The BBC website has a look back at the aural pioneers of electronic music and bizarre and often wonderful sound effects produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which would have been 50 this month but sadly was disbanded some time ago as no longer cost effective. Today creating special sound effects is a lot simpler with digital technology but the Radiophonic Workshop really pioneered a lot of work with early MIDI systems and Heath-Robinson contraptions wired together (they would influence electronic musicians with their innovations too), as well as more low-tech solutions like literally cutting tape with a razor to splice up into new mixes and, famously, creating the base sound of the TARDIS’ take-off by running some keys down the strings of a broken piano then treating it electronically.
(the TARDIS in flight, the original and now famous sounds created by the Radiophonic Workshop, (c) BBC)
“We tried to give the impression that whenever a Dalek spoke, it wasn’t speaking like we do, it was accessing words from a memory bank, so they all sound the same – dispassionate, mechanical and retrievable,” Dick Mills explaining how another now iconic sound was created. Doctor Who obviously challenged the Radiophonic Workshop a lot in its history and its impossible to think of the long-lived (and loved) show without the many audio effects, from the TARDIS’ groaning take-off, the aforementioned Dalek voice effect or sounds for the sonic screwdriver or numerous others, not to mention their re-arranging of Ron Grainer’s music to create that ultra-iconic Doctor Who theme. These days we can buy Who toys with very authentic sounds built into them as samples but back in the day creating these sounds took a mix of artistic and technical ingenuity.
The Workshop has also supplied many other famous BBC TV and radio programmes over the years – Mills talks gleefully of creating an over the top upset tummy sound for Major Bloodnok in the Goon Show, one of the watershed programmes in modern comedy evolution (no Goons, no Monty Python, no Python maybe no Douglas Adams and a very much sadder modern world…). Although it isn’t in the Beeb article one of my favourite sound effects tales from the Goons days is where Spike Milligan writes one of his anarchic scripts with the note cue sound effects: sound of wet sock full of custard hitting someone in the face. The poor sound effects technicians labour for a while trying to make an appropriate sound until Spike eventually goes to the BBC canteen, gets a bowl of custard then, in front of the serving lady, removes shoe then sock, tips up bowl and empties custard into it before swinging it round then thwacking it onto the counter. The article has some nice reminiscences from some of the Radiophonic Workshop’s glory days, including several short video clips showing how some sounds were created, well worth a look, especially for those of us who remember many of the shows they created those magical sounds for.
Fri, Apr 25, 2008
Film, TV and radio