New gear: Korg Volca Modular synth, Jabun's 15-4-20 album receives a Front Page Award on Newgrounds.com + more updates!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week so far. It's been an intensely busy one here at JabunAudio, mostly sorting out and proof-listening to all the uploads for Jabun's upcoming 3rd album (all done now), as well as doing a variety of admin tasks too. Not much actual music making this week, but I did receive my new Korg Volca Modular synth in the post which has been intensely fun! A little more news to share with you this week as you can tell by the title but let's start with a little update on the new synth!

As many of you know I've been using the Korg Volca Keys for years, most notably in tracks such as Better Than The Book's Meteor Shower, or Jabun's Anxiety, and after so many years working with it, it's been amazing to add another Volca, the Volca Modular to my synth armoury! Based on the Buchla "west-coast" method of synthesis, it's taken a little while to get my head around compared to my experience with the more common "east-coast" style synths and with the highly flexible patch-ability of it, it's been hours of great fun exploring new synthesis methods and sounds over the past week (so much so that I'm almost through my 2nd set of batteries for it already; gotta pick up some more rechargeables). While I originally intended to use it for making light ambient soundscapes, I've actually found it easier for making intense and gritty sounds unlike anything I've been able to do up until now instead, a testament to the versatility of the unit despite its compact design. For those interested in something alien, but fun and a great bang for it's buck, I'd highly recommend one, with the warning that things might not always go how you expect them to when working with it (at least that's what I've found). Looking forward to using it in a new track soon(ish)!

Interestingly, on my first day playing with it though, I discovered a strange behaviour which seemed unintentional. After reporting it to Korg tech support, they've managed to reproduce my result on their end and confirmed that I've indeed found a bug (likely in the firmware) and so the information has been passed onto the Korg development team in Japan, which if you ask me is pretty darn cool! Hopefully there'll be a firmware update shortly but in any case I'll be having a tonne of fun with the synth in the meantime while a solution is found! Seems I've had a knack for finding bugs recently! I wonder if I'll end up with 2 of these as well!

Onto other updates for this week, some amazing news to share as Jabun's 15-4-20 album received a Front Page Award on Newgrounds.com, gathering over 2000 listens in the week since its upload! Thanks so much for the love folks, I think that's a record for me, and check out 15-4-20 on Newgrounds below:

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/993867

Hope you enjoy the music, and if you like it, pick up a copy on Bandcamp below:

https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/15-4-20

Or grab it with the entire Jabun and Better Than The Book discographies + all past rewards for your tier when you become a supporter on Patreon for as little as $1 a month! More music to come soon!

Find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding
See the past rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44575319

That about wraps things up for this week! I've got a tonne of spreadsheets etc... to sort for Jabun's 3rd album release so it's looking to be an admin heavy week for me, though hopefully I'll have some time for more writing / jamming and there is another SUPER exciting project coming up which I should be revealing at the start of next month if all goes to plan! Until the next one (which may be next week or not, though there'll certainly be one on the 28th), I hope you have a great January to come and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects in all the ways you can. Stay safe, take care, and all the best!