Hi everyone and hope you've had a great few weeks since the last blog post! It's been a fairly busy one over here at JabunAudio working on another collaborative track of sorts (more to report on that when I can), as well as programming drum parts for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd full length album! 6 tracks done so far, so just a little short of halfway at the moment, but I think things are coming on nicely! Got a fresh batch of Ernie Ball strings in the post too, so I'll be servicing the guitars for some recording once these drum parts are sorted very soon. Busy busy! Onto the main news for the week, it's time for some more $5+ Patreon rewards so let's dive into that!

Yesterday was the final Wednesday of the month which means it's time for some more $5 and $10 Patreon rewards, and this time I have not one, but TWO classic Nick Standing songs to share with you (including some extra bonus content as well)!

Let's start with the earlier and lesser known of these two, a parody VERY rough punk rock song called "I Won't Eat My Broccoli!!!"! This was originally released on the same day as Sonnet For A Spider Girl: Halloween 2012 (according to the earliest dates I could find), and really was just me messing around recording for an afternoon to experiment (as I recall) with my newly homemade Super Fuzz pedal (which you'll be able to hear the bass guitar blasting though on this, as well as in some of my other discography)! I also wanted to try out getting some valve saturation and grit on the vocals which were recorded though my Korg ESX sampler for extra character. It was a fun afternoon with a silly song to show for it. Call me a phoney too, but full disclosure: I actually LOVE broccoli (probably one of my favourite veg), but those were the words which came to mind that afternoon, and so it's history now! The track was remastered for a Bandcamp release on May 7th 2014 and I've included both the original legacy version as well as the remaster as rewards for your enjoyment. Hope you enjoy a little silliness and you can listen to I Won't Eat My Broccoli!!! (the remaster) on Bandcamp:

https://nickstanding.bandcamp.com/track/i-wont-eat-my-broccoli

And speaking of silliness, we come to the next track which was released just one day after the IWEMB remaster on May 8th 2014: Mr. Knife! I've spoken about Mr. Knife in previous posts and for some reason, this Tiny Tim style track which was omitted from the original animation it was commissioned for has become one of my most popular tracks to date (I have no idea why)! To save some space on this already long post, you can read more about the creation of Mr. Knife on the 3rd part of this fantastic interview I took part in on Newgrounds which covers many aspects of my music philosophy and history and is my most detailed interview to date! Read more below:

https://theinterviewer.newgrounds.com/news/post/1119990

And I hope you enjoy the one and only Mr. Knife! Grab it as a reward on Patreon or listen below on Bandcamp:

https://nickstanding.bandcamp.com/track/mr-knife

For the $10+ patrons, you've also got an exclusive sneak peek demo from the upcoming next Better Than The Book album to look forward to! Become a $10+ patron to access that and many more rewards now, and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter including the full Better Than The Book and Jabun discographies and much more! With the newly updated REWARD ARCHIVE it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them!

Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Discover the Reward Archive: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44575319

That about wraps up the rewards for this time! Mp3s for these songs will be out for the $1+ patrons next Wednesday, and the next set of rewards after that will likely be a bit early and coincide with the announcement and pre-order launch for Jabun's upcoming 3rd album. Until then, I hope you have a great March to come and thanks as always for supporting my music, Jabun, and Better Than The Book! Take care and I can't wait to show you my latest tracks as Jabun!

And that it for this blog post! As mentioned above, next time I'll be sharing the $1 Patreon rewards and it's also Bandcamp Friday coming up next week as well as time to go through the usual monthly goals etc... at the very least! Always room for more excitement here at JabunAudio, but until next time, I hope you have a great end to February and thanks as always for supporting my projects in all the ways you can. All the best and take care!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week so far! It's been a fairly busy (and super cold) one here at JabunAudio sorting out all the Patreon rewards associated with Jabun's upcoming 3rd album, as well as the Bandcamp page and all the online streaming descriptions (YouTube Newgrounds etc...). A LOT of typing and copying and pasting, but it's all done now, and just one last thing to wait for until the pre-release admin work for the album is complete too. Almost there! On top of that I've also been going through all the pre-studio-recording demos for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album and thankfully it's not taking nearly as long as I expected it would! Just one more left to go through then it'll be time to prep for recording for real! Fun times! That's about all the main updates for this week, but I do have just one little press feature to share with you this week, so let's finish off this post with that!

So on Monday this week I had an nice surprise when my Patreon page was featured in The Tank Tribune Newspaper on Newgrounds.com! A huge thanks to The Tank Tribune for sharing the page and you can check out The Tank Tribune NO. 30 below:

https://thetanktribune.newgrounds.com/news/post/1142472

If you're reading this and haven't done so yet, then come join me on Patreon for as little as $1 and get the full Better Than The Book & Jabun discographies (and much more) when you sign up to support my music for monthly rewards; it really helps me out to keep making all these tunes! Thanks for the love and hope to see you there!

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
​
And for a big list of all the past rewards you'll have access to when you sign up, check out the reward archive below I put together for the convenience of new patrons! There's a TONNE of stuff:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/44575319

That's it for this blog post! I'm sure I'll be busy finishing up that final Better Than The Book demo in the coming week, and perhaps it'll be time to order some new strings soon too! Time will tell and we'll see how it all goes, but until the next one, I hope you have a great week ahead whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various music projects in any way you can! All the best and take care!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week and start to February so far! Boy has it been an exciting and busy one over here and there's a tonne of news to share with you as you can probably tell by the title! Let's dive straight into it with the release of the first compilation album to feature my music: The Ska Show with Beefy's "Save The Ska Show"!

Following the big announcement last week, I'm super pleased to tell you that the Save The Ska Show compilation album was finally released on Saturday and man is it a monster of a compilation! Featuring 64 ska bands from around the world in all sorts of ska flavours, this album will be acting as a fundraiser to help keep the great Ska Show with Beefy (proudly the 2nd most listened to Ska music show in the world) broadcasting during these crazy times. You'll even recognise my own contribution to the album on track 62: Better Than The Book's The Hardest Part! Check out the full album on Bandcamp below and I hope you enjoy it!

https://theskashowwithbeefy.bandcamp.com/releases

It's been an absolute honour to be part of this fundraising compilation (the first EVER compilation album I've been a part of in fact), and if you're a lover of ska music and/or the show, then that's 64 tracks from around the world for as little as 12 Australian Dollars (not even £7), with the option to donate more if you wish. Let's keep the skanking going and save this great show! Pick it up!

Next on the news this week, some more ska punk updates from Better Than The Book as I'm super excited to announce that songwriting for the project's next album (AND EP) are just about almost done! First draft lyric sheets are completed with rough demos of all tracks recorded as well; a total of 10 brand new tracks for the project's 3rd full length album (running in at ~35 minutes) + a subsequent EP of 4 bonus tracks including one new song + 3 alternative versions from the main album (running in at ~13 minutes)! Of course I also plan on making instrumental releases for these projects too, so that's 4 Better Than The Book releases (at least) to look forward to over the next few years! Due to restrictions from the pandemic, as well as general project timescales, I'm doubtful I'll be able to release the first of these before the end of 2021, but I aim to be well into the recording and production process at the very least! There's still a little preparation needed before it's time to start recording for real, including servicing instruments and setting up project worksheets/sessions etc... but next thing on the cards will be to go through these 14 demos and make sure I'm happy with all the general arrangements etc... before I get started recording for real. That'll be one of the goals this month (which we'll get into at the end of this post), but things are certainly exciting for Better Than The Book at the moment! More details to come as and when, but if you really want a closer sneak peek at the writing process then head over to Patreon and become a $10 supporter where I've already started sharing sneak peeks and demos at the progress so far! Remember you'll be gaining access to the entire back catalogue of rewards too, when you sign up so come get a backstage pass to the action and I look forward to seeing you there!

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding 

And speaking of Patreon, yesterday was the 1st Wednesday of the month which means it's time for some more $1+ Patreon rewards! This month we're going waaay back to Halloween 2012 for my first acoustic solo track as plain old Nick Standing: "Sonnet For A Spider Girl". Read more about it below and become a patron to d0wnload the track (as well as my entire Patreon back catalogue so far). I hope you enjoy it!

Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/45792410/
$1 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/45792397/
Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding 

Next this week, building on the success of last year's campaign in support of musicians impacted by the coronavirus, Bandcamp is again waiving its revenue share fees on the first Friday of the month from midnight to midnight Pacific Time (that's tomorrow) for Bandcamp Friday! That means that if you purchase anything from Bandcamp this Friday 5th of February, the artists you support (including myself) will get more of the sales revenue than usual since Bandcamp doesn't take its cut, and you'll be able to support the music you love more directly than ever on the platform!
 
If you've been itching to pick up Jabun's new 15-4-20 album, Better Than The Book's "Hopes and Dreams" or "Two Years On" albums (the latter of which celebrates its 5th anniversary on February 6th! Man how time has flown!) or the new Save The Ska Show compilation album, now's the best time to do so! Check out the Bandcamp pages below and thanks again for supporting my music in any way you can, it really means a lot:

Better Than The Book
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Jabun
https://jabun.bandcamp.com/
 
Nick Standing (< The sillier old stuff)
https://nickstanding.bandcamp.com/

Save The Ska Show:
https://theskashowwithbeefy.bandcamp.com/releases

Finally this week, it's the beginning of another month and so time to reflect on and set some new goals as usual! Here's what I set for January:

​1) Sort the Bandcamp, RouteNote and streaming uploads for Jabun's 3rd album (proof listening)
2) Make an announcement video for Jabun's 3rd album
3) Make a promo schedule for Jabun's 3rd album
4) Try to finish another 3+ 1st draft lyric sheets for Better Than The Book's next album
​
And overall a great turnout! All the music uploads have been sorted, RouteNote's even been approved for worldwide distribution too, the announcement video has been made and uploaded, and I've sorted out a solid promo schedule which lasts from March to mid-May as well (lots of work ahead for me). I also finished not 3 but 4 first draft lyric sheets for Better Than The Book's next album/EP project, as well a few horn parts and other things! Good progress! Next month is looking to be similar in terms of goals and things to do so let's aim for this:

1) Sort Patreon rewards for the next 2 months (related to Jabun's 3rd album)
2) Fully sort the Bandcamp page for Jabun's 3rd album
3) Sort all the streaming descriptions/tags/scheduling for the online uploads of the album (YouTube, Newgrounds, and SoundCloud teaser)
4) Finish assessing and finalising the 14 BTTB demos as mentioned earlier and set up a spreadsheet for the album production progress

That seems like a tonne of work to do, but hopefully just about doable (and I still have other non-JabunAudio goals for this month too). Of course I aim to keep up with my Better Than The Book live practice too as best I can, though still not sure when that's going to be put to good use... Anyways! A Long (short) month of hard work ahead methinks! Wish me luck and I hope you're able to achieve your goals too! Feel free to share them in the comments below!

That about wraps things up for this post! Seems like I've got a lot of typing in my week ahead to look forward to, but hoping for some BTTB practice and demo time too! Until the next blog post whenever that may be (February 24th at the very latest), I hope you have a great month ahead and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Jabun, Better Than The Book and my various projects (and the things they're connected to) in any way you can! Hope you enjoy the new compilation album and looking forward to sharing even more Better Than The Book and Jabun with you soon! All the best and take care!