The beginning of 2011 has been filled with brand new musical, business and creative opportunities. Most new projects are of the secretive nature but details will be revealed soon. In the meantime, the Progtronica videos have now reached a land mark of over 100,000 views on the NoServiceRequired YouTube Channel. Since developing the “DJ’ing from behind [...]

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 [...]

2011 is upon us and I couldn’t be happier about it. Don’t get me wrong, 2010 was far from a bad year, but the challenges, distractions, and relentless work load has lead to a perfect time for a reboot. Despite this need, I am very proud of where things have gone for Progtronica in the [...]

After doing the last track/video “Taste of Blue” introducing my new technique of launching clips and scenes in Ableton live using the Novation Launchpad while playing the drum part live, it opened my mind of the many different types of sounds and styles I could tackle using the same basic setup. I had the idea [...]

Although there was some live drumming on the recent Progtronica EP, for the most part I have focused my recording and performance techniques on live “re-mixing” of my own material. Drum wise my approach has been to record myself, often in several layers, playing live. Then take parts of the recording and slice, alter, and [...]

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 [...]

After doing all the post production, polishing, and arraigning of all other logistical details for the release of the “Live For No One” EP, I’ve gotten back to exploring new production and performance techniques in Ableton Live. The most crucial of all of these has turned out the be the “sidechaining” of certain effects from [...]

Challenges and how we respond to them is large part of what makes us who we are. Of course everyone knows the cliché of “with crisis comes opportunity” but just what that opportunity is and how to execute it to its fullest potential is not always as clear cut. From an internal perspective the recent [...]

The time has finally come. The long awaited Progronica debut Ep has been officially released. In the coming weeks it will be available for all to purchase on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, and a host of other sites. In the meantime, I’m offering to preview and download for free the entire album. Check it out, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I’m working and reworking the last track for my debut album before sending it off the be mastered. In the process I got locked into this techno club vibe and went with it for this weeks video blog post. All the synthesizer sounds come from various iPhone apps and all drum parts were recorded live, [...]

I’ve been working on putting my newest tracks into my “Master Set” in Ableton Live so that they are performance ready. After an extremely long week (and long Saturday night to blow off some steam) I woke up ridiculously early and threw down this mix. It’s a bit raw but shows the new direction I’ve [...]

This broken beat/house song i had been working over in my head for a few days, but the recording took record time. Sometimes that is the best way to write; think about it for a while then just pour it out as fast and unfiltered as possible. This is certainly unfiltered. I had been wanting [...]

Well I must say it has been a powerful and challenging month…better make that 6 months…okay the entire past year. My will as well as all those around me has been tested, the limits of exhaustion have been met and surpassed, tough decisions have been made, and emotions have been raw. As a result creativity [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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”, [...]

For the past 6 months or so I have been creating “Progtronica” tracks as solo performances using Ableton Live software and a few different controllers most notably the Novation Launchpad which has completely changed my musical approach. I have been creating music usually centering around samples of my own drumming mixed with found sounds musically [...]

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. [...]

Over the winter break I spent time experimenting with mapping different effects on the Novation Launchpad using Ableton Live and stumbled upon this great technique to alter audio (mostly drum) loops live using this effect in real time using only the launchpad. It inspired me to create the video “The Beat Repeater” which featured this [...]

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 [...]

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) [...]