Taking the 'Toy' out of Toy Instruments

This article was originally published on the CMRC blog, 25th April, 2017.

I spent 2018 working exclusively with toy instruments, although the title of this post perhaps implies a degree of severity and gravity in this exploration, which, in reality, was never intended, nor ever materialised.

However, the title helpfully alludes to a desire to drag these instruments out from the shadows of their expensive, and expertly-constructed counterparts – thinking less about how a toy piano could imitate a Steinway, and more about how a toy piano could produce sounds that a Steinway could not. To that end, this project aimed to treat these toys as instruments in their own right, separated from the associations they often spawn, in order to discover the individuality they can offer.

Due to the rinky-dink nature of their components, it quickly became the case that most of this individuality stemmed from deficiencies and infirmities in each instrument – products of a ‘pile-them-high, sell-them-cheap’ mentality. In fact, after only a few hours of concentrated use, each instrument began to deteriorate and offer a twinkling pallet of unpredictability to utilise.

Therefore, before the instruments could hasten their demise further (and before I was left sifting through a sparkling heap of plastic-ash and dust where my disintegrating instruments had once been), I recorded five études for individual instrument groups, alongside a more substantial piece for an extended ensemble. The realisation of the latter piece took place under the watchful ears of Fred White – the independent producer behind Tajdar Junaid’s ‘What Colour is Your Raindrop’.

The recordings reject the trend of rendering almost every contemporary music recording as an auralisation of the concert experience.

Consequently, our realisations offer little in the way of artificial distance; there’s a coarseness and befuddlement intrinsic to our perception of sound, and we thought it would be a shame to hold this at arm’s length with the addition of reverb and space – particularly while working with the relatively novel sounds produced by the toy instruments.

The compositions themselves revolve around themes of infirmity, indeterminacy and improvisation, and Movement ‘C’ of the piece for an extended ensemble of melodicas, toy accordions, slide-whistles, toy pianos, and plastic clarinets, trumpets and saxophones is embedded below. The completed suite for toy instruments premiered in York in 2018.

‘A Piece for an Extended Ensemble of Toy Instruments - Movement C’
Performed by Aaron Moorehouse, 2018.