The Mystery

 

A very different SHORT for me this week on the inscrutable SHORT algorithms and why am I making stuff and subjecting myself to the whims of Google/YouTube. Featuring ME! 

Recent view numbers of our MUSIC + COMICS SHORT have been really bizarre. [irony] It just doesn't make sense. A Mystery indeed . Wonderful... [/irony]

Last weeks Fake Kyoto FM remix12 did fine again.  It just doesn't make any sense and feel am just having my chain yanked, and don't want to play this game anymore. Even though I know it has never been a level playing field anyway.

I have never been "A YouTuber".  

At first YouTube was a place to share some videos explaining Stratocaster Shielding and Making a AURATONE like speaker and I embed them in my own website around 2010, but I mostly had slide shows of my illustrations with one of my instrumental 3 minute music tracks.  Later I put just the music on Soundcloud, and later again Bandcamp.

One video got 59k views. My videos were monetized back then. But that stopped after a few years of changing YouTube requirements when they pushed for long form more popular "TV like" content.  I think this is when YouTubers happened, but I never really watched YouTube at the time.  It was just a f a place to demo our stuff.

When my "slide shows with music format videos" stopped getting any regular views at all, I stopped making them. It was time for a change. Made a few other random things, but I didn't give YouTube much thought for quite a few years. I didn't watch it either and had other things to do.

After retirement and moving back to Japan, in 2020 I had gotten really inspired by Mattias IA Eklundh and had started adding more vocals ABOUT STUFF to my music, started down tuning my guitar/ bass,  eventually bought a 7 string guitar and even upgraded REAPER.  

But my regular creative output at the time was the  JUST THINKING... strip I was doing:

Random thoughts during the COVID years, where I came up with a fast to do format using VECTOR characters and text on photos I take around where I live.  Mostly in Black & White.  It was actually a really interesting time for me growing into my new studio. 

I only really started watching YouTube from 2020.  

I started making under 60 second music videos and posting them in 2021. 

I was using ANIME STUDIO in earnest to make the visuals, a book+CD I had bought many years ago but done little with.  It did real animation, which I did learn and made a few things with, but found just moving stills around with a soundtrack was fast and simple to do and become my main tool to put moving images to my original music.

I found that my YouTube SHORTS got more views than the Bandcamp music only version. Only double digits, but promotion has never been anything I spent much time on as a retired grandfather doing this as a hobby. One of a few hobbies I have. But I also felt most YouTube SHORTs I ever see are just time wasting garbage.

I moved to the later version of ANIME STUDIO that had been renamed MOHO. 

From 2021 till end of 2025 I mostly made what I call MUSIC + COMICS. Instrumental music with a few comic panels and speech bubbles about something. Like this SPEED IN MANGA: 

For most of that time SHORTS had to be under 60 seconds, and that was fine by me. Then they had to be under 3 minutes. I used to just post these whenever I finished one, sometime 2 or 3 a week, not considering that few would see them unless they were posted in a "peak viewing time".

I started on my MUSIC + COMICS + VOCALS songs around MAY 2026.  In recent months I released one weekly, on a Saturday morning Japan time. A peak time.  Gave me a weekly project with a deadline, but also slowed down the way I was working. Was getting enough views, especially as I also uploaded the files to X and Facebook. 

And in the last few weeks, even though X and Facebook still get the same numbers for views consistently, YouTube SHORTS views fall to single digits for some of my videos.  

Inscrutable YouTube algorithm change is the only conclusion to draw. Thus this weeks talking head SHORT.  

Wonderful, but maybe it is time to pivot again... 

Other Things

Been getting on with the important things in life with our daughter back in Japan for first time in 18 months.

So looked back at music I make 12+ months ago and really like this pic JBASS sound.

Get bored that everything starts sounding the same, so going back to DRUMS AGAINST HUMANITY and the Jazz Bass makes things more fun. 

Working/ thinking about/ considering what I will do this second week of September 2026.  

I don't have to do anything other than taking the garbage out, cooking, washing the dishes and drying/ putting them away.  Also do whatever the cat wants. The general living stuff. 

Anything creative is optional and for my own entertainment, but with a Typhoon on the way and lots of rain, working on "something" in the studio is the thing to do.  

Joshua Heath Scott  doesn't just design and build guitar pedals.  This being a particular interesting think piece.

THE GRAND TOUR is being very entertaining. The Kei car episode had me laughing as much as the original Topgear's "Crap Supercars" and "Making boats out of Cars" did.  Francis is a mix of Clarkson & May and so far the most endearing of the new hosts, in spite of the stilted way he talks much of the time.  

Unprecedented Rain and Flooding in Japan the in last weeks. Motorists in Chiba drowned in underpasses. Nagoya had the highest rainfall since records started in 1890 in the last week.  Media hasn't mentioned "climate change" at all, even though everyone else says it.    

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

Looking back on Tangerine Dream and Catching up

 

Fake Kyoto FM Number 12.  Using instrumental versions of  our tracks with added Korg Monotron effects.

The back ground rotating under the orange circle was generated on this BOOK OF SHAPES website.

Other Things

Been reading this Tangerine Dream book and listening to the over 15 albums we have of them, mostly from the VIRGIN YEARS.  I think my favorites are STRATOSFEAR, TANGRAM & HYPERBOREA. 

I have put Cinnamon Road in all the playlists I regularly use. 

Each track has a description "bird like tweets" from a VCS3 then a series of chords... It isn't described in musician terms though, the way someone like Rick Beato would.  Hadn't seen this before. 

Lots of history and interviews in one place over the years covered. Also with an essay around "did they loose their significance when it became easy for anyone to make sequenced digital synth music?".   

Like the book, but need to think about the Amazon review to write.

Tangerine Dream fandom is split between ZIET "no melodies, just textures" and later short "melodies/ techno/ synthpop" and the progression from one to the other.  I prefer melody myself.  Only just playing Le Parc now, one of their fans least liked albums, but I must say I think it is fine.

He mentions other artists and albums from the same era too that I have never heard. Klaus Shulze was an early Tangerine Dream member, and went on to be a solo artist. I am only now giving his X, Dig It and Moondance albums a listen. Moondance  is his most Berlin School like.

Finished Season 1 of Star Trek Discovery. It wasn't easy. I think this is the only trek that I haven't loved the opening music and graphics of. I skipped to the final ship flyby and the tiny bit of original theme music.  The graphics and music in the opening was a complete nothing to me.  It was just all wrong for something supposed to be 10 years before the original series. 

The Grand Tour with new young guys is doing the PR introducing them and about to start. A repeat of what Topgear did. In Australia we had 3 Australian hosts for the local Topgear. It was fine. As was the American Topgear they also showed. Didn't reach the level of the original though, but that is probably just the way it goes.

Expect the new The Grand Tour will be fine too. It is just a TV show.

Mend It Mark's latest is a RAID encloser.  He fixes it without any schematics or service information.

Incredibly well done. Having had to repair stuff as a job at various times I applaud his skill. Even with all the support information and schematics it can be very hard to fix stuff. 

But did the part fail due to age or a design fault in its application, I wonder? 

I once worked as an OLIVETTI component level repair technician ~ 1979~80 for their computer gear that filled the Commonwealth Banks in Australia at the time. The ALI-500 power supply was used in their terminals and this discrete component switch mode power supply caused issues. Even once something was repaired, there was a feedback 1/4 watt resistor that on some not small percentage of the units would get so hot, the solder would melt and it would fall out of the PCB. Caused the unit to fail.  I could never see why.  A few years later after graduating from University and getting on with my engineering career I learnt that the fix for that the local tech made was to just change it from a 1/4 watt to 5W part!  The resistor was under rated for the variations in the units. A design problem with the rating of the original part, and real component variations hadn't been seen by the Italian designers or just hadn't checked.   

Daughter now staying with us for awhile, even though working from home here much of the time. Catching up as she hadn't visited for 18 months.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN