5 ms·

Student Builds Daphne Oram’s Unfinished ‘Mini-Oramics’

66 points by teh_klev 10y ago

porsupah 10y ago
The Radio 3 documentary on Daphne Oram, "Wee Have Also Sound-Houses": http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ct1y1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ct1y1 - is, predictably, not available to listen to on their site, but you can find it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaqvAH7R34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaqvAH7R34
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Another documentary that anyone interested in this period of the Radiophonic Workshop might like is one on a colleague of Oram's: Delia Derbyshire, famous for being the creator of the Dr. Who theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXnmSgaeGAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXnmSgaeGAI
fhood 10y ago
Could someone explain to me what the creative advantage of this is? Particularly over a computer? I don't have a background in electronic music, so maybe I am missing something?
- jgrahamc 10y ago
  The original Oramics machine was designed in the early to mid 1960s Computers were something few people had.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  In the 60s/70s, composing on a computer wasn't the same experience as today. Incidentally, today it's still pretty frustrating. The creative advantage is in being able to express pitch, (and presumably generic control voltages) intuitively as continuous lines, which is a natural fit for analog synthesizers. The alternative is sending discrete events, which is how midi works, something not invented until later. There is a school of thought that to limit synthesizers to the discrete world of "notes," with quantised durations and pitch values as a hangover from our ideas of keyboard instruments, is to waste their potential. Ribbon controllers were popular in that period for expressing continuous pitch, and I suspect the Oramics was designed as a way of recording these sorts of expressions, like a kind of analog punch card. Also consider that the main compositional method of the radiophonic workshop at that time was splicing magnetic tape with razor blades and sellotape.
  - fhood 10y ago
    Thanks, to me the article wasn't clear on whether the machine was built for historical reasons, or whether it had modern uses. I agree that it seems restrictive to limit synths to discrete notes (like playing guitar without bends) although I probably wouldn't use the word mellifluous to describe the sounds made in the video.
    - JonnieCache 10y ago
      I agree. It did say that local artists were given "a few days" to play with the thing, which sounds frustrating. Like all primitive synthesizer music, with a generous helping of tape delay and spring reverb it will probably sound wicked.
    - mrob 10y ago
      I agree that quantized pitches are a great waste of a synth's potential. William Sethares did some very interesting research on consonance perception, which can be used to construct microtonal tuning systems without the dissonance usually associated with them. Here's an good demonstration of what you can do with arbitrary pitches: http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html "As each new note sounds, its pitch (and that of all currently sounding notes) is adjusted microtonally (based on its spectrum) to maximize consonance. The adaptation causes interesting glides and microtonal pitch adjustments in a perceptually sensible fashion. "
      - JonnieCache 10y ago
        Wow, that makes me feel seasick. Looking forward to playing it at the tail end of parties.
    - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
      There are ideas where the concept was far ahead of the available technology. This is definitely one of those. It's pretty trivial to do this kind of thing with automation curves in modern sequencers now. In fact you can draw tens of curves in parallel. The sound you get depends on which softsynths you use and how flexible their modulation routing is. Most people think of sequencers as discrete notes + modulation, not as curves or functions. So the good thing about this idea is that it can break people out of that way of working - even though there's no real need to make this device as a commercial product now. But generally "drawing" music doesn't work all that well. The information in music needs much finer control - either with conventional sequencing, or (more interestingly now) with generative code.
camtarn 10y ago
Tom Richards, who built the machine, has a very short blog here with a couple of bits of extra info on the machine: http://minioramics.blogspot.co.uk/ http://minioramics.blogspot.co.uk/ Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of info about how the lines on the film map to the synthesizer controls - I found it very odd to watch the film go by, and see busy sections with short discrete notes, sections with long interesting curves, and almost empty sections, but to hear no discernable difference in the audio.
- orillian 10y ago
  I think the disjoint between the audio and the visual is amplified due to the fact that the read head(s) are a couple inches to the left under the cover. So there is always a perceived delay to the audio from where you are looking. This magnifies if you for example look to the right edge of the view while it's playing a couple inches past the left, less so if you can project the last "bar" past the left edge in your mind. This device would be better I think if the read head could be moved directly to the left edge or even perhaps placed in the center of the view. But I have a feeling it needs to be in darkness to read best. Interesting idea none the less.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    Or you could desync the audio from the video by about a third of a second and place a red bar over where the head is reading.
tribe 10y ago
Someone made an iPhone app which simulates one of these machines, if anyone is interested in playing around with one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8
konschubert 10y ago
The music which it plays in the demo video is a meaningless mix of scribbled sounds. Whatever the musical potential of the instrument might be, it is not shown in the video.
- Angostura 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that was some Schoenberg actually.
  - konschubert 10y ago
    I respect if others discover meaning in this music. To me it sounds like a child's scribble.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      I find the art of children to often be much more unaffected, creative, and interesting than that of most adult artists. In fact, so do some adult artists themselves, who admire and even seek to themselves emulate the art of children.
- vessenes 10y ago
  Well, it was designed in the 1970s, at a time when experimental musicians were were thinking about what was next after the sort of post-Dada deconstruction of music, and how computers might fit in to that. Like this is the time, approximately, when Laurie Anderson has got analog tape affixed to a bow of her violin and is bowing the tape, and is about just go bat-shit crazy with MIDI for things like Oh Superman in the early 1980s. So, drawing is cool. Avant-garde musical experimentation is cool. It may not have a beat, but it's possible you could dance to it, with the right perspective. :)
dang 10y ago
Previous Daphne Oram on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993961.
biot 10y ago
I almost heard Flight of the Bumblebee at one point (0:50 in the video). I think something like this could be useful as a music transcribing device -- listen to a piece and move your pen up/down as the pitch rises/falls while the medium scrolls by. Then rewind and play.
jlarocco 10y ago
Sounds interesting, but the article doesn't show up for me. Ad-block shows it's blocking some font files, but everything else is getting through. I hope it's not a new trend to not display anything if custom fonts don't load.

66 points by teh_klev 10y ago

The Radio 3 documentary on Daphne Oram, "Wee Have Also Sound-Houses": http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ct1y1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ct1y1 - is, predictably, not available to listen to on their site, but you can find it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaqvAH7R34 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaqvAH7R34

pmoriarty 10y ago
Another documentary that anyone interested in this period of the Radiophonic Workshop might like is one on a colleague of Oram's: Delia Derbyshire, famous for being the creator of the Dr. Who theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXnmSgaeGAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXnmSgaeGAI

fhood 10y ago

Could someone explain to me what the creative advantage of this is? Particularly over a computer? I don't have a background in electronic music, so maybe I am missing something?

jgrahamc 10y ago
The original Oramics machine was designed in the early to mid 1960s Computers were something few people had.
JonnieCache 10y ago
In the 60s/70s, composing on a computer wasn't the same experience as today. Incidentally, today it's still pretty frustrating. The creative advantage is in being able to express pitch, (and presumably generic control voltages) intuitively as continuous lines, which is a natural fit for analog synthesizers. The alternative is sending discrete events, which is how midi works, something not invented until later. There is a school of thought that to limit synthesizers to the discrete world of "notes," with quantised durations and pitch values as a hangover from our ideas of keyboard instruments, is to waste their potential. Ribbon controllers were popular in that period for expressing continuous pitch, and I suspect the Oramics was designed as a way of recording these sorts of expressions, like a kind of analog punch card. Also consider that the main compositional method of the radiophonic workshop at that time was splicing magnetic tape with razor blades and sellotape.
- fhood 10y ago
  Thanks, to me the article wasn't clear on whether the machine was built for historical reasons, or whether it had modern uses. I agree that it seems restrictive to limit synths to discrete notes (like playing guitar without bends) although I probably wouldn't use the word mellifluous to describe the sounds made in the video.
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    I agree. It did say that local artists were given "a few days" to play with the thing, which sounds frustrating. Like all primitive synthesizer music, with a generous helping of tape delay and spring reverb it will probably sound wicked.
  - mrob 10y ago
    I agree that quantized pitches are a great waste of a synth's potential. William Sethares did some very interesting research on consonance perception, which can be used to construct microtonal tuning systems without the dissonance usually associated with them. Here's an good demonstration of what you can do with arbitrary pitches: http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/three_ears.html "As each new note sounds, its pitch (and that of all currently sounding notes) is adjusted microtonally (based on its spectrum) to maximize consonance. The adaptation causes interesting glides and microtonal pitch adjustments in a perceptually sensible fashion. "
    - JonnieCache 10y ago
      Wow, that makes me feel seasick. Looking forward to playing it at the tail end of parties.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    There are ideas where the concept was far ahead of the available technology. This is definitely one of those. It's pretty trivial to do this kind of thing with automation curves in modern sequencers now. In fact you can draw tens of curves in parallel. The sound you get depends on which softsynths you use and how flexible their modulation routing is. Most people think of sequencers as discrete notes + modulation, not as curves or functions. So the good thing about this idea is that it can break people out of that way of working - even though there's no real need to make this device as a commercial product now. But generally "drawing" music doesn't work all that well. The information in music needs much finer control - either with conventional sequencing, or (more interestingly now) with generative code.

camtarn 10y ago

Tom Richards, who built the machine, has a very short blog here with a couple of bits of extra info on the machine: http://minioramics.blogspot.co.uk/ http://minioramics.blogspot.co.uk/ Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of info about how the lines on the film map to the synthesizer controls - I found it very odd to watch the film go by, and see busy sections with short discrete notes, sections with long interesting curves, and almost empty sections, but to hear no discernable difference in the audio.

orillian 10y ago
I think the disjoint between the audio and the visual is amplified due to the fact that the read head(s) are a couple inches to the left under the cover. So there is always a perceived delay to the audio from where you are looking. This magnifies if you for example look to the right edge of the view while it's playing a couple inches past the left, less so if you can project the last "bar" past the left edge in your mind. This device would be better I think if the read head could be moved directly to the left edge or even perhaps placed in the center of the view. But I have a feeling it needs to be in darkness to read best. Interesting idea none the less.
- Asooka 10y ago
  Or you could desync the audio from the video by about a third of a second and place a red bar over where the head is reading.

tribe 10y ago

Someone made an iPhone app which simulates one of these machines, if anyone is interested in playing around with one: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oramics/id454505541?mt=8

konschubert 10y ago

The music which it plays in the demo video is a meaningless mix of scribbled sounds. Whatever the musical potential of the instrument might be, it is not shown in the video.

Angostura 10y ago
I'm pretty sure that was some Schoenberg actually.
- konschubert 10y ago
  I respect if others discover meaning in this music. To me it sounds like a child's scribble.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I find the art of children to often be much more unaffected, creative, and interesting than that of most adult artists. In fact, so do some adult artists themselves, who admire and even seek to themselves emulate the art of children.
vessenes 10y ago
Well, it was designed in the 1970s, at a time when experimental musicians were were thinking about what was next after the sort of post-Dada deconstruction of music, and how computers might fit in to that. Like this is the time, approximately, when Laurie Anderson has got analog tape affixed to a bow of her violin and is bowing the tape, and is about just go bat-shit crazy with MIDI for things like Oh Superman in the early 1980s. So, drawing is cool. Avant-garde musical experimentation is cool. It may not have a beat, but it's possible you could dance to it, with the right perspective. :)

dang 10y ago

Previous Daphne Oram on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993961.

biot 10y ago

I almost heard Flight of the Bumblebee at one point (0:50 in the video). I think something like this could be useful as a music transcribing device -- listen to a piece and move your pen up/down as the pitch rises/falls while the medium scrolls by. Then rewind and play.

jlarocco 10y ago

Sounds interesting, but the article doesn't show up for me. Ad-block shows it's blocking some font files, but everything else is getting through. I hope it's not a new trend to not display anything if custom fonts don't load.