Good morning everyone!

Lots of cultural treats for you this morning in the form of women pioneers of electronic music. This was a super fun one for me to research so I hope you enjoy them as well.

ARE YOU AWARE of Delia Derbyshire, who arranged the Doctor Who theme tune? If not, this obituary is a lovely tribute to her work and her life, and if yes, please enjoy this lovely tribute to her work and her life:

In the last few years she was beginning once more to take an interest in electronic music, encouraged by a younger generation to whom she had become a cult figure. The technology she had left behind was finally catching up with her vision. One night many years ago, as we left Zinovieff's studio, she paused on Putney bridge. "What we are doing now is not important for itself," she said, "but one day someone might be interested enough to carry things forwards and create something wonderful on these foundations."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jul/07/guardianobituaries1

Perhaps you were fascinated by her “Dreams” project, in which ordinary people spoke about their dreams. This sort of thing is catnip to me. I found at least some of these on YouTube – we start with “Falling”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCF_mHKBH3k

I’ve got a YouTube coming for algorithmic composer Laurie Spiegel as well. Delighted to see that she is also into folk music, too:

Electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel began her musical life as a folk guitar player and has never abandoned that music. But she fell in love with machines the first time she saw a mainframe tape-operated computer at Purdue University on a field trip there with her high school physics class and has been finding ways to humanize them in her own musical compositions and software development ever since. She sees a lot of common ground between the seemingly oppositional aesthetics of folk traditions and the digital realm.

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/laurie-spiegel-grassroots-technologist/

Here she is on video playing a synth in 1977. In her words:

This 1977 tape is one of the earliest examples of purely digital realtime audio synthesis. It manages to achieve an analog synth sounding quality, but it is entirely digital synthesis and signal processing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NChqEEz31eE

Of course, no discussion of women’s contribution to the development of electronic music is complete without Dahpne Oram:

She is credited with the invention of a new form of sound synthesis – Oramics. Not only is this one of the earliest forms of electronic sound synthesis, it is noteworthy for being audiovisual in nature – i.e. the composer draws onto a synchronised set of ten 35mm film strips which overlay a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical charges to control amplitude, timbre, frequency and duration.

http://daphneoram.org/daphne/

Beep boop,

Alex.