[Introspective] Radiophonic workshop

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Fans of Radiophonic from Nightlife may be interested in this article:

Daphne Oram, the unsung pioneer of techno


Daphne Oram at the controls in the 50s



By Giles Wilson
BBC News Online


Almost un-noticed by the wider world, one of the pioneers of electronic
music has died. Without Daphne Oram, we may never have known what the Tardis
sounded like.

Electronic music - as much a part of today's life as whistling a tune to
yourself - grew up amid milk bottles, gravel, keys, and yards of magnetic
tape and wires.
These were the sort of "tools" typically scattered around the BBC's
Radiophonic Workshop in the 1950s and 60s, when they were used to generate
wonderful and ethereal sounds for the airwaves.
The mother of this great legacy was Daphne Oram. Aged 18, and armed with a
passionate interest in sound, music and electronics, she started work at the
BBC in 1943 as a sound engineer.
Initially in charge of ensuring sound levels were right for broadcast and
helping to make sound effects for plays, she cajoled, worried and encouraged
her employer into taking the idea of electronic sounds seriously.
DOCTOR WHO

Delia Derbyshire joined the Radiophonic Workshop in 1962

She produced the Dr Who signature tune

Her colleague Brian Hodgson created the sound of the Tardis by scraping his
keys along an old piano's wires


See how the Tardis sound was recorded

As war raged, she began to indulge her hobby after hours, in the workplace.
Always a night-owl, and having initially failed to persuade her bosses to
create an electronic studio, she would stay late and move the BBC's first
tape recorders together to build a studio. When morning came, she would
disassemble it.
"She lived music. She was as poor as a church mouse, because any money that
came to her went into her music gadgets," recalls Chris Oram.
"To me she was a kindly rather eccentric aunt. But she had a very clear
vision of how the computer would revolutionise electronic music."
Challenges
Secretly she enjoyed the war - as well as allowing her to work in a
traditionally male environment, it presented interesting technical
challenges. During a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, for instance, she was
responsible for ensuring the broadcast would not be disrupted by bombing
raids.

Playing a 'mijwiz' - a Middle Eastern instrument - for a sound effect
Her job was to listen to the feed coming from the hall, while simultaneously
playing a record of the same piece. If the live performance was interrupted,
then unbeknown to listeners, she was to flick a switch to start broadcasting
the recording at the exact point the live broadcast left off.
After years of trying, in 1957, Daphne's efforts to persuade the BBC to open
a radiophonic workshop came to fruition. The role of the workshop was to
provide background music to programmes and she became its first director.
At last she would be able to pursue her dream full-time. It was a job that
brought her into contact with some of the world's leading experimental
composers, including Stockhausen and John Cage.
But this exposure to "the greats" made her question her role. She began to
realise her heart was in creating music for its own sake rather than as
background music. She resigned and started her own studio in an oast house
in Kent, known as Tower Folly.
Hear Daphne Oram's music - and her explanation of how she made it (1972)


Martin Cook, a friend of nearly 50 years, says the credit for founding the
workshop rests solely with Daphne Oram.
"It was only through her pushing that anything was done at all," he says.
"But obviously things didn't go the way she would have wished and she took
the decision to leave."
Success
The Radiophonic Workshop continued without her, largely in the direction
that had disappointed her so much. In fact, it was in the field of drama and
sound effects that it became best known, particularly the input it had to
the seminal BBC TV series Doctor Who. It finally closed in 1998.
Daphne continued composing and developed a system to convert pictures into
sounds. It involved drawing on 10 strips of 35mm film, which were then read
by photo-electric cells and converted into sound, and became known as
Oramics.
Composer John Cage, who died in 1992
"I was allowed to draw pictures on everything... and the machine made an
amazingly bad noise," says Chris Oram. "This convinced me how clever she was
because she could write music on this contraption!"
Daphne Oram grasped the home computing revolution with glee, buying herself
an Apple II computer in 1981. She started trying to replicate her work with
Oramics on it and later an Acorn Archimedes.
But she was forced to quit her music making after a serious stroke in 1994.
She moved to a nursing home while her studio at Tower Folly was burgled
repeatedly before being sold.
But Mr Cook and composer Hugh Davies believe they have most of her work
safely stored on 5¼-inch and 3½-inch discs.
Her Oramics machine is owned by a private collector in the West Country, but
it is thought that it is not now in working order.
A very private woman, she died on 5 January, aged 77. Her passing has gone
almost un-noticed, perhaps has a result of her desire to keep quiet. But you
don't have to go very far to hear her legacy.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2669735.stm

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