Being retired, being alone in the studio ( with just a cat ) making something is what I LOVE to do. Drawing, cartooning, model making, sculpting, painting, producing music and animations are the kind of thing we do most recently.
To me, making my music is a studio activity, not done live, in exactly the same way I cartoon. Not a "live onstage" activity, even if Urasawa Naoki does it during his concerts.
Lyrics:
In the studio No one around, unwatched, Freedom is found.
With art the anchor, The work - The drive, The piece - the goal Keeping a vision alive.
No critics guide the hand, Just shadows on the floor Wrestling with a spark. As dreams light up the dark.
Ideas fill the room, Answers stay at bay. Each stroke A journey from a thought.
Have put The Studio on our Bandcamp as a 2 track release with the song and the original longer instrumental. I may prefer the Instrumental myself.
So have done 14 songs in the last months, and feel I have now run out of ideas. The last few have gotten harder to be satisfied with my lyrics and singing. Has it been singing? Not sure.
Other Things
Was rather knocked out by last weeks INTERNET-ing getting only 2 views by someone that wasn't me.
The Remix 11 from the week before getting 400, then the ECONOMICS before that getting only single digits seemed all very strange. All released same time on Saturday mornings.
This seemed more than just the Internet Creator Random Rewards Algorithm and I wondered if there are subjects that the YOUTUBE AI throttles back. It seems there are subjects that get reduced exposure by the algorithm, but think in the main cases here, the animation got labelled by the AI as "kids" and throttled back for that reason. YouTube had gotten in trouble in the past and why all that stuff about "for kids?" or not, but the algorithm checking stuff is AI and of course wacko
Redoing the visuals would test that, but not something I care to do at the moment.
UPDATE: The Studio above after 3 hours is doing very poorly too. Nothing like the views these have gotten just posting original video on Facebook and X.
Meta has been fined $18B as their site is harmful to children. Social Media and the focus on ENGAGEMENT is harmful to everyone...
Our old music technology loving Scotsman in Los Angeles, Cris, has renovated a Fairlight Instruments CMI Series III and recently finished a FAIRLIGHT recorder/mixing Console. They are all multi part follow along videos on his YouTube channel.
Just so different from my own approach. I was involved in designing and developing the CMI Series III and have NO interest in having one now. Happy with Reaper on a PC with synths and guitars!
Facebook reminded me that 4 years ago I was far into my HEAVY METAL GARAGE comic book development. I had really forgotten all about it.
I had gotten a decent set of ellipse templates to do this too. You probably haven't seen, but a big set of Ellipse Templates are REALLY expensive.
Many hundreds of dollars that I could never justify, but picked up a useable set for 4,000yen on Mercari.
Also a set of ships curves. These were things I would have liked to have for decades, but just couldn't justify the expense.
But it made me think I should get back to doing another comic book. Get some more use out of those Ship Curve, Ellipse Templates and try and write some more jokes.
Tangerine Dream: 1967-1985 The Pioneering Years saw a post about it on Facebook, and have ordered my own copy. Stephen Palmer has a blog too.
I have some 14 Tangerine Dream CDs ( and some recent Concert Downloads from the current bands Bandcamp) and still have old magazines about them. But it isn't that I play there stuff all the time, I just come back to it a lot.
Our adult daughter from Sydney will be staying with us for a few weeks, and I expect I may not get around to any of this blog and related music stuff during her stay...
Web traffic from autonomous AI agents and bots has surpassed human-generated traffic, reaching a milestone far sooner than analysts expected.
So Bots are creating content AND consuming it with no need for any pesky humans in the loop!
G flat 138BPM Guitar Synth 138BPM. Lots of synth noises, heavy guitar, dubstep snare/ kick and synth string sound through a slow flanger. Probably way too much like the last 6 things I have done. Maybe I need a bit of a break.
EDIT: 2026-8-24 This short got only 6 views in 3 days. Last weeks Fake Kyoto FM remix11 short got 400. YouTube doesn't hide that it limits views of "political" shorts.
My own hobby music means much to me, and really is about ME of the week I did it, just like a diary entry, as much as this blog is. I am not on Spotify as that is a pay to play scam to me, remembering I am just a hobbyist retired grandfather music maker, and "making it in music" is not a goal of mine.
So that others couldn't care to hear it when I put a post on X or Facebook about a new track on Bandcamp, is to be expected. I know I rarely listen to other hobbyist tracks when they do the same. Anything new usually sounds very much like the last 12 things I heard from them, and that is true of my own stuff too. Posts on new music have to be from some bigger artist to get me to give it a listen.
Rather complicated animation done in MOHO Pro12. Took 40 minutes to render.
The Internet has become a vital part of everything, at the same time it gets worse and impossible to find anything.
I think of my recent shorts as kind of like newspaper political cartoons. Not pop, metal or rock songs at all, and me just doing my own original thing.
Anyone know of others doing something similar or related?
Other Things
Still cooking and helping my wife with her recovery. Things take time. Going out for short walks twice a day is showing progress. She could barely walk a few weeks ago but can get around again. Lots of long chats just sitting in the living room too. The important details in life... This week even watched DVDs after lunch for like the first time ever. Our own matinee.
Wife found a couple of movies she wanted to watch. They were available for rental on PRIME, but It seemed better to me to get discounted new Japanese release DVDs instead for the same cost.
Hidden Figures is one I had wanted to watch myself for awhile. NASA's hidden human computers. This is awesome. I had tears of joy in my eyes watching this more than anything else I have seen in many years. The kind of history the Frumpistan administration says didn't happen and the Smithsonian is lies. 😡
Blackmore back with Deep Purple for one song got way more news than it was worth to me.
I saw Deep Purple live in Sydney with Ritchie twice and Rainbow at the end of 1976. I was a fan.
Ritchie, I only discovered in the last 7 years, didn't treat many he worked with very well at all though. I have an LD of a performance, where he comes out really late into a song and throws a drink at someone at the back of the stage. There are interview with all the band members except Richie and they all go on how difficult he has been.
Blackmore isn't in good health, and maybe wants to make amends before his end. A great guitarist that really inspired me and why I started on a Strat, but not a great person. Shy, but nasty. It all seemed forced with Ian Gillian to me. That isn't the way most others have taken it though.
ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard passes away at 77 after being in hospice for awhile. I have no idea what his lifestyle was like but that is on the young side, but maybe not by the current lower American standards.
So much gear grifting on Social Media and YouTube. All those channels pushing the latest whatever from their sponsors. Despite what they say about their video being their own uncensored thoughts. Yeah, sure. You will not hear a difference between a linear 24bit vs 32bit audio interface, but no one says that. Preamps and EQs "character" is due to distortion which a mild form is called "saturation" generated in transformers and tubes and some circuit configurations.
I still think the JBL-104 sound fine, and iLOUDs aren't much different, with just a tiny bit more low end, that the room modes impact greatly. The iLOUDs are significantly smaller though.
Have a tiny 5' 7" square art/music studio, that has terrible room modes, and is too small for acoustic treatment, especially bass traps. Means the room is kind of like a 110Hz high pass filter applied to any speakers you put in it. It does open to a bigger room with tower speakers that doesn't have that issue, so all is not lost.
You wouldn't get that from Social Media though. It gets tiring to me. So much noise, but so little worthwhile, but all so addictive for the random small worthwhile bits.
My interest in small monitors is about my own music mixes.
I can't hear anything above 12kHz at all, and just don't trust my ears. Using REFERENCE TRACKS is important and to help me with this I am now trying ADPTR MetricAB. May be the trick I need to get better consistently. The real thing with this is that it does automatic level matching, so you start on a solid foundation with reference tracks. It has a bunch of meters and a big AB button.
Now I don't think MetrixAB gives me anything I didn't already have as separate things, but the all in one with autogain makes it all much more likely for me to use it, especially as it sits a the the end of the MASTER BUS.
Using reference tracks then makes mix decisions relative to the reference track, rather than relying on the accuracy of your monitor speakers in your room and headphones.
But I will see. An interesting TODD RUNDGREN comment heard recently was that record makers fuss about REVERB level and all that stuff, but listeners don't care at all. Whatever the mix(e.g. too much reverb, too little bass, too bright mids ), is the way the song is *supposed* to be to them.
Can't say I have ever been a big fan of Neil Young. Know probably 3 of his songs, but those are really significant. KEEP ON ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD in particular. Some comments on what he thinks is important.
I mostly agree with this. He was a guest speaker at the 1998 TEC AWARDS I attended many years ago, talking about his home studio from analog tape to digital and that the sound got worse as time went on.
I hadn't realized till then how up with studio gear he was, and I had considered him, incorrectly to be a folk singer!
I read INIO ASANO's SOLANIN manga a few years ago and yesterday ordered PUNK'N HEADS which seems could be similar 20 somethings, music and finding their way. All that stuff is way behind me as someone rapidly approaching 68.
I am still looking to do my next small comic book. Just haven't got any idea what it should be about or on. I do know that doing it in 8 page chapters is the way I have to do it. Maybe retirement, commitment to your kids and spouse and getting old? Maybe in such a way that isn't an immediate turn off for everyone! Like set in an alien world in another dimension with cute aliens...
The last 13 tracks I released ( 8 track EP and 5 singles) in the last months have gotten a couple of listens total by someone NOT me!
Still don't think of myself as a musician though. Especially not as a guitar or keyboard player. More a PRODUCER who can play instruments and use the studio itself, to mix and master parts to make music.
I went to a Sydney Comicon once and bought a few self published books, and was seriously considering going to this equivalent event. Some 9 minutes walk from COSMO SQUARE station all they way out near Osaka Bay. But knee was playing up yesterday and I had to use a walking stick, so will give it a miss in this heat.
A Misemono Kyoto FM remix for the OBON Summer Holidays in Japan here.
The SHORT I released last Saturday as all of Japan went on Holidays only got 9 views, so not a great time to release something you put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into.
The cicadas stopped singing suddenly a few days ago, when the rain started and temperature dropped about 10 degrees.
Other Things
It is now official that there are more BOTs on the Internet than people, but that is not new news to me and seen that in our website access data for quite some time.
Is it the end of the Internet as a useful tool? Google search is now garbage, that is for sure.
Star Trek Discovery stumbled into our included with prime viewing and struck us that this probably shouldn't have been a STAR TREK show but some other original SF thing, as they don't particularly care about the Star Trek universe it should be part of. Like when the Klingons look like the ALIEN PROMETHEUS ENGINEERS rather than anything in any previous series, and the tech they have breaks just everything that came before.
It seems YouTube is mostly advertising to me. Like these speaker shoot out videos.
And the guy presenting it, using his own original songs in the comparisons, is effectively advertising himself. Seems the majority of videos offered to me follow that same formular. I have the JBL104s shown in this. At the time the iLOUD micros were the better sounding monitor, and smaller, but even then had heard of reliability issues. The small powered PROSONUS monitors sound good, but have reliability issues too. The same guy had an older video with the PROSONUS 3.5 in the mix and was highly regarded. Note in the comments of this 5+ year old video, many originally happy customers say they failed after 2 years.
The failure points of older products become known. iLOUDs micros can have AC ADAPTERs, woofer and cables fail around ~3 years.. BUT that bright yellow RIBBON tweeters can get damaged easily by cats is "unusual".
What is most important about using any monitors for mixing is knowing what they add or reduce, and taking that into account in your mix decisions. The room they are in and acoustic treatment is REALLY important too.
My tiny acoustically untreated room (as NO SPACE!) means it doesn't really matter what speakers I use, the results wouldn't be good. Room modes, the deep dips and peaks in response when playing loudspeakers make all this vs that debates unimportant.
But being 68 this year means I don't trust my ears anyway, with no highs, and big dips in my hearing, and rely on visual tools a lot.
SPAN in MASTERING MODE being vital to me. AKG K702 Headphones too. Also check with a studio simulation tool, that has now been discontinued, dear VR MIX.
Compensating for the overly bright top and lacking low end of the AKG 702s.
Still being the cook with my wife still suffering from ongoing SHINGLES pain. Not as bad as it was, but still bad enough for her to not be able to leave the house or walk very far yet.
The animation is a steam punk Economic Fallacies Machine. Trying to be Monty Python-ish.
The song is about the vocal tone to me and is too much "Old man shouting at the clouds".
Ended up writing 3 different song lyrics for this piece of music. The first 2 on repeated listening ended up not being what I needed to say at the moment. Have them filed away though for the future.
Pseudoscience are things like Astrology, Homeopathy, Flat earth, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Detox Diets. Psychology borders on pseudoscience. Economics is a step up from Psychology, but far from a science with laws of nature and repeatability.
Economics has a big tie in with politics and is manipulated by it. Real Science doesn't. Real science can get a probe to land on an asteroid 6 years from now. Economics can't precisely determine anything 1 month into the future. As someone who had to be precise and accurate in my design engineering career, that economics is half bullshit annoys me.
So much discourse from Politicians, The Media and Government uses almost Pseudoscience Economics to justify what they do.
Some of those economic lies and fallacies:
Trade deficits cost domestic jobs.
Raising the minimum wage kills all jobs.
Government spending always creates wealth.
Price controls lower the cost of living.
Tax cuts always pay for themselves.
There is a lump of labor.
Government budgets are like household budgets
Taxing the wealthy always hurts the economy
Hard work is a guaranteed path out of poverty
Economics is an objective science
Trickle-Down Economics
A rising tide lifts all boats
Price Stability
Austerity
Free Market
Job Creators
Right to Work
Deregulation
That call to "get rid of the red tape!". Deregulation. Watching CLARKSON'S FARM, it looks like there are far too many regulations, and at least some should go, and not be up to a single authoritarian council member for their personnel use. Their bad behavior isn't regulated or reviewed is the problem! But in other cases, such as building codes in Australia, because they got rid of regulations to have independent building Inspectors, the builder did it themselves, and at least one apartment block in Sydney is now unlivable and dangerous for the owners who can't live there or sell it. If crooks aren't regulated, bad things happen.
Don’t let that there is a Nobel prize for Economics fool you. Economics is not a science, and yet there are no prizes for psychology, sociology or anthropology. That there is a prize elevates economics in the public mind it does not deserve.
The Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman wrote a New York Times article mentioning "a Corporations only goal is shareholder value". Of course bad people then use this to justify anything that may harm people or the environment. Enshittification is just bad people doing bad things to other people for monetary gain.
It is self evident that a corporation must be a good member of society to not harm the society it is in. "a Corporations only goal is shareholder value" is a lie, not a scientific law of nature.
So I have a problem when the half lies of an economist sets the course for anything. If a civil engineer did that designing and building a bridge for a highway, it would collapse. Economists should be held to the same standards as an engineer building a bridge to not to collapse and kill people. If they can't, then the advice is worthless, and may as well just use Astrology.
Lyrics:
Economic fictions get retold Like they're some holy truth, But these are just opinions No science, no proof
Economics and politics are not bound by hard facts Just fluffy nothingness holding us back
High Priests of Business Selling power to the sky but the system they have built Rests on sand and half lies
They preach from the ledger Where human worth is priced, And sacrifice the future To keep their charts concise
Keeping with my "unusual" 8 bars of instrumental, then 8 bars of vocals, then repeat song structure in these #MUSIC+COMICS. Trying to not do what everyone else does is interesting for me.
The Reaper project.
Guitar is my down and DROP tunned Ibanez GIO 7 string. My favorite guitar for a while now. Just a beginners guitar, but once I shaped the nut properly and set it up, there is nothing wrong with it (except GIO on the headstock).
The output jack could be better, and I did buy a quality unit to upgrade it, but haven't bothered to change it yet, as I don't use it on stage, just sitting in my tiny home studio. Recorded DI and tones from Neural DSP Modeller Vst.
That Sennheiser e945 microphone has made a difference to recording my vocals for the better. It is summer here now and the cicadas in the tree across the street make an incredible racket in the day time, but have found closing the studio window shutters reduces the noise significantly so it doesn't get in to the recorded vocals.
A year ago I moved to Win11 and left behind my Win10 only audio interface and driver. In that move I lost the ability to use Winamp or Guitar Pro and Reaper at the same time. Sound output was only one at a time no matter if sharing audio driver or not. The driver also had no LoopBack.
In the last few days I installed VOICEMEETER Banana, and have now paid for a license and virtual inputs. This has resolved those and OBS issues I had, well enough anyway. At least I can play GuitarPro to learn a guitar part, while playing thru Reaper now, like I could back in Win10. Winamp doesn't crash if Reaper playing when it opens too.
Still getting the hang of it, and what issues it can cause, and it isn't something I need all the time. When using Reaper to record, I use the native ASIO drivers, and bypass VOICEMEETER, at least so far. I am not a streamer so features for that kind of thing isn't something I need.
The last week has been so hot and humid in Kyoto. I made the trek out to 京都第二赤十字病院, (Kyōto daini sekijūji byōin, Kyoto 2nd Red Cross Hospital), near Marutamachi Station 3 times for the 3PM visiting time. The trip requires changing train 3 times and 12 minute walks each way, which isn't much, but the weather made it so hard at that time of day.
Walking to:
Walking back to station
There is a GUSTO just near Marutamachi Station, and ended up there for an early dinner each time before making the trek home. Had enough of GUSTO for the time being.
The robot in the GUSTO there has a broken wheel and makes the same klunk klunk klunk sound all Sydney Supermarket trollies do. The first GUSTO I have been to where things like ICE and hand towels had run out. Many more young people there than my local place.
August 2 2026, was 11 year Anniversary of our adventure with Kidney Stones. Early afternoon 2015/8/2 I had a sharp pain in the back. It quickly got worse and I could do nothing but lie on my back on the floor and I got my wife to call an ambulance via the EMERGENCY NUMBER. I talked to them to go to Royal North Shore Hospital Emergency.
A Firetruck arrived siren blazing, then they called the ambulance. Off to hospital. I had no idea what this terrible pain and illness was, but Emergency soon had me on Morphine (and the world was really wonderful again) and into an MIR to tell it was Kidney Stones. That was a huge relief.
Daughter rushed to Hospital with her boyfriend too, but the panic was over then.
I stayed overnight and with use of drug to enlarge the water works path, was fine in the morning and I caught a taxi home. Didn't sleep at all in Emergency though as the ECG equipment I was attached to made a loud beep every 5 minutes to indicate all was well!
That was the first of 2 Ambulance trips to emergency I have made. Worth it, as if you come in via an Ambulance you bypass the EMERGENCY WAITING ROOM which will add many hours before any treatment would start. Our private health insurance covered the ambulance fees.
10 years ago I was converting a number of my vinyl records to high res MP3 files. The stuff that had never been rereleased on CD or just rare album like the music to Australian TV series AGAINST THE WIND. I had made an RIAA equalizer and recorded them into REAPER. I had a Technics DIRECT DRIVE D2 Turntable and an OROTOFON cartridge.
I had some 120 albums and once I had recorded 12 or so, I sold them and my turntable. Practically gave them away at the time. No one wanted them in our area. Vinyl always had sizzle, pops and clicks, no matter how well they were cleaned and looked after. I just loved CD for the silence the music came out of.
Vinyl when it came back was of no interest to me. Still not. I prefer HiRes MP3, what I can carry around with me.
Wife still has all her albums and I do still have a few 7" 45rpm singles. No plan to buy a turntable at the moment though. Would just take up space we don't have.
Next week is OBON here in Japan. A public holiday, many extend a few days. Doctors and Dentist clinics closed. All rather too hot to go anywhere. Thinking I may not make it to Hyogo for the GHOST IN THE SHELL animation artwork before it closes end of August. It isn't a full exhibition but a smaller display in a 3F gallery. The multiple Hospital visits last week have shown me in this weather that is probably just all too hard.
The Random Rewards and the addiction they generate in a creator exemplified by our random YouTube SHORT views.
All just manipulation by the Tech Bros.
Bots are so active on X. 2 weeks ago had a jump of 10 followers, then a week later a reduction of 10. All about them getting followers and cash from X for garbage.
The Illusion of Equivalence Practiced by Politicians, the Media, Business & Advertising... speaking with forked tongues.
None in the mainstream media dare mention climate-change at all during recent extreme weather events, the power of the fossil fuel industry at work, world wide.
A Heavy Guitar & Synthesizer Punk (not polished performances, DIY aesthetic ) Philosophical Nursery Rhythm at 145BPM. With a nod to Frank Zappa and how easily we confuse activity with substance.
Lyrics:
Beauty ≠ Love Silence ≠ Peace Belief doesn't make it real
Love ≠ Freedom
They may not say What you think they did
The words are important
Movement ≠ Progress Progress ≠ Growth Certainty ≠ Proof Reason ≠ Meaning
Freedom ≠ Choice Choice ≠ Power Justice ≠ Law Law ≠ Order
The words are important They may not say What you think it did
Information ≠ Truth Knowledge ≠ Wisdom Truth ≠ Beauty Wisdom ≠ Truth
I like how the last 10 songs I have done sound. Okay with much of the vocals too. Doing a new song in about 3 days means I haven't really spent a lot of time on them, but I don't have any audience so I just do as I please.
All in G flat (F sharp) with similar riffs and melodic stuff. But that is okay. Ervin Berlin wrote 1500 songs just using the black notes on the piano.
Written the lyrics for the next one too, Bad Bosses. Had a few, but second worse boss I had for 2 years at a financial software developer. He took the cost of living pay increase for the year of a team of 12, and gave it to himself instead, and bragged about it. He had the Marketing department promoting himself rather than the companies products, and I don't get how they didn't see that.
All involved in Sabotage of Potential of staff and Credit Hoarding. All companies, as looked back on decades later, paid the price though for being so stupid.
Pain been a big thing with wife and SHINGLES again this week. Hasn't been a good time. Not going to go into details though.
Last weeks YouTube short, MONSTERS OF PAIN only had 10 views! Was that because of school holidays here or just algorithm related things I wonder?
I have been doing all the cooking and cleanup single handily for the last 4 weeks or so now. Something I needed to do, and haven't minded it at all.
I still haven't baked anything despite keenly following BRITSH BAKE OFF. Just so easy to buy a fancy cake or patisserie here, something very rarely do anyway.
Our JBL RUN2 headphones finally had one earpiece fail during a train trip this week (of a few visiting hospitals) , and I immediately ordered the current JBL RUN3 model when I got home. Couldn't not have music while out and about. The sound isolation they provide is really good, BUT the Italian songs they had in Saizeriya on Tuesday were so loud they couldn't keep it out!
I like being able to pull out the earbuds, and have them hang from the top of my ears using the IEM cable over ear way to wear them. That is great, but having to plug them into my phone in my trouser pocket, the cable gets in the way with my train travel card and such. So have ordered a Lavodio Bluetooth Wireless Audio Receiver, and see if that is more convenient for me, despite being another thing having a rechargeable battery.
The thing iPhone users without a headphone jack could use.
The clip holding it to your shirt was broken at the hinge before I even opened the shrink warped box. The size of the plastic hinge components is about 1/3 the size of an old Sony Noise Cancelling Earbuds unit I have, so it is just a mechanically bad Chinese design. The strong spring in the clip broke its own plastic hinge component.
Getting a replacement wouldn't fix that, So I hot rodded an attachment with a clip from SERIA and a bent paperclip.
This receiver with the JBL RUN3 is good in the trips I have done with it so far.
Been watching the new THE GHOST IN THE SHELL series. It looks great, and like the manga.
But it is just the same stories I already know, which is kind of a disappointment. Better than ARISE though. That was just dull for me.
YouTube algorithms are garbage now. Doesn't show you much of what you subscribed to, and more likely something related to what you liked on Facebook or searched on Amazon for.
I am so aware now of the pricing associated with BRANDS and the age groups targeted for different things. Still getting shown videos of how great the SSL2 MkII audio interface is, justified having around low noise preamps BUT mostly the brand name. So many useless unboxing videos just repeating the marketing material 😒.
The Internet now has more BOTS on it than PEOPLE, officially. That is what the access stats for our own website showed from a few years ago. No shock there at all, and that isn't a good thing. With AI just stealing everything, I don't put my artwork on their anymore. I do put up music, but that is okay, as BOTS are the only ones to listen to it besides me. 😃
