Les Chants Magnétiques

On This Day In History
2001: Delia Derbyshire dies

Quote Of The Day
"The air raid sirens. It's an abstract sound because you don't know the source of it as a young child. And then the all clear. That's electronic music in those days."
(Delia Derbyshire)

R.I.P., Delia Derbyshire; a true pioneer in the field of electronic music. We owe you so much for the music you created and the music you inspired. 

Verity Lambert, the first producer of Doctor Who, envisioned a French group called Les Structures Sonores to play the Doctor Who theme, but the B.B.C. could not afford them, so Ron Grainer and the Radiophonic Workshop got the job. Ron Grainer wrote the score but he couldn't think of any instruments to play it so on the score he wrote things like "sweeps," "swoops," "wind cloud" and "wind bubble." Delia Derbyshire took that score, recorded dozens of sounds on magnetic tape, played them backwards and forwards, faster and slower, chopped and spliced before finally putting it all together as this, perhaps the greatest, most revolutionary T.V. theme ever. When Ron Grainer first heard it, he asked Delia Derbyshire, "Did I write that?" She replied, graciously, "Most of it." Grainer asked the B.B.C. to give her half the royalties, but they refused because Radiophonic Workshop staff were not recognised as composers.

The Doctor Who Theme has been re-recorded many times but, in my opinion, never improved. The menace and otherworldliness of the original still induces goosebumps to this day. However, there is one version that comes close to at least matching the original and, if the B.B.C. could afford to hire him, it would be money well spent. Ironically, it's another Frenchman.

Doctor Who Theme.
O.K., this is not really J.M.J., but it sounds exactly like him, and Jarre has said that the Doctor Who Theme was one of the pieces of music that inspired him to pursue electronic music, so I am sure he would be happy to record something like this for the B.B.C.

As long as they don't go down the Belgian jazz route. Doctor Qui.