It's weird how janky Shortcuts is at getting what you are currently listening to. I've never gotten the actual Music shortcuts to work on desktop. There is an option for getting what is currently playing with a Shazam shortcut but that doesn't give you the album name.

Shortcuts does run Applescript though. I did a little searching and found the script for getting what you are listening to. Very cool how quickly it grabs the result.

tell application "Music"
    if player state is playing then
        set currentTrack to current track
        set albumName to album of currentTrack
        set artistName to artist of currentTrack
        set albumYear to year of currentTrack
        set albumGenre to genre of currentTrack
        return "Currently listening to: \"" & albumName & "\" by " & artistName & " (" & albumYear & ", " & albumGenre & ")"
    else
        return "Music is not currently playing."
    end if
end tell

Getting this working is inspiring me to use Applescript more with Shortcuts in the future.

Yesterday ruled. We went to see a friends photography exhibit at Tennozu Isle station. A very cool exhibition and nice to chill out by the ocean.

After that we went to see a legendary 1970s punk band called Totsuden Danboru at a live house called 七針 (nana hari/seven needles) near Hatchobori station. Such a cool spot to see a show.

We are recording in a month which has my brain in recording mode. My vibe for this next recording is to try to document the place we are recording at. If we are going to travel all the way to a studio in the mountains of Kyushuu to track songs, the listener better be able to receive some of that mountain-ness.

How do we make a record that sounds "mountain-y"? We have about 30 days to figure it out.

For about 95% of the year, living next to a temple is cool. We get the benefit of their trees and the vibe is mellow for sure.

The one by our place has a matsuri every year. This too is also cool because I am into drums so I get to hear a bunch of drumming at all experience levels for two days.

There is one drawback though. When they aren't drumming, they play the same 10 songs on a loop over the weekend. I think I heard the same Pink Lady song at least eight times.

We have recording time set up for October and we need three more songs. If we want them to sound natural when we record, we really should be rehearsing them and playing them live for two months. So that would mean we need to get three songs written by August.

I figure might as well lean into the pressure and enjoy it.

When someone asks me "how was your show last night?", I usually just say it was a good show and add some memorable details. On rare occasions, something annoying happens and I do a little rant to get it out. That's pretty rare though.

What I never do is include all the things I am actually doing for a normal local show in Tokyo.

- got all my drum gear and merch ready at home (30 min) 
- carried two heavy bags to the train station (10 min) 
- rode a crowded train an hour-ish to the club's station (1 - 2 hour) 
- carried the two heavy bags to the club (30 min) 
- wait to do soundcheck (30 min) 
- did a half hour soundcheck (30 min) 
- set up a pop-up shop at a merch table (30 min) 
- killed time til we played (30 min - 3 hours) 
- played a show (30 min - 1 hour) 
- wait until the show finishes and tear down pop-up shop (1 - 3 hours) 
- carried two heavy bags (hopefully a little lighter... ( ^ _ − )b) to the train station (10 min) 
- rode a crowded train an hour-ish to home (1 - 2 hour) 
- carried two heavy bags to the train station (10 min)

By the way, I love every second of it. I wouldn't change it for the world. I do need to appreciate the basic process and that it does require a lot of time and energy.

 Latest Project

• Bandcamp
• Apple Music
• iTunes
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

Middle school me made me get Iron Maiden tickets for their show in Yokohama in September. They are one of those bands I've always wanted to see live but each time they played where I am living, something always seemed to get in my way of going.

The last large venue metal show I went to was a blast mainly because there were tons of metal fans roaming the streets of Yokohama before the show. I will always love seeing a band in a small club the most. There is something fun about the build up to an arena show too though.

( ^ . ^ ) \m/

On the way home from our show last night, I kept thinking about how punk bands in the eighties spray painted bedsheets with their logo on them. My first band made one and it was SOOOO important to us to have it behind us at every show.

I kinda want to make one for our next show but I already have to carry 1000 pounds of merch on the train.  ( ^ . ^ ) \m/

When I listen to an album, I like to post it on the blog. It's useful for me to have a database of stuff I have listened to at random times.

The slog is getting them into the site so I thought I'd make an Apple Shortcut. After some struggling, the closest I can get so far is to have shortcuts Shazam the current song. The shortcut then opens the album up on Safari in one tab and an empty blog page in another tab. From there I can copy/paste the album's info into the blog post.

It's clunky-level which is one above from slog-level¹.

¹ Since this is a Drupal site, I should see if I can get the current song into a spreadsheet and import it.

A couple of things that always bring me joy are:

The "you can do this with Javascript" person on a CSS thread. It's like someone going to a thread about speaking French and saying "you can say this in Spanish".

When a podcast DJ plays an album at the wrong speed, fixes the speed, and leaves it on the recording. It is a signal to me that this is a show that I need to keep listening to.