Hi everyone and hope you're having a great (and much cooler) final week of July so far! It's been a busy time here at JabunAudio plodding along with editing for Better Than The Book's 3rd album project as well as getting my final Covid vaccination and being a little bit under the weather as expected in the aftermath. More Patreon rewards to share with you today so let's get straight to that and the rest of the news!

Yesterday was the final Wednesday of the month which means its time for another dose of $5+ Patreon rewards and this time we're continuing with some more soundtracky (but slightly different) stuff with another track from 2013, "Piggyback Ride"!

Piggyback Ride is an interesting one in my catalogue in that it combines orchestral and chiptune elements for a retro videogame-esq vibe with the clarity of more traditional scoring. This piece was originally written for a game on Newgrounds asking for people to submit tunes for the soundtrack, but after sending it over and some feedback, the makers decided to go with something else. I was a bit disappointed at the time as this would have been one of my first compositional rejections, but as I wasn't sure how else to improve on the track, I ended up releasing it as-is for people to listen to at the very least, as I was still pleased with the way it had turned out. As it so happened, while the originally intended audience wasn't so keen on Piggyback Ride, the track was eventually picked up by a MUCH higher profile interested party: EDF Energy & The British Science Association for their online "A to Bee" game which you can still play online:

https://jointhepod.org/teachers/games/a-to-bee-game

It's a great example of how one track even if not initially well received might lead to something big (and that's happened to me a few times throughout my career as I'm sure you know by now). Piggyback Ride has been featured in a number of other multi-media productions since then and is a fun one I look back on with fondness! Since it was designed for use in games as well as for listening, I'm including 2 versions in this months rewards: the looping version which was featured in various games, and an edited version with a fade out for your personal listening pleasure! Grab Piggyback Ride when you become a supporter on Patreon, and listen to the track on YouTube below:

Piggyback Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukGJmuw057E
$5+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/53164462/

And for the $10+ patrons, this month you have an exclusive LIVE Jabun ambient modular synth performance 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!

$10+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/53164465/
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Discover the Reward Archive (4th October 2018 -> 1st May 2021): 
https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-posts-50344842

That's it for the rewards this time and Piggyback Ride will be available for the $1+ patrons next Wednesday! Something a little different will be coming in the next set of rewards, but until then, I hope you have a great August to come and thanks as always for supporting my music on Patreon! 

Next in the news, in case you missed it last week, it's currently 50% off on anything from the Better Than The Book Bandcamp store to celebrate 2 years of "Hopes and Dreams"! Use the code "2years" and hope you enjoy it!

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Offer ends next Sunday 8/8/21 so grab a discount while you can!

Finally this week, some nice radio news to share as Better Than The Book was back on Button Down Radio with The Hardest Part again! Thanks so much to BDR for sharing the music and you can read more about what they have to say on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/buttondownradio5446/posts/2965822327022918

That's it for this week's news! Next time I'll have the $1+ Patreon rewards to share as well as the usual monthly goals to set and reflect on, and we'll see if there's any further exciting updates to share as well! Until then, thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects however you can and hope you have a great week to come! Take care and all the best!

​Hi everyone and hope you’re having a great July so far! It's been a super busy time here at JabunAudio since the last post finishing off organ and guitar recording for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album project as well as consolidating edits ready to start recording vocals! Still a few more tracks to edit to make my monthly target but we'll see how it all goes! Meanwhile I have something huge to celebrate with you today from Better Than The Book's previous album! Let's get started with the news and a limited time special offer!
 
Time really does fly and would you believe this week marks two years since the release of Better Than The Book’s 2nd full-length album Hopes and Dreams?!

With 9/10 tracks from the album airing on radio stations from as far as the west coast of the USA, to here in the UK (including 2 tracks on BBC Introducing), to even Australia, a tonne of online features and coverage from various web magazines, and even one track appearing on a ska music compilation album by The Ska Show with Beefy (the second most listened to Ska music podcast in the world), Hopes and Dreams was undoubtedly my most well received project to date, and I want express my sincerest gratitude to everyone who made that happen!
 
A HUGE thank you to the BTTB (not quite yet) LIVE band, Sam, Andy and Eamon, the radio DJs with special mention to Beefy and Melita, Meg, the album’s PR extraordinaire, my subscribers on Patreon with special mention to top tier supporters past and present Michael White, Bob Roberts, David Klein II and Nathan Puray, and of course everyone else who’s made some noise for BTTB over the years! You folks really do make my dreams come true!
 
To celebrate a fantastic two years on from Hopes and Dreams (puns intended), I’m launching my very first Better Than The Book Bandcamp discount sale! From now until August 8th (the end of the weekend following the next Bandcamp Friday), you can get a whopping 50% off anything on the Better Than The Book Bandcamp store below using the code “2years” at the checkout. Enjoy!
 
https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/
 
Or if you’re feeling extra keen, you can grab the entire Better Than The Book and Jabun discographies and more including many exclusive downloads and bonus tracks when you support my music with a front row seat over on Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month! New rewards are published monthly and I hope to see you there in the comments!

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
 
That’s it for this post and I’ll be back with another reminder before August 6th for the next Bandcamp Friday! Next week's post will be announcing the next set of Patreon rewards at the very least, but until then, I hope you have a great week to come and thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, JabunAudio and my various music project in all the ways you can! Take care, stay safe and all the best!

Hi everyone and hope you've had a great week since the last post! It's been a lovely one over here, not so much in the studio, but instead visiting my hometown, family and friends for the first time in 11 months (due to the pandemic)! A long overdue and fun visit, and apart from the demolition of a gig venue close to my heart, it seems that most of my usual haunts have made it through this tough past year which is great to know! I also had the pleasure of listening to in the flesh a LOVELY Moog Modular at GAK which was amazing, though also a space-launch away from my budget level at almost £12,000! Whoa! I did however also see a special something which IS at my price range and I now have on pre-order, but I'll wait until it arrives to reveal it! Been meaning to get another one of these for about a year and a half now, but with a special edition released to celebrate its 40th anniversary of uninterrupted production, I thought it'd be very nice to own a limited piece of history! No more clues, and it should hopefully be arriving later this month! Onto the main news for this week, there's not a whole lot to report since I've been away apart from some more $1 Patreon rewards being released! Let's get to it:

As of yesterday, last week's $5 Patreon rewards are now out for the $1 patrons: "Closing scene" and "See Ya Later" (+ an exclusive work in progress studio demo from Better Than The Book's next album for the $10+ patrons)! In case you missed last week's post you can read more about this month's rewards below 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! Hope to see you there and thanks as always for supporting my work on Patreon!

Read more: ​https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804846/
$1+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804859/
$10+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804790/
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Discover the Reward Archive (4th October 2018 -> 1st May 2021):
​https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-posts-50344842

That's it for the rewards this month and we'll be continuing with more soundtracky work next time!

And that about wraps things up for this blog post too! The coming week looks to be filled with some usual beginning of the month chores/admin such as backing up the computers, as well as sorting out the next few sets of Patreon rewards, and hopefully I'll be back to some organ recording later this week too! Until the next post which'll likely be in a fortnight or on the 29th, I hope you have a great July to come and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects in all the ways you can. All the best, take care and stay safe!​

​Hi everyone and hope you've had a great few weeks since the last post. It's been a super busy time over here recording Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd full-length album, and by a stroke of good progress and fortune, ALL (ish) the guitar parts are now complete! That includes electric, acoustic AND bass guitar! Great stuff! As such I've moved onto recording organs and piano now which has been incredible fun and is going well! With 9 tracks to do in total, only 3 remain, and I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be recording with a REAL combo organ this time, my Yamaha YC-25D (see above), rather than just some (still excellent) digital emulations and a midi keyboard! It's not just the sound, but the tactile experience too! Been a blast! As with such good times though, I also realised after taking apart my guitar recording rigs that I missed just one small thing... some feedback in one of the tracks, so there will be some minor guitar parts to pick up once organs are finished... Such is the way! Onto other news, yesterday was the final (Wednes)day of the month and so more $5+ Patreon rewards have just been released! Let's look at that!

For this month's Patreon rewards we're continuing with more 2013 soundtracky pieces, this time a pair of them! "Closing Scene" and "See Ya Later" are variations on the same musical theme both released in May 2013. The first is a musical box style track and the second a subsequent string orchestra version of the same piece! At the time I composed Closing Scene, I'd just been given some new samples to play with including a set of thumb piano notes (if I remember correctly) and I thought it would be fun to compose a simple musical box theme with them. Interestingly, at the same time, one of the rooms in my parents' house where I was living at the time was being redecorated and had no carpet on the floor, giving this really cool and lively ambience. I ended up dragging some computer speakers to the room and playing the piece out loud with a microphone set up to capture the reverb on the other side of the room. Mixing the original dry piece with the live recorded room reverb gave a really nice effect for the final track! I do love taking advantage of these rare acoustic opportunities!

After recording Closing Scene, I got the feeling that there was more I could do with this theme, and by swapping the thumb piano samples for my usual pizzicato strings, I thought it gave a really nice and different vibe. With a few extra tweaks, some added percussion and woodwinds, See Ya Later was created! When I listen to See Ya Later, it evokes images of being in an old wooden floor house, early on a sunny summer Sunday, tiptoeing tired around the house before making my way outside for a day of adventure, like something in a Hayao Miyazaki film. Those of you who have been following my work for years may also recognise See Ya Later as the credits music to much of the Fun Station 4 Kids videos, and indeed this piece was another door-opener for a tonne of amazing collaborations in the years to follow (totalling to over 30 MILLION YouTube views last time I checked)! I really should get back to more of this orchestral work soon (maybe even more variations on this theme), but until then, I hope you enjoy Closing Scene and See Ya Later! 

Grab Closing Scene and See Ya Later when you become a supporter on Patreon, or listen to the tracks on YouTube below:

$5+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804674/
Closing Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TDdv7YpNYY  
See Ya Later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAM40nKQ9UI

And for the $10+ patrons, this month you have the first work-in-progress studio recording demo from Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd 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!

$10+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804790/
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Discover the Reward Archive (4th October 2018 -> 1st May 2021):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-posts-50344842

That's it for the rewards this month, and "Closing Scene" and "See Ya Later" will be released to the $1+ patrons next week! We'll be continuing with more soundtracky work in the next set of rewards I'm sure, but until then, I hope you have a great July to come and thanks as always for supporting my music on Patreon! Enjoy!

Finally this week, it's time to look back at last month's goals and set some new ones for July! Here's what I set for June:​
​
1) Finish recording electric lead guitars for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album

Just one goal as I was unsure what the month would have in store, but with all the electric, acoustic AND bass guitars as well as over half the organ/piano parts on the album complete, I think I very much exceeded expectations on this one! Great! Continuing with the BTTB theme, I think the next month of goals should be easy to set:

1) Finish recording organs for Better Than The Book's upcoming album
2) Finish recording any pick-up guitars for ^^^
3) Start consolidating edits and set up sessions ready for vocal recording (at least 5 tracks)
4) Sort Patreon Rewards for the next 2 months

These should keep me busy on top of some other personal goals I need to take care of. 1) should be ok (it's just 3 tracks left, though they're quite in depth), and I think 2) is just that little bit of feedback I mentioned previously, though I'll have to do another check to make sure I don't miss anything else again. For 3), it seems like a good idea to get edits for the instrumental stuff (minus horns and production extras), solid before recording vocals, so this feels like a good idea as to not be overwhelmed with edits later down the line. 5 tracks might be overly ambitious but we'll see how it goes. 4) Should be a piece of cake, just some writing to do! Overall I think it's going to be a busy time, but if I can get goals 1), 2) & 4) complete, and make good progress with 3), that'd be great! Wish me luck and feel free to comment with your own goals below!

And that about wraps things up for this post! Looks like it'll be a very busy month ahead, but we'll see how it goes! I'll be back next week to post about the $1 Patreon rewards, and hopefully there'll be more exciting news to share then too! Until next time, I hope you enjoy the music and are excited for more to come soon, and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Jabun, Better Than The Book and my various projects however you can! Take care, stay safe and all the best!