June 2024 Blog Post: Polishing up the Better Than The Book mixes (5 down 9 to go), BTTB Band Practice Videos, how to service a Leslie Speaker + more updates!

Hi everyone and hope you've had a great May! Another busy month has flown past faster than expected including an amazing trip to Wales to see Bruce Springsteen (fantastic show) as well as multiple trips down to my hometown in Sussex. It's the beginning of another month which means more updates and rewards to share so let's get straight get to it!

First in the news for this month, although I didn't get as far as I'd hoped due to the many trips over the past few weeks, I've been hard at work going over the first draft Better Than The Book mixes I reported last month, polishing them to perfection and setting them up in a session ready for the final track sequencing and mastering! As of this post, 5 (almost 6) tracks are ready to be mastered with 9 still awaiting a final polish, so it's not quite where I thought I'd be but progress is being made. Once all 14 tracks are completed, it'll be time for mastering, a quick round of "final" checks and tweaks for anything off that the mastering reveals, then a test listen with some extra ears before calling it done. Phew... Still a little while to go, but I'm hoping to be in that final mastering tweaky stage by the next post! Wish me luck and thanks for your patience!

Meanwhile away from the album studio work, the BTTB live band was back at Stanbridge Studios on May 4th for another practice session, this time with Sam (the bass guy)'s amazing monitoring system, and boy oh boy does it make a difference! We only managed to get a little bit of footage this time, but by using the direct feed from the monitoring system and mixing it with the camera audio, things are sounding a lot clearer on the videos! Those'll be out in about a month's time, but you have a big batch of videos from the previous practice to enjoy while you wait! Next practice is set for July 13th, though we might not have the super duper monitoring system that time due to time constraints... we'll see and hope you enjoy the behind the scenes peeks when they're released!

Back to trips, after gifting me his old music production computer last month, I went to visit our old family friend Martin at his studio to say thanks and have a geek out session and somehow with his amazing generosity left with a stack of magazine and his old patch bay for when I get to set up my final forever studio in the hopefully not too distant future! Thanks so much again Martin! 

Finally for this update, there's another load of videos to share! Still keeping up with the 2-a-week packed playlist, and as previously mentioned it's been a month packed with Better Than The Book LIVE practice videos as well as a How To Service A Leslie Speaker instructional video! Check out the playlist below:

​https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm

And here's a list of the latest additions:

• Oiling and Servicing Leslie / Vibratone Rotary Speaker
• BTTB LIVE - Backseat Phobia (First in 4 Years)
• BTTB LIVE - Cathode Ray Days (Full)
• BTTB LIVE - And I Fear (Clip) (Nick gets overexcited)
• BTTB LIVE - Plot Holes (Clip)
• BTTB LIVE - Heartbeats - The Knife (Full)
• BTTB LIVE - Bump In The Night (Full)
• BTTB LIVE - Hold Me Tight (Full)
• BTTB LIVE - Artificial Ignorance (Full)

Next month is back to the usual shorts with a tonne of organ and a bit of guitar too! Keep your eyes and ears posted for the next one coming on Sunday!

That about wraps things up for this post, unless you're $10 patron in which case you have a sneak peak at the (hopefully) FINAL MIX for "Hold Me Tight (Non-Acoustic Version)" from the upcoming Better Than The Book album to look forward to, a new song you can also hear in the Better Than The Book LIVE videos for this month! This coming month is set to be busy polishing up these mixes while prepping and practicing for the next BTTB live practice in July, but some disruptions may be coming soon so we'll see how it goes and hopefully I'll have more information on that next time. Until then, I hope you have an amazing June to come, enjoy the Better Than The Book LIVE videos and music and thanks as always for supporting my music however you can! All the best and take care!

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