Hello everyone and hope you've been having a great 2nd week of December! It's been busy but a nice kind of busy here at JabunAudio this week, tying up loose ends for closing up for the winter, taking part in seasonal festivities, and just having a bit of fun to be honest! I did attempt some vocal recording for that upcoming cover on Monday, but while I did make some progress, it's quite clear that my voice isn't yet fully recovered (especially enough for metal screaming) so I've decided to postpone that goal until the start of next year. Got a few more minutes of demos recorded for the upcoming Jabun album though, practice sessions sorted for the first full band Better Than The Book live rehearsal (super exciting times!), and had some time to enter a little Fender guitar contest too! Let's continue with that:

So as seems to be the case this time of year, Fender is running another guitar contest to celebrate a new line of guitars, their Japanese Ultra Series, and the challenge this time was to come up with a unique Ultra Riff in a 30 second to 1 minutes video and describe what makes it unique (within the character limits)! The 4 runner up prizes are a Fender Ultra Series guitar or bass + a $500 Fender gift package, and the grand prize is (drum roll please) 2 Fender Ultra Series instruments + a fully covered trip for 2 to California for a tour of the Fender Factory and tickets to Winter NAMM 2020 in January (+ gift packages and gift cards)! Seems to good not to give it a shot so here is my entry below! It would have been cool to play the double-neck, but in connection with the Fender brand I went for my Jaguar with a DropC Nu-Metal riff using the unique circuits of the Jaguar to create some glitchy effects (think Wes Borland meets Tom Morello)! A bit silly, hopefully unique enough, and a lot of fun! I hope you enjoy this little clip! Wish me luck, fingers crossed for a win this time and who knows what I may be reporting in the next blog post!

And with that, that take us to the end of the final blog post of 2019! JabunAudio will be closed for the winter holidays starting Thursday 12th December 2019 (Today), and I'll be returning on Monday 6th January 2020 to get back to all the usual stuff with the first blog post of 2020 being on Thursday 9th! Lots of exciting stuff lined up for me until then and I look forward to reporting on it all in the next post! Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful time however and whatever you're celebrating this winter and I can't wait to bring you more music, news and more in 2020! Thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various projects and making 2019 a fantastic year! Take care and see you in 2020! 

Hi everyone and hope you're having a marvelous start to December! It's been a very busy time for me this week but not so much with JabunAudio stuff. I was away again for the weekend and my hands have been full with with personal errands these past few days too, so my studio work has mainly been making sure all the loose ends are tied up before I close up JabunAudio for the holidays (mainly admin stuff). I think it's going to be hectic until closing time next Thursday so not so sure what exciting things I'll be able to get done, but there's still a couple of things to report in this blog post (as I'm sure there'll be in the next and final one for 2019) so let's get started!

​First of all for the news this week, yesterday was the first Wednesday of the month which means last week's $5 Patreon rewards were just released to the $1 patrons (mp3s and artwork only)! The reward was of course Jabun's "Apollo" from 2013 and you can read more about it in the dedicated Patreon post below:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/31102212 

Or grab the $1 reward here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31102211

As a reminder for the $10+ patrons, I'll be diving deep into the creation of the final and title track from Better Than The Book's recent "Hopes and Dreams" album! Become a $10+ patron to access that article and many more now, and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter! With the new REWARD ARCHIVE tag it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them!  

Get the $10 reward now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/10-extra-reward-31102207
Find out more about my projects on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Next and finally this week it's the beginning of another month which means time to reflect on some goals and set some new ones! Here's what was set for November:

1) Put together and publish a new mastering demo reel for 2019
2) Finish some small web updates I've been meaning to do
3) Record vocals and guitar solos for a cover song that's been on the back-burner the past few months
4) Start putting together ideas for a new Jabun album/EP to release next year

Now I think I did mostly well on these, though some spanners were thrown into the works this month too. 1) & 2) seem like ages ago now but were successfully completed! 3) however I only managed to get half done: The guitar solos were recorded well, but I only managed the main lead vocal before getting ill and messing my throat up (still feels bruised from all the coughing). With the remaining vocals being metal screaming + belted high harmonies (high intensity stuff), I've thought it best to wait to fully recover before attempting recording again so unfortunately it might be a while until I can get this one sorted. On the other hand 4) was pretty darn successful I think! Sifting through my overflowing Jabun ideas folder for material for the new album, there's already 19 track ideas I'd definitely like to pursue with another 19 ideas which are less formed but partially recorded too! On top of 20 Ableton sessions and 56 shorter sound clips, there's also over 7 minutes of fully structured rough demos recorded so far with probably half a dozen reasonably fleshed out track ideas in the works at the moment! All in all a good haul I think!

So onto December's goals, here's what I was thinking:

1) Sort and schedule Patreon reward posts for while I'm away
2) Organise and prepare for the first Better Than The Book full-band practice session
3) Write & record 22.5+ minutes of rough demos for the 2nd Jabun album (total)
4) Finish recording vocals for that cover song (low priority)

Goal 1) is a must since I'll not be working (apart from fun stuff) while I'm away especially on Christmas and New Years Day. 2) is an exciting one which has been in talks for a while and it's really just a case of organising it and making sure everyone is suitably prepared to the best of my ability. I'm feeling pretty solid on my own guitar work, though having been resting vocals the past week or so, those may require some more work. 3) I think is a reasonably target, and by rough demos I mean fully structured demos with a definite track structure. I was originally thinking 30+ minutes, but with how busy the holidays can get I think this is much more reasonable but will still be a challenge. If you're wondering why 22.5 minutes, it's because it's one fully packed side of 12" vinyl, and with over 7 minutes already done, it's just another 15 minutes left to write and demo-record this month which should be ok. 4) is low priority as vocal recovery (especially for that BTTB meetup) is more important so if I manage to record those final vocals it'll be next week, but if not, it'll be in the New Year. That's it for my goals and feel free to share yours in the comments if you'd like! All the best!

And that wraps up this post! Next time will be the final blog post of 2019 before I close up shop for the Winter and in honesty, I'm not sure what'll be happening this week and what'll be there to report so we'll just have to wait and see! Until then, I hope you have a great rest of this first week of December (and keep warm) and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects! Take care!