So just 60 seconds of URASAWA NAOKI's "Yurei" from yesterdays HOT🥵 Kyoto afternoon, but in English with Synths and METAL GUITAR🤘 A very literal translation and with more thought could probably make it a bit more catchy or something, but did the music and animation in just a couple of hours, so didn't put a lot thought into it.
He actually sings "no one else can see us", which may make sense in Japan, but in English, to be more a love song, the couple should only see each other. "Only having eyes for each other" being an Idiom in English for a couple in love.
I thought I would just sing his Japanese at first, but Urasawa already did that, so I don't need to.
The word GHOSTS has terrible sibilance I haven't cleared up enough, so it is what it is 🫠. It does however have this interesting Shhhh sweep across the stereo field though, so maybe it should be a feature! 😀
If you are into making "studio" music, like I am, your constantly getting YouTube recommended videos about mixing, mastering and gear. But in reality for me, making my mix or my master "better" doesn't impact how many see these Music+Comics. A very niche thing, only a few bother to check out.
Urasawa san's Osaka Music+Drawing gig is September 23, and I have a VIP seat. Hope to not get sick and not be able to go!
Urasawa san is first and foremost a successful comic creator. This music stuff and his CD releases are a very serious hobby and may be his Sunday radio show and MANBEN Neo NHK TV series is too. You would think he is trying to do fun things other spend all his time chained to a manga drawing board, wouldn't you?
This picture was posted to his X account 2025/8/30 (I assume he doesn't do any interaction with his own X account and an assistant handles it), saying they had finished rehearsals for the first show in Tokyo 2025/8/31. The left hand up and finger is from his 20th Century Boys manga, the symbol from the friends cult.
And the turn out for that Drawing-Music gig. All making the "Friend" hand sign.
Been thinking I haven't even tried to play any of Mattias's FREAK KITCHEN music. Same way no one does covers of Jeff Beck's music, as his guitar had notes on it the rest of us don't have. Just a riff or 2 here and there. What he does is mostly really hard, but I can do his Drop Guitar Tuned power chords...
Looking forward to seeing them at Club Quattro UMEDA in 2 weeks time. The following week is the Urasawa gig.
A rather long winded video by Venus Theory on something I thing every creator/maker thinks about. YouTube counts those minutes, so videos need to be far longer than necessary.
I have thought a lot about "why?", and write about it every so often on this BLOG.
He does say "we do these things because we have to, and that makes us happy.." or some words to that effect.
I have said more than once "I make things because I have to, to remain a Happy Camper", as I get down if I don't, and feel I am wasting my time/life if I aren't making something regularly. I have felt this way since I was a little kid, and is probably the way I found to self medicate my condition.
Before I retired, I had to make things in my working life and that meant my own projects were not always something I needed to work on every week. The need to make something is like being hungry, where the hunger goes away after you make something, and the day job could satisfy that to an extent. But the hunger comes back, and how often depends on what is being made.
After retiring, and only doing random freelance illustration gigs every so often, means I spend much more of my time making my own things in my studio. For Venus Theory that is all about Making Music and Making Videos about Making Music. For me, that is drawing, illustrations, painting, sculpting, model making, making comics, making music and in the last few years, making short MUSIC + COMICS. Like this on a recent RICK BEATO rant on obvious fair use and record labels.
Or this on the DEVO documentary recently saw on Netflix after watching THE DIRT and STRAIGHT OUT OF COMPTON:
Me being retired means financializing what I make isn't a concern any more, but that is a significant factor for Venus Theory.
So the answer to the question in the title for myself is:
"I need to, to keep being a Happy Camper".
It would be nice if more saw or listen to what I release, but I do stuff that interests ME, and I have always found very few shared my interests.
You are not going to get any validation from the Nethereals that surround you. I learnt that in High School. Attending the 30th High School reunion reinforced that no end.
YouTube showed me a video about Music Promotion related to Streaming Services a couple of days ago. Basically talking about Bandcamp, compared to Spotify, and one of the guys there had done a few types of promotions, such as promoted (with paid advertisements on Facebook) that anyone could download his bands album for free on Bandcamp, and had found no one would bother to go to Bandcamp and do that.
His finding was downloading and owning music isn't something that the vast majority (so probably 99.99%) of listeners care about any more. They stream Spotify, and that is all. The way people in the 60s & 70s that had an AM Radio on a POP channel and never changed it. Downloading or collecting music files is of zero interest now.
On the Creator side, the majority of independent artists on Spotify get about 10 plays of their tracks they upload. This majority will never get any kind of payout either.
As someone who only puts his music on Bandcamp (as hate the Spotify exploitation business model, as I don't see what I do as worth paying $20+ a year to just have it on Spotify via Spotify owned DistroKid), all download "pay what ever you want and $0 is fine too", I found that all interesting.
My own plays on Bandcamp are abysmal. But the point is, I don't do it for the plays by others.
But have had far more on Soundcloud (that I don't bother to use any more, and think most plays are bogus there anyway), and on YouTube with old car illustrations music slide shows and shorts.
I have similarly found I don't care for the popular activities where ever I have been. In Japan here, where more than a few Americans seem to want to share all the trivia in their daily lives by live streaming themselves constantly, and even get more likes for doing it in a Kimono or something, is something I have no interest in. That is just really weird to me. Many call themselves Creators but I reserve that word for something else... for those like Venus Theory.
Recent Rick Beato video on his constant battle with Record Labels and their claims over music clips on his channel. He now employs a lawyer to handle these.
But how come YouTube isn't listening and doing something about constant, invalid claims, from the same companies? No 90day, or permanent bans for proven trouble makers, like they do to content creators themselves?
The comments that came back to this question was YouTube is better off with the way it is now and couldn't care less about any trouble Rick Beato is being caused.
Anyway, always loved Pseudo Echo, even when their Brit Style Synth Pop with matching hair was completely out of style from Oz Pub Rock of the time.... 😀. A previous music comic I did was on this tribalism.
And this is a cover-not-a-cover type thing. I listen to the original track and do something like a bad cover of it with a duration under 60 seconds, at a tempo I prefer. What I can us in a video and upload to X or Instagram. This a little slower than the original But with my current sounds and approach, like the 8th note bass sequence which is the foundation of this. If my version is too close to the original it would probably get hit by a Copyright Notice.
Have only had my Win11 up and running for almost 3 weeks now and it is very disappointing to see Update KB5063878 causing this chaos.
It appears to occur with long sustained, high data rate disc writes. User case being downloading and installing STEAM games on a Gamers PC, or copying your huge video library to an SSD drive.
It installed on my system 2025/8/13, and I get an error trying to uninstall it. So I guess I wait for the fix, which still hasn't appeared a week later. Assume part of the reason for this original problem, and the slow fix is Microsoft having sacked developers and replaced them with crap AI.
Now, I don't think anything I do in general use of my PC at the moment, recording midi and 2 guitar parts, some digital painting and scanning pencil sketches actually would cause the bug to occur. Rendering 56 second animations and Reaper Mixes is very CPU bound, but does not generating long high speed disc writes. I used my PC normally for a week after the bug was installed and I only found out about it from the above video yesterday.
Lots on Reddit about it now. Affected SSD controllers are Phison, InnoGrit, Maxio (Sandisk, Corsair, Kioxia). Writing 50GB at full speed to an SSD can cause it to be unrecoverably corrupted.
I installed CrystalDiscInfo as recommended, one of those "adverts everywhere disaster" download sites, and my system has a KINGSTON unit:
But there is no indication that this drive would not be affected by the bug. It is an industry wide issue.
I made a boot DVD and took a full backup to a portable HDD 2025/8/9, before the update, just after I had installed just about all my tools and data from my previous system, so I expect I can recover if something was to happen.
One of the things in this KB5063878 update is changing the certificates expiry for safeboot from 2026. So that means the requirement to get Win11 in the first place means MS can now stop a PC from booting at some date in the future, set by Microsoft. Don't like what that allows.
And the news Intel isn't in great financial shape, after years of CEOs from the finance world focusing on stock buy backs instead of using less money on keeping up in semiconductor technology comes as no shock. Assume this whole forced "security cpu feature" required in Windows 11 was Intel inspired too. 😡
Have read that more than a few times lately. Probably a few time just on Bluesky.
But is it being said as world weary advice or an attempt to be a "thought Leader"? So much of the later on social media, followed by subscribe to my Medium/ Substack/ Patreon/ buy my book.
Gets tiring. Not that it isn't bad advice though. As a creator, you need to make stuff, but the drive to perfection on everything is detrimental. Luckily I lost that a long time ago. 😌 My career in engineering was always deliver as good as can be done in the allotted time. Usually as fast as possible. Having a family also meant "my time" was always limited.
I think finishing something is far more important, than trying to perfect it.
The Music + Comic itself isn't a Masterpiece either. A music track far too like what I have done before and features a Lemans Hypercar comic I have yet to find the approach to make it funny or interesting. Still a work in progress.
Feel I should come up with something more engaging and interesting in my comics and music + comics, but doing that is hard. Haven't found what yet. Also, getting older makes you far less relevant to the popular status quo. Young people don't care what old people have to say about anything anyway, which is what most of these have been like.
Our cat, sleeping in the chair next to me as I type this, is 9 years old today. He has been a constant companion the last 4 or so years. Spending most of each day in my studio with me.
I am very happy he does.
Update:2025/8/23 A week since kids and grandson went back to Tokyo, and we didn't get sick! Grandson came down with a fever yesterday, but that is probably from the daycare he attends. Poor guy.
Our kids and grandson visited for 6 days, and they went home yesterday. So nice when they visit. So good when we get our house back to ourselves again. Grandson is in "the terrible 2s", and is talking which is wonderful, but can have a tantrum if you say "no".
Photos, in our family, were taken rarely, so I don't have a picture of me sitting on the knee of either of my grandfathers, and may have never done that.
Been so hot though so getting out and about is particularly tiring for everyone.
I had a mildly "slipped disc" for about the last 2 weeks, that went worse 4 days ago, but completely fine today. This indicates a lack of exercise and muscle tone, from not walking enough. How I keep this at bay over the decades, so will be heading to the airconditioned mall when it opens to get in my walking there, again. Need to do that more regularly as walking around locally is just dangerous in this heat and humidity in recent years.
Synth & Guitars
Made the attached YouTube short over the last couple of days though on the new Win11 machine. The video actually shows what is making each part as it comes in. 2 guitar parts, both on the Ibanez 7 string thru a line6 POD EXPRESS BLACK. Using the ANVIL amp. ZebraHZ on 2 parts, etc
People are so tribal.
When Eddy Van Halen played JUMP on synth to the band, I remember a story about them discussing they can't do that keyboard thing in a guitar band. British '80s synth pop was very anti guitar. Even Viking Guitar God, Mattias IA Eklundh, who did a synth album just a couple of years ago, INTERGALACTIC SONGS OF LOVE AND REFLECTION, found out no one wants to hear such a thing from a guitar player.
Well, except me maybe. I even bought it.
So Synths & Heavy Guitars together goes against music tribe conventions, even if that is what DURAN DURAN mostly did. I like both together too, so am not going to get listeners from any tribe. 😃
So my new Win11 machine is completely usable now, until I go to do something I only do sometimes and find I need to sign into some account or install something.
Or Win11 decides "whatever" is not allowed to run any more! I haven't found anything "better" in Win11, just a pile of "they made it worse". All the advertisements on the Log In Screen are so crass.
So I bought Zebra: Legacy and that is awesome. Just using the 400 presets will keep me inspired for some time to come. That is the only reason to get it to me. Same reason I visit art exhibitions. I didn't actually need another synthesizer, but can always be inspired.
Have put a longer version on our Bandcamp:
That is the 36th "bit of music" I put in that album this year. And that isn't all I have done. Mostly for MUISC+COMICS. It is a case of "make the music you want to hear", but it is also like eating, and something I have to do every few days to stay " a Happy Camper". Sequenced synths and heavy guitar riffs for the most part this year. I play the tracks, or a DJ-MIX of them a lot when out, sitting in a cafe, riding the train or walking around. I am entertained making them, and listening to them.
My own music is not the only thing I play though, and have also been alternating between that and playing Urasawa Naoki's LOVE SONGS, a Rikugo playlist and Freak Kitchen. Now just 4 weeks to attending their concerts in Osaka.
So made an EQ matching my phones sound on music. Allows to me to check my mixes in the DAW and change it to suit, if I could be bothered😄. But the reality is, if you are listening on a Phone Speaker, you don't care about quality.
But checking the mix on really low end speakers is still actually very important.
The Sound File of Brown Noise was generated in Audacity, then played in a loop on the phone using Pulsar Music Player.
I used to use REW and my calibrated measuring microphone a fair bit in different projects in decades past, and so had appropriate gear at hand to measure the sound coming from the phone, even though high accuracy isn't needed here.
The JBL FLIP series of Bluetooth speakers is or was a popular speaker, so we measures that was well.
The FLIP has a 100Hz boost, but has a reasonable downward slope to 15K, with a dip at 2Khz for a "ALWAYS LOUDNESS ON" type sound. Would expect most home entertainment/ soundbar/ music players have a response like that. BOSE systems were always something like that (and NEVER "Hi-Fi")...
Here comparing the myphone to my Flip5:
And I made an EQ to approximate the FLIP5 as well, and put NORMAL, FLIP5 & PHONE processed sections on the music track in this:
Just an approximation, but could help in MIX decisions.
Listening to music from your phone on headphones or earbuds isn't a low end experience at all though. The quality is better than what we had from standard record players back in the 1970s.
Phone Speakers are probably about the worst case though. Even super thin panel TVs with really inadequate speakers sound better. Something like the old Auratones is still a good reference.
The music in this short is the first time I have used Zebra Legacy, the Hans Zimmer version and that really is incredible. Just so much inspiring stuff.
The reason players buy new stuff is to get inspired. We also tend to collect stuff, even if they are just small things, more than we really need too. But artists do that with art supplies too.
After putting off researching building/ buying/ rebuilding my studio computer for much of the last year, I finally decided that getting one of the locally assembled brands was the most straight forward. Unlike Sydney, there aren't build PC stores run by Chinese guys with all the parts you might need, local.
There are stores that build customizable desktop PCs, like APPLIED and DOSPARA, but they aren't at my local MALL, and from my visit to downtown Kyoto DOSPARA, it isn't like they carry all the Gigabyte and other such motherboard brands.
Most in Japan just use a Smart Phone or a small laptop.
So I customized a MOUSE PC GAMER PC option. I have bought just an i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, DVD R/W and fancy graphics card in a box. Lots of DisplayPorts and an HDMI. No Display, keyboard, mouse or HDDs, as I have these in my existing system.
It will arrive next week, giving me 2 months to install, move things to it and be able to switch over before the October Windows 10 end of support. Moving stuff over, installing, registering, deregistering the old machine, etc, etc takes many weeks. Mostly just waiting for things to copy and install.
My existing machine has 16GB ram and the new will have 32GB, but that is about the only real difference. My existing machine is completely fine, as it was running XP, before I move it to Win10.
The only thing I have that pushed the memory of my existing system is the GRITONE DRUM vst, and don't use that very often.
Everything I have read just shows Windows 11 to be a step backwards, allowing advertising in the system widgets. The requirement that Windows11 needs TMP2.0 is just an excuse for an Intel cash grab. I was at a LAB in the 1990s when Intel released some special version of the 386 and then they came looking for any software that "required those new features".
Same old strategy.
And keeping with this blogs theme of PAIN, today is the 10th anniversary of my kidney stone trip to the ER.
Kidney Stones hurt like hell, but with drugs for the pain and flushing out the trouble makers, that will be all fine again in a few hours.
What is REALLY painful is an extensive hemorrhoidectomy that means you have the same or worse pain for 8 hours after pooping each day for 2 to 4 weeks, and no painkillers available to you help at all. Recovering from that took me over 12 months. For most of the last 10 months of that time, I wasn't in pain, but the intense extended pain seems to have caused a "depression". I wasn't sad or have the blues, but everything that I had done for fun, wasn't interesting to me at all for 10 months. Was like being a different person.
But I was looking at interesting 1967 manga speech balloons this morning...
And today 2025/8/8 we are up and running on the New Win11 Machine. Found a few things not installable, but have work arounds:
It has a SSD drive so it boots fast, but other than that, is the same speed as my win10 i7 PC for rendering Reaper audio projects or MOHO animations. Of course there were faster CPU options, like i9 and upward, but they add significantly to the price. It has cost ~￥270,000. It is a very nicely built machine though, and dead quiet the way I use it most of the time. That is a lot to be in pretty much the same place I was before getting it, but that is current American Capitalism for you.
So Win11 doesn't support my old audio interface so going back to ASIO4ALL and the motherboard audio. That is what I did for years when I first started using Reaper. I had a MIC100 preamp plugged straight into the motherboard line in for guitar, bass and microphone. The noise performance of the motherboard was better than the preamp. I also only record one instrument at a time, so things like crosstalk between channels is not relevant. I have used a Mackie 4 channel mixer for the last 5 years doing the same. The knobs and multi segment VU meter is way better than a single clip led on most audio interfaces.
Motherboard line out now goes to an Audio Technica Headphone Amplifier, then to my JBL-104 monitors. I mostly use headphones, and don't like just plugging them into to the JBLs when needed. I keep everything plugged in as needed, and turn on the headphone amp or speakers at the power point as needed. Hardly a Pro Studio monitoring environment, but the room is too small and I use a slow spectrum analyzer in mixing as much as anything else. The quality of my mixing and mastering isn't why no one listens to my music.
Not sure what to do with the old Win10 16GB machine. I originally bought it in February 2016 as a Win7 machine in a Corsair Case/PSU, with 1TB HDD, 8GB, DVD R/W and a GeForce graphics card for $1,489.58. 9 years is a good run for a PC!
At the moment it is the /Netflix/Prime/mediaPlayer connected via HDMI to a small 24" TV I have in the studio. Has Kodi on it.
