Thanks to Trunk Records, BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer John Baker — standout amidst the station’s slew of early electronic pioneers — is receiving the individual attention his recordings deserve, at long last. The John Baker Tapes, a two disc cd collection along with a vinyl issue of highlights, is scheduled for release in July and August, featuring previously unreleased Radiophonic material, soundtrack materials and home recordings. Considering the BBC’s notorious ineptitude at properly preserving the Workshop’s recordings, and the scarcity of information about John Baker’s career more generally, this Trunk release is a great relief.
Along with information about the scheduled July and August releases, Trunk includes a wonderful biography penned by John Baker’s brother, Richard Anthony Baker.
At the start of 1963, he joined the Radiophonic Workshop, which had been founded by Desmond Briscoe five years previously. In the early days of electronic music, its pioneering work of developing new and different sounds was greatly in demand by programme makers.
John invented many techniques. He recorded onto reel-to-reel tape the sound of everyday objects, such as the twanging of a ruler on a desk or a cork being pulled from a bottle. By changing the speed of the tape, he could alter the sounds’ pitch and was then able to compose a melody from these sounds by, for instance, making a minim fill four inches of tape, a crotchet, two, a quaver, one, and so on. More cleverly, if he wanted to introduce a jazz feeling to the tune, he cut a note slightly short so that it anticipated the beat. The work was painstaking and demanded a steady nerve. But it was the job for John. He loved it and was never happier.
additional reading/listening:
John Baker samples @ last.fm & BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop feature, Four sound effects that made TV history
(h/t Gutterbreakz)
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