Telekom Electronic Beats
Culture

Listen To Daphne Oram's Rediscovered Synth From The 1970s

Vimeo

By loading the video, you agree to Vimeos's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

Daphne Oram’s legacy at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is one of pioneering sound design and a vanguard attitude towards modernizing music production techniques. One of Oram’s memorable 1960s experiments was the “Oramics Machine”, which ran film strips across photo-electric cells which would in turn translate the images from the film into control voltages used to modulate parameters like duration, timbre and frequency. It was a machine that sought to do away with standardized hierarchies of thinking and producing sound. In the 1970s, she attempted to produce a smaller scale prototype called the “Mini-Oramics” which sadly never came to fruition. The “lost” blueprints of the Mini-Oramics have now not only been recovered, but thanks to the dedicated work of PhD candidate, Tom Richard, turned into a working prototype using only synth parts that would have been available at the time. Watch the video above and witness how powerful this “period piece” technology actually is.

Listen to a few of Oram’s own productions on this wonderful mix featuring 35 female experimental musicians.

(via Synthtopia)

Loading...