2 Weeks Down | Music YouTubers

So last surgery was 2 weeks ago tomorrow and not back to normal, but much better, mostly. Good to be on the mend.  I may start going out for coffee at a cafe later this week, again.  

There haven't been any nearby exhibitions announced this year so far that interest me. Kind of glad for that at the moment as I recover.  Last year thought the Osaka Expo had sucked all the air out of rival exhibitions for the first half of the year, but things sure picked up later. 

Expect the same this year, and that the GHOST IN THE SHELL: ANIMATION FILM exhibit will come nearby in a few months time.  

Wife and sister-in-law went to the cinema yesterday (saw RENTAL FAMILY) and brought back these coming film adverts.

I expect to go to PROJECT HAIL MARY opening session next week.  The Mandalorian ,edited to a film version, in May would be good too, as I don't have Disney+ and haven't seen it.

Music Youtubers. Did a draft  music+comic a couple of days ago featuring these two.

I had done a colored rough pencil sketch of Rick a couple of years ago and did a similar one of Billy on Saturday. The Rick one is a bit caricatured, Billy isn't.

That  music+comic  seems too simple at the moment, and doesn't say enough, in an interesting enough way. I wouldn't release it for a couple of weeks yet, so I may come up with something completely different by then. 

It was music that came first built around a sequenced bass part.  Guitars come in briefly in the center. Just love the sound. I am using the Hans Zimmer Zebra and many of his presets, and that is significant as to why synthesizer first recently. Sounds amazing. 

It was Rick's What Makes This Song Great? episodes  with the songs STEMS, so he could play individual parts and talk about them was what made me notice him. He hasn't done that for years now though and is mostly interviewing his music industry heroes.   

Billy is all about interviewing Creatives, many who are musicians but also actors.  Some who probably aren't even on Rick's radar. 

But there are many other Music YouTubers. Most shilling some product or another, like Ola with his guitars.  I guess I have more time for Glenn Fricker than most of the others.  He talks about interesting things, often, and is 100% right about Gearspace (formerly GEAR SLUTS ) that is full with people just think some piece of gear is the important thing (and big opinions). 

Speaking of Hans Zimmer. Mattias Eklundh posted he attended the current Hans Zimmer concert, helped by his friend Guthrie Gotham, who performs in it, and was amazed by it all.  I previously posted on the HANS ZIMMER: HOLLYWOOD REBEL documentary and how that was really inspiring to me. But when I saw the Japanese Zimmer Concert ticket prices I couldn't justify the ¥36,000+ price for a seat without a blocked view. Or the ¥50,000 VIP tickets. So I didn't go.

But the documentary is something I watch every so often, especially the bits on his approach.  Really simple themes, lots of 5ths, not chords, that repeat, adding another layer of complexity as they do. All being not at all what you learn in Music School.  

Back updating a complicated 6 year old vector design last few days. The only other thing I did last year was from a previous customer from years before too.

I think it is just another indication how broken Google is with their Search and AI now. The good Internet is gone. 

Saw something that mentioned how blogging is just so dead now yesterday. I had thought so myself until a year or so ago when I started posting here again.  Seems some, maybe just bots, access this, but it is really for myself, as I can't stick pictures and videos in my paper diary.  I just wonder exactly when Google will finally kill it,

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Appleseed(S) | Recovery

 

MUSIC+COMIC on another artist picking up the APPLESEED world and characters with 3 volumes of manga many years later in 2011.

The music used in this is in the Assorted Bits3 album on Bandcamp.

I had bought the English GHOST IN THE SHELL manga around 1995 and was amazed. All the tech foot notes! I had watched the Japanese language ANIME many times before that, but I could never catch all that was being said. Didn't matter a whole lot.  

It wasn't till we moved back to Sydney in 2002, and I had a 6 month contract working at Town Hall and discovered the 4 volume APPLESEED manga at the nearby KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORE, that I found out about APPLESEED.  I had seen the main characters, especially the Cyborg with the bunny ears antenna earlier but hadn't made the connection. 

The 3D animated films look great, but aren't. The second is particularly dull. Even if the action directed by John Woo. 

Other Things

A week and a half since surgery today and the wound isn’t weeping any more. Had the stitches out yesterday, and that is so much better.  They hurt coming out though!  A relief, even if not 100% yet. Didn't sleep well last night though. Even though the area wasn't painful, there was enough discomfort.

Had hoped to be back to normal after 7 days, but that didn’t happen.  Still had a weeping wound, probably from the ointment applied daily. Not painful, but sensitive, and when you moved and walked, the stitches could pull.  Made a small improvement daily though.  Great to not have to schedule going back to the clinic and can now get onto other things.  

Such a better experience than 9 years ago, as FB reminds me today, that was going to last 4 months and really take a year to get over.

Sometimes I set out to make a piece of music and think “this will be VERY METAL”, and end up finding a cool synth patch in the Zebra VST synthesizer that takes me somewhere else.  I may even start with a series of heavily distorted Guitar riffs, that would be metal on their own, but when I add pop-ish elements the result isn’t.  At least I don't think so.

I enjoy making the music I do, but you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. It is all simple and unsophisticated riff and sequence pattern based stuff, but that is fine.  I aren’t a “composer” and make my stuff by improvising a bunch of things, then editing them together, that then suggests something else that I overdub on top.  All made in my REAPER Digital Audio Workstation, which is like a word processor for sound and music. Never had any interest of being a performing musician or be in a band, just creating music and sound in a studio alone. It is just like drawing and painting to me which are both solo activities. My early technical career was about designing and building such studio music production systems.

I see other people I know repairing and renovating old music electronics or synthesizers. Some I designed a long time ago! That is something I was "good at", but have NO INTEREST in doing now in retirement! That was a job! Even if it didn’t start that way for me.  I am not that person now.  

Hay Fever is really bad around here now. Eyes stinging and nose running. Every morning have blood caked inside my nose. Even the cat is sneezing. And the amazing thing is, the troublesome trees where planted by the Japanese government decades ago.  They just didn't select a tree without a nasty side effect. 

Visited HANDS (used to be Tokyu Hands) just around the corner from the clinic in Kyoto Shijo yesterday for the first time after my visit to the clinic. 4F is my stop with stationary and art supplies.  Found and bought 2 A5 20 page clear files I use for printing my manga that aren't available any more at my usual ARC OASIS. 

Project Hail Mary hits the local TOHO cinema here Friday morning March 20th. This is the one with Ryan Gosling, to separate it from another movie of the same name, with same plot. Stop the sun expanding and save earth. I expect to be there opening session.

YouTubes current AI algorithm is showing me 80% garbage.  Facebook is 95% sponsored or sponsored Orange pile of Shit  content I have no interest in. A friend recently just gave up on Facebook. X is only saved by the Japanese content, which isn't manipulated the way the English is.  Haven't found any need to visit Bluesky often, and have stopped visiting MASTODON completely. 

Things change...

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

STORY SHAPED BEATS | Strange Music Structures and Life Events

 

Been listening to John Foxx's SYSTEMS OF ROMANCE, METAMATIC and his 2010 LIVE "Analogue Circuits" on continuous repeat the last week+. Some of his lyrics and delivery are "word salad poetry" like.  I hadn't really noticed before, and haven't seen them referred to as that.

I found that really interesting so added such spoken word lyrics to the last short piece of music I did. They imply things, and are open to interpretation. 

I think the result is a very interesting structure. I am being really original here? Maybe. But surely this stuff has all been done before...

The verses have a few bass sequences they play over, then there is kind of a call response between the spoken words and a melodic synth part, a few notes at a time. Verse ends with a melodic few bars. Could you call that a chorus though? 

After 2 of those section it drops back to just the arpeggiated synth sequence that runs all through it.

Then rock guitars come in for a few bars, then it drops back to another verse end melodic few bars with some repeated spoken words.

Can be found on my Bandcamp: STORY SHAPED BEATS. 

Didn't get many view, so did this visualized with MilkDrop3 too:

Any better?

Other Things

Had my last, number 4, medical procedure for hemorrhoids last Wednesday.  Cut and stitched this time and not the rubber band ligation of the previous 3 procedures. Will be uncomfortable for another few days yet, but this has been NOTHING like the 4+ week ordeal I went through 9 years ago recovering after the overnight hospital stay. Photo of Hospital room. 

The point of the story is that handling a problem earlier, rather than later, can be so much easier and better! Putting off treatment for 20+ years was the wrong thing to do.  I am lucky so far to have only none life threating issues, even if they have been terribly painful and inconvenient in the past.

I will be taking it easy for next week it seems, and will have my final check at the clinic on Friday and this issue should be closed.

On another medical note, the musician that video called me out of the blue last year tracking down who had made the SYSTEM FLOPPY DISC of the first Fairlight Instruments CMI Series III in the UK in the 1980s posted some not great news.  He had been under treatment for cancer the last few years, but that has now stopped as the treatment itself had became dangerous for him.  Without the drugs he is actually feeling the best for years, but he is now on the final stage of his life, and prepared for it.   

Watched LEON THE PROFESSIONAL on Netflix over 4 nights during the week.  Not a fun flic at all, but has many that made THE 5TH ELEMENT involved with it.  Some of the minor music cues in LEON seemed very similar to the same composers work in THE 5th ELEMENT.  THE 5th ELEMENT is one of my most favorite films, have the soundtrack CD etc.  The bits with the Arabic feel.

Gave LUCIFER on Netflix a try and that is a fun police procedural. Satan, who is just so entertaining to watch, discovering justice is as good as punishing the bad, but doing that sometime too. Fom a much darker Neil Gaiman DC comic with the LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR character derived from his Sandman comic.

Mattias IA Eklundh released a track yesterday that is back to his Freak Kitchen in style, rather than the more weird Jazz of recent Freak Audio Lab work.  More to my taste.  I tried to get into his RESIST THE CORROSION,  but it didn't have the kind of  riff and melodic bits that attract me. 

I guess I prefer stuff with simple riffs/ melodies and nursery rhyme like. I try and make my own stuff  like that. I really like to have a simple thing to hum to myself while having a shower.

I see Dream Theater are touring Japan at the moment. I bought a few albums, and a "best of-with a hit" over the years and just didn't become a fan. Great skill and musician ship, but not "great songs" to me. Seems many of their fans are a particular type of musician that love e,g. Petrucci's guitar gymnastics (like super skillful sweep picking) and the song doesn't really matter.  Same thing for the other band members.  Eddy Van Halen had the gymnastics AND great songs. 

I bought John Foxx's THE GOLDEN SELECTION from his Bandcamp page, his last album before calling it quits for a few decades.  It is Psychedelic and "happy" but doesn't have the hooks to me of his earlier stuff.  Need to listen longer, but keep going back to the 2010 live show, as having what I want to hear.

The amount of AI slop and lies on Social Media and YouTube is just crazy now.  Is this just trying to distract us from the actual really big, WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRUCTION level things that are happening? 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Some Great Artist Interviews: My Own Reflections

 

The Emperor's Birthday public holiday this Monday in Japan, so a good time to post another 180 second fake Kyoto FM Mix of 3 of my tracks from Bandcamp as a SHORT to YouTube.

And after a couple of days it got 600 views, then YouTube turned it off.  Never to be seen again.

Other Things

Watched 2 great musician/ artist/  interviews yesterday.

Mattias Eklundh: 

Mattias is so positive, and such a force for good, and being independent (and METAL).  What struck me most though is how totally different his upbringing was from mine. Mine was very much Cats In The Cradle.  

But it was Mattias's Freak Kitchen in the last 6 years that got me involved with 7 and 8 string guitars and writing and recording my own songs that really meant something. A huge recent influence, and I have met him a few times now.

Dennis Leigh ( stage name John Foxx, Ultravox founder):

I found John Foxx particularly interesting in his approach and way of thinking that is very similar to myself.  A very Quietly spoken man. Something else I relate to. 

When asked why THE GOLDEN SECTION was so happy and positive compared to earlier works he answers he visited Italy and discovered the sun, something he hadn't seen before living in the UK till that time. 😂

In reflection in retirement I feel I was always really an artist (drawing and making things was always my love, and did Art as a subject all throughout school), but it was drilled into me I had to have a real job and ended up doing Electronics and Software. My art and tech are very much done like painting. It isn't a performance, but a work created in a studio over time.  After finishing my Fairlight Instruments High End Sampler era, I moved on to other things and didn't need to do it again.   

Also his SYSTEMS OF ROMANCE & METAMATIC albums had such an impact on me on their release. I think I try and combine the sounds he did back then in what I do now with the Sequenced synths and Heavy Guitar. 

Like this quick thing I did yesterday.  Sequenced synths & heavy guitar. I will probably change the comic to something else before making it a YouTube SHORT:

Can someone steal the music in this, claim it is theirs and then claim a copyright strike against me in the future? It is very possible as it happened to Ola Englund from some thieving music company in China. Ola had his music published on Spotify and had done all the paperwork, and paid the fees to fight and win it though. 
 

Spring weather the last few days and took this in someone's yard in a midday walk yesterday. 

So my nose has started rehearsals for the real HAY FEVER season already. 

I expect most accesses to this blog are just bots and scrappers.  Doesn't really matter, as no one ever (well actually twice) comments on anything here anyway...   

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

6, 7 or 8 String Guitar?

 

For 30 years I just had a 6 string Squire, that 16 years ago I shielded and put a Humbucker in the bridge of. Hated the tremolo as it was just a detune lever and unusable. But with the humbucker, I could use high distortion without the hum and I did a lot of recordings with it.

In retirement I have spent much time recording and using 6, 7 and 8 string guitars. I had thought a Ibanez RG with locking nut and trem would be  the end game of the ultimate guitar for me, but not at all. Down tuning and heavier guitar music lead me to the 7 and 8 string guitars. 

I have my guitars in DROP tuning now, even my bass, but found that doesn't work with an 8 string. The lowest string is too floppy that way, doesn't sound great at the really low end, and I am not interested in heavier string gauges. I already have a Jazz Bass. So the 8 just stays 1/2 tone down tuned, and it ends up the 7 gives me as many usable low notes. The ones that sound good. Being fixed bridge is also so much easier for tuning and setup.  Tuning is something I fuss about a lot, and more strings and trem make it even more tedious. I find the bridge pickup on the 7 sounds better than the bridge on the RG too. The RG sounds really thin.

Will be keeping them all though, but will probably give the Squire to the grandson when he is older. 12 months ago I was really into Melodic Techno with no guitars, so have no idea where I will go musically in the future.

The track on Bandcamp  6, 7 or 8 String Guitar? 

The Reaper project: