Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.
Plaque honouring Derbyshire, at Coventry University
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means. Pure electronic instruments depended entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator, theremin, or synthesizer. Electromechanical instruments can have mechanical parts such as strings, hammers, and electric elements including magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Such electromechanical devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, electric piano and electric guitar.
Front page of Scientific American in 1907, demonstrating the size, operation, and popularity of the Telharmonium
Leon Theremin demonstrating the theremin in 1927
Phonogene (1953), a tape machine for modifying the sound structure, developed by Pierre Schaeffer et al. at GRMC
Pierre Schaeffer presenting the Acousmonium (1974) that consisted of 80 loudspeakers for tape playback, at GRM