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Daphne Oram: An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics
Daphne Oram (1925-2003) was one of the central figures in the development of British experimental electronic music. Having declined a place at the Royal College of Music to become a music balancer at the BBC, she went on to become the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Oram left the BBC in 1959 to pursue commercial work in television, advertising, film, and theater, to make her own music for recording and performance, and to continue her personal research into sound technology - a passion she had had since her childhood in rural Wiltshire. Her home, a former oasthouse in Kent, became an unorthodox studio and workshop in which, mostly on a shoestring budget, she developed her pioneering equipment, sounds, and ideas. A significant part of her personal research was the invention of a machine that offered a new form of sound synthesis - the Oramics machine. Oram's contribution to electronic music is receiving considerable attention from new generations of composers, sound engineers, musicians, musicologists, and music lovers around the world. Following her death, the Daphne Oram Trust was established to preserve and promote her work, life, and legacy, and an archive created in the Special Collections Library at Goldsmiths, University of London. One of the Trust's ambitions has been to publish a new edition of Oram's one and only book, 'An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics', which was originally published in 1972. With support from the Daphne Oram Archive, the Trust has now been able to realize this ambition. 'An Individual Note' is both curious and remarkable. When commissioned to write a book, she was keen to avoid it becoming a manual or how-to guide, preferring instead to use the opportunity to muse on the subjects of music, sound, and electronics, and the relationships between them. At a time when the world was just starting to engage with electronic music and the technology was still primarily in the hands of music studios, universities, and corporations, her approach was both innovative and inspiring, encouraging anyone with an interest in music to think about the nature, capabilities, and possibilities that the new sounds could bring. And her thinking was not limited to just the future of the orchestra, synthesizer, computer, and home studio, but ventured, with great spirit and wit, into other realms of science, technology, culture, and thought. 'An Individual Note' is a playful yet compelling manifesto for the dawn of electronic music and for our individual capacity to use, experience, and enjoy it. This new edition of 'An Individual Note' features a specially commissioned introduction from the British composer, performer, roboticist, and sound historian Sarah Angliss.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 26, 2017
A philosophy based on a very stretched but intriguing analogy... a primer on synthesised sound and tape splicing... a waveform-based argument on why you shouldn't take drugs... there really is nothing like this book from a supremely original mind.
January 2, 2023
Oram is very passionate about the possibilities of electronic music and its’ connection to metaphysics. While very interesting, the writing sometimes focuses on technicalities which may or may not be fully understood by the reader.
June 22, 2025
I found this a bit heavy going if I'm honest... there were bits of it that made me stop reading and disappear into the studio for a couple of hours, and other bits which I thought were extremely tenuous. As much as I appreciate her work in sound I can't say I'll revisit this.
August 8, 2021
Such incredible incredible musings on music and electronic compositions.
March 3, 2017
Certainly an interesting read, but less about Oram's music and more about taking a musical (specifically in electronic music terms) approach to human thought processes, behaviour and interactions.
March 17, 2018
http://www.soundgirls.org/review-of-d...
Review of Daphne Oram’s An Individual Note
I discovered this book on a trip to Moog in Asheville, NC. After the incredible tour, I was drooling in their gift shop with a small wallet. It was this beautifully packaged book with a soft matte white hardcover that caught my attention. Vaguely waveform-like shapes and a subtitle that paired music with electronics led me to skim the summary. From there it checked the final box: a book written by an audio pioneer who just happened to be female.
Daphne Oram was an electronic musician and sound designer when these terms were in their infancy. She co-founded and was the first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, famous for the ethereal sounds of the television show Dr. Who and the radio drama Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Through Oram’s vision, BBC Radiophonic Workshop was an incubator for musique concrete, experimental compositions that focus on sound manipulation. Oram herself left BBC Radiophonic Workshop soon after its creation and pursued electronic sound synthesis in her facility and on her own terms.
There is a story behind the edition I acquired, and one can feel the love in its creation. This publication was commissioned by the Daphne Oram Trust and funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The manuscript was re-typed, the diagrams were digitally redrawn, and new photographs were added in addition to the originals. The new outside cover is unique unfinished paper with abstract designs, and while reminiscent of a textbook it is smaller and gives a soothing feeling. Inside the endpapers are dark green rastered photos. Daphne Oram’s portrait graces the front, and her studio is featured in the back. Each page is a thin cardstock that gives weight to the words printed. Topic guidelines are added to each chapter heading and reflect the style of writing within. A preface has been added that offers a fitting tribute to Daphne Oram, as well as preparing the reader for the mind from which the main text was created.
An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronicsis written as a guide to understanding the philosophy of sound and its creation. Starting from the definition of sound, Oram leads the reader through the path of that note as an individual to overtones, chords, and various ways of creation. The final result is her Oramics Machine, a synthesizer that uses pictorial waveforms as the control interface. And like her device, An Individual Note combines different academic disciplines to reach the sonic goal.
Admittedly when I picked up this text, I had thought it would be filled with formulas and circuit diagrams. And while there is mention of Fourier and the basics of an oscillator, this is book favors humanities and art. Even Oram’s writing style is almost more poetry than prose with her use of alliteration, repetition, and metaphors. Nearly every single chapter had a reference to her coined term “cele” as a counterpoint to “elec” (electricity). These flourishes are interspersed in a stream of consciousness that does not reveal its goal until the last few chapters. Complex formulas and jargon are set aside in favor of the nuances of emotion and thought experiments. And some of those thoughts stretch too far in the realm of speculative fiction. In comparing resonance to consciousness and manipulation of it as a form of signal processing drugs become white noise. “You will be using white noise to overwhelm yourself…” Up until the end, I was impatiently waiting for the secrets to proficient analog sound synthesis and methods for tape manipulation. Instead, I found a succession of somewhat restrained nonsequiturs leading towards a creative thought process.
One cannot build the illustrious Oramics Machine from this book unless one has a background in Electrical Engineering, but An Individual Note can serve as a preface to experimentation with pre-made synthesizers. Often she refers to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, a text which feels anachronistic. “Wee also have diverse Strange and Artificial Eccho’s…” And Oram is not afraid to look into the past to find inspiration for the future. Nothing is off limits to influence the creation of sound. Daphne Oram does not write a how-to book, but a why-to. This is a text to inspire curiosity and to provoke new perspectives, as Daphne Oram did. And I guess I should co-opt a term from Oram herself and say that this book is a muse.
Review of Daphne Oram’s An Individual Note
I discovered this book on a trip to Moog in Asheville, NC. After the incredible tour, I was drooling in their gift shop with a small wallet. It was this beautifully packaged book with a soft matte white hardcover that caught my attention. Vaguely waveform-like shapes and a subtitle that paired music with electronics led me to skim the summary. From there it checked the final box: a book written by an audio pioneer who just happened to be female.
Daphne Oram was an electronic musician and sound designer when these terms were in their infancy. She co-founded and was the first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, famous for the ethereal sounds of the television show Dr. Who and the radio drama Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Through Oram’s vision, BBC Radiophonic Workshop was an incubator for musique concrete, experimental compositions that focus on sound manipulation. Oram herself left BBC Radiophonic Workshop soon after its creation and pursued electronic sound synthesis in her facility and on her own terms.
There is a story behind the edition I acquired, and one can feel the love in its creation. This publication was commissioned by the Daphne Oram Trust and funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The manuscript was re-typed, the diagrams were digitally redrawn, and new photographs were added in addition to the originals. The new outside cover is unique unfinished paper with abstract designs, and while reminiscent of a textbook it is smaller and gives a soothing feeling. Inside the endpapers are dark green rastered photos. Daphne Oram’s portrait graces the front, and her studio is featured in the back. Each page is a thin cardstock that gives weight to the words printed. Topic guidelines are added to each chapter heading and reflect the style of writing within. A preface has been added that offers a fitting tribute to Daphne Oram, as well as preparing the reader for the mind from which the main text was created.
An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronicsis written as a guide to understanding the philosophy of sound and its creation. Starting from the definition of sound, Oram leads the reader through the path of that note as an individual to overtones, chords, and various ways of creation. The final result is her Oramics Machine, a synthesizer that uses pictorial waveforms as the control interface. And like her device, An Individual Note combines different academic disciplines to reach the sonic goal.
Admittedly when I picked up this text, I had thought it would be filled with formulas and circuit diagrams. And while there is mention of Fourier and the basics of an oscillator, this is book favors humanities and art. Even Oram’s writing style is almost more poetry than prose with her use of alliteration, repetition, and metaphors. Nearly every single chapter had a reference to her coined term “cele” as a counterpoint to “elec” (electricity). These flourishes are interspersed in a stream of consciousness that does not reveal its goal until the last few chapters. Complex formulas and jargon are set aside in favor of the nuances of emotion and thought experiments. And some of those thoughts stretch too far in the realm of speculative fiction. In comparing resonance to consciousness and manipulation of it as a form of signal processing drugs become white noise. “You will be using white noise to overwhelm yourself…” Up until the end, I was impatiently waiting for the secrets to proficient analog sound synthesis and methods for tape manipulation. Instead, I found a succession of somewhat restrained nonsequiturs leading towards a creative thought process.
One cannot build the illustrious Oramics Machine from this book unless one has a background in Electrical Engineering, but An Individual Note can serve as a preface to experimentation with pre-made synthesizers. Often she refers to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, a text which feels anachronistic. “Wee also have diverse Strange and Artificial Eccho’s…” And Oram is not afraid to look into the past to find inspiration for the future. Nothing is off limits to influence the creation of sound. Daphne Oram does not write a how-to book, but a why-to. This is a text to inspire curiosity and to provoke new perspectives, as Daphne Oram did. And I guess I should co-opt a term from Oram herself and say that this book is a muse.
April 29, 2025
A-musings from Daphne Oram. Some interesting stuff (I did learn some) but a lot of personal views that were intriguing and occasionally quite off the mark. Still worth it. Read this through the blackout of April 28th.
February 22, 2008
An amazing look into the workings of sound and music on a theoretical, spiritual and practical level, this book delves into more than what is on the surface and what we are taught (though reading from a sheet of paper with squiggles, crosses and lines is a little more difficult that sheet music!)...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews