For Delia Derbyshire, faffing became an artform — heck, I should know

The new Electronic Sound magazine features electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, who is the best woman named after an English county after, er, Sarah Lancashire.

This edition comes with a particularly striking cover illustration by Adam Forster. A quick glance at his Instagram suggests he does a great line in hand snails, finger fries and skull worms. You'll have to scroll his Insta to discover I'm not making those things up.

It's a very nice issue with some good words in, and it even has Underworld talking about their Drift project, and Josh Wink talking about Higher State Of Consciousness.

However, some idiot came along to spoil everything. Hey, look, it's not my fault that I happen to know EVERYTHING about Delia Derbyshire and all you flopsies know absolutely nothing about her. Harrumph.

Here's the start of my new column about Delia Derbyshire in Issue 59 of Electronic Sound. I do apologise. By the way, as ever Joel Benjamin has done a brilliant illustration to accompany my writing - see here.

I envy Delia Derbyshire and all the music she magically made from toasters and wooden spoons and fart cushions. When I faff around all day, smearing my belly with guacamole to add texture to my sexts, I’m “procrastinating” and “avoiding my responsibilities” and “behind on my bills”. But for Delia Derbyshire, faffing became an artform: she’d whack some nipple clamps onto a lampshade and suddenly you’ve got Doctor Who. [read more by getting Electronic Sound issue 59] 

I would like to apologise to the entire history of electronic music. pic.twitter.com/HTmMZVtkJy

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) November 14, 2019

Further Fats: Electronic words (2014)

Further Fats: Delia Derbyshire: put a donk on it (2017)

Delia Derbyshire Day - even more original than the Atari

Get yourself to Band On The Wall this Saturday for an evening dedicated to the great knob-twiddler Delia Derbyshire.

Derbyshire would have been 80 years old this year. That means she pre-dates the Black Eyed Peas, Dappy and other modern musical legends. Ahem.

John Rylands Library has a whole bunch of Delia stuff in its archive, so for Delia Derbyshire Day there'll be new presentations of material offering glimpses into her working methods, She lived in a time before synthesisers were a thing. It's hard to believe, but she didn't even have Garageband. Not even Cubase for the Atari.

Delia used frequency generators and household objects like bottles, clocks and - most famously for the Tardis sound - piano strings. Which is why you should never climb inside a piano because you could end up in medieval times.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop will be in attendance on Saturday, alongside artists responding to the archive. There's gubbins happening during the day, and tickets for the evening are only a tenner.

Picture: BBC

Delia Derbyshire: put a donk on it

It's official. You can use Delia Derbyshire to put a donk on it.

The Deliaphonica Game is a little web gizmo where you can manipulate loops using the restrictions Delia would have had back in her day. Y'know. Back when this was all sine waves. And yes, depending on which one-shot sample it picks, there's a donk button. You can also submit your own sounds (see the video below) using pots, pans, draining boards, spleens and whatnot.

I farted a load of waffle about Delia Derbyshire a couple of days ago, and I'm really getting the Delia fever. There's a Delia Derbyshire Day on June 10th at Band On The Wall, with workshops and talks and bleepy performances. Delia's old work colleagues will be there, and there's some interesting sound collage stuff going on.

They're also bringing some Derbyshire magic to Cheshire's Bluedot Festival, which is proper good because Orbital are headlining and those chaps know a thing or two about sampling real-world noise like Delia.

Check the events here, Come hang out on DD Day in June and we can put a donk on it together.

Which one of these Delia Derbyshire facts is a lie?

Delia Derbyshire would have been 80 yesterday. Here are half a dozen facts about Delia. Which one isn't true?

1. Like the Beatles, Delia Derbyshire was turned down by Decca Records. It seems back in those days, they didn't employ women in their recording studios.

2. Delia Derbyshire had a phenomenal analytical ear. There's a rumour that she could listen to a record and tell you exactly where any instrument was located during the recording.

3. Delia Derbyshire composed music and sounds for over 200 shows, often building "real" world sounds from sine waves because samplers weren't really a thing.

4. Delia Derbyshire once took part in an electronic music concert which also featured electronic works by a certain Paul McCartney, whoever the heck he is.

5. Delia Derbyshire never got credits for her creations because the BBC had a policy of veiling the Radiophonic Workshop workers in anonymity.

6. Delia Derbyshire invented space aliens, and even now there is a race of amphibious robot mannequins who have stored her brain in a jar in the hope that one day Mecha Delia Derbyshire will rise up against humankind and, with laser eyes shooting and bazooka knees firing, rampage across a devastated earth to explode the innards of every single person who has ever (a) used, (b) heard or (c) thought about the musical production technique commonly known as "autotune". As Delia noted in her book from the distant future How I Destroyed The Universe (she also invented time travel), gilled android dummies really hate autotune. In an ironic twist, Delia Derbyshire teamed up with Davros to co-create the Daleks. These trundling pedal bins became famous for their war cry "exterminate, exterminate" using voices which were, of course, electronically autotuned. Oh Delia.