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Alchemists of sound on bbc two. About bbc radiophonic workshop! Delia derbyshire, tape machines, wobbulators and wierdness

Just switched over. Seen it before but it's always worth watching again.

Taped it for future watching.

A friend told me about that this morning, I completely missed it

I think some (if not all) of it is up on YouTube though (will try to find the link..)

not shure if this is the new one, but always worth a try...

http://fatbaron.com/

Royston - if it's any good I can always send you the tape if you like?

(Oh I can just hear the tech heads now - Don't tell me Neil is still using a video)

katano wrote:not shure if this is the new one, but always worth a try...

http://fatbaron.com/

Thanks for the link, Should make for some interesting watching.

Neil, I have a VHS machine as well... wtf, it works

Essential viewing. Amazing pioneering spirit and some compositions that wouldn't sound out of place on a new release today. It's the first time I''ve actually seen tape splicing/composition. Anyone watching this has no right to complain about a few bugs or glitches in there host of choice


I can't beleive how naive I've been for aall these years. Walter carlos became wendy carlos...I always thought that wendy just went uner a psuedonym for artistic reasons

Anyway thanks for the link katano, thats the one!

Hey neil, mabye after you've watched your hvs you can try your hand at splicing

irrelevance wrote:It's the first time I''ve actually seen tape splicing/composition.

I still have my cutting board

My gosh takes me back to my tape-splicing days: long loops of half-speed tambourines circling round the room, cut-up radio voices, vari-speeding. You know in some ways it was better than sampling. If you want to hear amazing tape stuff (other than the brilliant Radiophonic Workshop) then check out Tod Dockstader. His newer stuff (Aerial) is done on computer but his classics like Quatermass and Apocalypse are classic tape-splicing heaven.

wow many thanks for this link!

wasn't around in those days, but always been into music of the old bbc stuff like blake's 7, who and such.

great flick, thanks a lot for sharing, delia is my new hero

feel ashamed for not knowing all these folks till now ahahah thanks for fixing a hole in my education

thanks for the great link
I have a record from Perry-Kingsley (The In Sound From Way Out) from the 60s and though I know how tape cutting etc technically works, it's a big difference to actually watch them do it. Great stuff.
Reminds me on my first synth (as a schoolboy): a tube radio where a part of the speaker output was fed back into the Tape in. The coils, capacitors and resisitors in the feedback path were usually choosen by 'cool' look and not by tech specs - I had no idea at all what made these noises, but it was fun

cheers, Tom

Checking the Tod Dockstader site now. Some nice sounds indeed. Thanks.

Glad you're checking out Mr Dockstader (cool name). Along with Harry Partch he's one of my forgotten idols (although Mr Partch is more well known these days). Tod's CDs are reasonably available and i can recommed Apocalypse and Quatermass whole heartedly.

I just watched the Alchemists Of Sound documentation for the first time.
I must say, i'm very impressed. There was definitively much magic going
on... and the scary guy who always appears in the background, fantastic!

Neil B wrote:Royston - if it's any good I can always send you the tape if you like?

(Oh I can just hear the tech heads now - Don't tell me Neil is still using a video)

Cheers Neil but I think that the fat baron link will be fine for me

I've still got a VHS myself! It's great The remote control is only 50% working since my housemate dropped it a glass of red wine but other than that it just seems to keep going ...

Paul - if you ever lose your splicing board - mine is up the attic I think

Years ago I did some work with a Korg 700, Korg 700s, Elka Rhapsody and an electric piano that I think was a "WInfield" Copy - I was splicing recordings with Gregorian Chant. I think I've told this one before - the tape machines caught fire

Anyway - I finally watched it last night - great documentary.
One thing that stood out to me though was the comment about selecting one of 384 patches and then writing a piece of music around it. I think that's what I've been struggling with for a year or 2. The technology has taken over, instead of writing the music and then finding the patches/timbres to fit, I've been playing about with the technology and getting nowhere.
So the programme has fired me up - back to basics - write music - then get it to sound right!

Shame that Delia didn't get the recognition she deserved eh?

I like the strange beardy guy who lurks in the background during all the interviews. Spooky shit