Nigel Sifantus » ableton

“Candle that Burns From Both Ends” a Progtronica Dark House performance

Nigel — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:57:01 +0000

After a brief hiatus from creating new Progtronica tracks while I’ve been mixing and mastering the debut record, a new bomb live track has dropped: “Candle That Burns From Both Ends”. This track is dedicated to the past 2 weeks of craziness involving a massively busy schedule, a properly extreme Las Vegas hiatus with no sleep followed by a surreally extreme traffic jam in death valley. While staying at the Hard Rock Hotel (highly recommended for partying fun in Vegas) My wife and I met up with Dj extraordinaire Tatiana Alvarez late at night and talked music until dawn. The conversation inspired me to delve into the land of 4 on the floor house beats, something I love to play, but rarely compose. This deep dark House boomer is what came out. I’m mixing 8 tracks on Ableton Live using the Novation Launchpad while playing drums live on Roland V-Drums. I whipped this whole thing up in a daze over the course of this past weekend and it is meant as just a rough cut. I usually like to commit something new to finished recording as soon as possible, and then refine it later after I’ve had some personal distance from the creative process. Prepare for a booty shaker!

Progtronica Weekly Set #4 and News for February 2010

Nigel — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:25:48 +0000

Progtronica Ableton Live/Novation Launchpad weekly dj set. 2-11-20 by Progtronica

This week’s performance is the longest to date and has the most aggressive time signature changes. Here is the YouTube edit of the performance. To see the full thing visit this Vimeo link. Also I have provided the full audio to listen to here and download for free from soundcloud.

In other news, I’ve been experimenting with Ableton live’s “looper”effect which is loaded with live performance possibilities, but is also a tricky little animal. For those familiar with Ableton, a looper effect almost seems redundant since the whole program is based on looping. The effect, however, is a totally independent effect that works more like a “boomerang” guitar effect looper but is quantized to the tempo of the song. Using it I was able to do this little experiment creating a track with live layered drums. I haven’t yet totally figured out hot to have total control of this feature but I think is will work it’s way into my regular performance arsenal being that it is so dope nasty.

Progtronica Weekly DJ series part 2!

Nigel — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:39:42 +0000

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