Freak Guitar Lab: Kintsugi

 

Kinsugi is the Japanese art of repairing things like broken ceramic goods with gold to keep them, useable, but also "a reminder to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life".

That is a wonderful philosophy.  

Last night Mattias uploaded his track Kintsugi to YouTube. He gives me a credit, but the video I took in Osaka of him is really such a small part of this video:

For the love of Japan I put together a tune called Kintsugi, celebrating imperfections and the impermanence of all things.

Filmed by Yogev Gabay (Sweden) and Adrian S. Bruce (Japan).

Much thanks to Keiichi Ishida and the crew of Zanshin Musical Instruments for everything.For more information about Freak Guitar Lab and the Ulv guitars, please visit https://freakguitarlab.com/ 

A really small part, must only be a few seconds.

Mattias brought this track to Japan in early May. He seems to work on many things at the same time in his Freak Enterprise, like recording tracks and videos, preparing for, then doing his Freak Guitar Camp, handling his online store, promoting his guitars, other clinics or performing.  Kintsugi is quite a complicated video to edit together, but he has done more than a few of similar complexity, so guess it didn't take him as long as it would me to do. From the little I heard of it in May to the release yesterday has been 4 months. Think it indicates just how busy he keeps himself  "being a modern, successful, musician in the age of streaming and social media". 

What a guy! 😮

Listening carefully I can hear a synth part or three in there as well as the Toontracks drums and guitars. The kind of thing I do too. Not as skillfully though!

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

A Creative Exercise: Music-Comics

 

For many weeks I have been regularly making some short piece of music that I can pull out an under 60 sec clip from to use as the soundtrack to one of my Music-Comics.  60 seconds is the limit to upload to X/Twitter, which is by far the simplest way of showing the 1 or 2 people that could possibly want to read/ hear them. Pretty sure most who view them have the sounded muted anyway. 

But I really do them as a creative exercise for myself. Making stuff keeps me a "Happy Camper" and these are not massively time consuming things to do.

Ola Englund: Sunday With Ola, weekly opening music was a way for him to force making music into his schedule, and sub sequentially release his CHUGG PROJECT albums.  This is something like that, but not as regular, or for any real audience.

The music is made in Reaper with guitars and synths I have, The video is all made in MOHO Pro12 from a small collection of stuff I have made to do these with.  Mostly all first take things.  Make something, release it, move on.  Getting the 8 string increased my output for a while, as I practiced and got used to it. I always record and practice into Reaper anyway.

Of course I like some better than others.  All depends on what comes to me as I do one. 

I originally started just making square format YouTube shorts, as that is what YouTube encouraged, but they are undiscoverable by anyone doing that, and how many people get to see them is up to YouTube putting one in 10 peoples feeds for some hours after being uploaded, seeing if any play them to the end to determine if they show it to someone else (and taking into account what your subscriber numbers are and some other random stuff). 

So YouTube is all a "why bother" situation for me. I am not a fan of the portrait or square format either. I just prefer square to portrait, and if you upload a less than 60sec video that isn't like that, it isn't considered a "short".  

So this is what a Short Format looked like:

The other problem with shorts though, is they are 99% garbage. That seems to appeal to the largest audience, but not me. 

So what is this Music-Comics about?

Just trying to combine my interest in making music, with my interest in comics, and my dislike of doing time consuming animation, and rendering. Hate waiting for rendering.  The comics are really fast and easy to do in MOHO. This being the project for the Cubism thing at the top of the page here.

I currently have the waveform of the music as the background, and show the red playbar a wave player has. 

To the front of that is just something I feel like saying today.  Like a 3 panel comic strip in a newspaper, doesn't take long to read, and could say something that makes you think.  As far as I know, nobody else has done this format before. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Not going along with everyone else...

When I was a kid, the top of our street had a roundish area where several drive ways came and merged with the corner of a bend in a quiet road. Thanks to google street view I can show what it looks like above.

The 3 or 4 local kids would ride their bicycles around, and around, and around there.  During holidays I remember this activity starting early in the day, and going most of the days.  But, even as a kid, I found it entertaining for about 15 minutes at most. I don't remember there being any goal,  rules, or any kind of game associated with it to make it interesting.  It is what those kids did. They loved riding their bicycles. It wasn't just a tool to get somewhere that it was for me.  This was north shore Sydney where there were  no activities around, other than sports clubs,  churches or the pool/beach. And most of those were too far away to get too.

But during the holiday weekdays, mid morning, maybe it was 10AM, but I really have no memory of that, they showed this great science show Watch Mr. Wizard on TV.  

I loved it.

But I was alone in that interest. I remember saying, I'm going home to go watch Mr .Wizard ,  while the other kids were intent on their going around, going nowhere activity, and them saying something like "you're strange to watch that".

I didn't know of any other kid around me that watched it or cared.  But I found science cool!

I see on wikipedia it was popular.  Just not in the backward place I lived.

It was just another thing in my early life, that showed me that fitting into a crowd,  could be such a dumb waste of the opportunities available.  It seems many people are content to just "be". What drives them, and gives them contentment does not align with my own way of thinking at all.

There are some 33 million on X, (Twitter), but it seems to me, only around 1000 do anything at all actually worth posting about. Such a tiny fraction! The rest are busy with their going around, going nowhere, many with millions of followers, thinking the few that aren't  going around, going nowhere,  like them, are strange.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

The Pale Blue Dot: Music Video & Comic

 

Blue Dot, a 1280x720p 12fps video. Mostly instrumental with simple 2D animation. More in a bit.

This is using the awesome UGRITONE drum VST picked up for $10 in their closing down sale, and also uses a few bars from their Black Metal midi pack, got for $2. 

In the same sale, I also got AMPENSTEIN, but in these tracks I only use the graphic EQ and IR Player on guitars and bass. Distortion is a Waza Craft Metal Zone they are recorded with. 

I have found the guitar tuner in this is great, and so much faster than my KORG pitchblack portable.

This is the first recording using the Harley Benton Fan Fret 8 string. Started as an exercise in the Lydian Mode getting used to the neck, but loved the rhythm and lead guitar parts I was getting while playing with the drums.  So extended that out to a 3+ minute track.  A bit simple and repetitive maybe, but suits me.

This also used my Squire JBASS that I put WILDE humbucking pickups in, and this was the first time I recorded the bridge pickup only sound. Couldn't do that before due to HUM. I like the sound I get here playing with a pick.  I am not actually a bass player. That is okay, as I don't really think I am a guitar player either. Music is core to my life, but guitar isn't.

The Blue Dot lyric was just an off the cuff thing during recording a vocal, and the first time to put that Megaphone sound to use.  Kept thinking of that Gorillaz track "Feel Good Inc." , and that Steve Wilson used that sound a lot too.  So only three sentences, but it is an unconventionally structed track anyway, bound to be played by, maybe, 10 people. I will play it a lot more than that, so really do it just for myself.  

The reaper project:

The most right-ish guitar part has Valhalla Space Modulator on it and that meant for MONO compatibility that part level had to be increased more than it was in the first release. For MONO, the bass had to be reduced a bit too.  Without those the changes, when played in mono, the bass was over powering and the lead almost vanished. This was one of several changes we made in the versions that replaced the initial Bandcamp upload.  It seems everything is fine UNTIL it is released. I love that Bandcamp lets you replace the file anytime you like. 

The track on Bandcamp is here.

It is a simple thing, with simple parts. My whole goal is to be able to hum the parts, so simple, memorable is actually a thing I try for. 

I have bought the latest "Grow Your Own Mustache"  and expect, eventually, I will be incorporating some more complicated things into my guitar playing. 

Have been playing the non-stripped tracks quite a bit, getting familiar with the material, to know where I want to go with it. The "Native Hue Of Resolution" is where I think I will start. 

But not today. Or even tomorrow.

I am a fan of Japanese POP ARTIST Takashi Murakami, particularly SUPERFLAT and his use of color, and have presently revisited my color comic and added some Murakami inspired color textures to a couple of panels, and combining the music and this look was interesting. 

My IN THE NEXT DIMENSION comic is based around Multiverse Archeological Exploration and investigation, which looks at lost and destroyed civilizations and planets.

And thinking of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot this morning, and how fragile it all looks. It seemed to fit together. Like a future history piece. It also made me think of how I could represent the infinite number of universes (more pale blue dots), that lead to THAT universe, to THAT galaxy, to THAT planet. 

The expanding universe and the distances between solar systems is so vast, it is impossible that any intelligent life could visit us, or us, them. There is no credible UFO evidence, even though there must be an infinite number of intelligent civilizations such as ourselves in the universe.   Even at the speed of light the distances are just far too great. 

IN THE NEXT DIMENSION takes the approach that changing dimensions, and travelling via other dimensions bypasses all that.  There is no evidence that this is possible, but makes these stories possible. Some of the lifeforms capable of that may not even recognize any life on our Pale Blue Dot.

Doing this has given me some ideas on some more comic panels. Maybe a series of POP ART Postcards that are the pages of a comic? A mockup of such a thing in a Postcard album:

 

I haven't seen that done before, but it probably has been done somewhere.  Postcards are 100x148mm (はがき) size and still a major thing for New Years in Japan, with lots of options for printing quantities of photo or plain graphic cards around. 

The music video was directly made in MOHO Pro V12. Images mostly made in CorelDraw, the way I make my comics.  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Mixed Media Missive: A MultiScale 8 String Guitar

 

And the first thing I found:

I originally bought my Ibanez 7 String for the metal low end, but found down tuning my 6 strings gave better results much of the time.  And that is what Mattias IA Eklundh had said, and he didn't think 7 strings were worth the trouble. But he did fall in love with the 8 string.

I thought about that quite a bit, but couldn't justify the 748,000円  ( which is some 16 times more than I paid for my best Ibanez RG 6 string) for his Caparison Apple Horn 8  or a similar amount for his new ULV8 above.  I don't think of my self as a Guitarist, but just a guy mucking around making my own silly music in my studio. I didn't think some 188,000円 for an Ibanez RGMS8 \ RGD8 was for me either. The other thing was that 8 string guitars are rather rare around these parts. Went to the main guitar stores in Osaka and no one had any to try.  For me, Multiscale is they way to keep an 8 string guitar playable.

I started hearing about this Really Cheap/ Incredible value Thomann Music Harley Benton R-458MN WH MultiScale 8 String Guitar. Problem was that with the current Yen exchange rate in June 2024, it isn't a cheap guitar any more if I paid Japanese Yen and bought it online from Germany.

Then I did an illustration job for USD$ and that exchange rate problem vanished. 😁  

So I ordered one. I paid USD $251.87 via PayPal for it. Took 13 days to arrive, and then had to pay 1,652円 import duty to the Postman when he delivered it to my door.  Not expensive at all.

And in my studio it looks like this:

And comparing to my Ibanez RG, shows the fan frets, bridge slant, and neck width differences from a standard guitar.

Before it arrived I had seen that UGRITONE were closing and going out of business and so picked up their AMPENSTEIN Amp/cabinet/effects/eq VST for USD$10.  What PayPal is useful for when you live in Japan.  

Up until now I mostly used Boogex amp sim vst with GOD CABINET IRs with a real Metal Zone Distortion Pedal.  At the moment AMPENSTEIN EQ and IR Loader seem to be best in my Reaper DAW way of recording guitar the 8 string.  Can cut and boost multiple frequencies as needed.

Have found the Guitar Tuner in it is way more convenient for tuning the 8 string than my Korg strobe tuner. 

It has only been a few days so far, so along way from learning all I need to.

I found my guitar didn't have any of the QC problems some had reported. It is all good, for a cheap guitar. Tuning is similar to my Ibanez GIO 7 string in that the nut is sticky, and the tuners not mechanically so precise. 

I have the 8 string set up like my other guitars. Instead of E standard, they are down tuned to D# and the lower 7 strings are thus in DROP G#.  The 1 finger power chords are more defined than in my 7 string, probably due to the longer strings there.  I had to redo the intonation on the 7th and 8th strings in this tuning, and the 8th string "almost" didn't allow the saddle to move back enough, without replacing the saddle screw with a shorter one. 

I currently have the 8th string as D#, the lower D# than the D# 6th string.  Finding that very undefined though, and think it needs to be higher instead.  The fret 1~ 5 spacing on the low strings is a bit of a stretch. But I don't notice it most of the time.

It feels very much like my Fender Squire, but with 8 strings. Except the bridge pickup in that is a  DiMarzio HS-3 that is worth as much as the whole 8 string guitar!

I still need to work with the 8 string more. There isn't anything wrong with the fretwork or anything, but I normally do pinch harmonics all the time, but they just don't happen on this.  Need to work out why that is. The 7 String doesn't stop me playing  pinch harmonics. Curious.  May be related to the way the bridge is slanted and the way I have to hold my right hand with a Multiscale.

The guitar has Active pickups.  Have noticed, with the Metal Zone on with my extreme distortion/gain s settings, they seem to generate a midrange tone (a very low level oscillation in the opamp circuit maybe?) some -30db down. Not anything to worry me though, taken care of with a noise gate if need be.

So far a very interesting experience, but I am still treating it pretty much like a 7 string, and still to work out how I deal with that 8th string for what I do.  Meshuggah math metal or the DOOM soundtrack isn't what I do.  I have seen Mattias play now, and is all over Freak Kitchen's Every Body Gets Bloody Album, but have no idea how often he actually touches that 8th string.  

Will update this in the coming week or so with new thoughts or findings...

Seems I need to bring my right hand more over the bridge pickup to get the pitch harmonics. The multiscale looks deceptively similar, but seems it isn't. 

Main thing now is, what do I want to do with it? I haven't done anything much different from my 7 string, so that is I need to learn something new to use it. 

There really is nothing to complain about this guitar for what you pay for it.  I would be in exactly the same position now if I had paid 4 times more for a locally available Ibanez. 

I changed the 7th and 8th string tuning again. Not a drop tuning though, like the rest of my guitars are at the moment. High, to Low, they are now D#, A#, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, F .  This makes 8th string to not be floppy, like it is if D#.

I need some washers in the 8th & 7th string bridges to get better intonation, but no rush.   Needs to move back a bit more and the screw length means it hits the string. Washers, rather than a shorter screw is the simpler solution.

And another just getting use to the feel of it, and about Cartoon Strips:

 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology