A mini rehearsal video clip of "Cathode Ray Days" + the $5+ rewards have been sent out: Jabun - "Home" + another exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album for the $10+ patrons!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great final week of February! Another LIVE video clip to share with you today, this time from a mini Better Than The Book rehearsal in January 2020! This time we’re playing "Cathode Ray Days" from the Two Years On album and the main purpose of this practice was to go over vocal harmonies, of which Cathode Ray Days has a lovely 3 part section in the 2nd verse! Hope you enjoy this more intimate practice and check out the video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m74tWk9zcn8

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, Guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: Harmonica + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass + backing vocals

Andy Forman: Drumsticks + sofa

"Cathode Ray Days" and the rest of the Two Years On album are available on all major digital distributors as well as the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Or of course you can pick them up if you haven't already when you become a supporter on Patreon! Easy peasy with a side serving of the full Better Than The Book discography and more when you sign up, and with the project going live, we could use all the support we can get to push it as far as possible! Another set of $5 rewards was just posted this morning too so come join the community (more on that in a moment):

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Just 4 more of these videos to come over the next month, and next time we’re moving from short clips to some full song play-throughs from the first LIVE and loud rehearsal session! Subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and I'll see you next week for another one!

And onto those $5+ Patreon rewards, it's the final Wednesday of the month which means another set of reward posts for the $5 and $10 patrons are out, and this time we have the next track from Jabun's discography and the only one to be released in 2014: Home!  

Read more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33331415

$5 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33331411

$10 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33331409

Home is another track which holds a special place in my heart as I wrote and released it in the weeks coming up to Eva and I's 1st anniversary. It's a wonderful expression of the amalgamations of my musical history and various influences, piano combining with full orchestra and many synths, a parallel to the wonderful new life I'd discovered over the past year (excuse the soppiness)! The main plucky synth was a Moog Prodigy emulator, the Prodigy (synth) being probably my all-time favourite mono-synth and my go-to for all my analogue mono-synth sounds even to this day. Amazingly enough, on our first anniversary, Eva and I went to London where we first confessed our feelings and I found and played on a REAL vintage Moog Prodigy on Denmark Street! Home was my first track as Jabun to be given a Front Page award here on Newgrounds, and as with its predecessor Distance would go on to be remastered for the 2017 Jabun album: Daydream! I hope you enjoy Home:

For those of you interested too, the artwork for Home was based around a picture my mum took in the back garden of our family home in Sussex, UK! Thanks for letting me use the photo, Ma!

For the $10 patrons, you've got another exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album to look forward to as well as an article on the composition/production process for it! Become a $10 patron to access that article and many more now, and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter! With the new REWARD ARCHIVE tag it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them :) 

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding 

That's it for this month's rewards and today's update! There aren't any 2015 Jabun tracks to share, so next time we'll be moving onto the 2016 Jabun discography, or perhaps something entirely different, or maybe even both; I've not quite decided yet, and I'll be back this time next week with the first of the full song LIVE rehearsal videos too as well as the $1 Patreon rewards! Whatever the case I hope you have an excellent time whatever you're up to until then and thanks as always for supporting Better Than the Book, Jabun and my various projects here onPNewgrounds! Take care and enjoy the tunes :)

A LIVE & LOUD video clip of "Hearts Racing" from the very first Better Than The Book full-band rehearsal + I NEED YOUR HELP for "And I Fear"'s potential radio debut tonight on Union JACK Radio!

Hi everyone and another LIVE and LOUD video clip to share with you today from Better Than The Book's first full-band rehearsal + I NEED YOUR HELP for tonight's radio show on Union Jack Radio where “And I Fear” could be making its radio debut (more on that in a moment)!

Starting with the video clip, this time it's "Hearts Racing" (again) and again this would have been the 2nd time ever that we'd have played this song together as a full band. It's still a little rough around the edges, but I think you'll enjoy the step up in energy since the small jam meet-up previously! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bph7A9UbZs8

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, 1st guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: Harmonica + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass + backing vocals

Andy Forman: Drums

"Hearts Racing" and the rest of the Two Years On album are available on all major digital distributors as well as the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/ 

Or of course you can pick them up if you haven't already when you become a supporter on Patreon! Easy peasy with a side serving of the full Better Than The Book discography and more, and with the project going live, we could use all the support we can get to push it as far as possible! Come join the community:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

5 more of these videos to come over the next 2 months, and it just keeps getting better from here (IMO)! Subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and I'll see you next week for another one here on Newgrounds!

Onto the radio show news, if you hadn't heard yesterday on social media, "And I Fear" from Better Than The Book's Hopes and Dreams album made the Underdogs show shortlist and so COULD be making its radio debut tonight (Wednesday) at 7pm (UK time) on Union JACK Radio! If it plays, that would make 8/10 tracks from the Hopes and Dreams album to have made onto the radio worldwide, which would be phenomenal!

The trouble is, it's only a 1 hour show and so listeners must vote to push the tracks they want up the playlist during the show to ensure they get played, which means if we're going to make this happen we've gotta tune in and vote for Better Than The Book's And I Fear on the playlist tonight when the show goes live at 7pm! Hope you can make it for the show, many thanks in advance, and you can tune in and vote for Better Than The Book's "And I Fear" here when the show goes live at 7pm: 

https://unionjack.co.uk/vote/ 

Come listen to some great upcoming British music and let's make it 8/10 tracks from Hopes and Dreams to make it onto the radio! That would be awesome!

That's it for today's update, and I'll be back this time next week with another video clip and more $5 Patreon rewards if you don't hear from me before! Looking forward to it and until then, thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various music projects! Hope you can make it tonight and take care :)

EDIT:

We did it folks! "And I Fear" just had its radio debut half an hour ago which makes 8/10 tracks from the Hopes and Dreams album to have made it onto the airways! Thanks so much for all the BTTB love!

Hi everyone and another video clip to share with you today, this time LIVE and LOUD from the very first Better Than The Book full-band rehearsal: "Watching Airships"!

Now bear in mind this would have been the 2nd time EVER that we'd have played this song together (the first time being maybe half an hour before the video was taken), and it was our first day gelling as a full band too, so it's a little bit rough around the edges, but I thought it turned out pretty darn good and I hope you enjoy seeing the full BTTB live band in action! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCKuKgmf6os

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, 1st guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: 2nd guitar + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass + backing vocals

Andy Forman: Drums

Watching Airships and the rest of the One Small Step EP are available on all major digital distributors as well as the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Or of course you can pick them up if you haven't already when you become a supporter on Patreon! Easy peasy with a side serving of the full Better Than The Book discography and more, and with the project going live, we could use all the support we can get to push it as far as possible! Come join the community:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

6 more of these videos to come over the next 2 months, and it just keeps getting better from here (IMO)! Subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and I'll see you next week for another one here on Newgrounds! Until then, thanks as always for making all this possible and supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various music projects! It looks like it's going to be a super exciting year ahead!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to the week!

Just a quick update today to let you know that after being on the platform for a few years now, Better Than The Book and Jabun are now both verified on the global streaming platform Spotify! Check out the updated pages below complete with bio, extra photos and more:

BTTB - https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GUCmKQoIk3bNWGiXDGkrp

Jabun - https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Ig1iozkpNv4mOGHJFny73

The ONLY thing I wasn't able to update on them is the upcoming gigs sections, which are populated automatically by services such as Ticketmaster so I couldn't contribute to them manually. With that being the case, Head over to the BTTB website for the most up to date gig info:

https://betterthanthebookuk.weebly.com/

(and I'll be sure to let you know if and when Jabun decides to go live too!)

Hope you enjoy the new pages, have a listen, and if you like the music and want more, come support the projects on Patreon if you've not already! You'll get the full BTTB discography when you sign up and the Jabun discography's being uploaded throughout this year. Hope to see you in the community:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding 

And that's it for this update! Next one will be on Wednesday with the first of the full band Better Than The Book LIVE LOUD videos! Hope you're as excited to see it as I am to share it and until then, thanks as always for supporting my projects! Take care :)

Last week's main Patreon rewards are now out for the $1+ patrons (Mp3s and art only)

$1 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/1-patron-rewards-33000133

Read more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/1-rewards-have-33000130

Find out more and sign up here:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!!

Happy 4th anniversary to Better Than The Book's Two Years On + a video clip from BTTB's very first LIVE band meet-up!

Man how time flies! 4 year ago today, Better Than The Book released its debut full length album Two Years On, and a heck of a ride it's been since! It's also the 3rd anniversary of the Two Years On [Instrumentals] bonus album! Check them out on Bandcamp:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

And to celebrate, it's about time we get this live show rolling! Here's a clip from the VERY FIRST meet-up of the Better Than The Book LIVE band back in August last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HZf4xC3Klk

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, 1st guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: Harmonica + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass

Andy Forman: 2nd guitar

Andy's usually on drums, but he had his guitar this time!

7 more of these videos to come over the next 2 months, and it just gets better from here (IMO)! Subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and support Better Than The Book and the rest of my music on Patreon for the FULL BTTB Discography, monthly rewards and more!

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

I'll see you here next week for another one but until then, thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various music projects! It looks like it's going to be a super exciting year ahead!

Take care!

More $5+ Patreon rewards are out: Jabun - Distance + an exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album for the $10+ patrons!

$5 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33000131

$10 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/33000124

Find out more and sign up here:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to 2020! It's the final Wednesday of the month which means another set of reward posts for the $5 and $10 patrons are out, and this time we have the final track from Jabun's 2013 discography: Distance!

This track hold a very special place in my heart as it was the first track I wrote inspired by my one and only Eva, less than 3 weeks after we got together. I feel like this was the first original (non-remix) Jabun track where I'd discovered my own unique voice as Jabun, rather than trying to copy other people's styles or techniques, and as you'll here it has a very different feel to all the tracks previously. For the keen eared among you, there are multiple coded messages in this track in between the Speak 'n' Spell vocals and hypnotic synths. If you can work any of them out, major props! Distance would be the first single from my first album as Jabun Daydream (released May 2017), and would be remastered for the album as you'd expect. There are some subtle differences between the 2013 single and 2017 album versions though, so I thought it'd be nice to share them both on Patreon! The album credits for Distance from the Daydream album read as follows, a haiku followed by the Speak 'n' Spell lyrics:

"From our early years

When we were doing distance

I love you so much"

Union

Answer

Pleasure

Wonder

Beauty

Warm

Touch

Discover

Talk

Laugh

Comfort

Ready

Journey

5

2

0

Without further wait, I hope you enjoy Distance:

Listen on Bandcamp:

https://jabun.bandcamp.com/track/distance

or on Newgrounds!

For the $10 patrons, you've got another exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album to look forward to as well as an article on the composition/production process for it! Become a $10 patron to access that article and many more 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 entire Better Than The Book discography! With the new REWARD ARCHIVE tag it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them :)

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

That's it for this month's rewards and next time we'll be moving onto the only 2014 Jabun track and the 2nd pre-release single from the Daydream album (from many years before). Looking forward to sharing that with you and until then, I hope you have an excellent February to come and thanks as always for supporting Better Than the Book, Jabun and my various projects! Take care and enjoy the tunes :)

Hi everyone and just a quick announcement to make today: my ska / poppunk music project Better Than The Book finally has an Instagram page! I'll be aiming to put up daily pics and things there, so if that's your jam head over to Instagram!

https://www.instagram.com/bttb_music/

Hope to see you there and until the next post, I hope you have a great time whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book and my other projects! Take care :)

Get more from Better Than The Book and Jabun on Patreon including the full BTTB discography and more when you sign up:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Amazing news! Better Than The Book's "Artificial Ignorance" places #16 best new ska tune of 2019 on The Ska Show with Beefy Top 30 Charts + some radio re-runs and love!

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

https://www.patreon.com/posts/33066689

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great weekend so far! Some amazing news to share with you today, and a GREAT start to the year for radio features as The Ska Show with Beefy (The #2 ska radio show / podcast in the world) awards Better Than The Book's "Artificial Ignorance" #16 on their Top 30 new ska tunes of 2019 charts! Thanks so much to Beefy for all the love he's showed for the Hopes and Dreams album and Better Than The Book last year, and check out the replay of the #20 to #11 chart in this latest episode of The Ska Show below:

https://www.facebook.com/TheSkaShowwithBeefy/posts/2744594605628927

Better Than The Book plays about halfway through preceded by a lovely shout out from Beefy! You can also check out the #30 to #11 chart list via the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-ska-show-with-beefy-on-southern-fm/playlist-5th-january-2020-the-best-of-2019-chart/2742981579123563/?__tn__=-R

And if that wasn't a good enough Saturday of Ska, Tonic Ska Radio has also been showing the project some love over in London! Thanks so much for sharing the tunes and check out their Facebook post all about it below:

https://www.facebook.com/tonicskaradio/posts/1205821572961971

That's it for this post! I do wonder what exciting things are to come next for Better Than The Book and my various projects, but until then I hope you have a great time and thanks as always for supporting my music here on Newgrounds! Take care :D

Happy New Year and HUGE NEWS: Better Than The Book finally has a band and is preparing to hit the stage in 2020 (+ some fun gear updates)!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/32944672

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Happy New Year everyone and some long awaited HUGE news to share today as you can probably tell by the post title! Hope you all had a great time over the winter holiday period and are settling back smoothly into routine now that we're almost at the end of the first week of 2020. I certainly had an exciting few weeks away, so let's get into that and the big news!

Let's start with some backstory. Better Than The Book has been a studio project since mid 2012, but apart from making the records themselves, I never really had the opportunity / means to take it to the stage. Fast forward to 2016 when Two Years On was released, and things started getting interesting. With 2 tracks making it on the radio over in the USA, I was getting interviews and requests asking when I would be touring the USA, but as a person with no band or funding, I really had no idea what to do. I even had a label approach me about the project back then, but without a gig-ready band at the time, I couldn't fulfill the needs they wanted. Fast forward again to 2019 and Hopes and Dreams, and even before the album was released the attention was heating up with radio play as far as Australia and many web features and interviews. When the album launched on July 19ths, things exploded over the next few months and it was clear that people wanted me to take this live, and I'd be kicking myself if I didn't give it a shot. By the end of October, 7/10 tracks from the album had made it onto the radio all across the USA, UK and Australia!

After much discussion with a few close and musical friends, in August 2019, four of us got together for a casual living room jam and strategy meeting, and all things considered, it went super smoothly and I was happy to give this live thing a shot. We set out 8 tracks to learn to start with with the aim to practice hard and meet up for a full band, loud and proud rehearsal before the end of the year, and in late December 2019 it happened, and it was spectacular! Considering we'd never played most of these tunes together, and certainly not in a full band situation, it was already more than 90% there musically, with just a few tiny kinks to iron out (like vocal harmonies and who was doing which backing vocals). I was on top of the world, and at the end of that practice, it was pretty darn clear that 2020 would be an exciting year for Better Than The Book!

And so without further wait, I'd like to formally announce that Better Than The Book will be hitting the stage in 2020 with the following line-up of my crazy friends:

Nick Standing (Me): Lead vocals and guitar

Eamon Standing: Backing vocals, guitar and harmonica (the amazing one man horn section)

Sam Brown: Backing vocals and bass guitar

Andy Forman: Drums

Eamon, Sam and I were in our first band together, I was in a band with Andy, Sam was in that same band with Andy before I joined, Eamon and Andy made a record together with me producing it, Sam's been in another band I was in, I've been in a battle of the band against Andy, and of course Andy lent his guitar playing to Better Than The Book's 1st EP One Small Step on the track "Woof Woof, Nag Nag" (as well as many gang shouts on the album along with Eamon). In short, we all have a long musical history together and I honestly couldn't think of a better bunch of people to be doing this with! What's next for the project? Well we've another 7ish songs to learn before our next meet-up in April then it's time to make the final polishing and start looking for gigs! We already have one confirmed for November (more details to come closer to the time) so at the very latest, our first gig will be then! It's been a tonne of hard work but I can't wait to really push this to see how far we can take it, and if you want to help support the project over on Patreon, it'd really help cover the practice studio and travel costs while we prepare (and get some merch sorted), and of course you'll be getting all the good stuff and full BTTB discography when you sign up!

And speaking of getting things, I'm super happy with my love new and compact gigging amp I got just before the practice, an Orange Micro Dark! Don't let it's size fool you, this thing is DEAFENING if it wants to be! Plugged into a Marshall 4x12 cab at practice, I could only get the volume up 1/3 the way before it was plenty loud enough for the room and to keep up with Andy's drumming! Simple, sweet sounding, my kind of tone and doesn't even weigh 1kg!!! I'll definitely be putting this in my rucksack for practice rather than taking my 50 watt 14kg+ Marshall amp on the train, as lovely as it sounds. For the gear heads among you, since the Micro Dark only has one channel (or sound at a time), as opposed to my Marshall which you can switch between 2 via a footswitch, I took some time during the Christmas period to build a little pedal for it! This'll be the 4th (and most simple) pedal I've designed / built from scratch, and I call it the "Pre-Wash". Put it before you amp and when engaged it cleans up your single for less distortion, in the same way as rolling the volume down on your amp can clean the signal. It basically turns a single channel amp into a basic 2 channel one. Neat! I still need to save up for a speaker cabinet for the Micro Dark to play through in the studio, but as of right now I have all the equipment I need to gig Better Than The Book (which is half the battle)!

Back to that epic practice in December, I did manage to get some footage of that, as well as subsequent practices too, so keep a look out for some of that coming hopefully later this month over on Patreon! Overall, 2019 was a heck of an exciting year for Better Than The Book, but I have a feeling that 2020 will be just as exciting in a completely different way!

That's it for this post! There's still a heck of a lot of work to do in preparation for gigging but I think musically and equipment wise we're pretty much there! I'm sure I'll be posting more updates about this soon, but until the next post, I hope you have a great start to 2020 and thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, Jabun and my various projects! Let's make 2020 (and the decade to come) and amazing one!

More Patreon rewards have been sent out: Clare Jeffrey - 60 Days [Jabun Orchestral Mix] + 10 minutes of exclusive demos from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album for the $10+ patrons!

$1 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32058625

$5 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32058620

$10 rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/32096914

Become a patron and find out more: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Happy New Year 2020 everyone, and hope you had a great holiday season and New Years however you celebrated! Another set of rewards for my supporters on Patreon are out, and this time we're continuing with the 2013 Jabun back catalog of music with another and one of my favourite remixes: Clare Jeffrey's "60 Days [Jabun Orchestral Mix]"!

This remix really takes me back and was one of my first real attempts at orchestral writing (which was released), something I'm very much planning to get back to in the upcoming 2nd Jabun album next year. In summer 2013 Clare, who was a friend of mine and close with the people I hung around with at the time, came to me to record a lovely acoustic + vocal song “60 days”. We recorded that in an afternoon I think in the same makeshift bedroom studio that Better Than The Book’s “Two Years On” was recorded in and with the recording ready for me to mix and master at the end of the day, I began my usual work. I often find when I’m listening to music, especially with my “production hat” on, these things really mix and arrange themselves, telling you what they need and where in order to bring out the best in the melodies or atmosphere, and while I was mixing this lovely acoustic version, the song was saying to me that I had to try making it sound HUGE as well! The result was “60 Days [Jabun Orchestral Mix]” which was really only made for the fun of it but I’m super pleased with it even to this day. With that said, I think I’ll let you hear it for yourselves, I hope you enjoy it, and a huge thanks to Clare for having me record and produce the original as well as have fun with the remix too! It was a blast!

Listen here:

For the $10+ patrons, I have a VERY special treat for you this time: a download package with 10+ minutes of rough demos from the upcoming 2nd Jabun album as well as articles on the composition/production process for each of the tracks contained! Become a $10+ patron to access that article and many more now, and remember that you'll gain access to all historic rewards and posts for your Patreon tier too when you become a supporter! With the new REWARD ARCHIVE tag it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them :)

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

That's it for this month's rewards and another Jabun track will be coming next time as we continue with the final original track from 2013's Jabun discography! Until the next post, I hope you have a great January and 2020 to come, and thanks as always for supporting Jabun, Better Than The Book and my various music projects! Take care, enjoy the music, and I look forward to bringing you more exciting things in 2020! All the best!

Some more super exciting news coming later this week so keep your eyes on this page!