Recent Rick Beato video on his constant battle with Record Labels and their claims over music clips on his channel. He now employs a lawyer to handle these.
But how come YouTube isn't listening and doing something about constant, invalid claims, from the same companies? No 90day, or permanent bans for proven trouble makers, like they do to content creators themselves?
The comments that came back to this question was YouTube is better off with the way it is now and couldn't care less about any trouble Rick Beato is being caused.
Anyway, always loved Pseudo Echo, even when their Brit Style Synth Pop with matching hair was completely out of style from Oz Pub Rock of the time.... 😀. A previous music comic I did was on this tribalism.
And this is a cover-not-a-cover type thing. I listen to the original track and do something like a bad copy of it in under 60 seconds, at a tempo I prefer. This a little slow than the original But with my current sounds and approach, like the 8th note bass sequence which is the foundation of this.
Have only had my Win11 up and running for almost 3 weeks now and it is very disappointing to see Update KB5063878 causing this chaos.
It appears to occur with long sustained, high data rate disc writes. User case being downloading and installing STEAM games on a Gamers PC, or copying your huge video library to an SSD drive.
It installed on my system 2025/8/13, and I get an error trying to uninstall it. So I guess I wait for the fix, which still hasn't appeared a week later. Assume part of the reason for this original problem, and the slow fix is Microsoft having sacked developers and replaced them with crap AI.
Now, I don't think anything I do in general use of my PC at the moment, recording midi and 2 guitar parts, some digital painting and scanning pencil sketches actually would cause the bug to occur. Rendering 56 second animations and Reaper Mixes is very CPU bound, but does not generating long high speed disc writes. I used my PC normally for a week after the bug was installed and I only found out about it from the above video yesterday.
Lots on Reddit about it now. Affected SSD controllers are Phison, InnoGrit, Maxio (Sandisk, Corsair, Kioxia). Writing 50GB at full speed to an SSD can cause it to be unrecoverably corrupted.
I installed CrystalDiscInfo as recommended, one of those "adverts everywhere disaster" download sites, and my system has a KINGSTON unit:
But there is no indication that this drive would not be affected by the bug. It is an industry wide issue.
I made a boot DVD and took a full backup to a portable HDD 2025/8/9, before the update, just after I had installed just about all my tools and data from my previous system, so I expect I can recover if something was to happen.
One of the things in this KB5063878 update is changing the certificates expiry for safeboot from 2026. So that means the requirement to get Win11 in the first place means MS can now stop a PC from booting at some date in the future, set by Microsoft. Don't like what that allows.
And the news Intel isn't in great financial shape, after years of CEOs from the finance world focusing on stock buy backs instead of using less money on keeping up in semiconductor technology comes as no shock. Assume this whole forced "security cpu feature" required in Windows 11 was Intel inspired too. 😡
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.
Feel I should come up with something more engaging and interesting in my comics and music + comics, but doing that is hard. Haven't found what yet. Also, getting older makes you far less relevant to the popular status quo. Young people don't care what old people have to say about anything anyway, which is what most of these have been like.
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.
