Dr No soundtrack question
thenoisydrum
Posts: 84MI6 Agent
I've been fascinated by those little electrical signal sounds at the very beginning of this film since I was a kid. Those creepy little sounds and then the mallet roll up the xylophone as the picture opens up to reveal the gun barrel and Bond walking into shot.
My question is who wrote all of that. It was miles ahead of its time.
Where the hell did the idea for those sounds come from. Does anybody know?
My question is who wrote all of that. It was miles ahead of its time.
Where the hell did the idea for those sounds come from. Does anybody know?
Comments
Maurice Binder, title designer: “I thought we should have computer sounds on the titles. I looked for where I could get the sound effects and they said there was this little old lady in Surrey who had been doing experiments with electronic sound. She sent me a couple of selections.”
The “they” Binder referred to include Norman Wanstall, who was the movie’s sound man and won an Oscar for GF (before happily giving up the movies and going to work as a plumber), and did the editing of the sourced sounds to fit Binder's 17-second sequence.
Very interesting Barbel, thanks very much
I can just picture an OAP standing in a zimmer, wearing a long slouch hat with her jeans around her thighs and big ear phones over her ears...the world's first elctro-pop guru.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOXUbyh0Bio
This is a reconstruction by Nic Raine & the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, including both of those pieces plus a third- the original isn't available on LP or CD.
It's on various compilations, and usually they can be found quite cheaply on Amazon.
Hi, the description suggested Daphne Oram to me - a genuine mad scientist and one of the founding members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who was working solo at that time. So I had a quick Google and it looks like it was indeed her.
The Dr No opening track appears to be called "Atoms in Space". It survives as a full edit of 6'28, dated July '62 (search for "DO160"):
http://daphneoram.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oramcollection.htm
The tape archive is preserved as part of a collection at Goldsmiths College.
YouTube links appear to be ok here, so here's my favourite Daphne track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgpZi0ZnA5I
And here's a piece about her bonkers "Oramics" machine, including footage of Dapphers herself in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3TE1z9BSH0
Right, I have a Dr No soundtrack query of my own. Time for a new thread!
Thanks for sharing this. Really interesting! I'm very interested in early electronic music and how it's made.
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Now to have a listen to those links!
I love how laterally Daphne Oram's brain worked - most people who set out to invent a proto-synthesizer would have based it around a keyboard. Not Daphne - instead, she invented a machine that could play paintings! Bless her mad socks.
Is Atoms in Space available to listen to anywhere? I can't see it as a track on any of her available cds or on youtube.
A 007 fan needs to go and visit the Daphne Oram Archive.
You need to google "Goldsmiths" and "special collections". Or "Goldsmiths" and "Daphne Oram". Probably phoning them would be best - the tape library is listenable-to, but it's not clear if access is for everyone or just students / academics.
Ok, thanks
Nice to see Daphne getting some recognition around the internet as a result of this!
Some nice film of her here in 1960:
https://twitter.com/Birmingham_81/status/1661054997956632578