Have read that more than a few times lately. Probably a few time just on Bluesky.
But is it being said as world weary advice or an attempt to be a "thought Leader"? So much of the later on social media, followed by subscribe to my Medium/ Substack/ Patreon/ buy my book.
Gets tiring. Not that it isn't bad advice though. As a creator, you need to make stuff, but the drive to perfection on everything is detrimental. Luckily I lost that a long time ago. 😌 My career in engineering was always deliver as good as can be done in the allotted time. Usually as fast as possible. Having a family also meant "my time" was always limited.
I think finishing something is far more important, than trying to perfect it.
The Music + Comic itself isn't a Masterpiece either. A music track far too like what I have done before and features a Lemans Hypercar comic I have yet to find the approach to make it funny or interesting. Still a work in progress.
Our cat, sleeping in the chair next to me as I type this, is 9 years old today. He has been a constant companion the last 4 or so years. Spending most of each day in my studio with me.
I am very happy he does.
Update:2025/8/23 A week since kids and grandson went back to Tokyo, and we didn't get sick! Grandson came down with a fever yesterday, but that is probably from the daycare he attends. Poor guy.
Our kids and grandson visited for 6 days, and they went home yesterday. So nice when they visit. So good when we get our house back to ourselves again. Grandson is in "the terrible 2s", and is talking which is wonderful, but can have a tantrum if you say "no".
Photos, in our family, were taken rarely, so I don't have a picture of me sitting on the knee of either of my grandfathers, and may have never done that.
Been so hot though so getting out and about is particularly tiring for everyone.
I had a mildly "slipped disc" for about the last 2 weeks, that went worse 4 days ago, but completely fine today. This indicates a lack of exercise and muscle tone, from not walking enough. How I keep this at bay over the decades, so will be heading to the airconditioned mall when it opens to get in my walking there, again. Need to do that more regularly as walking around locally is just dangerous in this heat and humidity in recent years.
Synth & Guitars
Made the attached YouTube short over the last couple of days though on the new Win11 machine. The video actually shows what is making each part as it comes in. 2 guitar parts, both on the Ibanez 7 string thru a line6 POD EXPRESS BLACK. Using the ANVIL amp. ZebraHZ on 2 parts, etc
People are so tribal.
When Eddy Van Halen played JUMP on synth to the band, I remember a story about them discussing they can't do that keyboard thing in a guitar band. British '80s synth pop was very anti guitar. Even Viking Guitar God, Mattias IA Eklundh, who did a synth album just a couple of years ago, INTERGALACTIC SONGS OF LOVE AND REFLECTION, found out no one wants to hear such a thing from a guitar player.
Well, except me maybe. I even bought it.
So Synths & Heavy Guitars together goes against music tribe conventions, even if that is what DURAN DURAN mostly did. I like both together too, so am not going to get listeners from any tribe. 😃
So my new Win11 machine is completely usable now, until I go to do something I only do sometimes and find I need to sign into some account or install something.
Or Win11 decides "whatever" is not allowed to run any more! I haven't found anything "better" in Win11, just a pile of "they made it worse". All the advertisements on the Log In Screen are so crass.
So I bought Zebra: Legacy and that is awesome. Just using the 400 presets will keep me inspired for some time to come. That is the only reason to get it to me. Same reason I visit art exhibitions. I didn't actually need another synthesizer, but can always be inspired.
Have put a longer version on our Bandcamp:
That is the 36th "bit of music" I put in that album this year. And that isn't all I have done. Mostly for MUISC+COMICS. It is a case of "make the music you want to hear", but it is also like eating, and something I have to do every few days to stay " a Happy Camper". Sequenced synths and heavy guitar riffs for the most part this year. I play the tracks, or a DJ-MIX of them a lot when out, sitting in a cafe, riding the train or walking around. I am entertained making them, and listening to them.
My own music is not the only thing I play though, and have also been alternating between that and playing Urasawa Naoki's LOVE SONGS, a Rikugo playlist and Freak Kitchen. Now just 4 weeks to attending their concerts in Osaka.
So made an EQ matching my phones sound on music. Allows to me to check my mixes in the DAW and change it to suit, if I could be bothered😄. But the reality is, if you are listening on a Phone Speaker, you don't care about quality.
But checking the mix on really low end speakers is still actually very important.
The Sound File of Brown Noise was generated in Audacity, then played in a loop on the phone using Pulsar Music Player.
I used to use REW and my calibrated measuring microphone a fair bit in different projects in decades past, and so had appropriate gear at hand to measure the sound coming from the phone, even though high accuracy isn't needed here.
The JBL FLIP series of Bluetooth speakers is or was a popular speaker, so we measures that was well.
The FLIP has a 100Hz boost, but has a reasonable downward slope to 15K, with a dip at 2Khz for a "ALWAYS LOUDNESS ON" type sound. Would expect most home entertainment/ soundbar/ music players have a response like that. BOSE systems were always something like that (and NEVER "Hi-Fi")...
Here comparing the myphone to my Flip5:
And I made an EQ to approximate the FLIP5 as well, and put NORMAL, FLIP5 & PHONE processed sections on the music track in this:
Just an approximation, but could help in MIX decisions.
Listening to music from your phone on headphones or earbuds isn't a low end experience at all though. The quality is better than what we had from standard record players back in the 1970s.
Phone Speakers are probably about the worst case though. Even super thin panel TVs with really inadequate speakers sound better. Something like the old Auratones is still a good reference.
The music in this short is the first time I have used Zebra Legacy, the Hans Zimmer version and that really is incredible. Just so much inspiring stuff.
The reason players buy new stuff is to get inspired. We also tend to collect stuff, even if they are just small things, more than we really need too. But artists do that with art supplies too.
After putting off researching building/ buying/ rebuilding my studio computer for much of the last year, I finally decided that getting one of the locally assembled brands was the most straight forward. Unlike Sydney, there aren't build PC stores run by Chinese guys with all the parts you might need, local.
There are stores that build customizable desktop PCs, like APPLIED and DOSPARA, but they aren't at my local MALL, and from my visit to downtown Kyoto DOSPARA, it isn't like they carry all the Gigabyte and other such motherboard brands.
Most in Japan just use a Smart Phone or a small laptop.
So I customized a MOUSE PC GAMER PC option. I have bought just an i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, DVD R/W and fancy graphics card in a box. Lots of DisplayPorts and an HDMI. No Display, keyboard, mouse or HDDs, as I have these in my existing system.
It will arrive next week, giving me 2 months to install, move things to it and be able to switch over before the October Windows 10 end of support. Moving stuff over, installing, registering, deregistering the old machine, etc, etc takes many weeks. Mostly just waiting for things to copy and install.
My existing machine has 16GB ram and the new will have 32GB, but that is about the only real difference. My existing machine is completely fine, as it was running XP, before I move it to Win10.
The only thing I have that pushed the memory of my existing system is the GRITONE DRUM vst, and don't use that very often.
Everything I have read just shows Windows 11 to be a step backwards, allowing advertising in the system widgets. The requirement that Windows11 needs TMP2.0 is just an excuse for an Intel cash grab. I was at a LAB in the 1990s when Intel released some special version of the 386 and then they came looking for any software that "required those new features".
Same old strategy.
And keeping with this blogs theme of PAIN, today is the 10th anniversary of my kidney stone trip to the ER.
Kidney Stones hurt like hell, but with drugs for the pain and flushing out the trouble makers, that will be all fine again in a few hours.
What is REALLY painful is an extensive hemorrhoidectomy that means you have the same or worse pain for 8 hours after pooping each day for 2 to 4 weeks, and no painkillers available to you help at all. Recovering from that took me over 12 months. For most of the last 10 months of that time, I wasn't in pain, but the intense extended pain seems to have caused a "depression". I wasn't sad or have the blues, but everything that I had done for fun, wasn't interesting to me at all for 10 months. Was like being a different person.
But I was looking at interesting 1967 manga speech balloons this morning...
And today 2025/8/8 we are up and running on the New Win11 Machine. Found a few things not installable, but have work arounds:
It has a SSD drive so it boots fast, but other than that, is the same speed as my win10 i7 PC for rendering Reaper audio projects or MOHO animations. Of course there were faster CPU options, like i9 and upward, but they add significantly to the price. It has cost ~￥270,000. It is a very nicely built machine though, and dead quiet the way I use it most of the time. That is a lot to be in pretty much the same place I was before getting it, but that is current American Capitalism for you.
So Win11 doesn't support my old audio interface so going back to ASIO4ALL and the motherboard audio. That is what I did for years when I first started using Reaper. I had a MIC100 preamp plugged straight into the motherboard line in for guitar, bass and microphone. The noise performance of the motherboard was better than the preamp. I also only record one instrument at a time, so things like crosstalk between channels is not relevant. I have used a Mackie 4 channel mixer for the last 5 years doing the same. The knobs and multi segment VU meter is way better than a single clip led on most audio interfaces.
Motherboard line out now goes to an Audio Technica Headphone Amplifier, then to my JBL-104 monitors. I mostly use headphones, and don't like just plugging them into to the JBLs when needed. I keep everything plugged in as needed, and turn on the headphone amp or speakers at the power point as needed. Hardly a Pro Studio monitoring environment, but the room is too small and I use a slow spectrum analyzer in mixing as much as anything else. The quality of my mixing and mastering isn't why no one listens to my music.
Not sure what to do with the old Win10 16GB machine. I originally bought it in February 2016 as a Win7 machine in a Corsair Case/PSU, with 1TB HDD, 8GB, DVD R/W and a GeForce graphics card for $1,489.58. 9 years is a good run for a PC!
At the moment it is the /Netflix/Prime/mediaPlayer connected via HDMI to a small 24" TV I have in the studio. Has Kodi on it.
