This delightfully retro short from 1969 transports viewers to the advent of the synthesiser era. First broadcast as part of the BBC documentary Workshop: The Same Trade As Mozart, the video provides a tour of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which was established in 1958 to produce sound effects for the BBC, and ultimately became a groundbreaking space for experimental sound and electronic music.
In interviews with members of the workshop, including the electronic music innovator Daphne Oram (1925-2003), composers describe both the fundamentals of these early synthesiser technologies and the array of projects for which they are using them. This includes the inventive, hands-on techniques required to create these novel sounds at the time. Watched today, the clip may prompt reflections on the use of AI in music, viewed by some as a new tool that expands creative possibilities, and by others as a distressingly anti-human development.
For more on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, watch this video on how the Doctor Who theme music was created.
Via Open Culture
