We chat to Caro C, founder of music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.
A few months back RME and Synthax Audio UK proudly leant our support to Delia Derbyshire Day 2019, supplying an RME Fireface UCX audio interface for use in a 5.1 playback setup.
Organised by electronic musician Caro C (with support from the Arts Council England), the charity ran a series of music production workshops for children, young people and adults on 23rd and 30th November (at Spirit Studios in Manchester and the British Library in London), with a focus on sonic exploration and mixing for 5.1 surround sound.
The theme for this year’s workshops was titled ‘Electric Storm 50’, in recognition of 2019 being the 50th anniversary of seminal work ‘An Electric Storm’ by the band White Noise, a group that Delia was also a member of.
This year’s sponsors included Synthax/RME UK, Sound On Sound magazine, Genelec (provided by Source Distribution) and Spirit Studios.
Here Synthax speaks with Caro about introducing people to some of the creative techniques developed by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (which Delia played a major role in), and why she was keen to get hold of an RME audio interface.
Delia Derbyshire Day 2019
“Delia Derbyshire was one of the key figures in the development of electronic music in this country,” Caro explains. “Her most famous piece of work would be her realisation of Ron Greiner’s original Doctor Who theme, which beamed into people’s living rooms in 1963. Her archive has been donated to John Ryland’s library in Manchester, and I just thought ‘wow, this is a gem of electronic music heritage, we need to make a fuss of it.’”
“We held two events this year, with one in Manchester and one in London. During the day we had workshops for people of all ages, followed by a selection of panel speakers, and finally some live performances. The speakers included Brian Hodgson who invented the TARDIS sound effect, and David Vorhaus, both of whom worked with Delia on ‘An Electronic Storm’, which we’re paying homage to with our workshops.”
Cooking Up An Electric Storm
“The workshops are designed to be a kind of ‘Introduction To Electronic Music Composition, Production and Sound Design’, which we’ve also previously taken into schools and colleges, working with the Manchester Youth Music Hub and One Education.”
“This project in particular was aimed more at a younger audience, with children accompanied by an adult. We actually had a grandpa who was attending with his young grandson, and he remembered the original release of the An Electric Storm and was a fan of it when it first came out fifty years ago, so that was really lovely.”
“Because we’re not actually using any traditional acoustic instruments in the workshop, it is very much about using your imagination – encouraging people to create music using their voice and body percussion, found sounds etc. And then manipulating these recordings with effects and filtering, reversing things, changing the pitch, that kind of thing.”
“We also provide a few objects to use as starting points, like ping pong balls and a little pepper shaker, which I think gives one of the nicest textures! It’s all about being imaginative, like the Radiophonic Workshop had to be, and getting the participants thinking about how they can create the impression of certain sounds from a totally different starting point. We had a little boy in one of the workshops that could do a bubbly, Chewbacca-style voice, and he had a lot of fun recording that – it brings out skills you never realised were there!”
“If I had to come up with a word for the RME sound, I’d call it ‘silky’
– there’s a nice shine and a smoothness to the sound.”
Using the RME Fireface UCX for mixing in 5.1
Part of RME’s Fireface range, the RME Fireface UCX features 6 x high-quality analogue outputs (plus a stereo headphone output), making it perfectly suited for mixing in 5.1 surround sound. Further channels can be added via the optical ADAT I/O, for example with an RME ADI-8 DS Mk III AD/DA converter, or a Ferrofish Pulse 16.
RME’s TotalMix FX control software also lends itself well to 5.1 mixing – setups can be created and saved as a ‘workstation’, with Fader Groups enabling groups of output faders to be linked together, providing simultaneous control over all levels (as indicated by the coloured faders in the image to the right – click to enlarge). In addition, RME’s DIGICheck software* includes a ‘Surround Audio Scope’ tool, and is also free to all RME audio interface users.
* To download DIGICheck, visit the RME Downloads section of the RME website and choose which version you require from the drop-down (titled ‘Select Software’).
Enhanced control over TotalMix FX can be achieved with the RME ARC USB, a dedicated remote control with large rotary control and illuminated buttons, or you can even control your setup wirelessly from another computer or iPad, via the free TotalMix Remote iOS app.
We’ve also previously spoken to composer and sound designer Dominik Scherrer about his 5.1 surround setup, which is powered by an RME Fireface UFX II with TotalMix FX as the main monitor control.
For more information on TotalMix FX, check out the RME TotalMix FX For Beginners video playlist.
“I’m part of a group called Female Pressure,” Caro continues. “It’s an international network of women and non-binary people working within the electronic arts – music, visuals, research. It’s actually quite broad now, a kind of post-club culture economy. So I asked if anyone could recommend a good multi-channel soundcard, and three very well established professional artists/composers, whose opinions I very much rate, they all came back and said ‘you’ve got to get hold of an RME if you can, they’re just beautiful’.”
“you’ve got to get hold of an RME if you can, they’re just beautiful”
“Working in surround sound offers up a different challenge, but with immersive audio becoming increasingly popular, I felt it would be a good opportunity for the workshop visitors to understand how a 5.1 system works, and to explore beyond stereo. Everyone found it really inspiring – it’s a lot more physical than just working in stereo – and you’re awareness is different, being ‘in the sound-space’ as it were.”
“Stems were recorded in Garageband on iPads, then imported into Logic Pro for mixing. All of the participants were given the challenge of sending me six separate tracks, and we encouraged them to think about where they wanted to place each sound whilst they were composing.”
“Everything was then imported into Logic for use on the full system, with the children directing me in where they’d like everything placed within the sound field. I also had a bunch of reverbs and delays set up for them to experiment with, plus a small amount of compression to gel it all together. So I’m just the engineer, and they’re the producers.”
“It’s really been a lovely setup, the Fireface UCX paired with the Genelecs. Without wanting to sound too ‘brandish’, I could tell the difference immediately once I’d set up the RME.”
“If I had to come up with a word for the RME sound, I’d call it ‘silky’ – there’s a nice shine and a smoothness to the sound.”
Caro C’s Music
“I’m currently working on my fourth album which just got awarded funding from the Help Musicians – Do It Differently fund. I’m generally self-released and self-produced, so very much an independent musician in that sense. I’m not classically trained and I didn’t do music at school, but I’ve always loved music, and I have my own idea about what sounds or feels right, and I trust my instincts.”
“I work mainly in ambient electronica, as well as experimenting with breaks, bass and soundscapes, and often mixing unusual elements together. That’s what I’m doing a lot of in my own music, bringing in neo-classical piano riffs with almost choral use of my voice, harmonising. And then mixing it with someone playing a saw, and ice cubes clinking in a glass haha.”
“It’s very authentic to me, and therefore it’s hopefully quite different, although not necessarily the most economically viable! That’s actually how I first ever discovered Delia – someone telling me ‘you’re not the only woman making experimental electronic music, there are others out there!’”
“The next album will hopefully be done by the summer. I’m planning to get quite nerdy with it, in terms of doing a binaural version and stuff like that. Probably the most incredible gig I’ve done was at the BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre), with Annie Mahtani’s 32-channel live diffusion system. It was amazing and made me think about how I could quite easily go down this multi-channel rabbit hole, but at the same time there’d probably only be a handful of places in the country I could actually perform it, so we’ll see.”
Our thanks to Caro C / Delia Derbyshire Day. Caro will be speaking alongside David Vorhaus at the Inner City Electronic festival in Leeds on March 7th 2020, and performing the Electric Storm audio-visual show at Leeds College of Music (9th March 2020) as part of the ‘Sounds Like This Festival’.
You can find out more about Caro C’s work via her website.
Find out more about the RME Fireface UCX
Find out more about RME’s TotalMix FX Software
If you’d like to know more about any of RME’s audio interfaces, soundcards, AD/DA Converters or microphone preamps, give us a call on 01727 821 870 to speak to one of our team or to arrange a demo.
You can also contact us here.