MUSIC+COMIC on speed produced with a few lines and a lot of skill, around mostly car comics. But speed goes with action, and that is a major component of the Shonen Manga market, Yowamushi Pedal is part of.
I applied a few of the techniques displayed in these pages to my own THE SHADOW car racing team comic.
But it is the music track that is the focus in this. Fast, happy with a bit of a melody. Heavy guitar tone, very metal, but the rest makes it the simple rock genre, I think, if you want to put a label on it. The bass sequencer is just a pedal note here, but it helps push it along, as does the upper register sequencer rhythm pattern that comes in the 16 bar sections the melody doesn’t play in.
I tried a few different voices for the spoken word ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, GO! Settled on this “batman”, raspy sound rather than my normal speaking voice.
It isn’t a track done for “guitarists”. Think Steve VIA or Joe Satriani. That is so much about showing off technique. My thing here is just about simple riffs.
I continue to make a continuous DJ like music track of the last 30 minutes of music I have made and play that on repeat when out regularly. It gives me some perspective on what I have made, as I completely forget about something I made a 5+ weeks ago and worry I may just all be remaking the same track over and over again. Even if it does change from being in C to G to F to A every so often. I do think it is time for a change though!
Other Things
Our website is being visited by nothing but spammers, bots and AI content scrappers now at the end of 2025. I get a lot of email SPAM, but have had fewer email inquires this year than in the last 13.
Google has changed its Analytics again, but the last 15 years of organic search looks something like this curve, with the red line showing the declining usefulness of Google as a search engine, ending with the site mostly visited by bots and skimmers.
In 2010 it was looking like I could do illustration stuff full-time, and Adsense even paid for more than just my hosting fees. Then Google changed things (their on going BAIT & SWITCH) and for almost 12 months got very little incoming work. During that time I realized Google had made a website based business possible, but it was impossible to rely on Google for you living from it. You can see from the graph, it dropped to that same level again in 2017 and has gotten worse since.
I think the same thing is happening to YouTubers. FranLab coined the term “de-algorithmized” were it doesn’t matter what content is made, a channel or website doesn’t warrant recommending over other “more profitable for Google” sites and channels. Probably more than a few YouTubers that made money previously, can't any more.
I check every so often that the contact us pages still works, and it always does. Within the last few weeks I saw an Illustration YouTuber reporting that even well known working Illustrators have had work requests fall off a cliff this year. So it isn’t just me, and I am glad I am retired and don’t need that pocket money now. Seems the category “Illustration” has been “de-algorithmized”.
I expect this is partly as Google’s AI answers in search don’t direct people to websites any more, present sponsored content, and prospective customers are probably also just trying to use AI to make their pictures. I have tried a few times to get AI to make some images, and mostly they weren’t very useful.
Still think Illustration is my main thing though, but really haven’t done much of that this year. The music stuff has been most engrossing. A few times I think of something I would like to illustrate, then think of the tedium involved in working out the details, and then don’t start as it all seems “too much trouble”. My eyes aren’t as good as they were either, and that is significant as I start such a thing on paper with pencil. So I go back to the music stuff. I have this feeling in the back of my mind I have to make music while I still can, before Arthritis or something else makes it too hard.
With posting just my MUSIC+COMICS on Sunday morning for the time being, I have been keeping off X and Facebook more. Those places seem far less useful and engaging now.
KRAFTWERK will perform in Osaka April 28 2026. I have always liked Kraftwerk and was interested enough to look up ticket prices and what the recent concerts look like. Big video screen with 4 guys in illuminating costumes standing at keyboard consoles. And that is it. No chat, may as well be 4 dummies on stage, as they only move walking onto and off the stage at the start and end. So I think I will just stay home and play the KRAFTWERK CDs instead, even if die hard fans think it is worth it.
The October ASTERISM concert I attended has a few videos on YouTube now.
There was a young women with a handheld camera rig that took them. She looked like she was involved with the band, could have even been a parent. I was a little behind and to the left of her, and this is almost the view I had of the show too. The small KYOTO MOJO live house is more my thing than a KRAFTWERK concert.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology KYOTO JAPAN
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