Progtronica Ableton Live Weekly DJ set Week 3, 2/11/10 by Progtronica

Performed on February 11th 2010, this is the 3rd installment of My “Progtronica Weekly Dj Performance Series”. All music created using Ableton live, mixed, re-sampled, edited, and mixed live using Novation’s Launchpad dedicated Ableton controller. This mix features the songs “The Beat Repeater” “Dreaming (feat beatboxing by Taylor McFerrin, Ryat and Shara Dae on vocals)”, “Progtronica 1 (with a small Cinematic Orchestra sample)”, and “Rolling with Strings” all from the upcoming album: “Progtronica – Live From Nowhere” due out later this spring. All the drum parts are recorded live me, then sampled, edited, and re-mixed. However, for this weeks broadcast there is some “real” live drumming mixed in to a couple of the tunes. All Live, all solo, all Raw! Progtronia weekly DJ Series 2010!

Progtronica weekly Ableton DJ set part 2 – 2/4/10 by Progtronica

Here it is! Part 2 of the weekly Progtronica DJ series. This one is a little bit longer then the first one and incorporates a few new tunes. Featured in This week’s performance I  mixed the tunes “Drum n bass for a Rainy day”, “Lets Face the music”, “Rolling with Strings” “Progtronica 2″ and part of “Progtronica 1″. The video in this post contains highlights from the 16 minute performance because with the restrictions of YouTube, I can only post 10 minutes of material. To hear the entire set click on the sound cloud player directly below the video. You can also download the mix for free. To do this simply click on the downward pointing arrow on the right of the waveform! Enjoy

2010 is going to be an exciting year for Progtronica. I am nearing the compleation of compiling all the tracks for my debut solo release “Progtronica-Live from Nowhere” The raw version of all the performances have been featured an all my recent videos. The next step is mixing, mastering and arraigning them into album form. Recently I have added 2 brand new performances featured on this page: “Rolling with Strings” and “Drum n’ Bass for a Rainy Day” both featuring my new (awesome) piece of gear, the Novation ZeRO SL Mk II midi controller, which has tons of faders and knobs etc. Partnered with my beloved Novation Launchpad and Ableton Live Suite 8 things are getting really crazy here in my studio. 2010 is going to be the year of Progtronica!
Also check out the new “Progtronica Live for No One” channel on Vimeo.

This is a great old video I dug up playing my “Last of the Imaginative Executioners” drum ‘n bass drum solo that I used to play with Grandfather Ridiculous in the 2003 era. There are not a lot of good video’s at all of that band so this is kind of a cool time capsule. This was from a show at a club in downtown NYC called Tribeka and was probably one of that last times I performed this solo. the video kind of shows the infancy stage of the progtronica project I’m working on now. At this point I was using a Roland MC-909 sampler/sequencer with a electronic kick and Roland midi drum trigger along with my acoustic drums.

This is the first music video production from my new Long Beach studio, live drums and video by me, and featuring the Beatboxing skills of Taylor McFerrin as well as vocals from Philadelphia area vocalists Ryat, (as Human) and Shara Dae. The music was almost entirely written and produced on a quick coast to coast trip from California to Philadelphia for a old friend’s wedding, mostly on the many connecting flights and train rides. Following the slamming reception, extended after party, and impromptu late night hotel break-in pool party, I got these 3 artists to come back to my hotel room to lay down some of their stuff along to the semi abstract 7/8 Drum and bass piece I was working on. After getting home, I did a little mixing and editing, then re-recorded the drums live. The results are what you see here.

This is a Novation Launchpad remix in 20/8 time of my song “Lets Face The Music” (a tribute to Phillip Glass, The Cinematic Orchestra, and the MPC 2000) all of which were deep inspirations for this piece. I approached this one a little differently then my recent “remixes” incorporating some live drums (using Roland V-Drums) using the same sounds as the ones I used to chop up the original drum breaks. For this one I triggering all the individual parts of the music live and manipulated some of the sound effects. All music played by me using various triggers including the akai mpd 24, the Launchpad, keyboards, as well as all the drums parts being are cut and sliced from live V-Drum performances using Ableton Live 8.

This “Broken-Beat” video is a audio/cinematic tribute to evolutionary theory at a time when it seems to be under constant attack from a growing international trend of “creationists” who are convinced the Earth is a mere 10,000 years old with humans and dinosaurs coexisting in some sort of harmony. It features audio from prominent academic/author Richard Dawkins who is known for popularizing the gene-centred view of evolution (and is commonly referred to as “Darwin’s Rottweiler”) during a recent book tour reading promoting his new book “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, as well as video clips from a recent NOVA documentary on the subject “Becoming Human” produced by Graham Townsley. I’ve spliced these clips along with footage I took myself and re-mixed it with my music using Ableton Live in an attempt to remind people that evolution is not just a theory; it is being proven everyday before our very eyes and more and more understood as the origin of our existence. “It is no accident” as Dawkins reminds us.