Nigel Sifantus » nigel

Progtronica Weekly Ableton DJ Series week 3. This Week with Live Drums.

Nigel — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:46:09 +0000

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 latest news for January 2010

Nigel — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:37:07 +0000

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.

The latest news from Progtronica, December ’09

Nigel — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:29:47 +0000

There are lots of exciting happenings in the world of Progtronica at the close of the decade, one that will be looked back on as the worst in recorded music history (but more on that later). I have been hard at work preparing material for the release of my first solo ep “Progtronica – Live From Nowhere” which will be released in early 2010. The concept of “Progtronica” is the blending of sounds in an electronic music context, which stretches the bounds of what is known to be “electronic dance music” through the use of live and re-sampled drums, odd time signatures, shifting beats, and a health dose of 20th century minimalist inspired rhythmic melodic textures. My aim is to compose the music so that it can be constantly re-mixed live with no limits on the detentions of time, sound and rhythm, while keeping the all important human element that is missing from almost all of today’s music (not just of the electronic dance variety).

In this post are 2 recent live home performances: ”Progtronica – Live Extended Outdoor Edition” recorded outside on my deck under the setting sun of Long Beach California on December 20th. The second video is “Progtronica 2” which features a mix of triggered drum samples and live drumming on Roland V-Drums in a shifting 5/4 time. Both were recorded and performed using Ableton Live 8 and Novation’s new “Launchpad” a dedicated Ableton controller. All the drums are played by me live at some point, either at the point of performance, or at the beginning of composition. The other sounds are usually created from scratch using Ableton’s software instriments, or my manipulating samples of found sounds, chopping, editing, and transposing them to make melodic and harmonic phrases and textures.

Stay tuned for more info about the upcoming release which will be available for download and traditional CD purchase online through this website and all the other places where one finds music to add to their collection now days. After the release I plan to take this show on the road so watch out!

Novation Launchpad takes flight!

Nigel — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:48:43 +0000

I have been working with Ableton Live as my main digital music platform for a few years, using several different controllers to trigger sounds, samples, drum breaks and affect different parameters in real time while mixing music. With this unit though, I’m bringing it to a whole different level. Here are two live home performances: “Progtronica” a live jungle mashup, and “American Dream Remix” a live performance of the music from my film of the same title. I am just getting started with this so stay tuned. I plan to keep working this technique so that I can play for hours continuously.