Start of the New Year

 So our kids and grandson visited us the first week of 2025. He attends a preschool and had a runny nose and a bit of a cough when he arrived. They all did, one of the features of such a facility is they don't miss out on any of the bugs going around. Didn't stop them from doing everything they wanted.

And I came down with it after they left, and still have it. Mild but annoying. One of the joys of being a grandparent. All the sharing.

It has been very cold around here too so haven't been out much.  Snoozing and noodling around with some music production & pondering comic ideas. Doing what the cat wants me to do. Trying to do something musically a little bit different, as I feel most of the recent stuff I have done is pretty much variations on the same piece of music.  

I am most likely to play something well if it isn't new, and keep falling back into doing the same things.  

I am not using standard song structures, and in fact try to do something completely original, or unexpected. Most pop songs are all the same construction, and not what I am after at all.    

Came up with a great idea for a SF story a week or so ago. Not sure I want to do it as a comic though. Done a few comics, such as these:

Maybe it should be more an illustrated short story. That seems to be a more efficient way of doing something, so that it doesn't take for ever to finish.

I haven't decided anything, and really just want to relax at the moment. I had decades of working thru holidays and don't need to do that any more. I will wait at least until my nose stops running.

UPDATE: 2025/1/12 Been sleeping much of the last few days. So so sleepy, and then there is the coughing. Haven't bothered with social media. X is just terrible now and not worth visiting, and Bluesky, after an initial inrush of new folk a few weeks ago with lots of lists of what looked like interesting people to follow, is pretty much not actually interesting posts, and so uninteresting for me. Facebook is just for a few groups I am in.

I tend to think Social Media has run its coarse and will go the way of Myspace.  Only engaging  the type of people that got high on day time soaps and The Jerry Springer Show of old. What the vast majority of people post isn't worth the effort to scroll through. Popularity seems mostly about how trivial or rage inducing something can be. And with no holds bar on disinformation now, not being part of it seems for the better.   Haven't missed it at all the last week.

 We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

MUSIC+COMICs

 

I made quite a few MUSIC+COMICs last year, and started 2025 with one too. See above.

I haven't seen anyone else do the same thing. An under 60 second (to directly post to Bluesky and previously X) "animation" with music as a soundtrack and a Newspaper strip-ish comic with animated speech balloons and other images. BUT it isn't an animation and there is no voice over.

Just combined my own interests of mostly "slice of life type comics" and "original music".  The music doesn't support the comic, and the comic doesn't support the comic, but gives me an outlet for both.

The 48second music track of the above in Reaper looks like this:

I like repeated old style RIFFs and melodic phrases. If there is singing, it needs to be real singing you can understand. Watching grandson start dancing to simple kids animations with songs, shows this is a rather basic instinct. to me. Most Jazz leaves me cold, as does Dream Theater and Steve Via. Joe Satriani is wonderful, as is Mattias IA Eklundh and Freak Kitchen. 

I have made some these in the YOUTUBE SHORT format too, but they aren't something Google shows to anyone (unless you make and post one daily, or something close to that to appease the algorithm) , so no one sees them unless I post to Social Media, where the chances really aren't any better. 😂 

Such as these single digit view counts, that are probably just me

I see these all as experiments, and some work better than others. Most of the time the subject of the comic is something I come up with "off the cuff" as I see how a music clip sounds as a movie with the waveform in MOHO Pro12.

I discovered years ago actually doing an animation is just too time consuming, with a similar amount of views, so the ROI of my time is just much worse.

MOHO Pro12 makes these very simple to do. Moving images around and text balloons synced to the soundtrack is fast and easy to do.

MUSIC+COMICs has the right amount of satisfaction to me against time taken to do, to make them an interesting creative outlet.  Often I will then extend the music to a 3 or 4 minute piece of music, if I like the ideas in it enough, and release it on Bandcamp, where again, no one plays it except me.

And we extended the track, and is now on Bandcamp in a collection here: CAT HOPES 2025 EXTENDED.  

And this version on YouTube showing the very minimal production. Few tracks and no automation in this case:

Making and releasing these things keeps me "a happy camper". At the moment anyway.

Over the last 5 years I have done more of one of my interests than others each year. I have yet to find the "thing" I will focus on this year.

For the next week at THE MUSEUM OF KYOTO till next Monday there is a display of art from young Kyoto artists I plan to go have a look at. Sanjo is a pleasant place to visit for me and even though it has tourists, it isn't crowded like the other places downtown, and I get to go to my fav café and restaurant.

For another month there is also the wood block print works of UTAGAWA KUNIYOSHI  in Osaka that I have already got my ticket for.

These things may inspire me somehow, or at least I do a comic on something about my trip and impressions.  Way more than anything on that time wasting, infinitely scrolling, Social Media platform of any flavor.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Reflection on 2024

 

At year end we reflect on how the year was, and here I have two short <59sec  music+comics on my year. 

I went to more events and was out more than I have ever before, EVER. 

So in that regard it was a really good year for me. The other music comic is about the art aspect of my year. I made a far bit of stuff, including a BEST OF ALBUM  so there was a sense of accomplishment.

Bought an 8 string guitar this year and coming to grips with it has been interesting. I made quite a bit of my silly music and put it on Bandcamp. Even Melodic Techno this year! My being out and about also made me realize I needed Name Cards again, even though I am retired now. An interesting exercise using Stickerjapan.com 

There was health and sickness. There were visits to the cinema and regular sitting in a café listening to music on earphones while sipping coffee. Freak Kitchen released a new album, and discovered the likes of Cassian, Devin Townsend and Irving Force.  

I also did grandfathering, but I keep all that personnel stuff private. I just don't see any reason to share that with people I most likely don't actually know.  

It was a good year, and I hope 2025 is too! 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Harley Benton R-458MN WH MultiScale: My Setup and Modifications

 

We bought this inexpensive, 8 string guitar 6 months ago. USD$243 is around ¥39,000 ( including small import tax paid on delivery) which is more than I paid for my best guitar, the Ibanez RG350ZB with locking nut and tremolo 2 years ago (but today that RG is ¥70,000!). So it isn't actually a cheap guitar with the Japanese exchange rate for me. It is a half to a third of any other 8 string guitar around these parts, but I found no one actually had any 8 string guitars in stock around here at all. 

So I played it for a while to get used to an 8string, see how I wanted to tune it and work out what issues it really had. I will cover the issues and my fixes here, but basically the 2 issues were difficulty in tuning because of a very sticky plastic nut and intonation.

I currently like my guitars down tuned a half step, so high to low, the strings are:

 D#, A#,F#,C#,G#,D#,A#,F.  

The initial issue found that the strings on it needed immediately changing, and that the 8th string, F, couldn't have the saddle moved back far enough, without the screw hitting the string, let alone the spring allowing the saddle to move all the way back. The 7th string had the screw hit the string issue too.

The solution to that was replace the 7th and 8th bridge bolts with cut and filled versions. Black M3 bolts just bought from a local hardware store here. To replace the bolts, you have to remove the rear screw holding the bridge body onto the guitar.

The 8th String also needed the spring removed, to allow it to move all the way back.

So the resulting bridge, for the down tuning, is now this, red arrows showing shorteded bolts:

The next problem to be tacked was the sticky nut.  I ended up getting a Nut file set from Luthier of Japan, but probably could have just used 600 and 800 wet and dry sandpaper. Will do some Nut refinement of this 8 string, and the Ibanez 7 string to justify the files.

The Nut from the factory results in all the strings having two bends in them. No wonder the strings get stuck. Without fixing this first, there was no need to replace the whole nut with a "better" material one.

So the best nut slots are cut so they fan out going to the machine heads, and slope away from the string, as shown here from a STEWMAC video on cutting nut slots.

I didn't touch the fret side of the nut, other than run the correct nut file throw the slot to check it was in fact the correct width. I also only bought 6 files, but made due with the wide files for the lower two strings. It doesn't take much to tune each nut slot, adding the fanout and drop away, so the strings have a more direct path to the tuners. It is a bit subtle. As here:

Refining the slots isn't something the strings have to come off for. Just loosen a string, move it out of the slot, do a little dance with a file, polish with wet&dry, and ready to go in no time at all.

My 6 and 7 string guitars are in DROP tuning, but found that makes the 8th string here too floppy, and it is best the way it is as an F.  

It now lives in a GATOR GWE Series Stratocaster case I bought locally. Japan is a country of earthquakes, so shut away in a sold case is the best option. No sitting on a guitar stand on display for me.

I don't have any issue with the standard active pickups. I am playing into the Reaper DAW, with a distortion pedal, Cabinet IRs and have fancy EQ  (ReEQ) to do what ever is needed. I am also not trying to sound like someone else, which seems to be a significant factor in people wanting to change things around. 

The thing about an 8 string is string muting becomes more of a challenge, but not much different for the stuff I play. I still need my DROP tuned 7 string though, as the one finger power chords isn't what this 8 string is about.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Headphones Aren't Stereo

 

I use headphones all the time now. Rarely use speakers. 

My tiny music studio isn't acoustically treated as it is just too small. The same size as the walk in closet next to it. I mostly mix on headphones working their too, using SPAN set to mastering, and check on speakers a little. I almost don't drive now, so don't have a car I know well to check a mix in either.

I use headphones to listen to music all the time. Have a small stereo, with some Yamaha tower speakers, but it just makes too big a sound for general listening. So headphones it is. AKG-702 in the studio, and JBL earbuds or SHOKZ OpenFit out and about.

So am very aware that headphones aren't stereo. I also have a long time interest in binaural sound and how that sounds so much more interesting that standard stereo on headphones. Have a few VSTs to use headphones for monitoring in the studio. JB ISONE PRO and dearVR MIX among them.  

The piece of music here is just something I came up with after doing some refinement to the NUT slots on my 7 string Ibanez guitar. A sticky nut makes tuning really tedious, and this was done during the, is it easier to tune now? testing.  

Then did the binaural mix, and came back and did the crosstalk version to make this demo on headphones. There is also a SHORT version on YouTube.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology