Happy New Year! Holiday fun, more music from World Beyond, a Fender Contest to share, Two Years On Patreon rewards & another JabunAudio Newsletter sent out + setting and reflecting on some more goals!

Happy New Year everyone and hope you had a great winter break, festive celebrations and first week of 2019! It's been a busy week for me getting back into the swing of things, but it's nice to be back and there is much to share this week, both in terms of music, as well as news and updates. Before we get onto that though, let's briefly look back at the holiday and see what I got up to!

Unfortunately as usual I've been quite ill for the past few weeks, but that didn't stop me from trying to have a good and busy time! It was great to catch up with family and friends, and the new Spiderman was a fantastic watch at the cinema, probably the freshest film I've seen in ages! It was also fantastic to catch up with my old bandmate and friend Andy Forman who I've not seen in far too long! You can hear him playing guitar on Woof Woof, Nag Nag and shouting with the crowd in the rest of the One Small Step EP, as well as in our other past work together in Lights, Camera, Attraction! Looking back at last year's post, it looks like almost a repeat of last winter, as again due to illness I didn't manage to have a jam, or skate with my brother, and this time not even visit Brighton due to illness... I did however make the most of playing my old gigging Ashdown bass amp (as well as other instruments I don't have here). Boy I miss those low end vibes!

As with the holiday season, I was blessed with some great gifts this year too, including the usual edibles and vouchers, some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (yes, I am a child a heart), and an additional hard drive for backing up all that audio hard work (always useful and just in time as I was running low on free space). My brother also got me a keytar strap kit for my Yamaha Reface Piano which works a charm, frees me from the keyboard stand when needed, and is REALLY well designed! Now I just need to get some more rechargeable batteries to free myself from the AC adapter! The final highlights were some amazing experience gifts for the new year: tickets to see Ozzy Osbourne and KISS on their final tours, a ticket to the always amazing Australian Pink Floyd, and a visit to the Marvel Exhibition in London, all of which I'm super excited for! All in all a super generous set of gifts this year! Thanks so much everyone!

And with that said, enough talk of the holidays and let's get back to some of the usual JabunAudio news! First there's a load of new music videos to share from World Beyond, then some more announcements and updates before we take a moment to reflect on 2018 and set some new goals for 2019! Let's get started!

Firstly this week, I have a whole load of new music videos to share from World Beyond from our recent album "Nobody Asked For This So I Did It", so feel free to check them out below if you missed them over the holidays. The album is also now available from all major digital retailers and streaming services, and you can find all the links you'll need via the URL below! I hope you enjoy it all, and be sure to subscribe to World Beyond's YouTube Channel to be the first to see the new videos. Cheers!

Nobody Asked For This So I Did It: ​https://fanlink.to/naftsidi

Next this week, I wanted to share with you a photo I took for a competition last year called the Fender Upgrade Contest. No wins for me this time, but I was good fun so I thought I'd share my entry here now that the contest is over. To give a bit of background, the contest was a photo/video competition where you can show Fender why you'd like an upgrade to your musical gear, and the winner as judged will receive $5000 of Fender products to re-kit them for gigging and recording (very nice)! It seemed like a great opportunity for some creativity, and I love Fender stuff, so I thought it couldn't hurt to enter! The picture is captioned and is pretty self explanatory, so I'll put the caption below and I hope you enjoy it!  

Oh, and if you're wondering, this wasn't even half of the paper cranes I have in just my current flat (there's still WAAAAY more where that came from)! Enjoy!

"Every day for the past 4+ years I get a little note from my girlfriend and fold it into a paper crane. It’s become such a big part of my life that it’s ended up in my album art and I have 1000s of them now!
     But the birds were not credited on the album and have exacted their vengeance by stealing my precious Jaguar! I must gather a band of misfits, acquire a new set of instruments, and do battle on stage. Only then can I restore balance to ska-punk and make this story Better Than The Book!"

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Next this week, well... last week... it was the first Wednesday of the month and time to send out the Patreon rewards for January! This time I was giving away my debut full-length album as Better Than The Book: "Two Years On", so if that sounds good to you, then become a patron for as little as $1 a month to download Two Years On and all previous rewards for your tier including the One Small Step EP and the last few month's of tracks. Next time I'll be giving away "Two Years On [Instrumentals]" which will be the final piece of the BTTB discography so far, so look forward to being able to pickup the full (current) Better Than The Book discography in its entirety next month. I look forward to sharing more music with you then.

And keeping on the topic of the beginning of the month, as usual another JabunAudio music production newsletter has also been sent out. This time I'll be discussing how to record great gang vocals even if you're working on your own, so if that sounds interesting to you, sign up for free on the JabunAudio home page, I hope you enjoy it, and be sure to share with anyone you think would be interested!

​Finally this week, as has become a tradition, let's look back on December 2018's goals and see how I did. Here's what was set:

1) Have 5 mixes finished for the new Better Than The Book album
2) Write 3 more articles for the JabunAudio newsletter
3) Schedule the holiday time Patreon posts (i.e.: next months rewards)

And it's a triple success from even before I closed the doors for the winter holidays! Only 5 mixes left to go for the new album, all the articles have been written for the blog posts, and the Patreon posts were scheduled and went out in my absence without any problems. Horray! With all that taken care of, here's some goals for this month I'd like to achieve:

1) Have all 10 mixes done for the new BTTB album ready for final tweaks and mastering
2) Set up a new archiving / back-up system for projects
3) Update my ISRC records for the new (and old) World Beyond tracks

I'm not sure that I'll be able to get 1) finished entirely, but I don't think it's impossible, so we'll see how I get on and take as much time as needed. 2) should be pretty simple to set up, but it'll likely take a lot of downtime, to transfer files. 3) I actually set at the beginning of the month, and managed to get done by the time of this post, so it's a cheeky bonus tick in the box for that one already! January's looking to be a bit more of a laid back month at the moment (certainly compared to the last few), so I'm hoping I can sort or nearly sort these goals before a busy February comes around.

Since it's also the beginning of the year, I thought it'd be nice to look back at January 2018's goals for JabunAudio, and see how I got on with those too. Here's the ambitious targets I set myself:  

1) Release the 3rd BTTB album in summer + continue gathering ideas for the 4th album
2) Either release a Jabun EP or be well into working on a new album by the end of the year
3) Invest in some new studio equipment and/or instruments (I don't actually have much in mind for this at the moment, but it's always good to reward yourself)
4) Make some new connections and help make more animations         
5) Keep doing what I do, and keep getting better at it! 
6) Be a better business as well as an audio engineer, music producer and musician. Make 2018 the best financial year for JabunAudio yet!

Well, it's not a great start to those targets, but although the upcoming Better Than The Book album is a bit behind schedule, it's also well on the way towards completion which is something to celebrate. The new World Beyond album was a surprise achievement for the year, so that has to be mentioned in celebration too. Goal 2) has been held back as well for similar reasons, but I've continued to gather new ideas for both BTTB and Jabun throughout the year anyway so that's good. 3) Although I haven't really treated myself to any new instruments / (strictly) musical equipment this year, I did receive the desktop PC earlier this year which has been fixed up and become an incredible tool for music production! I also received the Yui Amplug from my brother which has been amazing for late night practicing and really helped hone some of my guitaring this year. Hilariously, I decided to try and buy a similar thing to help with my bass practice in December, but unfortunately I lost the bidding war on eBay... to my girlfriend, Eva. Apparently, it'll be a present for me at some point (hopefully soon)! The purchase of the new JabunAudio.com webdomain and email address, although not the most fun of things, has been a great investment for the business too. 4) A couple of new connections this year, but mostly rekindling and nurturing long term and older ones I think, and while it's not been a busy year for animation work, it was great to end last month with the new McDowntrends animation from Mr Overkillcoin. 5) I'm still here and I'm definitely continuing to grow, so it's big tick there, and for 6), while 2018 hasn't been the best year EVER for JabunAudio, it's been much better than 2017, and I don't think I made any particularly bad mistakes this year (having learnt from the past), I think I've made some great decisions instead which are already starting to show their benefits. All in all I'd say although I'm a little behind schedule to where I'd thought I'd be, 2018 was a pretty successful year, so let's get some JabunAudio goals set for 2019:

1) Release the 3rd BTTB album and (at least) start on another BTTB or Jabun album
2) There's a cover song I've been meaning to do for a LONG time so I'd like to release that too
3) - 6) Same as last year​: Keep growing!

I think those should all be pretty doable, and I'm still aiming to have "Hopes and Dreams" finished and released before my birthday in April. We'll see how it all goes, and wishing you all a great and successful 2019 for you and your goals too!

And that about wraps things up for this week! I'll be keeping my head busy with mixing the upcoming BTTB album over the next week I'm sure and I hope you all have a great time whatever you're up to as well. Thanks as always supporting JabunAudio and my various projects, once again Happy New Year, and I look forward to sharing more music with you soon. Take care!