Wonderful archive of BBC Radiophonic Workshop photos

Steve writes with exciting news: "I got an email today from Ray White, a old friend from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Ray was an engineer there for many years and has had this in-depth technical history of the Workshop up on the web for some time now. However, he has just added a gallery of pictures. As with so many unexplained phenomena, there are very few photos of the Radiophonic Workshop, but Ray’s collection is the most comprehensive to date. All the pics have notes, which are also very good." The pictures are fantastic and incredibly exotic. On a similar note, here has a great old clip of Liz Parker tweaking the enormous EMS Delaware (which people outside the workshop call a Synthi 100).

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Hey all...for us on the other side of the pond who aren't in the know...what's the radiophonic workshop? is this a commercial institution? a Tv show? What is it?

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:01 am

being on the other side of the pond is no excuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop

aaaanyway. I did a session in Maida Vale in about 1992 (a Peel sesh), I sneaked upstairs from the main studio to seek the radiophonic workshop .. imagining something like this
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/whitefiles5/rwsg/pages/page_8.htm

I was a bit disapointed when I actually saw this
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/whitefiles5/rwsg/pages/page_62.htm

best never to meet your heros eh!

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:23 am

hey, some of those are new to me, i got a glossy copy of the delia one they used for her obit out of the guardian, it's in this series.

daphne oram's book "An Individual Note" is a spectacularly eccentric treatise on electronic music, if you ever come across a copy (shows up in lots of libraries but never for sale).

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:23 am

The Liz Parker photo does not show a Synthi 100, just an old Soundcraft mixer and a couple of keyboards, neither of which are a EMS manufactured.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:04 am

That's why the copy refers to this clip of Liz playing the Delaware on YouTube...

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 8:16 am

I don't know about you, but I'm hot for Delia.

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:43 am

She's dead, Jim.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:07 am

If you haven't seen the BBC documentary on the Radiophonic folks, you can watch it here:

http://www.fatbaron.com/alchemistsofsound.wmv

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:15 am

The Tiscali site you are trying to reach has been temporarily suspended due to excessive bandwidth consumption.
Can someone mirror these photos please?

# posted by

cemenTIMental : 8:47 am

okay...i posted the first comment in this section...

i checked out the wikipedia article, basically the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a place where they did a bunch of Dr. Who sound tracks?

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:22 pm

"basically the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a place where they did a bunch of Dr. Who sound tracks?"

Uh huh. And Kraftwerk were a German band who used some synthesizers when they recorded Autobahn.

Moron.

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:42 pm

Because of exceeded bandwidth I've now provided extra link for downloading collection as Zip file via Rapidshare. Click on the link, Click on Free, wait the prescribed time and follow instructions. Takes 40 seconds on 2 MB/s broadband. Unzip the file, open the folder, click on index.htm and view in web browser. - Ray White.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:05 pm

Those photos all look like they come from the BBC book celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Radiophonic Workshop (The cover of the book is on page 5 of the gallery) If you can find a copy it's a fascinating insight into the beginnings of electronic music, and includes equipment lists for all the studios for all you synthgeeks.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:27 pm

Not all the pictures are from the book but not all the pictures from the book are in my collection. If you want them all you should find a copy of the book.

My purpose wasn't simply to distribute pics but rather to give some further insight into workings of the Workshop. An expanded gallery of 137 pictures, from various sources (14 MB), complete with my original descriptive text, is available as download from:

http://rapidshare.de/files/26207948/rwsge.zip.html

Ray White

# posted by

Anonymous : 8:34 pm

The radiophonic article is now at
http://whitefiles.org/rws

The gallery can now be seen at
http://whitefiles.org/rwg

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:27 am