Green Arrow interview
There’s a Green Arrow radio interview I did about my upcoming Boston area shows here:
http://www.greenarrowradio.com/wp-content/thomasdolby.mp3
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Great interview! Thanks, I didn’t know you played on Hysteria too,
and New Music by the Iron Horse Show!??!??!!!
Sweet!
Had a chance to listen to interview … thought it interesting that you had used a pseudonym in the past, Booker T. Boffin! If you don’t mind me asking, where did that name come from? Couldn’t find any of your lyrics under that name, wherever!?
Today certainly is different in regards to music production; I guess you don’t have to go to a dedicated studio any more to produce quality music. Any ways, it keeps your creative energy in a positive flow when you are in the comfort of your own surroundings.
I accessed Toby Marks (Banco De Gaia) website and saw the preview of Ferengistan. Kind of an interesting fellow, to be sure. Blends many styles of music into one musical piece. Brings many images to his work all with a global message. Not good road music, but good to listen to if you’re in a pensive state of mind.
Thanks again for allowing us input in your blog. And please continue being “dangerous with a soldering iron.”
Concerning your musical directorship at TED: is there a possibility that music performed at the conference could be accessed through your site or the TED site? Maybe a TED tunes section? Or a CD compilation?? Thanks for the link to TED talks. There really are some facinating people out there doing innovative and positive things for our world.
just a quicky thomas.any chance you could reveal the home team you were waiting for in the lyric of the neon sisters.its been bugging me for years,cheers david
I certainly agree with the interviewer when he adds that Thomas is a “good role model for the tinkerers of the world”. A hugely pleasant and captivating interview.
Thank you very much for sharing…you’re a star!
Transcendent 2000
Very interesting looking vintage synth
Not without it’s flaws but it seems there are plenty of interesting mods for it.
Transcendent 2000
Very interesting looking vintage synth
Not without it’s flaws but it seems there are plenty of interesting mods for it.
Incidently, Thomas, have you ever experimented with the art of Circuit Bending. It’s a discipline I find myself becoming increasingly fascinated with. It’s the creativeness from the randomness that really gets me. It reminds me a lot of an analogy my physical anthropology professor used for evolution, that biological mutations are a lot like randomly connecting jumpers and adding components to a piece of sophisticated electronics gear. Most of the time it either does nothing or has an undesireable effect. Sometimes it’s destructive. But every now and then you get something that enhances the performance of the gear on a certain level. That’s what circuit bending is like.
Of course I take a mixed approach to the hobby myself. If you’re a purist you’re not supposed to apply to much electronics theory to your circuit bending or else it simply becomes modification. It’s in the randomness and chance that the art lies. I’m afraid I have just a little too much electronics training myself to be completely random, if I see an obvious mod in the circuit I’ll go for it. But there is something remarkably thrilling about randomly poking away inside a machine and seeing what happens.
Of course this is a hobby that’s supposed to be employed upon cheap keys and electronic noise makers liberated from thrift stores and yard sales. I’d never do this to my Moog (although I’m not adverse to homebrew modifications on it).
It’s something I recommend each and every fellow “tinkerer” try at least once. Go to the thrift, buy a $5 or less toy keyboard, open it up and start experimenting. It doesn’t take much time, or electronics knowlegde. Basically if you know which end of the soldering iron to grab you’re pretty much good to go.
Although do your experimenting with the machine powered by batteries, not a wall-wart. Saftey first.
Ghastly, what do you ahev for a moog?
Just got my favorite moog ever tuesday, The Little Phatty. Its tough to bring myself away from it to check the dolby blog….
Strange interview. I thought the interviewer was stumbling along a bit. Quite uncomfortabley so at times. Great info from Thomas though.
Richard
I have the MG-1, Stevied. I traded an old non-functional Honda PT-70 4-stroke Moped for the old non-functional Moog MG-1. Both parties in the trade probably went away from the deal thinking they got the better of it. After a few hours with the soldering gun and contact and pot cleaner I had a fully functioning Moog MG-1. I think it took a bit more work to get the Moped up and running.
Absolutely love it to pieces. Need to doa proper MIDI retrofit on it one of these days. Right now I’ve old schooled it. I hook a relay up to the output of a drum machine to short the trigger input. I can get it to throb a synced rythmic pattern on whatever the last note pressed was by triggering the bass drum on the drum machine. Very handy for bass parts or sound effects. Not so handy for leads which I just play live.
It’s essentially the exact same machine as the Rogue, Liberation, and Taurus bass pedals, only in a different case. It has an extra polyphonic voice on it that the other incarnations lack.
A few questions to answer here! I’ll do my best:
-New music by the Iron Horse show? Hmm, that may have seemed a possibility when I did that interview a couple months back, but it’s looming awfully near…
-Booker T Boffin: the name was coined by Mutt Lange, producer of those Def Lepperd albums as well as Foreigner 4. He also sang an octave above me on the choruses of ‘Science.’ [Trivia point: I once saw Booker T and the MGs playing in a tent on the White House lawn, and Bill Clinton went up to jam on 'Green Onions!']
-TED tunes: it’s funny you should mention that! I was discussing this with the TED team just yesterday. We hope to put some music online in the next few weeks.
-’Standing in the cold rain, waiting for a home game…’ my team since childhood has been West Ham United, though I used to live very closer to Fulham’s Craven Cottage stadium in W London and my friend Matthew Seligman was a big fan, so I’d often end up in the terraces there on a rainy Saturday afternoon, despite Fulham’s inferiority to the excellent Hammers.
-Circuit bending: no, not really. In fact my soldering days are mainly behind me. These days I leave it to somone like Gustavo Lanzas, who did the mods on my current vintage boxes.
I’m a bit like the aristocratic Edwardian gentleman who announced to the whole of London society that he was going to swim the English Channel. They trooped down to the beach at Dover with their Harrods hampers and parasols. The cliffs were festooned with flags and streamers. Then at the last minute, said gentleman announces that his Man is going to swim the Channel in his stead.
if not new music, do you think we could hear Hot Sauce??
That was so cool at the NYC exotic, I was lucky enough to hear you sound check it (before the sound system and/or all the other noise started going on there….). Very nice to hear that live again!
More TedTunes? Excellent! Thank you in advance, Thomas!
I downloaded the TEDTalk featuring Sirena Huang, and my GRACIOUS, she is SO gifted!!!!! Her way with a violin makes
my heart sing. If she were my daughter, my heart would burst with pride, I tell ya.
Yet ALL of the TEDTalks are amazing…some utterly heartwrenching, yet with hope for the future {Majora Carter}, some absolutely hilarious {David Pogue}, and some eye-opening {Amy Smith}, but all of the talks have one thing in common: the listener is guaranteed to learn something.
Loved the tale of the last minute Channel-swimming substitute, hee hee. Hmmm, I wonder if his Man found out the plan at
A Man, a plan, a Channel, he’s gonna get wet. 
the same time as everyone else? “Pardon me Sir, I’M going
in??!?!”
Love and last minutes changes of plan,
Kara {grin}
Stephen Fry as the Man, for sure.
“Wooster, you’re going in!!!”
“Wot, sir? I am?!”
Stephen Fry cracks me up every time.
Love and ensuing hilarity,
Kara
Oops, sorry, I mean,
“Jeeves, you’re going in!”
Fooey.
Kara the Slightly Forgetful…
Ok…I had to post this link in the blog. Mr. Dolby, sir? Could you answer the big question…was this live or was it Memorex?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZEGHnAxEpo
Also, have you considered doing any live web broadcasts of your Fall tour? Those of us who might not be able to make this tour would certainly be willing to shell out to support such an endeavor.
Thanks!
- Elliot
I have to relate a quick story from late August.
Background- My friends and I are all in our late 30′s. We aren’t really going out much anymore.
My friend calls me up and says, “Scott, How would you like to go see a show in September?”
I remind him that I have 2 boys under 5, a five month old, and a wife who isn’t feeling especially understanding right now. So….
He says, “It’s Dolby.”
I ask him when are we going.
The icing on the cake is that he thought we would have to go out to western Mass- then we found the Berklee date.
knocking an hour off the commute to the show? Priceless.
oh, and my very first non-cassette, non 8 track ever? The Golden Age of Wireless, courtesy of my older cousin for my birthday.
Thank you Mr. Dolby.
Scott G
hello, it’s good idea…
…
good blog is dead blog:-) long live!…
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