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Garbage Picking

I go out for a walk evenings when the temperature has dropped, and in this part of Vegas trash day is Friday. I occassionaly find goodies left out as trash to use in my found art creations. But last Thursday night I came across a different kind of find, somebody had tossed a Yamaha Clavinova. a CVP-50 to be exact. So I got my handtruck and proceeded to haul it home. Damn, it weights a ton. I guess Yamaha finally learned how to cut the weight in later models, but I’m guessing its 125-150 pounds. My back still hurts from lifting and hauling it around.

Then I dug up a copy of the manual on the internet to see what was state-of-the-art Clavinova in 1989. Turns out this model is roughly as powerful as Yamaha’s cheapo models now, with one gent basically telling people to spend no more than $200 for one. It does have features that newer models don’t have, like a 30 watt per channel sound system. But basically its a 16 voice polyphony, with a selection of 22 voices and a drum section “synthesizer”.

Now for the negatives. Every E key makes no sound, as well as all the A# keys. And one of the black keys sticks, so if I want a fully functioning instrument, it apparently means a teardown.

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More on Music

More on Music; been fooling around with the Nervous Keys preset on my Arturia Microfreak lately. I kinda like the sounds it makes and I’m trying to find a drone sound to use with it. The gear that I’m experimenting with includes the Moog Mother-32 and the Moog Mavis. We’ll see how things go.

The new music that I’m working on I’m planning to upload to platforms I haven’t used before, Mirlo and bandwagon.fm. They’re platforms built to enable artists to keep more of the money generated from customer purchases. And as an extra benefit, no AI training from your music. The plan is to emulate SoundCloud and Bandcamp.

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Interoperability

Found this TikTok post on interoperability and breaking the chains surrounding the walled gardens of big tech.

http://jaypeachproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/v12044gd0000cvuq9gvog65ovs7pl940.mp4

Still haven’t figured out how to embed video in WordPress, click the link to start down the rabbit hole that I entered when Spotify started their nastiness a year and a half ago.

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Electronica #1

My latest album, Electronica , has been out almost a month and it’s getting a good reception. It’s a mixture of electronic music and ambient. The album took quite a while to mix, as I have been trying to use different platforms to do my music making. The album was mixed and mastered on iOS, using an iPhone and iPad. It was an interesting learning curve. Check out the new album at https://linktr.ee/jaypeach53

And check out my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/jaypeach?utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator

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Google Site Kit

Well, Google Site Kit strikes out again. I haven’t done anything to my settings, but now a whole bunch of data is now not available. Site Kit is a Google product which feeds off of Google Analytics to give you an idea about how users interact with your web site. But using Site Kit is a pain which has become even more of a pain. Ugh.

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More on Spotify, Part 2

Well, I have more news on Spotify. The latest stats (April 28) have my monthly users at 30, a 150% increase over the previous 28 day period. So something happened even though Spotify isn’t reporting any new playlists I’m on. I’ve been on a playlist with a measly 4,000 subscribers for months, but I don’t know how I acquired the new listeners. Lets see if the MAU continues at the new level, or if it falls back to the previous levels.

I fail to understand the listener base that Spotify has. They report huge increases in their listener base. Are the new listeners bots that Spotify and other bad actors keep on spinning up? And yes, Spotify is a bad actor. Between the AI “songs” that Spotify adds to its catalog and the pay to play “promotions” that are the only way to get your music listened to, Spotify and Ek are bad actors. and they plan to get worse.

But I’ve been promoting other platforms, especially YouTube and Amazon Music, both of which pay nany times more per song as Spotify. To the point that only about 10% of my impressions come from Spotify, even though industry statistics show Spotify has a 30% share of the streaming market.

I just wish there were more people out there that bought music. There are three platforms that I know of that sell my music, iTunes, Amazon, and Beatport. Beatport gives me the best payout and the music can be really high quality. I suppose I also should mention BandCamp, though not all my catalog is there because their discovery features just plain suck.

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Getting Stuck

If I feel I’m getting stuck in producing my art, I fall back on two sources to get unstuck. The first is the book The War of Art. The second is the app Oblique Strategies.

The War of Art is a relatively short book which outlines the author’s experiences in writer’s block, but I feel it also reflects the experiences of any creative person.

The second resource I use is the app on my phone called Oblique Strategies. It displays various things to mull over if the creative juices aren’t flowing. Here’s an example:

I find the items displayed sometimes fit the moment and sometimes they don’t. If they don’t just shake the phone to get another suggestion. I especially like this one for my art and music. New and different, not the same old formula, that suits me just fine.