Was playing around with a clean 8 string sound with the SUPERMASSIVE reverb after watching a Devin Townsend Ambient guitar piece. What I did struck me as being "Life Coaching" video like. Relaxing, so added the strange spoken words. I refrained myself from adding "discount coupons", as it would give the game away too quickly.
As I didn't want it to be LIFE COACHING at all, added the ROCK & ROLL, and the up tempo distorted guitars. That feeds into the animation were the serene screens lead to the MEGACURVE LOGO. I wonder if it is still too subtle that it is a joke playing with the genre?
The "Wellness Industry" contains many scammers. LIFE COACHING was started by a financial planner in the 1980s in the USA, who found his clients didn't need therapy, but he he found could sell them something else they didn't need! 😂
Supplements, tablets with no medically proven effectiveness, are the same deal. But did you hear about the Benikoji supplement by Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co. that killed a 76 people and destroyed the kidneys of others in Japan in 2024? It isn't all a joke.
We also made a YouTube video using an idea I stole from Benn Jordan on X. 2 old music lovers listening using just 2 frames to make the animation, rather than just the album cover. Will see if it gets pulled, and will do just a record cover version then.
Been listening a lot to the 3 tracks already released from Devin Townsend's POWERNERD album. My track here isn't like that, far more musically unsophisticated, power chords and single note melodies, but I LOVE the sounds!
I started with the JBASS parts and just expanded it from there. I normally start with rhythm guitar or a bass sequencer. The spoken words are inspired by Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells track, where instruments are introduced, by John Cleese in the last version. I am not doing that here, but that is where the idea came from.
I have been putting the SAMPLE&HOLD preset in the Surge XT VST on everything recently, and here too. Just love the sound.
The track is 3 minutes, but it isn't a song. More of a soundtrack clip of a feeling about the title.
As you can see it is made from 8 bar sections. I always start by laying out a really long drum track, then adlib parts with that on different instruments, and copy and past my track together from that. I may , or may not then re-record better parts after listening to that 10,000 times.
This animation was made in MOHO Pro 12, like most of my stuff. Done at 1280x720 12fps.
Uses 2 Ricks interview frames. Grabbed a short section of the YouTube interview with OBS, then saved a few frames from VLC. Selected frames with most extreme head movement, but didn't spend any time on it. Moving the front most frame off screen gives the head bobbing effect. The frames are also slowly zoomed in and out. I just eye balled the beat, and copied and pasted sections, so it goes out of time sometimes, but few will watch the video far to notice anyway, if things go the way they normally do.
Just listening to a Devin Townsend Vpodcast about his Synesthesia and creative motivations. Expressing how he feels at that point in his life though music.
Here I am just making something related to how I feel at the moment, with the skills and techniques I have at this point in my life. It Makes Me a Happy Camper. Because I need to make something on a regular basis to not feel down. So it is for my own state of mind.
I don't have any kind of audience for this music stuff, and it isn't my motivation. Very different from my Car Illustration stuff...
Wrote a different kind of song over the last day and a bit, and made this animated short.
My Harley Benton R-458MN didn't have the intonation right on the 8th string, and I set out to fix that. It was really only okay up to about the 3rd fret with my half step down tuning, as the saddle couldn't be moved back far enough.
I had to change to a much shorter screw (cut and filed a 15mm M3 to 11mm) and removed the spring in the bridge on the lowest string, and use a shorter 15mm M3 screw on the 7th, too. Moved the saddle all the way back on the 8th. So now with the half step down tune intonation can be set correctly. Screws need to be shorter too, so they don't hit the string going over the saddle on both 7th & 8th with the saddles moved back. To replace these saddle screws, you have to remove the rear screw attaching the bridge part to the guitar body.
I have it tuned (H>L) D# A# F# C# G# D# A# F. Why? I prefer the tone and the string tension with 9s with the half step down tune.
So this music started just checking out the newly improved intonation. I was also playing with the volume pedal and palm muting, so that on the neck pick up, you go from a very bass like tone (what you here at the start with just the drums) to a metal guitar tone.
This change in distortion and tone in the piece was the new thing in this Lydian 140BPM piece.
I hadn't added lyrics to anything recently, and after watching the Beato Rick Rubens interview, thought something rap like ( BEASTY BOYS, RUN DMC) isn't something I had tried. And the experience on X has deteriorated greatly since RWNJ Musk took over, with the zillions of porn bots morphing into extreme US political mode. So it didn't take any effort to come up with a few words for this. And maybe it isn't really rap, but that is okay, spoken word works for me.
I just used this lapel mic I have on the desk for FB Messenger calls. Not one of the mics I have for singing.
Mattias's whole hour clinic video was put up 2024/10/11 18:30 by Zanshin, who held the event and are the distributors for his new line of guitars. The guitars are only entering production now in October, and aren't available yet.
I was there. Mattias is a great guitarist, songwriter, singer and maybe, even better entertainer.
What is particularly cool about this video to me, is he calls out to me by name some 4 times 😍. At 9:15, then 23:44, 45:44 and 46:06. I guess it is one of the things he does, as part of his clinics, and I must say, it sure made me a happy camper. I get mentioned by name 4 times during this, but behind that there is the story, that even though I was the first there, by about 2 hours, the organizers, NOT Mattias, weren't going to sell me a ticket to let me in, as I didn't know you had to get the ticket at the Music Messe exhibition hall across town... Mattias said I should hang around and "see what happens". I was allowed to buy the last ticket to the event, number 35, shortly before it was to start.
My whole interest in the 8 string guitar is from Mattias. Earlier this year I went to the guitar shops around Umeda Osaka to try an 8 string, and none had one. I ended up buying the Harley Benton R-458MN online. Don't really consider myself "a guitarist", so that seemed the most reasonable way to see how they are.
A really interesting experience. Very worthwhile for me I think. Would love a ULV8
but my limited ability doesn't justify the more than our car cost. But such purchase decisions aren't rational like that.
Before the OBon holidays, and getting sick for about 4 weeks, I was trying to do some piece of music and a music+comic every week. Seems easy until something like illness gets you to break the routine.
For the last 2 weeks I seem to be back at it. The latest, off the cuff thing THE PACE OF LIFE is above.
I set out to do a fast "metal" thing, and set 156BPM. Much faster than I normally play with, and found down picking that verse riff hard and tiring. This is a better take, but hand was getting really tired even after only 4 verses of this!
The comic text is just the first thing that came to me making the animation. Being retired isn't a subject the mostly young interweb cares about, but I do these for myself.
As I have gotten older, I get more random old memories hitting my thoughts. Many are of just really embarrassing things that happened. This seems to be a very common thing among us oldies!
There were times I was so busy. Mostly 1981 till 2001 was most like that.
In a Facebook group I am in, there was a question about the systems I was one of those involved in designing. It was "what design compromises had to be made"? But the thing is, I did those designs 40+ years ago, and remember little. It was a very fast pasted time for me. I also try and not remember all the "not great" things that happened in the past.
I used to have a really good memory. That also meant I stayed upset about something for a really long time. I am glad I can forget much of that stuff now. I have tried to forget much that isn't relevant to me any more. Seems to clear up the mind for things that are important now.
In my slower paced retirement, that makes me a Happy Camper. Ican do things at the pace I want now.
