Listeners don’t buy music, Fans Do: Bandcamp

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,  were 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 SPOTIFY Discokid 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 views 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, 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. 

Bought and downloaded the 320kbps TANGERINE DREAM - BOTANIQUE ORANGERIE SESSION 2022   Love this, particularly when the sequencers are running. A break from ASTERISM and my own recent tracks.

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. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Fairlight Instruments 50th Anniversary: The Origin Of Sampling and Music Workstations

 

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. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Speed In Manga

 

 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

The Son Of The AMP Modeler That Ate My Wallet

 

All feels like Déjà vu. 

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.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

The Remix

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.  

Have put this bit of music on Bandcamp in our Assorted Bits 3 Album.

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.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Studio vs Live Music

 

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?! 😮

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

The Music Collection Not Streamed

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 ALBUM on 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. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Our Music Production Setup (Mostly)

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😞.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Where The Smoke comes out: A Collection Of Memories Comic

 

Under 60 second MUSIC + COMIC on our collection of memories. It isn’t an autobiography at all.  I can’t overstate that enough.

In 2001 I originally thought a book on my Oz Music Tech, Japan Music Tech then back to Oz journey as an autobiography might be interesting, but it didn’t take long via my website to discover that no one was interested. 

Some 10 years later I wrote a Kindle book about making car cartoons and put it on Amazon and discovered I wouldn’t go that route again either. The volume needed before you ever saw a payout was far too high for a niche book that wasn’t getting any significant promotion (and the give it away free for the initial promotion meant 1,000s had it anyway). 

A few years later I did the Heavy Metal Garage Car Cartoon webcomic hosted on my own website, all free to read  and discovered that was the direction for me.  

Some 10 years after that a short comic of just history and memories was something I felt like doing. I started it in a small apartment we rented after retiring/ downsizing in preparing to move back to Japan in 2019.  I just hosted it on our website like I did the webcomic using the same basic php comic viewer. All free to read.  That approach meant I didn’t need to write it all at once and can add and change it whenever I feel like it.  It received enough views, but more importantly, positive comments, to keep going. Only a handful, but that was enough.  

I really like this
I really enjoyed your short comic
love your comic
This is really interesting
Fascinating stuff and great fun to read!
Thoroughly enjoyed it
This is fascinating !!!
Awesome!!!!
Great read, thanks for sharing!
It's an incredible insight as to how technology develops

A key feature is it is short. Only 40 pages! 

The CBR format came later. Must say I have no idea if that format of My Collection Of Memories has been read by anyone the way I host it, but do know constant website accesses from China indicates it is being used to train their AIs.  

Not something I am going to fuss about though, as a retired guy just doing music & comics for fun.   

Wife had an old friend stay over the weekend, and I went to the Cinema last Friday. This week I have nothing I have to do, and that feels really good. I can ignore the rest of the world, and do whatever I want in the studio.

An Illustration? Painting? Comic? Music? Music+Comic? or something else?

What I did do is connect the "new" win11 PC (it is 3.5 months old) to the SONY mini combo HIFI with tower speakers in the next room via BT.  I have small JBL104s in my studio, and all I use ( mostly )with my AKG702 headphones in mixing and producing my music tracks.  But sometimes want to hear how it sounds on bigger speakers, not that it matters much now.  

I think very few people now actually listen to music on loudspeakers any more at home, and if they do it is just background music over something like a small Bluetooth speaker. Maybe the only place that people do listen to music via speakers is in their car. That was true for me. Car stereos are also still a thing, unlike the very niche home HiFi.

Studio or Live?

Musical instrument makers and sellers in Japan are all about live performance. Roland always was too. Expect being an introvert is part of the reason that has never interested me. Same reason I had no interest in being in a school play or performance and being on stage.  In the last couple of years, going to music events in Japan, I ask myself again would I want to perform on stage, as I do seem to be at odds with most who desire to be on stage. No, that is just Anxiety-On-A-Stick to me. The stress when hitting "record" on my own is enough! To me, a complete recorded piece of music is the goal , not just a keyboard or guitar part. 

New Manben Neo

The next TV episode of Manben Neo Urasawa Naoki told us was coming November during his concert chat will be on NHKe Nov 22 at 10PM on mangaka Chica Umino. I had not heard of her before this announcement, and I need to check out what she has done.  

Google Tricks

UPDATE: Wednesday 2025/11/12 The short above has gotten more views then anything recently, but this is purely algorithmically driven with google shaking my chain, as  "encouragement" for posting more consistently.

More views, but most only watch for 13seconds and there have been no likes.  

Yet to put this music track on Bandcamp. Seems little point, but expect I will anyway. No one goes to Bandcamp to stream music, let alone download it.  Maybe this video short is the best format for it.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Heavy Metal Garage Single Panel Comics

 

Under 60 second MUSIC + COMIC on our first single panel car comics. I did around 47 single panel car joke comics as a webcomic before I decided it wasn’t getting any increase of readership and I should move on to something else instead. This all in my spare time in 2014, as I made a living doing electronics and software engineering.  They are mostly based on the format used in the Non Sequitur comic strip. A single illustration with text in 2 parts, where many are jokes.  I tried a few art styles with them. Very rough sketchy pen photoshop colored. Clean black marker photoshop colored, and black marker with watercolor.

You need to spend far more time promoting and networking anything you make than you do making stuff, and that just doesn’t interest me. Never has.  

"An artists job, he said, was maybe 30% making art, and 70% selling your self to those rich enough to buy art."

The music in this is 8 and 7 string guitars, drums and synths. Using the same instruments and track arrangement as the recent others. I just haven’t tired of this setup yet.  I don’t spend much time worrying about the mixing and mastering either anymore. If it sounds alright to me at the moment, and looks reasonable on the SPAN spectrum analyzer in mastering mode it is good to go.  I expect the few people that watch the MUSIC + COMICs are doing so on their phone over the phone’s speaker. Maybe they are using earbuds is the best I could expect, and I do make sure nothing is panned 100% left or right.  “No highs, no lows, it must be B0SE”, is all completely fine for the majority, and  BOSE have done so well not comparing themselves to others.

YouTube shorts get far more views than just music tracks on Bandcamp ever do.  But the YouTube algorithm keeps on changing.  Three years ago, that was in the 1,000s, but now some 300 is all we can expect maximum.  More often just single digit views.  It seems I get the most views at the moment, I need to post so that they hit America/Europe Saturday/ Sunday night. If post at other times, it just doesn’t get seen. 

My YouTube channel's MUSIC VIDEO playlist has 165 of my videos in it, but has only had 108 views. 

YouTube changes to AI driven algorithm, programming and content creation seems to be pushing out human involvement completely. 

A few YouTubers have gone into that, such as EEVBlog  . Feel lucky I don’t need to make a living from it and lost interest trying to comply with their ever changing requirements on creators 10 years ago.  Have an old blog post on that downward trending views and website hits of Googles constant algorithm changes, and their constantly falling shared their profits & “bait and switch”.

Not all my MUSIC + COMICs get put on YouTube though. The ones that have a cover song type track are only for X, as that seems the only place along with my own blog, where that is still okay to do.  Not being someone that chases followers, most don’t get noticed. But I make them because I need too.

Predator Badlands

Saw Predator Badlands opening session Friday here and loved it. The runt of the litter (the Predator actor is only 7' 4" tall) succeeds through friendship. The connection with the ALIEN universe via WEYLAND-YUTANI corporation all makes sense.  The music is also awesome.  

The subtitles were especially great. There are a lot of subtitles. A line of Japanese over a line of English for Predator spoken language, and just the Japanese for the spoken English. All in the same font and color. Many subtitled foreign films in Japan, only ever have the Japanese.  

I never went to see any Predator movie at the cinema before, but did this time because it isn't like the others. Those old Predator movie die-hards seem to hate this one for doing it wrong, but from my POV, it has been done very right. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Car Comics: Pen on Ink, Black and White

 

Our car comics, pen on paper & vector drawn.   Just one of those things I wanted to do.  The music is heavy 8 string fan fret guitar and synths this time in Lydian 145BPM. Since getting the Line 6 Pod Express Black, I hadn't used the 8 string that much, as to me, I find the DROP 7 string the sweet spot.

These comics are all from 2022. 

I feel I did all the interesting cars back then, and all the similar comics I started since, just didn't have that "something" they needed for me to continue very far with them.  

The comics are all free to down load here from our website in CBR format.  It needs a CBR reader, but I find them very useful for PDF too.  In my own case, a CBR file is just a .zip archive of sequentially numbered jpeg images of the pages with the extension changed. They should really be .CBZ files, but the readers don't care, so for the longest time I didn't notice.  

Also did this music + comic too a few days ago:

It was pretty much ignored on social media.  Even more ignored than usual. 

Both of these music + comics are rather about the guitar tone. I just love that metal guitar sound, even if I'm not much of a metal guitarist. I am about "music production", not "being a guitarist".  The Pod Express Black ANVIL amp with large cabinet and no effects is THE guitar sound for me at the moment. The ANVIL amp is said to be based on the HX STOMP's BADONK, but I expect simplified somehow.  IS the HX's version more awesome I sometimes wonder? I don't record guitar parts with effects. They are added when MIXing in my Reaper DAW. CHORUS, REVERB, DELAY, FLANGING, EQ and everything else are plugins.   

Had  Booster Vaccinations early last week and we found it really knocked us about for a few days, so after all the business of the week before, had a rather relaxed, pained week.

I find I usually am really into some Album, or collection of tracks from an artists Albums I like and play them constantly for weeks, while walking, sitting in a cafe or drying the dishes.  In recent weeks that has been ASTERISM. A month ago it was URASAWA NAOKI constantly.  

I have also tried listening to the 3 FREAK AUDIO LAB'S RESIST THE CORROSION tracks from YouTube on repeat.  They are so awkward sounding for me at the moment, and I can't listen very long before going back to something from ASTERISM or even my own tracks. I can't buy the album (as don't have one of the FREAK KITCHEN online store payment options without asking Mattias personally to take my PayPal!), and there may be some tracks I will love on it, but don't know yet. Not sure why though, as I can listen to similar strange tracks on the previous GROW YOU'RE OWN MUSTACHE release and do get into them.

Have already started recording guitar parts for the next 60 second music comic, even though I have nothing I want to say with it at the moment. Nothing unusual about that though. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Live Music 2025, So Far...

So this music + comic tells the story in 60 seconds. Been to more live shows this year than have in the last decades. Been very good.

Being in Japan has a lot to do with that though, where there are lots of LIVE HOUSES all over the place. Very different from Sydney Australia now. But in the 1970s, all the pubs had live bands a few days a week. A pity all those stages were eventually all replaced by Poker Machines, and live music pretty much died.

Know of a few shows that I wouldn't mind attending in the rest of the year too, but will see.  I don't have the energy I had in the 1970s and need to pace myself.  I wonder what next year will bring, and expect, as I now follow the local venues, I will get to more earlier next year. I just want to be familiar with a bands music before I see them live.

I feel privileged to have gotten to see the bands I have this year. Getting Freak Kitchen to Japan for a show was dedication from an "amateur promoter". Urasawa Naoki is a Comic Creator, with this serious music "hobby", and he put a band together and toured, without any big promoter behind him. ASTERISM is on SONY, but that they still play in small venues like Kyoto MOJO is something I don't understand, but thankful for.  HAL-CA of ASTERISM is a extra ordinary guitarist, but the whole band is technically awesome.

The 60 second, 150 BPM music in this is me trying to be a bit more old school metal riff, while still having sequenced synths and a simple interesting melody, that rocks.  A longer piece edited down to this length.  

Last week was very busy for us. Needed to visit the Australian Consulate, get the Cat Trimmed on the other side of the city, select our "final resting places" and get a vaccine booster.  Much more than a normal week for us. 

I have no idea how I ever had a full time job AND did all that I had too, back in the day. 

AND have learnt of the music of SLEEP TOKEN in the last few days via YouTube suggestions. Seemed to come out of nowhere to me, but been around since 2016. Watched a few song breakdowns and listened to their most popular tracks playlist. Great voice where the lyrics are so important (even if mostly sad school boy), the rhythms, the word play, then the drums, then heavy guitars (down tuned 6 semi tones?) and production. Very start stop/ high energy/ pop/funk/jazz/ hip-hop/ black metal/ weird time signatures. One could say unnecessarily so.  What has stuck me most is the voice and wordy lyrics, then "anything goes" for the backing. 

The referral algorithm doesn't seem to work anywhere near as well as it did. Get offered the same videos I have seen and lots of rubbish I don't care for. If you want someone to tell you to think something, while wasting a lot of time doing it, YouTube is for you! 

I have stopped looking at MASTODON, and have pretty much stopped posting on Bluesky at the moment. There didn't seem to be any point posting anything on them for some time, so now just on X and Facebook again, with some of my music + comics posted on YouTube as well. I get so tired of social media. So many talking constantly about that that is not worth hearing. 

Our website has had no enquires for the last 6 months and I put that down to Google now being completely useless and now so focused on Advertising.  Get so much spam though, flogging AI site views.  Seems our site is now constantly having Wordpress login attempts in various directories, and feel lucky my site doesn't use Wordpress at all.  

Oh, look at that. I have to go renew my drivers license. Maybe next week.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

1 Minute Music

 

60 second music is what I have been mostly playing with in the last few years. Something for X, YouTube Shorts and X. Anything longer than that becomes a YouTube standard video or Bandcamp track where almost no one will hear it. 60 seconds or under will get at least 2 digit views, which is a triumphant success for me.  Even if I do it just for myself anyway.

Everything starts as an adlibbed recording that is much longer than that though. Sometimes I set out to make a new piece of music, but somedays what I do isn't worth keeping. It just doesn't have that something I need to finish it.  If I do manage to record something I like, that forms the basic musical structure.  Making no more than 60 seconds isn't easy. The majority play no more than 18 seconds, so as short as that is fine too, except I can't say anything in a cartoon, but the majority aren't reading what I am saying anyway. 

In the above image the music to the left of the selected bits are the early version of a complete track, and is about 90 seconds.  Has the heavy guitar and synth feeling I am after.

It is an interesting exercise to make something very short. It is also interesting to make a 3 ~4 minute song too, for my own entertainment.

It is about all I use my gear for now, and that is fine.  

I also put it in the Assorted Bits 2 album on Bandcamp.

It will now be a few days before I need to do it all again with a new theme... and at the moment, I have no idea what that would be.  I will be doing something like walking around in the Supermarket, or in the shower, and get an idea about something.

That is not just a variation of an previous music + comic:

Concert Thoughts

The audience hall and stage of the live house Kyoto MOJO is probably the smallest I have ever been too.  Then I see pictures of the Osaka Smashing Pumpkins gig and the huge hall there, and I am glad there are smaller venues like MOJO or even the larger CLUB QUATTRO Umeda.  Makes for a much more intimate concert, where you can see the performers close up.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Mid October 2025 Update

 

So did this 60 second guitar and synths piece, CRYSTALS. I animated some bits from this poster I did for my comic. All very Moebius Crystals, clouds and vast sky...

I guess it is interesting enough for one 60 second viewing...

Today is Windows 10 end of support.  My Win10 PC is a Netflix/PRIME player attached to a TV at the moment, but see how long that lasts, before I just connect this Win11 PC instead and clear up some room space. 

Been reflecting on the events I attended this year, art shows, music concerts, and a music + art concert. The most I have ever done. Hadn't attended a concert for some 30 years before this year. Not including our daughters piano recitals, or a Kabuki Dance thing attended at the Kyoto Noh Theater a few year ago, or Mattias's guitar clinic at Music Bar M last year. 

I intend to keep going to the things that interest me for as long as I can physically go. It is what I like to do. Not interested in a world cruise or something like that. Traveled enough during my working life. It is getting harder though. Just don't have the energy to keep going all day.  Need a grandad nap most days and have to pace myself. Like when I went to Shinjuku this year, after travelling there from Kyoto and attending the exhibition, I could do nothing but rest in my hotel room till the evening.  I could have met up with a few people I know from X, but just didn't have the energy, so didn't even try.   

Spent the last 4 days getting and listening to ASTERISM albums. Very impressive. The book that is part of PLANET OF METAL is a bright and colorful on good paper. Illustrations ANIME styled fare. Just maybe the story fragments could have had a little more thought involved in the writing? Seems all too simplistic. The groups playing though is incredible.

Out and about, listening to music with earbuds, I really enjoy Urasawa Naoki's lyrics. He takes care that you can understand what he is singing. I find that important. Mattias Eklundh also has lyrics to listen too.

Saw that TESTAMENT has a new album, a Thrash Metal group I had never heard the music of, and so had a bit of a listen. Unfortunately, like THE HAUNTED, they have METAL GROWL vocals, and that isn't my thing at all. Both of these bands do the way Ola Englund does metal riffs. Seems to be the modern way, but they seem more important for their rhythmic aspect than the notes they use. I guess I prefer old style metal riffs.  

AND, next week, the awesome Mattias IA Eklundh releases his other band's album, RESIST THE CORROSION. He has put a couple of tracks on YouTube, but it is all too free jazz for me, unfortunately. At least so far.  Being online shopping CC challenged, it isn't something I can just order from his store anyway, but maybe for later when available to purchase locally.  That is what I had to do to buy his EVERYBODY GETS BLOODY CD.    

Boring things are also part of life still.  Have to verify who we are to our Australian Bank for an account we have had for some 30+ years. As we are now living overseas means a visit to the Consulate General to certify documents to mail to them. And the wait time for our Consulate appointment is weeks longer than the deadline the bank gave us 😂.    

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN