The Books — Peter Howell

I was writing before I was composing, and every now and then the writing takes over. Below are the two currently published books. You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the three novels!

“This book really doesn’t disappoint. Highly recommended!” Simon Hart. We Are Cult

You’ll find it at Obverse Books

Over the years, people have suggested that one of the Radiophonic Workshop composers should write a book. I was always reluctant because there were already books out there that described the history of the workshop, and I couldn’t see the need for yet another. It was only when the Radiophonic Workshop formed a touring band, and when time after time the most bizarre things happened at our various concert venues, that I started to visualise how a book might work. It would be a way of recounting all those recent experiences alongside stories of my career in music for TV between 1974 and 1998. Stuart Douglas at Obverse Books, who turned out to be a fan of early H&F LP’s as well as the workshop output was happy to publish the result. Thanks to his help and suggestions, the book has now come to fruition. ‘Radiophonic Times’ is available through Obverse Books’ own site.

You’ll find quotes from it elsewhere on the site, especially in the ‘BBC Years’ section.
Here’s an extract from the introduction…

This is a book about the past and the present. How in 1974 I found myself at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and following its closure in 1998, how five of us formed a band.

I use present day concerts as springboards, bringing events from the past to mind. So, I make no apology for darting around in time. I don’t imagine Doctor Who would find the need to apologise for that either, so I’m in good company.

I hope I can give an impression of what it was like to work at the Radiophonic Workshop, the odd techniques we developed to tease out new sounds from brute machines, and how technology gradually evolved from the downright impossible to the ‘do it all’ era of the computers.

There could be as many books as there were composers at the Workshop. I can only tell my own story and will not pretend to tell theirs. Where appropriate, they come into the narrative, but this is not an exercise in name dropping, nor is it a catalogue of quotes. It’s the story of someone who was in the Radiophonic Workshop for twenty-six years, and whose career would have been nothing without it.

I’ve gained a rather dubious reputation over the years for unusual analogies, so those of you who like your metaphors mixed are in for a treat, but one thing I won’t be doing is describing the waveform page of the Fairlight Computer Instrument as a cake! I did that in front of a group of schoolchildren who were visiting the Workshop in the eighties, only to realise half way through that for the metaphor to work, the cake would have to be sliced horizontally. The head of the Workshop, Brian Hodgson, made me promise never to do it again!

Radiophonic Times

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This is a manual for composers who want to move into music for Film and Television. It is intended to be a very practical book, one which will be used time and again as a reference during the actual working process, when composers are under pressure to deliver and directors are are eager to hear; that period in the last throes of composition when time just seems to accelerate.

You’ll find it on Amazon

Below is an extract from the section on the composer’s first meeting with the director. A time when, counter-intuitively, the composer needs to come away with some in-depth information. What makes the director tick, why is he asking for music over certain scenes? What does he think about his own film?
Amazon

The composer needs to come away from this vital meeting with essential information. His ability to read the film shown to him and indeed to read the other people in the room, will ensure that his work is not in vain.

If he gets this wrong he will jeopardise his relationship with the director by writing unsatisfactory music. Once his offerings have been declined, trust between the composer and the director will break down, and regaining it will use up time and creative energy that is in short supply on a busy project.
Strange then, that this event is so often ignored in ‘how to’ manuals.

With the help of Bianca Ansem’s illustrations, we are taken through the whole process of writing music to picture.