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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The Evolution of Western Pop Music Over 50 Years

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The evolution of Western pop music over fifty years – from 1960 to 2010 – has been analysed by scientists. A team from Queen Mary University, London and Imperial College looked at more than 17,000 songs from the major American chart, the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. They found three music revolutions – in 1964, 1983 and 1991 – and traced the loss of blues chords from the charts, as well as the birth of disco. The team also refutes claims that pop music is starting to sound the same. Dr Matthias Mauch is from Queen Mary University of London and co-led the research.

Listen to the Radio 4 Today clip here:

Read The Independent piece here:

Composing LA

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Young British Composer Tarik O’ Regan tells the story of how the tradition of Western classical music, its composers and maestros, underpinned the golden age of Hollywood film score.

More or less the entire Hollywood music scene, as it blossomed in the 1930s, looked to serious European and Russian composers for film score composition. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, two of the greatest composers of ‘serious’ 20th century music, both lived and worked in LA – much to the consternation of the European classical music establishment.

Many composers on the run from Europe in the 1930s would arrive in New York and, failing to make inroads into the concert scene or Broadway (as Kurt Weil had done), continued their journey West. Even as early cinema flourished, America was still struggling to find its own authentic ‘classical’ music – one that strived to be equal to the European symphonic sound but that had its own voice too. The film score was precisely that.

Meanwhile most of the Hollywood film orchestras were filled with British and European émigré musicians who taught American musicians the European symphonic style that became the hallmark of Hollywood film music. This programme also explores how some of the most successful soundtrack composers today – John Williams and others – are completely caught up in that sound-world.

Presented by Tarik O’Regan, an émigré composer himself who moved to the US, with contributors including Andre Previn, Larry Schoenberg, conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and music writer Alex Ross.

Produced by Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.

All You Need Is Lab: How Technology Inspired Innovation in Music

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Musician and songwriter Midge Ure looks at the many ways scientific and technological innovation have stimulated creativity in pop music.

From the invention of the steel guitar string, through the tape recorder and the synthesiser, to the drum machine and Autotune, musicians have always embraced the latest ideas and adapted or distorted them to produce new sounds.

Musicians Anne Dudley (Art of Noise) and Thomas Dolby join music journalist David Hepworth and blues researcher Tom Attah, exploring how the laboratory has informed and inspired the studio.

Midge demonstrates what you can achieve with just a laptop these days – but laments the passing of an age of invention in popular music.

Featured music includes The Beatles, Chopin, Thomas Dolby, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Charlie Christian, Les Paul and Mary Ford, The Tornados, The Small Faces, Queen, The Sweet, Stevie Wonder, Band Aid, Art of Noise, Donna Summer, Fat Boy Slim, Cher, Daft Punk and Nick Clegg.

Producer: Trevor Dann
A Trevor Dann production for BBC Radio 4

Nightingale & Violin Duet – 90 Years Since 1st Outside Broadcast

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90 years ago today (19th May), the BBC transmitted its very first outside broadcast and the stars of the show were cellist Beatrice Harrison accompanied by a very tuneful nightingale. To celebrate the anniversary, Senior Lecturer in radio Dylan Roys and I accepted the challenge from Reverend Mark Holden (Wragby parishes) to recreate the historic event in Lincolnshire.

Violinist Janet Welsh kindly agreed to join us in this quest and we headed off to Whisby Nature Reserve to recruit a willing nightingale to our band. As dusk fell, Graham Hopwood, our expert guide and one of Whisby’s wardens, attuned our ears to the song of the nightingale amongst the many other voices of blackcap, whitethroat and robin.

With our avian talent spotted and in full song, Janet began to play the tune Londonderry Air, just as Beatrice Harrison had done 90 years earlier. Dylan and I captured the beautiful duet with our modern hand-held recorders as trains whizzed by and jumbo jets cruised overhead.

The recordings reflect the massive changes in our sonic landscape since 1924. Graham chatted to us about the dwindling numbers of nightingales visiting Britain due to changes in their landscape and habitat too. However, the nightingale’s song remains as beautiful now as it did then.

Dylan Roys’s radio piece documenting the recording will be broadcast on May 19th on Siren FM. Listen here:

Listen to a clip of the recording here.

The piece was broadcast on William Wright’s BBC Radio Lincolnshire show on the 19th May 2014. Exactly 90 years after the original broadcast. Hear it here:

Huge thanks to Janet and Graham for helping to make this happen.

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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 45 @ 65

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Sixty-five years ago RCA Victor launched a small, round, plastic green disc on to the listening public. Journalist David Quantick charts people’s love affair with the 45 rpm single and examines one of the most important revolutions in the modern music business.

The single was always aimed at the younger generation, while the LP originally catered for a middle-aged, middle-class, well-heeled audience. The cheaper 45 took on the poorer, cooler youth market and spun with it. The vinyl single launched rock and roll, pop and the teenager on the world and provided a lynchpin for Western popular culture. It has defined the popular music of last 60 years and shows no signs of dying.

In the first programme, David looks at the war of the speeds and the early, glory days of the vinyl single, which pitted stars like Judy Garland up against Frank Sinatra and then brought audiences Elvis and Bill Haley. All this, set against a brave new world of cheap ‘portable’ record players, exotic new vinyl jukeboxes and the birth of the singles charts.

David also examines the early days of the charts, the effect the single had on that new phenomenon, the teenager, the power the TV Music shows had on the single and the cultural power of the 45, from the revolution of rock and roll to teeny and weeny boppers and glam rock’s children of the revolution.

The series features contributions from Tom Jones, actor Martin Freeman, Myleene Klass, songwriter Diane Warren, musician Soweto Kinch, Bob Stanley from Saint Etienne, Michael Bradley from The Undertones, the Reverend Run, DJ Cosmo, Pete Shelley from The Buzzcocks, Pete Waterman, as well as DJs including Mike Read, David Jensen, Johnnie Walker, Bob Harris, and Bill Brewster Neil Fox amongst others.

Presenter/ David Quantick, Producer/ Anna Harrison and Frank Stirling for Unique Broadcasting

Episode 1

Episode 2

David Attenborough: My Life in Sound

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03lnzxh

MONDAY 16th December 2013 at 11.00am on BBC Radio 4

In an exclusive interview for Radio 4 David Attenborough talks to Chris Watson about his life in sound.

One of Sir David’s first jobs in natural history film making was as a wildlife sound recordist. Recorded in Qatar, David Attenborough is with wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, there to make a film about a group of birds he is passionate about, The Bird of Paradise. It is in Qatar where the worlds largest captive breeding population is and it is in this setting Chris Watson takes Sir David back to the 1950’s and his early recording escapades, right through to today where David Attenborough narrates a series of Tweet of the Day’s on Radio 4 across the Christmas and New Year period

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

The Most Significant Beat

A comparative study of changes in bass drum sounds from 70s disco to electronic dance music of the 1980s and 1990s.

This Paper was presented at the Art of Record Production conference at the University of Edinburgh, September 8th -10th 2006

The title for this paper; The Most Significant Beat, refers to the beat fulfilled as a bass drum sound. The material in focus contains the so-called four-to-the-floor bass drum pattern,where the author believes the bass drum is functionally crucial in initiating kinetic patterns amongst its receivers.