Channeling: Delia Derbyshire

The first in a new Winter Session series of hands-on music production courses, Channeling, where, each year, we will dive deeply into the work of a sonic practitioner, listen to their music and explore in the studio: how did they get those sounds? 2024's artist will be Delia Derbyshire, the trail-blazing producer of electronic music, most well-known for her work with the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop and realization of the Dr. Who theme. We will start by listening to and appreciating works that she created from the 1960's through to the 1990's, from proto-techno experiments to her psychedelic musique concrte band, White Noise. We will examine how she generated and manipulated sounds using oscillators / signal generators, tape loops, sampling and tape manipulation. Students will explore these hands-on techniques in the Analog Mixing Studio, and the course will culminate in a creative sound design project to compose and record a theme song for a hypothetical science fiction program.
Open to students from across the institute, the course will also include a crash course in analog signal chains and recording studio orientation.