Knowing Yourself

I retired 6 years ago now (December 2024 as I write this), but I still do the freelance illustration as it comes in from our website I set up in 2008, that I found a market for from 2000.  

Drawing and cartooning was an interest from a small child. By "interest" I mean I loved it and did it all the time. I cover some of this in our WHERE THE SMOKE COMES OUT comic. Audio and music later became an interest that lead to a Degree in Electrical Engineering, then working R&D in electronics design and firmware development.

Had to do all kinds of things in my working life, and one was get an understanding of why people are the way they are to deal with and manage them, as well as my internal self.  

But the point I am getting to is, I enjoy working alone and not dealing with people. I am an Introvert, that had to work in teams, and later be a manager. I am glad I don't have to do that anymore. I also like making things , be they illustrations, cartoons, comics, paintings, models, sculpting or music made in a studio. Things I can do all by myself in my studio.

I spend a lot of time in my studio now. It is what I want to do. 

But I don't always be productive. It doesn't matter if I make something brilliant for myself or not sometimes. 

I go out with my wife or by myself to restaurants and cafes, and go out of the crowded times. Except of course when our adult kids and grandson visit. 

I did electronics "for my career", and when we downsized in 2019, got rid of all the technical books and magazine, tools and materials I had collected for my career, and to be "up to date".  I was pretty good at what I did, but it wasn't easy, and all rather stressful. I just don't care anymore. 

Knowing what you want to spend the rest of your life doing is important in retirement.  Seems there are many that don't.

Knowing yourself is important for your own future. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

HiFi is Dead, Long Live HiFi

HiFi was injured by the Walkman, then killed off by Home Theatre and the iPod. 

No one sits in front of 2 big speakers, just listening to music anymore, unless a TV screen is there too. It is more likely to be background music while doing something else, possibly playing on a small Bluetooth speaker from a phone. 

BUT "high-end" luxury Audio gear with prices suited to the Lamborghini, Veyron and Rolex watch buyers is alive!

HiFi to play my albums became an interest in Junior High School, that lead to an interest in electronics and making my first stereo. It was a different world back in the 70s, where building an amplifier and speakers yourself was an option and cheaper than buying one.   

I only have a CD/FM radio/BT mini-compo stereo now and don't use it very often.  Just to check how my own original music sounds. I can't use the sound volume to make it an experience. It is annoying to others. 

I now mostly use SHOKZ OpenFit earbuds playing 320kps mp3s from my phone around the house and out for a walk. Bluetooth connected headphones do add an extra level of data compression, but not something a granddad like myself can hear.  Like having stereo BGM  while moving around, and it doesn't block out the cat or family members if not played loud. 

But checking out the world of HiFi has a nostalgic hit for me.  It came as a shock to pick up the latest Stereo Sound above and see how heavy and full of advertising it is.  Reminded me of the heyday of BYTE MAGAZINE in the late 80s when the personnel computer market was booming. Or the Japanese TRANSISTOR GIJUTSU electronics magazine that was even bigger and heavier in the 90s, and now a considerably smaller publication.

The shock continued at the prices in advertisements and gear being reviewed.  Like the 4,400,000yen per speaker for the JBL DD67000:

Or the 2,500,000yen for this Ultimate Headphone Audio System:

This is Luxury Good Pricing.  

Value-based pricing is a strategy that focuses on the perceived value of your product to your target customers, rather than the cost of production or the market competition. This means that you can charge a higher price that reflects the benefits, features, and attributes that make your product unique and desirable.

This is not how things used to be. HiFi was a mass market item, with various brands having a range of items from not expensive to expensive. But those Brands have disappeared or do not make such equipment anymore.  Music doesn't have the same place in people lives any more. There is YouTube, Facebook, computer games etc. for that. The Internet and Mobile Phones changed everything for everybody from the 1990s.

My own adult kids don't have any kind of Stereo. No wonder the brands disappeared. The closes thing anyone has is a Home Theater Speaker System, that rarely plays music.

HiFi, but it isn't called that any more, is now an extreme niche high priced luxury, status symbol, market. Many of the claims made for the gear are absurd, and there are so many snake oil salesmen.  Great sound doesn't cost anywhere near what these "top end" systems cost.   

HiFi is Dead, but gear for wealthy Audiophiles (Audiophools is appropriate occasionally too) lives on.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Music: Listen & Feel Better, 聞​た​ら​と​元​気​に​な​る​し

 

The track Listen & Feel Better (​聞​た​ら​と​元​気​に​な​る​し​) on Bandcamp, another pay whatever. Just take it.

Another very similar to the last few being a C Lydian thing, all very automatic and familiar, where the guitar is actually down-tuned a half step, but played as if it wasn't. Take into account they are down tuned doing the synth parts. 

The instrumental thing was mostly done, then there was more news about how terrible and evil SPOTIFY is, again. Then I remembered recording a few of their advertisements and thought of repurposing the speech for this.  

She: 聞たらと元気になるし（Kiitara to genki ni naru shi, Listen & Feel Better )
He: 凄い                                 (Sugoi , Amazing/ Wow)
She: 広告無し楽しめる         (Kokkuku nashi tanoshimeru, Ad-free fun )
He: 凄い                                 (Sugoi , Amazing/ Wow)

What it means to me is ​

​音楽聞た​ら​と​元​気​に​な​る​し - Ongaku kiitara to genki ni naru shi, Listen to Music & Feel Better.

Music really helps my mood. Couldn't live without it. I don't even need it playing to hear it.

Before I added the speech and vinyl record noises, the Reaper project looked like this:

Not double or triple tracking the 6 string rhythm guitar, but the jazz bass plays the same parts.

I don't mind it all, as it means something to me. Few others will hear it. 

Unless you know me, see this blog, you wouldn't even know about it, and it would be completely unfindable. There are 1000s of tracks uploaded daily, fighting to get noticed on the major streaming platforms, and I am not even on a major platform. The subscription costs to get on the platforms just makes no sense to a retired grandfather hobbyist, not even trying to make it as a recording artist, such as myself.  

My BlueSky feed has become a mix of music creators, music mixing/mastering, cartoonists and comic creators. And of the over 140 following me at the moment, it is only the same one or two people I know that acknowledge a few of the things, music, cartoons, comics and music animations, I have posted there. 

I assume this is because many new to me followers are on the platform  at the "grow their followers" stage, where they follow a lot, hoping to get followed back, and later unfollow.  Many that have followed me have no relevant bio or posts at all, and I assume  have no interest in the things I do.

When I was at school, I thought it would be cool to have friends with actually some of the same interests, as it seemed no one did. Much later when I was working for a living, I discovered, that even when we did, such as studied electronics/ computers and music at university, others reasons and interests were completely different from my own. Usually complete opposites. Same thing for many of the Westerners living in Japan, the how and why they are here. A few famous people like PENN & TELLER (the magicians) or ADAM & JAMIE  (The Mythbusters) worked well together, but have completely separate private lives and just annoy each other.  Proof having some of the same interests doesn't make for good friends.

So little hope for Social Media of any platform to change any of that. BlueSky is proving to be far more interesting than X/Twitter ever was for me though. At the moment. Just by being a simple social media platform and not an advertising engagement scam.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Japanese Listening Bars: Golden Age HiFi

 

My first interest in electronics way back when was HiFi and audio to play music. When I started, you could actually learn something from Audio Magazines, with technical analysis of amplifier topologies and loudspeaker designs. The wonder of the CURRENT DUMPING QUAD405. The glory of the Great America Sound's AMPZILLA.  I had a '70s British HiFi Magazine with an article I stared at for years on the first PHASE LINEAR 700B into the country: 

Then HiFi morphed into the grifting "golden ears" and "magic thinking" of oxygen free power cables and such rubbish with sky high prices, that never entered into the world of Studio Sound I had move into. 

I still occasionally look at the world of HiFi, and the latest stereo magazine in Japan here has an article on the Listening Bar JAZZ HOUSE ON LAVA in Yamanashi Prefecture at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

There are quite a few of these Bars/Cafes in Japan. Never heard of something similar in different countries. They are owned and run by avid 12" vinyl album collectors with Golden Age HiFi gear and, generally, top of the range old studio monitors. The owner selects and plays the music at live band levels. You sit and listen.  They all started as record collectors and HiFi fans, and took the step to turn that into a paying job as a café.

Speakers like the JBL4350 were built into the walls of top end studios and used as the far field monitors back in the day. Not what you find in a studio these days, which is more likely to be high end GENELEC powered DSP corrected monitors. It seems most of these old monitors ended up in Japan, where they were renovated and became prized possessions of many a  HiFi fan, along with similar huge monitors from the likes of ALTEC and TANNOY.

Live sound levels are not a problem with these kinds of speakers, with the huge power amplifiers they get teamed with. It is what they were designed for.

These bars mostly use 12" vinyl and top end turntables, related to their owners peak collecting years, before the CD.  Expect more than a few 78rpm Jazz Classics as well in their collections.  

I had some 120 12" vinyl albums at the time I sold them all, and my turntables around 2018. I never replaced all of them with CDs. There were many albums I had that had a good song, than the rest was filler.  That is the way the record business was. 

The only 2 12" Albums I still kept:

Kept for the album sleeves, not the records inside. These both meant a lot to me. Never a fan of "the sound of vinyl". It was only great until the CD was invented.

I extended the LOVE OF VINYL? after making the above MUSIC+COMIC. Features vinyl record noise from the few albums I recorded into Reaper (the needle drop and sound before a song starts and at the end where the arm automatically lifted and returned to the rest position. ) before selling them. Strategically arranged noises from Synthesizer and Guitar are featured too.😀 

The Reaper Project:

Now on Bandcamp, embedded here

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Creativity Gurus: Books & Notes

The Rick Rubens - Rick Beato Interview was the first time I really noticed what Rubens had been involved with and what he actually did.

I am a few years older than both Ricks, and was really into music, was working at Fairlight Instruments at the time designing electronics, and reading some of the music and much of the keyboard and synthesizer press back when Rubens started out. 

Rubens was a punk guitar player and played guitar and programmed the DMX drum machine on the 1986 Beastie Boys - No sleep till Brooklyn. That he understood that RAP was music at that time shows why he become the producer guru he now is.  I remember reading the USA Magazine KEYBOARD in the 1980s and the cover proclaiming something like RAP ISN'T MUSIC.  At the time I was so far away from that world, but still realized that wasn't a truth in anyway.

Rick Rubens, in his recent book, and in the Beato interview, seems to have always been a calm guru type, with a very wide perspective on music. 

An interesting read for the most part, but don't think he covers anything I hadn't thought about and considered in my own creative endeavors.  

The Fairlight CMI was a significant mile stone in instrument and music development. The sampling and composition tools made a one man band, that people like HANS ZIMMER ran with and made their career in film scoring with. Page R in particular. But it was all very expensive.

I look back now and think Rodger Linn's Akai MPC, had a much bigger cultural contribution, thru its use in RAP /HIP HOP. Not that the designer considered that at the time. It was a user sampling Drum Machine, but by sampling others music and raping over it generated a new world of music and copyright problems!  Rodger's original digital drum machine programming was also an inspiration to the PAGE R I mentioned about.  His matrix Linn Instrument is also interesting, but a real niche thing.

I wonder if Rodger is about to come out with his own book on Being Creative?...

Creativity. It isn't just paintings or songs. Designing instruments requires it was much as any creative endeavor. The form of it is just different from a book author with his characters, plot points and story.

Brian Eno has his own status as a Music and ART Producer Guru. His OBLIQUE STRATEGIES cards with ambiguous statements, is rather like Rick Rubens advice or suggestions. Very Guru Like.

There are between 100 and 128 cards depending on version with statements expected to trigger the stuck creative mind, like:

• Use an old idea.
• State the problem in words as clearly as possible.
• Only one element of each kind.
• What would your closest friend do?

I made up a version of this with a numbered 0 to 99 statements and D100 dice. An interesting exercise, but I have never really used it.  Here the dice rolled 59, which is Do the washing up

Latest version of OBLIQUE STRATEGIES cards on Eno store is 50+pp.

Brian Eno's MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS was on constant repeat in my studio around 15 years ago.  Like Tangerine Dreams Ziet, it changes the atmosphere in a room without taking it over. Both of these were firsts in Ambient Music, and bursts of creative genius.

Yesterday I was informed of  Brian's new book, ‘What Art Does’. 

The initial version is limited to 777, signed, with individual watercolor slipcase books for some ¥33,000, which seems outrageous to me. There will be a non limited version from January, but no word on that price.  It says the money is being donated to a charity, but is that one of those now, very rare,  NOT FOR PROFIT charities?  Asking the poster what the January price would be resulted in me getting blocked by the guy promoting it on Bluesky.  So is he part of that charity, do you think, and did so before I could ask if  it was non profit? 😏

"Eno and Adriaanse’s book looks at why people create art, how it helps people, and the role it plays in keeping communities together".

I am interested in seeing this new Eno book, but it is not about Creativity as such.  As I put on Bluesky, I know why I create art:   "... for people like myself, we have to regularly create something to be "Happy Campers".  Not everything is some great work of art, and it need not be, but we had to do it, at that time, in that place.  Where place is a mental state as much as anything else."

But to get back to Creativity, a video clip post I saw by the JHS PEDAL guy, repeats something I have found myself.  "You can't design a completely new original guitar pedal, by staring at a guitar. The inspiration or strategy has to come from outside, in a different field." 

The mind and where ideas come from may never be understood.  I am amazed that having time and no distractions is so significant to the process to me. Do something else, go for a walk, and you will see something out of the corner of your minds eye, that leads you to a new solution or the direction you need to go in.   Ambiguous statements and guru advice serve the same function to "look sideways".

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology