review Blog... and WHAT a review it is! What to say? I am honored. To get a review from this man is a honor on its own. And if you get such a positive review, it is really something special. Just read it for yourself:

Review of "Reggae?" on RebelRiffs

Here we go again...

2010-01-11T21:02:00.002+01:00

The new year started...well..."turbulent". There's nothing more that you, dear readers and listeners, have to know about this. At least I felt not very able to make music or let you know what was happening via this blog. First I have to apologize to those who tried to listen to music on alionsonny.com between Sunday 10:00pm and Monday (today) 6:pm. At the newer songs you most probably ended up on an errorpage. This was due to some problems at my former favourite reggaesite ReggaeDubwise. Because of the fact that streaming and downloading my songs from there is also not secured in the future, I decided to redirect all songlinks to the safe and reliable Archive.org. By now everything should work fine again.

What is Sonny doing right now? These days making music is not working so good, but I started programming again. The domain alionsolutions.de, which has been unused for ages will be the home of the fruits of my programming works in the future and everything will also being ready for download there. Amongst other ideas I am working at a interesting chat solution which will be implemented in Java. I also work at alionfractal 2.0 again, also using Java. Let's wait and see how performant a fractal generator written in Java is. Recently somebody told me, that the Java 6 plattform is oh so performant. We will find out soon if this is true.

Yepp, and thats it for a short status report. I am back at work!

Happy New Year 2010!

2009-12-31T16:25:00.006+01:00

There have been better years for me, I must say, than 2009. So I say good riddance to this one and hope that 2010 will be better not just for me but for us all. I know about so many people who had bad luck in 2009 and that not just because of the effects of the so called financial crisis. As some of you may know, I had to close down my business as a freelancer in the IT-sector in June of 2009 and afterwards got awfully sick. Currently I am suffering from a big depression which renders me unable to work. Currently I am living of unemployment benefit because of that and try hard to get on my feet again. But as I said, I know about not just a few people who also are hoping that 2010 things will work out better for them.

But while being one of the worst years so far in my life regarding to financial stuff and healt, 2009 was also a very creative years for me. In fact I released 25 songs this year. Not as much as in the most fruitfull 2004 and 2005 when I released 36/34 songs , but the highest number of songs since then. This may be due to the fact that I had more time on my hands to make music. Here's what my database says about my productivity over the first 5 years of the alionsonny project:

Year Songs Videos
2004 36 0
2005 34 0
2006 15 0
2007 14 5
2008 12 4
2009 25 4
--------------------
ALL: 126 14

I hope that 2010 may be even more creative and fruitfull than this year and all before. Happy New Year and all the best to you out there for 2010!

Merry Christmas and a little Christmas Carol

2009-12-25T13:28:00.003+01:00

I want to wish all visitors of my website, all fans of my music, all friends and simply all you folks out there a merry Christmas. I have created a little christmas carol for you too. It is my personal version of the well known christmas carol "Ding Dong Merrily on High". It is a Reggae- /Ska-version. Yes, yes, I know it sounds crazy to think about doing that song in that particular genre. I myself first had some doubt about if this works but in the end it was quite simple. And I think the result is quite good:

Ding Dong Merrily on High - LISTEN
Ding Dong Merrily on High - DOWNLOAD

New Album "Reggae?" is now OUT FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!

2009-12-22T21:24:00.005+01:00

Yes, like the previous four albums, this is a totally free download. No strings attached! It is released under the Creative Commons License Non Commercial No Derivs. You can either download it for a limited time from alionsonny.com (limited, because I have very little webspace on my hands) or from LastFM, where you can also pre-listen the songs if you don't want to download the whole 80 MB RAR-package without knowing what's is in it. To tell you a bit more about the album, just let me quote from my official release statement:

"Reggaelike" songs by alionsonny are getting fewer since a time, so the fifth album titled "Reggae?" consists of 13 "regaelike" tracks from the years 2007 to 2009. It is a real sequel of the album "This is not really Reggae", because it stretches the term "reggaelike" even more than its predecessor. While some tracks are in fact Reggae, some are "reggaelike" and some others are just "reggaqe influenced". This is another album which showcases the evolution of the alionsonny "reggaelike" style. The album starts with the new and rather fast track from 09 "Life goes on" and goes on with the slow dub track "Springtime 2009" from the same year. It contains in a wild mix with dubby tracks like "Aquatic Dub", experimental tracks like "Hamburg" and even more experimental style mixes like the second chapter of "The Knights of Dubwood Castle", a sequel of the track from the first album "XperiMental Reggae WorX" from 2004. The album even contains one of the rare vocal tracks by alionsonny, titled "Information Dub". Again this is in no way an album for Reggae purists.

So finally I got the fifth album released still in year 5 of the alionsonny project. This means at least an album a year. Not bad I think. Especially if you keep in mind, that I have loads of non-Reggae songs waiting to fill future albums on my harddisk. So the next album releases will be for sure NonReggae-Albums for sure. But for now: Have fun with this release!

New Song: "Days Of Our Years"

2009-12-22T14:51:00.002+01:00

My latest song was born out of the idea to do a song in the typical 80's New Wave Style. First I was inspired by songs of bands like "The Cure", but I more and more was distracted from that path. Well, in one way I am sorry that I was not exactly able to follow that original path, but on the other hand another original work came out of that approach, a unique musical piece in the original and well know alionsonny style. The title of the song was inspired by Psalms 90:10.

DAYS OF OUR YEARS - LISTEN
DAYS OF OUR YEARS - DOWNLOAD

New Song: A Day At Ligeia Mare Beach

2009-12-15T16:47:00.003+01:00

I released a new technolike teack again: My new song "A Day At Ligeia Mare Beach" is in no way reggaelike like "Mountainbiking on Mars" from the year 2005, but is indeed some kind of a sequel of it. Actually I planned to do a songseries like the "Drunken Joe" series in which I wanted to thematize several leisure activities on the celestial bodies in our solar system. Unfortunately that plan got lost over the years and the several other projects. When I read about the methane lakes on the saturn moon Titan recently and was working at the technolike track you are about to listen to, I had the idea to bring that old plan from 2005 to life again. I must say that I managed it quite well to catch the virtual athmosphere of a day at the beach of a methane lake on Titan. The song sounds cool, in fact ice cold and at the same time like sun and beach. Well, listen for yourself:
A Day At Ligeia Mare Beach - LISTEN
A Day At Ligeia Mare Beach - DOWNLOAD

New Video "Meditation One" is online!

2009-12-08T16:47:00.002+01:00

Yes, it has been a while since my last video release. But this time I have something real good for you. It is a video in HD instead of the SD format which I am forced to use usually by my outdated camcorder. I simply cannot afford a new one. This is why my new video is mostly made up of foreign material. STOP: I know that there are some jealous folks out there who by now think how they can pee at my leg by picturing me as a copyright violator. But NO chance: I only used material available in the public domain or under a fitting Creative Commons License. Well, ain't I clever? ;) The result, from my point of view, is great. As soundtrack is used my latest track "Meditation One" from my planned series of musical pieces for my own meditation experiments. You can read about this here. You can also listen to the soundtrack HERE and download it HERE.

By the way: For the first time I am 100% more satisfied with the upload result at YouTube than at Vimeo. Vimeo has finally lost it's leadership in quality it had from my point of view for a long time. Not just that Vimeo offers only 500MB PER WEEK upload quota, which is simply laughable if you see that YouTube offers 2 GB all the time, every day, 24/7. The upload of the video took the same time of about 3 hours for a bit below 500 MB. Also the videoquality is now much better at YouTube as is the quality of sound, which allways was a point where I criticized YouTube for. Additionally you can see at the example of the video embedded above, that even the embedding works better with YouTube now. Vimeo is finally second choice. Greed for cash is not a good advisor.

Just some final words for the technical stuff: The video first was with moderate XVid compression of 1 1/2 Gigabytes size and looked just a bit better thatn the actually uploaded version. Because Vimeo just allows me 500 MB per week, I reduced the video to a bit less than 500 MB. Still it looks great. A upload of 1 1/2 GB would have taken 9 hours to upload and I don't trust the stability of a network connection as much, that I would risk 9 hours of upload time. You know: It hurts less if an upload crashes after less than 3 hours, than it would if the upload crashes after about 9 hours :D

New project "Alion Meditations" and first song

2009-11-24T18:58:00.005+01:00

Yes, again I have started a new project. This time it is not an arbitrary decision, like: "Oh, currently I'm feeling like doing this or that too!" like all the other times I started some project. No, I was practically forced to do that project by my current miserable state of health. I will briefly explain it, because a detailed description of the project will follow for sure sometime. I've noticed that closing my eyes and doing a certain rocking body motion puts me in a very calm, meditative state, which makes the current severe pain much more tolerable and generally gives me more peace. But the sounds and influences of the outside world allways disturbed this meditative state and I wished that there would be music that maybe could help to shut down those external influences and/or deepen that meditative state. So I asked friends and acquaintances, of whom I knew that they were dealing with meditation and appropriate music. To my great surprise I found everything I could find described as "meditation music" terrible or inappropriate. So I came up with the idea of me going again as far as possible into the meditative state and to imagine how the appropriate music for my kind of meditation must sound like. I did that and I was amazed that I got a pretty good idea how this music would have to sound to and feel like ....right out of nowhere. So I got started working and created the first song.

Meditation One LISTEN
Meditation One DOWNLOAD

A meditation testrun was simply optimal and to my surprise it gave me the idea for the second song on which I am already working on. I feel in relation to this project like Tarzan lurching from one liana (Song) to the next to go somewhere. Where does this leading to? No idea ... but I am definately on the road.

...and again this site hasn't been updated for a while...

2009-11-18T20:17:00.004+01:00

This time it is rather not because of lazyness, but because things went very bad recently both health- and financialwise (see previous blog) and I was quite unable to do much things. Still music has been created. Four songs have been published since the last update. So, enough words, let's get right to the facts:

Some time ago somebody came up with the idea to do a Halloween Songcontest. I do not really like that commercialized version of a ancient festivity and I allways chase those kids begging for sweets away from my door. But the idea of creating a scary, spooky song... well I liked it. And out of this idea I created the following funny tune:

D.E.M.O.N -The Enemy within (LISTEN)
D.E.M.O.N -The Enemy within (DOWNLOAD)

I don't know who exactly won the song contest. I do not know about any votes on that.. and I really don't care :D

As said before things are not going very well regarding my health recently. In fact it is getting worse, but I try hard to ignore that. At the time when I was feeling very bad, I created and published the following lovely melody out of frustration and anger:

SNAFU (LISTEN)
SNAFU (DOWNLOAD)

Ok, if your ears do not bleed yet, it goes on a bit more smooth and positive. When I realized that my healthstate was not getting better, how much I tried, I changed to "positive thinking mode". To moan, scream and shout is not really a solution in the end, right? As a signal to the outside world and the "evil", I created the following song, dripping of "positivity":

Life goes ON! (LISTEN)
Life goes ON! (DOWNLOAD)

...if fate should after that stretched middle finger still go on bothering me, I have published another load of positive vibrations yesterday:

Fear NO Evil (LISTEN)
Fear NO Evil (DOWNLOAD)

Ok, that's it so far. I still have some other news for you but they deserve a seperate news posting.

Call for Help (Support)

2009-10-30T21:40:00.002+01:00

Hi Folks,
this is a call for help, something, I think you would have never imagined to read from me. But heavy conditions require heavy actions. To me, begging you out there for help is a heavy thing. Ok, so I'll describe what makes me doing that step:

Since 2007 I was self employed (freelancer), because I was offered some work at project from companies mainly from the US. I decided to become self employed, because the company I was working full time for at this time was about to go bancrupt. So instead of becomming unemployed I prefered to become self employed... with all the risk this carries inside. For the first year, everything went fine. It was not making me a rich man, but my girl and me could live of the cash comming in. But after a year two of the main contractors told me without prior notice, that the projects I was working at were either finnished or the staff was reduced. This caused far less money comming in and I wasn't able to pay our healthinsurance anymore. Well, we felt quite healthy back then and so this wasn't nice, but also no big deal.

In December 2009 one by one the other companies giving me work told that they cannot afford to pay me anymore. This process went on, until in June 2009 I had allmost no contractors anymore giving me work. I tried everything to acquire new contracts/work to do with little to no success. So at start of September it was unavoidable to report my girl and me as unemployed to the unemployment office, so they pay us at least unemployment benefit to have food and pay our rent. All the liitle cash I had saved on my bankaccount for "harder days" was used up. But now the REAL SH*T started: The folks at the unemployment office told us, that in order to get unemployment benefit, we need a health insurance. So we tried to get one, but all insurance companies
refused to give us health insurance. There's a law in germany since (I think so) 2007, which tells health insurance companies, that they must give a health insuranceto any german with no regard to if he had one before and no regard to financial or employment status. First the companies we called were trying to fool us by telling us the opposite. Well after I told them, that there's the law mentioned above, they started playing on time. This means they delay everything. And the unemployment office tells that they can't help it: They cannot pay us unemployment benefit unless we have health insurance. I think you get the problem.

So since September we are totally out of cash and weren't able o pay the rent. We get some support from neighbors and friends to at least have a bit of food on the table. But the landlord says we're gonna be kicked out of our flat if we do not pay the rent. Additionally (how fitting to the overall sh*t) my health is going down the drain. Not just that I am in a deeep depression, but also I have pain allmost everywhere in my body. I have (I think it is called that way) vertigo which makes for example a risky thing to ride a bike. I feel weak as sh*t am allways tired. Not the state I love to be in as you can imagine.

To keep it as short as possible: This is a call for help going to all the people out there who like my music, me or for whatever reason are willing to help. You know that I usually like to be the "tuff guy" and this doesn't suit me well, eh? I wrestled for quite a time with my "foolish pride" until I even typed this text. I do not like to beg, but it is the last thing I can do now. So please, if you want and can: Donate something to my Paypal account (alionsonny@alionsonny.com).

IMPORTANT: I would prefer if you had something to work for you, because I prefer to work for cash. Most of you know about the several skills I have and event tho I am not feeling very well these days, I am still able to work.... my girl says the opposite, but what does she know ;)

I allways gave everything away for free and maybe I could have a less hard time if I had been a good capitalist. But: Some people can't help it.

Please don't make this thread your personal payday. I know there are folks out there who do not like me or even hate me. And those folks maybe feel tempted to now tell me that I deserve what happens to me. Well if you think so... party on and keep it to yourself. It was not your sword which cut me down, it was just bad coincidence. And don't forget: Tomorrow some bad luck may happen to you.

I do not really feel well to post this, but it is the last thing I can do. If you don't want to use paypal, just message me for banking details. If you want to help in any other way, you can allways mail me.

Thanks
Sonny

Can you compose me a song (or 3-4) ... for FREE?

2009-10-19T16:03:00.004+02:00

This news entry is somewhat different from the usual news you find here. There's no new song or video to announce this time. No, I just want to share a little rant with you, that's it. So what is it, Sonny is pissed about? Here we go:
Since I am a very nice guy, I share my music, videos and other art with you, mostly for free. Even tho a donation is allways appreciated, I usually do not ask you for money to enjoy what I produce. Well, some people seem to think, that because of that, I must live in Cockaigne, where everything is fluffy and free. But I can assure you: I have to pay rent, electricity, online costs, webhosting etc. and I have to drink and eat and work for it. That just as a bit of information for you.

From time to time, with a increasing frequency, people ask me for "a favor". Some ask me to do something at their homepage, some want me to build a bassline, a drumpattern or some graphics or video stuff.... and of cause for free. Nobody ever had the idea to offer me some cash for my works and usually this is ok, as it is small "favors" which do not cost me a huge ammount of time. So usually I just help out and get more or less credited for it. That's 100% as I love to help.

But then there are those who expect me to do huge ammounts of work for them... also for free. The absolute "bestseller" amongst this is the request "Can you build me a reggae riddim on FL Studio and send me the flp-file (projectfile)?". I usually keep cool if I get such requests, even tho I am tempted to ask the person what the fuck he thinks what ammount of work he just asks me to give away for free. Those requests, may it be for composing complex drumstyles, complete songs or even a whole album concept allways come in with no offer for what I get in return. People expect me to edit their musicvideo for free or even produce a whole musicvideo for them.

What do those folks think? Don't they realize what massive ammount of work is behind all those things? Do they think I am just on this planet to fullfill their dreams? Many of those folks even leave no doubt about, that they want to make money using the services they expect to get from me, like that guy who runs a relatively successfull website with a radio on it, and asked me to create a jingle for his online radio show... for free... while he generates a good income from his website and radio ventures. Do those folks think I am stupid?

Why am I writing this newsentry right now? Easy: Yesterday I got a mail which (from my point of view) put the cream on the cake of impudence. A guy wrote me, that he likes my music (this is how it allways starts) and that he does a site about boardgames. I don't want to go into the details, but the bottomline was, that he asked me if I could do 3-4(!!!) original custom tracks in orchestra style for some videoshow to be played in the background while people talk about a certain boardgame. The fact alone that CUSTOM COMPOSED SONGS should play in the background makes my toenails roll up. This is like using a painting by an old dutch master as toiletpaper... after the dutch master custom painted the painting for just the purpose to serve as an asswipe.... hillarious... eh?

Ok, but never mind the usage and that the site linked at the bottom of the mail was literally screaming THIS IS A COMMERCIAL SITE AND I STRIVE TO MAKE SERIOUS CASH WITH THIS! What did this guy think? Did he think that it is the work of about 5 minutes to create a quality orchestral music piece on todays digital equipment? If so, why doesn't he do it himself. If it is such an easy thing....
The reality is, that a minimum of several hours of work is required to create a quality music track, regardless of its genre. But orchestral tracks require a huge ammount of more work than, for example, a simple pop-techno piece. I plan a minimum of 4-8 hours alone for composing and arranging plus the time for mixing the final result. And can you, dear reader, understand that one must give me a GOOD reason to invest such a huge ammount of my creative lifespan? For me it is clear, that simply giving me credits on some website is not that kind of a GOOD reason.

This is why I indeed do contracting works for music- and video production, graphical works etc. For such tasks as composing complete tracks, producing musicvideos, creating complex graphical artwork etc., I have hourly rates I work on. A good ammount of cash IS a great reason to invest time and work. I think we all live in the same world, right? I think there's nobody living on this planet who doesn't know about the fact, that serious work costs serious cash in our beloved capitalist system. And especially people, on whose websites I only need to take a look and I see that they run a business should know the price of artistical craftmanship. So I cannot really understand how one could make me an "offer" like the one I got yesterday.

To set it clear once again and for all: My free works available for download on several websites are free to use EXCEPT FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES. If you make money with my works, I want my share or hell breaks lose. So, you can use my music as a soundtrack for your holliday videos on YouTube, you can burn them on CDs and give them as a gift to anyone, you can play them on your online radio etc. But once you make serious cash with using my music, don't forget to give me my share.

If you want me to make something special for you, if it is not much work AND it is for non-commercial purposes, you'll most likely have me doing it for free. BUT: If it is a huge load of work, such as producing whole tracks, producing your music video etc., please mail me for my hourly rates, terms of service and other business stuff. This is ESPECIALLY the case, if the usage of my works generates money for you. So consider this, before you mail me, asking me for "a favor".

Another important note: The term "crediting someone" seems to have become a somewhat magical spell for some people. They think that "crediting" pays all bills. Friends and neighbors: I meanwhile have so many people, websites etc. crediting me, that your crediting is nice but just one amongst a huge load. So don't expect the magic sentence "we credit you on our website" to work at me. There's still things I do for crediting, but it must not be too much work.

Long text. I hope all of you out there now know a bit more about me and my handling of "requests for favors". If you feel tempted to ask me for a favor, please keep in mind that I am not a rich wealthy guy who can spent hillarious timespans on making your dreams come true. If I find your name amongst the donators for alionsonny.com, chances are bigger that I will do even bigger stuff for free for you. But if you wanna make sure that I'll work for you, just make a contract with me and pay me.

I have been very lazy recently...

2009-10-11T15:24:00.007+02:00

... in updating my homepage and various other places on the web. I was not lazy in making music tho. Two new songs were released since my last update of this site:

1. A new song for the "Alion Soundtrack" has been published a while ago. The title is "The River Valley" and, as hopefully everybody can imagine, this song shall be played while exploring a idyllic river valley.

The River Valley (Alion OST)
LISTEN -- DOWNLOAD

2. It was about time for the release of a new "reggaelike" song. Listeners told me that this is probably is the best song I ever published in the "reggaelike" segment. As topic of the song I have chosen the classic spy movie topic this time. So here's the song:

Special Agent Jones and the case of the Saphire Cross
LISTEN -- DOWNLOAD

So what was it which kept me from updating my homepage, blog and lots of other stuff? Well, you know me and somtimes I do not find some stuff too important :p Ok, some things are not going the way they should currently here, but I don't want to bother you with my problems. ;)

Well, that's it for now. Much stuff to update. Let's go

Entomologia II - Song and Video online!

2009-08-13T21:00:00.005+02:00

This time I decided to update the blog ie the new on alionsonny.com in one go for the song and the video. The song was actually ready two days ago, but I decided to upload it today with the video. People, who follow my updates on Twitter knew much earlier about it all. If you, dear reader want to be amongst those who get all news about all I do before all the others get them. just just follow my Updates on Twitter... if you, have a Twitter account.

The first chapter of the Entomologia-Series was published in late May and there was also a video for the first chapter. Now the second chapter has been published, which shares the topic of the first part and also its musical style: Videotopic = Insects, Music = Techno in a Trance style. As allways it is all for free and can be downloaded from various sources on the web.

The Soundtrack/Song:

and here is the video:

This time I embedded the video from YouTube, because Vimeo lost it's advances over YouTube in things like videoquality (compression) compared with YouTube. At all some things have changed at Vimeo since the PLUS pay-accounts have been established, for all freeriders and those changes were no positive ones. For example: One has to wait in line for videos to be encoded, because videos of paying members are encoded first. This takes a looong time recently. In the case of the "Entomologia II" video I had to wait about two hours after the video was allready uploaded until it was encoded. Additionally Vimeo cutted the possibility for freeriders that visitors could download the original uploaded video. Well, I understand that Vimeo must have an eye on the costs and that they want to make money. But this eliminates all advences Vimeo had compared with Youtube in the past. This means: From now on I'll embed my videos from YouTube, because YouTube got better in many aspects. Uploads do no longer time out and are processed in acceptable time and the results of encoding are no longer as bad as they were some months ago.

The Old Harbor Pub (Alion OST) has just been released!

2009-08-10T15:25:00.007+02:00

Yes, the story continues! A new song for the "Alion Original Soundtrack"-Album has just been released:

After a heavy fight with the undead on the cursed Cemetery of Alion Castle the throat is dusty and dry and our heroes urgently need a drink. The Old Harbor Pub at the harbor of Alion Castle is just the right place for that. As we enter the pub late in the evening it is quite crowded. Fishermen, Sailors and some folks who are for sure no honest merchants but rather pirates or thieves are enjoying the music of the band and the rum. A guy at the bar who is barely able to not fall on the floor shouts for another drink. He is told by the bartender that he allready had enough and should leave the place. As he keeps complaining the bartender grabs him and throws him out. We sit down at the bar and order a drink. The bartender looks at us with a suspecting face. Maybe it is because of our look: Full of dust, some minor wounds, dents and bruises all over the heavy armor. "You should visit a healer" he shouts with a thundering voice. Then he serves the rum. Finally... some peace and comfort... We all know: This will not last for a long time.

This song should capture the warm and rough atmosphere of The Old Harbor Pub at Alion Castle:

The Old Harbor Pub - Alion Original Soundtrack- LISTEN
The Old Harbor Pub - Alion Original Soundtrack- DOWNLOAD

Do you ear some celtic roots in this. Yeah, for sure. Ok, this is track four of 13. So we have 1/3 of the songs for the album done. I have some tracks in progress, but dunno which part of the adventure will be next... or let's say it like this:
Our heroes do not have the slightest clue what will be next. And they really don't care, as the strong rum blows away all care for future events like the breeze at the docks of Alion Harbor. They rent a room at the Old Harbor Pub and sleep until a loud knocking at the door wakes them up...

First song of the "Classic Reggae Riddims Orcastrated"-Projekts is ready!

2009-08-09T16:51:00.005+02:00

Well, this is how it is allways with me: You read nothing from me for several weeks, dust blows through the blog, the community is waiting in vain for a sign of life and then again I publish something all the time. If something is less predictable than the weather, it is my actions. That may be a problem for those who are tuned on simple and predictable minds, but I don't care. I am that I am.

The song was published today, confirms the facts written about above 100%. Who except me would have come up with the idea to reinterpret old reggae arrangements in orchestra style? ;) Well, I recently had this idea and extensively explained it in various forums. This brought me into the situation that I MUST complete that project now. Just too many negative minded folks would use it as a weapon agains me, if I would fail at this project.

Many times while working at the songs for the project, I must admit, I thought "Oh, if you just kept your mouth shut". Because, as I found out, I put a serious load of work on my agenda with this. Why?Well, how do I describe it avoiding the reggae community wants to roast me for this? *LOL* Well, let's say it this way: Reggae is not very well known for extensive melodic arrangements, but rather for catchy melodies and basslines. But orchestral music LIVES of extensive melodies and arrangements. How the hell do you get that together? You have plenty of work keep the typical Reggaegroove and -elements, and at the same time ,avoid to let the orchestra repeat the same phrases all the time like a longtime politician. ;) If the orchestra plays a 100% unchanged copy of the reggae riddim it is less then 1 1/2 minute musical entertainmen, not to mention a musical experience.

Somehow I've managed it and I think I have found out which is the way to go. Not that it will be really easier in the future, but at least I know now what the main aspects are that need to be considered. And now you want to listen to the music for sure. Here we go. Here is the first work of the series "Classic Reggae Riddims Orcastrated". It is a version of the "Answers Riddim":

Gimme some answers LISTEN
Gimme some answers DOWNLOAD

Lotsa News

2009-08-08T16:28:00.003+02:00

Maybe it is because of the great weather and the fact that I prefer outdoor activities recently over posting news in blogs. Yes, I have been some kind of lazy recently at updating the blog(s). Well, but that's all not that bad because I can allways catch up on it. Ok, so what did happen? Let's start with the most recent event. Do you remember my collaboration with Colin Mutchler?
Back then, I think it was in 2004 or 2005, I produced two songs with lyrics and vocals by Colin. For those of you who missed them back then, here they are:

Language of my Reality LISTEN
Language of my Reality DOWNLOAD
Everyday Choices LISTEN
Everyday Choices DOWNLOAD

Well, recently, because of Twitter, I got in touch with Colin again and I thought it would be a good idea to work with Colin again. So I searched at CCMixter, just like in those good old days, and found an accapella on which I had a try allready, but failed back then to get something done with it. This time everything went just great, because now I have one version ready and 2 to 3 in progress. The version I finnished yesterday is a Euro Techno Pop Version. You can listen and/or download it right here:

"More than 2 sides" LISTEN
"More than 2 sides" DOWNLOAD

If this is too pop-like or techno -> keep cool: I have one reggaeversion and one version in the style of "The Pogues" in progress. Most probably there will also be a orchestral version. So far for the work with Colin.

Since I last updated this blog, there have been 2 more songs released. First there is the song I finnished on my 41st birthday, with the title "Gettin' old". It is a production in the style of "Forest" and Flowers:

Gettin' old LISTEN
Gettin' old DOWNLOAD

and then I released the second chapter of the legendary "The Knights of Dubwood Castle". The first chapter was allready a bit orchestral, but the sequel takes it to the max. Again it is orchestral reggae crossover:

The Knights of Dubwood Castle - Chapter II LIST EN
The Knights of Dubwood Castle - Chapter II DOWNLOAD

While we are at the topic of orchestral reggae, I like to announce a new album project which you maybe do not know about. The workingtitle is "Classic Riddims Orcastrated". The idea is, to release an album featuring 13 of the most popular reggae riddims in orchestral style. The first song most probably will be based on the "Answers Riddim". I allmost finnished it yesterday, but it still needs some polishing.

So this was the news I think. I ommit all promises regarding poting more often at the blog(s). You know where it leads to ;)

The Survivor - Some Techno again

2009-07-10T18:41:00.003+02:00

This year seems to be in competition with the year 2004 in which the alionsonny project has started, regarding the number of songs published. Yes, one song after the other is published and the shere number of different styles makes some people doubt, that this is all still done by one single person. But I just can tell you folks out there to stay calm: It is still just me and I have no kind of team here which releases songs week by week. It just doesn't go very well currently in my dayjob and so I use the time I get from this to do creative things. And each and everybody who observed what I did over the years will know, that one of my main characteristic is, that I love to do different styles of music. Well, I admit that this year I am really mashing it up. But this is some thing you, dear listeners, can just profit of, right?

This time I moved again in the direction of trancetechno. Originally, believe it or not, this project was a reggaesong. But then a few arpeggiators were added and, woops, it was a technotrack. The speechsamples, by the way, are taken from the movie "Frankenstein" featuring Boris Karloff from 1931. So, here it is:

The Survivor (STREAM)

and of cause you can also download the MP3:

The Survivor (MP3)

"The cursed Cemetery" a new track of the Alion Original Soundtrack released!

2009-07-04T17:55:00.003+02:00

Again it is done and it was really a trip creating this song. To create the two previous tracks of the soundtrack was quite easy compared to this. This track really involved some additional work to get the atmosphere of how that evil place it is transfered into music. Well, I think I got it nailed.

So here it is:

The cursed Cemetery (Alion OST) LISTEN
The cursed Cemetery (Alion OST) DOWNLOAD

Sit down, close your eyes and imagine a place where you would never go alone at night, at least you would have a gun loaded with silver bullets, a big pack of crucifixes *LOL* and some garlic with you. This is a cursed cemetary where the restless spirits of those folks roam, who are not very happy with being dead and gone. As quite a lot of those folks were warriors when alive, they have been burried with their weapons. So, be aware of the fact that they are not only undead and dangerous but armed with mighty axes and swords. There's even tales of black mages burried here. No nice place to go... but now you are here and you can't run away...

After you cleaned that place, you are of cause thirsty and looking for a good time. So the next track will take us to the "Old Harbor Pub" where the sailors get drunk... stay tuned.. I am working at it ;-)

"Exploring Alion Forest", the second track of "Alion - Original Soundtrack" has just been released!

2009-06-30T19:24:00.003+02:00

It is done! One more track for my soundtrack album. By the way, this is the official logo for the fictional computergame "Alion".

The second track of the soundtrack album is, as announced, the song that should be played while exploring a forest and is therefore titled "Exploring Alion Forest". While listening to this song, imagine to walk in a forest with huge trees, sunbeams dropping through the treetops, birds, a deer bouncing by. Imagine the smell of a forest in summertime. You get the picture? ;-)

So here it is "Exploring Alion Forest", the second track of "Alion - Original Soundtrack":

Exploring Alion Forest LISTEN
Exploring Alion Forest DOWNLOAD

The next track I am allready working at, will be a lot less nice & lovely, because of it's topic/location. It will be the song which is playing while the hero explores a dangerous, cursed graveyard, where the undead roam... not a nice place to be ;-)

Alion - The Original Soundtrack

2009-06-19T18:31:00.008+02:00

Again I like to announce a new kind of musical work I just published for you. Yes, this is really different from everything I have done before:

Theme of Alion (Alion Original Soundtrack) LISTEN
Theme of Alion (Alion Original Soundtrack) DOWNLOAD

Some of you maybe know that I got the opportunity to create soundtrack music for video games recently and it is great fun for me to work at such stuff, as it is really a different thing than the usual way of making music. I had to learn about totally different aspects than those one must keep track of when producing music for people just to listen to.

Unfortunately I did not get any opportunity to create soundtrack music for my favorite genre of computergames such as Gothic,

Wikipedia about Gothic I

Never Winter Nights, The Elder Scrolls or some thing like that. Those games with Kings, Dragons, Heroes in shiny armor and all that stuff. I love those action roleplaying games. The lack of opportunities in that genre is most probably because I did very synthetic and rather science fiction fitting music in the past and the production companies of such roleplaying games prefer orchestral, epicstyle soundtracks.

To solve that problem, I thought about how

1. I could gain knowledge about how to do that kind of music
2. I could show the folks in charge that I CAN do this.

Because I would REALLY love to produce soundtracks for that kind of games. A simple idea was born over a good glass of red wine... as quite often ;-) Why not produce a soundtrack for a fictional game that does only exist in my mind? That idea has even some advantages over getting into that business by creating a soundtrack for a real game produced by some company: I can let my ideas float free and I am not bound to any of the usual, sometimes very limitting, requests by the company which produces the game. Total artistic and creative freedom. I can really run my genuine own concept. That's great!

Of cause I would love to produce the game for my soundtrack too, but there's too much stuff involved in this and I think nobody can develop a state of the art 3D action adventure game just by himself. So, until I found a own game development studio, I must stick to the soundtrack, even though I allready have a story for the game.

But this soundtrack idea is enough. Everyone who ever played such a game will know, that is not done by creating a fancy theme song. Each and every location which can be visited in the game needs its own (at least one) song. There's songs for fighting, victory, defeat... all kind of that. I constrained my project to a soundtrack album of 13 songs. That's really enough to keep me composing and arranging for quite a time.

The first thing I needed of cause was that theme song which should be played every time the game is started. And... I have finnished one during the past week. This is the song linked at the start of this posting. I would very much like to make a game trailer like video for it and maybe I even do one once I find some time and more ideas for it than I have right now. But for now I am busy composing and arranging a song that should be played while the hero is exploring a forest.

I will release this sountrack as a complete album the day it is finnished. But still 12 songs to go. The projects working title is "Alion - The Original Soundtrack".

Wish me luck and energy for this project. I will most probably need it ;)

"Entomologia" musicvideo is online!

2009-06-11T18:30:00.003+02:00

Yes, again it took quite some time, but this time it was not my fault, but because of the way my latest video was produced. I used 3D Raytracing Animation for the first time in this video and those parts had to be rendered upfront. 50 pictures/frames took one hour to render. If you keep in mind that each second of video takes up 30 pictures/frames, you can easily understand why this took some time. Well, and I must admit tht I had to stop rendering after a while some times, because I saw something was not ok and start rendering from the beginning. Well that's the way things go...
But now the video is finned and online for you to watch. As every time I uploaded it to all well known videosites, but the best quality is again on Vimeo.com. And here it is, the video for the song "Entomologia":

Entomologia from alionsonny on Vimeo.

New Song "Entomologia"!

2009-05-26T19:56:00.004+02:00

Yes, it has been quite a while since I wrote the last time in this blog...errm... a month to say it exactly. But now I am back with a new haircut and a new song. New haircut? Yes, a radically new one:
But as the posting title says, this is not the only new thing. A new song has been finnished. This time no reggaelike stuff, but rather technoid stuff. The title is "Entomologia" and at latest when the video will be finnished even those who are too lazy to use the Wikipedia now will know what it is all about. As allways the song is available for free on all good music download sites. Well, not really all. To avoid trouble with the genreophiles and purists I did not upload it on any genre dependent sites like, for example reggae oriented sites.

And here is it finally, my new song:

Video for the song "Springtime 2009" is online!

2009-04-25T12:00:00.002+02:00

Well, it took a while this time to cut the video material and I was, I must admit this, a bit lazy dong it. But the video was ready since four days. Since Vimeo decided to use a new encoder (I think so) it didn't like my preferred video format /-codec. They want H264 video and AAC sound by now. But since my (a bit outdated) Sony Vegas Software cannot do this (I tried EVERYTHING) I can not offer this format. And, honestly, I like my good old XVid video and MP3 sound. What's so bad at this? Well, somehow it worked yesterday late in the evening to get the video up and running. And here it is:

Springtime 2009 from alionsonny on Vimeo.

New Dub Reggae Song: "Springtime 2009"

2009-04-14T12:39:00.000+02:00

Many of the listeners who like my songs of the reggaelike style have for sure waited for this: A new reggae song has been published. It is really "dubby" this time. Just right for a song of my anual "Springtime" song series. Well, and it became a real "Spacemonster". Full six minutes, packed with wobbly and spacy sounds. The riddim is my own one and especially the groovy and boomy bassline doesn't make me just a bit proud of what I have done. OF CAUSE a real "Springtime" song needs it's own video. And I am allready working at it. But as six minutes are not that easy to fill and I don't want to do a loveless quick-quick-work, it will take some time until it is done. let's wait and see. The material has been allready filmed and now needs to be cutted and composed. Everything should fit best. So, enough words -> I am at work! And here's the song: "Springtime 2009"!

New Song: "Dr. Funkenstein"

2009-03-28T18:15:00.002+01:00

Yes, finally it happened again. After a quite long musical break, a new song is out. And "Dr. Funkenstein" is the title. The title has the following meaning: There's a fat funkbass and the song is, in my opinion very funky. The song is a mashup of many music styles. If Dr. Frankenstein built his monster out of bits of musical styles instead of parts of corpses for his monster, the result would have been something like this song. So the folks not used to the alionsonny musical stunts will again first think "What the heck is THIS?". A bit of Reggae is also in this song again. I just can't stay away from it. But, enough words. Let the music speak:

It is done!

2009-03-28T01:07:00.002+01:00

I have fixed the last obvious flaws at the Homepage and some things that looked not so good were also fixed. It all looks much more like cut from one piece now. The layout problems when using the Internet Exploder seem to be fixed too. The site looks allmost the same on Mozilla and IE now. This is it I think, regarding the work at alionsonny.com. Now it is time to do something different.

What else? Somehow LastFM managed to fix the bug in the video uploads that prevented me from uploading my videos there. In the past two days I uploaded all released videos so far to LastFM. The quality is somewhat suboptimal because of the ugly compression but that's not my fault. Anyway: My videos are now available on my LastFM page also.

Some time ago I created an account at the musicsite Aimestreet.com. Somehow I forgot it, but recently rediscovered it. So I took the opportunity to upload my four albums there. So they are available on my Aimestreet page also. Please don't give my songs a recommendation there. A recommendation is to tell other folks on Aimestreet that they should listen to the song too because it is great. However, I want to keep my songs as free downloads available for everyone. But if you give my songs recommendations, they are no longer free after a certain ammount of recommendations. The price of a song at Aimestreet rises with the number of recommendations it gets. So the only way to keep my music free there is, that it gets NO recommendations. thanks in advance for NOT recommending!

Ok, that's it. Nothing more to tell yet. I'll be back once something important happens ;-)

New Video for the song "Paddy Cronin's Reel" is online!

2009-03-25T19:15:00.002+01:00

Well, I was quite puzzled, when I saw in the Web Buzz of my Reverbnation Page, that my name was mentioned in conclusion with a video at YouTube which was not uploaded by me. First I thought it was because of the well known and hated YouTube keyword spam again, but when I visited the videos page, I realized that I was wrong. Somebody had done something I would have never thought about doing: Filming a video in SecondLife and using my music as a soundtrack. This is completely ok with me as I encourage people to use my music for such purposes, as long as the resulting works are non commercial.

Well, and the video is a good piece of artwork as you can see in the video embedded below. The topic, a virtual St. Patricks Day Party, is also suitable for the soundtrack. Sometimes one thinks, the avatars are dancing along to the soundtrack, right on the beat. Even though I do not like SecondLife too much, I love this work. Thanks again to the creator of this video. And here's the video:

Big progress at alionsonny.com

2009-03-22T22:25:00.003+01:00

Maybe you allready noticed it. Many things have changed today on alionsonny.com. This is the reason why there were no news in this blog during the past days. It was neccessary to implement some changes in one go, instead of doing them one by one and keep you updated about what was going on. It can be said, that alionsonny.com is complete now. It is true that there is one or the other flaw in the layout. But this is not that important and will be fixed soon. But the most important thing is, that all modules have been finnished and placeholders have been removed for the real things.

I must ask especially the users of the Internet Explorer for patience. I do not use this browser very often and because of this users of the site had to tell me about the fact that there are some serious layout issues, especially in the video- and image-galleries with this browser. But this is not my fault. It is because the nice people at Microsoft refuse to implement the standard for the cascading stylesheets (CSS) properly. The site is optimized for browsers which implement webdesign standards properly. And because of that the site looks not so well in the trashy Internet Explorer. I'll see how and what I can fix at this soon.

Well, so what's new on alionsonny.com in detail? First thing that run inside the website and are therefore not very obvious for the usual websurfer, for that example the way how particular pages are generated was completely changed. I also optimized some stuff at the handling of the small database which is used for the sites content and I made it more difficult for hackers to attack the site. I would never say that everything is absolutely bullet proof, but I did something.. that's it. Let's name the bigger and viewable improvements:

A completely new startpage now shows the lates entry from this blog as News. I have done this by using the RSS-Stream of this blog. So each time something new is written here, you can now see it instantly on the frontpage of alionsonny.com. Below the news, the latest song and album are shown and can be played and downloaded there. Below that, the latest video is embedded. So the startpage is a real newspage for alionsonny.com.
The image section now has multiple pages and categories for images.
The links got a new layout and structure.
The album section was completely reworked and on the details page for each album you can view and download the fullsize coverart by clicking on the cover image.
Some issues with the language selection have been repaired and places where everything was allways shown in english or german now work according to the selected language.

Well, that's it so far... I think. What's next? As I said some layout issues have to be fixed, especially for the Internet Exploder. And then it is finally time for a new song and video. A concept for a brandnew album is also ready.

...and done: The videosection is online!

2009-03-10T21:42:00.004+01:00

Well, something went not as it should have, but who cares? Now it is ready: The fantastic new videosection of alionsonny.com. From now on all videos can be viewed again on the site, selectable from a nice thumbnail gallery. Additionally, the soundtrack for each video can be downloaded directly from the details page of the video. I'm a bit proud of me and what I've done ;-)

But no rest, it goes on and on. The picture gallery looks quite nice now, but it is not like I want it to be. This means: The picture gallery is next! Because I have built all components needed allready in the process of building the previous sections, this will be quite easy.

But because I caught a bad flu while walking in the rain yesterday, I better promise nothing. I fight with full force against getting sick, but who knows how it all will come in the end. Let's hope the best.

Videosection is making progress

2009-03-08T23:07:00.002+01:00

There's nothing to see here. Move on! ;-) Today there's nothing new I can show you. Just the promise, that the new videosection of alionsonny.com is on it's way. Today I fooled myself for 4 hours by not recognizing a logical error in a PHP-class which should show a grid of things (albums,videos,pictures). Those who have nothing to do with programming will most probably not know what I mean with this. It's just one of those thingies that run in the background of many websites, causing grey hair for the webdesigners, eating years of a lifetime and causing pain in the stomach. Just the kind of stuff for freaks like me. Well, today I played a bit hide & seek with my own logic. But the core stuff of the whole thingie is working now perfectly. And tomorrow (if nothing unexpected happens), the ne videosection will go online in all it's shiny glory.

Oh yeah: Some folks ask, if I am doing no music no more. Well, sorry, at this thing I have a nice little creative blockade currently. Nothing serious, but still it will take some time until new music from me will hit your ears. Additionally financial problems force me to put more time into my dayjob. Rent doesn't pay itself here and so it is for the online connection and other stuff. Well, you can click on the "Donate"-button on alionsonny.com and donate some time-providing ca$h ;-) This may help a lot to get me back to the studio and make some music.

The Albums-Section is online!

2009-03-07T18:24:00.003+01:00

Yepp, one day later as expected, the new albums section and everything related to it goes online. Why the delay? Well I just needed a bit time for myself, and so I didn't work at alionsonny.com yesterday. Hey, but what's a day? As announced there's a music overview page now which is shown if one clicks on the "Music" menuitem. The menu now has two submenuitems: "Songs" which takes you to the list of all songs released so far and, brandnew, "Albums", which takes you to a list of all 4 albums released so far. Here you see shrinked versions of the abumcovers, which take you to the deatails page for the album on which iage you clicked.
A few things have not been implemented yet and they will be finnished once I want to do so. Currently only single songs from the albums can be streamed or downloaded. One day there will be a possibility to stream complete albums or download them in a ZIP-file. Clicking on the coverart image should take you to the coverart in full size in the future to allow downloading it. Just as I said -> this is a future feature.
Currently I find it more important to get the other sections of alionsonny.com done and get rid of the ugly placeholders. Next is the videos section which will look much nicer and deserves a more logical navigation.
Well, that's it with my (allmost) daily status report. I wanna say goodbye with a little song:

Albums section of alionsonny.com is allmost ready!

2009-03-05T21:45:00.003+01:00

Today I spent some time finnishing the part of alionsonny.com, where the albums released so far will be available. The section is allmost ready and should be available tomorrow. Additionally I finnished a new music startpage, where the latest 3 songs and albums are listed. The menuitem "Music" now has a submenu which contains the items "Songs" and "Albums". If you klick on the "Music"-item in the future, it will take you to the music startpage mentioned above. But don't go to alionsonny.com right now to check it out. Nothing of it all is currently online. All will be available tomorrow when it is finnished. And now I'll stop working for today. Enough is enough is enough :D

The new music section of alionsonny.com is online!

2009-03-04T22:42:00.002+01:00

It is done! Formerly the musicsection of alionsonny.com consisted of an embedded player from Soundclick, which looked more than awfull with it's blue color on the green background of the site. Additionally there used to be no possibility to download music, except from going to the Soundclick page. This is over now. All 112 alionsonny songs released so far are now streamable and downloadable online. Just take a look at the new music section. Currently it consists just of a paged list of songs. But in the next days I'll add an album-mode, which will contain the 4 alionsonny albums released so far. Of cause there will be the coverart graphics available for download also in printable size. Well, and now I think I can be proud of what I've done and end my working day.

Donations are welcome!

2009-03-01T15:12:00.003+01:00

The construction site, that alionsonny.com was for the last two months after the massive hacker attacks of December 2008, finally turned into a real website again. During the implementation of the enhancements, I also added something I was asked to add by several visitors in the past: A posssibility to donate. It is a fact that I provide all my music for free on the web. But there are, as I got to know, some people who would like to give something back, and if it is just a small ammount of money. For that reason I added a donate-link at a prominent position on alionsonny.com. Using that link, one has the possibility to donate via Paypal or direct bank transfer. I am fine with both ways and I thank upfront for each and every donation.
As some of you may know, I am a freelancer (my own boss) and I am free to chose the time I work at my dayjob as I like. Each donation that comes in gives me more time to create music and other stuff for you, because I am not a greedy moneysack and usually work just enough to make a living for my girl and me. So if donations come in, I have to work less at my dayjob and have more time to work at creative things. Pure logic, isn't it? So here, for you who overlooked the donation link so far, is it:

What's new else? Like I said, alionsonny.com was a bit changed. From now on you don't have to visit the site anymore thru the nice, but for some uncomfortable, language selection startpage. From now on, the language set as prefered language in your browser will be used automatically. Some magic *LOL*. No it is just technology. If, however, you should land on the wrong language version, there's also no problem. On a prominent position on the right side of each page of the site, there's a gadget to change the language on the fly. This works whether you have Javascript activated or not. If Javascript is not activated, there's a little button below the language selection gadget, on which you have to click after selecting your prefered language. If Javascript is activated it works by just selecting the prefered language from the drop down list. If you like, just try it with Javascript turned on and off.

And now I am off to do some more stuff. Much work to do!

Alion Free Music Base

2009-02-22T22:36:00.002+01:00

Here I am again. Unfortunately not much has happened meanwhile, since a little accident kept me from doing something valuable since mid of last week. But now the show goes on with full force. I am currently working at a new website project, called "Alion Free Music Base". This site will be, and I am completely serious at this, the biggest listing of free downloadable music on the web. Currently I am still working at the framework and try to find some artists who will be the first in the listing. But allthough the site is completely free of charge, just a few artists seem to be interested in free promotion. Well, all things start small... BUT while we are at it: If you are a musician with some free downloadable music online, just mail me: alionsonny@alionsonny.com if you are interested to be listed on my new site.
Ok, what else? Nothing :D Now I am off to create something I can really write about something here...

What's up with alionsonny?

2009-02-16T18:24:00.002+01:00

Well, Sonny is somehow on holliday now. The beloved girl is away for 2 weeks to visited some relatives and I have still to work at my dayjob. Still I spend the time left rather with being lazy, gaming etc. instead of doing anything creative. Well, and also the communication with you out there is on hold currently. And because of this, don't be puzzled if mails etc. are not answered very fast.

Still I am not completely uncreative. Currently I record some tracks with livedrumming using my Roland Handsonic 10. I just discovered some cool features of this thing. Ever played Sitar on drumpads, using the touchsensitivity for stringbending? *LOL* Pure fun! The guitar is used very often currently too.

Ok, I plan the following: The first week my girl is away I'll spend with things I like and by the way drink a lot too :D The second week will be hardcore creative work.

And now I'm off, opening a bottle of red wine and dive into the world of Fallout 3 to kill some monsters...

A bit of Raytracing

2009-02-08T17:56:00.003+01:00

Several reasons and a curiosity if I can do it lead me to try creating a 50's/60's-style radio using 3D graphic. The image above is the result of my first try and I think I have done it quite well. As an example I used a photo of an old radio found on the web. If there's an expert for old radios reading this: Don't try to figure out what was the original model on the photo. You'll most likely fail, because I used the photo as a very raw guideline. If you take a close enough look at the picture you will surely notice some flaws. I'll fix this once I have time to do it. It think it is good like that for now.

Blogging again...

2009-02-06T10:35:00.003+01:00

Well, I think I'll never blog regularly. This seems to be somewhat automatic: I open a blog and after two or three entries, I don't want to write in it anymore. Ok, this is not completely right, but I do not really have somthing every day which is important enough to blog it.

This post is also rather a "I have to blog something sometimes"-entry, because there's not really much to tell today. Hamburg is cold and grey and somehow this has an impact on my mood. Because of this, there's currently not much happening in the creative way.

But it is not that way, that nothing happened. Of cause I try to keep all my music- and videopages on the web updated. But because of the fact that I discover new sites all the time, and sign up there, it is nearly mission impossible to keep them all updated. Additionally videouploads strangely allways occupy the whole internet connection, not only the upstream, which makes it nearly impossible to use the web while a video upload is in progress. Because of this, I do not really like to upload videos and I usually keep only the best and important sites, such as Vimeo.com ,updated. Rather stupid sites (my opinion), such as MyVideo stay in a not so up to date state most of the time. So, why do I find MyVideo stupid? Well, a look at the sites title speaks volumes "Funny videos, video clips and commercials". Aaargh! This calls for all those mobile phone videos, stolen TV-Clips and stupid waving-videos I hate from the heart. The total oposite of sites like Vimeo.com where you can find mostly creative and original videos. Or Dailymotion.com where creativity is rewarded with a special userstatus, enhanced presence and more space per video. Talking of space: 100 MB max file size per video also calls for those types of videos I hate and is not really to date. This is why my latest video in HD is not there. All I said about MyVideo is also true for another site, which put its own value down by declaring itself a site for "funny clips" Clipfish. They also offer just 100 MB and compress the videos to death. I just can imagine one reason why those sites still exist on the market: The Funnyfunny-effect of the stupid consumer age. Well they are both in good partnership with the "beloved" TV-broadcasters. Still I uploaded a video at MyVideo, because up to now I had just 3 videos uploaded there and a bit more of distribution is never a wrong thing.

I uploaded also a bit more of my music at MP3.de. A good thing at this site is, that they offer a unlimited number of uploadable songs. I do not upload songs anymore to sites that offer less than space for 10 songs, because I hate that "delete a song to upload a new one" game. I prefer it, if my listeners find all my songs at one place instead of having to collect them from various sites. Sometimes I ask myself, how those sites with limitations stay on the market while there are countless sites which offer unlimited uploads. I prefer those. Very heavy in restricting the max uploadable songs for free accounts is myownmusic.de with a maximum of 2 uploadable songs for the free accounts. This is inacceptable for me, because I do not make any cash with my music myself. This is why I do not upload anything anymore to this site.

Back to MP3.de: The site is quite good, even though the techstuff does not allways work as expected. And some things are realy getting on my nerves:

for each song, even if it is part of an album, the complete details must be filled in manually, plus a picture must be uploaded. It would be more comfortable, if one could say that this is an album of one artist and all the data, except for the songtitle are the same.
without downloading a song, the listener can just listen to a small snippet. There's no possibility to preview the complete song or to stream it online.
each song must be uploaded seperately. There's no way to upload a complete album. This is unneccessarly complicated.
each song is reviewed manually by the site staff. This takes about 2-3 days. Most of the time the complete 3 days.

Well, these are the reasons why not all of my released 4 albums are available there, like at LastFM where everything works much more smooth and easy. Somehow MP3.de could use a bit of modernization. Everything comes not just a bit oldfashioned. But there is an important PLUS at this site: The support is phantastic and really friendly. In our days in which real support is a rare thing, this is outstanding! Just a few minutes ago I finnished uploading the last songs of the second album. Once the songs have passed the staff review, I can start uploading the third album.

I made a new discovery amongst the MP3 upload sites: Populizer.com! This site seems to be not so well known yet, but this may change. The site looks and works more than well. The tech side is perfect, the design is good. I could not find any limitation on uploadable songs so far, but I just uploaded one song for now.

A possibility to create albums would be nice but does not yet exist. But this site is rather new on the market so this may be a future feature. They have a real outstanding support. I made a little mistake with the tagging of the song which I could not correct because of sitespecific issues. So I wrote a mail to the support and got an answer in BELOW 5 MINUTES! This never happened in all my time on the web before.

Well, not much more to report for now. Currently I am working at an idea for the webradio on the site of my friend Duncan of Reggaefriends.com. This site is currently quite small but it will surely grow. Aside from that I must get something creative done for myself or I get a crisis *LOL*

Web.de drives me nuts!

2009-02-02T22:18:00.003+01:00

Today it is time again for a bit of complaining about stuff that doesn't work. Because today I wanted to update afew of my pages across the web, which I did not update for a time. Amongst them my Videopage at Web.de. Well I could not remember that I ever signed up there. But szill 3 of my older videos were there. So I thought that I upload some newer today. No big thing... so I thought...
BUT: As I tried to log in, none of my standard passwords worked. No problem: Then I let the site send me my password via mail... so I thought...
I did as advised on the apropriate page and entered my mailaddress in the appropriate editfield. Result: A message that told me, that I entered something the site did not recognize. So I tried the same with my older standard mailaddress. Result: The same. Well there was also written, that one can do this using the username. HAH! That could not go wrong, because my username is the same all across the web: alionsonny. Result: This website also did not know my username!
Well, I clicked my way to the support to find out, that the dropdown menu for the service to support did not contain an option for the video upload service. Great! Well, I chosed "other" and as suboption again "other". But what happened now? I must log in to write to the support. AAARGH! I CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT LOGIN DATA!!!
I took a deep breath and went to the impressum. Oh, there a infoaddress. I'll mail it simply. Said and done: I wrote a nice support question mail and sent it. Seconds later I got a automated reply which said, that they cannot answer my question via mail and I should contact the support using one of the support pages which only work if one is logged in. BUT there is a nice telephone number also there which costs loads of cash which I can call. Ahh, this is IT! Well, so the videopage stay in the state it is and the account stays a zombie account. So many video upload pages out there with working support. Bye Web.de!

Album Coverart for the album "Excursions in Time & Space" is ready!

2009-01-29T00:16:00.003+01:00

...and done! The last missing coverart for my album "Excursions in Time and Space" is ready. Again it is 3D Raytracing Art, this time done using the software "Cybermotion 3D Designer". Well, what to say? The album title demanded a picture of a time machine, and I did one. It took quite a time to create the 3D scene, but rendertime was again below 5 minutes.
Just as I said, this was the last missing coverart of all of my four albums and so it is time to release a new one. I have loads of songs in my archives, but not enough for an album which fit into one topic. So I first have to release some more songs. Well then: Let's work!

Album Coverart for the album "Early Xperiments in Dub" is ready

2009-01-25T23:58:00.004+01:00

Ok, the album coverart for the a lbum "Early Xperiments in Dub" is ready. The album, which was released quite a time ago, and which contains my first Dub Reggae songs from the years 2004 and 2005, had no coverart until now. Now I have finnished it. I created it, using the free 3D Raytracing Software "PovRay". I don't know how long exactly it took to create the scene, but it were quite some hours. I programmed the whole scene using the so called "Scene Description Language" SDL and did not use a PovRay modeller because I don't like the PovRay modellers and programming in the SDL is much easier for me as a programmer. The rendering took 4 minutes and 16 seconds on my little rendermonster. Every other Raytracer would have taken much longer to render the image. Clicking on the image will take you to a larger resolution which you can save to disk for printing your own CD-cover.