Interview + Performance with Edison

In our quest to seek out new DJ territory of the inspirational variety, we came upon Edison, a producer/performer who plays live with Ableton Live and a custom Monome. His performances are dynamic, visually understandable, and have a very “live” sound that is hard to achieve when you’re dealing with the quantized clip launching in Live and nothing but a giant grid of buttons. To get a closer look into how Edison gets that sound and showcase some of his new songs, we brought him into the DJ Tech Tools studio to share his ideas with the world. You can catch Edison on a live West Coast tour from late March to early April. Visit his Myspace page for more music and tour info.

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  • DJSDive

    i wonder how during a performance artists switch to a different sound setup if they want to perform another song. i mean for DJing i guess you just have all the songs in one project, but what about artists that actually perform songs on stage, doesnt seem practical there. more over is there any way in native ableton to easy switch your midi controller assignments?

    • Sebastian Cavolina

      you can just make a duplicate of the instrument, but with other content, i mean, set up differently with different sounds. so you just need to change the “armed” state on the track you want to use. You can group those tracks so you change your whole set up by just arming the next group :3

  • KK

    Nice interview
    BUT ean learn to stand still^^, youre moving around like you needed to go for a wee xD

  • weasel

    heh. thanks for another video.
    while watching, i couldn’t help but wonder whos the bigger nerd…

  • edison

    @ teenage
    I’m pretty shure it is… I think our reno show is the only one that is all ages… give em a call!

  • teenagesounds

    is the show at lo-fi lounge on Mar 30 gonna be 21+?

  • phil

    Ordered my overlay a week ago ,turned up within a week to uk ,fitted like a glove ,love the new mapping ,thanks DJ TT

  • Shane

    Why does everyone rag on Ean’s look? There must be at least one commented about it every week.

  • PROPS4EDISON

    Is Ean going for the Jesus look?

  • edison

    [quote comment=”27642″]You were in the bay area, but you won’t be playing there at all?

    Dang, I’d love to catch you in action![/quote]

    bay area date fell through….. we will definitely play… just no final show locked… one of two options up in the air…. stay tuned….

    as for traktor… never used it!
    ill check it out

  • Adax

    You were in the bay area, but you won’t be playing there at all?

    Dang, I’d love to catch you in action!

  • Eastcoastams

    Awesome to see these different articles, I agree with the Ableton vs. Traktor article…I’ve dabbled in ableton, but found myself bored and confused so I went back to the much simpler traktor. It would be nice to learn it better so I might be able to produce something with a little less of a headache

  • the caper

    Yeah thats fly, nice stuff Edison, Maybe its about time for a Ableton VS Traktor article, ive heard alot of good things about Djing with abelton but i use traktor and i like it and i dont want to spend a whole lot of money and time switching to find it shit, thoughts?

  • ToS

    edison YaY!

  • joseph

    [quote comment=”27595″]…

    …[/quote]

    agreed.

  • Ian T

    Really nice stuff here!
    I’ve been work at a similar thing with mainstage and a midifighter.
    Not nearly as insane as this though. Impressive!

  • Jonny Pez

    Edison IS the reason why I have a monome. Thank you Edison for opening my mind to new possibilities.. and thanks to DJTT for covering more than just digital djing. Let’s see more artist interviews like this!

  • edison

    thanks guys!
    glad to be up on djtechtools!
    as for the question of changing clips….
    each song i do is its own ableton set…
    in a live setting, i use a kaoss pad 3…
    i can easily grab 3 or 4 loops, and then quickly switch sets…
    messing with what is looping while the loading is happening…
    it’s definitely a busy set…. but its alot of fun… and never the same twice…
    endless endless remixes on the fly…!
    thanks for watching!!!!
    thanks djtechtools!

  • Mudo

  • Tyler

    Great live material. I’m glad to see the creative interface. I just bought Edison’s first album. It’s killer. I want to be just like him.

  • jacknpoy

    how easy/hard is it to map a monome with ableton?

  • belchman

    oh wait.. i can see how it can vary.. very cool 🙂

  • belchman

    This is way cool! But yeah.. very active for a 2 hour set.. i wonder how he buys himself time to change his clips and the like.. seemed like he only had enough material for one song?

    Awesome beat making skills on the monome though.. now no-one can complain about not having the right drum pads for the job! Thanks for sharing Ean 🙂

  • f0tif0

    TOTALY DOPE!

  • Jake

    I’m sure that is very hard to do and sounds cool for about 5 minutes but a whole set of that would get very boring I think

  • calvin01

    impressive stuff!!!from what i could see though he had a limited amount of sounds for say a 2 hr set.just wondering if what i could see was enough for 2hrs or how he loaded a new template of clips(i would guess dangerous if performing live)or if he just dragged new clips in from folders and if so how he grouped them in the folders for quick and easy access .overall though good presentation as always.

  • Gameboy

    Thanks DJTT for this Interview – love it. And very good camera work – give us more articles like this 😉
    btw : There is a ‘F’ missing in ‘performer’ (first sentence)

  • Sean

    [quote post=”5036″]…have a very “live” sound which is hard to achieve when your dealing with the quantized clip launching in Live [/quote]
    As far as I know, Edison doesn’t use quantization when he plays…at least he didn’t

    . Anyways, I love his work…awesome interview too!

  • Jeditekk

    Crazy! I had just discovered Egadz and Edison yesterday. I get home and here he is on DJTT. Very cool with the Monome. Thanks Ean for introducing what these guys are doing to DJTT.

    You guys should check out their blog as well.

    http://kidwithoutradio.blogspot.com/

  • cw

    DOPEEE

  • Princess Diana

    Diggin’ this rad-ified office setup & edison’s electric ingenuity.

    PS- Good Camera Work.

  • kelsey7k

    edison = srsly dope.