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| − | ''Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire'' is a 2010 radio documentary about Delia's [[Attic Tapes]]
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| − | presented by Matthew Sweet, produced by Phil College and recorded in Manchester.
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| | | | |
| − | Its format is excerpts from a round table discussion between the presenter, [[Brian Hodgson]], [[David Vorhaus]], [[David Butler]], [[Mark Ayres]], [[Dick Mills]] as they listened to her tapes, with recordings of [[Daphne Oram]], [[Desmond Briscoe]], Peter Howell and [[Elizabeth Parker]] speaking.
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| − |
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| − | It contains many clips of Delia's music and there is an excellent review of it [http://sparksinelectricaljelly.blogspot.it/2010/03/delian-moods.html ''Delian Moods''] on the ''Sparks In Electric Jelly'' blog.
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| − |
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| − | =Transcript=
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| − | ''(Numbers in italics are time codes measured in seconds from the start of the programme)''
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| − |
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| − | ''[[Doctor Who]] melody sample''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Delia was born in Coventry three years before the Luftwaffe
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| − | attempted to wipe it off the map. She thought she was clever and Girton
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| − | College, Cambridge agreed. She left with a degree in music and maths and
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| − | an ambition to work in the recording business which took a blow in 1959
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| − | when Decca told her the studio was no place for a woman. The U.N. had
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| − | no such scruples; Delia worked for them in Geneva before returning to
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| − | London to take a job with a music publisher. But our story starts in
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| − | 1960 when Delia joined the BBC as a trainee studio manager and it was
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| − | then that she started asking questions about a mysterious department
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| − | called the Radiophonic Workshop where boffins did avant garde things
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| − | with tape spools."
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| − |
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| − | ''160-183: Lush spangles (an effect from [[Anger of Achilles]]?)''
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| − |
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| − | '''Peter Howell:''' "[[Daphne Oram]] and [[Desmond Briscoe]] were the founders of the
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| − | Workshop and they were studio managers in Drama Department in radio and
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| − | they were given two old tape recorders to play with and they spent their
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| − | time doing special sound sequences for dramas. But it sort of took off
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| − | because it was in the era when radio drama was really at its height and
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| − | they did a lot of sound sequences for those sort of things and they were
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| − | the weird and the wonderful.
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| − |
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| − | '''Desmond Briscoe:''' "We are essentially specialists in sound. The fact
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| − | that if you take sound and organise it in certain ways and along certain
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| − | lines and bearing in mind certain parameters what you produce of course
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| − | is something which we tend to know generally as 'music'.
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "And so Delia applied to join these specialists in sound".
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| − |
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| − | ''240-247: More lush spangles''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "From 1960 to the mid seventies Delia was part of the musical
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| − | counterculture. She made bizarre pop tracks with Anthony Newley, composed
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| − | hymns for robots and sound tracks for horror pictures. She created a
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| − | soundscape for the world's first electronic music fashion show."
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| − |
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| − | ''263:''<BR>
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| − | '''Delia:''' "Any sound can be made into a radiophonic sound by the treatment
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| − | it receives. The sort of sounds we usually use are electronic sounds
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| − | of various sorts, and also sounds that are recorded, picked up by a
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| − | microphone, everyday sounds and also musical instruments. All these are
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| − | sources of sound."
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| − |
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| − | ''290: backing from [[Moogies Bloogies]] begins, overdubbed with other stuff''
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| − |
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| − | '''Delia:''' "Those basic sounds aren't really interesting in their raw state like
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| − | this; we have to shape them and mould them."
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| − |
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| − | ''([[John Peel's Voice]] clip)''
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| − |
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| − | ''(Shakespeare clip)''
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| − |
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| − | ''324:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "By the mid 1970s, though, Delia was disillusioned with the
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| − | direction that electronic music seemed to be taking. She always maintained
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| − | that this was down to the arrival of something called the synthesizer.
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| − | She wanted electronic music to be hand-made. So she left the workshop,
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| − | gave up composing and withdrew from the profession."
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| − |
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| − | ''342: "Without sound"''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "She worked in an art gallery, a book shop and for the gas
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| − | board. She drank a lot of red wine. She never asked for anybody's
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| − | sympathy."
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| − |
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| − | ''370: "Just bound by blue ethereality, drifting unto my dream free"''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "The world lost Delia Derbyshire in 2001 but her legacy is
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| − | still very much alive, not just in the Doctor Who theme but in a whole
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| − | back-catalogue of lesser-known work she left behind, a catalogue that was
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| − | recently augmented by Delia's personal collection of recordings which was
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| − | presented to Manchester University by composer and Radiophonic Workshop
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| − | Archivist Mark Ayres. But how did Mark acquire the collection in the
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| − | first place?"
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| − |
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| − | ''412:''<BR>
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| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "When Delia died her partner Clive discovered all these boxes
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| − | in her attic, just numbers of tea chests and cardboard boxes all falling
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| − | to bits, all full of tapes which one day had sticky labels on them but
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| − | all the sticky labels had fallen off and were at the bottom of the boxes
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| − | so we were just left with hundreds of reels of tapes and the labels,
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| − | so it was a real jigsaw puzzle."
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| − |
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| − | ''435: Tone sweeps''
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| − |
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| − | ''440:''<BR>
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| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "Initially Brian Hodgson took delivery of the tapes. Brian, of
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| − | course, a lifelong friend of Delia's and colleague at the BBC Radiophonic
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| − | Workshop and he weeded out a lot of stuff because, basically, Delia
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| − | seemed to have, when she left the BBC, just emptied her studio in to
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| − | the back of a car so a lot of them were either blank tapes or just echo
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| − | tapes and just bits of edits which weren't going anywhere or duplicates
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| − | of things we already had. So Brian did an initial sort of weed through
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| − | but I still ended up with about 300 reels of tapes. Then David Butler of
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| − | Manchester University contacted me, initially with an interest to work on
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| − | the Radiophonic Workshop catalogue in an academic capacity but I seized
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| − | the opportunity to suggest that there was a much more interesting project
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| − | that he might like to take on (laughs).
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| − |
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| − | ''480: Spoinky noises''
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| − |
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| − | ''490:''<BR>
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| − | '''David Butler:''' "The strange thing about it was that all the tapes were in
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| − | boxes of breakfast cereal, you'd got Bran Flakes, and in a way that seemed
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| − | to kind of encapsulate Delia's music and the way it has reached out to
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| − | audiences, particularly in Britain, and that is that you've got something
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| − | that is innovative and experimental and very progressive in many ways but
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| − | also is going into people's front rooms on a weekly basis. So there was
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| − | something about that combination of the extraordinary and the ordinary,
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| − | the mundane, which kind of seemed right in a way but also very odd.
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| − |
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| − | ''530: "Science and Health" clip''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Unless you are a student of electronica or an acolyte of
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| − | Doctor Who, Delia Derbyshire is virtually unknown and in the early days
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| − | that obscurity was a matter of BBC policy. Like those anonymous painters
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| − | and sculptors who toiled in the renaissance, it was the Workshop that
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| − | got the credit and not the individual.
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| − | Here's David Butler again:
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| − |
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| − | ''566:''<BR>
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| − | '''David Butler:''' "There was this great admiration for what she was
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| − | doing but there wasn't that official credit coming and in the archive
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| − | there's a wonderful letter from Martin Esling, who was head of Drama
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| − | and Sound at the BBC and this letter is from 1964, where he's writing
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| − | to Desmond Briscoe praising Delia Derbyshire and asking "Could she be
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| − | properly credited?" I'll read you a little bit from that memo because
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| − | it's extremely revealing. So he says: "I've just been listening to
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| − | the playback of the completed version of 'The Tower' and should like
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| − | to express my deep appreciation for the excellent work done on this
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| − | production by Delia Derbyshire and John Harrison. This play set them an
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| − | extremely difficult task and they rose to the challenge with a degree of
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| − | imaginative intuition and technical mastery which deserves the highest
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| − | admiration and which will inevitably earn a lion's share of any success
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| − | the production may eventually achieve. I only wish that it were possible
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| − | for the names of contributors of this calibre to be mentioned in the
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| − | credits in the Radio Times and on the air but, failing this, I should like
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| − | to register the fact that I regard their contribution to this production
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| − | as being at least of equal importance to that of the producer himself."
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| − |
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| − | ''643:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Even now, programme makers aren't free to put everyone they
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| − | want in the closing credits. There are no such rules, however, about
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| − | having credits anywhere else in a show, so we'll sneak one in here.
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| − | You're listening to "Sculptress of Sound" with music by Delia Derbyshire
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| − | and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
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| − | There! I think she might have liked that!
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| − |
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| − | ''663: Clip of Delia laughing''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "And so, as work continues here in Manchester on cataloguing
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| − | and preserving the archive I'm meeting up with Mark Ayres and some of
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| − | Delia's former colleagues to get a first-hand account of the woman behind
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| − | the work and of course to hear some of that work itself.
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| − |
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| − | ''680: "Talk Out" theme''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "So this, I guess, is a kind of convocation of Delia's
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| − | friends and colleagues. David Vorhaus is here, Mark Ayres, Brian
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| − | Hodgson and Dick Mills. I wonder if we could start by just gathering
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| − | a few impressions of this woman. Who was Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson?
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| − |
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| − | ''713:''<BR>
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| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "She was the most wonderful, infuriating person I've
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| − | ever met in my life. We were either great friends or great enemies for
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| − | the whole period and you never knew, even within the same few minutes,
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| − | you could be great friends or great enemies. You never knew quite what
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| − | you'd just said that upset her.
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| − |
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| − | ''734:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Dick Mills, you worked alongside her at the Radiophonic
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| − | Workshop. What impact did she make upon you?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "She was the ultimate planner down to the last detail. I
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| − | was more helping her to put it into audible, tangible form. She had the
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| − | plans in her head and multitudinous scraps of paper covered in spidery
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| − | brown ink but it was great fun with her."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "David Vorhaus, how did she come into your life?"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "I was going off to an orchestra practice one night and the
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| − | conductor said 'Hey, there's this lecture on electronic music." For me it
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| − | was fascinating, it was just a fantasy, electronic music so I shot into
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| − | this thing and it was this amazing lady and this amazing gentleman here."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Brian"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Brian, who were giving this lecture in a group called Unit
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| − | Delta Plus and it just was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. These
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| − | people were really doing it."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "But how would you describe her to someone who didn't know
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| − | her and didn't know her work?"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Very intelligent, very analytical as you had to be in
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| − | those days, you really had to know what you were doing. But also very
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| − | fiery and kind of a bit crazy. Hard to know what it was that would fire
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| − | her off in one direction or another. She'd start on a sentence and go
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| − | off on a tangent, and a tangent to the tangent and tangent to that,
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| − | and long after everybody else completely lost touch with where they
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| − | were she'd eventually come back to the point and so it was like this
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| − | very fine line between genius and insanity.
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| − |
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| − | ''825:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "What are you impressions of her, Mark Ayres?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "As David says, she was very analytical and she was very
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| − | analytical in terms of every aspect of her life, largely in terms of
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| − | sound. I was aware in telephone conversations that we'd have a long
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| − | telephone conversation, it would just suddenly finish. The phone would
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| − | just go dead. And a week later the phone would ring again and it would
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| − | be Delia and she'd start talking and I'd not have a clue what we were
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| − | talking about. And then I realised after a few weeks that in fact she
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| − | would pick the conversation exactly to the word where she'd dropped it
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| − | off and so I had to make notes about what we were talking about so that,
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| − | when the phone rang and it was Delia again, I remembered where to pick
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| − | up and I discovered, in fact, after she diedn that that's what she used
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| − | to do. She used to sit by the phone with a pad making notes as she went
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| − | along, largely on what she thought you meant through the tone of your
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| − | voice rather than from what you actually said. Could be very difficult
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| − | on occasions but, as others have said, totally wonderful."
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| − |
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| − | ''884:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "We're going to listen to some now and I want to start
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| − | by playing you an extract from a BBC radio programme from 1964. A
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| − | copy of the whole programme exists in Delia's collection. It's called
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| − | 'Information Please'. It's one of those question-and-answer programmes
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| − | in which everything is rather scripted, which is how a lot radio used
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| − | to be, I guess. We're gonna start with the theme tune which, in itself,
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| − | I think, illustrates just how different TV and radio music was to the
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| − | world that Delia was doing.
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| − |
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| − | ''911: 'Information Please' theme, questions:''''
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| − |
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| − | "How is electronic music produced?"
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| − |
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| − | "How long does it take to paint the Forth Bridge?"
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| − |
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| − | "How do comedy writer pairs work?"
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| − |
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| − | "Where does pigskin come from as we don't skin a pig?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Now that really marks the difference, doesn't it, between what
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| − | came before and what came after. What are you responses to that? David?"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Well, I couldn't be more opposite to that!"
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| − |
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| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "It's very interesting, actually, because we even speak
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| − | differently. Even listening to recordings of oneself from that period,
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| − | we spoke in a completely different way."
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| − |
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| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "The BBC was very formalised and expected their listeners,
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| − | perhaps not to sit to attention, but lets have some, er.."
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| − |
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| − | '''Hodgson:''' "at least, to pay attention."
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| − |
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| − | '''Mills:''' "Yes, to pay attention."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "But does what we've listened to there show something about
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| − | a world which the Workshop was beginning to resist in some way?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "Yes. It was not the world we were actually operating in."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Well, let's hear Delia beginning that process of
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| − | explanation. This is the answer that she gives to the listener's
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| − | question. It's sort of a 'Points of View' type show, this, so you'll
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| − | hear an actress reading out the letter that prompted Delia's appearance
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| − | in the program. At least, I think she's an actor."
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| − |
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| − | '''Actress in scottish accent:''' "We often hear in mystery or science fiction
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| − | plays strange eerie music which I understand is not produced by ordinary
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| − | musical instruments but electronically. How is that done? Miss Anne
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| − | Macmillan of Perth"
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| − |
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| − | '''1964 presenter:''' "So, to explain how these strange
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| − | come about we've come to a most interesting department of the BBC,
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| − | their Radiophonic Workshop where, for instance, the title music of
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| − | Doctor Who and many other special sounds and incidental music for
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| − | sound and television plays are produced. And to explain how this done
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| − | we have with us Miss Delia Derbyshire, a very versatile girl who has a
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| − | good technical knowledge combined with a musical training and a sense of
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| − | dramatic ability. (To Delia) So, in this Workshop you can turn practically
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| − | any sound into a form of music.
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| − |
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| − | '''Delia:''' "Yes, if we take the Greenwich pips, for example, we can speed
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| − | them up and slow them down and alter the quality and we can, by mixing
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| − | various tracks together, make a little piece."
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| − |
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| − | ''1066-1092: First London Lemons theme''
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| − |
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| − | '''1964 presenter:''' "Well, that was a very nice arrangement and I can
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| − | distinctly recognise the theme of it, the 'Oranges and Lemon" themes. I'd
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| − | never expected to hear it with the Greenwich pips as the instrument,
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| − | as it were. Well, thank you very much for your explanations and for the
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| − | very interesting things you've shown me while I've been in your workshop
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| − | here. Hey, what are you doing to my voice, Miss Derbyshire?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Delia:''' "I've turned you into a fish!"
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| − |
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| − | '''1964 presenter:''' "Thank you very much indeed, Miss Derbyshire."
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| − |
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| − | ''1119:''<BR>
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "It's like something, it is something literally from another
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| − | era, isn't it? But the way that interviewer talk to her is so incredibly
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| − | patronising, isn't it? 'Here's one of the nice gells from Bletchley
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| − | Park', that sort of idea. What do you think that clip says about the
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| − | BBC's attitude to what the Workshop was doing? Dick?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Well, I think the gentleman there was rather relieved it had
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| − | a sense of humour in it. I'm not quite sure if he got the actual pun,
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| − | that the tune 'Oranges and Lemons' were made from the pips of those
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| − | respective fruits. That was a bit lost on him! But it's very strange
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| − | asking anybody about something new that you don't actually comprehend
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| − | yourself. You expect the people to explain to you in words of one
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| − | syllable. It's also very peculiar, to my mind, that Delia had this very
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| − | cultured voice and at some stage it almost sounds as if she's sending
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| − | them up with her reply.
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "What was her attitude to that kind of authority? David?"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "She was pretty liberated in her own mind. She was Womens'
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| − | Lib decades before it existed so that would definitely set her off. A
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| − | lot of things would set her off but that certainly would."
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| − |
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| − | ''1211-1216:'' Second London Lemons theme
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "So let's try and find out a little more about the woman who
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| − | created these sounds. Here's another former member of the Radiophonic
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| − | Workshop, Elizabeth Parker, remembering her first sighting of the
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| − | legendary Delia Derbyshire."
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| − |
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| − | ''1228:''<BR>
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| − | '''Elizabeth Parker:''' "I saw her walking up to Portland Place, at least I saw
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| − | this figure with a great flowing cloak and an enormous hat and I thought
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| − | 'That has to be Delia.' We were going to a Radiophonic Workshop party
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| − | and when we got inside, lo and behold, it was her and very elegant, very
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| − | beautiful and a very distinctive voice too."
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| − |
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| − | '''Delia:''' "I think my forte, well, apart from having an analytical mind
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| − | to do electronic sound, at the opposite end I'm very good at writing
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| − | extended melody. Most of the programmes that I did were either in the
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| − | far distant future, the far distant past or in the mind."
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| − |
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| − | ''1270: Two bursts of wobbulator''
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "So let's try and build up a picture of this woman. I think,
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| − | my image of her is fixed by some early sixties photographs of her where
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| − | she looks rather like Joan Bakewell. She has this air of technical
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| − | efficiency about her. How dedicated was she to her work, David?"
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| − |
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| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "It varies. Sometimes she was totally into something,
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| − | quite obsessive about it and other days she wouldn't want to know, she
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| − | just wouldn't go near it and it was very hard to know why, what it was
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| − | that triggered these on/off phases.
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| − |
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| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "If Delia had an idea in her head she would go after
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| − | it. I mean, she was riding home one night. We worked in Maida Vale,
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| − | she lived just round the corner in Clifton Villas and she was riding a
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| − | bicycle in those days so she set off, she was writing this song, I think
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| − | for 'Poets in Prison', a thing for the City of London Festival and she
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| − | was riding away and she was thinking, she got it all sorted out and then
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| − | suddenly she came to and she was in Vauxhall on the other side of the
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| − | river. She had not a clue how she'd got there but she'd cycled all the
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| − | way though Central London without being conscious from the moment she
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| − | got on the bike at Maida Vale except for this piece she was writing."
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| − |
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| − | ''1355: Start of "[[Rorate Coeli]]" from "[[Amor Dei]]"''
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| − |
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| − | '''Delia:''' "When I was doing the Inventions with Barry Bermange he wanted
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| − | sounds which would sound like a Gothic altarpiece. 'Oh,' I said,
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| − | 'yes. What a good idea. But what do you really mean? What sort of
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| − | sounds?' He said 'Well, give me a pencil and paper'. I did, and with great
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| − | care and elaboration he drew me a beautiful Gothic altarpiece and said
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| − | 'That's the sort of sound I want'.
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "Was that a typical sort of commission?"
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| − |
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| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "I couldn't describe it better. Delia actually saw sound
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| − | as pictures and then she got analysing with a Gothic altarpiece where
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| − | the probably go up, soar up to a point and all this filigree bit and,
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| − | yeah, she could work to that. I mean, that was one of the best unsung
| |
| − | periods of her radiophonic life, working in radio as opposed to things
| |
| − | for television, where she was the sole contributing atmosphere setter."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "It's interesting, the process by which she transformed a
| |
| − | one-line request from a producer into something as textured and elaborate
| |
| − | as that."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "That was the genius. That was what it's all about."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "The other part of genius is knowing when to stop because,
| |
| − | if you took that further, as people do when they get their hands on
| |
| − | things that can do things, you overcomplicate it. You've just got to
| |
| − | keep it simple/stupid."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Yeah, that's so right."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "This seems a good point to hear one of Delia's
| |
| − | compositions. This is "Firebird" from the 1969 'White Noise' album
| |
| − | "An Electric Storm".
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1464-1515: Start of "[[Firebird]]"''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Our very first tune!" (laughs)
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "What do you recall of it? In fact, who were White Noise? Can
| |
| − | you tell me about how that collaboration came about?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "White Noise was Delia, Brian and me. I would sneak into
| |
| − | the BBC in the middle of the night. I think this is common knowledge
| |
| − | now, don't need to keep it secret any more, and I was never employed by
| |
| − | the Beeb. We didn't have out own studios and just wanted to try writing
| |
| − | a couple of songs, and that was the first. Delia and I actually wrote
| |
| − | that together."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''(Firebird continues...)''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "So is this, when we listen to this, do we think of this as
| |
| − | Delia Derbyshire unfettered by the constraints of working for the BBC?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Absolutely. It was the three of us, it really was. Brian
| |
| − | kind of excludes himself but he was totally essential, and even if he
| |
| − | wasn't, Delia and I actually wrote that together. Most of the stuff I
| |
| − | wrote the tunes but we equally made all the sounds and Brian was more
| |
| − | into making the sounds than the tunes, for the electronic music and
| |
| − | the voiceovers."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "That terrible, sixties, camp, dead motorbike bit".
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Don't do yourself down."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "No, exactly, as I was going to say, it's and every bit
| |
| − | as important and absolutely essential to have someone like that."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "OK, well, I think it's time we examined the piece that she
| |
| − | remains famous for now
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1615:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' (from intro to a tape) "OK, coming up"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1618: Start of Doctor Who theme''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "The first producer of Doctor Who, Verity Lambert, she had in
| |
| − | her mind ''Les Structures Sonores'', this group from Paris. Their music
| |
| − | sounded really electronic but in fact they were all acoustic instruments
| |
| − | and because the Radiophonic Workshop was a below-the-line cost she came to
| |
| − | the Radiophonic Workshop and the boss recommended Ron Grainer because he
| |
| − | had done something called "Giants of Steam". Ron saw the visual titles,
| |
| − | as usual something like a black and white negative, and he took the
| |
| − | timings and went away and wrote the score."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1678:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "It was a magic experience because I couldn't see from the music
| |
| − | how it was going to sound."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "Dick and Delia were sort of secreted away and we were just
| |
| − | hearing things coming through doors. It wasn't till the actual playback
| |
| − | that we were all really quite taken aback because no one had actually done
| |
| − | anything quite like that before. It just had never happened. Even Ron
| |
| − | when he first heard it was completely gobsmacked. He said 'Did I really
| |
| − | write that?" and Delia said 'Yes, most of it' because she'd added her
| |
| − | own things. But the way she'd just taken the idea - it was very simple,
| |
| − | it was a scribble on a piece of manuscript paper, it wasn't a proper
| |
| − | score - she'd taken that and gone away and creates an icon."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "It's not necessarily meant to portray time travel or space
| |
| − | or anything like that. It just is. Now, the problem with it, of course,
| |
| − | with hindsight, people said 'Oh, it's wonderful! I expect you had fun
| |
| − | doing it.' Well, yes, we had fun doing it. Physically it was laborious
| |
| − | because each of those notes were hand-cut, it was made in three different
| |
| − | layers and it necessitates playing three tape machines at once and,
| |
| − | as each of us has only got two hands, there was two of us, we had to go
| |
| − | "Ready, steady, go" and hope it all fitted. And of course there were
| |
| − | mistakes. We had a bum note at one stage and now, with three spools of
| |
| − | tape with more sticky joins than you could throw a stick at, how are you
| |
| − | going to find a wrong note? Enter Maida Vale's corridor which stretches
| |
| − | from reception down to Warwick Avenue tube station, it seems like. All
| |
| − | we did, Delia and I took the three reels of tape out into the corridor
| |
| − | and unwound them, walked along going dum-di-dum dum-di-dum and where a
| |
| − | sticky joint was out of place, that was the bum note."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Is the power of this music something to do with our sense
| |
| − | that its elements are kind of hewn from nature?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "I think absolutely that's right. I think the fantastic
| |
| − | thing about the Doctor Who theme, almost uniquely, is that it totally
| |
| − | obscures its own technique. You listen to it and you cannot tell, by
| |
| − | listening to it, how it was done. It is obviously not played. It's
| |
| − | obviously not played on real instruments. It's obviously not performed
| |
| − | on synthesizers because it has a performance sound element to it which
| |
| − | doesn't sound performed if you see what I mean."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "It's got imperfections in it".
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "It's got lots of imperfections. It is organic. Because
| |
| − | it is cut from individual pieces of tape, it's not sequences, it's not
| |
| − | quantised, it's not perfect in pitch, it's not perfect in timing, it
| |
| − | just is, and it;s fantastic and it's unique and it still stands up."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "It's really become a musical icon. I'd say it's built
| |
| − | in to every musician's psyche, every person's. It's built in to our
| |
| − | subconscious."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "So, Mark, you're going to deconstruct the Doctor Who theme
| |
| − | for us and show us the elements from which it's composed."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "OK. There are two sounds which make up the bass. One of
| |
| − | them is this, which is a kind of swoop organ sound which gives the grace
| |
| − | notes of the bass line
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1884: swoop organ sound''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "And then there's the plucked string sound which is what
| |
| − | you normally think of as being the bass line"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1896: Plucked string sound''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "That's a sampled string pluck and every so often you can
| |
| − | hear very subliminally a suboctave which is being mixed in to emphasize
| |
| − | certain notes and when you mix those two together you get the bass line
| |
| − | that we're all familiar with.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1920: bass line''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "Then there's the melody sound which is all the
| |
| − | manually-operated swoops and individual notes of the wobbulator cut
| |
| − | together there's couple of different elements overlaid here, put through
| |
| − | delay and echo to glue it all together.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1941: melody sound''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "Added to that there are some higher harmonics which emphasize
| |
| − | the higher partials"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1956: Higher harmonics of melody''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "And again you can mix those two together"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''1966: Melody with higher harmonics''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "What's that sound that we heard then?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "We think it was probably this strange mouth organy
| |
| − | thing that had keys on it, 'Melodica' I think they called it, and the
| |
| − | combination of the two actually makes it sound as if there's an acoustic.
| |
| − | I think that's one of the really incredible things about the Doctor Who
| |
| − | theme: it was all electronic but it sounds as if it's got an acoustic."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "The rhythm is provided by a couple of tracks of filtered
| |
| − | white noise."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2001: Filtered white noise''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "This was, in the graphics: the clouds seem to come
| |
| − | towards you."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Yes. We were trying, I remember now, we were trying to give
| |
| − | it a sort of doppler effect. As it comes towards you the pitch goes up,
| |
| − | the goes behind you. One of those tracks is forward so you get a sort of
| |
| − | pssss noise with a hiss on it and the other one was reversed so it went
| |
| − | ssssp ssssp ssssp but then we put echo on that as well so you didn't
| |
| − | get any sort of hard drop-off ends."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2041: sssp ppps sounds''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "And then we can slowly build it up from the bass line
| |
| − | track by track."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2050: bass, then + white noise, then + harmonics, then plus melody''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "It's just like being in a room with Delia, isn't it? It
| |
| − | really is."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2091: The Delaware version of the Doctor Who theme.''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "Every time a new producer came or new director came they wanted
| |
| − | to tart up the title music and they wanted to put an extra two bars here,
| |
| − | put some extra feedback on the high frequencies, they kept on tarting
| |
| − | it up out of existence. I was really very shocked with what I had to do
| |
| − | in the course of so-called duty."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Brian, I think you need to comment on this on this spirit of
| |
| − | resistance that Delia is showing here to being asked to kind of tinker
| |
| − | with what we all consider a pretty perfect creation."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "Delia had uttered sheer perfection with it. She absolutely
| |
| − | detested any alterations. The one she really detested was the awful
| |
| − | one we did on the Delaware just to see if we could do it."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2151: Twangy noises''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "It was my idea and, as I said, it's one of those sort
| |
| − | of ideas that should have been strangled at birth because we were all
| |
| − | embarrassed by how it ended up. Delia utterly disowned it just as she
| |
| − | disapproved of the even later versions of the theme apart from Peter
| |
| − | Howell's. It was, for her, an act of sacrilege to tinker with what she
| |
| − | had so carefully created and Ron had so carefully written."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Well, the Doctor Who theme was just the tip of a very large
| |
| − | iceberg of Delia's work. Somewhere below the waves is 'Blue Veils and
| |
| − | Golden Sands'."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2192: Most of "[[Blue Veils and Golden Sands]]"''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "What are the elements that she used in that piece of music?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "The lampshade is the kind of bell-like tone, the singing-like
| |
| − | sound is Delia's voice massively filtered and changed in pitch and
| |
| − | [recartons?] were sequenced on tape." (dreamily:) "Raw tones mixed up
| |
| − | all on separate pieces of tape and mixed together."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "This is one of her great pieces, really, this, isn't it?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Yes, but you've all missed the point. What you've just
| |
| − | heard is the sound of a mirage."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "It was called 'The Last Caravans' and it was part of 'The
| |
| − | World About Us' series for television.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Certainly it conjured up empty spaces and that little top
| |
| − | of the dune where suddenly all the sand goes swswssswss of the top,
| |
| − | you know, sails across, and out of it comes these plodding camel feet."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "In the mid sixties Delia collaborated with the poet Barry
| |
| − | Bermange on a sequence of radio programmes called 'Inventions for
| |
| − | Radio'. Here she's created an ambient sound to back his recording of
| |
| − | real people discussing the onset of old age."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2318-2454: Part of [[The Evenings of Certain Lives]]: "Time" (presenter talks over the top
| |
| − | of the first sound).''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "This is radio at its most pure"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "I think it's absolutely fantastic. The voices, the editing is
| |
| − | stunning, the way it's all put together and the backing fits it totally
| |
| − | like a glove. It is that slow time dragging opening then the voice comes
| |
| − | in over the top of it and you feel it drags a bit and then suddenly it
| |
| − | speeds up and the voice speeds up and they start talking about timing
| |
| − | and the way the backing just lifts you and pulls you through it."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "But also for us, listening to this years onward it's like
| |
| − | listening in on a seance or something. These people seem like ghosts.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Not when you're my age, they don't! (General laughter).
| |
| − | Listening to that again, and I did hear a lot of while Delia and
| |
| − | Barry were working on it, it's suddenly occurred to me. I think I
| |
| − | know what the sound is meant to be behind that, apart from the obvious
| |
| − | heartbeat. I think it's a sort of a very, very slow motion Westminster
| |
| − | chime. Not the actual ding-dong ding-dong phrase but the mellowness of
| |
| − | the chiming of the notes. It's just like a big grandfather clock, sort
| |
| − | of going very, very slowly and time's passing away. I never thought of
| |
| − | it that way before."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "No, I hadn't, but you're quite right."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "You see, Delia can get a rhythm out of the phraseology of
| |
| − | the speech. Barry Bermange would never have said 'Let's repeat certain
| |
| − | phrases here and there.' Delia picked up on each of those characters'
| |
| − | own rhythms and, you know, juxtaposed them to give her the argument
| |
| − | about - it goes faster, then 'I don't think about time'."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson (or Presenter?):''' "So she turned the voices of those people
| |
| − | into music in the way that she did with the sound of something hitting
| |
| − | a lampshade."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Exactly, exactly! Yes, yes, yeah."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2560: Two chords, presumably from the same piece.''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "In 1971 Delia was asked to create the music for the centenary
| |
| − | of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, the I.E.E."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "I began by interpreting the actual letters, I.E.E. one hundred,
| |
| − | in two different ways. The first one in a morse code version using the
| |
| − | morse for I.E.E.100. This I found extremely dull, rhythmically, and so I
| |
| − | decided to use the full stops in between the I and the two E's because
| |
| − | full stop has a nice sound to it: it goes di-dah di-dah di-dah."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2614: Start of [[I.E.E.100]]''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2627:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "I wanted to have, as well as a rhythmic motive, to have musical
| |
| − | motive running throughout the whole piece and so I interpreted the letters
| |
| − | again into musical terms. 'I' becomes B, the 'E' remains and 100 I've
| |
| − | used in the roman form of C."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2652: Another clip of [[I.E.E.100]]''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "This is high theory, this, isn't it? We were talking about
| |
| − | her analytical interest; this is maths transposed into music."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "Music ''is'' maths. They're one and the same. Music is
| |
| − | basically can all be turned into simple mathematics and it's really just
| |
| − | a fluke of history as amazing as evolution that the perfect tuning is
| |
| − | so close to equal tempered tuning that you hardly notice the difference."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2695: Clip of [[I.E.E.100]] melody on a single oscillator with portamento.''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "But there you can hear Delia describing her composition
| |
| − | process, her thought process in incredible details and how every aspect
| |
| − | of the composition from rhytm to pitch to tone colour to timbre is all
| |
| − | mathematically derived. She's working everything out. And then, as she
| |
| − | says, the aim is to produce something very simple and sweet-sounding
| |
| − | and that was Delia all over: start with this incredible analysis, a very
| |
| − | complicated thought process and then produce something utterly bewitching
| |
| − | and utterly beguiling and utterly simple."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "One of the real rarities in the archive collection is
| |
| − | a recording that demonstrates how Delia generated and shaped the
| |
| − | sounds from which she built her music. This is the master tape we're
| |
| − | going to listen to now, the master tape for her work on the programme
| |
| − | 'Tutankhamun's Egypt'."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2751:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "Egypt, lot one. Er, this is the master opening titles,
| |
| − | the final version. Thirty seconds approximately with tail to go into
| |
| − | museum. Ok, coming up."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2767: Opening titles for [[Tutankhamun's Egypt]]''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2790:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Presenter talks over the tail of the track:''' "When we heard there
| |
| − | was Delia's recorded notes to the producer about these sounds that she
| |
| − | was creating. Was that a common practice, to do this kind of thing?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' If you had specific plans of exactly where it went, you
| |
| − | didn't have time to talk to the producer and I think at that time Delia
| |
| − | would be lagging behind the process of putting the programme together
| |
| − | so the tapes would have been rushed over by cab, so she would put on
| |
| − | it where it was to go because she wouldn't have time to edit it and she
| |
| − | wouldn't have time to communicate exactly where it was in the picture.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2826:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "This is M1 of Egypt programme one which goes from zero
| |
| − | feet to one hundred and fifty-five."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "What does it tell us about her working practice that we have
| |
| − | this tape with her voice recorded on it in that way?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Again, she's communicating very directly in sound whereas
| |
| − | perhaps most of would write notes. She's wanting to communicate
| |
| − | immediately and directly."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Vorhaus:''' "But also that it was rushed. She was finishing something
| |
| − | very very late on and it had to go over and probably go on that afternoon."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2857:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "In fact there is rather more than you need here, about
| |
| − | two and a half minutes. Maybe you'd like to fit it, erm, where it fits."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2866: More trumpeting from [[Tutankhamun's Egypt]]''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Well, the archive also contains many of the raw elements
| |
| − | of Delia's work, so what we're going to do now is hear an extract from
| |
| − | the completed version of a piece called 'The Dance' from a Schools'
| |
| − | programme with the title 'Noah'."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2888: Start of '[[Dance from Noah]]' ''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2908:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "And now let's listen to some of the raw tracks that
| |
| − | were combined to make that final tune."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2912: Flute/pipe melody''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2923: Plucked counterpoint''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2927: Tenor counterpoint''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2938: Bass''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "Well, it's the individual building blocks and it's the way
| |
| − | that electronic music and popular music is put together as a matter of
| |
| − | course anyway, track by track. In these days, as we said with the Doctor
| |
| − | Who theme, there were no multitrack recorders so everything was a separate
| |
| − | strip of tape and then manually synchronised at the end. But again,
| |
| − | it was a pioneering use of the technology that was available, to create
| |
| − | virtual multitracks at the time so that one person could put together an
| |
| − | entire piece - a single person orchestration one-man band type of thing."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "One of the elements of the Dance from Noah has a very
| |
| − | strange quality to it. It was composed in the late sixties, we know,
| |
| − | but it sounds like something that could be danced to in a club right now."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''2987: Rhythm track from '[[Dance from Noah]]' ''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "David Butler from Manchester University."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Butler:''' "When the archive was first announced in July 2008, several
| |
| − | short extracts from the archive were played on the BBC on 'P.M.' and the
| |
| − | one that got the most astonishing reaction was the extract we played
| |
| − | of the rhythm track of the Dance from Noah. Within twenty four hours
| |
| − | we were inundated with emails from all around the world as well as the
| |
| − | reaction from the media on P.M. itself. They played the piece to Paul
| |
| − | Hartnoll of Orbital."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "Quite amazing, actually, because that could be coming out next
| |
| − | week on Warp records. Yes, it sounds sort of old but it could be
| |
| − | something off of a recent Walltech(?) record or something like that."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''David Butler:''' "In America there's a forum about digital music and there
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| − | was somebody posting on there and they called 'hoax' and believed that
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| − | this thing couldn't possibly have been done in 1971, that the technology
| |
| − | wasn't available, that Delia wasn't working in that style or whatever and so
| |
| − | I went on there and explained: "No, it's genuine, it's legitimate." So
| |
| − | that particular piece seems to have sent shock waves around the
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| − | electronic music community and I think you can hear why."
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| − |
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| − | '''Presenter:''' "There's still more to be recovered from this treasure box of
| |
| − | cassettes and reels of magnetic tape. The world of Delia Derbyshire is
| |
| − | not yet mapped and who knows what strange landscapes remain to be
| |
| − | discovered?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''3100: Something from [[Electrosonic]]... which piece?''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Over the next few years the University of Manchester will
| |
| − | continue to restore and catalogue Delia's work. Hopefully it will be
| |
| − | possible to make its secrets available to students for the first time.
| |
| − | And then the blue veil will be lifted and that music, that strange
| |
| − | music which defies the listener to say when or where or how it was made
| |
| − | will be where it belongs: in the air, moving through time and space and
| |
| − | I think that would surely would have pleased her."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "I think she would think it simultaneously rather wonderful
| |
| − | and rather funny. I think she'd be tickled pink but also extraordinarily
| |
| − | amused that people were poring over it and that she had become this
| |
| − | legendary Delia Derbyshire."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "No, it's in exxamining this enigma I'm sure people have
| |
| − | thought with getting back to her most famous of infamous piece, how
| |
| − | would she feel about a trace of her bein included in the modern
| |
| − | signature tune? Now, there's a little bit of me, knowing Delia, that
| |
| − | says she'd hate it but there's another piece of me that says, well,
| |
| − | sectetly she'd have a little smile about it, but then she'd sit down and
| |
| − | analyse why she felt that way as well because that's what she was."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "But does she remain an enigma to you?"
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "Yes. I've tried to work out throughout the whole of my life
| |
| − | and my friendship with her what it was that attracted me and drove me
| |
| − | mad at the same time and I've never really found a satisfactory answer.
| |
| − | It was almost as if she was retreating over a very, very long time and
| |
| − | Delia never unpacked. From the moment she left Clifton Villas I don't
| |
| − | think she ever unpacked a single case, a box or anything and that's why
| |
| − | the archive is there: because she never unpacked it."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Dick Mills:''' "It's almost as though her mind was always in transit, which
| |
| − | gets me back to: she enjoyed the journey rather than the destination."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Brian Hodgson:''' "It would be so nice if she could be up there listening to
| |
| − | hear you doing this thing. She would be so chuffed."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Mark Ayres:''' "So thrilled."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''3248:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "I did all sorts of things I was told I couldn't do and,
| |
| − | yes, I think I've always been an independent thinker but I must say that
| |
| − | I go back to first principles when it comes to music. I go back to the
| |
| − | Greeks and the original, simple harmonic series. I think that's a
| |
| − | very healthy thing to do for anyone."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | '''Presenter:''' "Delia Derbyshire *was* a rebel. She was spiky. She was
| |
| − | uncompromising. She was a utopian who believed that creative freedom was
| |
| − | ore important than getting work. That idealism didn't always make life
| |
| − | easy for her but it's the reason why at least one of her works has
| |
| − | achieved a kind of immortality. She might have hated what some people
| |
| − | did to that strange, thrumming tune she conjured in the endless corridor
| |
| − | at Maida Vale Studios but what she imported into it remains
| |
| − | indestructible. When the first tie machine is built and its inventor
| |
| − | pulls the lever and goes speeding off into the unknown, who knows what
| |
| − | kind of sound will fill her ears? Until that moment, Delia Derbyshire's
| |
| − | work is the nearest we will get to going on an adventure in time and
| |
| − | space."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''3322:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Delia:''' "(Laughs) Well, anyway, you can hear I'm tickled pink."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Doctor Who end credits theme with cliffhanger scream.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''3380:''<BR>
| |
| − | '''Announcer:''' "Sculptress of Sound: the lost works of Delia Derbyshire" was
| |
| − | presented by Matthew Sweet, it was produced by Phil College and was a
| |
| − | Made in Manchester production for BBC Radio Four."
| |
| − |
| |
| − | ''3390: end''
| |
| − |
| |
| − | =Availability=
| |
| − | * First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 27th March 2010.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl2ky ''Sculptress of Sound''] on bbc.co.uk</ref>
| |
| − | * [http://huffduffer.com/hickensian/16835 ''The Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire'' at huffduffer]
| |
| − | * [[File:Sculptress of Sound.torrent]]
| |
| − | * [[File:Archive on 4 - Sculptress of Sound - The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire.torrent]]
| |
| − | =References=
| |
| − | <references/>
| |
| − |
| |
| − | [[Category:Documentary]]
| |
