BBC Radiophonic Workshop
[2] Its members included Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, John Baker, Paddy Kingsland, Glynis Jones, Maddalena Fagandini, Richard Yeoman-Clark and Elizabeth Parker, the last to leave.
[4] The Workshop was set up to satisfy the growing demand in the late 1950s for "radiophonic" sounds from a group of producers and studio managers at the BBC, including Desmond Briscoe, Daphne Oram, Donald McWhinnie, and Frederick Bradnum.
Much of this interest drew them to musique concrète and tape manipulation techniques, since using these methods could allow them to create soundscapes suitable for the growing range of unconventional programming.
[9] In 1957, Daphne Oram set up[10] the Radiophonic Workshop with Desmond Briscoe, who was appointed the Senior Studio Manager with Dick Mills employed as a technical assistant.
[11] Their significant early output included creating effects for the popular science-fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit and memorable comedy sounds for The Goon Show.
The shift from the experimental nature of the late 50s dramas to theme tunes was noticeable enough for one radio presenter to have to remind listeners that the purpose of the Workshop was not pop music.
In fact, in 1962 one of Fagandini's interval signals "Time Beat" was reworked with assistance from George Martin (in his pre-Beatles days) and commercially released as a single using the pseudonym Ray Cathode.
During this early period the innovative electronic approaches to music in the Workshop began to attract some significant young talent including Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and John Baker, who was in fact a jazz pianist with an interest in reverse tape effects.
This led to many leaving the workshop making way for a new generation of musicians in the early 1970s including Malcolm Clarke, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb and Peter Howell.
By the early 1990s, BBC Director General John Birt decided that departments were to charge each other and bid against each other for services and to close those that couldn't make enough revenue to cover their costs.
In 1991 the Workshop was given five years in which to break even but the cost of keeping the department, which required two dedicated engineers, a software developer (Tony Morton) and a secretary (Maxine) as well as the composers, proved too much and so they failed.
The live performances were mixed in surround sound and interspersed with musical video montage tributes of deceased members of the Workshop including Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire and John Baker.
Performing as 'The Radiophonic Workshop' (dropping the BBC prefix) they were joined by drummer Kieron Pepper (The Prodigy, Dead Kids, OutPatient) and Bob Earland from Clor.
The Radiophonic Workshop appeared on BBC television's The One Show on 20 November 2013 playing a unique version of the Doctor Who Theme that combined Delia Derbyshire's original source tapes and Peter Howell's 1980 realisation of the Ron Grainer composition.
Radio 6 Music's Marc Riley played host to a Radiophonic Workshop session where they delivered live versions of Roger Limb's Incubus, Paddy Kingsland's Vespucci, the Doctor Who Medley and a new composition – Electricity Language and Me (by American poet Peter Adam Salomon), featuring DJ Andrew Weatherall as the narrative voice for this classic piece of Radiophonic sound design.
[2] Composer Matthew Herbert's first work for The New Radiophonic Workshop takes audio from 25 previous projects featured on the website – from theater performances to poetry readings, creating a "curious murmur of activity".
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.
Other fans of the Radiophonic Workshop included The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones – who visited in 1968 – and Roger Mayer, who supplied guitar pedals to Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix.
