About Art & Technology

I now call myself a Musical Cartoonist, but for the longest time also did REALLY technical stuff, but not any more. This site is a gallery of original Art and Technology works supplemented with a few of our "how to" articles. Now we do custom Vector based OR Digitally colored illustrations to your requirements for shirts and merchandise.

We developed, and shipped, hi-tech commercial products for simulation, training, music, audio and video production, among other industrial, medical, defence and mining NDA covered things. Did project management at different times too.

Audio and electronic musical instrument design have been very significant in our work at both Fairlight Instruments (where the Sampler originated with the Computer Musical Instrument or CMI) and Roland Corporation Japan. As used by the likes of Peter Gabriel, ZZ Top, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Jan Hammer, John Farnham (You're the Voice), Iva Davies (Great Southern Land) and many others. Some 15 years of that in Hamamatsu Japan and some is covered in the article here. Still more on the Blog.

In our Project Studio we also do assorted, video, audio and music production of our own material, playing guitar, bass and synthesisers. See our YouTube channel for some demos that support our illustration and graphic design. Have produced equipment designs and modified equipment where justified. See here for studio gear and here for guitar mods.

We have published our first eBook, Hot CAR-toons, Dudes, Dudettes & Stuff At the Heavy Metal Garage and it is now available at Amazon. Car cartoons and humor for the cost of a cup of coffee that you can read on your Smartphone or Kindle. We really wanted to do a book with music, but there aren't the platforms yet. eBook publishing is now also something we have some experience with.

"It did have a quality about it, and I don't think it was just luck, you know.
People are talking about the sonic quality of a series III Fairlight while forgetting the output stage of that thing was the same filter , and I "think" the same VCA , as was in a Jupiter 8 or Prophet 5.

I mean they ran through those, you know what ever... SSM chips and that was the filter on that thing, ..um… so there wasn't a reason really it should sound THAT much better than something else as everything else was using the same stuff , but I think there was a design aesthetic, and it is the guys building it.

I think the people that built our instruments, I see them as much as artists as I see them as scientists."

I was the guy that designed all the electronics that made sound in the series III over 34 years ago, and I'd like to say it is "Art & Technology" that makes the difference to the projects I'm involved with.

For a different take on our history, here is our draft Autobiographical History Collection Of Memories comic This Is Where The Smoke Comes Out inspired by the approach used in Mizaki's SHOWA, A HISTORY OF JAPAN. It combines history of the times with what I was doing at the time. It is brief, but I've received encouraging feedback on it

Contact us via email on your requirements. Also on Skype, Zoom, LINE and Messenger if you want to talk. Beginning of December 2019, we moved back to Japan and am now living in Kyoto.