http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Derbyshire

She was in White Noise, too. 

I have that 4x10” collection of BBC modular madness.  yum, what an excellent indulgence it is...second to leaving a real modular self-noodling in a patch in your very own home.

– Solenoid
3:21PM, 10 May 2006

there was a discussion about her on the kyma bb a few months back, in which someone who worked with her posted this which includes a bit about this funky machine she used to create sound:

robertjarvis
Member posted 06 February 2006 16:06
I first met Daphne in 1983 when she was my electronic music tutor at University in Canterbury. She had the foresight to see that I didn’t need directed ‘teaching’ as such but just needed to be left alone to get on with composing and experimenting. After the course had finished we maintained contact, and later on she invited me to join her in teaching an expanded course at the same College. There our studio was made up of a number of reel to reels, an EMS synth, and the new DX7 synth. As a result of our new professional relationship I would often visit her at her converted oast house where her now defunct ‘Oramics’ machine was set up, still in what used to be her main studio - a round room at the bottom of an oasthouse ( “http://www.rebuffer.com/law & Auder/radiophonic/Pdrm0274.jpg").

The oramics machine made use of ten 35mm clear movie films onto which she would draw or stick shapes to control parameters such as pitch, envelope, reverb, wave shape, vibrato and tremulo. These drawings were then pulled over photoelectric cells which were then transformed into sound. (see: http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/oramics/)

Sadly, much of the technology to bring the oramics machine back to life was now not easily available, electronics having moved moved from valves to smaller intergrated circuitry. Anyway, the future wasn’t in big machines, and so Daphne’s main interest for as long as I knew her was on trying to convert her Oramics concept to the computer. This was done in a smaller room (as it was easier to keep warm - the house needed a lot of heat to keep warm and this proved too expensive). In those days (c.1987) the most powerful home computer was made by the English ‘Acorn’ company, and we used its pioneering ‘Archimedes’ computer - an early exponent of RISC processing.

In order to have any chance of the computer to be able to do the complex calculations required by the Oramics concept Daphne taught herself machine-code and programmed in that language of hex strings. Instead of now drawing the various wave components of the sound parameters that Oramics dealt with she eventually devised a small wheel-like device which was attached perpendicular to the desk that the computer keyboard sat on, which you could move with your thumb to modulate the tremulo, reverb, pitch and so on. This was by no means perfect, but it offered a glimmer of hope for her being able to incorporate human gesture into her synthesis.

I spent many days (going into nights) with Daphne, not only acting as human ‘guinea pig’ testing out any recent programming she had completed, but also discussing how the progamme could develop, as well as chatting about musical matters and life in general, and of course lots of scheming and devising. (She had a great sense of humour.)

A great friend, and sorely missed.

(There is a detailed description of her life’s work at: http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/Oram/oram.html)

– bp
5:55PM, 10 May 2006

hey ben, good to hear from you!  Daphne Oram was a different person, but hopefully the documentary will cover her as well.  I still need to figure out how to get a copy!

– randy
6:13PM, 10 May 2006

David, what 4x10 BBC modular WHAT??? I need to know.  And here I thought having the “outer space sound effects” record with the Liberator on it was the shit.

– randy
6:14PM, 10 May 2006

http://www.discogs.com/release/212869

– brian
8:16AM, 12 May 2006

ah, whichever brian you are, thanks!

– randy
9:33AM, 12 May 2006