Spitfire Audio and BBC Announce Radiophonic Workshop VST Collaboration

Following the success of several collaborations, including orchestral VST BBC Symphony Orchestra Professional, Spitfire Audio and BBC Studios have announced a new venture offering something completely different: the iconic and groundbreaking sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop made available as a software VST for the first time.

Known best as the studio that played a pivotal role in the development of electronic music and music technology, and producing greatly-loved music such as the original Dr Who theme, the new VST (Virtual Studio Technology) will make the studio’s original samples available to be used by composers, producers, sound designers, and electronic artists alike.

The Radiophonic Workshop was set up in the late 1950s to meet the demand for newer and pioneering types of sound effects and music for the BBC’s programming. Allocated rooms 13 and 14 of the BBC Maida Vale studios, the studio was first established by composer Daphne Oram (one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound) and sound engineer and composer Desmond Briscoe. The early work saw innovative sound effects being created for radio, eventually expanding to the popular science fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit.

‘History in the remaking’

After Oram left to start her own studio, BBC Radiophonic Workshop was notable for continuing to bring in talented and pioneering female composers and sound engineers, including Delia Derbyshire, one of the biggest names in early electronic music. Derbyshire helped bring the Workshop greater acclaim and recognition when commissioned to take Ron Grainger’s theme for Dr Who and realise it into the iconic electronic that opened each episode of the series, one of the first television or film to be made entirely with electronic equipment.

Besides Dr Who’s theme and incidental music, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop created much of the programme’s sound effects, including the engine of the TARDIS, the instantly-recognisable voice effect of the Daleks, and the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver. The composers and Workshop used musique concrète techniques (using recorded sounds as source material for music), tape manipulation, and later modular synthesisers. 

“For 40 years, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the place to go for the sound of the impossible,” Spitfire Audio commented. “The unruly engine behind the music and effects of Doctor Who, the Goon Show, Blake’s 7, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Living Planet and countless other productions from the BBC. It was a place of other worlds and of other sounds. From scraping pianos and hitting lampshades to manipulating tape loops with milk bottles, the Workshop's unconventional methods produced a distinctive sonic signature that continues to inspire artists.”

An ongoing collaboration

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is not the first VST collaboration between the national broadcaster and Spitfire Audio: they have previously co-released the highly successful orchestral VSTs BBC Symphony Orchestra Professional, BBC Symphony Orchestra Piano, and BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover. The latter is a free download, and these have become some of Spitfire’s best-selling products.

Composer, sound designer and Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres said: “As a kid born in the 1960s, I realised there was a department at the BBC that was purely for making bonkers noises. It blew my mind!

“I'm the youngest member of the core Radiophonic Workshop – and I'm 64! We're not going to be around forever. It was really important to leave a creative tool, inspired by our work, for other people to use going forward. I hope we've made an instrument that will inspire future generations.

“This instrument is all formed from the work, processes and equipment that the Workshop created and used. You know, sampling now really looks like sampling then, but with a few more twiddles. I've been saying for years that Workshop composers such as Delia Derbyshire and John Baker were really samplists.”

Going with the tagline ‘History in the remaking’, Spitfire Audio have been granted exclusive access to the Workshop's archives, tools, and hardware at Maida Vale Studios. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop VST was created by sampling the original tapes, recordings, and even new creations and experiments using original equipment by some of the Workshop’s associates and members including Mark Ayres Kieron Pepper.

Harry Wilson, Spitfire Audio’s Head of Recording, said: "We're not just looking back at what the members were doing way back when. We're projecting a strand of their work into the future and saying: if the Workshop was engaged with a similar process now, what would it sound like?"

Some of the key features of the VST collaboration include:

• Original sounds from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop archives.

• Samples of the one-shots, loops, and multi-samples.

• Newly created experiments and sounds by Workshop members and associates.

• Spitfire Audio’s SOLAR engine, including the gate sequencer and effects suite.

• A wide range of archival content, found sounds, junk percussion, tape loops, and vintage synthesisers.

• 13 different signal chains are used for sound capture.

• Access to techniques of bending, stretching, and morphing sounds

• The Maida Vale plate and spring reverb, modular synthesizers, tape machines, EMS Vocoder, Echo chamber, Roland Vocoder SVC-350 and Eventide H-3000.

Dominic Walker, Global Business Director for BBC Studios said: “We are thrilled to be

collaborating once again with Spitfire Audio in bringing the legendary sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to a new generation of musicians and composers with this valuable online library”.

The Spitfire Audio BBC Radiophonic Workshop VST will be available from the 19th of February 2025 at www.spitfireaudio.com