March 2022 Patreon rewards: A 5 track exclusive blink182 cover EP (+ an artwork sneak peek and title / tracklist reveal from Jabun's 4th album for the $10 Patrons), Cyberdevil's free INK 20 Mixtape, new (old) gear, goal setting/reflecting + more!

Hi everyone and hope you had a great February! It's the beginning of another month which means time for some more Patreon rewards and this time we're back to another old cover EP I gave as a present! Some more updates to share as usual including some new pieces of old gear I couldn't resist picking up, Cyberdevil’s new INK 20 Mixtape and more. Let's get started with that EP!
 
This month I'm sharing with you a 5 track EP of blink182 covers called "5 Tracks, 4 Years, 3 Piece Band, 2 Of Us, 1 Leap", a present I gave to Eva on our 4th anniversary! As with all my cover music I give as presents, this performance is free from any tuning or elasitic timing correction. The track list consists of 5 blink182 songs which are in some way romantic and reminded me of Eva and is as follows:
 
01 First Date
02 M+M's
03 Wasting Time
04 Eva [Josie]
05 All The Small Things
 
The cover of Josie has lots of the lyrics changed to be more personal to me and Eva too, hence the title change. It was all made for her, but I hope you enjoy it too!
 
All Patreon supporters will be receiving an exclusive download of the EP (including music and artwork) this month, and if you're a $10+ patron, you also have an exclusive artwork sneak peek and title / tracklist reveal from Jabun's 4th album to look forward to! If that sounds good to you then join me on Patreon to read more and download the rewards below as well as check out all of this month's project updates in full. Remember you'll be receiving all past rewards for your tier too when you sign up so check out the archives to see everything you can catch up on and hope to see you there!
 
$1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/62327941
$10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/62327942
Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842
Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
 
Next month's reward will almost certainly be the instrumental version of this EP, so look forward to that if you fancy singing along without my voice, or just don't want to hear me singing!
 
Onto the monthly updates, despite being effectively away for about half of the month with my twin Eamon coming to visit (fun times), there's still a lot of news to share! Firstly, after many months away from it, I've finally got back to some Better Than The Book practice in preparation for hopefully some live shows at some point (though at the moment I don't have an ETA) and vocal recording for the new album. Meanwhile, Jabun's upcoming album is almost finished audio-wise and I'm just waiting on some feedback from other ears before I make my final decisions and calling it done. The artwork on the other hand is now fully complete, so things are almost ready to prep for release!
 
In other news, it's been a while since I had a press feature of sorts so I was super happy this month to hear that Better Than The Book and Jabun's "1314" single was featured in The Tank Tribune's phonograph playlist on Newgrounds! Thanks so much for the feature and you can check out the full post here:
 
https://thetanktribune.newgrounds.com/news/post/1251065
 
Onto some exciting gear updates, I have 2(ish) things to share with you this month! Firstly, after telling myself I really don't need another BOSS Overdrive pedal, an opportunity came up which I just couldn't refuse, so I bet you can guess what I did! I got another BOSS Overdrive: The BOSS OD-2r Turbo Overdrive, and it sounds phenomenal! I ended up doing a small modification to it to fine tune and perfect the sound, and after that I was craving another mod/build project, and ANOTHER opportunity came up too! After not being able to find a suitable small rotary speaker to pair with my Yamaha Organ, someone in the next town over was selling an OEM Leslie Tremolo Unit (basically the inside of one with bare wires and no case) and for only £15 so I figured, I’d try and build one myself! If all goes to plan and I can get the innards of the unit working properly then I hope to be rocking a small Leslie 16/18 style cab in the near future! Very exciting! The above paragraph was a heavily abridged version of the story behind those 2 purchases, so if you want to hear more, you can read more in this month’s Patreon rewards!
 
Next on the news, it's been a long while in the making but I'm super happy to finally present to you huge a sort-of collaboration, Cyberdevil's INK20 Mixtape! INK20 is a remastered collection of Cyberdevil's Inktober 2020 challenge where he wrote, recorded and released a new rap song every day for the month of October! The INK20 mixtape features all 31 original tracks + 2 more bonus ones (all remastered) and is free to download from Cyberdevil's website. I was on remastering duties for this, and unlike INK19 or last year's Inktober, there aren't any beats from me this time. Check out a grand collection, read more about it, and grab a free download below! There are some real gems in this one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnbn2LWkYI​

Listen on Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1115281
Read more and download on CyberD's website: https://cyberd.org/music/ink-20.html
 
And enjoy!

Finally this week, it's time to set and reflect on some more goals! Here's what I set for February:

1) Finish the artwork for Jabun's 4th album
2) Finish the master WAVs for Jabun's 4th album
3) Set aside ISRCs for Jabun's 4th album (no need to register yet, just get things set up in my own records)
4) Get back to practicing for Better Than The Book LIVE stuff!
 
And overall things were moderately successful! 1), 3) and 4) were all completed, though I'm still waiting for some feedback on 2) before I call it done (though essentially apart from cutting it up into individual, tracks it is done). With that, let's set some new goals for March!

1) Finish master WAVs + Mp3s / Flacs for Jabuns new album
2) Get the Leslie Tremolo Unit fully working electronically and mechanically.

Things still feel quite busy over here despite the completed collaborative projects so I figured I'd just concentrate on the new Jabun album and prepping the Leslie so that I'm ready for some woodwork in April (no doubt there'll be some admin work to do for the new album too)! Hopefully by this time next month I'll have a release date in mind, but we shall see. Until then, wish me luck and hope you have a fruitful month too!

That about wraps things up for this month! You already know what next month's main reward will be from above, so until then, I hope you enjoy all the new music and thanks as always for supporting my projects however you can! Have a great March and take care!