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 Kyma Forum
 Confabulation
 Doctor Who - Radiophonatron
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| Author | Topic: Doctor Who - Radiophonatron | |
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armand Member |
posted 11 April 2005 07:23
 
Maybe it is just sentiment, but I love all those sounds from the Doctor Who series. Brilliant! http://www0.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/news/radiophonatron.shtml IP: Logged | |
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Scot_Solida Member |
posted 14 April 2005 11:06
I am a die-hard Doctor Who fan. When I got my Wacom tablet, the first thing I did was to play the Doctor Who theme with the pen... That music and those sounds are what interested me in synthesis in the first place, so many years ago. As you might know, the BBC has revived the show, with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor for the first season (he has since announced that it would be his only season). One keen backstage observer spied a MoogerFooger ring mod being used for Dalek voices. Guess they haven't got a Kyma! IP: Logged | |
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Paul McFadden Member |
posted 05 February 2006 17:32
Hi Guys, I'm Paul McFadden the sound editor/designer on Doctor Who and we have got a Kyma on the show. Just recently got it and starting to get to grips with it. We did have a ring mod on it, Nick Briggs (the voice of the Daleks) brought his own modulator on set with him and they did it live. Recording a clean feed on a track of a Deva. Any wrongly modulated audio was redone with a Moogerfooger ring modulator Plug in in ProTools. I will be using the Kyma on the Cybermen though. Wicked!!! IP: Logged | |
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robertjarvis Member |
posted 06 February 2006 06:17
I worked with Daphne Oram between 1983-94, a pioneer of The Radiophonic Workshop, who although not directly connected with the 'Dr Who' Sounds, was very influential at that time. (See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2669735.stm). It is one of my regrets that she never got to see or experiment with the Kyma system because she would have loved the 'hands-on' control offered through the continuum and the wacom tablet. (There could have been some very interesting conversations with Carla and Kurt as well!!!) IP: Logged | |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 06 February 2006 12:31
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2669735.stm Robert would you talk a little more about your experience? Did you work in her studio? IP: Logged | |
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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%20&%20Auder/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) [This message has been edited by robertjarvis (edited 06 February 2006).] IP: Logged | |
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pete Member |
posted 07 February 2006 06:37
Re: the Dalek ring modulator I remember once seeing an article which had a circuit diagram of the ring modulator used for the Daleks and it was made up of transformers and diodes. I studied the circuit and found that It didn't do multiplication (like most ring modulators) at all. It instead used one signal to offset the other but then rectified it in such a way that the positive and negative halfs were squashed together (with zero values during the crossed over period) under the control of the other signal, hence giving the appearance of multiplication. I was thinking of emulating this action in Kyma to see how different these types of ring modulation are. I wonder if this diode/transformer circuit is the way the moogerfooger ring modulator works? IP: Logged | |
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pete Member |
posted 10 February 2006 17:26
I've made a Diode Transformer emulating Ring modulator (attached). It's made up of just mixers and constants and no multipliers. It relies on the clipping action of the mixers to act as the diodes but this is assuming perfect diodes with no voltage drop. I couldn't tell by looking at the original circuit at what level they expected the signal to be. If it was a high voltage then the volt drop in the diodes would have little effect, but maybe the used a low voltage and relied on the log response of diodes when supplied with low current to give a more multiplying type action. I don't have the circuit and I was doing it all from memory so I can't really check it out, but this one, as it stands, certainly has very similar properties to a standard ring modulator but yet is very different. enjoy Pete. IP: Logged | |
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Phi Curtis Member |
posted 11 February 2006 14:01
That's a great sound. Thanks! IP: Logged | |
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SSC Administrator |
posted 12 February 2006 16:49
IP: Logged |
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