Looking Out The Window

 

Short version of this track and comic, as that seems to be what the algorithm demands and at 49 seconds is still way more than the 18 seconds "best duration".  Just hate all that short attention span is king stuff.

Just wanted to make the vocal sound a significant part in this. Even if the lyrics don't say as much as they could, I wanted to not make it negative. An uplifting vocal sound helps, I think. I should have done more than one take on the melodic guitar, as it is just the default thing I seem to do without thinking at the moment, and it could have been a bit different, even though I love the sound and ending on a high note.

So much happening out in the world that I have no control over. Natural and man made disasters, but also the beauty of Cherry Blossoms.  Not all bad, but it is way too easy to be all negative and be taken down by the News Media that thrives on it.  Hate that US actions have such a big impact on the rest of the world with their PROJECT 2025 in full swing. The Christian Nationals/ Evangelicals behind that, reject Jesus's teachings on helping the poor and down trodden, calling all that stuff WOKE and BAD, seem to be actually some type of OLD TESTIMENT Jewish Authoritarian cult focused on Israel.  

Project Hail Mary was such a breath of fresh air for not being a downer. 

And YouTube Analytics for the first 37 minutes shows the SHORT's tap being algorithmically turned off after 30 minutes. To never be exposed to the world again...

Other Things

Finished Lucifer. Loved the jokes and musical numbers in this series. Not impressed with how a main character was treated in the final episode, and wonder why writers would do that to a beloved character, but loved the whole series.  Never saw SMALLVILLE and so didn’t get the jokes in Lucifer related to that main actor having a significant part in Lucifer.

QUEENS GAMBIT is fascinating. It is a fictional story about a chess prodigy, based on a 1983 American novel by Walter Tevis, but Netflix did get sued by a lady chess champion. 

Truth stranger then fiction probably, and the cost of a gift.  THE NEW YORKER said "the most satisfying show on television".  One of them, I would say.

Interesting to me the Chica Umino MARCH COMES IN LIKE A LION manga since 2007, has a young orphaned boy Shogi prodigy with problems and also has much on masters Shogi games as well. 

Nakanoshima Art Museum has an event starting today I will probably visit next Tuesday (as it is closed Monday unless a public holiday), and should be a fine day.  The works of 3 modern artists,

Yanobe Kenji and his SPACE CATS being the one I became interested in a couple of years ago after seeing his SPACE CAT guardian out front of the Museum.

I go to such exhibitions to be inspired for my own art creation in some way. 

SOUND MESSE in Osaka will be different this year without Mattias IA Eklundh there, but know other attending there now anyway.  I will be going on the Saturday May 16th, which has a chance of being less crowded than a Sunday here.  Will take ear protection this time. The electric guitar room was so loud in the afternoon with all booths trying to be heard over all the others. 

Heard there will be some event organized by Kogalashi Sound Magic for the Saturday night, probably downtown Osaka, but yet to hear what it will be. Not sure I care to go to a  M響 (M HIBIKI,  M ECHO,  that is a group jam), which is what Tokyo Metal City (東京メタルシティ) seems to regularly do.    Will see. 

Tokyo Metal City  made a joke post on X about the difference between ROCK and METAL where "metal doesn't have a vibe trying to be popular, and has dragons".  So I added a comment:

Recently found out about  映像研には手を出すな  ( Eizōken ni wa Te o Dasu na! Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! )  and ordered the Bluray. Three school girls wanting to make an animated film as a school activity club.  Reminds me a bit of the look of Chibi Maruko Chan, but it is said to be a master class in all aspects of animation production.  

I have no interest in doing real animation though, far too time consuming even using MOHO, but maybe help inspire me in the direction to go with another multipage COMIC, or something. 

After doing my Heavy Metal Garage and In The Next Dimension I have had no drive or idea on another comic. Will this change I wonder?

And in the good news department, it seems that I am finally recovered from all the small medical procedures I started in January.  😊  So I don't have to worry about the WAITING ROOM BLITZ of getting an online reservation number at EXACTLY 8:30AM and rushing off to Shijo Station Kyoto any time soon again, OR the almost 2,000yen return train costs OR the discomfort of the procedures.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

So Much Common Advice is Inappropriate…

 

60 second MUSIC+COMIC on the 2 versions of O What A Waste I did.  HARD ROCK and SynthPOP Remix interwoven for 60 seconds.  Japanese & English lyrics. Replaced Guitars and Drums with Synth/Techno instruments in the remix, based on the original Reaper Project.

Our original HARD ROCK VERSION and SynthPOP remix done 2 years later:

I like the result. Maybe I should do a single song combing those different sounds.

I also think even shorter tracks do better with the algorithms.  Read anything longer than 18 seconds is too long on TikTok.  Things like the Openings to TV shows like BONES and NCIS are 30seconds, and the theme music is written, so there is an ending at 30seconds, but the track actually continues. I did try that many years ago, but that was before shorts existed. Maybe have an ending at 18seconds, but continue.

I have thought back about all kinds of things since retiring, and yes, so much common advice I now see as inappropriate. Much is just wrong for me. What schools are focused on, the emphasis of being outgoing, eager to debate, pushing some types of activities over others. 

When I was in school in the 70s, having a dark tan "was cool". I just burnt so was always pale, so uncool.  But many of those cool kids have Melanoma of some kind now. Melanoma and skin like a crocodile isn't cool.  

Then yesterday YouTube showed me a recent Miranda Hart video that goes on about some of the same things she has written a book on.   Miranda Hart on being an introvert, medical gaslighting, body image 

Miranda Hart thinks part of her problems stemmed from that common wrong advice. Being an introvert and being told you must be outgoing has an impact on your health and well being. 

There is a spectrum between Extroverts and Introverts.  And much of the advice comes from the Extroverts that is just completely wrong for others.  I’m not talking about the Myers-Briggs Personality Type rubbish.  That is the worst pseudoscience with the validity of Astrology & Tarot Cards.  

The same type of thing came up with much MEDIA angst during COVID shutdowns around the world how that was just so bad for everyone's mental health.  What those stories should have been is the shutdowns were bad for the mental health of Office Space Landlords and Extroverts (who relay on the energy of others). The rest of us didn’t have a problem at all. 

I didn't have a problem at all. Japan didn't have real shut downs, but I didn't mind staying home at all.

I look back and see a school subject I did, Commerce as just being propaganda.  It didn't teach Financial Literacy or the way the financial system actually worked at all.  Much of school seems it was just a child minding service.. 

I am sure I would have had a better, more productive time at School without all the bad advice thrown around. 

Other Things

Of to Central Kyoto today to visit the 400 Years of Western Art Exhibit with an ex Roland colleague, then lunch (I expect). 

I use so few of the tools in the applications I have. Why CorelDraw v12 is still perfectly fine for me. I think I take pride in just using the simplest tools.

I have used the Reaper DAW to make my music for many years too, and don’t use many of it’s  features either. But I have thought more than a few times I wish it had MIX snapshots, so that when I went to do an overdub, it would disables all the effects and tracks not needed to improve latency and give me the track mix I need, then go back to a snapshot with the normal mix setup after finishing. Doing it manually gets tedious. 

Found out this week it can do that, but it is in the SWS/S&M EXTENSION plug in. So I have gotten that and while I was at it, I also installed the ReaPack: Package manager as well. I had been using ReEQ from that for ages, but getting the latest version and other useful things couldn’t hurt.

I don’t have to use all the tools in these extensions. But I see SWS/S&M EXTENSION has a GROOVE QUANTIZE and that is something I loved back using the MIDI Sequencer MicroLOGIC. 

Only in the last year or so am I now okay with the way my mixes sound on a Smartphone speaker in mono.  I have changed my guitar tone and main synth sounds, but I think is is partly to do with the way 

masterdesk changes the stereo width and mix. Along with that I have changed the PAN law in Reaper away from the default 0dB, which didn't help with mono compatibility either.

In investigating the disappearance of an 11 year old boy in a remote Kyoto mountain village over the last 3 weeks, the police used the step fathers phone location tracking data and found the boys back pack, a few days later his shoes, and a few days later again, his body, over a few kilometers of the mountain around his remote home & school. 

No one saw the boy at school the day he was reported he went missing. The step father's initial story, that he dropped the boy off at school by car rather than him taking the bus like he always did, didn't fool the police. It was only after the body had been found left face up on the ground, and identified that he confessed, it seems.  

That is a good use of the tracking data, rather than just targeted advertising, but I am sure it was an un-intentional side effect, and not planned by Apple or Google that way! 

On Android this is the Timeline feature, and you can see where you have been in Google maps with the correct settings. I have just seen that I have all that tracking and storing stuff turned off on my own phone.   

The Banality In Social Media has no limits. Saw this post and see it has 10K likes and been retweeted 332 times. The top buns are intentionally set a little to one side.

So designed to catching the OCD flipping out about buns not being straight in a marketing photograph?   

And not even mentioning anything the Orange Felon did this week (edged on by his lunatic supporters  ) that is now dramatically impacting all of us in the rest of the world. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Making "ART" or "CONTENT"...

Fake Kyoto FM Radio Stream MIX10. Something I prepared a few weeks ago, but ended up posting more interesting to me MUSIC+COMICS that almost no one were shown. In recent months, one of these simple "Japanese DJ chat/my music mixes" did better than anything I spent much more time on.

And that is a downer.  

And after 30 minutes can see MIX10 is doing much better than my typical shorts

"But this is music, why aren't you happy about that?" you might ask. Because this has Japanese chat in it, and guess that is the attraction to this video, not my music.

And I have seen that isn't just me either. 

Musicians being "forced" by the YouTube algorithm into not making the music videos they want to, but "content" with personality, gear reviews and making of stuff.  The YouTube algorithm prioritizes a type of content so that if you don't make it, your videos will not be seen.

That is the world we currently live in. Now being retired, it isn't that my lively hood depends on my channel, and building my channel isn't important in the way it is for many others.  

14 years ago my YouTube channel was monetized, and I had AdSense on my website. For the first few years that paid for the hosting fees I had. I also had reasonable views for my videos.

But Googles continuous Bait & Switch with creators meant that after a few years, my videos were demonetized for not meeting their changed requirements, there was no point in disfiguring our own website with Google Advertisements when the return for doing so was nothing, other than Analytics that our site has with more traditional tools that don't spy on everyone anyway.

The rise of FACEBOOK and it's walled garden approach to the Internet websites outside it had a lot to do with that too though. Wasn't Google alone at all. 

Mark Zuckerberg: “Social media started out as people primarily interacting with their friends. And now… at least half of the content is basically people interacting with creators.”

What Zuck didn't say though was this was ALL due to their algorithm's insistence on engagement as the important metric.  It wasn't the users that set that!

Unless a video is a SHORT now, it gets so few views it isn't worth the effort, if the making of them wasn't the main thing to me.

So the algorithms driving social media are now all about engagement. Pushing creators to produce stuff like the hideous posts under FOR YOU in X 😱, what ever the latest crass reality TV show is with toxic people being terrible, or whatever Mr. Beat does.  

Other Things

Related to that, Denmark where they had gone all in on digital tablets and PCs in schools instead of paper books, have now gone back to real books and lock up kids phones during the school day and supervise use of PCs. Education and child development had gotten worse with the all digital approach. The glorious future talked up by Steve Jobs and the tech companies was not true at all in practice.

Australia has tried to ban kids under 16 from social media. They have gone about that the wrong way though.  It is now known how manipulative social media and big tech are, so the problem is actually what the tech companies do that is the problem, not the users at any age.

Just like the sugar and smoking industries before, that instead of removing the problem, like limiting sugar and outlawing smoking, they focused on the user side to not hurt corporation profits.

So same old same old. The politicians/law maker are not working for the good of the people...

ARTEMIS2 is amazing, but an NHK story on it brought up something I hadn't realized.

We all know now the MOON RACE 50 years ago by America was all about Beating the Russians, and once that was "done", the Apollo missions soon stopped and we didn't get the future we had expected.

This renewed rush back to the moon is about Beating China. China has already brought moon rocks back to Earth in their own moon program and has a schedule for commercial mining of the moon in place.

Because of that, America is back to the moon for commercial exploitation, before China.  😞

Same old story...

And after over a week of not making any new music, have just done this. Think of it as a DRAFT I will change a lot before making it a YOUTUBE SHORT in a couple of weeks.

Rhythm guitar amp is actually a Red Lead rather than ANVIL patch.  The gnarly synth lead VITAL patch called BLEEDING ERROR.

I hadn't felt like trying to make any new music as it all seems like variations on the same thing to me now, and the algorithms around SHORTS limit reach. I know Irving Berlin only ever used the black keys on the piano (until he got mechanical transpose), so just 5 notes and wrote over 1500 songs with them.  

So thinking about that, I just call what I do my style, or is that genre?  

Not everyone needs to create stuff, but it is something I need to do, and always have. Recently very focused on the MUSIC+COMICS but it doesn't have to be. These just seem the best thing to do at the moment. 

Netflix offered up the TV Series Lucifer. Characters from Neil Gaiman's DC comic. It is simply written, with most of the guilty just confessing at the end, but it is wonderful, uncomplicated fun.  With lots of singing and music too. There are some standout episodes for me with Bloody Celestial Karaoke Jam, Daniel Espinoza: Naked and Afraid and It Never Ends Well for the Chicken being so unexpected. Sharon Osborne even has a brief part as herself in one episode.  

Really think there should be controls introduced related to Engagement focused algorithms, Disinformation, Privacy and Addiction but expect that is hard to quantify to be legally meaningful, but mostly if Google, Facebook etc. don't want to make things better, forcing them too will be hard with their unlimited cash. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Reflections: Where Were We Again?

 

Our hearing isn't what it was, I don't get to check my mixes in a car I know well any more and barely drive at all, so depend on a SPECTRUM analyzer in slow MASTERING MODE to see how balanced things are. I listen too, but that is all so deceptive.

The above is an OBS capture of the later part of STORY SHAPED BEATS showing the SPAN SPECTRUM analyzer I rely a lot on.

Is the mix great? 

Probably not.

But it sounds okay to me at the moment, and better than stuff I did 2 years ago, but will probably find it lacking if I look back at it in 2 years time. But as myself, and maybe, 5 other people will bother to listen to it for more than a few seconds, it really doesn't matter.  I came to realize the mix and mastering in cases like this isn't something to worry about. 

I found my structure of STORY SHAPED BEATS and how it makes me feel really interesting. The lyrics are personnel, but the word salad nature of them gives them other meanings depending on how I am feeling. I have no idea what anyone else thinks of it, other then being "original".

I have spent since November 2025 producing a piece of music to go with a comic animation about once a week for my MUSIC + COMICS.  So at the current time my album on Bandcamp ASSORTED BITS 3 has 23 tracks in it.

Maybe I should say that album is now compete? I feel an ending.  

I render out a DJ MIX of my tracks and will often have this on repeat when out and about.

It doesn't take long for me to completely forget that I made the tracks and can be objective about them.  I like much of many of them.

I think they all genre MEGACURVE.  And that is fine by me. 

Until 2 years ago I was doing a JUST THINKING comic weekly. Much of those were about living in the time of COVID just after moving back to Japan. I did them for myself.  I put them together in a CBR book for download. I still do one sometimes, but that project is pretty much finished.  I spent about 2 years on them, then I moved onto doing something else. It felt like the thing to do. There was an ending.

So the MUSIC+COMICS combined a comic strip with music into a short video. 

I really liked this Speed in Manga one but it only got 133 views. Most didn't even bother to listen to the music track it seems.

They seemed the thing to do. Have I found what I was looking for doing those? No, not really. 

The views for standard videos are so poor.

Better for Shorts, except most only see the first 2 seconds which is just enough to swipe away.

So all really terrible results if it was all just an attempt to get an audience.

Some work better than others and they were a reason, an excuse, to do a weekly comic AND music, even though, mostly one had nothing to do with the other.

What I found, doing my guitar and synthesizer stuff is that an 8 string doesn't give me anything I didn't already have with a drop tuned 7 string.  I have done tracks that are rock/metal drums and guitars but feel most "at home" with synths, sequenced synth bass with heavy guitars.

Not sure I have anything else musical to say at the moment though. Feel that the last tracks are all variations on the same few chords and melody with different instrumentation. The last two tracks even used spare guitar out takes from the tracks before them. 

Is this an ending?

I have spent much of the last 2 months mostly at home recovering from regular, minor, medical procedures, and have one more to go. Being uncomfortable changes my perspective on things. But that kind of feels like an ending soon too.  Or is that just a change of my mood with Spring being here and the ending of the really cold weather?

Is that just looking for a pattern in random, unconnected things?

Will probably do a bit more reflection on what I have done recently, then set out again on another art project. 

Other Things

ARTEMIS II has done their fly around the moon and are on the way back now. This epitomizes what the world admires about America!

The RIGHT STUFF, not the white house.

Hadn't done anything with my SoundCloud for years. Just put 2 recent tracks at the start of this playlist here: 

I had a work colleague once that was so condescending about non classical music and musicians. We developed a music production system 99% used by rock and pop musicians, and I was a rock guy myself, so his distain was voiced often. 

The company had staff lunch time performances sometimes. The guy could sing, but when he played the violin at one he seemed like a poor beginner. The way he always talked, that just didn't make sense. 

Now 42 years later I saw a post on Social Media that put a different focus on that. His mother had run and taught the music department at a private high school he attended. In his final year he was the "Captain Of Music" (which was the first time I had heard such a term).  Classical music/ opera/ singing/ violin.  I worked with him for 6 years, and he had never mentioned that.  I guess he was always praised about his (one sided) music education at school, even when it hadn't really been appropriate.  

Myself, I wanted to learn guitar when I was in High School but my mother though that was a stupid idea and why would anyone want to do that. I focused on my interest in audio electronics after working out car designer wasn't realistic. Music was non existent for my parents and they didn't even have a record player till just as  I started High School. I bought my first guitar after I left school so started the playing side of things quite late in life... 

The choices you make, or get made for you can have a really big impact.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Online Portfolios and the AI Issue: Website Update

 

So I updated our ArtAndTechnology Website today. I hadn't updated our portfolio pages for a while, as I wondered if I should or not any more. But if the page hasn't been updated for a while I get asked in emails do I still do the illustrations or not.

I decided to do "the last" gallery update with an image with a text overlay explaining the AI issue. The description also contains the same text. The images behind the text are new, but it says the 6 pages of illustrations already here should be enough to see what our stuff looks like.

I feel close to being really retired now. Had only 3 clients since 2024, doing some 11 illustrations, which isn't very much. As I saw previously, that seems the way Illustration has gone globally now due to Google search changes, the focus on advertisement delivery, and generative AI.   

But that is okay. I am happy making my own music and comics. 

In the website update, I also directly linked to some popular Blog posts I've done.

ASTERISM with Support Dr.Capital Kyoto MOJO: 2025/10/10.

Urasawa Naoki Rhythm & Drawing, Yes Theater, Osaka 2025-9-23.
Freak Kitchen & Rikugo LIVE! Club Quattro Osaka 2025-9-16 Behind The Scenes.
The BOTS are Listening.
Mid 2025, and has AI changed it all? And Other Thoughts..
Car Comics: Pen on Ink, Black and White.
SQ Quadraphonic - A Dead Surround Audio Format.... or is it?.
The Naim Audio Game....

 

The views from the last 6 months are:

The ones in red are mostly years old.  Not blockbuster numbers at all, but that is fine. 

I have been paying for the website hosting and url since 2008. I will still be keeping the email addresses we use for some time to come but not so sure about the website itself, and doing freelance illustration.  Google keeps on making up new excuses for why pages that have been indexed for 18 years don't comply any more. Heard the same thing from other site maintainers as well. Google would rather push sponsored content.

Will having a website be of any value in 12 months or 36 months?  We will see and determine what to do then. 

Other Things

IN EAR MONITORS (IEMs) were a custom fitted to the ear set of isolating earbuds for musicians, but I recently discovered that definition has changed in the last few years. 

A zillion Chinese hi-fi wired earbud manufacturers use that term now too with a slightly different meaning. They aren't custom fitted or just for musicians. A more HiFi wired earbud.  I have been using JBL ENDURANCE RUN 2 wired earbuds for a few years when out and about and have learnt, the slightly more expensive IEMs may offer a better sound, in a less durable package.  Things like the USD$50 Linsoul Kiwi Ears Cadenza II.  

And with the surveillance we are now constantly all under, I get nothing but IEM YouTube recommendations and advertisements!  😠

If I am not in a noisy environment, and need to hear what is happening around me out and about, I use my SHOKZ OPENFIT. I do wish they made a wired set though.  All wireless earbuds are disposable in a few short years, with unreplaceable batteries. Having said that, the thin wires of wired earbuds don't last real long with a lot of travel time and being stuffed in bag pockets either.  

The JBL ENDURANCE RUN 2 wired earbuds have proven to be pretty durable, and cheap. The magnets in the earpieces help with storage and less tangled wires too.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN