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Hi everyone and hope you've had a great August! It's doesn't feel like that long since I last wrote out to you, as I guess the previous post was a week later than expected. As such there's not as much stuff to report this time, but the news that will be shared is BIG! Lets get straight to it!
This month it's all been about finalising the audio for numerous projects and after 5 years of writing, recording, production and engineering, I'm super happy to announce that the master audio for Better Than The Book's 3rd full-length album is COMPLETE! It's been a heck of a load of hard work, long listening sessions and fine tweaking BUT I really think it's not only the biggest project I've put out, but also sonically the best work I've ever done too! With the master audio complete, I'll shortly be onto creating the artwork while also going through the all the admin work to get this officially released out into the world as well as making a good promo plan, as such it'll still be a little while yet until this is our into the world but the hardest part is complete and while I can't give a release date just yet, what I will say is that I'm aiming for the album to be out before the end of the year but that after 5 years of hard work on this I'll not be rushing things. In the mean time though, while I won't call this the official announcement for the album, I hope you're as excited as I am for this latest installment of my Better Than The Book ska punk project. Get ready for: Better Than The Book - Side Character In My Own Life Track listing as follows: ----- Side A ----- 01 - 2020 Was A Write-off, But What Comes Next? 02 - Side Character In My Own Life 03 - Mood Swings 04 - Red Kite 05 - Rewrite ----- Side B ----- 06 - Don't Be Too Hard On Yourself 07 - Hold Me Tight 08 - Bump In The Night 09 - Plot Holes 10 - You'll Never Be Too Old For This -----Bonus Tracks ----- 11 - Hearts Racing Backwards 12 - Plot Holes (Alternative Version) 13 - Hold Me Tight (Non-Acoustic) 14 - Side Character In My Own Life (Acoustic) + Additional Radio Edits for Tracks 07, 08, 09 & 10 Not only that but the master audio is also complete for the bonus instrumental (off -vocal) version of the album too! I haven't decided yet whether to release that a full 1 year after this one like usual, or get it our a bit sooner instead this time (potentially the latter). Either way, people seem to be enjoying / making use of the instrumental versions of the other albums so I thought why not regarding this album too. Enjoy that too when that comes! If finalising the audio for effectively 36 new tracks and over 2 hours of Better Than The Book music (instrumentals included) wasn't enough then man oh man do I have a surprise for you! It's not been in development for even nearly as long nor been nearly as much work (sort of), but I'm also pleased to announce that audio has also been finalised for Jabun's next small(?)album/EP project too! As with many of the recent Jabun ambient projects, this one was also an exploratory experiment of sorts, but the results I was very pleased with so I thought why keep it to myself! Jabun's new album will actually be an ultra ambient remix version of my 2nd Jabun album/EP 15-4-20, but this time each track is a 2 hour long soundscape which in my ears aimed to be an auditory and musical expression of cloud watching. It's not an album to sit down and listen to note for note per say, more a collection of 3 sonic paintings to have in the background, glance through at your leisure and just enjoy the vibes for as short or long a time as you want (and if you REALLY want to listen for more than 2 hours per track then you can loop it yourself). These 3 tracks and over 6 hours of ambient remix material are non-looping and never exactly repeating much like how the 15-4-20 album was (or how cloudgazing is) and I hope you enjoy the concept, textures and sound design and just have fun with it. I've already started preparing artwork for this one, and with only 3 tracks and not the type of music to need to prep/ send out to radio stations etc... it's a heck of a lot less admin work than for Better Than The Book's album so there's a very good chance it'll be out before the new ska punk vibes! With that said, again although I'll not call it an official announcement just yet, I hope you're intrigued and looking forward to checking out Jabun's 6th album/EP project: Jabun - Nephology Track listing as follows: 01 - Cumulus 02 - Stratus 03 - Cirrus After that I still have a BIG pile of over 70 minutes of Jabun demos and decent ideas which I aim to sort through, curate and compile along with some newer compositions too soon. Those have been slowly collecting/building since 2019 and are less ambient experimental and more akin to my debut album Daydream as well as venturing into the cinematic and instrumental hip hop side of things (check out my instrumental work with the recent Cyberdevil INKtober collaborations for a taste of the latter vibes)! That'll be a job for 2025 and super looking forward to getting back to those soon! Finally this month, I managed to pick up the pace and get back on track with the 2 videos a week YouTube stream for now! I must admit I've been finding it difficult to share new or worthwhile ideas recently especially for guitar playing, so the next few months are taking a more synth and organ focus which people seem to be enjoying anyway so that's good. Check out the playlist below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
More Volca Modular videos to come in the coming month as well as some organ and even pipe organ(!), and a clip from a Better Than The Book mini-practice session too. I hope you enjoy it! And that wraps things up for this month unless you're a $10 supporter on Patreon which case I'm sharing with you an exclusive first look at the finished opening track to the new Better Than The Book album! Disruption is on the horizon, hence why I was so busy this month finishing up as many audio projects as possible, but hopefully by the next blog post I'll be able to reveal all and share some potentially even bigger news than in this post! Until then I think it's going to be a busy admin and artworky month for me with some more video recording to do too. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the new music and videos, and thanks so much as always for supporting my music and projects however you can. Big things coming all at once in the coming months! Get excited and take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111073951 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111073949 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
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Hi everyone and apologies for the slightly delayed post this month! I hope you've had a great time since the last one, and over here's it's been a super busy and exciting one to report so I hope that makes up for the delay! Lot's to go through this month so let's get to it!
First on the updates for this month, some big news from BTTB! As of yesterday, I've just rendered the first finished master test for the complete 14 track album and finally sent it over to my team of 2nd ears for a sanity check before it goes out to the world! Essentially, unless they have any specific quarrels, then the audio for the album is complete and it's just a final round of checks, exports and checking exports then the master audio will be considered finished, then just 4 quick radio edits to make/check etc... We're in the endgame now and man oh man I can't wait to share this with the world! It's been a long and difficult 5 years since Hopes and Dreams but man oh man, I think you'll hear how far 5 years of extra experience goes! Not long to wait now! Onto some less project related and more casual fun updates, earlier last month I went on an amazing trip to London to go see the Spirited Away stage play which was phenomenal! Despite that being the aim of the trip though, that show wasn't the only highlight of the day. When we arrived at London Bridge Station, I had the pleasure of finding and playing London Bridge Station's famous recently rescued pipe organ "Henry" which was amazing (video coming to YouTube at some point)! It's likely been over 10 years now since I last had the opportunity to play pipe organ and man oh man it feels so good to be back to it! As you can expect, I've been spending even more time with my own Yamaha YC-25D organ since that day. Inspiration has been flowing like a broken tap! That's not all for the day though, on a routine trip to Denmark Street, which has changed a lot in the few years since I was last there, I had the amazing fortune of completely by chance meeting one of my biggest electronic engineering heroes Ade Emsley! For those who don't know, he's a legend among the music tech community in a 2-fold way! On top of being head of engineering and design at Orange Amplifiers; the guy who designed virtual every Orange amp and pedal and more since the late 90s, the guy who STARTED the lunchbox/small amp head trend with the Tiny Terror, the guy who designed the very amp I use for playing organ, and live Better Than The Book performances (and much of the recording on the new record), he's also an industry legend as a mastering engineer with credits such as... the most recent few Iron Maiden albums + their entire back catalog of remasters (designing and building his own mastering rig I might add)! Needless to say, it's been a while since I was that star-struck, but I had a nice quick conversation with him and told him how much his work has inspired me before leaving him to it. I hope he enjoyed the encounter too. What a great day! The following morning Sam, Eamon and I got together sans Andy for a Better Than The Book vocal harmonies and quiet practice session to brush up some of the tunes. It was so nice to jam again in a more relaxed setting where we weren't paying for the clock and hopefully we'll get back to some full loud-boi band practicing with Andy soon! Onto some collaborative news now, first of all I'd like to congratulate Sif Savery and the Tales of Zale team for reaching a whopping 1 million views on YouTube for our Tales of Zale: Flickering Lights short film released back in 2022! Crazy to think that it's been seen that many times now and I'm so glad that people have been enjoying our biggest animation project so far! Hope to be working with the team again at some point and check out Sif's post on Patreon all about it. Woot woot and well done team! https://www.patreon.com/posts/108536096 Next, a newcomer of collaboration (sort of), and man oh man is this guy crazy, but I was asked to help out with some vocal editing and the final music mastering for a genre switching, A.I and stock photos collage editing madness monster of a rap track "Smack a Fish (Motha Sharka)" by eterniTRex! The music is all real musicians and vocalists (no A.I. used) while the video is a collage of A.I. generated and stock images, animated manually animutation-style for a wacky music video crazier than anything you can possibly imagine. It was a fun project to be a part of and the track / music video even got featured on the All Metal Everything music blog (with a fun write up too)! Check it out below: https://allmetaleverything.com/eternitrex-smack-a-fish-motha-sharka/ Finally for this month, although I've been falling behind a bit on my pre-scheduled recording, I'm still keeping up with the 2 videos a week YouTube stream for now! It's been a synthy and Better Than The Book live band time recently, with more to come soon! Check out the playlist below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
August has already started with another KORG EM-1 cover, an unattended synth session, and an 808 celebration and will continue with more synthy stuff and a guitar interlude to come! Hope you enjoy it! And that about wraps things up for this month (unless you're a $10 patron in which case you have a download of that unattended synth session to look forward to)! Hopefully by the next time I write another of these, the master audio for the new Better Than The Book album will be complete and I'll be onto drafting up some artwork! In the mean time, I've got some video recording to catch up on too and I'm sure there'll be other things coming to keep me busy. Until next time, I hope you have a great month to come, enjoy all the new videos, and thanks as always for supporting my work! New Better Than The Book album is almost there! Get excited! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/108304290 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/108304288 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Hi everyone and hope you've had a good June and kept as cool as you can (it's been hot)! It's the start of another month which means time for more updates and rewards and it's a mixed bag in terms of the news this time, but things are progressing well although slowly. Let's get to it:
Starting with the upcoming Better Than The Book album, I'm about a week behind my revised schedule from what's been a super busy month of mixing tweaks and really polishing this album up to the absolute best of my ability and as it stands there's just 1 more mix left to finish before it's mastering time! It's coming on, but there's still a way to go and it's feeling slow. I'm hoping by the next update the "preliminary final" audio will be ready and out for field testing, i.e.: sending it out to a couple of people for their thoughts while playing it around on different systems on my end to see how well it's going. Busy busy, but when is that not the case these days! Carrying on with Better Than The Book news, when I mentioned potential upcoming disruptions this wasn't what I had in mind but the BTTB live drummer Andy has been sent away for work so July's band practice has been downsized to a 3 part harmony and backing vocals session with just Eamon and Sam, which is ok as it's something we've been needing to go over, but I was looking forward to cranking amps and kicking out the jams again. Full band practices have been postponed for the moment, but I'm hoping with any luck we can get back to it in September? I'd still like to aim for a gig by the end of the year, but we'll have to see how the cards play out... Onto some other news, with BTTB stuff shaping up in many ways, I've been back to some Jabun ambient explorations in my free evenings and it's been a great time! There's still another 70+ minutes of (less ambient; more beat based) Jabun demos waiting to be put into an album (or multiple) after this Better Than The Book album is done, but along with some live synth performances and practicing which you'll be seeing in YouTube videos to come, I've also been working on what I'm calling a hyper ambient remix album stemming for the 15-4-20 album! As with most Jabun ambient tracks it started off with simple experiments but what was probably around an hour of experimenting over the course of 3 sessions resulted in over 6 HOURS of (NOT A.I. GENERATED) dreamlike ambient soundscapes on a completely different level to anything else I've created in the past! I imagine this 3 track; 6 hour remix album will be the next Jabun release to come (maybe even before the end of the year depending on BTTB stuff). Exciting times! Let's get that BTTB album finished first though. In the mean time, I'll be continuing with practicing and experimenting with some live Jabun ambient performances when I have some free evenings! Expect to see those on YouTube soon! And speaking of YouTube, it's another jam packed playlist this month with a load of organ videos, some Open D tuning guitar and some rotary speaker guitar experiments! Check out the playlist below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
Next month's videos are going to be full of synths, groove boxes and back to the Better Than The Book live practice videos but this time with Sam's fancy monitoring system for some cleaner audio so hope you enjoy the videos to come! And that about wraps things up for this update, unless you're a $10 Patreon supporter in which case you have a Jabun live synth performance to look forward to! More disruptions are still potentially on the horizon but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. July looks to be busy with finishing off the BTTB album audio + a trip away including a mini-practice session + trying to keep up with everything else... I'll keep you posted with what's going on when I know, but it sure it busy at the moment! Until next time, thanks as always for supporting my work however you can, enjoy all the music and videos, and hope you have a good July to come! Take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/107307292 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/107307291 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
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:
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! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105183637 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105183639 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Hi everyone and hope you've had a good April! Spring is here in full bloom which means hayfever's back with a vengence but also that it's time for some more updates! Let's get to it!
In the news for this month, it's been a hectic and busy one, but I'm pleased to announce that the first round of mixing for all 14 of the tracks on the new Better Than The Book album is now complete! There's a couple of tracks I know I need to go back and tweak but for the most part it's just doing any final checks and tweaks as nessesary before it's time for mastering. Slowly getting to that finish line, but no point in rushing it now, I'll be taking my time to make sure things are the best they can be. With any luck it'll be time for mastering by the next update (or close to it)! Fingers crossed! Meanwhile it's been a mixed bag of luck away from the studio with some great fun birthday celebrations last week right after breaking my glasses... They've been replaced now and hopefully these ones will last even longer than the last pair, but man oh man what a pain in the ass! Onto the more fun and music related birthday news, my twin Eamon is always keeping me well equiped in the studio (more so than me I'm sure) and gifted me a super nice MXR Custom Shop Phase 90 (Script Logo with LED) phaser pedal! I've been eyeing one up for a while and there's a few different versions, but this one is perfect! When I think of the sound of a phaser it's THIS sound and no doubt it'll be finding it's way into the next project when I can! On a non-musical gift related note, Eva and Eli (my new sister in law) got me the new Kirby game which is a chill load of fun with Eva throwing in some Yu-Gi-Oh cards as well (since she's getting sick of beating me so easily (and indeed I'm still a geek at heart)), and my parents surprised me with tickets to Bruce Springsteen and some chicken trousers from Thailand! While not birthday related but a coincidence in timing, an old musical friend of the family Martin (see various BTTB album credits) has also given me his old music production PC too, AGAIN, and by that I mean that for the last ~6 years I've been using his old OLD PC to produce much of the stuff since and including Hopes and Dreams! Very generous! I still need to set it up which probably won't be until after this BTTB album is finished but I look forward to seeing what the extra power is capable of! Thanks so much everyone! Onto videos for this month, would you believe that it's now been over one year since I started uploading regular (twice a week) videos to YouTube?! Crazy times and thanks so much for sticking around for the journey! To celebrate I have a special thanks, updates, and BTTB rig rundown video for you! Check it out below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOpki6eGDdc And of course there's another load of videos to share too! Still keeping up with the 2-a-week packed playlist, and this month been some more organ and guitar whammy pedal experiments (+ more)! Check out the playlist below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
Next month I'll be showing you how to service a Vibratone style Leslie Speaker before a packed month of videos from March's Better Than The Book LIVE full band practice! Hope you're looking forward to it. It's been much too long! That about wraps things up for this month, unless you're a $10 patron in which case you have a sneek peek mix demo for the alternative bonus version of "Plot Holes" from the new Better Than The Book album to look forward to! More busy times ahead as this week/month I'll be heading off for another Better Than The Book full band practice (hoping to get some more videos in there) before a trip to Wales for see Bruce Springsteen (thanks again), than later on another trip to celebrate my cousin's wedding! I'm hoping to have the upcoming Better Than The Book album just about ready for mastering by the next update, but with all the trips and other stuff we'll see how it goes! Until then, I hope you enjoy the new videos and thanks so much as always for joining me on this crazy musical adventure! Let's make this 34th year a great one! See you in June and take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103338521 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103338509 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
April 2024 Blog Post: ONE mix left to go for Better Than The Book's upcoming album, the Better Than The Book LIVE band is back in action after 4 years apart, Bass and Leslie Speaker maintainence, more guitar videos and beatmaking + more!
Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to April! Another month arrives and another set of updates! Let's get to it: Onto the updates for the month, it's just ONE MIX LEFT to go for this intial and most in-depth round of polishing the tracks before a final go-over for Better Than The Book's upcoming album! 13 tracks done and ready for final pre-mastering checks now, but this final one is gonna be a big challenge! Essentially 2 complete band set-ups including rap vocals, 2 organs, horns AND a full string and brass orchestra?! It's the biggest mix session of the album (maybe even of my entire non-post production engineering career?) and I'm pacing myself through it, but things are sounding boss so far! Aiming to get this done in the coming weeks and I can't wait to share it with you! Meanwhile on the Better Than The Book news front, March 9th was a monumentous day as for the first time since January 2020(!!!), the whole of the Better Than The Book live band were back together in the same room to jam out the tunes! It's been a rough few years to say the least and I honestly wasn't sure how things'd be after all this time, but I can say with upmost confidence that despite the 4 years away, we are sounding better than ever! 10 tracks were prepped, but only 9 made it to playing due to a lost click-track, but we got a tonne a practice in and a load of videos recorded too including 5 tracks we've not played together before (which I think turned out to be the best ones of the lot)! 8 videos are all edited now, albeit with the lo-fi go pro mic audio quality, and are scheduled for release on YouTube throughout May, and I can't wait to show you all what 4 years apart has done for us! Next practice has been schduled for Mayday weekend (with 2 additional tracks since last time), and hopefully we may have some advancements in video/audio tech by then. We shall see! The plan is to get another practice in after that, then if all's good, start looking for gigs! It's been much too long in the making! Get excited! Next on the news, on top of a busy BTTB month it's been a super busy one with equipment maintainence too! After many (mainly pandemic) years of putting it off, and my first bass (a modified Squier Jazz Bass with additional secret so-called "BEEF" switch) being in a sorry and slowly deterioating state electronically, I FINALLY got around to serving the electronics including a complete overhall on the control cavity with some oo-lah-lah CTS pots which sound and feel FIYYYYEEEEEN! The bass which was used a lot during my gigging and recording years with Lights Camera Attraction, and on BTTB's Two Years On album is sounding and feeling better than ever, and while it's still residing at my parents' place until Eva and I have a place of our own, it's a lovely instrument which I look forward to playing whenever I'm back! While I was there, I also ended up servicing my dad's electric guitar too, I think the first time it's ever had a full service! He seemed very pleased with the result and it's always a plesure hear him inspired to play. On top of that, after some hesitation, I finally got around to servicing and oiling my homemade Leslie rotary speaker which although was running great before, should hopefully continue to run great again now for another year+. Given the complexities of the task, I decided to video the whole process too for anyone else to find useful! I think that video's scheduled for release at the very start of May before the BTTB live band stuff. It's been a busy time video editing this month! That about wraps things up for overdue equiment maintainence now, but I'm sure there'll be more to do before long! Finally for this update, there's another load of videos to share! Still keeping up with the 2-a-week packed playlist, and as I mentioned last time, it was a beat based detour this month, followed by a return to some metal guitar! Check out the playlist below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
Next month we're back to some organ as well as guitar, and also (would you believe) it'll have been a full year of doing these 2-a-week videos by then too?! Time sure does fly! I've got a special video planned to celebrate and hope you're enjoyed the ride so far! That's it for this month (unless you're a $10 patron in which case you have a mix demo for Better Than The Book's "Don't Be Too Hard On Yourself" to look forward to)! It's looking to be another busy one ahead recording videos, finishing off this final BTTB mix (then getting onto the extra edits) + praticing for May's meet-up + I've got my taxes to look forward to: JOY! I'll be away at the end of the month too for some birthday merriment, and although it's not confirmed just yet, there's been talks of me taking on a bass guitar student too! Should be a fun challenge! Until the next update, I hope you have an amazing April to come and thanks as always for supporting me with this crazy musical adventure! Can't wait to show you the next chapter! Take care and get ready for the next wave! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101488767 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101488769 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Hi everyone and hope you had a great leap day yesterday! It's March (man oh man this year is going by fast...) and time for another update!
In the news for this month, 3 more Better Than The Book mixes were completed (aaaaaalmost 4) which puts mixing at about 75% done now apart from final checks and tweaks! These final mixes are getting trickier as they branch out into more complex styles, but it's been a fun ride putting them together! 4 left to go so I'm hoping they'll all be at that final checking and tweaking stage by the next update, but we'll see how it goes! Carrying on with some more BTTB news, it's been another busy month training and practicing for gigging and after a period of uncertainty, I can confirm that Better Than The Book's first full band practice since January 2020 will be happening on March 9th! The studio is booked and I cannot express how excited I am for it! We've prepped 10 tracks (a mix of new and old) to run through and see how we do and hopefully (depending on the results) it'll be the first step to FINALLY getting some gigs booked in later this year. Hoping to grab some footage to share on YouTube while we're there. I cannot wait! In other news after many months of putting it off, I finally got around to servicing the electronics on my homemade Satin-X doubleneck and I really don't know why I keep putting it off because it's SOOO much nicer to play after I do it! The neck switch was cleaned for the first time in probably 18 years(?!) and it's guillotine switching so smoothly and reliably now! After going through a few different brands of contact cleaner, it seems like Kontakt10 (Servisol) is the winner for getting the dust and scratchiness out of the pots too! We'll see how time tells in terms of the longevity, but it's been super reliable so far! Next on the long-overdue-and-put-off-things-to-service list are the homemade Retro Rotary leslie speaker which was due for oiling last May I think.... oof... (it's a pain, but good too keep on top of it even if it is running smoothly (at the moment)), and the Jazz bass which needs a complete overhaul on the control electronics! All the new parts have been ordered so the latter will definitely be something for the month to come with the former a hopeful shout as well! Wish me luck! Back to BTTB news and I'm super happy to share that Button Down Radio is still giving the Hopes and Dreams album some love even after all these years! Thanks so much for playing "The Hardest Part" on the show next to some top class Ska acts from around the world! It's always a pleasure and an honour: https://www.facebook.com/buttondownradio5446/posts/pfbid02ouqjH4sXm7xb8tfKG2zpfMp4ELWh22npsWkropLjkVQ7vqkrHvrAJg6DzeRBWEaxl Finally for this month's news, it's onto the gear and guitar videos for the month as usual and it's another 2-a-week packed playlist for you! Not much guitar this time actually but there's a whole bunch of other fun things instead concluding with a teaser from the upcoming Better Than The Book album! Here's the usual playlist link with the added videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
We'll be taking a beat based detour for most of next month before returning to some good old metal guitar! Hope you enjoy it and there's more to come every Thursday and Sunday as usual! That about wraps things up for this month unless you're a $10 Patreon Supporter in which case you have another exclusive mix demo from the upcoming BTTB album to look forward to (a track called "Rewrite")! Looks like I'll be mostly busy mixing Better Than The Book, doing more live show practice, recording more videos, and servicing equipment, so no doubt it's going to be a jam packed month before I have my taxes to look forward to in April! JOY! In any case I hope you have a great month ahead and thanks as always for supporting my music and projects however you can! Fun times are 'acomin'!!! Hope you're as excited as I am, and take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99514448 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99514451 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Hi everyone and hope you've had a great start to the year! It's the beginning of another month and time for some more news and rewards and what a busy month it's been!
The updates for this month: with 7 out of 14 tracks from the upcoming Better Than The Book album now mixed, we're halfway there (whooaa, livin' on a prayer)! I'll be aiming to get another 4 done over the next month, but I've left the more complex/unusual mixes until last so things are getting a bit tricky and taking longer than before... Slowly but surely though! Meanwhile I've been super busy practicing for March for hopefully the first full-band BTTB practice since January 2020 (TBC)!!! It was a tough month getting my vocals back in gear for the longer-than-I'm-used-to sets, but things are feeling pretty good now, and with 10 tracks (a pick'n'mix of old and new) now pretty solid under my fingers, bar the occasional vocal or guitar slip, its now more about practicing creating the performance with these tracks! I cannot tell you how excited I am to get back to playing live and I'll keep you posted with news as and when! and feel free to check out the last time(s) we met up in the playlist below: Woot woot! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvTUl5SAbcIGB2nISnvWjGtq Onto other exciting news, it took over 2 years to come to fruition but JabunAudio's custom NOISE Oscillator for the KORG NTS-1 Digital Synth Kit is now on Korg's OFFICIAL logue-SDK unit index list (with JabunAudio actually listed now as a software developer for the platform)! Thanks so much for the stamp of approval KORG and hope people have fun with it! With the new NTS-1 mkII announced with its own new noise oscillator, JabunAudio's own NOISE gives users of the original NTS-1 a more basic version to play with while they wait to upgrade. It's free/donation based too so if you have an NTS-1 go grab it and have fun! KORG's official list: https://korginc.github.io/logue-sdk/unit-index/osc/ See + Hear it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R3mLR4aC5o And finally for this post, as usual I've been keeping up with the 2 videos a week on YouTube, and this month we have a demo of my homemade spring reverb with organ, some (mostly metal) alternative tuning experiments for guitar, and some experimental Col Legno inspired guitar techniques I borrowed from cello! Here's the usual playlist link with the added videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions: Enjoy!
The next month and a half of videos will be much less guitar heavy as it was super cold when I was recording, but guitaring will return in March! Meanwhile there's some other exciting things to share instead! Hope you enjoy it! And that about wraps things up for this month unless you're a $10 Patreon supporter in which case you have the latest (and almost final) mix of Better Than The Book's "Plot Holes" to look forward to from the upcoming album! Next month is set to be more BTTB mixing and live (solo) practicing ready for March and hopefully the first batch of some much needed equipment maintainence (on top of the usual YouTube stuff)? We shall see how things go but until then, I hope you're as excited as I am for what's to come and thanks as always for supporting my music and projects however you can! Until the next one, and take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/95781944 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/95781941 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Happy New Year everyone and hope you all had a great winter break! A new month comes with a new year and so it's time for an extra special first of the year update!
It's been a very busy month mostly away from the studio with various holiday festivities, but there's been some progress in the studio as well! One top of another solid BTTB mix which makes for a total of 3 so far (and 11 to go), I also got a request to do some programming for the Korg NTS-1 Digital synth which was a fun challenge! I'll hopefully be releasing that as a free/donation based public download in the coming months so I hope people can get something out of it. In the mean time, feel free to check out my previous NTS-1 programming project: NOISE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R3mLR4aC5o Of course I've also been keeping up with my 2 a week guitar/gear videos on YouTube and this time we have a Better Than The Book organ playalong video, some more organ experiments, some MPC fingerdrumming, unconventional guitar bends and more, AND a rough and ready live sneak peek demo of one of the upcoming Better Than The Book tracks: "Plot Holes"! Here's the usual playlist link with the added videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
That's about it for studio updates, but it was a fun time with winter festivities too! This was actually my first Christmas with family since 2019 (due to pandemic + work night shifts) and my first married Christmas with Eva (and her sister) too and it was amazing. As seems to have become tradition, my twin Eamon got me another synth for the studio, the ultra compact Bastl Kastle v1.5 which I'm super looking forward to intergrating into my synth set-up. It's a fun and ready less-melodically-focussed experimental synth of sorts which excels at creating some great textures and soundscapes! Hopefully you'll be hearing some of that from me very soon! To close this post I thought it'd be nice to reflect on the year gone by, celebrate the sucesses, reflect on goals, and set some new ones for 2024! This past year has been a busy one not only with work but with my personal life too! After a crazy start with my laptop of 14+ years having to be retired and moving projects over to a new system, Jabun released the June22 EP, a collection of 2 live performances inspired by the modular synth works of Suzanne Ciani. I also finally managed to get those BP-1 bass pedals for the organ rig (after 2 years of constant searching), and modified my Jaguar guitar for some lovely new fuctionality. I released Reduce with Cyberdevil, ChordC and Hania which was a dream come true collaboration, modified my homemade Superfuzz and got a pedalboard and BOSS TR-2 Tremolo pedal (from Japan) for my birthday (+ another footswitch), and started a new twice a week guitar/gear YouTube series! I took part in my first ever LIVE podcast interview with the Off The Wall Podcast on Newgrounds, Finished recording (and got deep into mixing) Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd full-length album, got MARRIED, and released multiple collaborations with Cyberdevil as part of his yearly INKtober challenge, most notably Pool Party! Phew! That was way more than I remember doing! In terms of the goals I actually set, the only thing which didn't come to pass (mainly due to logistical and health problems) was taking BTTB to the stage, but there's still time for that! With that I think I'll be setting the following goals for 2024: 1) Release the upcoming Better Than The Book album! 2) Finish recording the next Jabun album 3) Play my first live show as Better Than The Book 4) Play my first live show as Jabun The logistics have finally lined up (at least closer) again for that 3rd goal, and there's been some actually asked interest about the 4th one, so I just need to figure out how to do it! I've also got some long overdue equipement maintanence to do so hopefully that should go smoothly as well! It's looking to be a super exciting year to come! That about wraps things up for this month unless you're a $10 patron in which case you have a solid mix for Red Kite from the upcoming Better Than The Book album to look forward to in your rewards! I hope you all have a great 2024 to come and thanks so much as always for supporting my music and projects however you can. Lets make 2024 the best year yet! All the best and take care! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/93880978 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/93880979 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
Hi eveyone and hope you've had a great November! Another month begins and so it's time for some more Patreon rewards and news updates!
It's been a heavy few weeks of mixing (and preparing to mix) the upcoming Better Than The Book album project! As of now, 2 mixes are solid and ready for final checks before mastering (once the other tracks are done), and the remaining 12 tracks have all been set up ready with the new session templates and presets to make the mixing process much smoother when I get to them, as well as some general ballpark mixing so I'm not starting from square one for each song, and preparing my mixing sheets with all the notes I'll need too for each track. Progress is going well, and now that the first few mixes are done, I think the pace will be picking up in the New Year as I find my flow again! It's looking to be busy month ahead with various visits and Christmas / New Year festivities, so I'll be taking things at a relaxed pace and doing what I can until the time allows, but I'm super excited to share with you what's going on and can't wait to release this album in 2024! Next and finally for this month's news, it's onto the gear and guitar videos for the month and it's another 2-a-week packed playlist for you. This time I have another BTTB playalong, some doubleneck explorations and synth accompanied guitars jams, demonstrations of a few of my homemade effects pedals, and a full live cover of Third Eye Blind's Narcolepsy and more too Here's the usual playlist link with the added videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEmqIhrNPvQTBoOjZdKLgL4ecTvLz6sm And here's a list of the latest additions:
Hope you enjoy them and there's more to come every Thursday and Sunday in December! That about wraps it up for this month, unless you're a $10 patron in which case you have the first of the solid BTTB mixes to look forward to in your rewards (the final WIP look at "Hold Me Tight (Non-Acoustic)"! It's looking to be a busy month ahead, mostly away from the studio with various celebrations and festivities so I'm hoping to complete at least one more mix + record the next month's worth of videos, but I'm not sure there'll be much time for anything else. We shall have to see! The next blog post will likely be a few days late due to the New Years celebrations, but I'll be back in January with more guitar videos and BTTB album updates at the very least! Until then, I hope you have a great December to come, enjoy any seasonal festivity fun you have planned, and thanks so much for all your support in 2023! See you in 2024, It's gonna be a big year! $1 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/92145895 $10 Rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/92145889 Reward Archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding |
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