Speaker 1: Hello. For Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
Speaker 1: is Wamanica. This month we're talking about women of sound.
Speaker 1: These women dominated the airwaves, innovating, documenting, and creating the
Speaker 1: audio landscape we live in today. Today we're talking about
Speaker 1: the woman who could draw music. A pioneering electronic musician,
Speaker 1: she developed her own musical technique called aramics, which involved
Speaker 1: drawing on film strips to produce sounds never heard before.
Speaker 1: Please welcome Daphne Orum. Daphne was born in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: She grew up in Wiltshire, England, and was extremely bright.
Speaker 1: Her musical journey began unconventionally, not as a hobby, but
Speaker 1: as a divine calling. As the story goes, when she
Speaker 1: was seventeen years old, Daphne's father invited a famous medium
Speaker 1: to their home. The medium told Daphne that a voice
Speaker 1: from the beyond stated she would become a great musician
Speaker 1: one day. Daphne's father trusted this otherworldly advice and allowed
Speaker 1: his daughter to pursue music. But when she was offered
Speaker 1: a place at the Royal College of Music, she turned
Speaker 1: it down and got a job as a music balancer
Speaker 1: for the BBC instead. As part of her job, she
Speaker 1: stood by with pre recorded versions of on air orchestral
Speaker 1: concerts on a turntable. If the live show was interrupted,
Speaker 1: the pre recorded version ensured the radio broadcast could continue.
Speaker 1: When she wasn't working with the orchestra, Daphne was composing
Speaker 1: her own music. She took advantage of the newly invented
Speaker 1: commercial tape recorder to experiment with unconventional sounds. These early
Speaker 1: tape recorders aren't the pocket sized devices we know today.
Speaker 1: They were the size of industrial gas cookers. Daphne would
Speaker 1: stay at the BBC late into the evening to play around.
Speaker 1: She recorded random sounds and then played them back, cutting them,
Speaker 1: splicing them, slowing them downs, beating them up, and playing
Speaker 1: them in reverse, just to see what they would sound like.
Speaker 1: DAFTI put some of those new sounds together and wrote
Speaker 1: a song called still Point. It's considered to be the
Speaker 1: first musical composition that manipulates electronic sounds in real time
Speaker 1: alongside acoustic orchestration. Despite its innovation, the song was rejected
Speaker 1: by the BBC. It went unheard for nearly seventy years
Speaker 1: until the London Contemporary Orchestra performed it in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen fifties, Daphne had become music studio manager.
Speaker 1: She begged her higher ups at the BBC to start
Speaker 1: an experimental sound department. They told her they didn't need
Speaker 1: machine made music. They had plenty of orchestras that made
Speaker 1: music just fine. Still, the studio set up a committee
Speaker 1: involving electrophonic effects. They asked for the results of Daftie's experiences,
Speaker 1: but didn't ask her to be involved. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: Daphne finally got the opportunity to make electronic music like
Speaker 1: she'd hoped. She teamed up with another recording engineer, Desmond Brisco.
Speaker 1: The pair were given a spare office room, some out
Speaker 1: of date equipment, and time to experiment. They weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to use the word music in their department name to
Speaker 1: avoid confusion with other offices, so the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Speaker 1: it would be. Unfortunately, the job was less adventurous work
Speaker 1: than Daphne expected. The workshop was mainly tasked with creating
Speaker 1: sound effects for radio dramas and bouncy commercial jingles. What
Speaker 1: Daphne wanted was to craft avant garde electronic orchestras. Just
Speaker 1: a few months after founding what would eventually become one
Speaker 1: of the most famous music studios in the world. Daphne
Speaker 1: left the BBC, she decided to set up her own
Speaker 1: studio in an old barn in Kent. There she kept
Speaker 1: working as a commercial composer, producing music for television, film, commercials,
Speaker 1: theater and sound installations and exhibitions. Her sounds can also
Speaker 1: be heard in early James Bond films, though she went uncredited.
Speaker 1: But Daphne's old barn was also the site of her
Speaker 1: biggest invention yet. There she built her own aramics machine
Speaker 1: for making music. It was modeled after a machine she'd
Speaker 1: seen at the BBC, the osculoscope, which visualized the sound
Speaker 1: it played via sound waves. Daphne was interested in the
Speaker 1: machine's reverse. If music could create images, could images create music.
Speaker 1: Daphne created a machine the size of a chest of
Speaker 1: drawers made from metal shelves. Motors in the machine pulled
Speaker 1: eight parallel pieces of thirty five millimeter film across a scanner.
Speaker 1: Daphne drew on the film curves, dots, swiggles, shapes, and zigs.
Speaker 1: Each shape created a different sound as it traveled through
Speaker 1: the machine. Aramics combined the mechanization of electronic music with
Speaker 1: the organic nature and joy of human made art. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, Daphne also wrote a book, a manifesto
Speaker 1: of sorts, titled An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics.
Speaker 1: She began a second book, The Sound of the Past,
Speaker 1: a resonating speculation, but never finished it. It's rumored that
Speaker 1: the likes of The Beatles, The Who and the Rolling
Speaker 1: Stones visited Daphne's home studio to get a peek at
Speaker 1: her groundbreaking aramics machine and into her musical process. Even so,
Speaker 1: Daphne never enjoyed mainstream success. She passed away in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. These days, Daphne and her contributions to
Speaker 1: music are gaining more recogniz Goldsmith's College at the University
Speaker 1: of London has a catalog of her archive. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the PRS Foundation and the new BBC Radiophonic Workshop launched
Speaker 1: the Arim Award to honor women innovating in sound and music.
Speaker 1: Daphne's remembered as the Godmother of electronic music, a woman
Speaker 1: who innovated and overcame in a male dominated field. All month,
Speaker 1: We're talking about women of Sound. For more information, fight
Speaker 1: us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast special thanks
Speaker 1: to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co creator. Talk
Speaker 1: to you tomorrow