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Drop the Beat – Analysis of Katy Perry’s Copyright Lawsuit

 

July 2019 has seen a “guilty” verdict passed on the latest high profile copyright case in music: Katy Perry’s entire musical team were ordered to pay damages to Christian rapper Flame for copying his 2008 track “Joyful Noise” in her US No one hit “Dark Horse.” The most interesting thing to me, in this case, is that the musical elements in question are not part of a complex or distinctive melody, a musical progression or harmonic sequence, but a 4 bar beat that includes an eight-note synthesiser ostinato loop. The notes in question and the nature of them under any kind of musical scrutiny highlight a few potentially significant implications for the future of music.

There is no “magic number” of notes or hard and fast, black and white rule of what copyright infringement is in a purely general sense, so each case is always a unique comparison to be argued. When a copyright case is brought to court, the comparing of lead sheets (consisting of melody, chord progression, and lyrics) is the general method of analysing whether a song has been copied for legal purposes. Musicologists are often called in to explain in layman’s terms how these line up and compare, and it is common for both sides to bring instruments into court to practically demonstrate points to the jury in context.

Analysing the lead sheets, in this case, is interesting because of the section this case is looking at – the beat. The drumbeat in both tracks is traditional where the main kicks and snares fall, although Flame’s kick has more variations and additions on extra off-beats than Perry, and he also shifts from claps to snares in the voicing. As such, Joyful Noise is the more complex beat musically.

Looking at the synthesiser ostinato melody is more realistic in where the similarities lie. The instrumentation is vastly different – Joyful Noise uses a sawtooth wave sound with a heavy glide or portamento at the start of each pitch change, while Dark Horse uses an airy artificial vocal sound, giving them completely distinct tones and timbres. Charlie Harding’s transcription of the sheet music shows the real song keys used, however, if we mentally transpose either track one semitone to look at them both in the same key, we can see obvious duplication. The first four notes are the same, and the pattern of intervals then falls one semitone for the notes 6 and 7. The 8th note lines up again only on the second repetition of the eight-note phrase. This is a typical descending minor scale pattern as shown in Adam Neely’s transcription, which he has transposed for clarity.

While the similarities in the synth parts are apparent, the reality of them musically must be emphasised – what Perry’s team and most musicians would argue in this case is that they are excerpts of a minor scale. Rhythmically it is difficult to factor in an argument as every note falls on the beat. While nobody can deny that the two synth parts are similar, it needs to be understood that the reason they are similar is the simplicity and genericity of the line, found in nursery rhymes, esteemed classical works, folk songs, and instructional book 1 of almost every pitched instrument the world over. The literary equivalent would be something such as “I would like a glass of water” – a phrase so necessary and well-used that it could not possibly be assigned as being an original creation of the 21st century.

Perry’s lawyer Christine Lepera argued the prosecution was “trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone.” If we are not careful, we run the risk of copyrighting musical necessities, the letters of the musical alphabet Lepera references, most likely not understood by the non-musicians who ruled in this case, which raises the question of whether a musically illiterate jury should be involved in the decision making process?

Of course, there’s likely an element of PR dumbing down for media purposes with the umbrella phrasing of “the beat” being found at fault in this case, yet my analytical side is deeply dissatisfied with it. Looking at the argument from Flame’s expert; however, it makes a little more sense. The prosecution’s musicologist Todd Decker stated the ostinatos had “five or six points of similarity including pitch, rhythm, texture, pattern of repetition, melodic shape and timbre. The descending melodies of both ostinatos are unique. I have not seen another piece that descends in the way these two do.” He also said, “the synthesised sounds create a pingy, artificial sound in the beat.” If the entire “beat” (and all of the rhythms, variations, and scales this includes as previously mentioned) is now copyrighted by Flame, what does this mean for music, other than us all running home to spice up our drum tracks?

Another worrying part of this ruling is the fact that all six songwriters and the four corporations involved in the release were found liable, making this an extreme verdict, no matter how removed from “the beat” or synth line the individual or company may have been.

It feels like there have been significant copyright cases every few years in recent times, and while intentional plagiarism is, of course, a wrong to be avoided, it’s worth remembering that we are all the product of what has come before us, whether unconsciously, through education, or out of love or rebellion. Under real musical analysis, it feels quite wrong in principle to be marred with the label of stealing someone’s “vibe” (see the much-discussed Pharrell & Robin Thicke case) or for obeying the long-standing rules and traditions of Western music, as is my view on the Perry case. Hopefully, creativity will continue to thrive among all of us sharing this somewhat limited 12 note system, and terms such as influence, tradition, and vibe will evolve to their more logical meanings rather than being worrying words within the industry.

Engineering Ourselves and Rewiring the Brain

I recently came across a news article about people who chose to drastically change large areas of their lives, which included changing their internal narrative and concept of ‘self’ entirely. My interest was piqued and led me to investigate the science behind this concept — the ability to rewire the brain.

What is neuroplasticity?

The discovery of neuroplasticity is a relatively newly accepted one, only becoming appreciated and understood in the last 20 years. Science previously believed the brain to be ‘hardwired’ to function in predetermined ways. However, we now know it is ‘softwired’ by experience.  It turns out that we are changing all the time and that our brains are like flexible plastic and can be rewired.

Neuroplasticity is the ‘muscle building’ part of the brain. Dr. John B. Arden, author of “Rewire Your Brain,” summarises the principles of neuroplasticity with the phrases “Use it or lose it” and “Cells that fire together wire together.”  He explains that our brains reorganise when we have new experiences, and the connections the brain makes when performing a skill are strengthened with use.

Conversely, if the skill lies dormant, the connections are weakened, just as any muscles in the body will weaken without exercise. The more repetition we engage in, the more neurons will fire together, strengthening and increasing in power until it becomes automatic to us. This means that we become what we think and do.

We are the engineers

When we find a bad connection when engineering, we understand that we must re-route our signal and find another way. In life, when we see an inner “connection” in us that we deem to be undesirable, we must engineer ourselves.

In the initial news article that piqued my interest, not all of the subjects were able to undertake such drastic rewiring in themselves. While some successfully overhauled and maintained all areas of their lives and “selves” completely, some were unwilling or unable to believe anything other than their familiar inner narrative about who they were and their capabilities. This duality of neuroplasticity is outlined as “The plastic paradox” in Mike Sheerin’s documentary “The brain that changes itself”:

“The same plasticity that allows us to change our brains and produce more flexible behaviours is also the source of many of our most rigid ones. All people start with plastic potential. Some of us as we grow and develop, enhance that flexibility. For others, the spontaneity, creativity, and unpredictability of childhood give way to a routinized existence that repeats the same behaviour and turns us into rigid caricatures of ourselves. Anything that involves unvaried repetition; our careers, cultural activities, skills repeated, and neuroses can lead to rigidity.”

The connections we engineer 

For those wishing to roll up their metaphorical sleeves and embark on some mental cable coiling and re-routing, the good news is our behaviour is not rigidly determined. The brain forms connections and pathways – major pathways are like highways that are frequently used, but we can also take the dormant backroads and over time and use, build them up to be the new highways.

Through stimulation and exercise, we can change the brain at a physiological level. Arden explains that we can even turn genes on or off with our behaviour and can rewire the parts of the brain that are out of balance with the others.

Musicians have been studied at length to understand neural connections associated with skilled repetition. Arden outlines research that has found not only behaviour (in this case instrumental practice) changes the structure of the brain through neuroplasticity, but just thinking about or imagining particular behaviours can change brain structure as well, meaning that mental practice contributes to the rewiring of the brain.

“Neurons communicate something new. The brain would not be able to record anything new if it were hardwired. Remembering something new is, therefore, rewiring the brain. By making connections between ideas or images, you also make connections between the neurons that encode those ideas and images. “

What this means

When we repeat an action, a thought, or emotion, we reinforce a neural pathway. We, as engineers then must take care with what is going into our input, that is, what ideas and images we are allowing into our brains that will make subsequent connections.

The discovery of “mirror neurons” has been an interesting one, and Professor Ramachandran has been an advocate of their importance. He explains mirror neurons are motor command neurons that fire and orchestrate a sequence of muscle twitches to allow a physical action such as pulling a lever. A subset of these neurons also fire when watching another person do precisely the same action – the neurons are performing a virtual reality simulation of the brain.

Ramachandran goes onto explain that when we feel pain, cells respond in the anterior cingulate area of the brain. Again, when we watch someone in pain, a subset of anterior cingulate neurons will also fire. This has led Ramachandran to believe the mirror neurons are involved in the basis of all empathy. The broader implication of this means that our brains take on and feel that which is around us, and what we “feed” into it.

We are changing all the time with everything we think and experience. Knowing that plasticity is an inherent part of the brain, we need to learn enough so we can guide the changes, keep our input signals clean, and be content with our own ability to wire and rewire ourselves.

Consoles, Consoles, Consoles

Part of the fun of working in live music is the variety and unpredictability it inevitably brings. Great as that may be, my bosses recently set up a training day for my colleagues and myself,  using some of the consoles likely to be installed on future client contracts. We spent the day getting our geek on, and these were my top three.

# 3 Allen & Heath SQ5

The SQ5 is an attractive desk – the digital display looks slick and modern, while the touch screen features are precise and impressive. On first appearance, it feels sturdy, which I later find out is something the company prides itself on – they rigorously test the materials for resilience and longevity of moving parts. With 48 processing channels, 16 faders, and a 96kHz mix core, the desk can handle plenty before I need to worry.

I found the main setup to be a little time-consuming at first but well worth it in the end. Once the balance was struck (or learned) between using the touch screen and the controls, life was good! The copy and paste function is sure to be a timesaver, and the soft controls are presented in a logical way, also making life easier.

The detailed level of control and precision available (I stopped counting all the EQs on offer) plus the easy personalisation all seemed very intuitive. The final plus for me was the ability to save the settings onto USB, ensuring your setup stays just how you like it.

#2  Yamaha QL1

Nobody had a bad word to say about the QL1. It comes with 16 inputs, 8 outputs, and 16 faders, and has 33 mono and 8 stereo mix channels, and 16 mix and 8 matrix busses. Almost certainly the most foolproof of all the desks (if there is such a thing), there’s an effortless feel and ease of locating everything on it. The visuals and functions are all clear and easy to use, and GEQ, soft controls, and DCAs are all quick and obliging. The desk equivalent of a comfortable pair of shoes.

# 1 Midas Pro 2c

I was struck by how at home I felt with the 2c, owing to it perhaps to the feeling of 90s nostalgia from the screen and mouse functions. For me, it was the most visual of the desks, and at times felt more like using a DAW, which I rather liked. For a desk with 156 inputs, 166 outputs, and 64 simultaneous input processing channels, it’s very approachable, which is another plus.

Although some of the controls and buttons can look and feel quite old school, they are just a rouse to impress you all the more when you discover the touch response feature – a light tap to the faders will display your current level without moving, and when done to the knobs will select that setting control on-screen. I really liked this for being so clever, but mostly for being incredibly useful and practical.

The GEQ function works great overall, and as standard, the desk can save lots of scenes and shows as presets, with the necessary option of saving to USB for future work and clarity. The desk feels great to use, makes sense, and has plenty of great features that add a little extra.

Her story – Interview with Dr Helen Reddington

On a rainy Friday night, I’m drinking tea under the glow of fairy lights in the crowd that’s gathered to catch Helen McCookerybook on the Midlands leg of her solo tour. Dr. Helen Reddington’s pseudonym helps to distinguish the multi-faceted nature of her work, spanning from musician in the British Punk movement to academic and teacher, to solo musician, author, and filmmaker. Helen is an ambassador for telling women’s stories, and she kindly squeezes in time for a coffee with me the morning after the gig to tell me hers.

It’s like chatting with an old friend as we recall our highlights from the previous evening, compare notes on overcoming musician’s injuries, and discuss the similarities between knitting and sequencing, and the nonsensical myth that women’s brains aren’t conducive to working in these patterned methods. As we talk about her colourful life, I wonder how we will cover everything in time for the screening of Helen’s documentary “Stories From The She Punks” that afternoon. The film has been a natural progression following the publication of Dr. Reddington’s book “The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era.” Created by Helen and fellow Punk musician Gina Birch, the film came about after Gina was interviewed for the book and suggested they make a film about it together.

Q: Women are frequently omitted and written out of history, and you address that in so much of your work, particularly in this film.

“It still shocks me how much it gets covered up, because it was so important, that period of time. I think we interviewed 20 women for the film; there was easily another 20 we could have found. The women are people, people first. This is where feminism works, when it makes women into people, rather than the second sex or whatever, and they’re people’s stories. I think you can tell everyone’s quite proud of what they’ve done, but without trumpeting it, it’s just like actually we did this thing! We did it, you know? When you’re a creative person, there isn’t a point where you sit, and you say ‘oh yeah I’ve done it’ because you’re always looking at the next thing, and I think that’s what the film did for the people that we interviewed.”

The film focuses on the stories of women instrumentalists including Palmolive & Viv Albertine from The Slits, Enid Williams from Girlschool and Shanne Bradley from The Nipple Erectors. Helen tells me she’s trying to encourage Shanne in particular to write her biography.

“She auditioned Shane McGowan from The Pogues for his first ever band, The Nipple Erectors with Shanne, and she was there right at the beginning. She knows so many people and did so many things, and she appears in Punk Histories, there’ll be a photograph of her, and it’ll say ’unknown woman.’ You can’t be an unknown woman; you’ve got to write your story!”

Q: You’re currently editing your next book on the topic of women engineers and producers. Can you tell us about that?

“It came about through the experience of working with producers and never getting the vocal sound that I wanted, and also working in Higher Education and always seeing the guys in that environment. In 2002 I did an academic study and found the guys already learn at school and get a head start on music tech. I ran parallel classes; one for guys and one for girls. During one session, a girl came to the guy’s class by mistake, and within 10 minutes a guy had borrowed a pen from her, and someone else had borrowed her bag to lean on, so she was put into this position of being a supplier. It was really interesting psychology, and the girls loved the class. I started finding women to interview while touring – I decided every place I went to. I would find a female engineer or producer because the spread of activity under that umbrella is really wide.”

Helen tells me about some of the 30 women she worked with for the book; they range in age from 22-70 across genres, all took different routes into the industry and all experienced different levels of acceptance. Additionally, they all had different attitudes and ideas about what production actually is.

“I interviewed Yvonne Shelton, a Gospel Choir producer in Manchester, which is quite a niche, as was another producer who programmes cheerleader music and mashups. I worked with Janet Beat, one of the first electronic music composers, as well as reggae, analogue and grime producers.” Dr. Reddington tells me about interviewing Susan Rogers, sound engineer to Prince.

“She came into it through repairing equipment, and that is such an interesting route into it. She was told when she was learning that there was no way that she was ever gonna be able to engineer, so she might as well learn how to fix studio gear. And she was actually fixing the gear for Prince’s studio, and then one day he just said ‘put the tape on’ and she said, you know, ‘I can’t do this, cause this is your engineer’s job,’ and he just said ‘that’s you.’ He’d kind of got to see how much she knew, and because of the way that he worked he actually wanted somebody who knew that side of things, cause he knew everything else, but that’s how come she started doing that.”

“The book has the working title of ‘Gender Ventriloquism’ because it’s that thing where a male producer, contextualised in a kind of history for example Nile Rodgers saying stuff like ‘I could make your secretary a star’ and like feeding Sister Sledge a line at a time, not allowing them to listen to a whole song, so that he’s completely in control of what’s happening, which for singers is completely disempowering. Dance producers just sampling female voices and taking them away from a body or any sort of agency, so it’s this idea, I call it Gender Ventriloquism. I’ve written something academic for the International Association of the Study of Popular Music where a male producer takes a female voice and makes them sound like men want to hear, rather than what the woman wants to sound like. What really freaked me out is being brought up on girl group music which is actually even written by men, and it’s all like the girls want to have sex with the men, sung by teenage girls, and that was my instruction on how I should be as a teenager – by men! And it’s so wrong, and it’s still happening. I got the article through by talking about instances where women produced men because that does happen, so I balanced it up, and I think that made it a bit less kind of controversial. But there’s not any punches pulled in the actual book, because it’s a historic. And all I’m doing is pulling out what’s actually happened in history and putting it all together in one place.”

Q: You’ve said how happy you are with your choice to take a break from music while you raised your daughters, and how pleased you are to be back again on the live scene now.

“There wasn’t any support from anybody, even the male musicians I knew, it was like ‘oh no, you’re a mother’ so if I’d have done it then I wouldn’t have felt confident. I’m really glad that I put the girls first. I take inspiration from blues ladies like Rosetta Thorpe and Etta Baker if they could do it so can I. I’ve seen how life could have gone, and that’s not an option. Whatever piles up, I’ll carry it, and it’ll make me stronger. Playing live is the closest you can get to flying.”

Q: What advice would you give to women and girls in the industry?

“The most important thing to me is that people actually write their own stories. Everybody, it’s really important. Keep a diary of what you’re doing, because by doing that you put yourself into some sort of history, and when you’re feeling ignored, you look at your diary and you push it out there, and you say look what I’ve done.”

You can find more from Dr. Helen Reddington at www.mccookerybook.com

Positive Action for Women in Music

Give peeps a chance

I’m impressed with what 2019 has offered so far in the way of women achieving greatness and it being celebrated, both close to home and worldwide.  The 2019 Grammy awards were pioneering for women in the industry with 31 award winners, which is an increase of 82% from last year, sweeping the board across all areas including classical music and production.  While the work of women is recognised at the highest levels, the language surrounding them is still being improved. Oscar-winning sound editor Nina Hartstone was covered by the BBC in the run-up to the event with the headline “The sound editor mum up for an Oscar.”  After something of a public backlash, the BBC rephrased their reporting on the feature to “From tea girl to Oscars red carpet,” and it now appears in online searches under the headline “Bohemian Rhapsody: First Oscars night for sound editor.” Considering Hartstone is a woman with 25 years of experience in the industry and a string of A-list film credits in her portfolio, the backlash seems like fair criticism.  It is refreshing to have seen the conversations and the subsequent corrections that were made to this error of judgment.

 

I wonder if a shift is finally happening around us, as for the first time I’ve experienced, being a woman in music seems to be supported, encouraged, and has positively impacted me – on a much smaller scale of course!  While positive discrimination is illegal under UK law, positive action is when an employer takes steps to help or encourage certain groups of people with different needs, who are disadvantaged in some way, access work or training. I have been heartened to see big and small organisations alike encouraging the inclusion of women where there is a disparity. The Grammy Recording Academy Task Force on Inclusion and Diversity is announcing the launch of the Producer and Engineering Inclusion Initiative – an industry-wide initiative that asks that at least two women are identified and therefore considered as part of the selection process every time a music producer or engineer is hired.  In the UK, The Musician’s Union is currently launching a mentoring scheme for women in association with Shesaid.So, as well as consulting with ministers in Government to implement policies that will promote parity for women in music. The MU also hosted a conference for Women in Music this month, which was a hugely positive event I attended that was filled with inspirational speakers, workshops and chances to network, share connections and experiences as well as business talk with like-minded individuals.

Recently I’ve been pleasantly surprised to have found positive action in motion via new allies in my work; taking on a client who specifically encouraged women to reach out, and also starting some audio work for a lovely company looking to support equality with the work they’re doing in the industry.  These last few months have been quite unfamiliar to me, coming from a background where I’ve often felt like the ‘token woman’ at work, a subordinate, or at worst a ‘threat’ in a world where our major achievements are so often defined as secondary to our matriarchal or marital status.

While there’s still a lot of room for improvement across the board, and unsolicited explanations on the fundamentals of what I do from ‘helpful’ outsiders still regularly infest my space, they don’t hold the weight they once did.  I can see positive changes that are both aspirational and experiential for the first time in my life, and that’s brand new. Even my local BBC radio station has shown support for female-led happenings in the industry, inviting me to be part of a conversation this week on the subject of women in music, and it feels like people are banding together to address the disparity and actually do something to proactively change it.  It is a change that I hope will continue to flourish far and wide, and I also have hope that this is the start of better times ahead for all of us wherever we are, in our pursuit of making music and being heard.

Additional Resources:

How to Write about Women in Sound

The EQUAL Directory – Find and Hire Women

A More Inclusive Industry

AES Diversity and Inclusion Committee

 

Delia Derbyshire – In Profile

Coventry is a city in the middle of England, known for the legend of Lady Godiva, the WWII blitz, and for many years it was an industrial boomtown and subsequently a ‘concrete jungle.’  It is my hometown, a place that has given us a diverse selection of musical greats over the years spanning from Ray King, The Specials, and Hazel O’Connor to The Primitives, and The Enemy.  Coventry was also the home of electronic composer Delia Derbyshire. Although I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, interviewing and performing in front of a number of this city’s musical giants, regrettably I never had the chance to meet Delia before her untimely passing in 2001.

Delia was a musical pioneer, a unique lady with a sharp sense of humour, humility, and an unbridled passion for creating.  The story of her contribution to the world has not taken up space as prominently as it should but is still quietly there nonetheless.  I’d like to turn up the volume and tell you a little about her life and work, and why she is an iconic woman in music, who in my opinion possessed all of the ‘cool points’.

Early life

Fifty years before I would come to exist and first set foot in my childhood home, the place of Delia’s childhood home lay just five streets away.  While I’m proud of where I come from, it is not a fancy area – it is one of honest, working-class roots. It’s still the kind of place today where earning the opportunity to study at Cambridge is an esteemed accomplishment only achieved by an exceptional minority.  Delia Derbyshire was exceptional: she graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in music and mathematics at a time when it was the most prestigious location for studying mathematics, and when only 1 in 10 students were women.

Upon graduating, Delia approached Decca Records for work in 1959 only to be told they didn’t employ women in the recording studio.  Heading to the BBC shortly after that in 1960, they were firm that they did not employ composers however Delia was hired as a studio assistant.  She cheekily referred to this as ‘infiltrating the system to do music.’ Later that year, she joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a role that was traditionally only short-term, the reasoning of which was rumoured to prevent the onset of madness.  The Workshop provided sound design and music for a vast amount of TV and radio and was located in the mysterious room number 13, found at the end of a long corridor in Maida Vale studios.

The Radiophonic Workshop Years

Delia remained at the Radiophonic Workshop from 1960-73 and created her most iconic pieces in that time both freelance and for the BBC, the most well-known work being Derbyshire’s original Doctor Who arrangement.  The theme was commissioned in 1963 and had an amicable story relayed in Spinal Tap-like fashion by Derbyshire’s contemporaries of the time: composer Ron Grainer had given Delia not a full musical score but a scribbled idea on a sheet of the manuscript with vague directions that she interpreted perfectly.  His stunned reaction upon hearing the finished piece was to ask “Did I write that?!” to which Delia replied, “Most of it.” The original intention had been to hire and record a French band performing the piece on glass rims, however, the BBC budget was too tight, hence Delia was brought in.

It is worth noting that this period was before the synthesiser, and it may be useful to reflect on how incomprehensible it can be in our digitized lives to understand how Delia made electronic music in the mid-1960s.   She worked heavily with a Wobbulator (portmanteau of wobble and oscillator), which was a sine-wave oscillator that could be frequency modulated and is also called a ‘sweep generator.’ Delia made the sounds she used both painstakingly and organically by inventing, manipulating and shifting samples that she often created from scratch, and this was all captured on reels of tape.  For the Doctor Who theme, Delia used three layers and three tape machines at once for the final recording. Each note in the piece had to be individually cut and placed onto the tape reel. It is no wonder that all who knew her concurred that Delia was undoubtedly a perfectionist.

Whilst the Doctor Who theme has become her most famously known work; it came with its difficulties.  The BBC had a longstanding policy of anonymity for the staff in the Radiophonic Workshop, and even when composer Ron Grainer wished to split the writing percentages and give Derbyshire credit, the corporation refused.  Other creatives Delia had composed for made similarly fruitless acknowledgment requests. Years later, the BBC subsequently changed their rules on anonymity but declined to do it retrospectively. Delia got nothing for Doctor Who. Interestingly, the source of annoyance with the theme for Derbyshire was the number of times new producers at the BBC wanted to revamp it over the years. She was very vocal about her views and disapproved of all ‘tarted up’ versions other than Peter Howell’s.

The Swinging Sixties

Aside from her BBC work, the 60s were a most fruitful time for Delia’s solo creations, and she also collaborated in several electronic band projects including ‘White Noise’ and ‘Unit Delta Plus.’  These works blurred the pre-existing lines of genre and broke many moulds in their experimental nature. Delia and her peers were highly influential and pivotal in shaping the music scene at this time: her ‘Unit Delta Plus’ bandmate Peter Zinovieff had a studio in Putney where Delia would often work which was known as EMS – Electronic Music Studios, and this was equipped with Zinovieff’s pioneering VCS3 synthesiser. Derbyshire believed in the generosity of knowledge and wanted to share her techniques and new discoveries with others. Some of the most quintessentially 1960s stories and sounds resulted from her remarkable contribution by the end of the decade.

Delia was approached by Paul McCartney who requested she arrange a backing track for “Yesterday,” and he soon came in person to listen to some of her work at EMS.  Shrouded in secrecy, Delia was then involved in the somewhat fabled electronic Beatles piece “Carnival of Light,” a legendary experimental track, which was played once and is now impossible to find.  In a rare interview, she comically recalled “I did a film soundtrack for Yoko Ono. While she slept on my floor”, and the occasion when Brian Jones visited the Radiophonic Workshop and played with hand-tuned oscillators “as though he could play it as a musical instrument!”  Delia was also responsible for bundling Pink Floyd into a taxi to EMS after the band visited her at the workshop to introduce them to Peter Zinovieff and his famous VCS3 – see “Dark Side of the Moon” for the outcome of that.

Creative process

 

Delia’s methods for composing are thought-provoking to me: she looked at music very mathematically and often assigned ideas to pitch and frequency with a meaning in mind, her starting point always being the Greek harmonic series.  Being classically trained to a professional level pianist as a young woman meant that Delia’s music theory provided a solid knowledge of the rules in order to break them, her written notes highlighting this quirky combination with the use of graphic scores and colloquial musical and technical directions.  She believed the way we perceive sound should have dominance over any theory or mathematical working. Delia herself cited childhood experiences as the earliest influences on her interest in electronic sounds, notably the ‘air raid’ and ‘all clear’ sirens she had become accustomed to hearing as a young girl during World War II that had piqued her interest in sound waves.  I find it fascinating how such a combination of experiences can be a catalyst for such innovation and creation.

After the Workshop

Delia left the BBC in 1973 and is quoted as saying, “The world went out of tune with itself,” which is quite a heavy statement.  She felt electronic music, and the common usage of synthesisers had changed music for the worse – it wasn’t organic enough as she always wanted to physically get inside equipment.  It’s hard to know if her statement was borne from a reluctance to embrace the changing times and methods of making music, or perhaps how this had affected her role at the BBC, whom she openly blasted for being “ran by accountants” and “expecting her to compromise her integrity.”

Personally, I fear there may have been a sadness in Delia at this point, as she turned her back on working in music after leaving the BBC, taking on various non-musical jobs.  She wrote lots privately, however never recorded, released or collaborated in the same way as she had in the 60s. Delia described herself as a utopian who believed freedom of creativity was more important than getting work, and I believe her. Perhaps the many years of blatant sexism, lack of credit, and working long through the night after everyone else had left were no longer sustainable if, in addition, her creative process was now being micromanaged.

Thankfully, by the mid-90s, Delia felt music was returning to it’s “pure” state and during the last years of her life Pete Kember a.k.a. Sonic Boom made contact with her by searching the Coventry phone book, eventually putting Delia in touch with the current generation of musicians she had inspired.  He even persuaded her to collaborate, and she is credited as adviser/co-producer on two EAR albums, as well as co-writer with Kember on the track ‘Synchrondipity Machine’. Delia and Kember thought very highly of one another, and shortly before her death, she said “working with people like Sonic Boom on pure electronic music has re-invigorated me.  Now without the constraints of doing ‘applied music,’ my mind can fly free and pick up where I left off.” It is bittersweet that the collaboration came so close to the time of her passing after all the silent years she’d endured.

Delia’s legacy

Her partner Clive discovered Delia’s back catalogue of tapes spanning her career after her death.  The collection had been kept in the attic, stored neatly in cereal boxes, although time had not been kind to the labels that had once documented almost 300 reels of tape. A project to restore and archive the collection was undertaken by Mark Ayres, Dr. David Butler, and Brian Hodgson, and the complete collection now resides at The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester and can be viewed by anyone upon appointment.  The last work in the archive is a cue for an unmade film from 1980, donated by filmmaker Elizabeth Kosmian. Delia’s fascinating graphic scores and workings are also included as well as digitised sonic versions of her archived works.

Delia’s legacy lives on physically in The University of Manchester archive, and their associated organisation entitled “Delia Derbyshire Day” (DD Day) which offers events and activities promoting the art of British electronic music and history via the archive and works of Delia Derbyshire.  For an interactive and family-friendly experience, Delia has a charming permanent spot of residence at The Coventry Music Museum. Online, there is wikidelia.net, delia-derbyshire.org, deliaderbyshireday.com, and of course, the many music download and streaming platforms on which Delia is still a presence.

Delia was a complex woman, one with oodles of personality and a sense of humour that shone through in the few rare interviews she did. Her friends and colleagues unanimously described her as an incredible planner, intelligent, analytical, fiery, and an eccentric genius. An enigma.  She remembered, “Directors who came to see me work used to say ‘you must be an ardent feminist’ – I think I was a post-feminist before feminism was invented!  I did rebel. I did a lot of things I was told not to do.”

Delia Derbyshire lived a fascinating life, and I wish I could have met her, to learn and understand more about her work and her mind.  I’d be interested to uncover her thoughts on the 5% of women currently working in audio in 2019 and compare notes on the things that have changed so much, and the things that haven’t changed nearly enough. One thing’s for sure – if we ever discover the secrets to make time travel via Tardis possible, you’ll know where and when to find me.

 

Staying Tough & Moving Sideways

If we are lucky, both our careers and ourselves will change and grow for the better. Life has a funny way of evolving and taking us on a different path than we might have ever expected. When I reflect on the dreams I had as a teenager, for example, there have been some that were smashed and excitedly crossed off the bucket list, and others that teenage me could never have foreseen from a reminiscent time of analogue study and scoring notation by pencil.

Working in most industries, but particularly music comes with its share of setbacks and rejection as par for the course, and we learn early on to be thick-skinned and roll with the punches. Some years I’ve been fulfilling my teenage and adult dreams, whilst others I’ve felt like I have been starring in a low-budget female remake of ‘Withnail & I.’ Jobs, people and projects come and go naturally, and stagnation is a dirty word. But what do we do when making a change feels like it’s out of our hands, and has been forced upon us?

 

Through a very dark, frustrating and seemingly endless limbo period of fruitless auditions and interviews following illness, injury and the subsequent closure of my business, I lacked an obvious answer to the question of what to do next. During this time, I was aware of a steady stream of media that kept bombarding me online, on TV and radio about Rick Allen, drummer of Def Leppard. Here was a man who overcame the most unthinkable adversity losing his left arm in an accident aged just 21, who personified the qualities of strength, adaptability and creativity to find a solution and continue working as a drummer in a mere matter of weeks following his hospital release, and become even more successful in the years that followed.

We can gain both perspective and a reminder that things are not as hopeless as they seem when we look at the success stories of inspirational people such as Allen and can resolve to model the qualities they possess in attitude and action.

Aristotle’s Golden Mean is a theory relating to character and discipline of the mind that highlights a need for balance in whatever we strive for. We all have needs to be met as individuals that will be relative to each of us. Aristotle proposed that equilibrium in our actions and reactions was the path to virtue and that this is found on a sliding scale between two vices, e.g., between cowardice and foolhardiness. Similarly, ‘The Middle Way’ is a Buddhist practice of ‘non-extremism that leads to liberation,’ an ideal of ‘bravely confronting life’s challenges by identifying the root causes and seeking means of resolution while summoning the transformative strength and wisdom of Buddhahood from within one’s life to create harmony.’ Put very simply; these ideals remind us of the importance of knowing when to yield and when to take action, learning to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we cannot accept.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and so it’s up to us to find comfort and a Plan B that feels right, and sometimes we must move sideways to move forward. In reality, then, we must embrace change in whatever form when it befalls us, and look at what existing skills we have that can be improved, honed and adapted to work for our futures.

Often a different area of expertise is not a million miles away, however much it may feel so whilst in the midst of watching a previous life crumble. The difficulty can be figuring out exactly what we do next, as we embark on the uncertain tightrope of virtuous equilibrium, shakily imitating the monks, great minds and super-humans who’ve gone before us.

Business gurus and industry experts are unanimous that research/asking for guidance is one of the most important parts of building anew. Had Rick Allen not asked for help from his friend involved with an electronics business, his bespoke adapted drum kit may never have come into being, and the story may have been a very different one. Chances are, there’s a plethora of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances from previous work that are an untapped potential of alliances sitting in your smartphone right now.  Set up that meeting to pick their brains over coffee, start shadowing and get informed – this is as useful for finding what doesn’t work as much as what does, and often chatting through ideas and experiences will be invaluable to planning your next move.

The second point of monophony from experts is that great things sometimes take time. There’s no shame in taking a break to work behind the scenes making things happen, whether that be retraining or attaining the funds and proficiency to set up a new business model. Nobody wants to launch a sub-standard product or service, so the cliché of building on a solid foundation rings true, and the world can wait until all the kinks have been ironed out, and the new venture is a strong one.

Ultimately, the only thing we can control in life our thoughts, so it is important to take inspiration and learn from those who have examined the parameters of happiness and our human potential. Unexpected changes are inevitable for us all at some point. With a hopeful mindset, a balanced attitude and the determination to work towards a clear, well-planned goal, alchemy can and does happen.

 

 

 

Lost in Translation

Should we be mixing with lo-fi portable devices in mind?

Some say “a great mix is a great mix”, and they’re not wrong. However the question remains a constant source of discussion, amusement and point of frustration between friends and internet strangers alike – should we be mixing with lo-fi portable devices in mind?

It seems a 21st Century problem that isn’t going away anytime soon; we have our portable devices on hand with a connected convenience between us that means we can listen to our peers’ newest song or latest mix in seconds. Is it any wonder that we surreptitiously count the “real” ceremonial listening sessions as drastically less frequent events compared with our habits of multitasking and listening on the go?

Considering most listeners and consumers listen to music on portable devices and speakers the majority of the time, should it at least be considered as a factor when mixing? Perhaps the better question is can we maneuver this current technological phase by using our phones as a reference point for how the mix translates on small mono speakers, helping us to reach that holy grail of a great mix in all forms.

Our phones are limited in their frequency range, with most having a distinct lack of highs and lows. We lose most of what’s going on below approximately 500 Hz and above 6 kHz in translation. To use our phones as our small mono reference speaker means balancing in ways that enhance the absent lows and highs with our busy mids, but that does not then overpower on better speakers.

One of the most universally agreed methods, to begin with, is the appropriate use of harmonic distortion, utilising the full range of naturally occurring harmonics, notably of the kick drum and bass which are often the first casualties of the mix. On the flip side of this, keeping the upper end in check from overcrowding of high frequencies from other instruments sitting in that upper range provides a much clearer and more even spread.

While mixing in mono is preferential to some, checking mono compatibility is a must. Phasing issues between left and right can mean even more loss of sound in a mix, so getting width and balance in mono is good practice. Checking compatibility audibly by doing an A/B of mono versus stereo via the DAW output is one relatively painless way, and there are several visual tools available on the market that can analyse the signal for us, helping to spot anything our ears may miss.

Without diving down the rabbit hole that is ‘compression,’ it is worth remembering the brief philosophy of “less is more,” which is possibly truer here than for any other technique or effect! Running the mix through a high pass filter from the low midrange is also regarded as a useful check for clarity in the mix, and can only help when taking into account the issues of translation. While these points are by no means extensive, they can go some way to helping our mixes sound better, and easily alleviate some of the loss encountered on most lo-fi devices.

While there have always been lo-fi speakers in days gone by, it does seem to have become more of an everyday consideration with modern solutions available – mastering software such as iZotope Ozone now incorporate a phone speaker pre-set on their output referencing features. Though the convenience of listening on our devices hasn’t run its course just yet, it doesn’t have to be a source of struggle and deliberation in the mixing and mastering process

 

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