Hit Song Writers

 

Diane Warren | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan interview is really interesting, and a drive to make the above MUSIC+COMIC. In D Flat/C# Dorian @ 135BPM. Powered up the MS-20mini for the first time in awhile too.

Brian Cadd has a story that he was in the studio with THE POINTER SISTERS to record one of his songs, and he was playing the piano in the session. They decided they wanted to change the key to suit their voices better, and as he couldn't do that himself, they had to get another guy in to play the piano. He just laughs it off. Being a great song writer and being a great versatile musician aren't related.

It seems Diane Warren is a bit that way herself, great at the words, emotion and melody, and that is the bit that counts. Maybe a bit like Irving Berlin, but they didn't go into it.  

Makes me feel a bit better about the music I am making.

Added some recent tracks to my Assorted Bits 3 album on Bandcamp.

Other Things

So the FAIRLIGHT INSTRUMENTS 50YEARS pin arrived in the mail today, for attendance at the Event held 2025/12/19 in Sydney. I was one of the ex-staff on Zoom that attended. 

The type of thing worn on a suit. I rarely do that.  Put it on my hat maybe?😀  Not that anyone I expect to meet will ever have any idea what it is about.

I had my first medical procedure on Monday, 2 days ago and it was painless and took all of 5 minutes. Will go back in a bit over a week for #2 to be taken care of.

Urasawa Naoki's ASADORA vol 9 English was released yesterday and I ordered my copy.

After watching THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY for the first time, Star Trek leaving Netflix last week and BONES repeats starting on Netflix this Sunday,  HALO TV series on PRIME seemed the best option. 5 episodes in and it is holding my attention.  Never played any of the games but know about MASTER CHIEF. For something that started as a FPS, the TV series has a very human core to the story. 

Watched part of a JAMES CAMERON interview in the last weeks and there was one part where he says after finishing Titanic, he spent many years doing other things like the deep sea dive and working with NASA making cameras. The guys at NASA were super smart and driven and paid little attention to films and what the latest buzz in that, what was his world, was up to, and he hadn't met people like that before.   I had spent years in a similar NASA frame of mind where the trivia of movies was a waste of time and there were far more important things to do. Part of the reason I can catch up on things in retirement.  

I expect the local to me Art Museums and Galleries I have regularly visited over the last 3+ years  will have some interesting things on this year, but am not aware of anything yet. I thought that for months at the beginning of last year, then the mangaka MASAMUNE SHIROW exhibition opened and that was a surprise and a delight.  

But the overnight trip to Setagaya/Shinjuku Tokyo showed me how tiring things get for me as I age. The previous year I went to Nagoya and visited 2 exhibits in the one day, even if I did have to rest in the Anno exhibition. It is further to Tokyo and I could just manage the one exhibition and getting to lunch and dinner.  I have to pace myself even more. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

It Seems Good At First...

 

A Quick Thing I did yesterday and put on X as a 60 second HD landscape music comic and came back today and made a short from the same basic comic as the 120second original music in HD portrait format.  

This one has the spaces in the panel to show the animated background, which I like.  The last few things I did were all 138BPM, so this is a slow 100BPM, but the instrument sounds are pretty much the same.

And I can never hear how something actually is during the recording of something. I need time away from it to be able to really hear what it is like.  Same goes for my writing and drawing too.

Other Things

Watched the Rick Springfield interview and it was very good  :

Comments on Australia's Tall Poppy Syndrome appreciated. Australia almost ignores this guy that did so much, and I had my own experiences.  Mental Health also.

Will try and get an appointment Monday, and try each day till I do get to start my procedures I went on about in the previous blog.  

I bought this tool to be able to more conveniently set the intonation on my Ibanez RG350 with the Edge II bridge.  That bridge only has a screw to loosen the saddle, and lacks a screw to move the saddle back and forth a controlled amount.  This fixes that during the adjustment of each saddle. 

I also uploaded this Fake Streaming FM Radio Mix 6 from a week or so ago.

UPDATE: 2025/1/25

Uploading at 8AM Saturday morning shows the fake FM Radio with mixes of 3 of my tracks with some DJ chat gets far more views than anything else.  I assume that is because they are  being shown to Japanese, and my others aren't, or if they do, get swiped away quickly. 

Compared to NON SHORT video views. No one sees non SHORT videos any more. Especially not being a YouTuber. 90% of videos the YouTube AI serves to me now are just garbage. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

A GOOD FRIEND, A Minor Surgery

 

A Minor Surgery ... I hope. And not the ordeal of 2017. But thinking about that and I came up with the above comic this morning.  The surgeon had lead me to believe I would by fine in 2 weeks, but that wasn't the case at all. It was just an overnight stay in hospital and tomorrow should be just a visit to the doc and walk home a couple of hours later. I survived the 2017 ordeal, but it did take 12 months to be back to normal. It was only(!) hemorrhoids, not cancer or anything life threatening, but still an ordeal as painful as kidney stones but lasting a months.

A GOOD FRIEND helped me get through that, just by being with me. 

Since I retired he spends everyday with me too, and I release that our time together is not unlimited, and he will be 10 this year.  

Whatever happens, he will be with me to get through it too.

I have to make the appointment from 8:30AM on their website on the day you want to visit to get a patient number and approximate time.  You have to arrive 5 patients before your turn and it takes about an hour by train to get there, but that is only twice an hour by the direct route.  So leave home around 2 hours before your appointment, and they do the surgery 9:00~12:00 then 16:00~18:00! 

Complicated. Getting there at 8:30AM and sit in a Hotel Lobby and make the reservation seems the easiest. But discover I can make a reservation at 8:30AM, then tell them when we can get there, about an hour later.

This is a variation of the HD music comic, where the background is animated between panels. I kind of like this, and having all the text on screen at once isn't frustrating the way it is when I animate the speech balloons. 

Got a reservation, and even using the web interface and just copy/paste my details in at exactly 8:30AM when it opened I was still patent number 28 in the morning! 😧 . 

Update: 2025/1/22

Visited doc. Filled out all the forms, waited, had first consultation and got medicine. I will initially go back once a week, if I can get a reservation that day, for a minor procedure, Rubber band ligation, then do that for 3 weeks. Then after that there are 3 more things to take care of that are a bit more painful to heal.  

So have a plan forward that isn't the ordeal I originally went through.

That is good 😊.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

偽物 (FAKE) Streaming FM RADIO Mix 3

 

偽物 (FAKE) Streaming Kyoto FM Radio Mix 3. 180 seconds of faked FM radio broadcast mix of 3 tracks from my ASSORTED BITS 2 & 3.  On Bandcamp, Assorted Bit 2 and Assorted Bits3.

Posted this about 8AM Sunday morning and it had 150 views the next time I looked at it to see it was there.  And after a few hours, YouTube stops posting it to the SHORTs feed, resulting in this:

I would think most seeing it wouldn't get that it is a fake FM stream, and that the music is actually by an old Australian white guy in his late 60s happily living in Kyoto.

And the Danny Sapko SHORT I posted yesterday morning 8AM got all of 14 views when I checked it this morning, 24 hours later.  I guess his face didn't appeal...

All just the algorithm.  YouTube certainly offers up so much junk on my feed now that I don't want to watch, that it seems to have no idea what I like or have already seen. The AI driving the algorithm now is just broken... 

Other Things

PRIME offered THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY and I realized I had never seen it. About a third the way though before going to bed last night.  A spaghetti western, with everyone but Clint Eastwood dubbed into English.  It looks great and that music is so iconic now.

A story from Matt Damon on how Netflix wants their new shows produced from the standpoint that the audience is actually on their phone doom scrolling while only half watching. 😲 “you re-iterate the plot 3-4x in the dialogue because people are on their phones.”  Generally dumbed down and made extremely obvious.  So why haven't Netflix considered instead that they should make a show so interesting it actually holds your attention?!

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN

DANNY SAPKO: I am the ONLY person on the Internet to NOT talk with him this week

 

DANNY SAPKO seems to have filled my YouTube feed the last weeks, with his shorts, talk, talk, talk and name calling out more popular Internet Musicians. Then this week he seems to be interviewed by many of those Internet Musicians.

I guess that was his aim. To build his brand and, maybe, be the BEHS playing Rick Beato of YouTube. He is entertaining enough, and THAT seemed something to do a quick MUSIC+COMICS on this morning. 

No doubt I will hear all the things that are a "bit off" in the music later and just have to fix them, but feel it is "okay" after a few non critical listens, and wanted to get this short out 8AM Saturday morning Kyoto time, rather than one of the fake streaming FM station remixes I had actually prepared earlier.

Other Stuff

My Facebook feed now has so many AI generated posts. An AI generated illustration, then a long rambling ChatGPT generated essay about something designed to not get to any point, or generate anger for "engagement" which is what the algorithms are after.  Nothing from anyone I know anymore. 

I was happy to find CAR STYLING New Era #2 at the bookstore yesterday.

I have a small collection of the originals, including the last issue in 2010 where publishing has to shut down and can't continue. Also an issue of an earlier restart attempt that had a slightly different format. 

A significant publication in the world of product design for decades, that seems have gone back to specifically focus on transportation again. I maybe retired but still follow this stuff.  Will probably do some comics about some aspects of it.

I didn't expect to, but found this chat with Penn Jillette really interesting, as it has the unexpected interest in music and Bob Dylan.  Dylan's music was on the radio when I as a kid a lot, but it never engaged with me, even though I knew he was a master story teller in song. 

Not sure if just old age, but I am far more interested these days in a documentary about something that actually happened than watching fiction.   Am watching Season 2 of FALLOUT though, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere much in the 5 episodes have seen. A third player? A Virus from that 3rd player?  First season seemed to have gotten to the point faster, and this filling in the backstory..

Just got a call on my phone and remember I have used this as my ring tone for 8 years or so now... edited to take away the slow start. 

This week ASTERISM released KICK DOWN THE WALL CD/BOOK album and I also picked up last years (best ? METAL ALBUM) THE HAUNTED CD. 

SONY has gone the route of a premium ASTERISM release with a book for your 4,500yen.  Not an impressive book to me though. A few photos, many "artistically" blurred, and others of rocks, plants and lots of white on pages.  Not like the impressive PLANET METAL release at all.

THE HAUNTED will be at UMEDA CLUB QUATTRO in July and am considering going. Don't know their catalog though, just that Ola Englund is in the group now. It is an onslaught to get through. This modern metal doesn't leave me with any catch riffs or melodic fragments to sing to myself. Like Ola's SWOLA intros with growling vocals. I need to play it more, but yet to find that much fun. I may change though.  ASTERIMS is more fun to my ears.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology  KYOTO JAPAN