Electronic scores can evoke the dramatic wonder of nature, as composer Elizabeth Parker demonstrated in her score for the 1984 BBC David Attenborough classic The Living Planet. Here’s a look behind the scenes, as Parker imagines that soundscape with everything from a PPG Wave to a ketchup bottle. If you need a little extra imaginative inspiration back to the Earth, you’ll love listening to her talk about how she works.
“The bigness of the world” is a tall brief — and Parker had to interweave the synthesized sounds with the natural sound, providing, as she puts it, a sense of power and “a celestial feel.” This kind of evocative, human approach seems ready for a comeback, particularly in today’s age of disposable scores and generative AI. So Parker sings and improvises her way through that score, still thinking about themes and motives. If you’ve found yourself staring blankly at a screen or a keyboard, why not transport yourself from somewhere like dreary, gray Britain to the intense heat of the desert, “the sweat rolling off you” or te “dripping of the leaves” in the jungle.
Enjoy, from the BBC archives:
Seriously, I imagine it’ll be hard not to finish watching this and run off to make an ambient album. I also appreciate that she went with sense memory and a focus on the image; despite the presence of a thumb piano, nothing is particularly exoticized.
“And of course the other very important element is silence.”
Another video looks into what was in the Radiophonic Workshop’s studio at the time, starting, as apparently all BBC programs on the topic were required, with Doctor Who. While my inbox is full of pitches for complex ways of loading massive sample libraries or even using AI just to even find something, let me introduce you to the BBC’s secret weapons … an old piano. Blowing across a bottle. Hitting a bit of a broken office chair. You’ll also note that apart from expensive gear like the Fairlight, they’re mostly using tape and fairly inexpensive mics.
As for synths, that 1984 studio was full of instruments that are revered to this day: a Yamaha DX7, Sequential Prophet-5, and Fairlight CMI, in addition to the PPG. That includes still more of Parker talking about this score. (I’m curious by the way about the modular behind her; someone here should know.)
And since digital sampling was new in the 80s, the BBC does what Reading Rainbow and various US programs did, and shows audiences the mind-blowing possibility of repitching samples. (Well, to be fair, it is still fun in 2025.) Radiophonic Workshop’s Malcolm Clarke and Brian Hodgson weigh, in, too.
Okay, I could just stop here, but let’s listen to Daphne Oram explain machines as the “arm” ot the composer, rather Cyberman style. And then get ready for a whole lot of cutting tape:
And this program explains the Workshop’s history and evolution, through all the “collywobbles“:
Could you give me instant spaceship?
Just tons of fairly straightforward synth work and recording stuff with mics, so funny enough, tape-cutting aside, a lot of what we return to now:
In PPG Wave news: