|
 Okay, the
Doctor Who theme, composed by Ron
Grainer, is one of the best known television themes in the world and
it is certainly futuristic, but what has it to do with future music?
Sure it's cool, but anyone with a synthesiser can create the same.
Ah, Grasshopper, but they did not have synthesisers in 1963, so how
did they do it? The answer is with a heck of a lot of equipment.
Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop commandeered a dozen "test
tone" generators used for testing circuitry to generate various sounds
which were then filtered, run through an equaliser, looped, sped up,
slowed down, and mixed to produce the desired notes. These were
then spliced together into tracks, backed by an electric guitar,
remixed, and fingers crossed when the play switch
was hit.
This is why you could get the Radiophonics people very cross if you
invited them to "jam" on the Doctor Who theme. |
