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Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:44 pm
by dahnielson
Consul wrote:If I could ever have met Delia Derbyshire in her prime, I would totally have hit on her. :mrgreen:
He he. True.

She had studied both mathematics and music.

BTW, after finish listening to collection of queues from Doctor Who (produced by the workshop) I took the recently released third album from Hot Chip for a spin. And I must say that you actually can find in the intro to the first track "Out At The Pictures" how much the workshop have managed to influence contemporary music.* Hot Chip is famous for using all kinds of weird instruments and sounds, in addition to all kinds of VST plugins, to create complex rhythmic sound textures ("impossible to recreate live" they have lamented). Another British favorite of mine is Psapp who build their songs with a lot of humor by sampling mostly toy instruments. I think you can trace both groups methods of working to methods and ideas developed by the workshop, despite being "simply" popular music. (Although, Hot Chip probably will claim Kraftwerk as the main inspiration for much of their work.)

*) In this case I got a John Baker feeling.

Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 5:11 pm
by Consul
I think at this point that I'm going to stop coveting the latest and greatest in sound design software, and focus on making music with what I have instead. Many of the Radiophonics Workshop recording are so amazing, and it was all driven by pure talent. The tools are only as good as the hand that uses them.

The funny thing about the whole NI Komplete bundle, is that I had downloaded every possible demo that NI offers as part of Komplete, and even though I was amazed by some of the sounds, in the end, there were still only one or two sounds in each synth that I actually liked. $1000 for a couple dozen nice sounds seems a little excessive, I think. I'd rather have a nice, easy to use sampler with some nice synthesis capabilities. That could do everything I might want.

For everything else, there's musique concrète numérique. (Google translated "digital" as numérique. I don't know if that's strictly correct, so please tell me if I'm wrong.)

Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 6:26 pm
by dahnielson
Consul wrote:For everything else, there's musique concrète numérique. (Google translated "digital" as numérique. I don't know if that's strictly correct, so please tell me if I'm wrong.)
Yep. That's correct, digital is numérique in French afaik. "Digital audio" is "audio numérique".

Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 6:31 pm
by Consul
Well, it makes perfect sense, given that digital processing is purely numeric in nature.

Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 7:00 pm
by Consul
Okay, my last post was the most pointless post ever.

Re: The Alchemists of Sound: BBC Radiophonics Workshop

Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 7:01 pm
by Consul
No, wait. That one was.