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