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         THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN TOTAL IRRELEVANCE ISSUE 7
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              The Doctor Who Theme Music by Ron Grainer
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    For  the  last  thirty  years,   Doctor   Who  has  been  a  British
    institution, millions of homes stopped at 5.15 on a Saturday evening
    to watch the programme,  to  marvel  at  the  special effects and to
    laugh at the inherant inability of everbody in the programme to act.
    One of the most  distinctive  aspects  of  the series throughout the
    years has been the theme tune.   How  did the theme tune come about?
    Who exactly composed it?  I hope that  in this article you will find
    out everything you never  realised  you  wanted  to  know about that
    marvellous theme tune, which everybody knows so well...

    Before we go  into  the  tune,  a  little  background information is
    necessary - in 1963 the  first  filming  for  Doctor Who began - the
    title sequence.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  Doctor Who title
    sequence - swirling  lines  merging  and  swirling  in  a pattern of
    colour (originally black and white)  -  the programme seemed to lose
    its character when the title sequence was changed in the late 1970s.
    The creation of this  sequence  is  in  fact  a  viual equivalent to
    feedback (as used by many bands  in  the 60s), the effect you obtain
    by putting a microphone next to the loudspeaker playing the sound it
    is recording,  so  it  is  amplified  and  distorted  and  a  simply
    marvellous (..ish ;^)  effect  is  achieved.   The  Doctor Who title
    sequence was based on  some  footage  used  in  an  earlier TV drama
    called Amahl and  the  Night  Visitors.   The  correct  name for the
    effect is howl around, and is made by pointing a video camera at the
    monitor displaying what it is  recording.   A  light is shone on the
    screen and then a distorting effect is created as the camera "sees a
    blob of light and continuously reads it.  What happens is that every
    little distortion is magnified and  amplified  until the screen goes
    blank." (Extract from Doctor Who: The '60s).

    Anyway, once the title sequence had been shot the music needed to be
    created.  At first  Verity  Lambert  (then  the  producer) wanted to
    comission a French Group called 'Les Structures Sonores' to make the
    music, but the Head of TV music, Lionel Salter, persuaded her to use
    the BBC's own  Radiophonic  Workshop.   She  told  its head 'Desmond
    Briscoe' that she wanted a  piece  of  music  "...with a strong beat
    which would sound 'familiar but different'".   She also wanted it to
    be written  by  Ron  Grainer,   an  Australian  musician  famous for
    composing the music for Steptoe and  Son, Maigret and later Tales of
    the unexpected.   This  was  easily  arranged  as  Grainer  had just
    finished working with the Workshop.

    Grainer wrote a simple version of the theme, which he intended to be
    inkeeping with  the  visuals  (when  discussing  the  tune  with the
    Workshop  composer,  Delia  Derbyshire,  he  used  such  phrases  as
    'windbubbles' and 'clouds' to describe the sort of sounds he wanted)
    Derbyshire and her assistant, Dick Mills, used "sine and square wave
    generators, a white noise  generator  and  a  special beat frequency
    generator".  Of course, there was no  such thing as a Synthesiser in
    those days!

    The music  was  painstakingly  put  together  note  by  note,  using
    carefully timed adjustment  of  the  oscillators,  before the sounds
    were manipulted ready for synchronisation.

    Over the years the music has changed gradually, with the most recent
    music markedly different  to  the  original  theme,  because  of the
    advent of  synthesizers, samplers  and  sequencers  and other things
    beginning with 's', but it still remains  one of the most well known
    and unusual TV themes.

      Ron Grainer tragically died of Cancer on the 27th February, 1981

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            Mike Richmond, 19th February 1994, 30th November 1994
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