Week 1 out of 8 of the acoustic cover songs: Perfect by Alice Cooper, the future of YouTube, an extra special LIVE performance video, Better Than The Book lyrics finished, new webpages + more!

Hello everyone and hope you've had a great week whatever you've been up to. It's been cold here, with a lots of snow and sleet over the past few days (for England at least...), but I've been keeping super busy since the last post developing the website, working on Better Than The Book, and uploading the next 2 months of cover songs to YouTube (more on all that later). There's a lot to report this week, plus some extra special things that don't come around often to share, so let's get straight to it!

First of all this week, I'm excited to introduce the first of the eight acoustic covers I recorded as Christmas presents for people last year. This one is the first of the tracks for my parents, "Perfect" by Alice Cooper, a song sang back when we were living together. I hope you enjoy it, and tune in next week for some more Blink-182; an acoustic cover of "Aliens Exist". Happy listening!

While we're on the topic of YouTube videos, I'd unfortunately like to share something with you all that I received this week which, to put it lightly, pissed me off a great deal. After uploading videos to YouTube for over 7 years (and that's 159 videos as of recent), YouTube sent me a notice saying it will no longer be monetising my content. Why is this? Well as of their new standards, in order to keep my content monetized I must have over 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours of viewed videos in the past 12 months, and if I haven't exceeded these standards by this time next month, I will no longer be eligible to make money from YouTube. Now being realistic, I know I'm not going to make megabucks from my videos, but the fact of the matter is, whether I receive my due pennies or not, YouTube will likely still be running ads on my videos and making money off them. Needless to say, I'm not the only person unhappy with these changes, and after last year's Adpocalypse which severely effected many of the people I work with, it really seems like YouTube mastered the art of how to disappoint the people which create content for its communities. I'm not sure what the future holds for YouTube, but I sure as heck hope that they realise soon the effect they're having on content creators, especially new ones. If you're reading, what are your thoughts on the matter? Do you agree with the changes or do you feel the same as me? 

Anyways, enough ranting, let's get back to the nicer topics at hand:

Secondly this week, I have an extra special treat to share with you all. A throwback to last summer, and it's a crime this hasn't been put up sooner, here's a video of my good friend Sam Brown and I playing an unrehearsed, spur of the moment "Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult during one of Sam's gigs at The Woolpack in Burgess Hill. It'd have been my first public performance in probably over 2 years, and Sam and I's first performance together in about 9 years! For those who don't know, Sam is pretty much a brother to me, a fantastic dude and friend since my early teens. We started our first band "Crow's Wing" together along with my twin brother Eamon, and another great friend Andrew Gelnar, Sam on bass and myself on guitar and vocals, and recorded and played gigs together until about 2008 when we parted ways for University. In 2007 I started a metal band Lupus Atrum as the lead vocalist and guitarist, and after my departure, Sam took the mic and rocked the vocals in my place. Later on in 2012, I took the place of Sam on bass in the pop-punk quartet Lights, Camera, Attraction! until my departure in 2015. Indeed we've had an intertwined musical path throughout the years and I hope it stays that way. Love you, bro, and it's always a pleasure to share the mic with you. We should definitely do this more often! (In case you don't know what I look like, I'm the long haired one playing guitar)

Next this week, some more awesome news from Better Than The Book. As of the weekend just passed, lyrics for all 10 songs on the new album are complete! Horray! Now just a little disclaimer: there is still a chance that some of the lyrics may be altered before the final recording, but it's at the stage where they're all fully fledged songs you could sing and play on the guitar without having to mumble that one verse where you don't know the words. Progress! The project flies have been cleared up too with only material for the new album in the folder and all the unused ideas moved to the ideas collection ready as riff fodder for the next album. Recording is still scheduled start next month, though before that I need to service my guitars, work out some of the parts in more detail and practice them, and generally prepare for what looks to be an exciting and high energy recording session this spring! Hope you're as pumped as I am and I look forward to sharing the journey with you as I go!

Finally for this post, the main thing I've been up to over the past 7 days has been working on the website, and again progress has been made as this week I'm happy to present to you the brand new and updated VIDEOS and GAMES sections of the JabunAudio portfolio! As well as that I've also completed behind the scenes the main Portfolio and Music pages too, though I'm waiting for some permissions on artwork on those before I can make them public. Hopefully I'll be able to share them next week, but we shall see! All that's left to do is the Services and Home pages so with any luck it shouldn't be long before the website is all finished and live. Hope you're liking the new design and please let me know if you spot any broken links or errors on the site in the mean time. Many thanks in advance for your help!

And that about wraps things up for this week! What's in store next week? Well there's the next cover song "Aliens Exist" by Blink-182 to look forward to, and hopefully the website will be complete or at least close to it by the next blog post. I'm away this weekend for my brother Eamon's graduation to Dr Standing though so there may be some delays over the next few days, but I'll do my best. Next on the audio projects list, the A P O T H E O S I S  final boss theme is on my plate to compose so I'll be starting on that as soon as the website is done, and as for what else is happening, I'll see where the wind takes me! Hope you have a great week whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my projects. See you next time, and take care.