Wednesday, April 2, 2025
EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE, REALLLLLLLLY
Monday, March 31, 2025
Retirement & The Bucket List
That list of things you want to do, The Bucket List.
Like making my own comics:
I have now done most of the things I ever set out to do. Be involved with some technological worthwhile product, live and work overseas, make music, draw, sculpt, start my own (side) business, have a family and a few other things.
There are also a lot of things I never had any interest in, like Being Rich and Famous, performing on stage, a Tennis Pro or Golfer, so they haven't happened and I am very okay with that too.
Even have a Best Of Album on Bandcamp. But that wasn't something that was ever on my Bucket List. My desire was just to do music production, in my own studio, at a level I was happy with. The album came out of that.
Retirement itself was never on my bucket list. Retirement wasn't something I ever thought about till just weeks before I did it. And that I would retire to Japan wasn't either. But giving up full time work had such a huge impact on my life. A huge stress was removed from me. Hadn't seen that coming.
Gave me an opportunity to really think about what I like and don't like and what comes natural to me, and is comfortable. I have come to embrace my true Introvert self, and be content. Making something in my small studio is bliss. It is also something that doesn't really cost anything.
During my working life, I travelled overseas a lot. Catching an airplane somewhere now is not what I want to do. But I do love going somewhere up to a couple hours away by train, and Japan really is a place to do that in comfort.
Retirement has been a chance to wake up and think, "what do I want to do today?". Sometimes that is just hangout with our cat, at other times build and paint a model, go to an Art Exhibition, go to a Cafe and Drink Coffee while listening to my music player, or play with a synthesizer.
There are lots of things happening around the world that I can get really upset about, but I also have no agency over any of them. Nothing I can do has any impact over them at all, even if I have drawn a cartoon or two pointing out some of the stupidity. Generally I have found there is no good side to even thinking about them. It saves my mental health to not follow what is happening and pretty much ignore the foreign news. That keeps me a happy camper.
Hope you get the opportunity to be able to do what makes you content.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Concert Ticket Lotteries
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Sanjo II 3000 Kyoto Japan
Not an Ambient Piece.
A throw away 1:40 thing from this morning, recycled this evening 😀. But with JP8 rather than Church Organ, and 16th note sequencer bass synth. Repeating 8 bar A Lydian parts for JP8 and bass. Threw in a Black Metal drummer, over playing a Simmons SDS-V 😮, to keep the Ibanez GRG7221QA-TBB 7 String guitar thru a Line 6 UBER METAL pedal company.
Spent all of 5 minutes with GROK and prompts around "Sanjo Kyoto Year 3000". Hope it is never built up like this, and anything new needs the taste of a Syd Mead if they do.
Put together in MOHO PRO12 Animation system as it really fast and simple to do this, and way easier than my Video editor Vegas Movie Studio.
This uses the same sounds as the other things I have done in the last 2 weeks since getting the Simmons SDS-V vst Electronic Drums sim. Love the metal guitar tone too.
Part of me feels there should be a blistering guitar solo with pick scrape, sweep picking and two handed taping of some interesting arpeggios, but I really like a simple riff or melody to hum. No one hums a blistering guitar solo with a zillion random notes in it.
I would normally just put an image of the audio waveform in a video like this, but had the random idea to use AI future Sanjo Kyoto instead. It takes less effort than preparing the audio waveform!
AI has so many problems. In this case, I have no idea where the training data for these city images came from, but do know you can't copyright them. In this case, it would have taken me weeks to paint images similar to these, and so I wouldn't have done it. In Grok it was all of 5 minutes, which is fine for a disposable little video 10 people will ever watch.. Would have done a manga like scene instead, as the ROI to do it isn't worth it.
The music is the main thing here, but I didn't really take any time to do that in this case either. There is nothing stereotypically "Japan" about the music at all. BIGBOSS KYOTO is at Sanjo Kyoto which has a nice collection of very metal guitars, so I don't see this as out of place at all.
Also recently learnt about Rikugo 六合 a Kyoto Prog Metal "Dark Rock" band, and have been listening to their material the last few days. They are the support band for the September Freak Kitchen Japan Tour. Girl Punk band Otoboke Beaver おとぼけビ~バ~ are also Kyoto natives.
So to me, heavy/ metal music is very much a part of Kyoto.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Vital Inspiration
We got around to assigning the Akai PMD218 pads to the right drums, and also making our own preset for the VSDS-X Simmons drum vst. That all makes a difference.
Then stayed inside all day and made two pieces of music and accompanying videos on this cold, slightly snowing, sometimes sunny Kyoto today after a very busy day out yesterday, where we ended up having some lovely Ramen at a place in Kyoto JR station.
So is this 1980s music sounds with a 1960s cartoon vibe, I wonder?:
I would have loved to attend this local car show if I had know about it.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology