1965: How DELIA DERBYSHIRE made the DOCTOR WHO theme I Tomorrow's World I Music I BBC Archive

[@LeeStaffs1]

The absolute genius Delia Derbyshire. The pioneer of electronic music. She deserves far greater recognition.

[@lundsweden]

Delia had qualifications in mathematics and music, quite unusual!

[@LucyOLastic]

@@lundsweden Unusual maybe, but fundamental, as music uses a lot of calculations! Time, duration, frequency, amplitude, fractions and all sorts I could not begin to mention because I was always useless at maths. think of what it takes to calculate how long a segment of tape in a loop needed to be to create those amazing rhythms and for those loops to stay synchronised. Maths could be made fun by introducing music into lessons! This to my mind is why music is important in a child's education, and should be encouraged more, to see broader applications and broaden the mind to possibilities.

[@derekcamilleri8]

Couldn't agree more

[@johnbrereton5229]

@@LucyOLastic Yes indeed, in fact Music is Mathematics !

[@toccataindmajor4594]

Check out Raymond Scott' for some earlier electronic music.

[@TransistorBased]

You can hear her excitement- even if she doesn't realize that this is going to be a huge stepping stone in music history, she's just having a great time and doing something fulfilling

[@jamesdanton9033]

Shes using pre-existing equipment set up nearly a decade prior.

[@TransistorBased]

@@jamesdanton9033 but it's being used in a way that was very different than how most people would.

[@jamesdanton9033]

@@TransistorBased I don't disagree...but that's all musical instruments. Jimi Hendrix didn't have the same sound as Eric Clapton or John Carpenter but they all use guitars and in some cases even the same guitars.

[@namafarm]

I think, somehow, she DID know...

[@TransistorBased]

@@namafarm I hope she did. Way too often artists that leave a serious impact don't get to fully realize how important their work was.

[@scottmcmaster4927]

This woman was performing synthwave so very far ahead of her time. She's awesome.

[@sonofhibbs4425]

Reminds me how the inventor of the first computer programmer was a woman- Ada Lovelace in the 1840’s.

[@phill6859]

​@@sonofhibbs4425ADA Lovelace was hired to translate some documents and then went off and did her own thing and wrote a program for a computer that never existed and was never tested. It should have been a stark warning for what programmers would get up to.

[@liannettmendez6393]

He saw the future

[@BigSillyOrangeCat]

@@liannettmendez6393he?

[@ConceptJunkie]

Most modern music styles were invented way earlier than people commonly think. For instance, Terry Riley was doing post-rock in the mid-60s.

[@tripencrypt]

Ms. Derbyshire was a gifted artist with her medium. Doctor Who wouldn't sound the same without her and her incredible creative contributions.

[@andrewmclaughlin2701]

If Ms. Derbyshire is to be recognized today, it will have to be as a trans woman of color just to be fair and inclusive.

[@mack-attack-420]

@@andrewmclaughlin2701 uh why can't we just recognise her as she is?

[@GrandduchessAnastasia-ko5rg]

Huh?​@@andrewmclaughlin2701

[@dannawaldman3175]

​@user-tz9wk2rj2d Dear "Dredd" Dredd? No disrespect intended, this makes me giggle. Were all the other scary names taken? But, I digress. "The problem lies in the rewriting of history to put on a pedestal any female...etc." FYI, it's 2024, not 1924. This is the status quo, every day, garden variety answer to any points that highlight the crushing ubiquity of dogmatic and misogynist socio-cultural and historical bias against women's achievements and contributions in fields where male-only participation, dominance, and expertise are assumed to be the rule. So, yes, let's put Delia Derbyshire on a Pedestal! To be clear, while it is true that the tune for the theme for Doctor Who was written by Ron Grainer, it is the only one of his works that was realised by another person, in this case being Delia Derbyshire. This situation is unique. It was her brilliance that created the sound associated with Doctor who for the next seventeen years. Her original arrangement served as the Doctor Who main theme from 1963 to 1980. The theme was reworked over the years, to her horror, because the only version that had her approval was the original. But being the creator of art doesn't also give any control over its use if you are an anonymous "female employee" of the BBC, and your name is not Ron. There are sources stating that Grainer attempted to credit her as co-composer, but was prevented by the BBC bureaucracy because they preferred that members of the workshop remain anonymous. She was not credited on-screen for her work until Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. This is history, and I would say worth, if not putting on a pedestal, than surely mentioning at least once in half a century. As tedious as it is for me to say one more time, I will put on my Historian's hat to repeat that when only a few voices are used to speak for human historical documentation, those are the only voices acknowledged, whether it's who won the second world war, the history of weaving and ale making, or the discovery of the helical shape of DNA. BTW that was Rosalind Franklin. There is an old "joke" still circulating in x-ray crystallographic circles that the only things discovered by Nobel "winners" Crick and Watson were Rosalind Franklin's notes. But again, I digress. There are few historians who can successfully argue that History has not been and still isn't written by the editors, the bible being a good case in point, with an honourable mention to holocaust denier David Irving, not that it puts any crimp in their efforts to do so. When those editors derive from the same social, political, economic, racial/national, and gender origins and and are powerful enough to use their assumed authority and expertise to enforce limitations on disseminated knowledge we end up being told to believe, under threat of death if necessary, that the world is flat, "Iike your head"; Bugs Bunny, one of my most cherished cultural icons and truth speakers. The time for reacting to the increasing uncovering of the weight of historical bias proof by putting fingers in ears and yelling, "NONONONONO" is past, gone, and collecting dust in boxes of old university term papers, regardless of where it is applied. Is it putting Hedy Lamarr on a pedestal to identify her as the genius behind frequency hopping circuitry first used on WW2 torpedoes and later for mobile phone technology? Is it putting Grace Hopper on a pedestal for crediting her for creating the world’s first compiler in 1952, enabling programmers to enter code for the first time in words rather than numbers. How about Gladys West, a Black mathematician who worked for NASA as a "human computer", and who calculated the exact shape of the earth, creating the geodetic model that became the basis of our Global Positioning System (GPS) in use today? Then there is Lise Meitner, born in 1878, who was initially overlooked for her contribution to the discovery of nuclear fission, and whose theory it was that actually explained the process. BTW, Her male colleague, Otto Hahn, received the Nobel for the discovery he made with Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch. In the arts, there is Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché, a French pioneer film director who was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. American film director and actress Helen Gardner was the first film actor to found a production company. Like Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) is an early modular synthesizer pioneer and electronic music composer. She helped Robert Moog develop his namesake synths. Daphne Blake Oram, a British composer and electronic musician, was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of musique concrète in the UK. As a co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, she was central to the development of British electronic music. If we have to live in a world where only those on pedestals are recognised and celebrated for their achievements, it's far past time that we started putting more of the right people on them. And now, I vote for avocados and mayo all around.

[@dannawaldman3175]

@@andrewmclaughlin2701 Although Wikipedia is not the final word in historical accuracy, the evidence strongly suggests that she was white, cisgender, straight, and both married and partnered with men. You might want to loosen off your tin foil hat just a little bit.

[@jcortese3300]

Why is this woman's name not plastered on every museum in the world having to do with modern music? She wasn't just ahead of her time by a little bit but by leaps and bounds.

[@rabidbigdog]

And the composers for Forbidden Planet's 'electronic tonalities'.

[@Cavi587]

I guess most of the people who are into that are of the generation that remember 80's a lot more. That's why often artists from that era are far more recognizable. It's a shame she isn't known more honestly, but I think it's good this video is uploaded here and at the very least some people know of her and by this video staying up more and more people will learn.

[@jamesjameson4566]

She wasn't black

[@tartgreenapple]

Because everyone, regardless of stature in their field, will be forgotten.

[@akk709]

Same reason most people, men or women are not plastered everywhere

[@jacklawrence2212]

One of Doctor Who's true visionaries. RIP Delia Derbyshire.

[@rachelhenderson2688]

I just love the Dr Who theme! I get that feeling down my spine that tells me something exciting is going to happen! p.s. I am nearly 81, and it just grabbed me when I first heard it, and has gone on doing that ever since!

[@Pandangus]

What an actual legend! Shame on those who denied her the legitimate compositional credit she deserved.

[@tachikomakusanagi3744]

Because she didn't compose it?

[@SamuelBlack84]

​@@tachikomakusanagi3744 Because, she was a woman

[@childrenofminervaofficial4316]

​@@tachikomakusanagi3744 Ron Grainer, when he heard Delia Derbyshire's arrangement of his theme, was so blown away that he fought (and lost) a battle with the BBC to get Delia a co-writer credit. The BBC refused on the grounds that they wanted the members of the Radiophonic Workshop to be anonymous.

[@andrewmclaughlin2701]

@@SamuelBlack84 If you want to give her credit today, all you have to do is identify her as a trans lesbian woman of color and she will get all the recognition she never wanted.

[@amadandearbhte4318]

​@@andrewmclaughlin2701you appear to have written something similar to this under several comments. This is what we call an unhealthy obsession. Get some help pal.

[@KnapfordMaster98]

The audio quality is frighteningly good. Like a vintage picture with audio recorded yesterday. Analog media has so much to offer.

[@felixdonnelly7449]

PHILIPS broadcast-quality tape-recorders!! Combined with this lady's remarkable creative talents, of course!

[@user-cs4fg1rm5k]

So much so you can hear the camera.

[@sndrcve]

Best white noise I’ve ever heard

[@hotdog1214]

Her tapping her fingers in time to the rhythm as she demonstrates is really charming. Amazing what the Radiophonic Workshop were doing back then, really creative and forward thinking. Great stuff.

[@SpeccyMan]

That actually reminds me of being at infants school and my earliest memories of music lessons where we were taught to tap the time or the rhythm along with the music we were hearing. I guess old habits die hard as I still do it to this day.

[@NickSBailey]

@@SpeccyMan though probably not with weird time signatures like that :) I'd definitely have to tap it out to keep track

[@heresjohnny602]

I've danced for hours to music that probably wouldn't have existed without people like her.

[@DenTube619]

years actually

[@kevintipcorn6787]

Discovering that loops used to be actual loops of tape on huge boxes is both rewarding and makes me feel incredibly dumb for not intuiting it at the same time.

[@AtheistOrphan]

Like when I realised that ‘The Beatles’ is a pun.

[@johnp515]

@@AtheistOrphan The clue was in the spelling!

[@AtheistOrphan]

@@johnp515 - Exactly!🤔

[@johnmh1000]

Apparently the organ sounds on 'for the benefit of mr kite' were a tape recording cut into pieces, thrown up in the air to mix them up and rejoined by a splicing block (as in the clip). Then played on a reel to reel tape machine.

[@bernardjharmsen304]

Look up "Musique Concrete"

[@chrisandersen5635]

To think the powers of the time just thought of them as mere technicians. Ron Grainer, composer, wanted to give Delia a composer credit, the BBC of course said no. Her life might have gone a little differently if she was able to earn a bit of royalties. Alas, much her recognition and respect has come posthumously.

[@mikethespike7579]

If you create something as an employee of a company, the IP belongs to the company not you. The most you can expect is to be named in the credits, which wasn't common practice for engineers back in the 1960s. Working on computers wasn't considered creative work then, it was considered engineering.

[@specialunit0428]

@Dr.Quarex I would disagree. Computing is a female-dominated industry when it comes to computer work, hence why at my school only the girls were allowed to do computing and boys could only do engineering etc.

[@cromyjr1592]

@Dr.Quarex The boys' club invented computers. Mathematical and technical thinking is much rare among women. When will feminists stop with the persecution complex in STEM field ?

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Unfortunately yes, the BBC owned the entire composition. Delia had several personal musical projects in which she got to express her own music, the best known of which is White Noise. She also had a piece done with her group Unit Delta Plus installed at the Million Volt Rave in 1966, the art installation where Paul McCartney played his abstract tape piece The Carnival of Light (credited Beatles).

[@markgatland977]

Mind absolutely blown...the stuff they were doing back then on tape would take me 30 seconds to do on Logic these days, but everything she ever did still sounds like it's from the future

[@hulksmash8159]

..and far better than anything you will ever have your computer come up with.

[@hulksmash8159]

@@spaggtrait1608 No.

[@golangismyjam]

For future readers, no just means he has no idea what he’s talking about and casually commenting based on 0 experience

[@paulheap1982]

@@hulksmash8159 you're very, very wrong.

[@macescoolchannel]

@@hulksmash8159 do you need to be a cunt about it?

[@chriswinwood6501]

Her energy and enthusiasm when she’s talking about the shapes of sounds. Incredible. And movement of her hands and feet in time to the music is so endearing. She’s unique and she lives on.

[@OrafuDa]

This is the first documentary I remember seeing where Delia Derbyshire is talking on camera. I heard her voice before, and saw pictures, but seeing her in this way is quite special. Thank you very much.

[@ozcxpilot]

I could listen to her voice all day.

[@User1975-]

With that gorgeous bloody accent!!! Absolutely!

[@andersdottir1111]

That upper class accent just isn’t heard today. Punctuate instead of ‘punc-chwate that we hear today.

[@misspurrr-fect3684]

She wasn't upper class ... She came from a middle class working family & lived in a basic terraced house in Northampton .

[@robertferguson5562]

​@@andersdottir1111upper? Tf.

[@meta-self]

I think what you mean is that you want to splice her voice into a tape loop and play it nonstop.

[@hcs8789]

She makes this look really easy, but she would've had to chop all of these sounds up by hand and get them perfectly right to produce these complex rhythms! Amazing pioneer

[@keriford54]

And she can get the exact timing from pressing the play button at the right time, which would need the tape being ready with the sound at the play head.

[@danielmcnamara_]

I love the part where the guy trips the switches to play all the tapes in sync and the conductor smoking

[@User1975-]

So 60's hahaha

[@malcolmmitchell6529]

" smoking" oh the horror.

[@malcolmmitchell6529]

​@@User1975-Er, it was the 60s, can't see what's amusing about that.

[@lego5745]

Although it might’ve taken way longer than people would’ve liked for her to be recognized for her works at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, there is no doubt that Delia Derbyshire was a pioneer in the field of electronic music. Absolute respect!

[@happyfeet4506]

The lady is without a doubt a genuis. This iconic theme music was years ahead of its time.

[@livvy94]

It's great to see this in full. I learned about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop through the documentary The Alchemists of Sound, which I don't think is legally available to watch anywhere. If anyone at the BBC is reading this, I'd love to watch it again.

[@BBCArchive]

Unfortunately, that programme was made by an independent production company, so we wouldn't have the rights to post it. But that's not to say it won't come back on the BBC iPlayer at some point. In the meantime, you might enjoy this: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000w6tr/arena-delia-derbyshire-the-myths-and-the-legendary-tapes which is still on the BBC iPlayer for a couple of months.

[@livvy94]

@@BBCArchive Thank you!

[@MelancoliaI]

FINALLY getting the recognition she's deserved for decades

[@chibacityblues2003]

Absolutely incredible. The sheer dedication and planning needed to construct any piece is mind boggling

[@LawnMowersThingsThatMakeNoise]

Delia Derbyshire the original MASTER !! Who needs to be thanked more often.

[@1701Starfish]

Delia Derbyshire is an absolute legend.

[@ShamrockParticle]

Waveform synthesisz mixing electronic with traditional instruments, and even sampling - all decades ahead of its time. So much time to create such memorable pieces. Technological advancement has helped remove the need to splice miles' worth of tape (30 inches per one second of sound?) but the creativity to produce such a range of compelling sounds, cues, and tunes was and still is as expansive as it is amazing. Delia's presentation is simply magnetic. How she describes raw sounds then saying how they can made into something of value- she would be as eminent as a teacher or professor too.

[@beeble2003]

Sampling wasn't actually "decades ahead of its time" -- you just didn't know it was an old technique. People have been doing it for a long time: the musique concrète movement was sampling in the 1940s.

[@G6JPG]

@beef business Not entirely; 30 IPS _was_ used for the best broadcast-quality and studio recordings at times (I think the original steel strip machine might have been even faster, but that's an earlier generation); binary divisions were done, so you got 15, 7½, 3¾, 1 7/8 (what cassettes ran at), even 15/16 (not unknown on little "portable" machines that has 3" reels or smaller, but never considered hifi); in the days when reel-to-reel was the bees' knees for home hifi, I think a serious enthusiast would use 7½ IPS. (Not much higher for practical reasons of length: a lot of even high-end domestic machines only took 7" reels.) I don't think Delia and co. were using 30 IPS - if you really want to work it out, you can time some of the machines shown in the clip! (As she says, ¼" tape was the norm [cassettes used half that], so you can roughly scale things from that; you don't need to be that accurate, as they'd have been using one of the standard speeds - I suspect 15 or 7½.)

[@klaxoncow]

3:19 I love how modern sounding that instantly is. But, more crucially, how you can see her feel out the rhythm before triggering the second tape machine, like she's a DJ on the decks. Because, basically, she's doing exactly what a DJ does right there, just with different equipment. A different form of "deck" under her hands. And that quick correction on the third player, when she could feel it was slightly out. With the dexterity of someone who's been doing this an awful lot, that she knows exactly how you caress the machine into doing your exact bidding.

[@georgebruh8325]

I've never seen a DJ being able to clap to 11/8 meter, let alone layer another polymetric rhythmic figure on top of it and correct it in real time.. She's a musician before anything else and freakishly talented i might add

[@MPHORROCKS]

Just brilliant and it shows how the methods really directed the way sound might be composed, as opposed to conventional performance. How she gets thode tape machines in sync is a miracle! Her music was an inspiration to many later artists, such as Portishead.

[@BobscratchTurntablist]

she deserves more recognition, amazing lady!

[@VBaskin2010]

Delia Derbyshire Is the godmother of real Dance Music!

[@Lauriedriver]

She was in the band, white noise, late 60s early 70s. Check out the album “an electric storm”, brilliant.

[@SilntObsvr]

I wondered for years how the Doctor Who theme was recorded before there were synthesizers. Just recently I learned it was done by tape cut editing of electronic and real sounds as demonstrated in this video. There was an album my cousin had in the early 1970s (not sure when it came out) called "The In Sound from Way Out" that was done this way -- but with only natural sounds edited together. I first heard it the same year Wendy Carlos released her first album (under her birth name, Walter Carlos), "Switched On Bach", recorded with actual synthesizers.

[@leopoldbluesky]

Make sure you search for the Perrey and Kingsley version and not the Beastie Boys album with the same name!

[@customsongmaker]

Some people say Walter Carlos was really good on his first album, but I've never heard it.

[@SilntObsvr]

@@customsongmaker The only other synth player I've heard who approached that level was Rick Wakeman -- though there might well be others I haven't heard; I'm not one who spends ever waking hour searching for and listening to music, never mind specialized sorts of music.

[@DeiNostri]

Thehe RCA Vacum tuube synthesizer made in 1955, there was alot of experiments with creating electronic sounds then (most of them not very well known). There were alot of experiments before the sixties, but I would still stay that Delia was a genius.

[@jsnap1]

I love the stories of Della's her departments long hallway counting the edits in the tapes

[@CastellanSpandex]

I actually don't feel worthy of leaving a comment. What do you say about a talent like Delia? Was she ahead of her time? No, we were so very far behind hers. So much respect. 💪💪

[@G6JPG]

What a clever line! Added to my quotes file (with attribution to you).

[@yfrontsguy]

So glad this historic document did not get wiped! Superb!!

[@holygroove2]

Wow! A portion of this came into my Insta feed and I came here to see the longer clip. I was super blessed to be able to work with tape and see an old synthesizer back in my college days. The oscilloscope is such a wild thing!

[@qqleq]

The amount of patience and work it took to create these sounds and loops and synchronising everything, it nearly endless. It’s a credit to her, that the music does not reflect that at all. Now you can do all of these tasks almost instantly, yet there is no music being made like this. The musical quality is astounding.

[@EmperorKonstantine01]

Remarkable I would imagine Delia Set the benchmark to be the Mother of all Digital keyboard Samplers and/or even Waveform Synthesizers of Today. Every piece of electronic music we listen to has some of her legacy in it. I have been playing Synthesizers for well over 38 years and I only heard of her like 2 years ago, she is underrated in my opinion.

[@sub-jec-tiv]

She is amazing but she did not invent tape music. The techniques she used were largely created by the original Musique Concrete artists like Pierre Shaeffer, most of whom worked at University music departments in Europe. Delia absolutely 100% did her own thing with those tools, she was a total genius. But she did not invent tape music nor is she the mother of digital sampling. She is hugely underrated but check your history.

[@AndrewLeSynt]

when she speaks......... me gets warm.......what a wonderful voice she had back then 😎😎😍😍😍

[@johnmh1000]

Thank you for this I've admired this lady and her groundbreaking work for years. I was privileged in the 70s to visit Maida Vale Studios. I worked for the BBC as an assistant house manager (what would be today a facility manager). I was shown one of the rooms where the Radiophonic Workshop was based. All traces were long gone by that time...

[@lincolnparc8897]

psychedelic electronic and history making! a true pioneer she is Miss Derbyshire we thank you for all that you contributed putting smile on our faces imagination in our hearts!

[@rd-wj3sh]

God bless you Delia Derbyshire and all the other unnamed people who worked with you at the BBC A work to span the ages

[@christopherdaffron8115]

I started watching Doctor Who (Tom Baker) on my local PBS channel in the early 1980s. I really loved its eerie electronic theme music which I thought was contemporary with the electronic music at that time. I have recently learned that the theme music for Doctor Who was originally composed WAAAY back in the early 1960s!! I find that so fascinating. Derbyshire was certainly ahead of her time.

[@rachelhenderson2688]

Mmm! My all-time favourite Doctor!

[@dtz1000]

Also Ron Grainer who is listed as the composer of the title theme in the credits.

[@AndyB1286]

Delia appears in the documentary "Sisters With Transistors". I watched it recently and not only did I enjoy it, it's fired my own musical imagination 🙂

[@wvr23ph]

What a place to work that was! Derbyshire, Baker, Fagandini... Pioneers of electronic music, just doing their daily job... Awesome.

[@fufu1128]

Don't you forget Kraftwerk! Also the creators of hip hop, electric drums, first to use computer graphics in a music video, and so much more!

[@G6JPG]

I'd forgetten about Maddalena! It struck me at one time that to work there, it helped if your forename and surname had the same number of syllables … 🙂

[@matthewfarmer2520]

Our American version of Delia Derbyshire is Susanne Ciani, they both in their own rights do electronic music, they are both pioneer in the field. Thanks for sharing classic in the vault video.🎥🎞️🙂

[@marcnelson8986]

Back when there was creativity, what a legend she was!

[@enigmabodylanguage]

Never thought I would see this! Absolute gold.

[@RubberMammy]

Utterly spellbinding. Genius.

[@suzie4211]

At last.. technology of this century, has finally caught up with Delia.! 🎛️🎹🎼

[@MegaNiteowl]

..... and Wendy! ;-) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Carlos

[@Problembeing]

My heroine.

[@merseydave1]

The Late Great Delia Derbyshire

[@sjacrane]

My heroin

[@G6JPG]

@@sjacrane My cocaine 🙂

[@UXXV]

This is astounding - thanks for sharing, also the quality of this scan is fantastic!

[@MarcusGalatix]

I love the way she talks for some reason.

[@leejones8582]

Without her we wouldn't have the iconic theme

[@oneoflokis]

Well done, these electronic music pioneers!! A bit of genius - coming out of 60s Britain, too! 🙂👍

[@nigelcarren]

If only I had known that this gentle pioneer lived in my hometown of Northampton when I was still there, I would have loved to have shared a pot of tea with her! Amazing mind for working around the accepted norms and bending the rules. 🎹🇬🇧🏆

[@yggdrasil9039]

4:00 So basically the world's first house music recorded was not in Detroit, it was in the BBC radiophonics workshop by Delia Derbyshire.

[@calderarecords]

Yes but what's so impressive about this is that unlike today where everyone uses guide lines by selecting a genre to adhere to, they were working outside of genre. It was eclectic & heterogeneous.

[@customsongmaker]

She didn't build the workshop

[@violetnouveau2064]

@@customsongmaker theyre not saying she made the workshop but the world's first house music 😁

[@customsongmaker]

@@violetnouveau2064 what do you think they were doing with the workshop before she showed up?

[@NuGanjaTron]

@@customsongmaker Well, maybe in an abstract sense... she _was_ the workshop! 🤣

[@mpersad]

The wonderful, wonderful BBC. Long may Auntie reign!

[@douglasgreen437]

Not as it is, as it was...

[@paulbuswell6566]

Who needs midi sync when you can just have a box with 4 switches that starts all the tapes at the same time. Fascinating doc from a time when the BBC produced world class material

[@Jack_Wolfe]

I wish Delia Derbyshire was still around! it would be wonderful to see what crazy stuff she could make with the tech she pioneered.

[@Ndlanding]

If she were still around, she would probably be dead.

[@customsongmaker]

She didn't pioneer any of the tech, the lab was already there and other people showed her how to use it

[@robbiethepict2783]

Hearing how she created that wonderful menacing theme of our beloved Doctor.

[@SaccoBelmonte]

Hardcore sampling back then :) Nothing like Delia explaining some of the oscillator shapes.

[@dfend451]

WOWOWO the birth of sampling. Bravo Delia!!!!

[@Flux_One]

Wow this is amazing. It's got a freeform jazz feel about it. Such clever people

[@nicool1312]

the mother of electronic music, this is the invention of sampling ans daws... f@#!ing genious

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

And to think she did this entirely with analog equipment and physical tape movement. Crazy. I was hoping we'd see the actual creation of the Doctor Who theme though.

[@G6JPG]

There wasn't a documentary-making crew in the workshop at the time 🙂! Even if it hadn't taken the many hours (days?) it would have actually taken, remember that for any documentary to have survived rather than just gone out live, it would have to have been made on film: the BBC didn't have much if any video-recording equipment then (well, I'm not sure when VERA appeared, but that was really just a novelty). And the making of the theme - although a big job - was just part of the everyday work of the Workshop, so wouldn't have been considered something worth filming. (In fact if they broke any rules while doing so, which pioneers often do, they'd probably not want that fact recording!)

[@KarldorisLambley]

me again. i had to come back to hear her compositions and her lovely RP voice. see you again in a few months.

[@kaw203]

She was so inventive, amazing

[@popcycles]

Omg at 3:31 she manually syncs these two tape loops; that is too awesome for me to witness.

[@hatednyc]

I love her voice.

[@Charon.1]

She could have a career in ASMR nowadays

[@EusouoBenjamim]

Thank you.

[@DoctorWhoAdventures]

This is just magical to watch this! :D

[@ReallyJustAnotherDay]

This is unbelievably cool. What a pioneer.

[@RaptorJesus.]

0:52 i love that dramatic zoom in for no reason XD

[@marxistlynchist]

Danny Brown and Madlib both sampled Pot Au Feu which was the song from this video. her works laid the blueprint for so much soundtrack music, techno and even to some extent a fair amount of trip hop and underground hip-hop. it's so impressive and yet she wasn't even credited for her work on Doctor Who until 2013. madness.

[@G6JPG]

Thanks for the name of the piece she was actually making here.

[@edkretchmer2167]

Ethereal and haunting. That theme truly conveys emotion and tells a "story." (As a kid, that theme scared the heck out of me. I thought it had something to with ghosts!)

[@laggle55]

This wonderful woman was badly treated by everyone in my own country. May her contribution to music be remembered.

[@TenCapQuesada]

In my early childhood (late 50s, early 60s) the thrill of hearing the words "BBC Radiophonic Workshop" was indescribable. Not only for Dr Who but for a host of other programmes, on radio and television, because they held the promise of thrills to come. And let's not forget that even then we had women pioneers like Delia Derbyshire and Verity Lambert. Britain was the leader in such things. Such a pity that people nowadays seem to have forgotten.

[@thedwightguy]

Meanwhile, Richard Branson got Knighted for making huge coin, and Mick Jagger got Knighted to stealing BLACK folk tunes. If Delia is NOT named to the top slots of the Empire postumously (Dame?) Greetings from Canada, a Colony.

[@soarornor]

Absolutely amazing style this woman had. Extraordinary hair as well. She was very unique.

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Great video, there is an electronic music era even before the Fairchild CMI. What boring music we would have without people like Delia❤️

[@GRAHAMAUS]

Thinking of the Fairlight CMI as one of the first synthesisers is like calling the Ford Escort the first car. There was a huge amount of stuff before that, going all the way back to the 1930s and even earlier, depending on exactly which definition of synthesiser you use.

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

@@GRAHAMAUS I'm just saying the CMI is a big milestone in electronic music history, many would agree I think. Your comparison isn't very good at all IMO. I think that what you're saying about the CMI is more like "the T-Ford is of no significance since there were cars before that" and I don't agree, but we're just of different opinion - no biggie.

[@felixdonnelly7449]

Those fabulous, ENORMOUSLY solid PHILIPS studio tape-recorders in the BBCs Radiophonic workshop. Spectacular hardware, spectacular creativity produced spectacular results!!

[@Samn3212]

Learnt of this woman today. She should be as well known and renowned as Kraftwerk.

[@alexmarshall4331]

The effect this piece of music had on me and my peers that 1st Dr Who episode was profound and lives on to this day 👉🇬🇧👈

[@leftyzappa]

This is fascinating. I wish they had gone through the process of the *actual* Doctor Who composition.

[@minimoments7039]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZmxmGCegbOmapY

[@NuGanjaTron]

Delia kept the details largely to herself (as she so often did), The bassline was a plucked string on a wooden resonator, and the leads were valve oscillators. But I don't think she documented any of that herself. Some details of how the theme was achieved are still a bit of a mystery. Btw, she didn't compose the theme herself; that was Ron Grainier, specifically for orchestra. Reportedly, he didn't even recognise his own composition after Delia's treatment, but was pleasantly surprised.

[@BlahDBlahDBlah]

The painstaking care that went into cutting and splicing tape for each sound is tremendous; when today virtually the same sounds could be produced by electronic devices a fraction of the size of each of those tape machines.

[@graphosxp]

Delia Derbyshire seems so awesome. I can't wait for a miniseries of her life story! Maybe it could star Jodie "Villanelle" Comer!

[@lewissmart7915]

"a little more top" *slams all high-freq sliders to the max*

[@matheusflores619]

The fact this video is remastered and still exists while Doctor Who episodes have no film to remaster and has missing episodes🤣

[@MrClingclong]

Amazing people worked at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, true genius's.

[@sleekitwan]

She’s mega. And how come, I never knew this? I knew the theme tune was ahead of its time, it actually took another decade before modern music began to reflect this properly.

[@cableguy786]

Love the way people spoke in them days ❤

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

@0:30 "a LITTLE more top"... ... Pushes all controls firmly to MAX 😁

[@G6JPG]

Well, only some of the channels! Also, look at the _size_ of a graphic equaliser in those days!

[@EricAllenJett]

Amazing! Everyone should share this woman's legacy...!

[@PerChristianFrankplads]

It's extremely annoying that the full documentary "Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes" is simply not available to view. The BBC should really do something about such situations, and keep important archive material for much longer on the iPlayer.

[@hypercomms2001]

Tomorrow's world, just now for us yesterday World...

[@freakybuzz]

My god, the sheer level of creativity and unrestrained inventiveness. This was the genesis of electronic music and they got so much of it right from the very start. The tactile, interactive, analog precision is tempered by inevitable inexactness inherent to the medium, which lends a human quality to these otherworldly sounds that digital gear simply cannot replicate. Just spectacular.

[@Chevy-jordan]

3:36 Madlib's - A Flight to Brazil mix (around 50:30 mins in on the full mix) Delia was an absolute beast!

[@herseem]

"....then all we have to do is cut the note to the right length". My, how times have changed, when my phone has a £3 app that has a sampler built in that automatically becomes a keyboard sound that's buiilt in to the DAW with it's own sequencer. We should be grateful.

[@rabidbigdog]

It would be so fascinating if Delia and Robert Moog had met.

[@NickSBailey]

would be interesting but I read that she hated the moog synthesizer lol

[@filled_soda]

Along with all the other wonderful aspects of this clip, I'm particularly impressed with the skill involved in pressing play at exactly the right instant in order for the sounds to play in synchronisation.