Tonight we explore the music of one of the unsung heros of electronic music, British composer Daphne Oram. She worked at the BBC in the late 1950s where she co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and became its first Studio Manager. A year later she resigned from the workshop, being unhappy with BBC's music department's lack of interest in the more experimental music that was beginning to be created in Europe and abroad. Instead she designed her own  Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition, and produced a far wider range of music than the Radiophonic Workshop.

By 1962, with the help of a grant, Oram began to research had develope "Oramics" drawn sound technique, a method of music composition and performance that allowed the composer to draw an "alphabet of symbols" on paper and feed it through a machine that would, in turn, produce the relevant sounds on magnetic tape. By 1965 the machine was complete.

Throughout her career, Oram lectured on electronic music and studio techniques. Besides being a musical innovator, her other significant achievements include being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio, the first woman to set up a personal studio, and the first woman to design and construct an electronic musical instrument.

Tonight we'll listen to many works of hers, mostly drawn from the 2-CD set "Oramics" on Paradigm Disc, and the recently released 4-LP "The Oram Tapes - Volume 1" on the Young Americans label, as well as some other stuff. .