Hi everyone and hope you've been having a great and sunny start to June so far! I've been away for much of the past week so there's not been too much going on over here at JabunAudio, but it's been a nice week on my end nonetheless! Finally got my first Covid vaccination too (along with the expected achy arm), so feels like things will hopefully be returning to normal in the UK soon? I hope so! A little bit of lead guitar recording for Better Than The Book since the last post which has been fun, but other than that, not too much to report, so let's just get to some quick Patreon news before setting and reflecting on the usual monthly goals!
As of yesterday, last week's $5 Patreon rewards are now out for the $1 patrons: "Mayhem Market" (+ an exclusive unreleased Jabun demo from the writing sessions of 2019/2020: "Arc-welder" for the $10+ patrons)! In case you missed last week's post you can read more about this month's rewards below and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter including the full Better Than The Book and Jabun discographies and much more! Hope to see you there and thanks as always for supporting my work on Patreon! Read more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804671 $1 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804654 Become a Patreon supporter: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Explore past rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-posts-50344842 Finally this week, it's time to reflect on last month's goals and set some new ones for June. Here's what I had set for May: 1) Sort Patreon reward posts for the next 2 months 2) Finish the Generation Supernova promo period 3) Record all but one of the bass parts for Better Than The Book's upcoming album (12/13) 4) Launch my custom white noise generator for the Korg NTS-1 as a downloadable product! And overall a successful month I think! Patreon rewards have been set, Generation Supernova promo has been concluded, BTTB bass parts are done and I've started on lead guitars already + my custom oscillator for KORG's NTS-1 synth has been released and well received! Not much else to say on that. A productive month! Onto goals for June, maybe it's because I've only just got back from a break, but I've really no idea what to set for this month, as I'm not sure what's going on and what availability I'll have for acoustic recording... As such I'll just be setting one concrete goal this month which should hopefully be doable: 1) Finish recording electric lead guitars for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album There's 7 tracks left to go, 5 of which are just the solos, though I still need to practice and write those up. If possible it'd be great to start on acoustic guitar or organ recording though we'll have to see how things go and I've got a fair few personal things I need to sort out this month as well. Not much set for this month but hopefully it goes smoothly. All the best with your own goals too and feel free to post them below in the comments! And that about wraps things up for this post! As I'm not sure there'll be a lot to report in the coming weeks, I'll be going a bit more sporadic on the weekly blog posts for a little while, but you can be sure there'll be at least 2 updates a month coinciding with the Patreon rewards coming out, and I'll be sure to post up anything interesting in the mean time as and when too! Until the next one, I hope you have a great June to come, stay cool and hydrated and thanks as always for supporting my music in any way you can. All the best, stay safe and take care!
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Hi everyone and hope you've been having a great final full week of May so far! It's been a busy and chaotic time here at JabunAudio, mixed in with a bit of illness (not covid thankfully) and a lovely overdue visit from family for some well earned break time too. Some cool Better Than The Book updates: bass recording was concluded (for now) last Friday with just one track left to go for after acoustic guitars are finished, shortly after which I snapped my glasses which put work on hold for the rest of the week... Luckily I've fixed them now until I can get a new pair, which is great because writing this blog post without them would be heck! Onto lead guitars next which I'll hopefully be starting today; exciting times! Anyways, onto the main news for this week: more Patreon rewards and another cool feature for JabunAudio! Let's get started! After Jabun's big Generation Supernova album release in April and the updated Patreon REWARD ARCHIVES, we're back to the usual schedule, and as yesterday was the final Wednesday of the month, that means it's time for some more rewards for the $5+ patrons! This time I'm heading back down memory lane for more of my tracks as plain old Nick Standing, and today I'm sharing with you the first in a new set of orchestral / soundtracky works "Mayhem Market"! Mayhem Market was released back in March 2013, and was the first track I recorded with the Shure SM27 microphone I was gifted for Christmas the previous year! Much of the inspiration for this track came after finally getting around to watching Disney's "Tangled" (good fun btw), which features an amazingly scored scene running through a market. Super inspired and itching to do some more recording, Mayhem Market was the result of the shortly followed recording session! The description I wrote back then when I uploaded it to Newgrounds is as follows: "I finally got round to recording with the SM27 I got for Christmas! Just a little soundtracky piece that sprung to mind. Imagine playfully racing through a crowed fantasy market with a good friend, rival or the love of your life, perhaps being chased by some half-wit bad guys or the fuzz! If I could do this as my job, I would be sooo happy XD" Mayhem Market is a blast from my past which I'm still super pleased with, especially from an acoustic guitar performance point of view. As chance had it, it also ended up being heard by the amazing World Beyond shortly after its release, opening the door for me to join that epic music production team (thanks so much to World Beyond for that opportinuty and praise) and help create much of the amazing stuff we've released together over the past almost decade! Mayhem Market unfortunately doesn't have any associated artwork, and this is the case for much of my soundtrack type work as Nick Standing from around this time. Nevertheless, I'm sure the music speaks for itself, so close your eyes and imagine a scene, and I'm sure it will be even more vivid than any painting or photo I could provide! I hope you enjoy it whether you've heard it before or this is your first listen! Grab Mayhem Market when you become a supporter on Patreon, or listen to the track on YouTube below: $5+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804595 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCVXEw_uJjA And for the $10+ patrons, you've also got an exclusive unreleased Jabun demo from the writing sessions of 2019/20 to look forward to, the hyper-experimental and glitchy "Arc-welder"! Become a $10+ patron to access that and many more rewards now, and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter including the full Better Than The Book and Jabun discographies and much more! With the newly updated REWARD ARCHIVE it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them! $10+ rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50804613 Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Discover the Reward Archive (4th October 2018 -> 1st May 2021): https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-posts-50344842 That's it for this month's rewards! Next time we'll be continuing with some more soundtracky work, but until then, I hope you have an amazing June to come and thanks as always for supporting my music on Patreon! Enjoy the music! Next and finally this week, an amazingly cool feature as KORG's official Facebook page posted about JabunAudio's very own custom oscillator for their Nu:Tekt NTS-1 Synth Kit: NOISE which was released earlier this month! Thanks so much to KORG for sharing my work and you can check out their post below! Neat! https://www.facebook.com/KORGusa/posts/319558136208101 And that about wraps things up for this week! Next time will have some more $1+ Patreon rewards as well as the usual monthly setting and reflecting of goals at the very least, but hopefully there'll be some more things to report too (now that my glasses are fixed). Until then, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and start of June and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects however you can! Take care, stay safe, and all the best! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week so far! It's been a busy but painful week here at JabunAudio, as I seem to have injured my back (slowly but surely getting better), so I've spent the time mostly doing admin and promo work, as well as writing up all the Patreon reward posts for the next 2 months (finished), all while trying not to move around too much... No bass recording for me this week (at the time of writing at least), but before the pain kicked in, I had a very productive Saturday finally repairing my Roland Tr-505 drum machine! Last week's 505 Day jam was a fun one, though I noticed that the volume control on my own machine was playing up worse than ever... The 505 had been an amazing 29th birthday present from my twin Eamon, a 1980s vintage unit with Eamon's own handmade battery cover to replace the missing one it didn't come with. Even when I was first given it though, it was difficult to dial in the volume low, as the control was crackly and the right channel tended to get super loud at low volumes for some reason. I thought it was a faulty potentiometer, but man oh man the 505 has a very specialised part for that (next to impossible to find) and while I had been keeping my eye out for one for the past few years, I've still yet to see or find any. After the amazing success simply cleaning the (what I thought were unserviceable) pots on my homemade double-neck guitar in March though, I figured I'd give it a shot for the 505, and sure enough, with a good spray of contact cleaner and some touched up solder joints, it worked wonders! The volume control (my only sonic gripe with it) is all smooth and working perfectly now, which also means I can play it in headphones again without fear of blowing my ears out! While I had the drum machine apart too, I also took the liberty of removing a tiny bit of fluff trapped between the clear protective plastic cover and the LCD display too. That'd been bugging me for YEARS! Happy times for the Tr-505 and wishing it many more decades of good health to come! Another small update before we get onto the main news for this week: on the front page (and a few other pages) of this site there's a statistic which makes me truly proud: the fact that the work I've done as JabunAudio has contributed to over 200 music tracks and over 20 MILLION views of YouTube animations! That's still mind-blowing to me. While I'd only recently updated that number to over 200 music tracks though, I remembered that I hadn't actually checked the number of YouTube views in a long while, and after a short investigation, it turns out that it's now WELL OVER 40 MILLION! Just astonishing, and thanks so much to everyone who's been watching and still watching all the hard work myself and my various collaborators have worked on. It really means a lot to me that people are still enjoying all these animations, and I hope there'll be more to share with you in the not too distant future! Onto the main news for this week, I have 2 things to share with you: first of all something I made I'm super pleased with and is free to download (I'm sure you can tell by the post title), and next, the final new music upload for Jabun's Generation Supernova album! Let's start with that mystery make! As you may know, I recently was gifted a KORG Nu:Tekt NTS-1 build it yourself digital synth kit for my birthday last month (huge thanks again to my twin Eamon), an exciting compact digital synthesizer which you put together yourself (IKEA style), that KORG also released a free software development kit (the logue-sdk) so you can create your own custom sound sources (oscillators) and audio effects for it (IF you know how to program in C++ (which I admittedly do not, but that's no problem))! You can use it standalone, or as an audio processor or sound module and it's incredibly versatile! There was one thing which seemed missing out of the box though... Among all the custom user oscillators people had made and distributed on the internet (and there are a tonne of great ones), for the life of me I could not find anything which was just a simple noise generator (free or otherwise) so after some research, I figured I'd do some code tinkering try to make my own... and it was a success! No point in keeping it to myself soooooo.. Introducing NOISE: a simple white noise oscillator with adjustable soft-clipping for the KORG Nu:Tekt NTS-1 so you can shape the noise with the envelopes, filters and effects for making percussion sounds, sweeps and the such! NOISE is free to download with an optional donation here on the JabunAudio website, and you can find out more about it along with a quick demo video explaining the features and giving some usage examples below: https://www.jabunaudio.com/news/introducing-noise-a-custom-white-noise-user-oscillator-for-the-korg-nutekt-nts-1-digital-synth-kit-free-download-or-donation I'm still new to the coding for this synth so it's a VERY basic user oscillator, but as I learn more, I look forward to creating some more exciting custom content in the future! If anyone else has one of these fine DIY synths, then I hope you like my very first program for it and enjoy making some noise, with NOISE! Check out the intro video below: Since its release my notifications have been filled with some lovely comments, and I'm so pleased that everyone is enjoying it so far! Fingers crossed that KORG adds it to their official user oscillator database! That would be the final seal of approval! Lastly this week, the final (for now) weekly new music upload is here and Jabun's full Generation Supernova album is now available for streaming on YouTube and Newgrounds! Check out the full Generation Supernova album below: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAGi_mCVc30 Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1031625 Or check out the playlisted songs on the platform or your choice: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6tKVPNjy1_BP9Em-lnNl3w9M8_pOjMxZ Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/playlists/view/a78406727321023caf886e4645d4c5b2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1I3XVBjn5hqjUdrg1HWaMT And if you like what you hear, pick up the Generation Supernova album on Bandcamp: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova Or grab it with the entire Jabun and Better Than The Book discographies when you become a supporter on Patreon for as little as $1 a month (The reward archives have just been updated too)! Hope to see you there! Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Explore the rewards archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 That wraps up the promo posts and uploads for Jabun's Generation Supernova album! I hope you've enjoyed these generative soundscapes and experiments over the last few months and I'm sure I'll be back in the not too distant future with another grand Jabun adventure to share with you (still sitting on over 70 minutes of demos from last year's writing sessions)! And that's it for this post! I'll be aiming to get back to bass recording very shortly, though apart from that, I'm not too sure what this coming week will have in store! The next set of $5+ Patreon rewards will be out at the end of month again as usual (with the $1+ rewards following a week later on the first Wednesday of June), so at the very latest, the next blog post will be in 2 weeks time, unless there's anything particularly interesting to report next week. Until then, I hope you have a great May ahead filled with good times and vibes and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio, Jabun, Better Than The Book and my various projects in all the ways you can! All the best, enjoy the music and take care! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to May and the week so far! It's been a SUPER busy week here at JabunAudio, so much so that I couldn't even fit everything into the post title this time! Electric rhythm guitars for Better Than The Book's in progress 3rd full-length album are complete, and after a quick service I've started laying down some basslines too! On Tuesday my debut album as Jabun "Daydream" celebrated its 4th anniversary which feels crazy! Thanks so much to everyone who's listened to and shared the music throughout the years (and you can listen to and read more over on bandcamp). And Wednesday was 505 day in celebration of the lesser appreciated Roland TR-505 drum machine which made for some fun celebratory jams on Wednesday night! Happy 505 Day for yesterday everyone! On top of all this, after much research and some code tinkering, I built my first very own custom oscillator for the Korg NTS-1 digital synth I received for my birthday last week, a super simple but incredibly useful white noise generator! I'll be running some further tests in the coming week when I can, but I plan to make the program a free public download with optional donation for anyone to use shortly (maybe I can even get it featured on Korg's official database?)! Some more work to do before that can happen, but I'll keep you updated! Expect to hear more about it later this month! With all those extra bits of news out of the way, let's get down to some of the bigger pieces (from a writing point of view), starting with a HUGE Patreon update! First of all this week, I announce the updated set of Patreon reward archive posts for all rewards covering from 4th October 2018 (when I started on Patreon) to 1st May 2021 for the convenience of Patreon supporters and new patrons! These months' rewards cover the full discographies (as of 1st May 2021) for my ska punk / pop punk project Better Than The Book and electronic / cinematic / ambient project Jabun, as well as a few bonus tracks, covers, and some of my discography as plain old Nick Standing, and the REWARD ARCHIVE is here for your convenience so you can pick up all these rewards (Mp3s, WAVs, artwork and more depending on your tier) in one place when you sign up. No need to search through all the posts manually: Just click the link to the REWARD ARCHIVE below (which will be pinned to the top of your feed when you sign up), select the archive for your tier, dig in and enjoy the music! Hope to see you in the comments! Become a patron for as little as $1 a month to access the REWARD ARCHIVE below and all new music as it's released: REWARD ARCHIVE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44580119 And find out more on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Music rewards include: Better Than The Book's full discography (as of 1st May 2021):
Jabun's full discography (as of 1st May 2021):
As well as:
For those of you on the $10+ DEMOlition Pigeon tier, you also have access to all the work in progress, demos and behind the scenes monthly articles too including:
More Better Than The Book will be coming soon as you know as I'm busy recording the project's 3rd album, but the next few months of rewards will be focused on more of my other music as plain old Nick Standing! Until the next set of rewards and then, thanks so much for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various music projects on Patreon, I hope you enjoy the music (and articles) above and to come! Next this week, some amazing news to share as Jabun's Deep Space (Track 02 from the Generation Supernova album) just received a Front Page Award on Newgrounds.com! Thanks so much for the love folks! https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1026374 And speaking of the Generation Supernova album, it's time for the next weekly music upload for Jabun's 3rd album, and this week, track 04 Voyagers is now available to listen to on YouTube and Newgrounds! Check it out below: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRBhbdrAB3o
Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1029193 And if you like what you hear, pick up the Generation Supernova album on Bandcamp: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova Or grab it with the entire Jabun and Better Than The Book discographies when you become a supporter on Patreon for as little as $1 a month! Hope to see you there! https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Rewards archives: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50344842 The full Generation Supernova album is also now available to stream on Spotify as well: https://open.spotify.com/album/1I3XVBjn5hqjUdrg1HWaMT And while we're on the topic of Bandcamp, it's once again Bandcamp Friday tomorrow and in case you're not familiar with it, in support of musicians impacted by the coronavirus, Bandcamp is waiving its revenue share fees on the first Friday of the month from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, meaning that if you purchase anything from Bandcamp this Friday 7th of May, the artists you support (including myself) will get more of the sales revenue than usual since Bandcamp doesn't take its cut, and you'll be able to support the music you love more directly than ever on the platform! If you've been itching to purchase Jabun's new "Generation Supernova" album or pick up one of my other albums as Jabun or Better Than The Book, now's the best time to do so! Check out the Bandcamp pages below and thanks again for supporting my music in any way you can, it really means a lot: Better Than The Book https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/ Jabun https://jabun.bandcamp.com/ Nick Standing (< The sillier old stuff) https://nickstanding.bandcamp.com/ And if you're not sure whether it's Bandcamp Friday in your time-zone, you can check using the tool right here: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ Finally this week, it's time to reflect on the usual monthly goals! Here's what I set for April: 1) Release Jabun's Generation Supernova album 2) Update the Patreon Reward Archive posts ready to release in May 3) Finish recording electric rhythm guitars for the upcoming Better Than The Book projects 4) Service and start recording bass for ^^^ And overall a productive month it has been! All done, no need to elaborate, so for May I'd like to set some more: 1) Sort Patreon reward posts for the next 2 months 2) Finish the Generation Supernova promo period 3) Record all but one of the bass parts for Better Than The Book's upcoming album (12/13) 4) Launch my custom white noise generator for the Korg NTS-1 as a downloadable product! Should be a busy month ahead but hopefully doable (on top of the other non-JabunAudio related stuff on my to-do list). 1) I've already decided what the rewards will be, it's just a case of writing up the 10 posts. 2) should be finished in another 2 weeks. 3) I've currently got 2 bass parts done which means there's 10 left to go! Should be doable unless I have any major problems or delays. If you're wondering why I'm not doing that one last bass part it's because that track has only acoustic guitar and I've yet to record any of the acoustic parts yet. I'll try bass for that once the acoustic parts are recorded. Finally 4) My original goal for the month was just to be able to program such a custom oscillator, but since it seems to have gone so well I figured, heck, why not share it with the world and give back a little! I'll need to do some further tests and checks, then make a product page at the very least, contact a few people and possibly do a demo video for it so it should be an exciting endeavor! Hopefully all goes smoothly, and if this goes well I'd like to try making some more custom content for the NTS-1 in the future! Wish me luck and what are your goals for the month? Feel free to comment below and let's keep eachother motivated! Phew! That's it for this post! I'll be back next week at the very least with the full album streams and playlists for the entire Generation Supernova album, but hopefully more updates on recording or custom oscillators or something as well! Until then, I hope you have a great week to come whatever you're up to, and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects however you can! See you next time, take care and enjoy the new music! NOISE is a basic white noise generator for the KORG Nu:Tekt NTS-1 digital synth kit, an invaluable tool for creating percussion sounds, sweeps and other non-pitched sound effects! NOISE is my first custom created user oscillator for the NTS-1 and is based on the sine_test code in KORG's logue-sdk. Parameter A has no effect, while Parameter B adds soft clipping to the white noise core signal, slightly boosting the level, reducing the dynamic range, and adding some extra overall presence. [Note: shape/pitch modulation will have no audible effect on NOISE. Also, the same sound will be produced regardless of keyboard pitch information.] The code has been optimised (to the best of my ability) by editing the logue-sdk's original sine_test code to produce a Gaussian white noise output, then removing any extra code related to parameters with no audible effect (such as the original Parameter A shape control). While NOISE works well for me on the NTS-1, I've not been able to test it on the Prologue or Minilogue XD platforms, but since those already have more flexible noise sources, I doubt you'll be needing this custom oscillator for those synths. NOISE is provided as-is, at your own risk, and will not be offered any formal technical support, though I'll do my best to help where possible. Use NOISE along with the NTS-1's multi-mode filters to create a variety of timbres to be shaped by the on board envelopes, effects and more, or use NOISE to turn your NTS-1 into a white noise generator to use with external synths such as the KORG Volca Modular! NOISE is free to download below, though if you'd like to make a donation I'd be truly grateful for the support, and I hope to learn more and create more custom user oscillators for the KORG Nu:Tekt NTS-1 in the future! Have fun, and enjoy making some noise, with NOISE! NOISE VERSION 1.0 (Any updates will be posted on this page)
Make a donation: https://www.paypal.me/NickStanding
And feel free to leave a review of NOISE below! I hope you enjoy it! MINOR UPDATE: I've had reports that the file isn't downloading correctly for some users on mobile devices. It should download as just the single file "noise.ntkdigunit" as above, NOT a .zip or .bin or .json file. If the latter is the case, try downloading from your desktop browser instead (Chrome or Firefox works on my end) and that should fix the issue. Hope that helps! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great final week of April so far! It's been a busy and fun one here at JabunAudio as I turned 31 years old on Saturday, though with the ever-present covid-19 restrictions it was another birthday away from friends and family much like last year, though with some nice Zoom calls and stuff at least, highlights including watching movies and eating noodles, snacks and cake as expected. Good stuff! As with these celebrations, I was gifted some rather exciting new gear this year as well, namely a Digitech Whammy V pedal which I've been eyeing for quite some time and have much practice to do with (sounds great on the organ btw), and a build it yourself Korg NTS-1 digital synth kit, from my parents and twin Eamon respectively (the latter a hint to work on more Jabun soon?)! The synth kit is all built as of Sunday afternoon and sounds amazing, though I'm REALLY looking forward getting stuck in customising the internal workings. Looks fun! Of course these are on top of the early present from my GF Eva, the Sonic IR box which I've been using extensively for guitar recorig over the past month! Thanks everyone! And speaking of guitar recording, I've got just one more track of rhythm guitars for Better Than The Book's next album left to complete before it's onto tracking bass, acoustic and leads! Exciting times with progress! Lots of stuff to play with and things to do and that's about it for that news, so let's share some more music uploads from Jabun's Generation Supernova album! It's time for the next weekly music upload for Jabun's 3rd album Generation Supernova, and as of yesterday, track 02 Deep Space is now available to listen to on YouTube and Newgrounds! Check it out below: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI3feKeifUk Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1026374 And if you like what you hear, pick up the Generation Supernova album on Bandcamp: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova Or grab it with the entire Jabun and Better Than The Book discographies when you become a supporter on Patreon for as little as $1 a month! Hope to see you there! https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding The full Generation Supernova album is also now available to stream on Spotify as well: https://open.spotify.com/album/1I3XVBjn5hqjUdrg1HWaMT That's it for this post and I'll be back next week with the final track from Generation Supernova: Voyagers, hopefully some more BTTB recording updates, some Patreon updates, and the usual beginning of the month goal setting and reflections! Until then, I hope you have a great week to come whatever you're up to, and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various music projects however you can! See you next time, take care and enjoy the new music! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week so far hopefully enjoying Jabun's newly released Generation Supernova album! It's been a busy week over here with some post-release admin and promo work to do as well as some more guitar recording for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd full-length album. As it currently stands, there's only 3 more electric rhythm guitar tracks left to do, so hopefully those'll be finished by the end of the month and it'll be onto some lead guitars and bass soon! I've left the hardest tracks until the end though so we'll see how it all goes. Not a whole lot else to report apart from that this week, so let's get straight to the main news! The new weekly music uploads for Jabun's 3rd album Generation Supernova started yesterday and following the pre-release single Turing Machine, the opening track of the album Supernova is now streaming on YouTube and Newgrounds! Check out and relax to Supernova below: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_7X3PNbi1I Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1023807 And if you like what you hear, pick up the Generation Supernova album on Bandcamp: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova Or grab with the entire Jabun and Better Than The Book discographies when you become a supporter on Patreon for as little as $1 a month! Hope to see you there! https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding The full Generation Supernova album is also now available to stream on Spotify as well: https://open.spotify.com/album/1I3XVBjn5hqjUdrg1HWaMT That's it for this quick post and I'll be back next week with track 02 from Generation Supernova: Deep Space, as well as any other updates (probably BTTB recording related)! Until then, I hope you have a great week to come whatever you're up to, and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various music projects however you can! See you next time, take care and enjoy the new music!
Hi everyone and hope you're having a great April so far! It's been a busy 2 weeks since the last blog post and a BIG blog post it's going to be this time with some HUGE news (as if you already couldn't tell from the title)! Alongside prepping for the release of Jabun's 3rd album Generation Supernova (more on that in a moment), I've also been working hard recording electric rhythm guitars for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album as well, and am currently a little over halfway as I type this with 6 tracks left to go, 2 of which are about half done. Having a tonne of fun recording properly for the first time with my Orange Micro Dark amp too; a lovely and contrasting flavour to my usual Marshall! Anyways, with that quick recording update I think it's time to get straight to the BIG news this week! Let's get started!
First of all this week, I’m super excited to finally share with you my 3rd album as Jabun – Generation Supernova, which was released last night! Check out the album teaser video below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNchnK_emj4 (Featured music: “Deep Space” – Jabun) The album preview on SoundCloud featuring all 4 tracks: https://soundcloud.com/jabun/generation-supernova-album-preview And listen to and pick up Jabun’s Generation Supernova album now on Bandcamp: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova Generation Supernova is a 37+ minute collection of 4 tracks exploring generative music methods in the studio. Each track utilises a carefully designed system set up to generate a never-repeating and ever evolving soundscape which was conducted and guided to build an emotional and developing journey from the first note to the last. (SKIP THE FOLLOWING FOR A SPOILER FREE EXPERIENCE BEFORE YOU LISTEN) Track 01 – Supernova utilises 2 short free-time recordings of Rhodes piano performances which were then duplicated and layered playing at different harmonic and sub-harmonic pitches/speeds either forwards, backwards, or bouncing between both, with some added echo for extra ambience and polyrhythms. Each layer was faded in or out to build and reduce the intensity of the composition throughout its duration. The title Supernova was chosen to reflect the feelings this track brings to me, a great expansive explosion of sounds gradually fading out much like the astronomical phenomenon; beauty with hints of sadness, and later something else. Track 02 – Deep Space utilises 2 random arpeggiators each given a set of notes to choose from and told to play a note at a consistent regular interval, the first once per quarter note (at 100 BPM) and the second, once per second (60 BPM), along with a randomly triggered note-repeater leading to more interesting polyrhythms. Beneath this is a short free-time performance which was then duplicated, reversed and played back at 2 (sub)-harmonic pitches/speeds. The piece develops with an improvised synth melody (later returning in reverse) as well as a programmed drum machine performance. Unlike the warmth of Supernova, Deep Space feels cold and isolated to me, the persistent ticking of time, that feeling of drifting perhaps aimlessly reflected in the improvised synth and its subsequent return. Nevertheless, the regular beat of the drums keep marching on. Track 03 – Turing Machine utilises 4 evolving sequences generated using an initial input fed into a deck of cards and a coin flip acting as a very basic modular synth style Turing Machine. You can see the original handwritten manuscript including the sequences, generation rules, and more in this album’s bonus materials (on Bandcamp and Patreon). These 4 generated sequences were then arranged for synthesizers to create an intensely building track accompanied by multiple layers of random arpeggiated heavily distorted electronic drums/percussion, additional orchestral and electronic percussion, as well as a carefully arranged string orchestration developing on one of the Turing Machine sequences for added harmonies and tension. The hypnotic and minimalistic atmosphere of Turing Machine reflects the relentless and driving inorganic computations and calculations I’d expect from a complex machine, and being based around a Turing Machine inspired set-up, the title seemed rather appropriate. Track 04 – Voyagers utilises 2 instances of an 8 note looping sequence, the first consisting of 32 steps, and the second only using 31 steps (shortening the final note), resulting in a gradually phase shifting relationship between them throughout the piece in a similar way to Steve Reich’s Piano Phase. These sequences were then arranged for string orchestra and pipe organ on opposite sides of the stereo field, gradually building the piece by adding additional instruments and layers at harmonic/sub-harmonic pitches as well as additional glitching sounds using randomised arpeggiators, another set of phasing sequences for synthesizer, and additional percussion. The two phasing sequences which form the basis of the track, I like to think of as representing the twin Voyager space probes launched to explore interstellar space, each on their own undoubtedly lonely, but unfathomably awe-inspiring journeys into the unknown. Even as they explore further than humans might ever reach physically, no matter how far apart they drift, they’ll always be connected by their origin on our small blue planet. (READ THE ABOVE BITS AFTER LISTENING FOR A SPOILER FREE EXPERIENCE) Generation Supernova was a fun and rewarding exploration into generative music methods, with each piece very much the result of the unexpected fruits of conducted chaotic experiments in the studio, much like the 15-4-20 album. Whether you sit down to listen intently, have it on in the background while doing something else, or simply immerse yourself in the sounds, I hope you enjoy these semi-ambient, generative experimental soundscapes, from the strange early months of 2020. In case you’ve not seen them yet, you can also check out the full album credits, special thanks and descriptions on the Jabun – Generation Supernova Bandcamp page! Read more below and I hope you have fun exploring: https://jabun.bandcamp.com/album/generation-supernova All tracks written, performed and produced by Nick Standing [Jabun] Recorded, mixed and mastered at JabunAudio by Nick Standing [Jabun] Album artwork, images and photography by Nick Standing [Jabun] In celebration of Generation Supernova’s release, there’s whole handful of rewards for my supporters on Patreon! For the $1 patrons, you’ve got the full mp3 album and artwork including alternative album covers, the original unedited album cover photo, and a high resolution scan of the original handwritten Turing Machine Generation Manuscript! Pick it up below: $1 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46779681/ For the $5 & $10 patrons, you’ve got all that + the highest CD quality WAV files for all 4 tracks, and for the $10 patrons, you’ll also be getting an exclusive unused unreleased demo from the writing sessions for Better Than The Book's upcoming 3rd album! Check out the rewards below: $5 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46779658/ $10 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46779682/ If any of that sounds good to you, then become a patron today for as little as $1 a month and remember that you’ll be also getting access to all past rewards for your tier including the full Better Than The Book and Jabun discographies, many Patreon exclusive bonus tracks and more! I hope to see you there! Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding Explore past rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44575319 And that’s it for this set of rewards! Now that Jabun’s Generation Supernova album is out, I’ll be uploading tracks from the album to YouTube and Newgrounds each Wednesday until mid May, and with such a big release, I’ll also be taking a short break from rewards to update the Patreon REWARD ARCHIVE posts again, but will be back with new rewards for the $5 & $10 patrons on the final Wednesday of May, and the first Wednesday of June for the $1 patrons! Until then I hope you have a great month ahead and enjoy the new music, and thanks as always for supporting Jabun, Better Than The Book and my various projects here on Patreon! More music to come soon! And speaking of new music, next this week I have a wonderful cover song to share with you from my friends over at World Beyond! In Vlad's own words, this cover from Hans Zimmer's Pirates of the Caribbean was his most challenging production to date with over 140 production hours and over 9400 notes on the arrangement timeline, and I really think him and featured violinist Maritza have outdone themselves this time! I'm not playing or engineering directly in this one, though the last few weeks have been spent as Vlad's extra set of ears reviewing mixes and squeezing the last few drops of greatness into this production! I'm super pleased with the way it turned out and I hope you enjoy it! Pick it up and listen below, and Drink Up Me Hearties Yo Ho!!! Listen and purchase the track here: https://fanlink.to/DrinkUpMeHearties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIDC3SnXfVA Finally this week, a little extra cool news as Better Than The Book was back on Button Down Radio again with The Hardest Part from the Hopes and Dreams album! Always nice to know that people are still enjoying the tunes and thanks so much to Button Down Radio for sharing them again! Check out Button Down Radio and the playlist for the show below. Great listening if you need more ska in your life! https://www.facebook.com/buttondownradio5446/posts/2889879874617164 And that wraps things up for this post! No doubt it'll be a busy few days for me with more promo for the newly released Generation Supernova album, and I'll also be taking the time to update the websites and such, as well as fit in a bit more recording for Better Than The Book is I can! Next week starts the weekly streaming uploads for the new album so look forward to track 01 "Supernova" being shared in the next blog post, along with any other updates and news I can find! Until then, thanks so much as always for supporting Jabun, JabunAudio, Better Than The Book and my various projects and I hope you enjoy listening to and exploring my latest album as Jabun - Generation Supernova! All the best, take care and see you next time! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to April and a fun April Fools' Day so far! No pranks or bonus tracks for me this year (for real), but it's been an exciting and busy week here at JabunAudio! Some big updates on upcoming projects as I've just started recording guitars for Better Than The Book's 3rd full-length album (not a whole lot to share on that front; I'm just working through it bit by bit, but it's great to be back to it), and a few things to share this week typical of a first-of-the-month blog post! Let's get to it!
Firstly this week, it's once again Bandcamp Friday tomorrow and in case you're not familiar with it, in support of musicians impacted by the coronavirus, Bandcamp is waiving its revenue share fees on the first Friday of the month from midnight to midnight Pacific Time, meaning that if you purchase anything from Bandcamp this Friday 2nd of April, the artists you support (including myself) will get more of the sales revenue than usual since Bandcamp doesn't take its cut, and you'll be able to support the music you love more directly than ever on the platform! If you've been itching to pre-order Jabun's upcoming "Generation Supernova" album (which releases April 15th) or pick up one of my other albums as Jabun or Better Than The Book, now's the best time to do so! Check out the Bandcamp pages below and thanks again for supporting my music in any way you can, it really means a lot: Better Than The Book https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/ Jabun https://jabun.bandcamp.com/ Nick Standing (< The sillier old stuff) https://nickstanding.bandcamp.com/ And if you're not sure whether it's Bandcamp Friday in your time-zone, you can check using the tool right here: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ Finally this week, it's time to reflect on the usual monthly goals! Here's what I set for March: 1) Announce Jabun's 3rd album and launch the pre-release single / pre-orders 2) Finish recording drums for BTTB's 3rd album (4 left + checks) 3) Test guitar recording set-ups and start recording rhythm guitars for BTTB's 3rd album 4) Design and source at least one piece of merch for BTTB and/or Jabun And overall it's been a mostly successful month! Of course 1) was completed a few weeks back and I'm sure I reported the same for 2). 3) was completed as of this week, but the final goal 4) I didn't quite get done between all the promo work and turbulent guitar maintenance work in preparation for recording... Not to worry though as 4) was fairly low priority so it can wait until another time. I did however manage to keep up with my usual BTTB live practice though which is always good! Onto goals for April, on top of such exciting things as doing my taxes and renewing this website, let's set some new goals! 1) Release Jabun's Generation Supernova album 2) Update the Patreon Reward Archive posts ready to release in May 3) Finish recording electric rhythm guitars for the upcoming Better Than The Book projects 4) Service and start recording bass for ^^^ 1) Should go smoothly as most of the stuff is already scheduled for that. 2) hopefully won't be too strenuous but will have to wait until after the 15th when the album is released. 3) Might be overly ambitious judging from my current progress and the other things which need sorting this month, but it'd be nice to try, and 4) very much depend on the progress for 3). Should be an interesting month for sure! Unlike the previous months, I'll be taking a break from Better Than The Book live practice until the guitars are recorded, just to make sure I savour all that freshly restrung guitar tone for recording, before I shred it away with practice, but I hope to be back to it in May after a productive month of recording! Wish me luck and I wish you the best with your own goals too! That about wraps things up for this post and it's only 2 weeks now until Jabun's Generation Supernova album goes out to the public! Hope your as excited as I am for it, and hopefully it should be a productive week ahead recording and doing all that busy admin work for the start of the tax year! Until the next one, I hope you have a great start to April and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various project however you can (remember it's Bandcamp Friday tomorrow)! All the best and take care! Hi everyone and hope you're having a great week since the last post! It's been an incredibly busy and stressful one over here (and I don't say that lightly) with guitar service work and preparations to start recording guitars for the next Better Than The Book album, but thankfully everything's all sorted and just about ready now! As usual before starting any big recording project I took the time to service my guitars, give them a restring as needed and check the intonation etc... For my Jaguar and Modded Pacifica, it was a routine job, but for my homemade double-neck guitar, after putting it off for years, I decided to finally take the plunge and service the electronic controls as well, aaaand it was a bit of a disaster... From broken parts to ordering news ones, to some of those being broken, to refunds and replacements and the replacements being just as broken, eventually the problem was solved by simply drowning the old original pots (which I was convinced were beyond saving) in cleaning solution, and basically putting all the original parts back in (with a fresh set of capacitors and resistors), and re-soldering the whole guitar control cavity probably 3 times before it was done... Having said that, after an ordeal of a service job, it's sounding better than ever and I will not be making the same mistake again trying to fix it or replace parts unless COMPLETELY necessary. A whole load of wasted time, a bit of wasted money (though I have to commend and thank the shop for the refund and being so understanding with the faulty parts), BUT I'm finally ready to start recording! Phew... let's pray that never happens again...
A brief history of my double-neck "Satin-X" for those of you interested, I built this guitar with my dad and brother (and tools lent by other family members and friends) when I was 15, half a life ago. It's been through a whole load of crazy adventures and repairs over the years (on top of the one above) with the most significant being when the 12-string neck's truss rod (the metal bar which counteracts the tension of the strings) snapped, me cracking the original 6 string bridge whammy block, me snapping a whammy bar and cracking another one if I recall correctly, and replacing the 6 string bridge completely as well as the 6 string tuning heads (the "new" bridge is AMAZING!). The Satin-X is my pride and joy and has been featured on most of my guitar heavy records. I wish it the best health for the years to come, and while this probably won't be the last time I need to repair it, I can always hope! Back to recording news, my GF Eva gave me a wonderful early birthday present last week which was an IR loader box from recently founded tech company Sonicake! For those of you who don't know, IRs or Impulse Responses are a relatively new technology whereby you send a frequency sweep through a piece of equipment to map out its response then use a "deconvolver" to compare the input and output and generate a snapshot of the effect of the equipment you scanned. This only works for non-dynamic effects, but is ideal for accurately emulating speaker and mic set-ups and reverbs for instance! The technology has been around for a while in software, but this is the first time I'd seen it in hardware for the entry level market, and it does and amazing job! Marketed as a guitar cabinet IR loader (for recreating the sound of guitar speakers), the Sonicake IR box featured 11 slots which come pre-loaded with a nice selection of classic speakers, but in case you want to customise, you can load in your own speaker IRs via USB! I generally use cab sims in IK Multimedia's AmpliTube when recording but it's quite heavy on computer resources so I loaded IR snapshots my favorite AmpliTube cab settings into the IR box instead so I don't need to use the computer which will save me a load of time and computer resources! I can even take the IR box to a gig and D.I into the PA instead of micing a cab if I need to, and know that every place and time I'll be able to play with the same sound AND the sound which was used on the BTTB records (or close to it)! Sounds amazing and I can't wait to start recording with it! Finally for this week some quick and cool news to share with you today as Jabun's "Turing Machine" (which was released a week ago on Monday) and the upcoming "Generation Supernova" album were featured in The Tank Tribune No. 36 on Newgrounds.com! Thanks so much for featuring the music and sharing the news fellow Newgrounds peeps and check out the issue below for a whole bunch of Newgrounds related news! Have you heard Turing Machine yet? https://thetanktribune.newgrounds.com/news/post/1152194 Only a few weeks to go until Generation Supernova releases to the world! And that about wraps things up for this post! I'm hoping to start recording guitars for Better Than The Book very shortly, and next week will be the first post of the month, so I'm sure there'll be Bandcamp Friday news as well as the usual setting and reflecting on goals to do. Until then, I hope you have a great week, I hope my week's a bit more relaxed than the last one, and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my various projects however you can! Take care, all the best and see you again on April Fools Day! |
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