0

Shopping cart
0

Cart is Empty

Delia’s Tatty Green Lampshade

One of Delia Derbyshire’s most loved natural sounds was the bell-like chime of a metal lampshade when it was struck with a soft-faced hammer. She described it as, “My most beautiful sound at the time was a tatty green BBC lampshade. It was the wrong colour, but it had a beautiful ringing sound to it.”. The sound is rich in overtones and proved to be a significant resource for sound sculpting. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) frequency analysis of the lampshade is shown below. The FFT is based on 2048 data points, sampled at 44.1KHz and a Hanning weighting is used. Levels are referenced to 775mV.

By removing the initial percussive attack portion of the lampshade being struck, slowing down, fading-up and applying filtering to the recording Derbyshire was able to emphasise its sonorous mystique to create a haunting atmosphere. This can be heard towards the beginning of ‘Blue Veils and Golden Sands’ where she evokes an auditory image of a relentless sun beating down on a nomadic tribe as they wind their way across a desert wilderness in the shimmering heat.

Derbyshire also claims to have made a frequency analysis of the lampshade and synthesised it using the Radiophonic Workshop’s 12 Jason signal generators. “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.”. At this time (early 1960s) the frequency analysis instrumentation available to her at the Workshop would have been primitive – she would have probably used a swept filter and oscillscope. A laborious process, however she left Cambridge with an MA in Mathematics and Music – don’t doubt she was geeky enough to have tackled it. Below is short video clip of the strongest 12 partials of the lampshade synthesised with 12 pure sine wave oscillators using DASYLab virtual instrumentation software.

It was mathematician Joseph Fourier, whilst experimenting on heat transfer work, who first proposed that any periodic signal could be reconstructed from a series of pure sinewaves of different frequencies and this little experiment does confirm his idea. However, although the timbre of the ringing in the synthesis is pretty much identical to that of the recording of the real lampshade, the synthesis is pretty ‘flat’ sounding as there is no amplitude variation and decay envelope. As time passes the ringing is changing as vibrational energy sloshes around in the metal shade and gradually dissipating. The higher partials decay at a more rapid rate than the fundamental and the relative levels of partials are constantly varying in repsect to each other – its a complex sound that shimmers and ripples with a life of its own. The synthesis is merely a snapshot of a frozen moment in time – it’s no wonder it sounds so one dimensional in comparison to the real sound. It takes a great deal of work to sculpt the bland tones of synthesised pure sine, sawtooth and square waves into something that is musically interesting enough to be useful in a composition. Derbyshire would add effects such as tube amplifier and tape saturation distortion, tape wow (vibrato), phasing, filtering, reverb and delay to breathe life into her sounds.

The lampshade used in these recordings is a ‘Coolicon’ utility lighting shade, British Patent No 419602, Registered Design No 777912. The actual lampshade that Delia used at the Radiophonic Workshop to make the sounds for ‘Blue Veils and Golden Sands’ is currently on display at the Science Museum in London.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_GRECAPTCHA	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Google. In addition to certain standard Google cookies, reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie (_GRECAPTCHA) when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category .
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
JSESSIONID		Cookie used to allow the Worldpay payment gateway on the website to function.
machine		Cookie used to allow the Worldpay payment gateway on the website to function.
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
wordpress_logged_in_		Users are those people who have registered an account with the WordPress site. On login, WordPress uses the wordpress_[hash] cookie to store your authentication details. Its use is limited to the Administration Screen area, /wp-admin/ After login, WordPress sets the wordpress_logged_in_[hash] cookie, which indicates when you’re logged in, and who you are, for most interface use. WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-{time}-[UID] cookies. The number on the end is your individual user ID from the users database table. This is used to customize your view of admin interface, and possibly also the main site interface.
wordpress_sec_	1 year	Provide protection against hackers, store account details.
wordpress_test_cookie		Test to see if cookies are enabled.
wp-settings-	1 year	WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-{time}-[UID] cookies. The number on the end is your individual user ID from the users database table. This is used to customize your view of admin interface, and possibly also the main site interface.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.

Cookie	Duration	Description
mailchimp_landing_site	1 month	This cookie is used to keep track of newsletter sign ups and client emails at checkout, Mailchimp utilises cookies to store information captured from user input for remarketing purposes.
mailchimp_user_email	1 month	This cookie is used to keep track of newsletter sign ups and client emails at checkout, Mailchimp utilises cookies to store information captured from user input for remarketing purposes.
mailchimp_user_previous_email	1 month	This cookie is used to keep track of newsletter sign ups and client emails at checkout, Mailchimp utilises cookies to store information captured from user input for remarketing purposes.
mailchimp.cart.current_email		This cookie is used to keep track of newsletter sign ups and client emails at checkout, Mailchimp utilises cookies to store information captured from user input for remarketing purposes.
mailchimp.cart.previous_email		This cookie is used to keep track of newsletter sign ups and client emails at checkout, Mailchimp utilises cookies to store information captured from user input for remarketing purposes.

Shopping cart

Delia’s Tatty Green Lampshade