BTTB Guitar recording finished; onto organs, more $5+ Patreon rewards are out: Closing Scene & See Ya Later + the first work-in-progress studio recording demo from BTTB's next album for the $10+ patrons + setting and reflecting on monthly goals!

​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!