Hawkwind BBC4 Documentary - part 4/9

Lemmy, In Search of Space, audio generators and synthesizers.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Hawkwind

[WizardofFuzz]

can't find anything about audio generators... is that just a simple form of a synthesizer?

[HawklordPXR5]

in a word: yes. Also known as tone generators, I believe.

[BritWarlord]

Is the spaceship Nik's talking about in 0:50 somthing PXR5?

[HawklordPXR5]

Mmmmm, I don't really think anyone knows what "PXR5" stands for. I asked Dave once and he just laughed.

[ifscott]

I've always liked to assume the 'P' represented Alan Powell & the 'R' represented Paul Rudolph while the 'X' meant they weren't in the band any more & the '5' represented the 5 members of the band at the time (even if Bob is not credited on the track).

Then Powell & Rudolph & Nick Turner could be the "three of our crew who were with us then did not survive, their life supports could not take the strain...".

Ok, I've made that up but I quite like it & it might account for Dave laughing too :)

[zbelm]

"We discovered that we had a mutual interest in seeing how long the human body could be made to jump about without stopping".  As ever, Lemmy's your man for a good quote, ha ha ha!

[applecrumping33]

haha legends. the ole Brown Note hehe. they use them in intruder alarms too lol!

[cheechwizzard101]

they kept me up when i was a kid in powis square.. my window face directly in front of stage. loved every second of it... growing up there was the best!!!

[comic93]

I wish we could "Like" comments, Anagram was right, they are STILL ahead of their time.

[Alembic25]

@WizardofFuzz It's a speaker and amplifier testing unit.. Not really a musical instrument as such but a lot of fun. It produces a variable tone which is adjustable via a large knob on the front panel. The tone goes out of the human hearing range at both ends of the spectrum and can cause odd effects on the human body. lol. I bought one off Ebay the other day.

[Alembic25]

@WizardofFuzz The famous audio generator is a device intended for testing speaker systems. It creates a range of tones which traverse the full range of sound, from ultra low to ultra high and out of the range of human hearing at both ends of the scale. It's not a musical instrument as such but Dik Mik used one through a suitable amplifier. Del Dettmar used a VCS3 synthesiser which produced the whooshing sound on Silver Machine. Put VCS3 into Youtube and see the magic!

[AnagramISP]

They are STILL ahead of their time

[edgeeffect]

@WizardofFuzz it's a piece of audio-test equipment that generate simple pitches. Before the dominance of the synthesizer it was the basic tool of electronic music. 

[ifscott]

Cheers. And if i bring GroupX, XIn Search Of Space, Xitintoday, and xHawkwind into it I have to conclude the X is in fact Nick!

[uncleambient]

You know you might just be right!!

Genius, go to the top of the class :)

[cazmonaut]

Audio generator, tone generator -oscillator. Same animal.