REQ: Spitfire Audio BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Electronic music history, reimagined
For 40 years, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the place to go for the sound of the impossible – the unruly engine behind the music and effects of Doctor Who, the Goon Show, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and countless other BBC productions. It was a place of other worlds, and of other sounds. Reanimating this abundant legacy, the essence of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is now available for the first time – with unprecedented access to its home: London’s Maida Vale studios.
Dive into an immaculately sampled collection of vintage synthesisers, tape loops, iconic archives and brand new performances from Workshop members. Revitalised with Spitfire’s SOLAR engine, this library passes the torch from the most forward-thinking minds of early electronic music on to the next generation of producers.
While there are instruments in this library that are created from sampling the archival tapes of the Workshop, the human connection has been maintained. The found sounds and early synths that were deployed by the Workshop are realised here with new performances and patches from remaining members of the Workshop such as Dick Mills, Mark Ayres, Glynis Jones and new collaborators including Kieron Pepper (once live drummer for The Prodigy).
Preserving a unique period in the history of British electronic music (1958-1968), but offering an instrument for the future, BBC Radiophonic Workshop takes the early form of sampling pioneered by composers such as Delia Derbyshire, Desmond Briscoe, John Baker and Daphne Oram and brings it up to date with the cutting edge techniques of library creation Spitfire Audio is known for. Vintage synthesisers, treasure-trove tape archives, found objects and performances from Workshop members are now available under the hood of Spitfire Audio’s state-of-the-art Solar engine.
We were guided through the labyrinthine archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop by composer, sound designer and Workshop archivist Mark Ayres – who has worked on Doctor Who and many other productions. Along with other members of the Workshop who are alive today and still gigging under the Workshop’s name, Mark has overseen a deeply sampled exploration of this other-worldy collection. New patches and performances on precious EMS VCS 3 synths, choirs of the lampshades Delia Derbyshire famously sampled and composed with, Skeleton Guitars, tape loops … And more.
The Workshop was a physical place, a space where you could get your hands – and your ears – dirty. The archive materials available in this new instrument, stored in Spitfire’s Solar engine, are your invitation to do the same. Solar allows these historic audio ingredients to find new expression through a variety of signal chains – some old, some new – and the modern techniques of bending, stretching and morphing provided for by the on-board effects.
Along with a variety of microphones, the EMT turntable and Rogers loudspeakers made especially for the BBC, there are the Maida Vale plate and spring reverbs, plus processing through modular synthesizers, tape machines, EMS Vocoder, Echo chamber, Roland Vocoder SVC-350 and Eventide H-3000. Choose from Archive Content, Found Sounds, Junk Percussion, Tape Loops, Synths and a Miscellany of other gems … And your time travel begins.