Originally broadcast 2 February, 1982, Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop demonstrates how he reimagined Ron Grainer’s classic Doctor Who theme – which was first realised so startlingly by Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills in the 1960s – to make it ‘brighter and more modern sounding’ for the 1980s.
He uses modern polyphonic analogue synthesisers like the Yamaha CS-80, an ARP Odyssey Mk3 and a Roland Jupiter-4, a vocoder and an old, malfunctioning phase shifter unit he found in the back of the Workshop. Gent that he is, he then pops over to the Music Arcade studio to demonstrate the extraordinary new Fairlight CMI Series II synthesiser to the some kids from St Mary’s Balham Primary School and hosts Tim Whitnall and Lucie Skeaping.
