In essence, this allows me to share stuff without writing a formal article. Instead I can be like “here, check out this youtube vid”.

So with yet another layer of web apps, this increases the number of levels you can subscribe to me:

• Google Buzz (RSS), the "everything" feed.
  • Blog+News RSS
    • News-only RSS
• peripherally, my SoundCloud uploads. (RSS)

1. Nine Phases LP (50% complete)
2. Artificial Girl EP (70% complete)
3. minimal techno EP (0%)

Across the Threshold LP, my previous album, is a somewhat awkard mix of electronic tracks and my new brand of pseudo-Japanese-folk tracks. I decided for my new material, it’d be better to split the material.

Artificial Girl

Artificial Girl EP will be my all-electronic deal. I’ve previously made tracks about robogirls, now here’s a whole album about that. In practice, it’ll be similar to Reiha EP. The drafts I have online like Robogirl and Wind-up Doll aren’t really exemplary of that however, since both of them are the album’s non-IDM tracks.

Nine Phases

Nine Phases will be my Japanese folk-ish organic/electronic stuff. I’m trying to cut back on the Okami-esque japfests of Across the Threshold, and instead go for a more integrated, hybrid sound. Senjougahara is pretty exemplary of what I’m trying to do, as well as the taiko-IDM of Sama Sama Deshita to some extent. Japfests will still be there however, like Taiko Musubi, but I’m trying to infuse a more festival-like sound to them.

I’ve collected a lot of real-life hand percussion, a real-deal Shamisen, more sophisticated sample libraries and stuff. Though primarily for MMvsUSAF, I bought a Zoom H4N which I can use to invent sound effects rather than rely on The Freesound Project for everything.

Minimal Tech EP?

Thinking about it… wouldn’t be hard to do. I already produce a lot of dance music for MMvsUSAF, but that project doesn’t allow much dissonance, or the kind of dance music dissonance that you find in genres like minimal tech. I was thinking of something like a Renzu version of the shuffly, semi-organic Antislash. It’s just a matter of getting in front of the ol’ Korg ESX and seeing what happens.

Record labels?

I have no damn idea how I’m going to release this stuff.

Its success was a mixed blessing. On one hand, it allowed the average Joe to own and use a computer. On the other hand, it allowed the average Joe to own and use a computer, exposing him to a vast landscape of viruses, trojans, spam, web browser exploits, phishing, scams, and adware/malware for which he was woefully unprepared to handle. Windows, in its own way, was also unprepared for the unbound ignorance and indifference of Mr. Average Joe. Suddenly a paramount goal of modern Windows was to save Joe from himself and his tendency to install malware on his computer, and have his identity stolen from various forms of online fraud.

The fundamental "problem" with Windows is it’s an open platform. It’s a better Microsoft DOS. While it has increasingly capable security features, it was never designed to be idiot-proof. It was not purpose-built like a game console OS or a smartphone OS.

Exhibit A: Game Consoles

Within the past five years, the video game industry largely withdrew from the PC landscape, as dedicated game consoles started to sport the social networking & online features previously found only on a PC, as well as took advantage of the previously unattainable high resolutions of the HDTV / home theater revolution.

I remember the late 90s and early 2000s of cutting-edge PC gaming, though once again not very fondly, of rolling your own gaming rig with hand-selected components, mucking around forever with video drivers and DirectX, boldly experimenting with overclocking and tweaking the performance of Windows until the cows come home.

This was obviously a poor way to play videogames for the mainstream, something only a geeky niche of users (like myself) would find appealing. Compounded by rampant software piracy & subsequent overreaching DRM, it was only a matter of time before the video game industry and "cutting edge" gamers would migrate to the Xbox 360, with its sophisticated online features and no-hassle gaming.

Nowadays, PC gaming is left with only a few genres suited to desktop controls: MMORPG (keyboard), RTS (mouse), and hardcore simulation games with their open peripheral support. Do you want a cutting-edge, PC-exclusive game to show off that fancy new rig of yours? You only have two choices: the already aging Crysis, and the awkwardly complex ArmA 2.

The lesson of this is: closed, limited, idiot-proof platforms are what the mainstream want out of technology, not an open platform that relies on your ability to use it.

Exhibit B: Netbooks

A comment I frequently hear from mainstream PC users is how their fancy new X-GHz rig is primarily being used to browse the web and play MP3s. Before netbooks, the entire computer market was running under the assumption that people were buying PCs for productivity– for, say, computing and generally doing real things, or if not, bleeding-edge PC gaming. This was not the case. Enter: Netbooks.

Asus sparked the Netbook revolution with their "Eee PC" in 2007. It was a very small, phenomenally inexpensive laptop. What was anticipated to be a niche device stumbled upon exactly what the mainstream crowd wanted: a slow, piece-of-shit computer that’s only good enough to (barely) surf the web and play MP3s. Unlike most "laptops", this device could comfortably sit on a lap and give you facebook/twitter updates as you watched TV, rotting your brain at twice the normal speed. While productivity was technically possible, good luck running modern Microsoft Office on it reasonably, much less anything that demands real CPU power.

Intel, by getting into the netbook CPU game, realized its success was cutting into its own higher-margin profits of faster CPUs, but knew it could not fight the plain-as-day trend.

Exhibit C: Smartphones

Apple did not invent the smartphone. It merely popularized it by producing a smartphone streamlined for non-productivity, unlike the (admittedly horrible) Windows Mobile phones & PDAs of the past. Unlike the multi-tasking, crash-happy WinMo, iPhone’s limited, tightly controlled, idiot-proof OS quickly became the smartphone OS of choice for the mainstream. Google stepped in with the relatively open Android platform to offer a mid-way point between "productivity" smartphone OSes and the limited, "experience"-focused iPhone OS.

iPad

The recently announced iPad and its defacto competitor, the coming flood of Android tablets, represents the future of mainstream computing. It sounds hyperbolic, considering what it is: a big iPod Touch, but its limited, idiot-proof experience is clearly what the mainstream wants, or rather, needs out of their computers.

Computer nerds like myself are all too familiar with being their friends’ and family’s go-to tech support guy. The subtext of every computer with botched Windows installs, hopelessly adware-ed from head to toe is "you shouldn’t be using a computer". And now, finally, there will be an alternative to the old adage of "Get (or drop $1.5 grand on) a Mac" — get an iPad or an Android tablet. It’s tightly controlled user "experience" is clearly what you need to not be eaten alive by technology.

I expect mainstream users will gradually ditch their Windows machines for Smartphone OS tablets and netbooks once they see them performing 100% of the tasks they care about.

Chrome OS and Cloud Computing

"Do you not do real things with your computer? Do you just dick around on Facebook and Farmville all day?", the Google Chrome OS introduction video may as well begin.

The gradual cloud computing evolution envisions a world for people who don’t need computers to be more than just web portals. If the internet was infinitely fast, then maybe I would just use a Chrome OS PC + recording interface to communicate with an Ableton server to do all my DAW work… but the internet is not that fast. It’s not ready to handle any media work beyond text in real-time. However, Google still found this a prime time to rev up their Cloud Computing vision with Chrome OS, the OS for people who don’t do work. Its initial demographic draw will be this casual crowd of computer users… "early adopters" of the Cloud Computing future.

Windows PCs in the Future

Like the exodus of cutting-edge games from the PC world, I expect an exodus of mainstream users to Android and iPhoneOS tablets and netbooks, once again leaving vanilla Windows PCs in the strict domain of nerds and professionals. End users will get what they want, Microsoft can stop trying to design a Windows that attempts to save you from yourself at every turn, and the problem of malware and zombie PCs will more or less be solved if not just greatly diminished.

No wimmenz producing music, and Ableton’s hot in the Cayman Islands. The more you know

while I’m at it, my dance/pop project MMvsUSAF will be having another live show this Friday (Dec. 11th, 2009) at Jerry’s Wicker Park, Chicago, 9:00PM, no cover.

Studio music is kind of unique in that sense. It’s hard to do it "lazily", like sketching or 3D graphics. There’s too much judgment involved in every step. Every element has to be constantly evaluated on multiple levels– how it fits in the mix, how it fits with the rhythm, how it fits with the harmony, and how it fits with the overall song structure. And as you’re evaluating, you’re constantly trying to change your perspective between "objective" and "subjective".

Sometimes it helps to get immersed into the groove of what you’ve made to help you brainstorm new ideas, though at the risk of going too far and "losing perspective". You need that objective perspective to keeps your impulses in check– your impulse to make that radical new lead too crazy, that phat bass too overpowering, that monstrous effects chain too absurd and distracting.

Sure, you can say all of this exists in graphics as well (e.g. sketching, painting, 3D graphics, 2D animation), but from my own experience I’ve found that type of work to be more "automatic", lighter on its demand for "judgment" when you’re in the nitty gritty of it. It’s much easier to follow your impulse and work mechanically for extended periods without intensely concentrating on maintaining your judgment and shifting your perspective.

What exacerbates the fatigue problem is the fact that sound and music exist in time. An evaluation requires more than a quick zoom-out and a glance at the project. Instead you have to sit there, and you have to listen, and you have to listen multiple times with your ears, your brain, and your "heart" so to speak. You have to think about how you feel during each moment of music. You struggle to imagine what it must be like to hear the song for the first time. As you do this, you have to resist the urge to get too used to the way things are, or else you’ll develop a resistance to change. Professional mixing/mastering engineers have practices and rituals to fight fatigue, because once you’re fatigued your ability to judge properly is compromised.

For me anyway, there’s a constant identity crisis happening when I work on music. I tend to begin each project with a vague notion of who the track is "for" (what sensibilities it caters to), how it defines the album it’ll be placed into, and how it defines me as an artist. 4 times out of 5, I end up with a very different song than what I originally envisioned. Ultimately I’m fine with that, but it does add another layer of ambiguity that makes the act of "judgment" less clear-cut. On what basis do I judge? Is this weird new part of a song a bold new direction for me or a daft idea that should be scrapped before I burn myself out on it?

The only other type of work I’ve done that’s similar is video editing. From beginning to end, the process is full of evaluation and more evaluation, from the little details (What should I use in this 3 hours of raw footage? Will this edit "feel" better if I place it 50 milliseconds earlier?) to the grand scheme (Does this rhythm feel right? Does this part really make me feel a buildup of tension?). Like music, sometimes I get on a roll and can work all day, but more often than not it’s a battle of concentration.

Meanwhile… news about me

Holy shit live show Nov. Fri. 13th 2009 in Chicago. That’s in two weeks!!

but not for "Renzu", my personal music project… instead it’s a debut of a music duo I’m in called MMvsUSAF (unofficially "Mega Man vs the United States Air Force"). It’s electronic dance music with rap, hiphop, pop and rock. Lots of variety. A site will be launched very shortly, so I’ll update my "news" RSS when it’s ready to roll. If all goes well, I’ll also post some video of the show after the event.

Renzu stuff

You might’ve noticed that my last album was a weird split of Japanese folk and straight electronic. I thought for my next album I’d try to focus on a tighter, more accessible fusion of modern electronic music and Japanese folk, but instead it went in the other direction. My Japanese folk-type stuff sounds jappier than ever, ready for the soundtrack of Muramasa 2, and my electronic tracks are becoming more aggressively bizarre and IDM-esque. So instead I’m going to split my material into two EPs or LPs or whatever. Who knows what kind of netlabels will take this stuff.

This divergence from the center, I think, is partially driven by how my pop energy and pop sensibilities are drained into the MMvsUSAF project. As a result, my personal work is growing increasingly experimental. Like what I was saying earlier about how working on music leads to an "identity crisis", I had to grow accustomed to the idea that the kind of energy I’m pursuing is something deeper, stranger and more alienating than what I originally aimed for, which was something that makes the foreign accessible. Instead I’m writing material that pursues its own logic with relative disregard to pop sensibilities.

It’s kind of awesome in its own way though. My goal is to make music that’s vivid and engaging and that hasn’t changed. It’s only the imagery that’s changing.

This blog, a section of my home page and a subsection of my Google Buzz feed, is about anime, music, games, and sometimes myself. I like to decipher themes and aesthetics in those topics, and connect them into grander ideas. This sticky post will be updated periodically.

• “Western” games vs. Japanese games: self-expression vs. self-escapism
• Rethinking anime distribution: nche labels & premium products
• Spotlight on Lackluster
• Simulation is the future of games
• Mamoru Oshii and the "proper" use of mediums
• The Japanese apocalyptic vision: beyond the atomic bomb
• Is music dead? Where are the new genres?