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<html> <head> <title>Delia Derbyshire</title> <meta name="googlebot" content="noodp"> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/silly-nndb-icon.png" /><style type="text/css">  </style></head> <body bgcolor=#ffffff> <center> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td valign=top><table width=550 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><table width="100%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" background="/nndb.gif"> <tr> <td rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><a href="http://www.nndb.com/"><img src="/title.gif" width="260" height="50" border=0 alt="NNDB"></a></td> <td><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr align="center"> <td width="25%" nowrap><b><font size="-1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is a beta version of NNDB</font></b></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" valign="middle"><b><font size="-1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <form action="http://search.nndb.com/search/nndb.cgi" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="nndb" value="1"></input> <nobr>Search: <select name="omenu"> <option value="unspecified" selected>All Names</option> <option value="living">Living people</option> <option value="dead">Dead people</option> <option value="bands">Band Names</option> <option value="books">Book Titles</option> <option value="movies">Movie Titles</option> <option value="fulltext">Full Text</option> </select> for <input name="query" value="" size=24 maxlength=96> <input type=submit value="Search"> </font></b></nobr></form></td> </tr> </table>        </td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=red height=2></td></tr><map name=fool><area coords="102,0,240,14" href="/people/685/000099388/bibliography/" alt="bibliography"></map><tr bgcolor=F0F0F0><td bgcolor=F0F0F0 style="padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;"><img src="/red-profile-2.gif" align="right" height=15 width=240 border=0 usemap=#fool><br clear="all"><table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=F0F0F0><font size=+3 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Delia Derbyshire</b></font><p><img src="delia.jpg" height=212 width=175 align=right hspace=10 vspace=10 alt="Delia Derbyshire"><b>Born:</b> <a href="/lists/643/000106325/" class=proflink>5-May</a>-<a href="/lists/936/000105621/" class=proflink>1937</a><br><b>Birthplace:</b> <a href="/geo/731/000111398/" class=proflink>Coventry, England</a><br><b>Died:</b> <a href="/lists/071/000106750/" class=proflink>3-Jul</a>-<a href="/lists/511/000106193/" class=proflink>2001</a><br><b>Location of death:</b> Northhampton, England<br><b>Cause of death:</b> <a href="/lists/346/000069139/" class=proflink>Kidney failure</a><br><p><b>Gender:</b> Female<br><b>Race or Ethnicity:</b> White<br><b>Sexual orientation:</b> Straight<br><b>Occupation:</b> <a href="/lists/903/000116555/" class=proflink>Electronic Musician</a><p><b>Nationality:</b> England<br><b>Executive summary:</b> Constructed the <i>Doctor Who</i> theme<p>In 1959, Delia Derbyshire applied to become a recording engineer for Decca Records, but was denied due to her being a woman. After a brief stint at the U.N. in Geneva, she took a job as a trainee studio manager at the BBC. In 1962 she became an attachment to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale where she worked until 1973, creating fantastic, never-before heard sounds for various BBC radio and television programs. She is best known for her arrangement of Ron Grainer's title theme from <a href="/tv/753/000049606/">Doctor Who</a>, which she created by recording the individual notes onto bits of tape and then assembling the song <i>by hand</i>. On hearing the finished piece, Grainer asked: <i>"Did I really write this?"</i> "Most of it," Delia replied. Yet despite Grainer's best efforts, Derbyshire never received any royalties or credit for her performance from the BBC. <p> In 1966 she formed the group Unit Delta Plus with Brian Hodgson and Peter Zinovieff. Though the group existed only for a year, they staged some of the earliest concerts consisting entirely of electronic and tape music. Famously, the group performed at the Million Volt Light and Sound Rave in 1967 at the Chalk Farm roadhouse in London, a four-day electronic music event which featured <a href="/people/070/000023001/">Paul McCartney</a>'s sound collage <i>Carnival of Light</i> (now lost in a vault somewhere). <p> In 1968 David Vorhaus enlisted Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson (also at the Radiophonic Workshop) for his psychedelic electronic music project White Noise, releasing the seminal album <i>An Electric Storm</i> in 1969. <p> From her obituary in the Guardian: <blockquote><tt> Among her outstanding television work, one of her favourites was composed for a documentary for The World About Us on the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert. It still haunts me. She used her own voice for the sound of the hooves, cut up into an obbligato rhythm, and she added a thin, high electronic sound using virtually all the filters and oscillators in the workshop.<p> "My most beautiful sound at the time was a tatty green BBC lampshade," she recalled. "It was the wrong colour, but it had a beautiful ringing sound to it. I hit the lampshade, recorded that, faded it up into the ringing part without the percussive start.<p> "I analysed the sound into all of its partials and frequencies, and took the 12 strongest, and reconstructed the sound on the workshop's famous 12 oscillators to give a whooshing sound. So the camels rode off into the sunset with my voice in their hooves and a green lampshade on their backs." </tt></blockquote><p><b>Boyfriend:</b> Clive Blackburn (1980 until her death)<br><p>    University: <a href="/edu/214/000081968/">Music and Mathematics, Girton College, Cambridge University</a><br><p>    <u>BBC Radiophonic Workshop</u> (1962-73)<br>     Risk Factors: <a href="/lists/780/000064588/">Alcoholism</a>, <a href="/lists/445/000066247/">Breast Cancer</a><br> <p>     <font size=-2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">TELEVISION</font><br>    <a href="/tv/753/000049606/">Doctor Who</a> Arranged the main title theme<br><p> <br> <p> <table> <tr> <td align=right valign=middle style="padding-right: 5px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 22px; font-style: italic; color: #ff3333;">New!</span><br> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/" class="fotmlink" style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: #dd0000;">NNDB MAPPER</a></td> <td valign=middle align=right style="border-left: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: 5px;">Create a map starting with</td> <td valign=middle align=right><a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=99388"><img src="/woman.gif" border=0 style="padding: 2px;"></a></td> <td align=left valign=middle> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=99388">Delia Derbyshire</a></td> </tr> </table> <font face="Trebuchet MS, arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.</font> <br><br><p> <font size=-1>Do you know something we don't?</font><br> <font size=-1><a href="http://commentary.nndb.com/submit/feedback/?id=99388" rel="nofollow">Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile</a></font><br> <p> <br><br><p><font size=-1>Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications</font><p> </td></tr></table> </td></tr> </table> </td> <td width=180 align="center" valign="top" style="padding: 0px 0px 8px 25px;"></td></tr> </table> </center> </body> </html>