The Mystery

 

A very different SHORT for me this week on the inscrutable SHORT algorithms and why am I making stuff and subjecting myself to the whims of Google/YouTube. Featuring ME! 

Recent view numbers of our MUSIC + COMICS SHORT have been really bizarre. [irony] It just doesn't make sense. A Mystery indeed . Wonderful... [/irony]

Last weeks Fake Kyoto FM remix12 did fine again.  It just doesn't make any sense and feel am just having my chain yanked, and don't want to play this game anymore. Even though I know it has never been a level playing field anyway.

I have never been "A YouTuber".  

At first YouTube was a place to share some videos explaining Stratocaster Shielding and Making a AURATONE like speaker and I embed them in my own website around 2010, but I mostly had slide shows of my illustrations with one of my instrumental 3 minute music tracks.  Later I put just the music on Soundcloud, and later again Bandcamp.

One video got 59k views. My videos were monetized back then. But that stopped after a few years of changing YouTube requirements when they pushed for long form more popular "TV like" content.  I think this is when YouTubers happened, but I never really watched YouTube at the time.  It was just a f a place to demo our stuff.

When my "slide shows with music format videos" stopped getting any regular views at all, I stopped making them. It was time for a change. Made a few other random things, but I didn't give YouTube much thought for quite a few years. I didn't watch it either and had other things to do.

After retirement and moving back to Japan, in 2020 I had gotten really inspired by Mattias IA Eklundh and had started adding more vocals ABOUT STUFF to my music, started down tuning my guitar/ bass,  eventually bought a 7 string guitar and even upgraded REAPER.  

But my regular creative output at the time was the  JUST THINKING... strip I was doing:

Random thoughts during the COVID years, where I came up with a fast to do format using VECTOR characters and text on photos I take around where I live.  Mostly in Black & White.  It was actually a really interesting time for me growing into my new studio. 

I only really started watching YouTube from 2020.  

I started making under 60 second music videos and posting them in 2021. 

I was using ANIME STUDIO in earnest to make the visuals, a book+CD I had bought many years ago but done little with.  It did real animation, which I did learn and made a few things with, but found just moving stills around with a soundtrack was fast and simple to do and become my main tool to put moving images to my original music.

I found that my YouTube SHORTS got more views than the Bandcamp music only version. Only double digits, but promotion has never been anything I spent much time on as a retired grandfather doing this as a hobby. One of a few hobbies I have. But I also felt most YouTube SHORTs I ever see are just time wasting garbage.

I moved to the later version of ANIME STUDIO that had been renamed MOHO. 

From 2021 till end of 2025 I mostly made what I call MUSIC + COMICS. Instrumental music with a few comic panels and speech bubbles about something. Like this SPEED IN MANGA: 

For most of that time SHORTS had to be under 60 seconds, and that was fine by me. Then they had to be under 3 minutes. I used to just post these whenever I finished one, sometime 2 or 3 a week, not considering that few would see them unless they were posted in a "peak viewing time".

I started on my MUSIC + COMICS + VOCALS songs around MAY 2026.  In recent months I released one weekly, on a Saturday morning Japan time. A peak time.  Gave me a weekly project with a deadline, but also slowed down the way I was working. Was getting enough views, especially as I also uploaded the files to X and Facebook. 

And in the last few weeks, after another announced YouTube change I haven't followed the details of, even though X and Facebook still get the same numbers for views consistently, YouTube SHORTS views fall to single digits for some of my videos.  

Inscrutable YouTube algorithm change is the only conclusion to draw. Thus this weeks talking head SHORT.  

Wonderful, but maybe it is time to pivot again...   not bothering with YouTube.

UPDATE: Sat 1:25PM after 5.5 hours THE MYSTERY has 104 views.

And my YouTube is now all, improving you YouTube Video videos. 😫  

Other Things

Been getting on with the important things in life with our daughter back in Japan for first time in 18 months.

So looked back at music I make 12+ months ago and really like this pic JBASS sound.

Get bored that everything starts sounding the same, so going back to DRUMS AGAINST HUMANITY and the Jazz Bass makes things more fun. 

Working/ thinking about/ considering what I will do this second week of September 2026.  

I don't have to do anything other than taking the garbage out, cooking, washing the dishes and drying/ putting them away.  Also do whatever the cat wants. The general living stuff. 

Anything creative is optional and for my own entertainment, but with a Typhoon on the way and lots of rain, working on "something" in the studio is the thing to do.  

Joshua Heath Scott  doesn't just design and build guitar pedals.  This being a particular interesting think piece.

THE GRAND TOUR is being very entertaining. The Kei car episode had me laughing as much as the original Topgear's "Crap Supercars" and "Making boats out of Cars" did.  Francis is a mix of Clarkson & May and so far the most endearing of the new hosts, in spite of the stilted way he talks much of the time.  

Unprecedented Rain and Flooding in Japan the in last weeks. Motorists in Chiba drowned in underpasses. Nagoya had the highest rainfall since records started in 1890 in the last week.  Media hasn't mentioned "climate change" at all, even though everyone else says it.    

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Looking back on Tangerine Dream and Catching up

 

Fake Kyoto FM Number 12.  Using instrumental versions of  our tracks with added Korg Monotron effects.

The back ground rotating under the orange circle was generated on this BOOK OF SHAPES website.

Other Things

Been reading this Tangerine Dream book and listening to the over 15 albums we have of them, mostly from the VIRGIN YEARS.  I think my favorites are STRATOSFEAR, TANGRAM & HYPERBOREA. 

I have put Cinnamon Road in all the playlists I regularly use. 

Each track has a description "bird like tweets" from a VCS3 then a series of chords... It isn't described in musician terms though, the way someone like Rick Beato would.  Hadn't seen this before. 

Lots of history and interviews in one place over the years covered. Also with an essay around "did they loose their significance when it became easy for anyone to make sequenced digital synth music?".   

Like the book, but need to think about the Amazon review to write.

Tangerine Dream fandom is split between ZIET "no melodies, just textures" and later short "melodies/ techno/ synthpop" and the progression from one to the other.  I prefer melody myself.  Only just playing Le Parc now, one of their fans least liked albums, but I must say I think it is fine.

He mentions other artists and albums from the same era too that I have never heard. Klaus Shulze was an early Tangerine Dream member, and went on to be a solo artist. I am only now giving his X, Dig It and Moondance albums a listen. Moondance  is his most Berlin School like.

Finished Season 1 of Star Trek Discovery. It wasn't easy. I think this is the only trek that I haven't loved the opening music and graphics of. I skipped to the final ship flyby and the tiny bit of original theme music.  The graphics and music in the opening was a complete nothing to me.  It was just all wrong for something supposed to be 10 years before the original series. 

The Grand Tour with new young guys is doing the PR introducing them and about to start. A repeat of what Topgear did. In Australia we had 3 Australian hosts for the local Topgear. It was fine. As was the American Topgear they also showed. Didn't reach the level of the original though, but that is probably just the way it goes.

Expect the new The Grand Tour will be fine too. It is just a TV show.

Mend It Mark's latest is a RAID encloser.  He fixes it without any schematics or service information.

Incredibly well done. Having had to repair stuff as a job at various times I applaud his skill. Even with all the support information and schematics it can be very hard to fix stuff. 

But did the part fail due to age or a design fault in its application, I wonder? 

I once worked as an OLIVETTI component level repair technician ~ 1979~80 for their computer gear that filled the Commonwealth Banks in Australia at the time. The ALI-500 power supply was used in their terminals and this discrete component switch mode power supply caused issues. Even once something was repaired, there was a feedback 1/4 watt resistor that on some not small percentage of the units would get so hot, the solder would melt and it would fall out of the PCB. Caused the unit to fail.  I could never see why.  A few years later after graduating from University and getting on with my engineering career I learnt that the fix for that the local tech made was to just change it from a 1/4 watt to 5W part!  The resistor was under rated for the variations in the units. A design problem with the rating of the original part, and real component variations hadn't been seen by the Italian designers or just hadn't checked.   

Daughter now staying with us for awhile, even though working from home here much of the time. Catching up as she hadn't visited for 18 months.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

The Studio: Adult Animation & Subjects, like Economics & Pain

 

A song about working in the studio alone. 

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, or something else with recent changes for creators.  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. Or maybe even AI, even though there is tones of AI stuff collecting huge view numbers about. 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.  After 3 days, has 29 views. Way down on the 600+ for my short from a few weeks ago.

Meta has been fined $18B as their site is harmful to children.  So maybe a YouTube reaction to that. 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.

I just love the sound of a ratcheting sequencer riff in the morning... 

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...

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

INTERNET-ING: After the OBON Summer Holiday

 

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.  

Our Internet-ing on Bandcamp   .

No one cares about your music, or you. 

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. 

Sunday August 23rd at INTEX OSAKA is GOOD COMIC CITY 32 OSAKA an amateur self published comic market. SYDMEADLAB will have a booth there too.

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.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

On The Internet, Bots Outnumber Humans

 

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.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN