SHORTS & Social Media is so much about about personality, and not music or anything actually worthwhile... so much chasing celebrity. And this SHORT is just an excuse for an instrumental music track as a SHORT😀
The kids and grandson will be arriving shortly and staying this week, just getting this quick thing out before they arrive. 😀
But when you consider TOPGEAR was popular, not because it was a car show, but due to the personality and relationships between the three hosts mucking about in cars, that doesn't seem so bad.
BUT garbage, AI SLOP and Grifters seem to make up way to much of YouTube and Social Media now, and not forgetting the RAGE BATE side of things.
Again this uses the 7 string, DIed and free Neural DSP Modeler vst for the amp/cabinets. SDS drums and ZebraHZ for most of the synth sounds.
SHORTs have taken over the YouTube feed now, so maybe sticking with them is the thing to do, rather than go off where no one will find me with a 1080p HD 8 panel comic page with music as I was planning? But the life of 24 hours maximum for a short and the multiple posts people make of the same thing isn't something I want to spend my time doing. I do really like the music in this, but it is very close to the last few tracks too. It is my style at the moment and do I want to change it? I think I need to to not loose interest.
This week is the Japanese End of Year /New Year Holidays. New Years day used to be about the only time everything was closed, and shrines and temples did a booming trade.
The way the stores are so crowded now you would think everything was going to closed for a month.
New Years day post cards used to be a really big thing, but even Japan now has many converted to New Year messages instead.
I did my first real, multiple panels a page, multiple pages comic, TERAFORM 8 year ago now. I had made various single panel cartoons for decades before that so a long single story with drawing the same character over and over was new. I re-read it this morning for the first time in years, after seeing in my website logs a couple of visitors had read it recently.
I could only get to work on it a few hours on weekends and it took months to finish using the traditional drawing, inking and coloring each frame. My goal when just half way through was JUST to finish it.
It looks rushed, which is understandable, but I do like the take on Climate Change, AI, the Media and Corporations I have in it. My love of THUNDERBIRDS, a secret organization doing good must had something to do with the approach too. Maybe it is more like a film pitch/treatment as a comic that just hits the main points, where in a longer/better comic those points would be revealed much more slowly rather than the characters just explaining it all. I was trying to be subtle, with the intentional misdirection with the early images of Mars. Implies Terraforming Mars, but that isn't what it is actually about.
If I had spent longer on it, the art would have been better, and with more panels of world building. Even characters drawn better. Doing it in all color added many hours and I would have been better off just doing it with line and gray tone and make it more manga like.
I did 2 other related comics after it, a page from the second one:
They are what they are.
I initially posted a link to them in a webcomic related site. I have only received one comment on them in 8 years.
I imagine that the color in the first two stories took a lot more work, but I found their style a bit easier to read than the third one.
The first was very much like a documentary, which reminds me of Arthur C. Clark. The second one actually has a character, so was more like Issac Asimov. Each style has its place, but the latter attracts a larger audience.
I agree with what he said, especially with the number of years since since doing it. The second comic has a sentient robot as the main character.
Rewatching the DEVO documentary again, I feel they too were rather too subtle for the public to understand their thesis that America was obviously de-evolving. Seems all to true now.
Other Things
Well it is the Christmas/New Years break now. For me that involves the kids and grandson visiting for a week and thinking about what happened this year, and what I think I want to do next year.
So far, I think I will attend the May 2026 Osaka Sound Messe and that is about it. There are tours by KRAFTWERK and DEEP PURPLE early in the year, but I don't care for huge crowded concerts anymore. A small sound house with a band I know is a much better experience.
Haven't made any new music in about 2 weeks, as the last 30 things I did all sound the same and I need to change my composition method a bit before continuing. I need to recharge.
Thinking about other interests I could get back to too, like where to go with my comics. I haven't done a comic book in 2 years now. Am I done with them? I don't know.
I did the last Stop Frame Animated Rock Opera episode 3 years ago and I know I aren't trying that again. A bunch of too long scenes, a few I actually like, strung together that don't make ANY sense, and the music doesn't help at all. It is a mess. The 5 episodes could be edited into a single MUCH SHORT thing that is actually interesting, possible with some voice over. Maybe one year, but I just got really sick of it.
Star Trek leaves Netflix Jan 8 2026. In the last few years I managed to finally get to see all of Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise via Netflix. Missed most on their initial broadcasts back in the day, other than ST:TNG. They were mostly great. The original STAR TREK was on for many years, like Sunday afternoon, when I was in high school and I mostly didn't watch it. I have no memory of any S2 or 3 episodes and catching up with them at the moment. So dated, but also interesting stories.
MUSIC+COMIC on what and why I have been doing these.
My original use of my own original heavy instrumental music was as the soundtrack to my illustration sample videos. The first of those got some 50k+ views and the last one, years later before I gave up, had maybe 5 views. Google moved to promoting longer form content “more like TV” so my 3 minute music videos got sidelined. They have since changed multiple times and revised what is “best for them to promote”.
After retiring and moving back to Japan 2019 I did my JUST THINKING comic strip series weekly during COVID and a bit after. Just one of those things I wanted to do. If something strikes me as interesting and better for just a comic, I still do these sometimes.
I had moved from drawing pages like my TerraForm comic, to vector based pages as in my WHERE THE SMOKE COMES OUT and that made the process a whole lot faster. But that is possible as I am not doing emotionally charged stories with complex characters, but mostly a host character talking to camera ala GRAND DESIGNS or TOPGEAR, explaining something.
Four years ago I started doing short videos with comic characters and speech balloons, but 2024 sometime I started on YouTube Short/ X/ Instagram, square under 60 second animations with the current MUSIC+COMIC format. Had used MOHO Pro Ver 12 to do some animated music videos, and rediscovered that real animation was far too time consuming even with computer based tools, and a comic book was more for me. A comic strip with 3 to 4 speech balloons with my original music and very limited animation, that uses a lot of photo images and cartoon characters is the approach I have come too. Something I haven’t seen others doing, but was the way POINT AND CLICK RPG games were done originally.
They are a vehicle for me to make original music and a comic at least once a week. Done for my own entertainment. I sometimes feel the music is all the same, but I also think that of Ola’s SWOLA too 8^).
Ola Englund starts his SWOLA videos with this weeks original minute music piece. Partly to force himself to make music, and partly to demonstrate new guitar models. He also made the drum track available for others to do the same, and he would judge them as a segment on one of his channels. Some of us need goals to motivate us, and it helps me too.
I have received no comment at all on the format of these. I have received comments on the subject of a music + comics though.
I know of a few musicians that regularly post music clips on YouTube and Social Media, such as Jeremy Wentworth and Phillip Jackson. I have to admit I don’t listen to most of their works recently. Once you have heard a dozen or so, they all sound the same. I just know others feel the same about my MUSIC+COMICs, even if the comic part is always different.
The music in this is mostly the F# DORIAN mode. It is here on Bandcamp. It combines CHUG guitar, BOOPIE-BLOOPIE synth sequence, metal drums and synthesizers. Trying to do “my own original style”, which I think comes out being rock.
I do like to CHUG, as Ola says. I have found having a 7 string in a DROP tuning is my go to instrument, and has been for a while. I haven’t found my 8 string gives me any more usable low notes over the 7. It has a few more notes, but the sound of those doesn’t have the same punch. A 6 string with a pitch shifter would work too, but that BOSS fixed pitch shift pedal costs more than I paid for my 7 string guitar.
I think the last 3 of these MUSIC+COMICS have actually been pretty interesting, but I need a change. The format isn’t right, and I’ve only been thinking of finishing them, not working out how they could be better. That shorts are at the mercy of Googles algorithms, and whatever that is this week, as to what gets pushed to the SHORTs stream, and for how long, to people who are just filling in time and don’t care what shows up is not a great place to be either.
I don’t mind the music tracks, and feel that in the 60 seconds they have enough sections and variations that work. The mix is fine too. I think anyway, but no one goes and checks them out on Bandcamp.
That the limits for short videos went from 1 to 3 minutes on X and Youtube has also made the 60 second format I came up with obsolete. This may be more the style going forward:
But we will see. This bigger longer Looking Back MUSIC+COMIC has 9 views on YouTube, and a few of those are probably just me looking at it again. Drawing actual 8 frame comics kind of feels what I want to do, at least for awhile. The music is really important to me, but I don't think anyone seeing them cares, and probably has the sound off.
The last versions of CorelDraw and MOHO Pro I bought were via the HUMBLE BUNDLE websites, around $25 each for perpetual one time license fees. A Bargain.
Other Things
So had my first ever ZOOM meeting to join in the FAIRLIGHT INSTRUMENTS 50th Anniversary event in Sydney Australia, from here in Kyoto Japan:
It wasn't till it was almost over I saw that you could resize and move the window to see all those that had zoomed into it.
Strange feelings. So long ago to me and there are still so many people that are fans of the machines and have renovated and using them.
Since doing the cartoon, was sent some pictures of the room:
Looks like maybe no more than 35 people were there in person. Maybe 14 on zoom. Not a whole lot it seems to me. One of the organizers is writing a book on the companies history and the people involved over the years and what they contributed.
Then they promoted their coming Fairlight 50th Anniversary FRESHWATER INSTRUMENTS release of a 19" 3U rack module running "improved" CMI SERIES 1 software on modern hardware.
That doesn't interest me at all, and was this 50th Event thing mostly to promote that? And us ex-staff being there adding validity to that venture??? 🤔
Some of the same people in this new venture were involved with the 30th Anniversary FAIRLIGHT 30A that ended in tears for legal reasons, being shut down after developing and shipping just 14 units.
Some of us ex-staffers that hung around on ZOOM after everyone else left said "how could this new venture end differently than the 30th anniversary one did?". It seemed, legally, the same situation.
TONY FURSE, the guy that started everything that the CMI turned into, had declined to be involved with the 50th Anniversary event. That kind of adds weight to the feeling it was really all about promoting the new product.
Anyway...
Been told there is a WhatsApp group specifically for ex staff, but I don't use WhatsApp and don't think I have anything to contribute to such a group the Facebook Fairlight CMI doesn't already do. My family uses LINE, and already have FB MESSANGER on my phone and don't need any more messaging apps.
It just doesn't seem relevant to me any more. Or maybe I feel my contribution isn't relevant anymore, but that may be as I have been asked technical questions on things I did, such as logic programming source, that has my name and date in 1984 on it, but I just don't remember any details now. I am a different person now.
I feel something like an old retired guy that spends all his time carving little wooden birds in his workshop that no one else cares about. So he just keeps to himself doing what makes him a Happy Camper.
My Video Call Setup
I could have just used the Mic in the Logitech webcam, and listened over my small JBL speakers, but I find using the Lavalier microphone on my collar to give a better sound without room tone, especially when slightly moving about as I do in a chair. I love the sound of my AKG headphones too, so that is what I did. I am in my studio anyway. If I was a YouTuber, I would have a fancy mirrorless digital camera or whatever and a SURE SMB7 on a podcast arm, but I don't and don't care for that stuff at all.
I originally bought the cheap maono brand mic for recording my Japanese speech during practice for our sons wedding. Not for Skyping or Zooming at all. I keep it plugged into the mixer, and many of my NOT COVERS singing were recorded with it.
So looking back at 2025 in Music & Art looking at the Concerts and Art Exhibitions. It was great, in my part of the world (and very aware other places are "not great").
Mattias's FREAK GUITAR WEEKEND was a chance to get a taste of his guitar camp, and meet a few other contributors like TOKYO METAL CITY who introduced me to the CEO of Zanshin Instruments, Mr. Ishida.
I had been worried about being outclassed and out of place at a Mattias guitar camp but it was fine. I saw Ola Englund say the same thing before he actually attended a camp. His music pieces end up being guitar exercises to me where I take a few bars and go off doing my own thing from them. All good. I don't need to learn to play them like he does.
This year was not a great year for exhibitions, and assumed it was because of Osaka EXPO. That was probably true, but then the Masamune Shirow manga artwork exhibition in Tokyo was announced. Getting to see original pages, Work In Progress copies and finals actual size of the GHOST IN THE SHELL and APPLESEED manga was awesome.
The concerts were great this year, as I wrote previously. Real BUCKET LIST stuff. A sound house or theater seating up to 300 is really the kind of concert I want to attend more of now. Kyoto MOJO with up to 100 is extra special. A 1000+ venue s not for me.
TV series Manben neo had THE OTOMO interview this year and examined DOMU. I ended up getting that and all volumes of AKIRA too. It was time. I also got all English volumes of Urasawa Naoki's ASADORA released so far. That you really get to feel for the characters is something special.
In the last few months new music has been ASTERISM, MINISTRY (Moral Hygiene & Squirrel Version), STEVE VAI (Passion and Warefare) and TANGERINE DREAM.
The DJ mix-ish soundtrack in this different MUSIC+COMIC has a clip of my FREAK KITCHEN cover and a bit of my English version of Urasawa Naoki's "Yurei" from this years LOVE SONGS album, sandwiching my "Speed In Manga". Added "MUSIC: name" to show what is playing along the bottom left of the page, which is the way Japanese TV advertisements used to be. That is how I first learnt of Enya! This is is something will add moving forward.
Still considering direction to go next with MUSIC+COMICS.
This single page comic with up to 8 panels and music, but more traditionally drawn seems something I should work with. I think YouTube SHORTS are just a waste of time, as even though they get more views, the whole system is just set up to target people that don't care about what I am trying to do. And with the 8 panel comic page format ( and maybe sometimes just 3 or 4 panels in a strips), up to 3 minute songs with lyrics that mean something to me would feel better to me too. Animating the speech balloons the way I have in the last years always made them annoying to read. Changed too slow or too fast, and all on screen at once is more comic like. You can read the comic and not bother to listen to all the music if that is what you want to do.
Other Things
The Fairlight Instruments 50th Anniversary is tomorrow. That will probably be quite something in Sydney tomorrow, but I will just be ZOOMing it from Kyoto here, which I expect to be a lesser experience. I was at the small get together at the 2018 Alan Galt memorial, but they are trying to get together all the previous staff for this big one.
And here I am in the back at the Fairlight Instruments 10th Anniversary:
My main concern is making sure the cat is locked out of my room, so he doesn't interrupt proceedings. Also if the battery in the Lapel Microphone I plan to use will last, but don't expect to say much...
I am not a YouTuber so have the most basic online meeting setup.
AVATAR3 starts tomorrow. I didn't bother to see #2, and read this new one is the same story but lots of fire instead of water. They have a subtitled, NON ATMOS, BIG SCREEN 9:30AM session Monday morning next week. I don't expect going is worth the effort though.
Nagano's first manga FOOL FOR THE CITY from early 1980s published over a year in NEWTYPE is out as a new single volume 2025 Dec 24. Post WW3 AI controlled society with suppressed art & music. At his Nagoya exhibition he had the '70s FOGHAT track FOOL FOR THE CITY playing over the exhibit corner of this.
MUSIC+COMIC on “People don’t buy music” and Bandcamp.
Music here is 7 String guitar, Synths and Drums put together in Reaper DAW. Still using the POD Express GO purely as a App/Cab simulator, The ANVIL amp and Kali 4x12 cabinet.
Have had a Bandcamp account since 2011 and a Soundcloud account much longer, where we put out original music on the Internet. Neither of these places are where “ordinary people” go to listen to music, despite artists like TANGERINE DREAM & DEVLIN TOWNSEND having their whole catalogs available to play and even buy and download.
Spotify is were the majority of “ordinary people”, listeners, stream music. They don’t go anywhere else, and it seems, rarely do anything but select a music genre. Very like a Radio station back in the 1970s, were the station you selected determined what of POP, ROCK, CLASSICAL, JAZZ, EASY LISTENING or TALK, you would hear.
Bandcamp doesn’t charge anything for an account, and you can upload your music and even sell downloads and real merchandise/ CDs/ Vinyl. Listeners can play any of the music there for free too.
SPOTIFY charges to put music on it, and an Indie artist has to use a subscription service like the owned by SPOTIFYDiscokid to get their music into Spotify. For the majority, those fees are more than they ever get from Listener plays. So for the many it is a PAY TO BE PLAYED system to access the largest audience. There is a huge number of music tracks uploaded daily there now, and with almost instant AI music generation it is probably way more now.
Many do this PAY TO BE PLAYED thing.
I don’t.
I have read of an artist testing the viability of Bandcamp compared to Spotify, Apple Music and the other streaming services and found, using paid FACEBOOK advertising and the audience that implies, that even if he offered FREE DOWNLOADS of his Bandcamp music, no one would even bother to visit Bandcamp. If it wasn’t on the service they already used, they wouldn’t go elsewhere, even if free. But this targets “Listeners”, not “Music Fans”.
But then:
Fans have paid artists $1.62 billion using Bandcamp, and yesterday alone bought 78,852 records.
Part of the disconnect in this is that FACEBOOK is not a platform where advertising, or anything else is trusted anymore, and has turned to total garbage for users and advertisers. People I know rarely post any personal things there any more. I don't.
No one buys music anymore has to be prefaced by “ordinary people” or “Listeners”.
Fans do buy music, merchandise, CDs and Vinyl. I do. I know people that do. The “Listeners” don’t care particularly about music and don’t buy it either, but pay for the convenience of Spotify without advertisements.
For a musicians to sell music, they need to have “fans” though. Many musicians now have YouTube Channels and spend much time making video content, rather than original music, to build their fan base. I think this is like the X Factor Singing Contests, where viewers end up focusing on getting behind their personal stories and personality, rather than the actual music. Secondary things. Rick Beato says that is the way it is now, which maybe so, but I think they aren’t being musicians any more, but YouTube entertainers. They will get more views of a video unboxing a guitar than they will of one on any of their music!
I haven’t gone the Spotify route, and only have my material on YouTube and Bandcamp. I don’t see a bigger “possible” audience as something worth paying for. I made an ebook years ago and put it on Amazon, “the biggest possible market”, and have seen that by itself doesn’t help sell a very niche book. What I do is “niche” and not “mass market” at all.
Other Things
ZOOTOPIA was last weeks Friday night movie and I thought it was really well done. Bullying, Discrimination and trying to make a difference. The voice acting was amazing.
It used to be a post on X was visible for about 18 minutes before vanishing into the endless time line, but if you are using a free account like I am , think it is much less than that now, and disappears almost immediately. X is being very insistent I should get a Premium account, always saying how many/few the reach of my posts was and guess they have made the reach even worse as an "incentive". No way! A YouTube Short seems to be using a related algorithm now and is put out into the stream for about an hour, if it doesn’t get enough of it viewed before being swiped away, and you are not in the “favored creator” group. The time it is released is also thus so important to the number of views it gets, and have to say I don’t like that at all. Even those that make stupid thumbnail images are annoyed at how important a stupid thumbnail image is.
The last Manben neo was on mangaka Chica Umino, and my second hand copy from 2008 of MARCH COMES IN LIKE A LION #1 has arrived so I can check out this work. It is filled with Shogi, emotion, internal, external and spoken dialog. I will see what I can learn and apply to my own future works.
That Fairlight Instruments ex staff get together has turned into a much bigger 50th Anniversary celebration, but I joke I will still only be in 720p. Doing this interview made me realize I don’t remember much about those days, and am a terrible interview subject.
Received a Christmas Comic/ Card from a friend on their good and bad of 2025. Travel, surgery, exhibitions and funerals for 5 friends. Some don’t live long enough to have the experiences of the elders. So now feel we should be grateful to have these things happen to us.
Watched a very interesting Steve Vai with Billy Corgan Interview in his, The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. Would be better if Corgan didn’t interrupt his guest so much, but it gave me new insight into Steve. I haven’t been a music fan. I have a G3 Tokyo DVD with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and John Petrucci and always found Steves’s stuff less interesting to me. Skilled but lacking something to keep my interest. Have just bought his 1990 Passion & Warfare, and maybe that will change me.
It is truly shocking to see what is super popular on Social Media and YouTube. So much stupid garbage, and after seeing what the American school education system is like, leave no child behind, it is no wonder.
The year is rushing to a conclusion and we have our plans for over the year end/ New Year set with our grandson and his parents staying with us again. Doing the grandparents thing.
Expect many will be holidays now or soon too. I have one more MUSIC+COMIC ready to upload and a Mixed Media Missive to go with it, and that may be the last for 2025. May try something a bit different next time, and just forget about whatever the random changing algorithms are said to be doing, as it all seems Automated Idiocity to me.
Fairlight Instruments just turned 50! In August (or September) 1975, Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd was incorporated. Then other stuff happened.
To mark this occasion, many of the Fairlight alumni are gathering in Sydney on Friday the 19th of December to celebrate formation of this remarkable and influential company.
We have over seven (and probably more) original employees who will be joining the event virtually from all corners of the earth. Dozens more will be there in person, including many special invited guests. In many cases, these Fairlight alumni will not have seen each other in decades. Remarkably, in many other cases, we remain in constant personal and business contact, 40 years after working together in our early careers.
A website, fairlight50.au has been set up and (hopefully in the coming days) there will be an opportunity leave greeting messages and a place to share stories and memories.
We will be recording the event and compiling a video that will be posted on the website, along with photos and other media from the occasion.
If you worked at Fairlight or had a close association with Fairlight Instruments, especially in the early days and have not already been contacted, we'd love to hear from you! Please get in touch ASAP.
Let's all join in celebrating the golden jubilee of Fairlight.
So there will a get together in Sydney at Cicada Innovations December Friday 19th 2025 to celebrate the company and what it became with staff, customers and well wishers.
I will be ZOOMing in from Kyoto, as will a few others, I have been told. Not the most interesting way to attend a party I expect and I have never been a party person either.
I am proud of what I did there 1981 till 1986. But it was only 6 years early in my career. Forgotten many of the details of what I worked on now too. But I achieved far more technically than I did in 15 years at Roland Japan...
I threw away all the memorabilia like copies of my hand drawn schematics and lab note books 7 years ago now during downsizing to move back to Japan. So I have nothing much to show or jog my memory of what happened when, other than a few photos, unsorted in a box.
Had kept the info for so long and found no one cared, until now. Too late.
There are a few people very nostalgic for the machines, but I am not like that at all. Even when I worked there, I had little access to a machine and never used one once my initial year involved in testing and assembling customer machines was over. What I used for development was just the computer part of a CMI in a RACK, never a whole CMI.
Loved what artists like Jean Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield and everyone else did with them though, and collected those albums.
A 4 track cassette recorder, guitar, bass, drum machine and synth were my own musical direction then. Not really so much different from now, other than being all in for PC based music production using the Reaper DAW.
But the first products Fairlight made were things like the SLEEPING DOG CAR ALARM. Not as glamorous as later things were to be.
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.
Amp Captures and Cabinet IRs "FEELS" all like SAMPLING was in the 1980s. Large collections of captures/samples and not being able to find or change what you have. Feel Modelers/ Synthesizers will not be forgotten for long, and having the most "realistic" amp/cabinet sound will not be as shiny as it is now.
Neural AMP Modeler (NAM) is pretty cool, but getting "your sound" is by downloading and trying out lots of different files, rather than turning a few knobs in a modeler. That it is free must have really impacted many companies in that space.
Such as the TONEX ONE for example, is a tiny hardware pedal that is very much like the NAM. It is not free though. You download up to 20 amp/cabinets or distortion pedals/overdrives into it and can switch between them.
A problem (but some see it as a feature!) is there are 1000s to choose from, and there is that FEAR OF MISSING OUT, that you haven't tried the latest files, as "they maybe better".
I think I prefer the sound I have using the ANVIL amp in my POD Express Black at the moment though. A modeler, not a capture of a real AMP/Cabinet setup.
But I also don't think of myself as a guitarist.
Other Things
Was contacted yesterday about an ex Fairlight Instruments get together in Sydney Friday afternoon Jan 19th. Last chance "while we are all still alive". Myself and a few other will ZOOM it to Sydney. Last time I met a few old colleagues was at the memorial for Alan Galt in 2018. I didn't recognize many!
Avatar 3 hits the cinemas here next week, but I don't think I will go. I didn't see the last one as it required a fair commitment just for the length of it. This one is maybe even longer. Saw the first one in 3D at the cinema with my two youngest and we all hated the glasses and could not keep wearing them. It wasn't till it was actually on TV that I really watched it. The VFX may be awesome, but I really don't care at the moment.
56 second MUSIC+COMIC on remixing, using a remix of last SHORT music. Lots of gratuitous abstract animation here. Took over 3 hours, which is a lot for one of these. I just kept on coming up with something else to add to keep it more animated than usual. Our cat in recent years is my constant companion, and he selected me as his full time live in staff.
Kraftwerk the MIX isn’t the only remix that has impressed me though.
CAN’T YOU TRIP LIKE I DO from the SPAWN soundtrack had a real impact, and made me realize a metal version was just as valid an approach as the more common DJ HipHop style.
Another is CASSIAN’s GREAT SOUTHERN LAND
And to not forget the remix of Freak Kitchen’s EVERYBODY GETS BLOODY
Or even the Teddy Riley remix of Jane Child’s I Don't Wanna Fall In Love .
But all those is too much to put in a 56 second music comic. Far too much text.
I have a 2017 issue of COMPUTER MUSIC with a few articles on THE ART OF REMIXING. None of those ideas mentioned in that are used in this track, except for the arrow and line graphics featured. But very educational otherwise, to a different music world.
I only ever bought 5 issues of COMPUTER MUSIC magazine, but am grateful to the creators. It was the right thing, at the right time for me. It was the COMPUTER MUSIC SPECIAL 07 2007, THE ULTIMATE FREE HOME STUDIO, with the CD-ROM on the cover that introduced me to the world of VSTs. Buying that magazine was a great investment for me. We had dial up INTERNET and we had exceeded our contracts limit much of the time, so having stuff on CD-ROM was awesome.
Also pretty much made what hardware manufacturers like Roland were doing irrelevant to me. I think the same thing happened to many other music creators too.
I updated my POD EXPRESS BLACK presets to have a more aggressive LEAD sound in this and the last track. I don’t use any of the delay, modulation or reverb options on offer. Would use a pitch shifter if it had one sometimes though, but the new BOSS Poly Shifter costs more than this whole unit. The Reaper project now also has additional guitar tracks for using my NO CAB presets and adding and mixing cabinet IRs in Reaper. I have yet to find I use more than 3 presets. My ANVIL sound, and my ANVIL lead sound, and the same without the cabinets.
Something in my head keeps saying "But maybe you should try the Line6 HX STOMP" but I just know I would only use the same 3 presets. Would it sound better though? Maybe a little, but no one watching this for a few seconds would care at all! And as the Yen exchange rate is really poor at the moment, the best price I have seen for it is ¥89,100, which is more than double what I paid for my most expensive guitar, which just screams all kind of wrong priorities to me too.
YouTube showed me some guys HX STOMP’s 5 favorite guitar amps and the settings he used. Cool, but in the context of a piece of music, It would not make any difference to a listener which “rock guitar” sound he used in original music. But what this is about is how it makes the Player feel, and that impacts the performance, and the listener can probably hear that. Same goes for the guitar itself, and all the other stuff “guitarists” fuss about.
It seems needing all these different guitar tones is possibly about the different styles of music, and covers, they play. I don’t really do that, and am after “my sound”. If I do play a sound alike cover, I still want it to sound like me, so all the guitar sounds on the original songs do not interest me.
I had downloaded Neural Amp Modeler and Amp/Cabinet files a few weeks ago and hadn't tried it till today. Here comparing it to AMPSTEIN. I have never before just recorded straight guitar and then applied the amp/cabinet.
Neural Amp Modeler gives you the sound of the system that was analyzed.
Other Things
Last weekend was a long weekend, with Monday a public holiday. I posted the STUDIO VS LIVE Short to You Tube Sunday morning, and Tuesday morning 11AM has had 325 views, so back to the idea a Sunday post is best. 65% of viewers stay to watch the first half.
Drivers License renewed for 5 years. Only 2 hours door today Wednesday morning. This is due to only having a 30 minute safe driving video/ lecture this time rather than the 3 hours for a new license.
GOLDEN - From the K-POP Demon Hunters animated film must surely be some type of Master Course in making a catchy pop song.
Just caught part of RICK BEATO’s video on what he wants to do on his channel next. Mostly not traveling and doing interviews any more. More back to what he originally did on his channel, like film scoring and production, music education and song breakdowns, but NOT what makes this song great. I haven’t watched most of his famous musician interviews, as that doesn’t particularly interest me. Survival Biase is a thing. His producer, recording engineer type things have been more interesting to me, but I also don’t care about mic-ing a drum kit or piano. If what does helps me do my own thing, and inspires, that would be good.
A music comic thrown together this morning. After doing a rather rocking short thing on 7 string yesterday and wanting to check SUNDAY posting of shorts some more.
I saw Neil's thoughts on his Studio CD preference on Facebook or Twitter some time ago, and even though I have looked, I haven't been able to find it again. I had agreed with what he said.
I mostly prefer Studio produced CDs too, but this year changed me. I attended 3 concerts in Japan and the sound and facilities are so much better than what I endured way back when in Sydney. Also I attended 2 smaller concerts with Urasawa Naoki + Band and ASTERISM and they were much more like a personal performance, they were so close.
I am very much a Studio guy for my own things. Making my music and producing is rather like painting to me. But I can see that very much depends who you would be performing with if you didn't just use backing tracks, but anxiety is a thing for me about that kind of thing.
The music in this was a very quick 7 string guitar and synth thing. Basically 4 guitar riffs, where 1 is repeated a lot. I like it though, and the guitar tone from the Line 6 POD EXPRESS BLACK.
Manben Neo #21
Urasawa Naoki's latest Manga Study on Chica Umino was on last night. I always learn something interesting in these. The way she has text doing 3 different things in a panel is interesting, and not just caption, speech and sound effects. Outlining in green pen in color illustrations is something else too. But is it all a reaction to her own school trauma?! 😮
How about that. X videos are now up to 140 seconds for the free accounts and YouTube Shorts AND Instagram REELs up to 3 minutes. When did that happen? Seems like yesterday I tried to upload a video a tiny bit over 60s and it failed. But Shorts where changed to allow up to 3 minutes in October 2024, 12 months ago. I just don't keep up with the comings and goings of social media.
Still seems the average viewers attention span is under 18 seconds though... 😂
So this is a 2 minute MUSIC+COMIC on having a music collection and buying music (CDs, Vinyl and MP3s) to own.
I started with vinyl records in the '70s, and was in a record club. I was so happy when CDs came out. No fizz, clicks and pops! Also took up much less space and less of a dance performance to get them out of the sleave and onto a turntable and cue the stylus to actually play it. I sold my turntables and all but 2 of my 136 vinyl albums before moving back to Japan in 2019.
I think buying the music you listen to makes it mean more to you. The CDs I bought this year were of artists I saw live and even met. I would call Urasawa Naoki an Independent Artist, as he is actually a famous Comic Creator and musician isn't his fulltime job. I am all for supporting that.
I will sometimes use SPOTIFY or YOUTUBE to check out an artist I have just learnt about, to see if I want to get more familiar with them. Like I have known about BABYMETAL for ages, but hadn't listened. Listened to a few tracks in the last couple of days and the band is awesome, and that the singers are cute girls is just very Japan. Very different from ASTERISM, my current band on constant rotation.
When out and about in recent years, I put tracks and a handful of albums on my SHARP Android Phone and use the PULSAR music player with JBL Earbuds or SHOKZ open units, depending on how noisy the place I am in is and environmentally aware I need to be. That is so if my wife calls me about something, I will get the call, and missing calls is a problem if I use my X1 MP3 Player.
I don't need my entire music collection instantly available everywhere I go. The same few albums and track collections is all I need for many months at a time, before feeling I need to change anything. For the last 6 weeks I have been mostly playing ASTERISM albums, and occasionally going back to some of my own ASSORTED MUSICAL BITS.
Other Things
Found that just releasing a YouTube short just on a Sunday made only a small difference to how many views it got. Not enough for me to not go back and post at random times as is what I have normally done. So here we are, posting on a Wednesday morning!
Came across Indie, Over 50 on YouTube asking a question I talk about every so often on this blog. Why keep creating things and putting them out, when "no one but a few friends cares?". That channels focus is on being An Older Indie Musician/Band trying to connect with an audience, with a dream of maybe making it. Helps with promoting such musicians with YouTube and Spotify etc. playlists. I left a comment, even if it isn't exactly my focus, even if I do have a BEST OF ALBUMon Bandcamp of my simplistic music 😀.
I will be 67 in a couple of weeks! We decided on where our ashes will go after cremation a week or so ago, and have to organize to pay for that tomorrow. Not that we have an expiration date or anything, and we are fine.
Hey! Look at all those Shills! The LINE 6 HELIX STADIUM is released and seems like dozens of YouTubes are gushing all over it today. LINE 6 didn't send me one for free though, so you will not see a video like that from me. I paid for my LINE6 POD EXPRESS BLACK. I also have a BASS FLOOR POD I bought many years ago at a very low price at a local music store. Assumed it was too complicated for any bass players. I use it for 2 sounds and is great for me.
A new Rick Beato video this morning, Where Have All The Metalheads Gone? Japan has a lot of metal (and every other style) bands, and I think part of that is there are a lot of guitar players here, so do get exposed to everything. I think it was after I started playing the guitar again in 2006 or so that I found metal (Metallica, Megadeth Avenged Seven Fold and the others in the guitar magazines), and that was even cooler than the hard rock I thought I was. So I agree that playing the guitar is the place to get exposed to all the variations of guitar music. Rick Beato is also in "middle 'merica". In Trump country. Very much evident in his video on his trip to Japan and the music scene there, and much of his older top hits videos, where much of what he went over was SO American centric and not what was big in PUB ROCK Australia of my High School days. Like America had no Slade or Mark Bolan T-REX in the charts, but they were big in Australia and Japan.
Easily Fooled
Our ears are easily fooled. The MP3 encoder relies on it. Higher level frequencies mask lower level near by frequencies. HI-GAIN guitars in a mix can hide issues in my music too. Something can sound fine on headphones or full range speakers, yet some notes can have timing or pitch issues when played back on a laptop or phone speaker.
I got out these tiny PC speakers again and updated them too Bluetooth with a Nobsound NS-01G as another mix checking tool in the last weeks. Helped with hearing some issues in a couple of 8 bar sections in the music in the extended Short here. These speakers originally had garbage 3” 4 ohm drivers in them, picked them up during an office junk clean up. I replaced the drivers with JAYCAR 1” 8 ohm units some 8 years ago. For some reason, just putting a band limiting EQ on the monitor bus in Reaper for my main monitors doesn’t prove as revealing as these do. I have them across the other side of the room.
Under 60 second MUSIC + COMIC on our current music production system. I have always DI’ed my guitars and have never mic’ed an amplifier. The only guitar amplifier I have is a micro Orange practice unit, and rarely use it now. It just makes too much noise, and I rarely practice. Making something is my practice.
This MUSIC + COMIC has a few extra irrelevant things going on in it to see if it can keep the attention of the general viewer for more than a few seconds on YouTube in the SHORTs feed.
Have a few Distortion Pedals. Even an old MXR and a Boss DISTORTION & FEEDBACKER, and man, that BOSS thing is terrible. Have bought things like the METAL CORE and Mackie Mixer second hand. Happy enough using the ANVIL Amplifier and large cabinet in the Pod Express Black recently.
I don’t use any of the Pods effects or stereo, as I add that during the mix with vsts. I can also use just the Pod amp and turn off the cabinet, and use the IR loaders I have. I just haven’t needed to do that yet. But it will come a time I will want to change things up a bit. Would love a HX STOMP but expect the HI-GAIN extra amp and cabinet options, especially in mono without effects the way I use it, would go UN-noticed in my finished tracks anyway.
Until moving to the Windows 11 GTUNE MOUSE PC I was using a Roland Rubix22 and Cakewalk audio interface. I could still use the Rubix as there is a WIn11 driver, but it isn’t great. I hate that input level indicator. The control of volume between use in the DAW and standard Video and Animation applications isn’t consistent either, which makes it tedious. So PC LINE IN, LINE OUT, ASIO4all and a Mackie mixer are what I am using at at the moment. The mixer has phantom power for condenser microphones (like my audio-technica AT2020), and a real level meter.
The basic noise floor of the Mackie Mixer -> PC LINE IN with nothing plugged into the mixer.
The noise component when you plug anything in becomes 60Hz mains hum some -68dB down. Irrelevant for a Hi-Gain Guitar and even my vocals.
I started my music production career in earnest with a TASCAM PORTAONE, so compared to that, my current system is “perfect”. For many years I used a BEHRINGER MC100 into the line in of my PC for guitar and microphone interfacing.
Use an audio-technica AT-HAZ to drive headphones (love my AKG K702) and that also connects to JBL104 tiny powered monitors. I can power on Just the Headphones or speakers if I want, and most of the time it is just headphones. My studio is so tiny, there isn’t room for any larger monitors, or room treatment. I use headphones A LOT. I use the mastering spectrum analyzer and larger tower speakers in a larger room to check how I am going. Also have room simulator for the headphones and other things.
This is all very much a lowcost music gear approach. I don’t need an expensive Neve Microphone Preamp, compressor or EQ. Wouldn’t be any audible difference for what I do.
In years past, checking music in the car was the best, but I almost don’t drive any more, and it is now a different car I haven’t spent 100s of hours listening to on long commutes to and from work. These days I don’t hear anything above 12kHz at all, and have some big dips in my hearing too, so I don’t hear like I used too and don’t trust my own ears. ( I also go out of my way to protect what hearing I have and not get Tinnitus, like lots of people I know have. I use Ear Plugs when appropriate ). The SPAN spectrum Analyzer in mastering mode is thus a significant too to check the balance of what I'm doing and how much spectrum individual tracks are using.
I use the REAPER DAW, with a bunch of effects and VST synthesizers, such as SURGE XT and ZebraHZ with a KORG microKEYS keyboard. Have an old Roland PC-180 too, I bought with a staff discount, but it takes up too much space now and the key touch is terrible. I think BOSS and Roland aren’t competitive for what I am after these last decades, and haven’t been value for a long time (since the TR-606 anyway, which I used in my 4 track days). I also have a KORG MS-20 mini, a real analog synth. Bought second hand.
Most guitarists will have at least 4 tracks of guitars. I have done that in the past, but recently I have one rhythm track and one lead track. Keeping it very simple, more Van Halen style than heavy metal.
The music I put on these music + comics is slapped into a limiter to make it loud and stand out. Very much like a TV advertisement. A longer track doesn't need to be slammed anywhere near as much as these short things.
At the present time, only YouTube Shorts get any views so that is why we keep with the 60 second music tracks. They also go on X with my “I am not paying for X!” account.
When I started my YouTube channel, I used it for slide shows with music of my illustrations, like this:
I still do the same, with the music as support most of the time. So I identify with the pronoun PRODUCER, rather than GUITARIST or MUSICIAN.
This blog post and Short upload to YouTube will be the 3rd week in a row I am waiting till Sunday afternoon Japan time to post. This seems to be what YouTube is encouraging, and I will see if that is contestant with last weeks results or not. Also the 3rd time to write the post in Scriven first, rather than in the Blogger online editor. For the last years, I have just uploaded stuff when I finished it, which more often than not, was a weekday morning. Many have had very few views. It also means I get to review the result over a few days before I finally post it, and I think that has probably made the results a little better (or may be just busier) too, with added, interesting details I may be the only one to notice.
But in the end, I make these things for my own entertainment and how I fill a few days a week of my remaining time in retirement. I’m not trying to “grow my channel” as all the tedious YouTubers say. I am not a YouTuber, but having stuff seen is nicer.
Dangerous Advice
On a related note, was shown a YouTube video yesterday about mixing on headphones, and their advice was to play it at a loud 85dB to judge, and that 8 hours at that level was safe.
My first thought was “what level do I listen at?”. So made a quick foam jig to hold a Sound Level Meter in one ear pad, with the ear pad sealed (even though these are open back headphones ).
Played BROWN NOISE and MUSIC and found I listen at a very low level. 60dB is VERY loud, and 85dB is like head crushingly loud!
The advice is 85dB is “safe for 8 hours” but really, that will result in ear damage if you do that often.
Random Things
After really enjoying Predator Badlands last week, I realized I had never seen the first Predator (1987) movie. It is on PRIME and watched it during the week and it is quite a thriller. 1987 was the year I first moved to Japan with a young son and wife. A really busy time. 38 years ago and all a bit of a blur now.
Facebook reminds me I bought EQUINOXE INFINITY CD 7 years ago. Love Jean Michel Jarre's music. In my own stuff I try and do RIFF based heavy guitar with things somewhat inspired by his kind of sequencer and melodic synths. But not always 😁 .
I see on Facebook some in my year in High School had a 49th get together at a local pub. What was alarming were the reasons some that wanted to go but couldn't travel. Dialysis, Radiotherapy, recovering from a head wound needing 10 stitches and other things. These things happen to everyone, and 8 years ago I had my turn in Hospital, and glad to be fine at the moment.
Thinking the next one of these MUSIC+COMICs I do could be on the making of the animation in this one, but we will see what else strikes me as interesting in the coming week.
Update: 2025/1/17. Monday shows many only watch the above Short for 2 seconds, so it seems what I tried to do didn't work at all, and one on making the MUSIC+COMIC is probably NOT a good idea at all. Whatever it is, already done a very guitar piece of music for it.
And I always find just posting a picture, like this of our guitars, gets far more reaction than anything I make with them, like a MUSIC+COMIC😞.
