New A P O T H E O S IS track: "Final Boss [Intro + Phase 1]" (+ some updates), Better Than The Book has started recording, an amazing present from my brother, a post from World Beyond, 1 million views for "3 Little Raptors and the Beanstalk" + more!

Hello everyone and what an exciting week it's been over here at JabunAudio! After many months of writing and preparing I've finally started recording the 3rd Better Than The Book album, and I am so super hyped up with ska-punk energy at the moment, I feel I could explode! More on that in a second. Other than that, I've actually been away for a great deal of this week celebrating mother's day with my family and getting some fresh air and a little too much amazing food. Seeing my brother again too, I can finally share the crazy cool present he got me from Japan (and it sounds AWESOME! *Warning: serious fanboying ahead*). In all honesty it's been a jam packed an exciting week and with that there is TONNES to share so let's start with some new music as usual: the latest track for the A P O T H E O S I S  game!

So first of all this week, I'm super excited to share with you the latest piece for the A P O T H E O S I S  game: the first part of the final boss theme! I must say that this game has been a blast to compose for, but this final boss theme I'm especially proud of. The final boss fight is split into 2 main stages and the following track is to accompany the intro and phase 1 of the battle. The music for phase 2 is very nearly done, but I'm just waiting on some final checks (and possibly edits) before it'll be finished, so hopefully it should be out in the next blog post, but if not, I'm sure it'll be in the following one. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this mash-up of genres for the climax of the game and if you like what you hear, go play the demo for the full experience! Happy listening! (More like tense/suspense listening though...)

Next this week, as stated in the intro to this blog post, recording for the new Better Than The Book album has finally started, and as of right now, 3/10 tracks have their rhythm guitars sorted (which is the first stage of the recording process I've chosen). This album I'm trying a slightly different approach to the guitars using a wider variety/combination of my hardware and virtual amps/effects than ever before in my music, so it should be an interesting new soundscape for me, and I'm looking forward to having fun with it. Of course before any of the guitars could be recorded, they all needed a thorough service and restring which was good fun, but very time consuming (especially the double-neck). All worth it though and with that done, here are the electric guitars which will be taking the stage for this album!  

The last guitar there (The Pacifica II) I actually won't be recording at all with for this album, but its already been captured in the original guitar parts for GG [Good Game] for which there is a vocal version on the new album. It's gonna be strange not having that guitar with me (It's at my parent's house 200 miles away), as it was the sole guitar on the One Small Step EP (apart from on Woof Woof, Nag Nag), and my main guitar on Two Years On. Nevertheless, I think the other 3 are going to make for a lovely sonic soundscape for this next collection of 10 songs. Of course I still have my bass to service before recording too and there's the acoustic guitar to record, but I imagine that'll be in a few weeks! I'll keep you all updated with how progress goes!
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Third on this list of things this week, brace yourself for some intense fanboying as I struggle to contain my excitement for the amazing gift that my bro brought back for me from Japan: The Yui Hirasawa signature model VOX Amplug (1st gen)! A little background: The Vox Amplug series are a selection of compact headphone amps for practicing/recording and there are various models depending on what kind of music you play or tone you want (clean, classic rock, metal, acoustic sim, bass, etc...). This one was a special limited edition (1 of 3000) Japanese model to emulate the guitar rig/tone of the fictional lead guitarist Yui Hirasawa of the lighthearted Pop-Punk/J-Rock band Houkago Tea Time (HTT) from the anime K-ON, both of which I'm a huge fan of (in fact, my first bass I got was the same as the bassist from that band). Long story short, it sounds INCREDIBLE: like putting a Shure SM58 in front of a Marshall JCM stack (with adjustable, gain (from barely breaking up to Zakk Wylde levels of gain), tone and volume), with the optional extra of the most J-Rock echo preset I think I've ever heard! I've known that these existed for years, but after seeing the prices on eBay, thought I'd never get to see one let alone play one. Eamon however stumbled upon this in a second hand shop as cheap as chips and the rest is history! Thanks so much bro! I have no need for sleep now, as I can practice with amazing tone even when I can't crank my Marshall! (Oh, and it's already on the new Better Than The Book album). I'd like to do a video about it at some point as it's an intensely rare item and there aren't many demos of it on YouTube (not in English certainly), but we shall see! 

And I think that's my public fanboying quota used up for the rest of the year!

Next this week, I just wanted to share a post that my good friend and long term collaborator World Beyond made about one of our early collaborations. It's nice to look back at how far we've come and I hope you enjoy reading the story about how the track came to be:

Read: "Everything We Stand For by World Beyond feat. Nicholas Standing | Cinematic Orchestral Music from Winter Legend EP"

​Finally this week, it is with great pleasure that we can celebrate reaching 1 million views on YouTube for "3 Little Raptors and the Beanstalk", one of last year's Fun Station 4 Kids animations I did the mixing for. It's certainly been tough on YouTube over the past year, but I'm super happy to be able to celebrate this milestone. Well done to everyone involved and I look forward to working on the next animation when the time comes. 

And that about wraps things up for this week. Phew that was a long post! What's up for next week? Well I'm definitely going to be continuing with some Better Than The Book rhythm guitars and hopefully I'll be able to finish off and share the Final Boss (Phase 2) music for A P O T H E O S I S  (but we'll have to see). I can very much see it being another busy week ahead, but it's the good kind of busy so I'm looking forward to it. Until the next blog post, I hope you have a great week and thanks as always for reading and supporting JabunAudio and my various projects. Take care!