2 new video channels and more!

Not much is happening regarding to music recently here and I know that one or the other dislikes this a bit ;). But currently I want to try some stuff I always wanted to try. And since I test whether you really can make money with Youtube lately, currently just about anything circulates around Youtube and videos. But promised: New music will also be created again soon. Look at it this way: Right now I just have a little time off from being a musician. Constant change keeps the brain fit ;).

Sonny is gaming! My Let's Play Channel AlionLiveLP
You do not know what a Let's Play is? You can be helped. Just click here! I am with my 46 years certainly the oldest Let's Player of the multiverse and in the way I'm doing the whole probably also otherwise unique. Currently, there is just one video on my channel, but that will change very soon when I have time for an extensive gaming session. As the first game I have chosen the old classic "The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind" extremely modded. Unfortunately, for the people who do not understand German, my first Let's Play is in German. Sorry, but my version of Morrowind is in German language. But I will for sure do some English Let's Plays also, because I also have some English games. In the future you will not read any further information about the Let's Play channel here, as it is part of the AlionLive project. It is therefore advisable to either subscribe to the AlionLive blog, like the AlionLive Facebook page or to subscribe to the Youtube channel if you want to stay up to date. Here is the first video. And I was indeed as nervous as it seems ;).

Life long learning ... and teaching! My Tutorial Channel "Multiversity of Alion"
I was asked several times if I could make a video tutorial about this or that. Mostly, these questions based on my activities in the area of ​​3D graphics in Blender or making music in FL Studio. And so it is not surprising that the currently only video on the new channel is a Blender tutorial. A fairly modest one, but it is also only the introductory part of a series on audio visualization using Blender. More coming soon. And it will not only be Blender tutorials: I will also make tutorials about making music in FL Studio, Web design, programming in various programming languages ​​etc. My repertoire is quite extensive ;). However, news concerning the tutorial channel will be posted for the time being here, because I do not have plans for an independent "web identity" for this project yet. Certainly one day there will be a separate blog and a Facebook page, but currently I have simply no time for that. Have fun with my first tutorial. Nervous? Never! ;)

The alionmind records video channel
This one (LINK) I introduced already in the last two blog entries in detail. However, also a lot has happened here. 22 pieces of music are now already available and there will be more. Today I have just uploaded an old classic from 2006, which is also on the free album "The Alion Archives". You find more information about the track in the video description on Youtube.

So, that's it so far. Stay tuned, because it will always get more interesting ;)

State of emergency is starting today!

Yes, today I will get my lazy ass up and give all my project sites (alionsonny.com, alionsonny.de and everything under alionmind.com) a hefty update. It is time to wipe away all the amateurish away. Too much is still reminding of the hobbyist times when I gave away everything for free and to change the overall design of the websites to something more professional.

This will, most probably, become a tough ride for you as the website users. I cannot imagine the whole process to be free of any accidents. So stay tuned and excuse the one or the other "side-effect" of me working on the sites. If the homepage is not available, you will still get news via Facebook and Twitter. If something should not work for a longer time, and you think I forgot to fix something, don't hesitate to contact me via mail. E-Mail will allways work ;)

What to expect? My main goal now is to make it easier and more accessible to buy albums, to be able to listen to music and get the latest news without being distracting by unneccessary stuff.The websites and also the blogs will get a more uniform and pleasant look & feel and I want to create more possibilities of interaction between you and me. I will ask you about your opinion about some of my ideas during the time I am working at the whole thing. For examle somebody had the idea of an alionmind records forum. What do you think about that? Would you participate actively in such a forum?`Well, personally I think, that this all works with the Facebook Fansites allready.

Well, I will now start to work. So during the next hours, it is more than just possible, that instead of the websites, you will see a boring "under construction" message. I will keep you updated.

Win a download of Cimelium's album "Mesopotamia" & more!

It is time again to let you know what is happening here currently. A great occasion for that is the fact, that the music project Cimelium is giving away 5 free downloads of the album "Mesopotamia". That's something for those who have allways no money, eh? All details about your chance to win one of those free downloads, you can read at the official Cimelium Blog. You can take part in this until 23rd of December.

For all those who are waiting for "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira": Patience! I have a little creative mess regarding to the 3D intro and a small but powerfull sickness kept me from filming the introduction. But however: AlionLive Return 2 Madeira will start before christmas.

I work at new music at various fronts. The next you will most probably get, is a new song of the project "Tubenwurst", which did not really release much since it was declared to be the stylewise heir of alionsonny's "Electronic Spacerock". I have a track for that project allmost ready, which perfectly fits into the concept of electronic rock, synthpop and 80s music, which is actually the main genre direction of Tubenwurst. For Cimelium, I work at songs for the second themed album, titled "Madeira". I allready did some quite good work for that during the past days. And REALLY great progress can be reported from the progress of new works for the Willma Poppen project. Some people allready warn, that it may be confusing for the audience, if Willma Poppen releases a second album in 2012 ;) You see: Some great stuff is happening!

I also decided to give the websites of the alionmind records empire a new kick into a new direction. "Inspired" by a recent hacker attack on all of my websites, I found out, that some of the internals of the core content management system must be cleaned up. Also the overall handling and design of, especially, alionsonny.com is not just a bit dusted. It still breathes a touch of the old "I give everything away for free" era. That must be changed ;)

Ok, so far for the news and don't forget to participate in the Cimelium sweepstakes!

Back from Madeira, and now?

Yes, dear friends, I am since 2 days back from Madeira. And with me I brough 16 1/2 hours of raw video material. So, there will be a lot for you to watch on AlionLive soon. If you are on Facebook and are my Facebook friend, you can now watch a quite huge number of nice photos from Madeira there. Of cause I will upload the photos on Google+ too sometimes, but not now.

It will take some time until you can view the video, because i want to create a brandnew intro for "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" and some new fresh music would also be good. Well... you know that ;) I have some new plans regarding to music. The new alionsonny album, I announced for until the end of this year will for sure be released and all the other allready announced things will happen too.

To talk about the new ideas for projects I had in Madeira, there will be a second album of the "Cimelium" project. Again it will be a concept album, this time titled "Madeira". It will have the traditional number of 13 tracks and each of them will be titled after a particular place in Madeira and I'll try to capture the atmosphere / ambient of that place in the song. The music will again be very relaxing and calm, but it will not contain the oriental sounds you know from the "Mesopotamia" album. I plan to release this album at latest in summer 2013.

I also work at new songs for a second album of the Willma Poppen project. After the initial approach of the project failed, because of my inability to produce stupid simple pop-techno in a music industry style, I will take the project on a path of ambitious, sophisticated pop-techno meeting my artistical ambitions. To plan a release date for that album would be, keeping all the stuff on my agenda in mind, not just a bit shady.

And then I have some stuff on my mind, I don't want to tell you about yet, because it is supposed to be a surprise for you. TIPP: When the "AlionLive Return 2 Madeira" videos are being released, watch each of them. I sing a particular song in there... ;)

By the way: A short remark on the Cimelium album "Mesopotamia" and the Willma Poppen album "Heroes of the Popp-Culture". I thought that my distributor Routenote would manage it to get both albums out on iTunes, Amazon and eMusic until I return from Madeira. As you can see if you check it, this is not the case. Believe me: I am for sure AT LEAST as unpleased as you about that. I will have to speak some serious words with Mr. Bennett tomorrow. This doesn't work at all that way!

Ok, and now I go back to work to bring you some firstclass entertainment. The show must go on!

Creativity strikes hard!

Hi friends! This time there's just good news, because there's a real creative mood going on the kingdom of Alion. Everywhere something is going and not just a bit. If you watched my activities during the past days, you'll have noticed that the recent creative block has vanished and made way for a quite fruitful era.

Yesterday, the 10th track for the album "Sumeria" by my project "Cimelium" has been released and that means, that there are just 3 tracks missing, until I will release that album. And, what a  coincidence, I have about 6 song projects in different states of completion, which fit on the album beautifully. So it is more than just possible, that the album will be released prior to my birthday (July 19th). And once the concept album "Mesopotamia" is released, I have two more album ideas for "Cimelium". Yeah, the beat goes on and on...

A new sideproject, a new facette of my musical schizophrenia, is also in a state one can call it a concept. Because my musical origins are in the metal and punk genres of music, it was a wish from the heart all the time to do such music too again, besides all the other musical styles i cover. The concept for my new project is titled "Greifenberg" and under that name I will release Folkmetal, Viking Metal, Blackmetal etc. And because the whole concept is not just a bit about Dragons, Knights, Sword and Magic, this project is also a great new home for the successors of the "Alion - The Original Soundtrack" album.

You will be surprised at all, which new facettes of my creativity I will unveil to you soon. For example I will put more focus on guitar and vocals in the future. I expect that, aside from the alionsonny project (Reggae Dub), there will be 10 to 15 projects for particular musical styles in the end. Some of those projects are more or less alive allready:

• Cimelium - Electronic Ethno, Chillout, Meditation -> formerly AlionMeditations
• Willma Poppen - Techno Pop of the most commercial kind
• Tubenwurst - Electronic Rock, Wave, Avant Garde -> successor of the album "Electronic Spacerock"

Scheduled for the future are the following projects so far:
Greifenberg -> Folkmetal, Viking Metal, Blackmetal, orchestral stuff
WOLTHER -> Singer Songwriter and Progressive Rock

And what about AlionLive? AlionLive Madeira? YEAH! This will go on too! Currently I am cutting the longest part so far, which is about a day at the botanical gardes of Funchal. This part will consist of twoo separate parts. No this time not because of upload issues, but because when we were getting back from the botanical gardes, we took the bus and I was able to sit in the front of the bus and could film the whole busride from Funchal botanical gardens to Funchal center from nearly a drivers perspective. And because riding a bus at Madeira is allways an adventure, I make the busride a video part on it's own to not let it drown in all the flowers & stuff at the botanical gardens.

This will be part 10a and 10b of AlionLive Madeira then. And so you know what awaits you still, here's a little outlook on the comming parts of the series. These are the parts comming up next:
Part 11 - Hiking on our own to the wild heartland of Madeira
Part 12 - The day after hiking and the return.
Part 13 - Another day at the beach and more
Part 14 - Departure -> extremely short.

Maybe I will do a part 15 for an aftermath with tips & tricks, do's and dont's. This could be very useful for your own planning of a trip to Madeira. Please let me know if you would like me to do this.

Well and after this is done, other stuff from AlionLive is to be done. I have loads of ideas. Well, and that's the report so far from here. I'm at work for you again!

Let's talk about MONEY!

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.