New music video for a classic and more!

Yes, currently I really put the pedal to the metal to make all my old works available on YouTube. And since still images are rather boring, as announced, one or the other real music video is created. For example, for the title "Victory Dub" from the debut album "Reggae Xperimental WorX". Yepp, a really old track, which back in the days made the purists go berzerk and also still triggers the WTF? Effect for not just a few. Yes, quite unusual. As "Xperimental Reggae WorX" is none of the free downloadable albums, I've decided to give this track a real music video instead of a still picture of the cover art. I have been experimenting a lot lately with audio visualization and by a friend was made aware of the fact that I already own a great tool for this: With FL Studio ships a plugin with the strange name "ZGame Editor". Yes, some time ago I already came across this thing, have played around with it for a while but then forgot it pretty quickly. Why? It was buggy and that is actually an understatement. Let's rather say it was dysfunctional. Moreover, it swallowed such an amount of CPU time that you could actually only see jerky still pictures... until the thing either froze FL Studio or crashed it. So I was somewhat skeptical when my friend told me that he could well imagine, given my love for experimentation, I could get something good out of it. And indeed, although the ZGame editor is still anything but stable, not just sometimes surprises with difficult to understand behavior and is still quite resource hungry, you can actually work with it quite well. One just needs to save often and from time to think outside the box. With that in mind, it is a fantastic visualization tool with almost unlimited creative possibilities. Well, after all these words, here it is: My latest music video! Have fun!

And since, as I said, I want to get all the old chestnuts up on the alionmind Youtube channel as quickly as possible, I have also uploaded a still picture video for an absolutely dusted creation today. On that occasion, I also want to clarify something: One or the other asked me if it wouldn't be embarrassing for me to present my early works, which of course do not match my current quality standards. My answer is clearly NO! These are my beginnings. This is how everything started and I think not only I have a wide grin on my face when listening to those old tracks. I'm not ashamed that I had to learn a lot. Everybody who wants to get somewhere has to start at some time and also has to learn a lot. Also, there are not just a few, who remember the "good old days" (eg the original Versionist Reggae community) when listening to these old songs. Yeah, nostalgia. So, now that this is also clarified, have fun with a real beginner part of my works. If you want it, it is available on the, now free downloadable, Album "Excursions in Time & Space":

The alion conspiracy - A game of thoughts

I promised some folks on Facebook to post that. I myself found it a rather bad idea, as there's enough people allready out there, who think that I am nuts. But, well, what damage can some more do?  So be it: Let's play a game of thoughts:

1. Conspiracy theories are for nutters. This counts especially if there are other and better explanations for what happened than a conspiracy.
2. Conspiracy theories are especially nutty, if an individual suspects a conpiracy against himself.
3. It is a special and very nutty case, if 2. is done by a relatively unimportant person.

Those facts are the basis of me not drifting into the "twilight zone" and usually I am quite proud about it. But there's another rule I have:
If you investigate a certain incident and eliminate all profoundly impossible claims: Whatever is left, how irrational it may sound: It must be the truth.

So far the rule codex we will take as a basis of this "little experiment". Let's set the stage:

There is a well known video publishing plattform, called Youtube, which has (Youtubes own statistics) more than 1 billion unique visitors each month. Many of them randomly surf the site and are not looking for anything special. It is like TV Zapping in the internet age. Youtube does quite a great job, entertaining those people by providing them with more or less random video recommendations, based on their previous viewed videos. This makes it possible that EACH AND EVERY video uploaded to Youtube gets some views. If you now count in the usual random factor of mistakes, misspellings, misplaced clicks or simply curiosity, each video should get a good ammount of clicks. Ever wondered how a video with a boring guy talking about boring stuff in a boring environment got 40.000 view in just one month: Here's your explanation. It is his share of the gaussian distributed randomness of all existing things. It is the white noise of the very populated internet. The more people are at a certain place/website, the more likely it is, that even profound bullshit atracts some of those people.

Am I boring you allready? Ok, then I will make it a bit more interesting for the male audience ;). Let's imagine a central place in your city. Would you imagine, that one day a nice female would showcase her boobs to the public there? Well, if your city is in fact a small town, this will most probably not happen in ages. BUT: The more people are visiting that place, the more possible it is that some day a young, good looking lady is up for some fresh air around her boobs. This is called PROBABILITY.

Let's get back to Youtube (*yawn*). Let's imagine the following: You upload a video without any content, let's say pure black screen for one minute, give it some random tags, title etc. If my assumptions above are correct, your video should attract at least your share of the "Youtube White Noise", right? And this should of cause happen without you promoting the video anywhere. A simmilar experiment I did recently, just out of curiosity, generated 74 views in one week. If I had chosen a clever title such as "You will not believe this! Alien invasion on its way! Prepare!", did tag-spamming by filling in tags like "free,sex,porn,money"... you name it and spreaded the video viral across the web, I am sure it would have generated a lot more views. And remember: All without any interesting content.

What would you say, taking all of the above into account, if you uploaded videos to Youtube (quality and content still doesn't matter here) and even one of them gets no views in, let's say, a day? What would you say, if a whole Youtube channel, existing since about 2 years with 50+ videos on it doesn't get ONE view in a whole week? And now imagine that the people you personally know who watched the videos say, that they are interesting, entertaining, beautiful etc.

Wouldn't you say, that this is against the rules of probability? Wouldn't you say, that this is "twilight zone"? Yes? Well, then I am in the "twilight zone", because exactly that happened to me. I have a 2 year old channel with 50+ videos with (i think so) quite entertaining content. If I tell you now, that often my channel gets no view in a whole week... is that in compliance with the rules of probability? Each video uploaded adds to the probability of somebody watching one of the videos by accident etc. For this it is absolutely unneccessary, that anyone is really interested in my videos. And if you now count in the fact, that I am not just uploading my videos to the "great video dump", but promote them heavily all over the web... Something is not right here, or am i wrong?

Let's set this clear: I am not whining here about too little views and/or subscribers. It is just the reaction of a human being, confronted with... well weird things happening, and trying to find a LOGICAL explanation. I am a very stubborn guy and I will continue uploading videos even if they get no views, and if it is just to laugh about this crazyness happening. So, no moaning and groaning here, but just pure amazement.

Let's wrap this up: There are countless folks out there, who would. if they were experiencing the same, love the thought, that there's a conspiracy against them. NOT ME!

1. I don't have a logical explanation for the facts described above. In fact noone of the people I talked about this with has one. So rule number one from the top of that posting does not apply, right? So, this is a point for the "twilight zone" team.
2. I am not important in any way (at least as far as I know ;)). So why should anyone put up a conspiracy against me? Point for the "logic & reason" team.

So this ended up in a draw, as I think. One point for "twilight zone", one point for "reason & logic". I just talked with a Facebook friend about me writing this blog post, and she thinks, that there is in fact no point for the "logic& reason" team. I simply quote her: "How do you know you are not important in any way? Everybody is important in some way, or he/she wouldn't exist". Well, that's too esotheric for my brain. Would I think that way, I could join all the other online nutheads, observing conspiracies all over the planet. I am a player in the team of "reason & logic" and I love it.

But what about the inevitable facts? I think for the sake of my leftover sanity, I simply ignore them and keep uploading videos. Even IF there is a conspiracy: People are watching and hopefully enjoying them. It is just that the conspiracy manipulates the view counts *snicker*.

Be well and allways remember: THEY are after you ;)

I give up... or not?

I thought for quite a long time, if I should write this posting and if, in which form. I allready see the feedback: There will be the ones who are honestly sorry about it all happening, but also folks who with intention get me wrong. I hope, that the experience I gained so far in the communication process with you out there over the years, helps me to avoid the worst misunderstandings. Well, on the other hand, I could handle it like a friend suggested it yesterday "Never mind! You are giving up! What do you care what people think about you now?". Well, I am not that way.

I also am unsure about, if I should describe it all to you in detail, or just keep it crisp and short. I pretty much know, that each and every bit or negative information about me, my life etc. I give to you makes you flee in masses. The media consumer of today wants no bad news. You want the happy, funny Sonny and not his reallife problems. Most probably each of you out there has their own and doesn't want to be bothered with those of others. That's why I will try something in the middle and hope it works.

What happened? Inspired by an exceptionally positive mail regarding my AlionLive Madeira Series (hello Isa!), I realized, that I possibly waste my time. What I somehow ignored so far and didn't really realize is, that the ammount of work and effort I put into my works is absolutely disproportionate to the reception I get for my works. And NO, I want to set this crystal clear: This is no possible stupid form of some kind like a "revenge", like "You do not subscribe to my channel, and buy not enough albums, so I quit!". I pretty much know, that the rather bad minded folks out of you will presume it all in that way. And this while it is quite easy to understand my real motives.

Each human has a limited ammount of time and uses it preferably for a usefull purpose. Sure: One can do many things in form of a so called hobby, just for fun and to make others happy, and that's great... as long as the ammount of time put into a particular activity is not too overwhelming. Because then it turns into a job and a job should be preferably paied. Here we have to use different aspects of "does it pay". And that is not neccessarly connected to money. I still remember the first gig of my first Punk band very well. The audience was 3 people who had free tickets. If it went on like this, I think the band would not have existed as long as it did. Nobody wants to play gigs at empty houses.

Regarding to my activities, currently every thing is quite questionable, when it comes to the topic of "Does this make any sense? Does it pay AT ALL?". I sell a laughable ammount of albums, my Youtube channel is most probably the least viewed and subscribed channel in the known universe and the ad-revenue is because of that rather not mentionable. This would be completely ok... if there wasn't that gigantic ammount of time I put into my works. People like Isa, who told me in precious words about how she experienced and liked AlionLive Madeira know how much work is put into making the music and the videos. Well and that's by far not all. But many people still think that my work is something one could click together in just a few minutes.

What is happening now? I plan to for at least a month put a halt on all projects. This regards AlionLive, alionsonny, Willma Poppen and Cimelium. I am very sorry for those who allready wait for the next AlionLive videos and also the albums announced allready. I again emphasize: This is not some kind of "This is what you get from all that". Such kind of thinking is no part of my agenda at all and you, as loyal fans, should know that allready ;). In that month, I will put it all to the test and view all aspects of my work rather regarding to sustainability, reasonability, possible ways to go further and of cause also the financial part of it all. I will look if there is anything I can possibly do to increase the proportionality between the work, time,money i invest and what I get back. And at latest at the end of the month I will decide if the projects are continued or completely abandonned.

I want to be honest as allways: If I do not discover any blatant error in my promotion strategies, it looks rather dark for a continuation of my projects. But I would not do that "month of truth", if I had no hope. In all events, something has to change drastically. I MUST become more professional. The last time I said this, it resulted in the loss of a majority of my audience. It was back then in 2010, when I decided to no longer give away my music for free. Let's hope we can handle this more in an adult-ish way this time ;)

As allways I am interested in your opinion and welcome each form of constructive discussion (preferably via mail). The Blog comments stay moderated, because I expect some folks to run wild here ;)

Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new!

Now it is finally done. The new website is here; not 100% perfect, but quite ok. Some folks allready gave me feedback and of cause the reactions on the new site differ. Of cause, the site has been shrunken down. In the process of "professionalizing" of my work, I prefer easy understandable structures. The old alionsonny.com simply contained too much not really neccessary information. Just an example: Who is interested in an endless list of song titles and the corresponding exact dates of release? Ok I am, but I do not really think you are. Another example? How are fractal images and Raytracing experiments exactly connected to the musicproject alionsonny? Right: In no way!

What I simply recognized throughout the whole process of transformation from a "everything for free fun project" to a professional music project was, that my website was allways a mix between a private homepage and a professional musicians homepage. I tried my best to eliminate the first part now. If I have the time someday to run a private funhomepage again, I have the domain wolther.de for that ;). And even if some folks are complaining now about "losing the cool & easy private touch of the site" and missing (I think unneccessary) information, I think the new site is much cleaner and structured and more suiting it's actual purpose. So stop whining. To say it with the Bible: "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new", and it is great that way!

The site is far from being perfect. The layout sometimes freaks, especially on some Browsers. The more investigative guys amongst you will also have recognized, that not all possibilities to provoke errors on the site lead to a corresponding error message. But in general the site is safe, otherwise the few hours would have been enough time for my "russian hacker friends" to turn the site into a Viagra selling page. They are quite quick at this and they seem to love to try hacking my website.

The functionality of the site has been now reduced to the absolute minimum, to get the site online very quick. If you are missing one or the other thing, you will most probably find it back in a improved version during the next weeks. So please refrain from AT THIS TIME sending me loads of reports about missing stuff. Most probably I am allready at the job to bring it back. I plan a gigantic improvement regarding to the interactivity of the site. You will get a newsletter again and also a personal section called "MyAlionmind" or so, which will be, for example, very helpfull during sweepstakes etc.

Ok, so far the news. Have fun on the new alionsonny.com. I will now create a new alionsonny track. About time ;)

The eternal Youtube Game - Stupid Copyright Claims

Time for a little rant again, because there's something which really gets on my nerves. Of cause you remember my AlionLive video about the biketrip to the Baltic Sea, right? And for sure you also remember a posting I wrote on this Blog, about that some people claimed, that the soundtrack, from my Pop-Techno project "Willma Poppen" was their intellectual property. Well, after a short time the claim was withdrawn and everything seemed to be allright.

Well, until I decided to monetarize my videos, which means, to put advertisings in them. When I did that, instantly a new copyright claim was made. "Times Music India" and again "One or more music publishing rights collecting societies" claimed, that there was a musical composition titled "Shakti" in my video. So I rejected that copyright claim again, by "disputing it"... as Youtube calls that process. Nothing happened. While the first copyright claim had been withdrawn in just a few hours, now nothing happened at all. In the video manager, beside the stupid copyright claim, there was a text which said, that "an answer is expected until November 6th 2012". And exactly on that date the copyright claim was withdrawn.

The monetarizing for the video was still inactive. So I clicked the "monetarize"-link again. And guess what happened... I got a message that this time even 3 parties were claiming a copyright on music in my video. This time it should have been a musical composition titled "Pearl's Girl". Meanwhile I found out that it is a song by the band "Underworld". I listened to that song on (now that's funny) Youtube, and could not hear any similarities to ANY song of the Willma Poppen project. The funniest thing about that is, that I found all existing versions of "Underworlds" song "Pearl's Girl" on Youtube on Accounts of which I am sure that they do not have any rights on the song. So, Youtube: Why do you not wipe that crap away in the first place before accusing honest musicians to use copyrighted music?

One more and maybe the most interesting fact is, that each and every song used in the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is used in at least one more video on my AlionLive channel and for none of those other videos a copyright claim has ever been made. A special thing here is the AlionLive Madeira part about a busride from Funchal to Curral das Freiras. It hads allmost exactly the same set of songs by Willma Poppen in it's soundtrack as the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video. This video is monetarized and NEVER has a copyright claim been made by anybody.

So why is it all just happening with the "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video? In discussions at forums etc. about that topic some selfmade "professionals" talked about a magic tool by Youtube (Google) which magically scans videos for copyrighted content. Somehow this is impossible, because then that scanner would have found foreign content in the AlionLive Madeira video mentioned above also. Because that didn't happen, the idea regarding the badly calibrated contentscanner seems not to work. Additionally, I listened to each and every song mentioned in the copyright claims and even checked the digital waveform. There is not the slightest similarity between any of them and ANY of the Willma Poppen works.

The answer to the question why all this happens, seems to be connected to the number of views a video has. The "Biketrip to the Baltic Sea" video is the secondmost viewed video on my AlionLive channel and looking at the statistics it has the biggest potential. I don't now which objectives are the reason to deprive me of my ad revenues as long as possible, but this is for sure no propper business behaviour. I would have loved to talk about that issue to any "Youtube Support" but such a support does in fact not exist. What a absolutely unprofessional business is Youtube, that all the times new copyright claims can be made against a business partner, who repeatedly said, that he just uses his own works for his videos. I am able to bring each and every evidence that this is true. I am the only person in the universe who has the original raw material and project files for each and every bit of media which is used for the videos I upload on Youtube. It would be fine if one was able to sue the shit out of those people who allways claim that my works are theirs. But because the process regarding the copyright claims is totally intransparent, one is not even able to contact those idiots who claim copyrights on my genuine works, and ask them, for example, who crapped that giant turd into their so called brains, that they see a similarity between ANY work of the Willma Poppen project and, for example, "Pearls Girl" by "Underworld". By the way: I feel not honored by that comparison at all.

So, one can only hope, that there will be a better, more professional video upload service one day, which values it's creative users a bit more. Nuff said!

So here are again the copyright claims so far... for your amusement:

• "Victorious", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• Note: Initially there was a copyright claim here too by the company Rumblefish, which became world famous for claiming a copyright on bird tweeting. Funny, that this claim has totally vanished ;)

• "Go Getter (David Wiegand Alternate Mix)", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• CD Baby              

• "Shanti (Instrumental)", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: Times Music India
• One or more music publishing rights collecting societies           

• "PEARL'S GIRL", musical composition
• Copyright claimed by: The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA)
• One or more music publishing rights collecting societies
• UMPG Publishing

A new AlionLive Episode... and trouble with Copyright Trolls on Youtube!

Well, actually I just wanted to inform you about the new AlionLive video I uploaded yesterday... if there wasn't our beloved Copyright Trolls, who force me for the first time since quite a time to do a rant. What has happened? After a long time of editing I uploaded the Alionlive episode about my biketrip to the Baltic Sea yesterday evening, and it is by far not the first time, that the contentfilter of Youtube kicked in or some Copyright Troll claims I violated his "intellectual property". However that works internally at Youtube, today there was that well known message beside my freshly uploaded video which said "Matched third party content", which means, that someone "thinks" I violated their copyright. Well, let's have a look. I click on that link and get to know that it is suspected, that my video contains portions of the following foreign content:

 "Go Getter (David Wiegand Alternate Mix)", musical composition administered by: 

rumblefish 

One or more music publishing rights collecting societies

"Victorious", musical composition administered by:

One or more music publishing rights collecting societies 

This means, that Rumblefish AND one or more publishing rights collecting societies have the opinion, that my video contains a song titled "Go getter", to be more precise the "David Wiegand Alternate Mix". A short recherche resulted in, that this song is by an artist with the very creative artistname Michael. But that's not enough. ADDITIONALLY one or more publishing rights collecting societies have the opinion, that my video contains some musical composition with the title "Victorious". 

Ok, here's my answer to this: 

The first claim i understand as a 100% insult against my works, because I have seldomly listened to something boring like "Go getter" by that guy who calls himself Michael. Techno at all is a genre, some artists use as an excuse for their lack of musical creativity, but our dear Michael with his track "Go getter" sets new standards regarding this. Well, EACH technotrack sounds a bit like "Go getter". Why? Because this track is so simple, that you can hear a bit of "Go getter" in each and every technotrack ever produced. It is puzzeling me, that somebody can hold a copyright on something simplistic like that. But let's see... who is claiming a copyright on that track besides one or more publishing rights collecting societies? Rumblefish? Aren't those the guys who claimed a copyright on birdsinging recently? Ahhh I get it! Now Rumblefish wants to claim a copyright on the 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws. Because that's all "Go getter" by Michael has to offer... and has in common with a few of my works. And now for the second claim: What is "Victorious"? A song? A band? Ahhh, no it's a "musical composition"... by who? Who's the composer, the performer, the actual copyright holder? ...distributed by which label? Sorry dear Youtube folks, that's a bit vague claim, don't you think? 

So I filed (it's not for the first time) a dispute about those false claims and... after just about 5 minutes I had a mail in my email, that one or more publishing rights collecting societies have checked my objection and withdrew their claim. A glimpse on the status page told me, that this was just for the "Victorious" claim but not for "Go getter" by Michael. The question which came to my mind was, if one or more publishing rights collecting societies directly and within 5 minutes went to my video after I rejected their claim and withdrew their claim because they recognized it was all my own music... Why not the other one regading "Go getter" too? And Rumblefish? i think they really want to copyright the 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws. ;) 

FACTS: 

All video- and audiomaterial of that video is like allways my own self produced content. The music is, with the exception of one song, by my sideproject Willma Poppen project. And the only exception is one song I released under the artistname alionsonny. Here's the tracklist:

 0:00 -  0:55 alionsonny - Intro
 0:56 -  5:07 Willma Poppen - Willma Poppen
 5:08 - 10:30 Willma Poppen - Popp-U-Lism
10:31 - 14:33 Willma Poppen - Popp-Corn
14:34 - 19:28 Willma Poppen - Poppin' on heavens Door
19:29 - 24:22 Willma Poppen - Heroes of the Popp Culture
24:23 - 29:29 Willma Poppen - Mrs. Von Poppen's Funny Mushroom Omelette
29:30 - 34:25 Willma Poppen - Poppin' All Over The World
34:26 - 39:48 Willma Poppen - Strandspaziergang
39:49 - 44:40 Willma Poppen - Popp-Eye
44:40 - 47:53 alionsonny - Entomologia 

I strictly advise Youtube to look out for a better contentfilter and/or not to listen to each and every copyright troll in the multiverse. I really think about claiming the copyright for "Go getter", because that strange use of a 4/4 rhythm with the bassdrum on each beat and the prominent use of so called SuperSaws seems to be copied from the Willma Poppen Project ;). No, just kidding! That shitty capitalism which is basically responsible for bullshit like the one this rant is about, will eat itself. And now have fun with my latest video:

alionsonny, now also on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify!

Some of you folks told me, that buying my music is too complicated. Directly from me this was the case at all, but also via the (awfull slow) Routenote Shop you told me it is too complicated. And escpecially Europeans told me that at RouteNote "I have to pay in Dollars". Well...

But now, there's no excuse for you all, because on iTunes, you can buy the albums "Alion - The Original Soundtrack", "XperiMental Reggae WorX" and "Electronic Spacerock "international in the currency of your country. The album "Reggae?" is not yet at iTunes. I have to ask why. Additionally you can get all four albums on Amazon and on Spotify. There's no music of mine available yet on eMusic, but maybe my distribution partner did not get this done up to now.

So, let's go! There is really no reason left, why it should be impossible or inconvinient to buy one or the other of my albums!

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

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.

It is done!

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!

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

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!

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

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!

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!

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!

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!

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

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...

A quiet day

Last night me and my girl watched all episodes of "Kalkofe" we didn't watch until now on YouTube. Because of that I got out of bed at noon. Fortunately I had worked in advance during the past days and so no stress was generated off this. After all I must say, that this Kalkofe-Session was a double edged sword. Of cause it was funny as hell like allways, but on the other side it is shocking for people who didn't watch TV for more than 8 years. What a bunch of bullshit is present on german TV is by far not imaginable if one doesn't see it with own eyes. Worst of it all is, that it seems, that people let themselves get fooled and bullshitted without end. Shows where people allow to get their relationship destroyed, teleshopping where total trash is sold and nightly astroshows, where people pretend to be shamans, mediums and astrological consultants where you see not just a but that they lack intelligence big time. I mean: Who takes advise of a person who has obviously the IQ of a piece of bread? Who would think that such a person may have spiritual superpowers? That's heavy!

Ok, let's get away from the overall bad state of the intelligence-state of the population of germany: Today, when I surfed the web, I found something that really puzzled me. I am a big fan of the works by Douglas Adams and among other stories I found the description of the Currency called "Ningi" allways very amusing. But I never thought that a currency like the Ningi existed. At least not on Earth. Well today I was taught a Lesson. Please view this Wikipediaarticle and be amazed.

Nut much else happened today. I just finnished working at my day job and now relax with a good cup of green tea. I don't know how the evening goes on. Currently I try to upload some missing music videos at Sevenload.de. Unfortunately this site seems to use the same technology as Youtube, because the problems are exactly the same. Let's hope the best. Meanwhile I maybe work a bit at my lastest song. We'll see...

I HATE YouTube!

It has to be said once again: I HATE YOUTUBE! Why? Because this site turns each and every video I upload into unviewable trash. Yesterday and today I uploaded two of my videos which the site refused to accept without problems until now. That's nothing new: Of about 5 uploads usually three do not work. One time there's only a still picture available and the other time the video stays in "processing"-mode forever. My personal favourite: There's only a short "Blidelip" left of the sound at the beginning of the video and then.. silence. This was also the case with the two videos I managed to upload now. I encoded the videos once more and this time the sound is there. BUT: The videoquality sucks. And I uploaded high quality source material. Especially at the first alionsonny musicvideo in HD the destruction, done by the YouTube encoder, is clearly viewable. Additionally the stereosound was mashed into a monaural recording. That's really great especially for a musician :(

I cannot understand, that the marketleader in video upload services offers the worst quality. Fortunately I am able to back up what I told you above with a clear evidence in this blog. Below I embedded both videos once from YouTube and once from my favourite video upload service Vimeo.com. Judge for yourself. I uploaded the same sourcefile for each of the videos on both plattforms. For the first video it was a 720x576 pixels resolution, for the second the resolution was 1280x720 pixels HD resolution. Both videos contained 320kbps MP3 stereosound.

First "Springtime 2008" in the malformed YouTube version:


and here the Vimeo.com-Version:

Springtime 2008 from alionsonny on Vimeo.

Now the HDTV-Video "Autumn" in the YouTube Version:


and the Vimeo Version:

alionsonny - Autum (HD Version) from alionsonny on Vimeo.

I think nothing more has to be said about this. If YouTube wasn't so damn popular, I wouldn't upload anything there at all.