What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

Sur­vey the British pub­lic about the most impor­tant insti­tu­tion to arise in their coun­try after World War II, and a lot of respon­dents are going to say the Nation­al Health Ser­vice. But keep ask­ing around, and you’ll soon­er or lat­er encounter a few seri­ous elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­asts who name the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop. Estab­lished in 1958 to pro­vide music and sound effects for the Bee­b’s radio pro­duc­tions — not least the doc­u­men­taries and dra­mas of the artis­ti­cal­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly ambi­tious Third Pro­gramme — the unit’s work even­tu­al­ly expand­ed to work on tele­vi­sion shows as well. One could scarce­ly imag­ine Doc­tor Who, which debuted in 1963, with­out the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop’s son­ic aes­thet­ic.

By the end of the nine­teen-six­ties, the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop had been cre­at­ing elec­tron­ic music and inject­ing it into the lives of ordi­nary lis­ten­ers and view­ers for more than a decade. Even so, that same pub­lic did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly pos­sess a clear under­stand­ing of what, exact­ly, elec­tron­ic music was. Hence this explana­to­ry BBC tele­vi­sion clip from 1969, which brings on Radio­phon­ic Work­shop head Desmond Briscoe as well as com­posers John Bak­er, David Cain, and Daphne Oram (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture).

Hav­ing long since built her own stu­dio, Oram also demon­strates her own tech­niques for cre­at­ing and manip­u­lat­ing sound, few of which will look famil­iar to fans of elec­tron­ic music in our dig­i­tal cul­ture today.

Even in 1969, none of Oram’s tools were dig­i­tal in the way we now under­stand the term. In fact, the work­ing process shown in this clip was so thor­ough­ly ana­log as to involve paint­ing the forms of sound waves direct­ly onto slides and strips of film. She craft­ed sounds by hand in this way not pure­ly due to tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tion, but because exten­sive expe­ri­ence had shown her that it pro­duced more inter­est­ing results: “if one does it by pure­ly elec­tron­ic means, one tends to get fixed on one vibra­tion, one fre­quen­cy of vibra­to, which becomes dull.” Believ­ing that “music should be a pro­jec­tion of a thought process in the mind of a human being,” Oram expressed reser­va­tions about a future in which com­put­ers pump out “music by the yard”: a future that, these 55 years lat­er, seems to have arrived.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Daphne Oram Cre­at­ed the BBC’s First-Ever Piece of Elec­tron­ic Music (1957)

Meet Delia Der­byshire, the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

Hear Elec­tron­ic Lady­land, a Mix­tape Fea­tur­ing 55 Tracks from 35 Pio­neer­ing Women in Elec­tron­ic Music

New Doc­u­men­tary Sis­ters with Tran­sis­tors Tells the Sto­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music’s Female Pio­neers

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938–2014)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.