Nigel Sifantus » Akai

Progtronica presents: “Twisted Digits”

Nigel — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:13:41 +0000

I’ve never liked the modern emergence of “sub-genres”, the incessant need these days to boil down each kind of music into dozens of sub-categories. I have found that, although it provides a decent description of the sound of the music, rarely can music be so pigeonholed as to be put into a place that is so pre-defined. It also leads music fans to gravitate towards more music similar to what they already have heard rather than expanding their sonic horizons. I would never be the player I am today if I had this kind of mentality towards music “I like hard house but not deep house”. My approach through Progtronica is to take all of my influences and boil them into one succinct concept. Other than the basic forms of “electronic dance music” I have always has a secret love of progressive “math rock” and have played some form of that kind of music in many of my bands over the years. I had been looking for a way to do a tribute to this affinity in a Progtronica performance (mainly for my own self pleasure) since the beginning of the project. I can play a little guitar but mostly for making weird sonic feedback textures but then I found a secret weapon: the iPhone pocket guitar combined with Ableton Live 8’s new “Amp” and “Cabinet” effects. So I made this little ditty, switching from 7/8 to 6/8 with interweaving Don Caballero/King Crimson guitar lines all remixed live while playing the drums. This is a little bit different then my other recent videos but I like how it turned out and I’m sure you won’t find anyone using Ableton quite this way anywhere else.

I write a song…”For Soul”

Nigel — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:15:03 +0000

For the past year since I’ve been on this Progtronica quest, I’ve had the compositional approach of beginning with the idea of “What if I did this?” A lot of great music has been written with this type of inspiration, trying to figure out something one doesn’t know and then making a musical statement out of the trial and discovery. This has been especially true for me with computer based music as there is always so much to learn and infinite ways to approach the same ideas. Ableton Live as a program exacerbates this even further with the flexibility of the compositional, programming and performing platform. Everyone does things differently, often producing similar results.

For this track however, I set about writing a simple house tune stringing a few chords together as more of a keyboard exercise, getting back in touch with a little of my music theory roots. After a while I liked what I was playing and tracked the simplest part of the track. Then the magic of the arpeggiator kicked in and I started applying all of the usual techniques I have been working on, slicing, dicing, mixing, and remixing and finally performing. In the end it has a different sound than most of what I’ve been doing while keeping the same Progtronica characteristics.

Many thanks to the people at Matrixsynth.com and especially Synthtopia.com who made it their “Sunday Synth Jam”, writing a nice introduction to the video. Props to all who link and anything I do.

Ableton Live House From Scratch (Total Electronica Improv)

Nigel — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:29:02 +0000

The release of the “Live For No One” ep is eminent so I have been spending most of my time getting my full length live set together to perform, but I got a little break from that intention when my old friend and musical collaborator Taylor McFerrin came through town on tour. He asked me to sit in and play the show in Santa Monica duo which was a great combination of nostalgic techniques and brand new ones that both of us have developed in the last 2 years since we’ve been on opposite coasts. Both of us learned the basics of Ableton Live together years ago and have gone on to develop our own techniques to use it for live performances. While rehearsing for the show, he opened my eyes to a little trick he uses to make loops on the spot which was an idea I had been toying with but hadn’t found just the right way to do it. Like most things with computers and software, sometimes the littlest trick opens huge doors.
For this video I created a whole house track from scratch with no preset loops. Each part is played then looped using the Akai MPD 24, then arraigned using the Novation Launchpad. This one is COMPLETELY live!

Live duo performance with Taylor McFerrin at Zanzibar

Nigel — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:53:07 +0000

My old friend and musical collaborator Taylor McFerrin called me a few weeks ago and said he was rolling through LA on tour supporting his soon to be released album “Early Riser” and invited me to sit in with him at his show at Zanzibar in Santa Monica. Naturally I was totally excited to revive our old chemistry and eager to see what we would actually do. The show was put on by KCRW Dj Aaron Byrd and featured the bands Master Blaster and Electric Wire Hustle. It ended up being an amazing evening and we played a mix of Beat-box, Rhodes, Drums, iPhone, and dueling Ableton Live systems at times building beats from scratch on the spot using the Akai APC 40 and the Novation Launchpad. The whole show ended up being a total free form improv and it went places we didn’t even know we would go. One of the other DJ’s from the night, Anthony Valadez also posted this video recap of the night which has some great footage from the whole experience.

Lets Face The Music revisited (Novation Launchpad Edition)

Nigel — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:47:13 +0000

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.

Leaving Huntington Beach (a live Ableton Arrangement)

Nigel — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 04:22:34 +0000

A polyrhythmic farewell to my place of residence of the last 12 months. Huntington Beach is a city of amazing contrasts. A beautiful shoreline with the best surfing in the country littered with aging offshore oil wells. Cookie cutter housing developments side by side with rusty oil drills. Opulent wealth next to abject poverty. Almost as though you mixed Ohio, Texas, and Hawaii into one city. I love California but Orange County, it turns out, is not the place for me. It was good while it lasted….Off to Long Beach!
All the music was recorded with live performed v-drums, cut up, and edited using Ableton Live 8, then mapped to my MPC style controller and triggered in real time along with loops.