"This optoelectronic hurdy-gurdy was commission by the Acces(s) Festival, Pau France in October 2012.
TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions, such as the Light-Tone Organ (Edwin Emil Welte, 1936 Germany), the ANS Synthesizer (Evgeny Murzin, 1958 USSR), and the Oramics system (Daphne Oram, 1959 UK). Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry similar to that used in 16 & 35mm motion picture projectors to produce sound.
The TONEWHEELS Hurdy-Gurdy presented at Acces(s) is not an "interactive" artwork in the common sense. While it does not reward the impatient museum visitor with flashing lights and noises at the simple touch of the button, it does invite participation in the process of technological music creation. Although it first appears to be a very traditional instrument known to many folk-music cultures, it functions in a very different way which can only be discovered by playing it.
The artist would like to thank Tobias Traub of Oroborus Customs e.K. and Carlo Crovato for their invaluable assistance in creating this instrument. Circuits designed by Jessica Rylan and Eric Archer are also used within the system.
More information on this project can be found at http://macumbista.net/?p=3020"
This one in via Scott, via Bleep: "Bleep's guide to Electronic Music is a 55 track compilation charting the historical emergence of electronic music by looking at landmark tracks from the 1930s up to present day.
Our aim with this selection of music is to show the length and breadth of the medium, providing a snapshot of the genres forms and styles, and the development of the artform. Whilst there are omissions and compromises that we have had to make, we hope that we achieve our aims and we do some justice to the variety of music that we love.
This compilation developed out of a project to create a Facebook timeline charting the development of electronic music from the late 19th Century until now."
The collection begins with Olivier Messiaen's Oraison from 1937 performed on Ondes Martenot & Theremin (you can find the original full track previously posted here and a beautiful cover on Buchla 200e and Haken Continuum from the late Richard Lainhart here):
"Originally composed by Olivier Messiaen, this beautiful and contemplative piece of music is a monumental moment in electronic music. Argued to be the first piece of purely electronic music written expressly for live performance on the Ondes Martenot, an instrument closely related to the Theremin."
The collection ends with James Blake's CMYK"
"At just 21 years old, London producer, James Blake releases on newly relaunched R&S Records.
At its core 'CMYK' is forged from a myriad of 90's R&B samples (Aaliyah, Kelis) their voices mangled, barely recognisable and thrown into a red-eyed fire of DSP and hours spent in the waveforms."
And the runner-ups:
"We would also like to congratulate Atomic Shadow with his second place & Obe:lus for coming third. And a special mention for Astrogarage and The Audible Smile who also received excellent reviews from our star judges."
You might recognize Automic Shadow from previous posts here on MATRIXSYNTH, including the recently announcedHollow Sun Records. Note the winning track was selected by none other than Brian Eno, DJ Spooky and The Wire.
In the 1960s, Daphne Oram developed a ground-breaking music technique she called ‘Oramics’. With her home-built ‘Oramics Machine’, Daphne made music for TV shows and commercials, but she dreamt of broadcasting live Oramics concerts through a network of fibreoptic cables, an idea that sounded like science fiction at the time.
This ambition, so typical of that era of boundless optimism for science and technology, was paralleled in the use of satellites to broadcast Our World on 25 June 1967, the very first television production performed and broadcast live from studios across the world.
Imagine that the producer of Our World, the 1967 TV programme that first linked the world via satellites, had commissioned Daphne Oram, the pioneer of electronica, to make its soundtrack.
Now you have the chance to make that imagined track a reality, using samples from the Daphne Oram Archive, courtesy of our friends at Soundcloud; Goldsmiths,University of London; Sound and Music; Boomkat; and the Daphne Oram Trust.
You don’t have to limit yourself to 1960s style. Use the stems to make the piece in whatever genre you fancy.
Our winning track will be selected by our judges Brian Eno, DJ Spooky and The Wire."
Daphne Oram documentary - Wee Have Also Sound-Houses
YouTube Uploaded by straypixel on Jan 6, 2012
"To mark the 50th anniversary in 2008 of the creation of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the programme examines the life and legacy of one of the great pioneers of British electronic music - the Workshop's co-founder Daphne Oram.
As a child in the 1930s, Oram dreamed of a way to turn drawn shapes into sound, and she dedicated her life to realising that goal. Her Oramics machine anticipated the synthesiser by more than a decade, and with it she produced a number of internationally-performed works for the cinema, concert hall and theatre.
Daphne Oram was among the very first composers of electronic music in Britain and her legacy is the dominance of that soundworld in our culture today.
Introduced by Robert Moreby
Produced by Ian Chambers
TX BBC Radio 3, Sun 3 Aug 2008 21:45"
Early BBC radiophonics: Private Dreams and Public Nightmares (1957)
YouTube Uploaded by straypixel on Jan 8, 2012
"An early BBC experiment in radiophonic sound, predating the establishment of the Radiophonic Workshop, created by Frederick Bradnum and Daphne Oram (pictured) and produced by Donald McWhinnie.
TX BBC Third Programme, 07/10/1957.
McWhinnie's spoken introduction (the work starts at 4:20):
"This programme is an experiment. An exploration. It's been put together with enormous enthusiasm and equipment designed for other purposes. The basis of it is an unlimited supply of magnetic tape, recording machine, razor blade, and some thing to stick the bits together with. And a group of technicians who think that nothing is too much trouble - provided that it works.
"You take a sound. Any sound. Record it and then change its nature by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds. Play it backwards. Add it to itself over and over again. You adjust filters, echos, acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape. By these means and many others you can create sounds which no one has ever heard before. Sounds which have indefinable and unique qualities of their own. A vast and subtle symphony can be composed from the noise of a pin dropping. In fact one of the most vibrant and elemental sounding noises in tonight's programme started life as an extremely tinny cowbell.
"It's a sort of modern magic. Many of you may be familiar with it. They've been exploiting it on the continent for years. But strangely enough we've held aloof. Partly from distrust. Is it simply a new toy? Partly through complacency. Ignorance too. We're saying at last that we think there's some thing in it. But we aren't calling it 'musique concrète'. In fact we've decided not to use the word music at all. Some musicians believe that it can become an art form itself. Others are sceptical. That's not our immediate concern. We're interested in its application to radio writing - dramatic or poetic - adding a new dimension. A form that is essentially radio.
'Properly used, radiophonic effects have no relationship with any existing sound. They're free of irrelevent associations. They have an emotional life of their own. And they could be a new and invaluable strand in the texture of radio and theatre and cinema and television.'"
"Daphne Oram, founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, died in 2003 leaving a colossal archive of reel-to-reel tapes and documents behind. This important collection of material eventually made its way to Goldsmiths College, London, who have been administering it on behalf of the Daphne Oram Trust for the last few years. The collection holds over 400 tapes made by Oram during her lifetime, and 211 of those have been archived and catalogued by the college so far."
"Sonic sculpture for the Museum of Science remix content, assembled from the original Oram tracks with two additions. One used vintage sine wave generators and effects pedals, recorded in real time. The second took one of the stems and ran it through a tape echo pedal where the sound was 'played' by changing the feedback and other controls in real time. The other parts were reversed, slowed down, chopped up and pitched and arranged just as they did in the days of tape recorders and scissors. Despite the advantage of doing the editing with a computer it still took about two weeks to get the composition in order."
"A short piece featuring Hp sine wave generators, tape loops and ring modulators. re-mixed and produced by Steve Howell at Hollow Sun."
via Atomic Shadow:
"Entitled 'Mid Century Electronica' the piece made use of my dusty, tube HP sine wave generators, tape loops and ring modulators. I am very pleased that Stephen Howell of Hollow Sun agreed to produce and re-mix the track. Any day that you can collaborate with a man who has done sound design for Peter Gabriel is an outstanding day.
Here is how Mr. Howell described the piece...
'A short piece featuring vintage, tube HP sine wave generators, tape loops and ring modulators with a photographic homage to the early pioneers of electronica.... Daphne Oram in twin set, the impish Delia Derbyshire of the early BBC Radiophonic Workshop, several tweedy boffins in their music labs, Karlheinz Stockhausen and so many others. A different age when innovation and ingenuity triumphed over the many technical limitations of the age.
Abstract music soundtrack re-mixed and produced by Stephen Howell of Hollow Sun using traditional techniques in a digital age.'
Stephen has made some really unique Kontakt instruments using samples from my vintage equipment. Check the Music Laboratory Machines section at his web site.
TriOsc, Oscillosine, and Broken all started out as samples from the Atomic Shadow lab."
See http://atomicshadow.bandcamp.com for the latest two releases by Atomic Shadow. A future album titled "Twelve Full Moons" is due shortly after the first of next year.
"The Oramics machine is the creation of Daphne Oram, the first director of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop and a central figure in the evolution of electronic music.
'Forget everything you've ever known about synthesizers. This machine has no piano keyboard or anything like that. It looks like the sort of thing that a mad inventor would make in his shed.'" [her shed - mad inventor Daphne Oram below left]
This one in via timelord. Be sure to see the Oramics label below for more.
"The Oramics Machine was developed by Daphne Oram from 1957 onwards.
'Not only is this one of the earliest forms of electronic sound synthesis, it is noteworthy for being audiovisual in nature - i.e. the composer draws onto a synchronised set of ten 35mm film strips which overlay a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical charges to control amplitude, timbre, frequency, and duration.This system was a key part of early BBC Radiophonic Workshop practice'. I wrote a post on Daphne Oram's work at Dataisnature in 2008."
"Oramics is a drawn sound technique developed by Daphne Oram in 1957. Oram's composition machine consisted of a large rectangular metal frame, providing a table-like surface traversed by ten synchronised strips of clear, sprocketed 35mm film. The musician drew shapes on the film to create a mask, which modulated the light received by photocells. Although the output from the machine was monophonic, the sounds could be added to multitrack tapes to provide more texture.
The original machine is in storage at the Science Museum in London and is expected to go on display in 2011.
This iPhone app tries to bring to life the incredible sound of the Oramics Machine. Users can draw aspects of a sound in a drawn composition on top of film reels, including the envelope, pitch, reverb, vibrato, as well control the shape of the sound by drawing a waveshape on top of a glass plate."
Free Fri 29 Jul 2011 - Sat 01 Dec 2012 at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London.
"Electronic music is everywhere, from the television that we watch to the music we listen to in clubs and even the ringtones on our mobile phones. But who created these electronic sounds? And how did electronic music develop?
The Oramics Machine is a revolutionary music synthesiser that was created in the 1960s by Daphne Oram. Daphne had a strong passion for both sound and electronics and the vision to combine the two.
It is too fragile to restore to working order, but you can use our new interactive to recreate the sounds that it made.
In October 2011 more exhibits will be added to this core display that will be co-created by people who are working with electronic music today as well as a group of Daphne’s contemporaries.
They will tell the intriguing story of how electronic sound has advanced, changed and was democratised from the 1950s through to the modern era, and they will look at how people envisioned new sounds and pushed the boundaries of what was possible. They will explore how over the years musicians have invented, altered and improved (often cheap) equipment to be able to produce these dreamt-up electronic sounds. And finally they will show how the production of electronic music has moved from purpose-built laboratories to a music studio the size of a laptop.
Find out more on the Oramics Machine Facebook page.
Oramics to Electronica is part of the Public History Project, which aims to explore how visitors understand the history of science and to develop a new collaborative approach to developing exhibitions. This is a novel type of exhibition for the Science Museum, filled with objects that will fascinate enthusiasts, families and adults alike."
"Testing the Oramics Machine iPhone App which will be released very soon! Also look forward to the Interactive Exhibit as part of the special exhibition on Daphne Oram in the Science Museum of London during the Fall."
"A brief glimpse of Daphne Oram's pioneering and unique 'Oramics' synthesiser, designed in 1957 after she left the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop to pursue the project.
The machine, recently acquired by Goldsmiths College, is now in the hands of The Science Museum in London and is currently being restored. It hasn't been performed since the 1970s.
For more information on Daphne Oram and her machine check out daphneoram.org"
Two day event via Cube Cinema, Saturday April the 2nd and Sunday the 3rd.
"Day one of a weekend of special events, performances, screenings and more - dedicated to the output and legacy of the one and only BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
With their often primitive hand built devices, tape loops and early synth explorations, the workshop brought the sound of electronic weirdness out of the realms of academia and into the home, re-adjusting the ears and minds of an entire generation in the process. As interest in their oddly British, and often somewhat crackpot approach to electronic experimentation grows, and as many of their key instigators finally begin to gain the worldwide recognition their pioneering efforts deserve, we spend a special one-off weekend looking back on some of the characters, stories, sounds and inventions that shaped an era.
On day one (Saturday), we’re delighted to welcome very special guests - Radiophonic boffins, David Cain and Dick Mills - who will be presenting a history of the workshop, discussing their work, and presenting a wealth of material unheard for decades.
I went to Times Square with some electronics I built that convert light waves into sound waves. I used photodiodes, which are actually tiny solar batteries. When light shines into them, they generate voltage. Many electronic lights are actually flickering off and on faster than the eye can see. In the place of a normal microphone, the photodiodes let us hear this flickering as pitch.
I built these sensors into a preamplifier circuit and mounted it to the camera base, so that you can simultaneously look and listen to whatever light you’re filming. What you see is what you hear, with no special effects or processing.
I don’t usually like being in a place like this, but the “sound camera” has a transformative power; like a skateboard, which turns the parking lot from urban wasteland to paradise.
all editing, filming, circuits, everything by me, daniel fishkin.
Key Grip: Wilder Alison
thanks to: Bob Bielecki, Stephen Vitiello, Eric Archer, Sparkfun Electronics, John DuQuette, Yabla Inc., Derek Holzer, Daphne Oram, Jeff Stark, and everyone I caught on film."
"I wrote a 12 page article about the history of the Radiophonic Workshop for the April 08 Sound On Sound and it's now free to read on-line.
As a result of that article being printed, Graham Wrench got in touch - he's the engineer who'd built the prototype Oramic synth for Daphne Oram in the 60's. The current Feb 09 SOS has my new article about Graham and his story. Here's a link, but only to a preview.
Ray White has just put up a new gallery of Radiophonic Workshop pics - some not seen before; http://whitefiles.org/rwg/"
Also see Steve Marshall's SURROUNDHEAD for scans from 70's Studio Sound magazines.
Above: "Daphne Oram with the wobbulator (centre of shot), 1958."
Left: "The unique Oramics synthesizer was controlled by drawing onto 35mm photographic film."
Mute are proud to announce the release of a 50th Anniversary Retrospective double CD from the Radiophonic Workshop. This brand new compilation features classic, extremely rare and previously unavailable sounds and music by the legendary BBC organisation. Presented in chronological order, the CD includes works from stalwarts of the Radiophonic Workshop such as John Baker, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Elizabeth Parker, Desmond Briscoe, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell and Malcolm Clarke amongst others.
This Retrospective features over 100 pieces of music and sound effects from various BBC TV and Radio shows from 1958 through to 1997. Including work from Quatermass and the Pit, The Goon Show, The Secret War, Blake’s Seven, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Salem’s Lot, The Demon Headmaster, Michael Palin’s Full Circle as well as the original full length Dr Who Theme and the Tardis effects.
Using reel-to-reel tape machines, early heroines such as Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire recorded everyday or strange sounds and then manipulated these by speeding up, slowing down or cutting the tape with razor blades and piecing it back together.
The pioneering techniques were created for and used on a myriad of programmes, with Dr Who being their biggest client. The sound of the Tardis in Dr Who was a sound engineer's front door key scraped across the bass strings on a broken piano. Other impromptu props included a lampshade, champagne corks and assorted cutlery.
Ten years ago the workshop was disbanded due to costs but its reputation as a Heath Robinson-style, pioneering force in sound is as strong as ever, acknowledged as possibly the greatest influence on UK electronic music, influencing the likes of Jon Spencer, Aphex Twin, Daniel Miller, Add N to (x)…. The corporation initially only offered its founders a six-month contract, because it feared any longer in the throes of such creative and experimental exercises might make them ill.
Also released on the same day are the albums BBC Radiophonic Workshop and BBC Radiophonic Music, The BBC Radiophonic Music CD concentrates on the more musical output of the legendary organisation while BBC Radiophonic Workshop deals with the pioneering sound effects and methods used to achieve them.
These releases continue a series that began on The Grey Area of Mute with the release of Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop Volume 1: The Early Years 1963-1969 and Volume 2: New Beginnings 1970-1980."
"The Women of ELECTRONIC MUSIC! From the 30's to the 70's!
Before synthesizers, electronic music was honed the hard way in universities, by splicing tape loops, distorting sounds, endless dubbing, and blind instinct. Here are the timeless women of future music who created our present...
Since the 1930's, CLARA ROCKMORE was the master of the notoriously difficult Theremin, and later championed by synthesizer-creator Bob Moog; LOUIS & BEBE BARRON created the first all-electronic score for the film "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (1957), using oscillated sounds and tape loops; //STUDIO d'ASSAI (Paris): Danish ELSE MARIE PADE studied under musique concrete founder Pierre Schaeffer, becoming a noted composer; ELAINE RADIGUE used the Buchla and Arp synthesizers in her work, heavily influenced by Buddhist meditation, and records now with laptop improv group The Lappetites; MICHELE BOKANOWSKI has composed for film, televison, and theatre; //BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP (London): ...was created and directed by DAPHNE ORAM, inventor and sonic pioneer; she was followed by DELIA DERBYSHIRE, who brought Ron Grainer's "DR. WHO" theme to brilliant, eerie life with her studio wizardry; MADDALENA FAGANDINI co-created the proto-Techno single "Time Beat/ Waltz In Space" (1962) with young producer George Martin under the alias 'Ray Cathode'; GLYNIS JONES produced some of the Workshop's classic albums like "Out Of This World" (1976); ELIZABETH PARKER scored many BBC shows including "BLAKE'S 7", and was the person to see the Workshop out in its 1998 finale; //Fluxus performance artist YOKO ONO expanded John Lennon's mind and range with electronic music, musique concrete, and 'happening' experiments; //COLUMBIA-PRINCETON ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTER (New York): A premiere focal point for international composers since the 50's, including composer and Associate Director PRIL SMILEY; ALICE SHIELDS combined her operatic voice and poetry with the revolutionary synthesizers of the late 60's and early 70's; teacher DARIA SEMEGEN wrote traditional classical music as well as electronic; WENDY CARLOS had massive mainstream success with the all-synth "Switched On Bach", before writing groundbreaking film scores for "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE," "THE SHINING" and 'TRON"; nearby at Bell Labs, LAURIE SPIEGEL spearheaded computer graphics and software design as well as new music; maverick ANNETTE PEACOCK went from Free Jazz piano to the first synthesizers, threading her early 70's raps and rock with freeform electronics; //Argentinian BEATRIZ FERREYRA, who also studied with Schaeffer, is an esteemed composer and teacher; //SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC CENTER: The crucial West Coast electronic center, including Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and PAULINE OLIVEROS in 1962; it moved across the Bay to become the... //CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC (Mills College, Oakland, CA): Oliveros was the first Director, perfecting her signal processing system for live performance; student and now Co-Director MAGGI PAYNE trailblazed video imagery and record engineering along with her music; alum CYNTHIA WEBSTER played in the early synth band Triode, founded electro mag SYNAPSE, and now runs Cyndustries designing software for electronic music, such as the Zeroscillator.
Their innovations led to Progressiv Rock, Krautrock, New Wave, Coldwave, Darkwave, Electro Funk, Industrial, Techno, and Electroclash. Their fringe future music is now the soundtrack of today.
See also:
ALICE SHIELDS -"STUDY FOR VOICE AND TAPE" (1968)
"Sound, the infinite frontier! Science had chopped the world into atoms, components from which to build. Modern art deconstructed reality, reconstructing our perceptions of it. And the first Electronic Music likewise took apart sound and turned it inside out for new compositions. Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the first Electronic Music Center jointly with Columbian and Princeton universities in 1952. He brought in avant composers from countries worldwide with new perspectives and radical expirementation. This included women like Daria Semegen, Pril Smiley, Wendy Carlos, and Alice Shields. In the 50's, Electronic Music was distortions of recordings. Sounds on a tape recorder would be manipulated by feedback, repeated spliced loops, overlapping tracks with multiple recorders, and using oscillators and reverb to sculpt the tempo, tone, or texture. This prevailed in continually advancing ways well through the 1960s. Alice used these techniques in creating this composition. A gifted mezzesoprano, she first sang a poem she'd written. She accompanied this with the first analog Buchla synthesizer, a rare and recent device only beginning to draw the attention of the hippest pop musicians. She then manipulated pitch and speed in textural patterns to supplement the freeform song. This was the cutting edge music of the future, usually heard only in academic circles. But it made its way into film soundtracks (from FORBIDDEN PLANET to Wendy Carlos' A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Fusion Jazz (Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock), Progressive Rock (from George Harrison's 1969 ELECTRONIC SOUND to Krautrock and Kraftwerk), Funk (Stevie Wonder's T.O.N.T.O., Bernie Worrell), on to the synthesizer explosion of New Wave, then Hip Hop (from Bambaataa's ElectroFunk to Public Enemy's radical sculptures of noise), Industrial (synthetic abrasion), and the Electronica music of today; as such, Alice Shields is a godmother of Le Tigre, Peaches, Chicks On Speed, Lesbians On Ecstasy, and Ladytron, to name a few."
MALARIA! -"Your Turn To Run" (1982)
"The Women of 80's ELECTRO! Coldwave, Darkwave, Synthpop, Industrial!
As synthesizers got smaller and cheaper through the 70's, 'future music' went from acedemia to the street. Punk, PostPunk, Funk, and HipHop artists brought attitude and new styles into the pop vocabulary throughout the 80's that forged the music of today. Here are many women from the first Electro rock era..."
"This Friday sees the launch of a new simonsound produced radio series looking at the history of electronic music as a worldwide phenomenon. The 10 part series called ‘The Tone Generation’ is presented by electronic musician and film-maker Ian Helliwell. Starting in Europe and finishing in the Southern Hemisphere Ian will be playing vintage tracks - some celebrated, many obscure and overlooked, to give an overview of electronic music. Part one starts with Great Britain and features music from a number of BBC Radiophonic composers including Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire." More info on Simon Sound, via Music Thing.
via synthetic in the comments of this post: "Neil Diamond's "The Jazz Singer" was on cable a few days ago and the synth player was rockin' an ARP Quadra. I think I saw a String Ensemble in there too. The last concert scene, "Fahhh, we've been travelin' faaahhh..."
