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"... 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

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.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology