BBC radiophonic Workshop: Tape Loops & Tape Replay Setups

Elizabeth Parker and Paddy Kingsland from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1979 demonstrate the use of tape loops and tape-replay setups. We hear Elizabeth Parker’s “bubble music” and Paddy Kingsland on the electric guitar with twin Studer tape recorders.

This excerpt is from the BBC documentary The New Sound of Music produced in 1979.

Tape Loops BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Paddy Kingsland demonstrates twin Studer recorders in a delay-replay setup that some might refer to as “Frippertronics’ – named after Robert Fripp I believe. Fripp may have used twin Revox machines in a similar way for some of his compositions. It is an interesting setup, possibly described in some Workshop writings from the 1960s.

BBC radiophonic workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound effects units of the BBC,
was created in 1958 to produce effects and new music for radio.

It was closed in March 1998, although much of its  traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995.

The original Radiophonic Workshop was  based in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios
in Delaware Road, London.

 

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We have more on the Radiophonic workshop elsewhere in this blog –
e.g.
free-thinking-bbc-radiophonic-workshop/

doctor-who-how-norfolk-man-created-dalek-and-tardis-sounds/

 

 

The techniques initially used by the Radiophonic Workshop were closely related to those used in musique concrète; new sounds for programs were created by using recordings of everyday sounds such as voices, bells or gravel as raw material for “radiophonic” manipulations. In these manipulations, audio tape could be played back at different speeds (altering a sound’s pitch), reversed, cut and joined, or processed using reverb or equalisation. The most famous of the Workshop’s creations using ‘radiophonic’ techniques include the Doctor Who theme music, which Delia Derbyshire created using a plucked string, 12 oscillators and a lot of tape manipulation; and the sound of the TARDIS (the Doctor’s time machine) materialising and dematerialising, which was created by Brian Hodgson running his keys along the rusty bass strings of a broken piano, with the recording slowed down to make an even lower sound.

Much of the equipment used by the Workshop in the earlier years of its operation in the late 1950s was semi-professional and was passed down from other departments, though two giant professional tape-recorders (which appeared to lose all sound above 10 kHz) made an early centrepiece. Reverberation was obtained using an echo chamber, a basement room with bare painted walls empty except for loudspeakers and microphones. Due to the considerable technical challenges faced by the Workshop and BBC traditions, staff initially worked in pairs with one person assigned to the technical aspects of the work and the other to the artistic direction.
[source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop]

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Free Thinking – BBC Radiophonic Workshop

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The BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes including The Body in Question, Horizon, Quatermass, Newsround, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chronicle and Delia Derbyshire’s iconic Doctor Who Theme before being shut down by Director General John Birt in 1998.

In an edition recorded just as the Workshop prepare to release a new album, and tour the UK, Matthew Sweet brings together Radiophonic Workshop members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Peter Howells, and Mark Ayres to reflect on the days and nights they spent in the workshop, coaxing ageing machines into otherworldly life, and pioneering electronic music. Also in the programme, The Prodigy’s Kieron Pepper and Vile Electrodes on the influence the Radiophonic Workshop had on them.

Listen to the BBC Radio 3 programme here:

Taking part in the programme:
Dick Mills
Mark Ayres
Roger Limb
Peter Howell
Paddy Kingsland
Matthew Howden
Kieron Pepper
Vile Electrodes
Steven Price

The Art Of The Loop

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Most current pop music is created not with live instruments, but from pre-formed, off the shelf chunks of music known as loops. Musician Matthew Herbert explores the art of the loop and the million-dollar industry that has grown up around it, and asks whether it is setting music makers free from the constraints of traditional instruments or killing creativity.

Loops are pre-recorded performances, typically of a solo instrument, and typically 1 or 2 bars long. Looping isn’t new – it started soon after the advent of tape recorders. But recent advances in computer technology and software mean that effects which once needed a full-scale studio costing thousands of pounds can be created for little or no cost on a laptop or even a mobile phone. A CD of loops costing £10 can be used to make a million-selling international hit, but who is the real composer?

Matthew once made an entire album from the sounds of a single pig’s life, so he’s no stranger to the benefits of loops and sampling. He talks to producers, musicians and loop-creators and experiments with technology ancient and modern; he hears from looping’s defenders and detractors and looks into a musical future which he finds fascinating but many find terrifying.

And, along the way, he builds a dance track out of a Radio 4 Continuity announcer.

Produced by Micky Curling
A Folded Wing production for BBC Radio 4

Doctor Who: How Norfolk man created Dalek and Tardis sounds

 

With the screening of the 50th Anniversary Dr Who Episode ‘The Day of The Doctor” this weekend, an interesting report of the early sound effects design work, done by sound engineers at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop caught my eye. As is always the case, lateral thinking, a tight deadline and creativity always win the day.

reproduced here from an online article by By Paul Hayes and Martin Barber :
BBC News Website 23/11/13

A broken-down Sunday school piano and the key to a mother’s front door were the unlikely origins to unlocking one of the most recognisable sounds in Doctor Who history.

But for Brian Hodgson, a former BBC Radiophonics Workshop sound engineer, these basic items were the starting point for creating the distinctive, unearthly, sound of a Tardis – the sometimes temperamental vehicle of the Time Lords.

As Doctor Who marks its 50th anniversary, Mr Hodgson, who now lives on the Norfolk Broads, remembers: “It was quite difficult as everybody knew rockets went ‘bang, whoosh’ – but what does a time machine do?”

“It doesn’t go up, it doesn’t go down, it goes everywhere at once. The thing I had in my mind was that it should be coming and going, and very vague.”

Mr Hodgson, 75, joined the workshop in 1962 after working as an actor and stage manager.

On how the Tardis should sound, he said: “I don’t know who thought of it, but we came up with the ‘rending of the fabric of time and space’. I was in a cinema and in the interval I had a programme and I drew it – exactly how I wanted it to go together.

“I’d done a programme called The Survivors where we had to have the sound of a ship scraping on the rocks, and the piano sounds I’d used for that, very slowed down, seemed a good starting point.

Keith Salmon (foreground) and Brian Hodgson at BBC Radiophonic WorkshopMr Hodgson used a device known as a ring modulator to create the sound of the Daleks

“I got my bunch of keys out, I got my mum’s front door key and scraped that up the strings. We did that several times on the bass strings on an old Sunday school piano that had been taken apart.

“So we took those and speeded them up, slowed them down and cut several of them together and started to add feedback to get that echoey sort of thing.”

‘Great big bang’

Mr Hodgson told BBC Radio Norfolk he remembers the Doctor Who team liked his sound of the Tardis. It had taken him three weeks to create, but it still wasn’t quite right.

“They came to listen to it and said they liked it, but there was something missing – why hadn’t I put a rising note in it?

“I said ‘time machines don’t go up, they go everywhere’. They said ‘well we think it needs it’. So I put the rising note in it with loads of feedback and the Tardis was born.

“Unfortunately, I’d spent so much time on the sound of it taking off, when we were asked for it to land I only had three days to sort that out. So I literally played it backwards, again with loads of feedback on it, and put a great big bang on the end of it.”

As the original sound effects creator on the programme, Mr Hodgson was also responsible for designing the dictatorial modulated tones of the Daleks, whose leader Davros was played by Norfolk’s Terry Molloy for three seasons of the classic series.

During his 10 years working at the workshop on Doctor Who, in addition to the Tardis, Mr Hodgson also created the sounds of invading Cybermen, the Dalek control room and the Time Lord courtroom.

‘Dalek staccato’

“I’d done a voice treatment for a rather posh robot in a radio play called Sword From The Stars,” he said.

“I’d experimented with my own voice and a ring modulator and it seemed to work. So when the Dalek thing came up I thought the modulation thing will probably work as it will grate, but we needed an actor to do the voice, so we got Peter Hawkins in.

Doctor Who production designer Michael Pickwoad reveals the secrets to the Tardis’ new look

“Peter came up with the typical Dalek staccato and I asked him to elongate all the vowels because you only hear the modulation on the vowels.

“If you modulated the consonants they disappear and you can’t hear it – so he did it on all the vowels and that became the Dalek voice.”

After the Daleks appeared in the series in 1963, Mr Hodgson asked producer Verity Lambert if they could have one for the workshop.

He remembers she said that they could have one after the show ended.

“We never got it of course,” he said. “The series had been renewed.”

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-25051061

The Soundworld Of Dr Who

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This interesting documentary celebrates the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and explores the sound design of Doctor Who, both in its early years, and in recording the seventh BBC Wales series. Matthew Sweet interviews Tim Ricketts, Paul Jefferies and Brian Hodgson who are all involved with sound design on Doctor Who, past and present. Also interviewed the voice of the Daleks and Ice Warriors, Nicholas Briggs. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 during the interval of the 2013 Doctor Who at the Proms.

Listen to the programme here


Also

Doctor Who: How Norfolk man created Dalek and Tardis sounds

Bush House Soundscapes


The closure of Bush House, home to the BBC World Service since December 1940, has provoked two wonderful soundscape projects.

Firstly, World Service studio manager Robin The Fog used recordings made in Bush House at night to create The Ghosts of Bush. “Here, atmospheric noises are slowed down and looped, with the help of some of the World Service’s ancient reel-to-reels, to form a piece of beautiful, warm spatial exploration. Chords swell and harmonic patterns emerge out of the building’s crepuscular creaking or Robin’s whistling, using the labyrinthine Portland stone corridors of the building, at one time the most expensive in the world, as a giant reverb tank.” (The Quietus, 2012).

Secondly, Creative Director of the re-launched Radiophonic Workshop Matthew Herbert created a soundscape for the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Listen to Matthew discussing his Sonic Tribute To Bush House here
Listen/download The Ghosts of Bush here

A Sound British Adventure

Comedian Stewart Lee is passionate about electronic music and he take us on a remarkable musical journey. We discover how, after the Second World War, a small group of electronic pioneers began tinkering with their army surplus kit to create new sounds and music.

Tristram Cary started the first electronic music studio in Britain but, while France, Germany, Italy and the USA had lavishly funded research centres, British electronic music remained the preserve of boffins on a budget.

As the programme reveals, this make do and mend approach prevailed long after austerity Britain had given way to the swinging 60s, with Peter Zinovieff developing EMS synthesizers from a shed at the bottom of his garden in Putney. (Paul McCartney put on his wellies and took a look). Zinovieff is interviewed about his experiments in sound.

Unsurprisingly, the electronic community in Britain was a small, intimate group and joining Cary and Zinovieff was Daphne Oram, who devoted decades to developing a ‘drawn sound’ electronic composition system that never really quite worked.

Brian Hodgson tells us about 1960s experimental and electronic festivals, including The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave (1967) at which The Beatles’ electronic piece Carnival Of Light had its only public airing. We shall also hear how the radiophonic workshop broke new musical ground with Dr. Who.

Experts in the history of electronic music, including author and musician Mark Ayers and Goldsmith College lecturer in computer studies Dr. Michael Griegson give the boffins’ view and Portishead’s Adrian Utley explains why the early forays in electronics are still relevant today.

Produced by John Sugar
A Sugar Production for BBC Radio 4.

Listen to the programme here