Doctor Who theme song: how did they originally make it?

[xiphias]

Lis and I have been listening to early Doctor Who episodes (the audio exists for almost every episode of Doctor Who, even though the video is missing from a lot of them, so there are a number of audiobooks which are the episodes with voiceover narration filling in the important visual information). And we have therefore been getting curious about various Whovian things.

The Doctor Who theme song is one of the longest-lasting theme songs in history, only exceeded by Coronation Street and James Bond, and is also one of the most distinctive. And I never really spent a whole lot of time thinking about how they created it. If I thought about it, I guess I figured that Robert Moog was involved somehow, with one of his early synthesizers.

Nope. The first episode of DOCTOR WHO aired a good six months before Moog got his stuff working. So, my understanding of the timing of stuff in the 20th century isn't bad, but it's off enough that that wasn't the answer.

Or I assumed it was something related to the Theremin. Also wrong.

The answer is crazier than that. Ron Granier is listed as the composer for the theme, but that's not the whole story. He sketched out the baseline and melody, and some ideas about what he wanted it to sound like, but then had to hand it off to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for them to make it happen. And that's when Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills started.

Let me string together a bunch of words that just plain shouldn't go together: handcrafted artesial electronica. Here's what they did. They worked out what tones they needed to make the theme happen. Then they recorded a sound -- a plucked piano string, for instance. A test-tone oscillator used for calibrating equipment for another instance. And took that audiotape and sped it up or slowed it down until it made the correct tone. The glissandos were done by turning the knob on an oscillator while recording.

Then they recorded that onto another piece of audiotape, and took all those audiotapes of different tones, and a razorblade, and tape, and cut them into a music line. They created a melody line, a base line, and a couple "sound-effects" lines, with whooshing and bubbling sounds.

Then they mixed those four lines into a single line.

But this was a couple years before multitrack mixers were invented. They had to mix them all down by hand.

The whole thing was done by hand, with human imperfections. The original DOCTOR WHO theme doesn't have metronome-perfect timing. It's therefore a charming mix of electronic and human.

I guess that's kind of thematic for the show, isn't it?

Comments

[pameladean]

I'm watching the new Dr. Who with one of my partners -- it's the second time through for the partner -- and every time I hear the theme I start wondering exactly what it is about it. So thank you so much, that was really fascinating, so much weirder than I had imagined.

P.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

In the Eighties, they re-did it with synthesizers, and there have been other re-recordings. They all are based on the same base line and melody, though, and most of the versions are largely that original recording with other flourishes added.

[jon-libby.livejournal.com]

You re forgetting that due to having a Tardis, they could make it with tech from any era.

[(Anonymous)]

there is a great documentary, Alchemists of Sound, about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, where it was created. Amazing stuff.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Wow.

• artesial
→ artisanal

Or did you mean that they really did it well?

I'll get me hat now...

—Dr. Whom: Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

[usmu.livejournal.com]

If I remember this correctly, these are the people who quit working for the workshop when the computer stuff came in because it stopped being interesting and fun. Quite extraordinary.

[gingicat]

I thought it was a theremin too. This is cooler, though.

[gilana]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

[firecat]

Thanks I love knowing that.