Brian performing at Symphony Hall for Fierce Festival
As part of the Curious Sounds in Curious Spaces event at Symphony Hall on April 7th, Brian will be performing his Speak & Spell piece, last seen at Friction’s The Edge in 2010 (video here).
Ross Cotton has an interview with him about it:
“There’s a lot of random aleatoric stuff in the toys that we don’t use in the Plastic Planet set, and I found it very interesting that the toys could demonstrate these hidden worlds of sound. These musical phrases that weren’t in the toys to start with.”
However, it seems that Brian’s performance won’t be as random as he has first suggested.
“That’s how this Speak & Spell piece started out”, he continues.
“It was unexpectedly producing random gibberish, but it turns out that the sounds are actually completely predictable! It’s the same repeatable sequence every time, it just sounds random.
“So it’ll be several Speak & Spells with a modification in them to make them spill the gibberish. You can get them to do that at the same time, and it’s like a little game that I play to get them to go in sync.”
@Graerose: #modifiedtoyorchestra back in rehearsal after a 5-month gap. This time next week we’ll be circuit-bending dans La Suisse.
We were then treated to Brian Duffy’s demonstration of how he has sonified the light from the stars by looking through telescopes at the night sky and then translating the frequencies of the light into sound frequencies. My favourite part of this was hearing him talk about the ‘pulsar’ – a rotating neutron star – discovered by Jocelyn Bell – (I am very taken by the story of her discovery which was recently featured on a BBC documentary). Anyway – if the rotation speed of the pulsar is fast enough, it can generate a pitch – so Brian asked a scientist to find pulsars with various pitches to work in a piece of music…
– Kathy Hinde reports on TEDx AldeburghMini-MTO at Sound Kitchen
News reaches us that there’s a (rare?) chance to see an extended Casio Duo set from the Modified Toy Orchestra on the 6th of October at Kings Heath’s fashionable Hare and Hounds where they’ll be supporting Coppe’, “the legendary godmother of Japanese Electronica”.
The whole gig should be unmissable. More info on the Sound Kitchen blog and tickets are a mere £4.00.
If you’re wondering what the Casio Duo set is, here’s an example from last year.
A 6 day course for £40 in the week before the big gig. Exciting!
About me
A fan-blog for Brian Duffy, his Modified Toy Orchestra, and related endeavours.
BDHABB is also on The Twitter
This blog has no connection with Brian Duffy, Warm Circuit or anything like that. It's a homage, a monument of love. We love you Brian.
"Brian Duffy, award winning sound artist and creator of the Modified Toy Orchestra, has been at the forefront of a world wide underground movement called circuit bending which involves rescuing childrens electronic toys from car boot sales, and converting them into new strange and wonderfully sophisticated musical instruments. Taking them apart, he finds new connections hidden within each toys circuits that reveal new sounds, exposing the surplus value of redundant technology. The toys are then reassembled including switches and dials with which to control this surplus value. The results of this process can be shockingly beautiful, funny and extreme and have led to Brian being labeled a genius, a madman, and a national treasure."
