The March issue of UK month­ly music mag­a­zine Q recent­ly hit news­stands, fea­tur­ing a Bea­t­les 50th anniver­sary cov­er with an inset promis­ing “Mac­ca Speaks!”. Did we need anoth­er Paul McCart­ney inter­view, you may well ask? Is there any­thing Bea­t­les-relat­ed left to tell? It seems there is. McCart­ney reveals that he once gave seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to using an elec­tron­ic back­ing for the 1965 record­ing of “Yes­ter­day” instead of the string arrange­ment he end­ed up with. Now, in itself, this may not seem note­wor­thy except that, well, it was 1965… what did “elec­tron­ic” even mean in music at the time?

To find out, we should get acquaint­ed with Delia Der­byshire, com­pos­er and arranger at the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, who would have scored McCartney’s elec­tron­ic “Yes­ter­day.” Der­byshire is now best known as the com­pos­er of the clas­sic 1963 theme to the orig­i­nal Dr. Who series (above), a fact we will return to. But first, let Q read­er and record pro­duc­er David Mel­lor explain why he thinks that when McCart­ney says elec­tron­ic, he doesn’t mean syn­the­sized music:

The rea­son I don’t think that syn­the­siz­ers would have been con­tem­plat­ed is that the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop only acquired their first syn­the­siz­er in 1965. Per­haps it was already avail­able for use at the time of the record­ing of Yes­ter­day in 1965, but the his­tor­i­cal reports I can find don’t give suf­fi­cient lev­el of pre­ci­sion to con­firm this. I would con­tend how­ev­er that unless the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop imme­di­ate­ly went synth-crazy as soon as the syn­the­siz­er was deliv­ered, most work would have been accom­plished using their exist­ing tech­niques.

So what were the “exist­ing tech­niques” before the use of syn­the­siz­ers? McCart­ney him­self alludes to them in say­ing that Der­byshire had a “hut in the bot­tom of her gar­den… full of tape machines and fun­ny instru­ments.” What McCart­ney saw were the imple­ments of radio sound effects and also of what was called musique con­créte, an ear­ly form of elec­tron­ic music devel­oped by French com­pos­er Pierre Scha­ef­fer, Egypt­ian com­pos­er Hal­im El-Dabh, and oth­ers (most notably Olivi­er Mes­si­aen and Karl­heinz Stock­hausen). Musique con­créte com­posers manip­u­lat­ed nat­ur­al sounds with basic record­ing technologies—microphones, tape recorders, film cameras—to cre­ate com­plex elec­troa­coustic arrang­ments through care­ful edit­ing and effects like reverb, echo, and over­dub­bing. The excerpt below from the BBC’s 1979 doc­u­men­tary The New Sound of Music demon­strates.

It so hap­pened that Delia Der­byshire had mas­tered these tech­niques, using them in her arrange­ment of Ron Grainer’s Dr. Who theme, com­posed entire­ly of musique con­créte effects. The work of Der­byshire and her col­leagues at the BBC sound effects unit cap­tured the imag­i­na­tions of thou­sands of sci­ence fic­tion fans and lovers of radio dra­ma, includ­ing McCart­ney, who is quot­ed from his Q inter­view say­ing:

The Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, I loved all that, it fas­ci­nat­ed me, and still does… there came a time when John (Lennon), because of his asso­ci­a­tion with Yoko and the avant garde, became thought of as the one who turned us all on to that. But that ear­ly era was more mine.

Mac­ca can take the cred­it, but the ear­ly era of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music belonged to Delia Der­byshire. See her demon­strate her craft below, using tape machines to cre­ate a rhythm track.

Der­byshire did, of course, also embrace the use of syn­the­siz­ers as they became more wide­ly avail­able. Branch­ing out from her BBC work, she began to make music with anoth­er com­pos­er, Bri­an Hodg­son, under the name Unit Delta Plus. The two soon joined with clas­si­cal bass play­er David Vorhaus to form the exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic band White Noise in 1968. The fol­low­ing year, the band released their now-clas­sic album An Elec­tric Storm, which used the tape manip­u­la­tion tech­niques Der­byshire demon­strates above as well as the first British syn­the­siz­er, the EMS Syn­thi VCS3.  This record, notes All­mu­sic, is renowned “as one of the first albums to fuse pop and elec­tron­ic music.” Check out the White Noise song “Love with­out Sound” below to get a taste of what they were about.

What­ev­er your inter­est in the place this song occu­pies with­in the wider his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic music, there’s no doubt that Der­byshire and com­pa­ny were sim­ply mak­ing fan­tas­tic exper­i­men­tal pop. If they sound well ahead of their time, that’s because of the influ­ence they’ve had on so many musi­cians since (why, Pitch­fork even gives the White Noise album an 8.6!). After sev­er­al more pro­duc­tive years, Der­byshire became dis­il­lu­sioned with the state of elec­tron­ic music in the sev­en­ties and with­drew to work in a book­shop and art gallery, but with the mid-nineties revival of the sounds she helped cre­ate, she saw a resur­gence of recog­ni­tion as both a genre pio­neer and a hero to female musi­cians and engi­neers. For an extend­ed look at Derbyshire’s life and art, be sure to watch the doc­u­men­tary Sculp­tress of Sound, on YouTube in sev­en parts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Glenn Gould Pre­dicts Mash-up Cul­ture in 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Many of today’s thir­teen-year-olds sure­ly have the Bea­t­les on their iPods (or their iPhones or Androids, or what­ev­er now ranks as the cut­ting-edge ado­les­cen­t’s lis­ten­ing device of choice). Yet they would have been born in 2000, forty years after the dis­so­lu­tion of the Bea­t­les them­selves. Their par­ents would prob­a­bly have been born in the six­ties, already the height of the band’s cre­ativ­i­ty. The star­tling impli­ca­tion: these kids rock out to some of the very same songs their grand­par­ents may well have loved. As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote upon spot­ting an aged hip­pie with a walk­er and a hear­ing aid at an Iraq War protest, sic tran­sit gen­er­a­tion gap. But back in 1967, when that gap yawned so chas­mi­cal­ly wide as to ren­der any com­mu­ni­ca­tion across it seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble, the young Baby Boomers and their own Great Depres­sion, Sec­ond World War-forged par­ents used the musi­cal land­scape to draw their bat­tle lines. Who could bro­ker a peace? Enter com­pos­er, pianist, and New York Phil­har­mon­ic direc­tor Leonard Bern­stein. Born in 1918 and hailed as one of the most accom­plished and astute musi­cal minds in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, he could not only appre­ci­ate the tech­niques and inno­va­tions of the youth-dri­ven pop-rock explo­sion of the six­ties, he could get the ear of his mid­dle-aged peers and explain to them just what they were miss­ing.

The tele­vi­sion broad­cast Inside Pop: The Rock Rev­o­lu­tion gave Bern­stein a mass-com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form on which per­form this analy­sis, ask­ing aloud the ques­tions of (a) why this music so infu­ri­ates Amer­i­cans over a cer­tain age and (b) why he him­self likes it so much. Decked out in a square-friend­ly suit and tie and appear­ing on the even square-friend­lier CBS net­work, Bern­stein plays clips of songs by the Bea­t­les, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Asso­ci­a­tion, break­ing down the gen­uine musi­co­log­i­cal mer­its of each: their vocal expres­sions, their unex­pect­ed key changes, their count­less son­ic lay­ers, their stripped-down melod­ic sense, and their lyrics’ adept­ness of impli­ca­tion (“one of our teenager’s strongest weapons”). Bern­stein also calls upon “Soci­ety’s Child” singer-song­writer Janis Ian and Beach Boys mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son to per­form live. Quite a few crew-cut, cardi­gan-clad, mar­ti­ni-sip­ping adults must have come away from Inside Pop with a new, if grudg­ing, appre­ci­a­tion for the craft of these long-haired young­sters. But now, to address the con­cerns of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s bewil­dered grown-ups, who will go on tele­vi­sion and explain dub­step?

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Jeff Slat­nick has been the “guy in the store” over at Music Inn World Instru­ments for over 40 years, a land­mark music store in the West Vil­lage of NYC. When you step into the Music Inn, you’re step­ping into “a muse­um, rich with music his­to­ry from around the world.” You’ll encounter instru­ments from far-flung coun­tries, instru­ments that died out cen­turies ago, and new-fan­gled instru­ments designed for the hus­tle and bus­tle of today’s New York City. The short pro­file film above comes from NYork­ers, a series of shorts ded­i­cat­ed to fea­tur­ing “New York­ers that you don’t read about in head­lines…”

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

The Joy of Mak­ing Artis­tic Home­made Gui­tars

The 2013 base­ball sea­son starts next week, and it’s a time when hope springs eter­nal — unless you root for the Cubs, the injury-laden Yan­kees, or the Pirates, Indi­ans, or var­i­ous oth­er small mar­ket teams. But let’s not get side­tracked by all of that. Today, we’re head­ing into the past, 20 years deep, and we’re think­ing about Base­ball, Apple Pie and the Grate­ful Dead. You heard me right, the Grate­ful Dead. On April 12, 1993, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Bob Weir, and Vince Wel­nick (then a key­boardist with the band) did the hon­ors on open­ing day at Can­dle­stick Park, singing the nation­al anthem before the San Fran­cis­co Giants — Flori­da Mar­lins game. If you thought the Dead could nev­er car­ry a tune, you’re in for a lit­tle sur­prise.

A few key things to remem­ber about this 1993 moment. 1) It was the first sea­son of base­ball for the new Mar­lins expan­sion team. 2) Bar­ry Bonds was still skin­ny and lean and home­red in his first at bat. And 3) it was the only time that Jer­ry sang the anthem at a ball game. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh made a return vis­it last fall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

A Year of Grate­ful Dead Tunes Up in a Mashup