Back in the 1980s, when creating the bulk of his most popular radio and video hits, many fans of Thomas Dolby were more motivated to dance to the infectious melodies the artist was weaving from his collection of keyboards, effects, and synthesizers.Hyperactive, scheduled to drop July 27 as part of BMG's Masters Collection series.The Newtown Bee, Dolby explained the intimate solo shows will allow audience members to randomly pick songs from his 30-year catalog. He will tell the story behind the genesis of each, while simultaneously deconstructing its musical parts, synth sounds, and lyrics.

But well into the 21st Century, fans who have stuck by the English musician - and those who have come along since - may be more predisposed to delve into the lush layers of Dolby's material, not only reveling in the depths of his creative musical arrangements but interpreting his sometimes complex or cryptic lyrics as well.

In the coming weeks, Dolby has planned a brief tour in part catering to these more dedicated fans. He will be appearing Friday, August 3, at The Cutting Room in New York City, and on Sunday, August 5, at the State House in New Haven.

The accomplished musician; video director; author; and more recently, university professor is presenting An Evening of Music and Storytelling With Thomas Dolby.

The tour coincides with the July release of a two-CD greatest hits collection 

In a pre-tour chat from London with 

The resulting music will be output from his laptop and keyboards and projected on a screen behind him, along with personal photos and memorabilia. Each performance will therefore be a slightly different audiovisual experience, with surprises each night.

'Unstitching The Songs'

Aside from his successful solo hits such as "She Blinded Me With Science" and "Hyperactive," Dolby is known as a synthesist and producer for the likes of David Bowie, Roger Waters, Stevie Wonder, Foreigner, Def Leppard, George Clinton, and Joni Mitchell.

His acclaimed memoir 

The Speed of Sound (Flatiron/Macmillan) was an Amazon Bestseller in its category and a 2016 NPR Book of the Year.

"These shows will give me an opportunity to expand on some of the stories in my book - without pulling any punches," said Dolby in an advance. "I'll be unstitching the songs, as I've found audiences love to get a peek under the hood and into an artist's creative methods."

Since completing 12 years as Music Director of the TED Conferences in 2012, Professor Dolby has been teaching music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. This fall, he will launch a new undergraduate degree course at the Peabody Institute, focusing on music composition and 3D sound design for virtual and augmented reality - the first of its kind at a major US university.

"My first three years at Hopkins, I was teaching as an elective - film and TV scoring - largely to filmmakers and a few composers," Dolby said during his call to 

The Bee. "But as I was preparing for the new course, I spent a lot of time traveling around the country recruiting students from art colleges and so on and presenting at college fairs. After auditioning the first crop of new students, I find they are really quite a bright bunch. They're all fascinated by this course because it's a first of its kind thing."

Dolby said the students who will be part of his first ever 3D sound design course range from classically trained musicians interested in composing for media, to those who are looking to create music for YouTube and who want to do a lot of collaborating online.

"It's quite an interesting spectrum of interested students," he said.

Getting 'Hyperactive'

Dolby said he did not have a lot to do with influencing the new greatest hits package which is available now, but thanks to a recent "re-shuffling" of his catalog he ended up seeing it released on the BMG Masters Collection label, which he said was "very keen" on revitalizing his catalog.

"I worked with them on the song listing, and we went for sort of a balance between the best known commercial songs from the radio, and some of the perennial fan favorites," he said. "Obviously with re-mastering techniques, we were able to restore, dare I say, the glory of the original masters."

He said today's technology and digital tools allows the original masters "to be tweaked in an extreme way," but since he was mostly still very satisfied with the recordings as they were originally mastered, some of the challenge of completing the remastering was actually, "knowing when to leave well enough alone."

Regarding the tour, Dolby said as he has been traveling around the world lecturing and giving keynote presentations, he's been doing more analyses of how he puts his songs together.

"Some people are interested in how I created the composition or the lyrics; others want to know how I chose some of the sounds and put them together in the arrangements, and others want to know about chord sequencing and the beats I use," he said. "Even people who have read the book have contacted me wanting to hear more of the stories behind the songs. So I thought I'd take the opportunity on this tour to talk about how I put all of that together. I think hearing what I do stripped down and exposed might be quite interesting."

Diving Deeper

While audiences on the upcoming tour will certainly learn how Dolby's major hits were created, he confided that it is the deeper cuts that he has enjoyed creating and explaining.

"The songs that got picked as singles were so often the most superficial of my songs," he said. "But compared to the atmospheric quality and emotion of songs like 'Screen Kiss' or 'Budapest By Blimp,' and 'I Love You Goodbye,' are the songs my hard core fans are really desperate to hear at my shows. So I'll be preparing about three times as many songs as I need for a given show and do some preparation. But I want to allow each night to be different and spontaneous.

"Also, for those who have seen a previous show and put a spoiler online," he added, "you can still come along to the next show and potentially see something that is very different."

The 2018 tour is sponsored in part by Roland Corp, manufacturer of the world's most iconic synthesizers, guitar pedals, and drum machines. For a limited time, check out a replay of 

"Thomas Dolby Live in Roland Cloud," a historic first-ever concert streamed live on Roland Cloud. 

For ticket links for the tour and more information, visit

thomasdolby.com

Check out Thomas Dolby performning "Budapest By Blimp" from

The Sole Inhabitant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDhU7c2_Cx4

Thomas Dolby gets "Hyperactive" at the Light City festival in Baltimore in this March 2016 performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usRVl2_e5Ik

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