Out Of The Comfort Zone

 

Music + Comic on the coming Sound Messe Osaka 2025

It is the GOLDEN WEEK Holidays here, not that really has much impact on me, other than places can be more crowded.

The schedule for Mattias's mini FREAK GUITAR CAMP and the "optional" requirements of bringing your own guitar and a battery operated Headphone Aamp, as there will be no power available to attendees.

But the real crux Music + Comic on: OFF THE GRID, BEING OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE or maybe NOT BELONGING?  

The thoughts as I prepared for a Freak Guitar Weekend Clinic during the Sound Messe Osaka 2025 this coming weekend. It is 90 minutes by train each way, so a carry your guitar on your back in a gigbag (the way everyone does it here, but I haven't done that before) thing, and take a guitar headphone amp (which I didn't have and bought one second hand on line), wired earbuds and tuner. Not taking my better Ibanez RG, but this 1984 MADE IN JAPAN Squire with a DiMarzio HS3 pickup in the bridge.

This is my oldest, and now, least used guitar and so the one I am most comfortable to take on this trip to ATC Hall Osaka. Very close to Osaka Expo 2025. 

I expect carrying this much of the day will be very tiring for me, a guy in his later 60s. I could drop it or fall over with it. I will probably be wiped out before I even get there if I couldn't get seat on the train.

I attended Mattias's clinic during last years Sound Messe 2024 and it was great. I aren't a good student of Konnakol though. I was the only retired person there. This year is longer and hands on with guest musicians. He does that with his yearly FREAK GUITAR CAMP in the Swedish woods too. It seems a significant part of that camp experience is "the eating vegetarian and shitting like a horse" and that hasn't been brought along😃

The other thing is Saturday is forecast to be fairly heavy rain. Sunday maybe not, but it is too far out to tell yet. Getting myself and a guitar wet isn't really something I want to do. Maybe I go Sunday. 

Seems an opportunity I shouldn't pass up.

"One ticket to FREAK GUITAR WEEKEND please, and I'll take a helping of HUMBLE PIE with the FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY topping"... 

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2006 Satoshi Kon's PAPRIKA & Vocaloid Soundtrack

 

Vocaloid was used extensively by Composer Susumu Hirasawa in the soundtrack to the 2006 Anime Paprika. A film to later have a few concepts & scenes "borrowed" in 2010s INCEPTION.  More than a few.  

In the early 1990s I developed a Smalltalk/DSP system in Roland Japan R&D I demonstrated and wanted to use in developing a "singing" synthesizer. Management said don't need that, and a couple of years later Yamaha came out with Vocaloid, a singing synthesizer.  Is it what I would have developed? I don't know as I didn't get that far.  In Japan, it also generated the virtual Idol, such as Hatsune Miku and that is a whole other thing.

So I have an interest in things "singing" synthesizer, and only found out about the anime Paprika through a post about the storyboard art book this week.  A bit of following the threads, and the soundtrack becomes something I need to hear, the use of vocaloid, and other works of Susumu Hirasawa. Then I need to see the movie:

So I got the Bluray on Amazon. Wow.

Dreams vs Reality, and Paprika's weird/ surrealism leaves it up to the viewer to interpret. Or does it? 

The Anime is based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, but Kon was much more interested in producing interesting visuals than explaining character motives, so unless you know the book, which is like nobody,  the result is amazing to look at but much is not "obviously" unexplained. May be vaguely hinted at with Interpretive Dance, is closer to the approach taken 😀 .

The composer also influenced Kon, with his philosophy.  Composer Susumu Hirasawa was also an Amiga user at the time, so was original enough not to be an Artists only use APPLE guy and took advantage of the unique real time midi effects BARS & PIPES provided.

So I have now seen the movie, listened to the Soundtrack a fair few times, and read about the novel and how that was interpreted in the film.  One of the essays I saw mentions all the references to film in the anime, so it is could be more a Reality vs Film thing.  I think Kon just liked Film images, so put them in.  You could interpret it as as Reality vs DrugUser  too, were leaving reality for "the other place" destroys your life. 

Satoshi Kon died of pancreatic cancer at 46 years ago now, so he doesn't have any further insight into it.

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Ignorant Son Of A Gun

 

The AMEN Break, above, is the most famous drum phrase used in music of sampled drum music culture. 

For most of that time, I didn't know about it. 

I knew of Recycle, a tool for manipulating such a sample when used with a sampler and a midi sequencer, but never went deeper into it. Okay, "so what" you say, but the thing is, I was in the music industry for all that time, designed the worlds first 16 bit sampler electronics, thought I knew about music tech and applications, then spent years in Roland R&D in Japan, where no one else know about it either! What an "Ignorant Son Of A Gun" I was.

I now think the AKAI MPC was probably a much more culturally significant device that influenced Music Culture through HIP HOP than the Fairlight Instruments CMI did, even if the CMI was the sound of 80s pop music.  But I didn't see that during my 15 years in R&D in Roland Japan.

For the last 20 years I have been off in my own world with heavy guitars and synths with my own music, and apart from ezdrummer, haven't used a sampler. Haven't looked at sampling much at all.  Reaper Digital Audio Workstation, guitars, distortion and analog synthesizers were and still are my interest.  Distorted guitar and Analog Synthesizer sounds, mostly VSTs but do have a KORG MS20mini, are what I use.  

But I had YouTube recommend SPITFIRE SAMPLE LIBRARY videos and other such things over the years. Two years or so ago a friend tweeted about the PIANO BOOK vst and site and some library, and I made an account and looked at some sounds with it, but have never used the one or two things I downloaded. 

I wasn't interested in Orchestral Samples, no matter how amazing SPIRTFIRE's maybe, as my interest in that direction is covered well enough by Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.  That was used in the production of Metalocalypse .  The Orchestra to use, when you aren't really into Orchestral sounds.

So I find myself, today amazed at my ignorance again!  

Benn Jordan on Bluesky posted some things and a link to an explainer video on the self destruction of Piano Book and Spitfire through a founders anti trans stance.  I had completely missed all of that, even though I did know one of the founders was now doing his own thing independently from  them.  I just don't care what other people do around that kind of thing, it isn't any of my business.  

Live and let live works for me. 

The older I get, the more I realize the less I know, about anything. 

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Sunday Jam on Monday, and 2025 Osaka Guitar Messe

 

Always this way. Do something quickly, listen to it a few times, put it out as a quick thing, and want to change it the next day. No matter how "okay" it seemed immediately after doing it. 

Nothing break through here. Same comfort chord progression and lead scale. BUT, after a week of FINGER DRUMMING practice, I am now good enough to actually play something in time, and that is what the drums are here. So I call that progress. 

But doing this makes me think more about my John Carpenter/ Rock Guitar + Synthesizer + Sequencer direction. I am far more interested in that than faking a one man metal band. At least this week 😁

Which reminds me, 12 months ago I was really into Melodic Techno. I still have this in a Playlist and find it fits in perfectly. I don't even realize it is mine when it plays.

Has no guitar what so ever. Has MS-20mini though, which is aggressive for a synthesizer.

Osaka Sound Messe 

May 10/11 is The Osaka Guitar Messe, and Mattias will be there with his now in production 6,7 and 8 string Ulv Freak Guitars at the Zanshin Instruments booth as well as doing 5 or 6 guitar clinics over the weekend.

Takes something like 90minutes, almost as far as Osaka Expo 2025, to get to the ATC Hall Osaka by train from home:

I want to go to Mattias's clinic, but need to enter  the Messe to get a ticket. So will get to the Guitar Show. 

I used to go to Musical Instrument tradeshows a lot during my time at Roland, but NAMM only once. But this is a guitar show, and apart from seeing the Ulvs, I don't really care about looking at guitars, and kind of feel out of place at such an event. I am not such a "guitarist".  I don't collect guitars, even if I do have 4, 6, 7 and 8 string instruments.  I have zero interest in having 4 different colored 6 string PRS, Ibanez, SG or Les Paul guitars, as collector guitarists do.   I think a Guitar Show, is for collector guitarists.   

But I may have an interesting time talking to the people on the booths though.  Hope it doesn't rain, and the day with the least chance of rain is probably the day I go, but hope that is Saturday.

Talking with people on the booths is the reason to go. I was in "the Industry" once.

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Oblique Strategies - Creative Inspiration

 

Oblique Strategies is a 120+ card method for promoting creativity jointly created by musician/artist Brian Eno and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt, first published in 1975.

Above is a version with 100 Strategies for use with a D100 dice. This will give enough random prompts for creativity for anyone.  I created the numbered lines in Excel. But for me, my mind wonders off by its own anyway when I aren't focused on something I am working on, so haven't found the sheet and dice particularly helpful, but it was worth trying. Other types of things work better for prompting my own  creativity it seems.  

I am in between projects the last few days.  And that makes for a random path till the next project. My own kind of Oblique Strategies, that isn't a randomly selected ambiguous phrase, but actions and thoughts that eventually lead me to my next project.

Rereading Masamune Shirow manga (that 6 wheeled bike above from APPLESEED VOL3, obviously inspired by Akira, that was inspired by Syd Mead TRON design, is really cool) and doing a few other bits and pieces. Like use the cool ION STORM in UNIVERSE IMAGE CREATOR, in video text, like here:

Recorded some door  noises around the house with my Zoom H1 recorder and manipulated them to use in some yet to be determined piece of music and animation:

That came out of recently founding out about French Metal Band IGORR  and their use of recorded sounds, AI and making of strange videos.  Something I do in the future will be because of inspiration from them. 

Have been practicing FINGER DRUMMING using the Akai pad controller. Why is it the pads always look dirty?

I don't need to be able to play a whole drum track live, but the practice and just doing things different triggers something in me that is encouraging.  A different kind of Oblique Strategy prompt. Doing the basics suggested in THE QUEST FOR GROOVE has made a difference for me in a couple of days too. 

This is the 3rd different Akai pad layout I have tried and have found it the best. The main assignments are also the same as in the Yamaha FGDP-30, which is an interesting development to me. A drum machine without the sequencer, for playing live. Has a USB interface for controlling a VST as well though, and really a DAW is a way better sequencer!

Have found putting the Akai on a small folded towel makes it "better" than being just on my NITORI desk. It is quieter and not as hard on the fingers.  

It seems that being not good at all with finger drumming has completely killed my recent normal routine of making some 60second piece of music and putting a comic to it to do a music+comic.  That and kind of hitting a wall with my technique and composition approach recently. 

Last thing I did was this: 

And felt I was just repeating myself more than normal. It needs more, and I need to change/ learn/ practice to do that.  Maybe that requires going back to Melodic Techno for a bit and putting the guitars aside.  Being more proficient with playing some drums on pads feels like part of that too. 

The Appleseed manga has many complex panels with cityscapes and machines and people. They add greatly to the atmosphere of the work, but must have taken so long to do. Looks great, but that really isn't the kind of comic I want to make though.  So I then think, "what kind of comic is the thing I want to make?"  I know most of the answer to that already.

Non-Fiction is what interests me most, as I find, now (is it just an age thing?) I don't care for made up stories and arbitrary danger to the protagonist.  I keep coming back to the format of Topgear, as an entertainment format that had more great moments for me than other things I ever watched. 

Which brings me to my HEAVY METAL GARAGE comic which is rather like that😁.

I only recently discovered Dino_DC and vbloggers like Sammit with their focus on Japanese Car Culture.  I knew about Initial D from my oldest son many years ago and Tuner Kei Cars are things I admire in the car park of my local 7/11 almost every time I visit. 

Have watched many car shows over the years. Monster Garage, Full Custom Garage, Extreme 4WD (and many others from that network), Counting Cars and recently Rust to Riches.  Things like Extreme 4WD & Full Custom Garage were more hands on real workshop stuff than some other more reality TV style. 

So it was interesting  (but terrifying is closer)  to see a "famous" Japanese shop, put a super wide body kit on a yellow Porsche owned by Dino_DC.  Guy didn't wear a mask, or goggles or gloves while working fiberglass or an Allsaw.  He cut into the fenders to make clearance, but then didn't treat any of the exposed metal with an epoxy primer or anything, to stop it rusting away. Mmmm, that could be all done way better, even if the resulting car looked awesome, it isn't going to last. 😧

I feel more HMG comics focused on the Japanese Car Culture scene is likely this year. I mean, even that wonderful 1970s Lancia Stratos HF ZERO was in Nara Japan last month!

Update: April 27

And did this yesterday. Very off the cuff animation, and the door fx is a main part here.

"After a late night audition to be a guitarist in a KISS parody band, our wana be rock star takes a midnight short cut through a grave yard...."

And on the Finger Drumming front, practicing 5~10 minutes a few time a day makes a huge difference after a week. The pads just fall under the fingers and timing and groove comes more naturally too. 

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Masamune Shirow Art Work & Exhibition

 

Glad to say the Osaka Expo this year hasn't killed off all competing exhibitions. That still seems to be the case for the next 6 months in Kansai,  but Tokyo is a different story.

Last week end the Masamune Shirow  Exhibition opened in Tokyo. 

I hope to be able to stop in, see the works and get the exhibition book during a coming trip to the kids and grandson in Chiba before it closes in August. 

Masamune Shirow is not his real name. That is actually Masanori Ota, and for the longest time he remained anonymous. 

His GHOST IN THE SHELL,  the translated to English, and page flipped (so it was read left to right on the page) comic version was the first Japanese Manga I read in maybe 1995. It is still really something. I was living in Japan at the time and it was still very early stages of websites, and I didn't find out about APPLESEED  and his other works till I went back to Australia in 2001. 

I am currently rereading the 4 volumes of APPLESEED I bought at Kinokuniya Sydney Australia and think wow. The mechanical designs and architecture backgrounds in particular are amazing.  I just think "that must have taken so long to draw" which adds hugely to the atmosphere, but you pass the panel in a second.

The exhibition also has work in progress material, as he copied his in progress (as a backup?) work.

This is the kind of mangaka exhibition I want to see, with manga pages, completed and not.  That was a disappointment for the Nagano Mamoru Exhibition I attended in Nagoya last year, that had no manga pages at all.

The exhibition book is now on Amazon Japan, so I don't have to lug it home when I finally visit:

Yes the GHOST IN THE SHELL Anime is cool too, I particularly like STANDALONE COMPLEX, but the manga is great without them. 

 

When done with APPLESEED, will reread GHOST IN THE SHELL too. I do remember not being so thrilled with the final volume, MACHINE INTERFACE, but all good.

2 years ago, Otomo Katsuhiro had a huge display of artwork for his AKIRA animation, and all his manga were re-released in the OTOMO COMPLETE WORKS series.  I didn't know about the Osaka show till the day before it was to close. Still dealing with Covid controls at the time, you had to pre-purchase the ticket, and specify the time to attend attend, like 11AM till 11:59AM. The ticket may not be available for that time slot though, and it just seemed too difficult, so I didn't go. 

Yes, AKIRA is awesome and his artwork is amazing, but OTOMO as a story teller doesn't interest me as much as Masamune Shirow has.  His recent episode of Manben neo was great though, and made me track down his DOMU and FIREBALL. His artwork is incredible.

I have a fascination with the comic medium.  But I think life is too short to put as much detail in a panel that Otomo has!

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Dream Weaver, What AI hell have you brought to this world today?

 

This mornings musical ditty + comic. 

So the Shopify CEO now wants it proved AI can't do a software task before he will employ a human to do it.  The kind of thing that is the same issue as AI generated pop music or art. Replacing people with AI to save a corporation money.  

Enshittification continues.😟  

This is going to be a huge problem, and I suspect government regulation, like health regulations, are required to ensure greedy corporations don't poison its customers and workers for short term profit.  But that probably will not happen outside the EU.

In the comic I put LCD.  Lowest Common Denominator, so an inbred Hill Billy with an extreme learning disability can completely "get it".  Rage and hate are also easy "to get" and are major parts of Social Media and right wing pundits. 

I didn't use any AI to make the music though, just 8 string guitar, synths and a microphone 😀.  The vocal does have a very wide chorus on it, which makes it sound AI. Based around a Gary Wright Dream Weaver like, but wrong,  bass pattern. 

And just that bit of vocal + bass:

AI has also made fake news more convincing.

But China is being funny, showing American Factory workers as part of MAGA. 

Benn Jordan made a terrifying video about X and how bot farms were being powered by ChatGPT. Has a section with hundreds of supposedly human account commenting in something, and them giving the same ChatGPT apology. 😲  What he found made him quit X .  There are just so many bad actors out there. 

I find it total garbage. A waste of time posting anything at all myself, and am still there only to follow some, like 浦沢直樹_Naoki Urasawa公式情報

I actually think AI has legitimate uses, and I am not dead against it. In the same way Photoshop Filters can add greatly to an artwork in the way they automate somethings painting or edited would take too long to do.  I am just dead against corporations using it to rip off people, in all the ways they can.

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Space Is Big

 

Back in a Tangerine Dream music vibe at the moment, after the Blossom walk last week. Chris Franke left  them to do the Babylon 5 music, and that show had a look I love. Universal Image Creator is something I used for star fields back in the 1990s and have just upgraded it. It can make images greater than 640x480 pixels now.

So this music animation comic combines those influences, even if it doesn't sound like Tangerine Dream or look like Babylon 5. That is also from a time when I was living in Shizuoka Japan in the 1990s, and there is a back to the start feeling with being back in Japan again too. Not that I focus on "things Japan" like a lot of foreigners in Japan seem to do.  Have many interests outside that narrow field.

I read The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy at the end of High School, but the main thought here is about Aliens/ UFOs and that the distances from us to anywhere they might be is so vast that with our current understanding of science, any such visits impossible.  

Of course, maybe there is a hyperspace that will allow us to travel the great distances, and we are just still too primitive to know of it yet. 

And now I think to myself, what unexpected musical and illustrative turn will I make next?.. 

Well, I went and noticed while creating an image in   Universal Image Creator  some of it is animated, and if I capture that using OBS, can make an animated music video, like this:

But I also added the green graphics and the probe via addition layers in the video editor.

This version has more interesting 16 step sequencer variations, with some steps dropped out, and at other times "ratcheted". 

And another, musically not so interesting though, even if the sun is awesome:

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Yawata Kyoto Cherry Blossom Grove and Walk

 

Sewaritei Yodogawa Riverside Park is the local place for the full cherry blossom viewing experience around here. Just one train stop away for me.  A 1.4km canopy of Cherry Blossoms and an equal length walk back past all the food stalls.

There was heavy rain early this morning and the forecast was for that to continue most of the day, but it fined up suddenly around 9AM, so today became an excellent day to go blossom viewing.

I actually went a week ago and saw that the trees were all still without any blooms. Very different a week later.

I was actually listening to Tangerine Dream Booster VI during my walk, and I think that adds to the proceedings tremendously Cuts out the chatter around you, of the many talkative Mandarin speaking tourists and you get a musical journey, depending on what you select to play.

X1 music player and JBL ENDURANCE RUN 2 earbuds. Good sound and fit. I use the over the top of the ear approach, so that if I unplug them, they are still just hanging at my ears, so I can talk to someone and soon put them back in, and they aren't dangling around my knees.

Tangerine Dream played concerts in Cathedrals and all kinds of atmospheric places. With headphones you can do the same with whatever music you like. I particularly like cafes, but NOT Starbucks!

This year there were two Kebab stalls, and I chatted with one Turkish guy. He drove the van from Osaka to be here. Bought two chicken kebabs from him and his Japanese lady assistant. He wanted to know where I was from as was quite friendly. Also bought a Beef kebab at a tent with two other Turkish guys in it. First time to see a BEEF Kebab offered here, usually just chicken. I now know the Turkish Kebab in Japan is rather different than the Lebanese Dona Kebabs they have in Sydney Australia. Here they are they are a simpler affair of chicken/beef, grated cabbage and a sauce that is a mix of Ketchup and Mayonnaise in a rolled flat bread. They were bigger this year, or maybe my memory is just bad. Then some Chicken Karage and extra long fried potato chips. Brought that home for lunch with wife and sister in law. Not cheap, 1000yen each, but tasty and a nice yearly treat at the moment.

The music in the video started out as all heavy rhythm guitar, but that got chopped right back and replaced by mostly synths when I put it against the picture. Added a fisheye lens effect as well as the 12fps frame rate.

So I wonder what I will do next. Musically something more Tangerine Dream-ish or more Freak Kitchen-ish?

I actually did do a 5 page comic related to the new ERA of Carstyling that is back from the dead. Maybe more in that direction.

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EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE, REALLLLLLLLY

Whereas, where I am in Japan here, things ARE REALLY good.  😀
 

Had several different goes at the cartoon used here yesterday, and versions of the music. The first few were inspired by my recent watching of  the Otomo episode of Manben neo, and had a Rainbow robot head, and the theme was rather different.

But with catching a glimpse of the "3rd term" news and other "not great" goings on in that far away Trumpistan, EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE, REALLLLLLLY as the vibrant life force drains, seemed more appropriate, and subtle.  

Works just as a vector poster too, I think. Used a variation with the waveform as the cover of the track on Bandcamp

And a related cartoon from a couple of days latter:

But yesterday, April 1st 2025, was a really good day for me. I won the lottery to be able to go to the Freak Kitchen Osaka Concert in September. Even booked a next door hotel to the venue, to not have to rush home the hour+ on a late train.  September is a long way away, and a lot can happen in that time though.

Still feeling really nostalgic about the Simmons SDS-V drum sounds used here. Will keep with them for a while more.  As I wrote before, I once built a small electronic drum kit and practiced with it, and it was really fun. I very briefly considered getting the Roland TD02K to play it with

but I came to realize, I don't care to learn the drums now at 66, and these things still make too much noise for the environment I am in.  Roland do have a really silent kit, the VQD106, that would work, but that is way more expensive.  Akai MPD218 finger drumming is the way to go for sure for me.

I can't say I am getting better at under 60 second compositions, but I am trying to make something interesting to me.  Most of what I do is power chords with a few mono parts on top, like bass, synth and guitar melody.  Mostly working with 8 bar sections.  Here, that became an  intro, 16 bar section, 8 bar section and ending.  Sometimes I repeat the same melody fragment, but not here.  A lot of the time feel I am just making variations of the same thing, and that is kind of true, even if the results are different. Just doing it for myself, searching for "it". A track I will play happily on repeat for days on end, until I do the next one.  

The Otomo episode of Manben neo also got me to search out Domu, which the episode covered and his Fire-Ball, which is in THE COMPLETE WORKS 5.

It was interesting to see that Urasawa Naoki considers Tezuka and Otomo to be the most influential mangaka to him.  Usually Mizuki Shigeru is in there too.  

I will now go off and ponder what I will do next.  

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Retirement & The Bucket List

That list of things you want to do, The Bucket List.  

Like making my own comics:

I have now done most of the things I ever set out to do. Be involved with some technological worthwhile product, live and work overseas, make music, draw, sculpt, start my own (side) business, have a family and a few other things.

There are also a lot of things I never had any interest in, like Being Rich and Famous, performing on stage, a Tennis Pro or Golfer, so they haven't happened and I am very okay with that too.

Even have a Best Of Album on Bandcamp. But that wasn't something that was ever on my Bucket List. My desire was just to do music production, in my own studio, at a level I was happy with. The album came out of that.  

Retirement itself was never on my bucket list.  Retirement wasn't something I ever thought about till just weeks before I did it.  And that I would retire to Japan wasn't either.  But giving up full time work had such a huge impact on my life. A huge stress was removed from me.  Hadn't seen that coming.

Gave me an opportunity to really think about what I like and don't like and what comes natural to me, and is comfortable.  I have come to embrace my true Introvert self, and be content.  Making something in my small studio is bliss. It is also something that doesn't really cost anything.

During my working life, I travelled overseas a lot. Catching an airplane somewhere now is not what I want to do. But I do love going somewhere up to a couple hours away by train, and Japan really is a place to do that in comfort.

Retirement has been a chance to wake up and think, "what do I want to do today?". Sometimes that is just hangout with our cat, at other times build and paint a model, go to an Art Exhibition, go to a Cafe and Drink Coffee while listening to my music player, or play with a synthesizer.  

There are lots of things happening around the world that I can get really upset about, but I also have no agency over any of them. Nothing I can do has any impact over them at all, even if I have drawn a cartoon or two pointing out some of the stupidity.  Generally I have found there is no good side to even thinking about them. It saves my mental health to not follow what is happening and pretty much ignore the foreign news. That keeps me a happy camper.  

Hope you get the opportunity to be able to do what makes you content.

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Concert Ticket Lotteries

 

First time to experience the e-plus ticket lottery system, in my attempt to get to the Freak Kitchen Osaka concert, with opening act 六合 / Rikugo .

But unlike a Lottery, you don't pay anything unless you actually get drawn to buy a ticket.

A musical ditty threw together this afternoon. REAPER DAW, Simmons SDS-V drum vst, 8 string guitar and VITAL for bass and additional u-he synth melodic/siren thing...

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Sanjo II 3000 Kyoto Japan

 

Not an Ambient Piece. 

A throw away 1:40 thing from this morning, recycled this evening 😀. But with JP8 rather than Church Organ, and 16th note sequencer bass synth. Repeating 8 bar A Lydian parts for JP8 and bass.  Threw in a Black Metal drummer, over playing a Simmons SDS-V 😮, to keep the Ibanez GRG7221QA-TBB 7 String guitar thru a Line 6 UBER METAL pedal company.

Spent all of 5 minutes with GROK and prompts around "Sanjo Kyoto Year 3000".  Hope it is never built up like this, and anything new needs the taste of a Syd Mead if they do.

Put together in MOHO PRO12 Animation system as it really fast and simple to do this, and way easier than my Video editor Vegas Movie Studio.

This uses the same sounds as the other things I have done in the last 2 weeks since getting the Simmons SDS-V vst Electronic Drums sim.  Love the metal guitar tone too.

Part of me feels there should be a blistering guitar solo with pick scrape, sweep picking and two handed taping of some interesting arpeggios,  but I really like a simple riff or melody to hum.  No one hums a blistering guitar solo with a zillion random notes in it.  

I would normally just put an image of the audio waveform in a video like this, but had the random idea to use AI future Sanjo Kyoto instead.  It takes less effort than preparing the audio waveform!

AI has so many problems. In this case, I have no idea where the training data for these city images came from, but do know you can't copyright them.  In this case, it would have taken me weeks to paint images similar to these, and so I wouldn't have done it. In Grok it was all of 5 minutes, which is fine for a disposable little video 10 people will ever watch.. Would have done a manga like scene instead, as the ROI to do it isn't worth it. 

The music is the main thing here, but I didn't really take any time to do that in this case either. There is nothing stereotypically "Japan" about the music at all.  BIGBOSS KYOTO   is at Sanjo Kyoto which has a nice collection of very metal guitars, so I don't see this as out of place at all.

Also recently learnt about Rikugo 六合 a Kyoto Prog Metal "Dark Rock" band, and have been listening to their material the last few days. They are the support band for the September Freak Kitchen Japan Tour.  Girl Punk band Otoboke Beaver おとぼけビ～バ～ are also Kyoto natives.

So to me, heavy/ metal music is very much a part of Kyoto.

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Vital Inspiration

We got around to assigning the Akai PMD218 pads to the right drums, and also making our own preset for the VSDS-X Simmons drum vst. That all makes a difference. 

Then stayed inside all day and made two pieces of music and accompanying videos on this cold, slightly snowing, sometimes sunny Kyoto today after a very busy day out yesterday, where we ended up having some lovely Ramen at a place in Kyoto JR station.

So is this 1980s music sounds with a 1960s cartoon vibe, I wonder?:

It wasn't just the right pads and sounds that were inspirational though:

I would have loved to attend this local car show if I had know about it.

As I put in our Memoires Comic, it set a career direction for me.

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All Just Play

 

Watched the Hans Zimmer Beato Interview and he said something I think about myself every so often.

Musicians don't retire as what they do is play (and have fun).

Not exactly his words, but his meaning. 

I "retired" 6 years ago now from my engineering/technical career.  I originally went down that path as it was an audio engineering hobby I turned into my career. But I don't do that any more, it became just work, the job, and even if there was satisfaction in making something, it was just a job. 

The music stuff I do now, to almost no views or plays of the things I release, is the result of my playing with my very inexpensive music instruments and Reaper based DAW. Consider myself a Producer and not a Guitarist. It is all just Play, and even if getting no Bandcamp or YouTube plays doesn't feel great, it is the playing with the gear, solving musical puzzles in time (a bit like Tetris isn't it? ) that is fun and rewarding, and I don't need any financial reward for doing it. It was never my career, and I never tried to make a living at it.  The capabilities I have in my tiny studio with a Reaper based DAW and being able to release stuff on Bandcamp and YouTube makes this the best time for a hobbyist like myself.  But that is partly as I don't need to make any money from music or my comics.  I only ever bought music making gear out of the money I earned from my Illustration work, not from my tech career. Seemed appropriate. 

Not my only Play things though. Making comics, drawing and going to exhibitions and sitting in cafes drinking coffee, and a few other things, is play to me too now. I had never thought about retirement, but very happy to be in the position I am now.

My latest Music Video above is extended from a music+comic I recently did about Osaka Expo 2025.  This track is twice that length and has more parts though.  The Track EXPO on Bandcamp is another, just take it track.

Getting the Simmons SDS-V vst has been a little inspiring, even if the last 3 tracks have pretty much the same drum track!  That sound and distorted guitar, and synthesizers is a very 1980s sound I think, and I love it. Had so much fun have ordered an Akai MPD218 pad controller and see if that sparks some different finger drumming world to me. I have no desire to learn to play real drums at this stage of life, so a V-DRUM kit is not required, even if I did give it a second or two of thought... 

I still use Winamp to play my music on the PC, but rarely use the visualizer in it.  But after thinking about how to put this track EXPO on YouTube, and do something different from my previous videos, it seemed an old school and cool thing to try. Used OBS to capture the visualization, then resynced the audio to the master track and added title and watermark in MAGIX Movie Studio.   

All Just Play.

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The Love Of Electronic Drums

 

During the mid 1980s when I was designing complicated 16bit digital audio systems, I was fascinated with Simmons style electronic drums, and designed my own analog/eprom based system.

I made a playable kit around a guitar stand,  a kick drum pedal and 4 pads on a sheet of MDF about 35cmx25cm. A pad being:  piezo sensor glued to 15x11cm 3ply with a thin rubber layer on top and 4cm foam on the bottom attaching it to the main MDF.  Kick drum support was aluminum angle.

My design was about minimizing stick noise in a tiny practice kit with a big sound. I lived in a small rented apartment and making any noise was out of the question. Still have the drum sticks, but threw away the rest many years ago. For a time, practicing with this was a lot of fun, and a real eye opener has to how difficult playing drums really is. 

In the 2000s I tried to buy a used Simmons SDS5 to SDS8 on ebay a dozen or so times, but was never successful. They sold for the kind of money I didn't have. 

When I much later started using the Toontrack DRUM KIT FROM HELL vst, I realized the provided drum patterns, developed from a real drummer playing an electronic kit made such a big difference to how my tracks sounded.  I rarely make my own drum patterns now, but when I do , I may play part of the them on a small keyboard, then edit with a mouse. 

Finger drumming is now a thing, and completely bypasses the acoustic noise issues any kind of electronic drum pad set makes.  I have never tried one though.

I have used a few SDS5 drum samples in my tracks since the beginning. But I still surprised myself when I finally bought the VSDS-X vst a few days ago.  Known about that for years.

I just still love that "sheep kicked in the stomach" sound.

The above Music Animation started with me playing the drums on my KORG microKEY32 keyboard. Then adding a FM Bass to that. At first it was just 2 synths, but added 2 guitar tracks later, and that is the version here.  

The main image is an AI thing saw on Facebook. Sure I read AI isn't copyrightable, so took that and edited to be the mysterious outcrop here. Just the vibe of the thing. red triangle probe done in MOHO Pro 12.

Another:

This uses some AI images I asked GROK for.  AI has huge problems with using it, even if used as a texture generator like here.  

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Not Doing Song Covers

 

Except these kind of are. My last 5 music+comics have been like this. Like a buskers Fake Book, or not remembered correctly, close, almost cover versions.

I want to do original music, then here, almost well known songs. 

Not the thing can put on YouTube or Bandcamp, and fair use is not a universal concept. For example it does not exist in Japan.  

The lyrics are what people remember, or mostly remember...

Interesting thing to try for a change.  I basically gave myself a morning to record and sing a 60sec piece of music, then make a music+comic around it. Hadn't played the song before.

So I usually look up the TAB for it.  Find the track on YouTube if I don't already have it, and open up my template for this stuff. Same drums and default instruments and set the tempo. All of these songs here use the same three ultra simple 4/4 drum patterns.  Record some verse chorus like bits and ram them together. I play the parts, they way I do my original stuff. I am NOT trying to copy the original artists. 

Other than maybe a hint of a Scottish accent in the singing maybe  😀. 

Then have 3 or 4 attempts at the singing and keep the best takes. So it isn't that I spent any time practicing these songs I don't know. Part of the incorrectly remembered feel.

Thing is, as I don't own these songs, there is little point in spending much time working on them, learning them, other than for the educational value. To me anyway. 

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