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| * [[Dick Mills]] in issue 198, 14th April 1993 | | * [[Dick Mills]] in issue 198, 14th April 1993 |
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| The interviewer is very discreet and almost all of the article consists of a direct transcription of her words. | | The interviewer is very discreet and almost all of the article consists of a direct transcription of Delia's words. |
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| =Transcript= | | =Transcript= |
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| <B>Delia Derbyshire made an impact upon the British music industry, by | | <B>Delia Derbyshire made an impact upon the British music industry, by |
| proving that electronic music could not only work within the context of | | proving that electronic music could not only work within the context of |
| radio and television, but could stand as highly creative and beautiful | | radio and television, but could sta |
| music in its own right. Derbyshire is better known to ''Who'' fans as the
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| person who realised Ron Grainer's legendary score for the ''Doctor Who''
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| title sequence. The unreal quality of her ''[[Doctor Who]]'' music proved so
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| successful that it introduced the programme for seventeen years.
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| In 1963, the general public had never experienced a piece of music like
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| it - there was not one element of the signature tune that was performed
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| in real time. Perhaps that is why the original ''Doctor Who'' title music
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| is still heralded as the best version, thirty years after it was first
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| heard. With the knowledge that women often found it difficult to pursue
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| a career in the pre-Women's Lib era of the Fifties and Sixties. I asked
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| Derbyshire to explain how she had succeeded where so many had failed.</B>
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| | |
| "At school I wasn't allowed to study music. I studied mathematics,
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| theoretical mechanics and physics. The most exciting part of physics was
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| acoustics, although unfortunately my teacher didn't share my enthusiasm!
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| So I was forced to teach myself. I learnt about acoustics and indulged
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| my passion for music away from school. Later, I won a scholarship to
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| Cambridge reading mathematics. That was a strange year, one third of my
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| fellow students gave the course up and so I was given the opportunity of
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| changing to another subject. Well I wanted to do music; to me that was a
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| forbidden paradise. The eventually realised that I had a natural
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| instinct for music and allowed me to enter the course.
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| "Radio had a very big influence over me. It was so important during the
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| Second World War. Life was really very basic at that time and radio
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| provided an essential escape and a greatly valued education. That
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| influence stayed with me throughout my time at Cambridge. There were
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| only a few women at the University at that time and so we were treated
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| terribly. But I had the solace of my music. The musicians hated
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| acoustics and the theory of sound, but when we studied that I was in my
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| element. I found myself drifting away from the syllabus to learn about
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| mediaeval and modern music. That didn't go down too well with my tutors.
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| They wanted me to study the period 1650 to 1900, but it bored me. So I
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| didn't do too well there!"
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| | |
| <B>I asked her to explain how she had turned her ambition to work at the
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| BBC into a reality.</B>
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| "Because radio was so important to me I knew that I wanted to work at
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| the BBC. Before I joined I went straight abroad with the Pembroke
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| University Players doing sound effects for ''Julius Caesar''. I had such
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| fun, I just didn't want to come back to England! Eventually the BBC
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| wrote to me and I went along for an interview. I impressed the
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| interviewers and eventually became a studio manager. That was only just
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| after the Radiophonic Workshop had started, but I had no idea how easy
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| it was to get there. I was really happy as a studio manager until I
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| realised that I could move to the Workshop and before I had even
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| finished asking my boss for a transfer, he had his hand on the
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| telephone. It turned out that I was the first person who had actually
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| ''asked'' to go there. Previously people had been sent, usually
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| unwillingly, for a six month attachment. I was allowed to stay longer
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| and became the most junior person there, even though I was the most
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| highly qualified.
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| "I joined in 1962 and the first thing that I did was to go off and tour
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| around our European colleagues' studios like the ORTF
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| [Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française at Radio France]
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| to see how they worked. I was so brave - just marching in like that! It
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| wasn't long until I returned and began work on ''Doctor Who''. I had only
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| done one other television programme before that called ''Time On Our Hands'',
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| using beautiful abstract electronic sounds. So I was very inexperienced,
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| but making something from nothing was my secret."
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| | |
| | |
| <BIG><B>THE BEGINNING</B></BIG>
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| <B>Delia Derbyshire was involved with ''Doctor Who'' almost from the very
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| start.</B>
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| | |
| "Verity Lambert, the first producer, had just come over from ITV. She
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| struck me as very high powered even then. She and the initial director
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| Waris Hussein came to see Desmond Briscoe, the Organiser of the Workshop
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| at that time and my boss. They said 'We've got a pilot of four episodes
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| for a programme called ''Doctor Who'', can you do some music?' The boss
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| suggested Ron Grainer should compose the score. The title sequence was
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| done first, so Ron had a chance to see it before he created his score.
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| He watched the opening graphics and did all of the timing with a stop
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| watch. It was when Verity and Waris brought in the title graphics to
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| show us that I met Ron for the first time. He was a lovely Australian.
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| What a talent!"
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| | |
| <B>How were the sounds physically created for the Doctor Who signature
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| tune?</B>
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| "On that occasion I worked with [[Dick Mills]]. The ''Doctor Who'' music was
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| quite a project. First of all it was a matter of translating notes on
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| the page into cycles per second. Then translating the duration of notes
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| into inches of tape at fifteen inches per second. We had to work out
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| how on earth we could do the sounds. The swoops, the rising notes of the
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| tune, were difficult. We used some old valve oscillators to generate the
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| initial sound. I was dead into using as much electronic sound as
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| possible. The boss was on record as saying that it was impossible to
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| make a beautiful sound electronically and it was my pleasure to prove
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| him wrong. I'm sure that Ron expected that oscillator sound. The swoops
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| were done and recorded at half speed. There was a lot of tedious work
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| involved, but not one thing was done in real time. One didn't know where
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| one was going, so it was a great journey of discovery.
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| "At that time there weren't two machines that ran at exactly the same
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| speed, so synchronising soundtracks became very complicated. Our main
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| recording machines were the [[BTR2]] and the [[TR90]], both of which ran at
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| fifteen inches per second. There were two other machines the [[Ferrograph]]
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| and the [[Reflectograph]]. Both of these machines ran at seven point five
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| inches per second: half normal speed. It was very hit and miss, in fact
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| it was a nightmare! That's why I'm so fond of the original version of
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| the ''Doctor Who'' title music, because of the way it's never quite in
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| synch. It's almost as though there's one dimension of time dragging
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| against another. The bassline works like two notes together. The sounds
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| that accompany the 'time clouds' in the titles were white noise,
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| generated in part by the [[Wobbulator]]. That was a wonderful piece of
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| test equipment, we often used it to treat sounds and it worked so well
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| on ''Doctor Who''."
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| | |
| <B>The original ''Doctor Who'' theme music was created using a highly
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| innovative technique. I asked Derbyshire if she realised, at that time,
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| that she was creating something revolutionary?</B>
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| "Oh yeah! We had to wait until the final mix to hear it but - Oh golly! - I
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| just remembered being so delighted when it all came together. Because it
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| was generated by making short sounds on tiny bits of tape we didn't even
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| know if it would work. When I had done the various bits I had a feel for
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| how it would sound, but we didn't expect it to sounds ''so'' good. I was
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| thrilled to bits when we did the first mix. I wanted to tell everyone!
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| In those days people were so cynical about electronic music and so
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| ''Doctor Who'' was my private delight. It proved them all wrong. It's not
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| the fact that it was done well that's important, it's the fact that it
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| was done at all. But it was Ron's genius that made the tune a success.
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| "After that first mix we had Verity and Ron over. We played it to them
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| and Ron just stood there and chuckled! He was so pleased. He said, 'I
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| can't believe you've been able to do this! I want you to have half of my
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| royalties.' Unfortunately that wasn't allowed. Ron had intended to book
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| a band to go behind what I'd done. But he was so delighted with what
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| we'd created that he insisted on leaving it intact. Verity liked the
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| music but wasn't sure that it sounded right so she had us add on an
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| extra line. In fact we had many requests for changes to the music from
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| the various producers of the programme, so we cut it up and added a bit
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| of glitter. Oh, it was mutilated! I did some of that, adding another two
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| bars and sounds and so on. I hated doing it.
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| "I remember an orchestral version came out very soon after the show
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| began, I think it was done by Eric Winston and his Orchestra. He had
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| someone at the back of the orchestra with an oscillator doing the swoops
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| in real time. It sounded like some inane creature wobbling the
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| oscillator, desperately trying to sound musical. I remember hte
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| disc-jockey David Jacobs picked it as his record of the month. I was
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| disgusted!
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| <BIG><B>FAME</B></BIG>
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| "''Doctor Who'' seems to be my only label. I remember being in a flat in
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| summertime, with the sounds of the ''Doctor Who'' swoops drifting through
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| the open windows. That was lovely. It thrilled me to bits. God bless [[Ron
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| Grainer]]. I was devastated when I heard of his death. He created so many
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| scores like ''Steptoe and Son'', ''Man in a Suitcase'', ''The Prisoner'' and
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| heaps of others including film scores. He was so talented. It was almost
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| disastrous when he began to lose his sight. He was quite an ill man. It
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| was cancer that took him in the end. He worked very hard, I miss him."
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| <B>Realising how fondly she remembered Ron Grainer I asked her of she felt
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| that subsequent versions of Ron's score had been true to his intentions.</B>
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| "[[Peter Howell]] is brilliant! I know [[Brian Hodgson]] felt that Peter's
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| version was superb. I think Peter is very talented, his is more accurate
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| to Ron's ''score'' than mine. The original is lovely, but Peter brought
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| something new into Ron's work. I was really upset about the more recent
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| versions. I hated them! They just didn't follow the tune. I think Ron
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| would have been disgusted with them."
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| <B>How did some of Derbyshire's music concrete come to be used as stock
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| music on the Pertwee story ''Inferno''?</B>
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| "News to me! I was still at the Workshop then. I'm sure nobody told me
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| that it was being used. It often happens that my music is used without
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| my knowledge. I heard some of my music on the radio last year but I
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| didn't get a credit. Sometimes when people use my music they change its
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| name. For example, a few years ago I heard my music on <I>The Hitch
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| Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy</I>. I wrote to the Producer who said ‘Yeah,
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| it's called <I>Dreaming</I>'. I've never done ''anything'' called that. They
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| had picked out a piece which I wrote for a programme about the Aztec and
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| Mayan civilisations. They put a new title on it and used it behind Peter
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| Jones voice. Such is life!"
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| "Even after the success of ''Doctor Who'' was established, I still had to
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| fight prejudice against electronic music. But I suppose that the Workshop
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| did influence the pop world. I was visited by Paul McCartney. In fact we
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| lent his band, Wings, some speakers because theirs weren't good enough.
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| I remember some crazy antics with Pink Floyd. Yeah they did want to learn
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| our secrets. But there was still a lot of resistance to my work at the
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| BBC. I remember bounding into the canteen and saying to my boss 'This
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| producer's just listened to my music and he's going to use it!' His
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| reply was 'You call that stuff music?!' I think that's why I was asked
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| to take over the Workshop quite early on, but I wanted to do the actual
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| stuff, to be hands on. I was desperately keen on creating new sounds. I
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| could not have stood all of the bureaucracy."
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| <B>What does Delia Derbyshire think of the pioneering sound effects work of
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| Brian Hodgson and Dick Mills in the Sixties and Seventies?</B>
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| "They have a talent for making something out of nothing, using
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| ingenuity. The magic is to get sounds that are just lifted far enough
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| away from reality. It's not the real sound of a volcano, it's not a real
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| spaceship, it's like our perception of those sounds but different. They
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| had to imagine sounds and make them a reality with very little
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| equipment. Brian used to get me in to listen to some of his ''Doctor Who''
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| voice treatments on things like the early Cybermen, to see if I could
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| understand what they were saying. Oh golly, sometimes he had to go back a
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| notch because he had taken the voices too far away from reality. If ever
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| I wanted a big dramatic sound he would lend it to me. They are a good
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| pair, they work so well together. The Workshop wouldn't exist without
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| them!"
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| <B>Many people in the music industry have called Delia Derbyshire a unique
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| talent. I wondered how she felt about this label.</B>
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| "I'm not! I have certain way of analysing sound in my mind and creating
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| a specific sound from scratch, which is unusual. I've never wanted to be
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| on the inside of the music world, I've always wanted to be on the
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| fringe. What I hate is the way it went eventually, just pressing a
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| button to generate a sound. Voltage control synthesisers were the great
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| new flavour of the age in the early Seventies. It was being used more
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| like a glorified electric organ. I don't like the idea of replacing a
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| musician with presets."
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| <B>It is obvious that her music means everything to Delia Derbyshire. I
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| asked her to explain why she had left the BBC after only ten years into
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| her career as a composer.</B>
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| "I ended up working during the night. I was fed up with the petty
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| bureaucracy at the BBC during the daytime. I remember one occasion when
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| they interrupted my work just to query a sixpence claim for a bus
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| journey! But the main reason for working at night was that I could plug
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| equipment through from all of the rooms in the Workshop into my room. I
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| would always have to beg for equipment during the day. But at night I
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| could just do it all myself. It was a very great physical strain. I
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| couldn't see myself going on working all night, every night for the rest
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| of my career. I gave my whole life to my music. The Workshop was a
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| creative treadmill. I was trying to do an original sound for every
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| programme. The only way to survive was to have a library of sounds. But
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| I wanted at least one brilliant creative idea for each programme. That's
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| why I worked for so long at night. I was a strange person as far as the
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| night porters were concerned. I finally left the Workshop in 1973. I
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| regard life as a joke, a game, so I don't have any bitterness. I made my
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| own choices.
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| "The ''Doctor Who'' music was the only time in my whole career that I
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| realised someone else's score for television. Thereafter I did my own
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| scores for hundreds of television and radio programmes. I loved creating
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| the score for the TV programme ''[[The Long Polar Walk]]'', I had to get the
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| feeling of trudging through snow. I worked all night on that one, until
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| the cleaners came in. I remember using one of them as a guinea-pig on
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| that track. I asked her how my music made her feel and she said, 'Oh
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| really shivery!' I knew I'd succeeded. I created the music for a TV
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| series called ''[[Great Zoos of the World]]''. The producer called the boss
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| and said, 'I want some music made from animal noises.' The boss replied
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| 'That's impossible! But if it's impossible, Delia can do it!' i sorted a
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| tape of twenty-four animal noises into rhythmic ones and tuneful ones
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| and they put it all together. I was very proud of that. The most
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| successful TV title music that I've composed is probably ''[[Chronicle]]''."
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| <B>Finally, I wondered if Derbyshire is pleased that she contributed
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| towards ''Doctor Who's'' longevity?</B>
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| "Yes! I'm delighted that ''Doctor Who'' is still so incredibly popular.
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| Now that Ron has gone, I feel that ''Doctor Who'' is my baby and I have
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| single-parent responsibility for it. If the programme were reborn, I
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| would dearly like to be its midwife."
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| =References=
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| <references/>
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| [[Category:Article]]
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| [[Category:Interview]]
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