Old Techniques and New Synths

1975

Paddy, Roger and I had been sharing the ARP Odyssey synthesiser. It was one of the most creative pieces of gear I’ve ever come across. You would stumble across an interesting sound by experimenting, and then have to decipher how it had happened. It forced you to learn. Of course, in those days nothing was memorised, and so you had to be sure you could reprogram it later.

Merry-Go-Round was created entirely on the ARP synthesiser, and apart from the final chord, played in one pass, using syncopated tape echo to provide all the semiquavers!

There were nine people entered in the catalogue as composers in 1976 and the department handled a total of 283 projects. 

Dick Mills lead the field with 63 jobs to his name. Supplying sounds rather than music, the projects were shorter and faster, and he would clock up many more titles. On the other hand, whole series were often a single entry in the catalogue, so it hard to be precise.

It’s easy to imagine that work was a neat sequential line of projects but it was more chaotic. However linear the commissioning of the music, different programmes would jostle for priority. You’d have to work on several projects at once in order to meet the deadlines.

The Secret War featured sounds from the large Synthi 100 in Room 10 together with the ARP content, it was assembled in John Baker’s old studio, Room 11.

A whole collection of radio projects threaded in out of the work for television. There were eighteen projects for radio, idents for a local radio station, title tunes, complete radio dramas and a radio documentary. Outside composers were always envious of us in the Radiophonic Workshop where work never stopped, but we often longed for a bit of head space. The BBC’s need for music seemed unstoppable….