EDEN

Jonathon Ng: Better known as EDEN is an Irish born singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and occasional model.

The artist and music we now know as EDEN was born in 2015, when Jonathon’s previous musical endeavour, The Eden Project, transitioned its EDM, Dubstep and Drum and Bass stylings across into the Indie Pop stylings of EDEN.

With such a diverse and unique sonic landscape, you’d rightly suspect that performing EDEN’s music on the live stage requires a diverse and unique live rig. An Audio-Visual spectacular, the tech behind the scenes is as captivating as the performance.

Early in 2020, and before the COVID pandemic prematurely killed touring, we caught up with EDEN’s Musical Director, Brian Kesley for a walk around EDEN’s live rig.

EDEN’s live rig is utterly dependant upon solid MIDI communication and routing and was one of the first rigs to be built around the newly released iConnectivity mioXL and mioXM MIDI interfaces.

The heart of the EDEN rig is a playback system based around MacBook Pro computers and two PlayAUDIO12 interfaces. Uniquely the PlayAUDIO12s are utilised purely for their ability as redundant MIDI switching and networking units.

“The PlayAUDIO12s came in handy because we were able to use MIDI sync to failover, rather than a test tone. This happens to be an entirely digital audio rig. We needed a parallel failover system for the MIDI so that if we lost a computer both the audio and the MIDI would switch in parallel” - Brian Kesley MD for Eden

The EDEN live rig is a real showcase for the versatility and flexibility of the mio X Series interfaces. Multiple MIDI positions both on and off stage require detailed and reliable routing and networking over a distance. It’s an ideal application for Ethernet RTP-MIDI.

At stage right, EDEN has an interesting and diverse mixture of keyboards and modules, including the rare “Deckard’s Dream” synth module as well as a Moog Grandmother. At stage left sits Gabe Smith’s enclave of drums and controllers.

The performance demands that at times, the modules can be played by either EDEN, Gabe or from MIDI playback. Likewise, both Gabe and EDEN have access to triggering sounds from Mainstage at playback world.

In order to accomplish this, EDEN and Gabe’s stations all route through a mioXM. This serves two functions: Local MIDI routing between modules and controllers. Networking modules across the Ethernet RTP-MIDI Network.

“Without iConnectivity’s RTP-MID networking and the new mioXM’s having so many RTP sessions available, none of this would have been possible.” - Brain Kesley MD for Eden