![\"Unknown-2\"](\"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Unknown-21.jpeg\")
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A Goldsmiths Computing researcher has built a music synthesiser and sequencer designed \u2013 but never realised – by electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram more than 40 years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n PhD student Tom Richards has spent the last three years poring over an unfinished project by Daphne Oram<\/a> (1925 \u2013 2003), one of the central figures in the development of British experimental electronic music.<\/p>\n Oram was the co-founder and first director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop<\/a>, and is credited with the invention of a new form of \u2018drawn sound\u2019 synthesis \u2013 Oramics, which was recently the subject of the \u2018Oramics to Electronica<\/a>\u2019 exhibition at the Science Museum.<\/p>\n The original Oramics machine was designed in the early to mid 1960s and was built with funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.<\/p>\n It was different to many early forms of electronic synthesisers: the composer\/musician drew onto a set of 35mm film strips which ran past a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical signals to control amplitude, timbre, frequency and duration.<\/p>\n The original Oramics Machine was the size of a large office photocopier, so was too cumbersome for the average musician. In the early 1970s Oram began work on Mini-Oramics (perhaps inspired by Moog\u2019s development of the Minimoog), but as far as we know she never completed a prototype.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of reasons why she didn\u2019t launch Mini-Oramics,\u201d explains Tom. \u201cShe was working on her own, she wasn\u2019t affiliated to a large organisation or university.<\/p>\n \u201cShe had ups and downs in her life, and at the time she was working on Mini-Oramics, she also worried that her approach to musical research was out of fashion when compared to chance-based and computerised techniques. She was unable to secure the further funding she needed and she eventually moved on to other research.<\/p>\n \u201cIn an alternate universe, Mini-Oramics might have become an actual product, bought and used by musicians all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Daphne](\"http:\/\/www.doc.gold.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Daphne276-150x150.jpg\")
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