Lead guitars & keys finished for the Better Than The Book album, onto Horns (+ more updates), JabunAudio sends out another newsletter, sporadic downtime, reflecting on July + setting some new goals for August!

Hello everyone and hope you're having a great week whatever you're up to! It's thankfully a lot cooler than it has been over here, so my brain is frying with work overload rather than heat (is that any better?). I'm not sure whether it'll be staying cool for much longer though... Anyways, it's been a super productive week working on the Better Than The Book album, and as the calendar flips to the next month I have many exciting updates for you in this blog post. Let's start with some Better Than The Book album updates!

So as you can probably tell from the post's title, I'm super happy to announce that lead guitars, guitar solos, and keyboards for the new BTTB album have all been recorded now, which finally puts things back on track with the original schedule I set in March! Next it's time to finish off the recording for each of the 10 songs which means (where necessary) adding horns, synths and other extra samples and things to spice things up before I get deep into edits and mixing, etc... As of yesterday 4/10 tracks have been completely finished recording-wise, with another 6 to go over the course of the next month. Things are certainly shaping up! Just to break up the text, here's a quick photo of some synth sequences being recorded for the heaviest track of the album, "Meteor Shower". Gotta love the Korg Volca Keys! 

​Since I'm nearing the end of the recording phase for the songs, I've also started to plan out some interludes to really bring the album together. Many of them have been in the back of my mind since I started writing the album, and at the moment, it looks like there'll be a maximum of 4 depending on whether I can find the public domain samples to pull them off effectively. Looks like I'll be watching through lots of black and white movies and footage soon! I remember how difficult it was doing this for Two Years On, but listening back, I love how it brings everything together, rather than just being a collection of songs. Wish me luck!

Onto the next piece of news for this blog post, yesterday I sent out the 2nd JabunAudio music production newsletter, this time discussing different and effective ways to reference and listen to audio when mixing, mastering, and even composing music. It's focused around music production, but I'm sure many music makers in general (whether you're recording or not) will find it useful for coming up with effective arrangements when writing! If that sounds interesting to you, head over to JabunAudio.com's home page, sign up for the free newsletter using the form, and I'll drop the article in your inbox! I hope you find it useful, and if you have any feedback you'd like to share, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Enjoy!​ Thanks to everyone who signed up to read last month's newsletter about effective use of metering in audio production too. I look forward to sharing more articles with you soon!

Next, as it's the start of August, let's take the time to look back at July's goals, and set some new ones for the coming weeks ahead. Here's what was set:

1) Finish recording vocals for the new BTTB album (2 tracks left)
2) Finish lead guitar and solos for the BTTB album (10 tracks)
3) Finish keyboard parts for the BTTB album (5 tracks)
4) Sort out the Patreon Page *
(* indicates low priority)

So overall a successful month of catching up on recording, despite the injured finger! 1), 2) & 3) were fully completed! The Patreon page is still on the back-burner, and may well be for a while, but now that I'm back on track with the album, I can hopefully make some time to look into that again soonish. Next month is looking to be a busy one outside of music work too (more on that in a second), so let's set some goals for August with that in mind:

1) Finish recording the songs for the BTTB album (6 tracks to do)
2) Plan the interlude for the BTTB album (up to 4 tracks) *
3) Sort out the Patreon Page *
(* indicates lower priority)

Goal 1) basically means sorting out all the horns, synths and extra things and assessing whether any additional recording needs to be sorted too. The horns especially will be tricky, but careful planning and referencing should help with this. Originally, August was supposed to be a month dedicated to just horns, with any extras to be done in September, but with almost half the songs finished already, I thought it'd be good to keep up the pace and try for finishing everything in the next 4 weeks. For 2) I'd like to say finish all the interludes, but I'm not sure if that's realistic since I'll be away for a fair bit of this month. We'll have to see how that goes, but even if they aren't finished, it'd be great to have them all planned and confirmed at least (maybe sort out a couple of them). 1) is definitely the priority though. The Patreon page again is on the back-burner but still in mind for completion soon.

Finally in this week's news, just a quick notification of some sporadic downtime throughout the month. Over the next few weeks I'll be travelling a lot and while it's just for a few days at a time, I may not be able to respond to messages as immediately as I usually do. JabunAudio will still be open for business and accepting work though, so don't hesitate to send me a message and I'll aim to get to it as soon as possible. Many thanks for your patience.

And that about wraps things up for this week! I'll be continuing to grind through the album until next time, and hopefully there'll be another couple of tracks completed by the next blog post. Until then, I hope you have a great time whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various music projects. Enjoy the summer and take care! ​