I don’t quite know how it works. It is not atomic, and no radioactive effluvium bubbles through the bathwater. No, the clock is governed by a radio signal, from Glasgow, I’ve been led to believe. That might cause problems if Scotland goes off in a huff and changes its time zone, but in the meantime the second hand hits the hour at the very same moment that the last, long pip lets out its plangent note.

Sometimes one can see the Glaswegians at work adjusting it from a distance, so that the second hand trembles in the run-up to the nine o’clock finishing post. But I think the experience of staring into the pip-abyss demonstrated how much they meant to the nation, like the shipping forecast or The Archers. It is not just that they have been around a long time (introduced on February 5 1924, at the suggestion of the Astronomer Royal), but they are terribly, terribly British. Americans don’t give-a-damn for pips. Spaniards play them, unnaturally, at half past the hour and then make apologetic reference to the time being quite different in the Canary Islands. I suppose it’s partly that the British invented time. I don’t quite mean that, before GMT was promulgated, people round the world vaguely spoke of Michaelmas, tomorrow or sunset, without being more specific.

But the fact is that the globally recognised Universal Time is Greenwich Mean Time under a different name. Britain has only one time zone and it matches the sun. Time, after all, is not an entirely arbitrary measurement of the sand that ceaselessly trickles from our life-span. The definition of noon is the moment when the sun is highest in the sky, and the British rejoice in the good fortune of celebrating noon when the clock says 12. Nations less blessed than we often have to get up in the chill dark because their rulers have moved the clock two hours earlier than the sun. I realise that in summer even the British labour under BST, but that is merely a conspiracy by the Government to get us all out of bed an hour early.

Home TV Radio Contact Media About. HIDE PLAYLIST. Fast to Slow. Copyright © 2016 David Arnold Music. All rights reserved. BBC Radio; Media Archive - BBC World Service - Lilliburlero Shortwave Radio Guide. A To Z Guide; Air Traffic Control; Amateur Radio; BBC Radio; Current Band. Lillibullero (also spelled Lillibulero, Lilliburlero) is a march that seems to have been known at the time of the English Civil War.

So, because of our atavistic attachment to GMT, the BBC pips are the last bastion of cultural imperialism. To some, that is obviously a reason for them to go. To most, it is a reason that they remain an unexamined ritual of national identity. Like driving on the left, or saying please and thank you, they are part of the way the world runs.

It was bad enough in 1972 when the BBC made the last pip longer – half a second’s worth instead of a tenth of a second. It seemed a smudging of punctuality, an untidy business like not furling your umbrella tightly. But that’s nothing to dropping the pips entirely. The prospect coincides with a general disinclination to use clocks and watches and instead to check the time on one’s mobile. Of course, one day in the coming cyber-war, the internet cloud will burst, the telephone signal will die and we shall all be stumbling about in the dark bereft of the comfort of so much as a single pip.

This information piece accompanies the upload entitled, RADIO WIRELESS THEME MUSIC RADIO/WIRELESS THEME MUSIC I EXPLAINED Theme music was created to give identity and mood to a particular Radio show or Wireless programme. Easily recognized being repeated before and after each broadcast they quIckly became ingrained into listeners subconsciousnesses. II RADIO/WIRELESS: THE GOLDEN AGE, AND TODAY During the Golden Age of Radio/Wireless, great care was given to the orchestration of these pieces. In The United States and to a certain extent The United Kingdom, that era has long passed.

In the United States, transcriptions of shows were made by the major networks only to prove that a commercial was transmitted and most often destroyed. Audio tape replaced the fragile transcription discs. Due to financial considerations, they were wiped, reused over and over again. By the 1950's the availability of less expensive home recording devices made it possible for almost anyone to preserve their favorites. Collectors of OTR/W, Old Time Radio/Wireless shared, traded and sold copies that they had made. In our Digital Age, fans of Old Time Radio/Wireless, are able to listen at their leisure, via The Internet reliving those exciting days of yesteryear!

Bach Cello Suite 2 Guitar Pdf Tabs. Radio 7 and now, Radio 4 Extra rebroadcast programmes from the BBC archives. Sit back, shut your eyes, open your ears, and listen to see how many of the Themes you remember! III HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY UNITED KINGDOM WIRELESS THEMES THE ARCHERS 'Barwick Green' is the theme music to the long-running BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers. It is a 'maypole dance' from the suite My Native Heath, written in 1924 by the Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood, and named after Barwick-in-Elmet in Yorkshire's West Riding.

The familiar opening 7 notes are echoed in the pizzicato in Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, written in 1934. The recording used between 1950 and the 1990s was played by Sidney Torch and his orchestra. Sidney Torch recorded a commercial release of 'Barwick Green' in the 1950s, but it was not used on The Archers itself. Wiki The familiar jingle 'dum di dum di dum di dum.'

Was relegated into the vaults of history. After several decades, the popular theme tune was refreshed and updated. == DESERT ISLAND DISCS Desert Island Discs was created by Roy Plomley in 1942. Plomley originally wanted the sounds of 'surf breaking on a shore and the cries of sea birds' to open and close each programme. But Leslie Prowne, the head of popular record programmes at the BBC, was concerned that it lacked definition and insisted that music would also be used.

Plomley and the series' producer Frederic Piffard selected 'By the Sleepy Lagoon', composed by Eric Coates (who appeared on the show in 1951). The tune has been used since the first transmission in 1942. The sound of herring gulls has accompanied the music except for a period of time in 1964 when tropical bird sounds were used. The format is simple: a guest is invited by Kirsty Young to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island.

Wiki == THE LATE SHIPPING FORECAST 'Sailing By' is a short piece of light music composed by Ronald Binge in 1963. A slow waltz, the piece uses a repetitive ABABC structure and features a distinctive rising and falling woodwind arpeggio. 'Sailing By' is played every night on BBC Radio 4 at around 00:45hrs before the late Shipping Forecast. Its tune is repetitive, assisting in its role of serving as a signal for sailors tuning in to be able to easily identify the radio station. It also functions as a buffer — depending on when the final programme before closedown finishes, Sailing By (or part of it) is played as a 'filler' as the shipping forecast starts at 00:48hrs precisely. Wiki Stormy future for BBC Radio 4's shipping forecast? 'It has been a British institution for years, but it looks as though the shipping forecast's days may be numbered.

Peter Jefferson, who read the forecast for 40 years, has warned that the famous BBC Radio 4 broadcast may face stormy seas ahead. Speaking at the Radio Times Festival at Hampton Court, he highlighted the plight of the long-range mast at Droitwich Transmitting Station in Worcestershire, saying: 'It's very old and it's falling over. Its days are numbered, perhaps.' As FM radio can only reach around 12 miles (19km) from the coast, this would put the shipping forecast - which currently reaches as far as south-east Iceland on long-wave radio - in peril.

The transmitter is old and expensive to maintain and, as radio goes digital, Mr Jefferson warned that the service - dating back to 1911 - may be under threat in the future....' .bt.com What if they failed to broadcast the programme!?! It happened in 2014. Newspaper headlines read: BBC fails to air Shipping Forecast for first time in more than 90 years Nation's morning thrown into chaos when Radio 4 accidentally fails to broadcast shipping forecast for the first time in history: Radio 4 accidently skips Shipping Forecast leading to mild confusion, apocalypse fears Country's morning routine thrown into disarray as BBC Radio 4 forgets to air Shipping Forecast == BBC WORLD SERVICE 'Lilliburlero', is generally considered to be the signature tune of BBC World Service. Preceded by the announcement 'This is London', it is played on the BBC World Service before the five-minute World News bulletins.

The current version was arranged by David Arnold, who has composed most of the new themes for the World Service, and has been recorded in digital format to replace the previous version, which was in use for over 30 years. Included here is an audio compilation I created from several sources. == THE BBC RADIO 4 UK THEME An orchestral arrangement of traditional British airs compiled by Fritz Spiegl and arranged by Manfred Arlan. It was played every morning on BBC Radio 4 between 23 November 1978 and 23 April 2006.

The piece was used as the signature theme to introduce the daily beginning of Radio 4's broadcasting following the early morning handover from the BBC World Service. The theme was immediately followed by the Shipping Forecast. In 2006, the decision by Mark Damazer (Controller of Radio 4 at the time) to drop the Radio 4 UK Theme to make way for a 'pacy news briefing' caused much controversy in the United Kingdom, including extensive discussion in the British media and even in Parliament. Wiki ==30===slw 4/16.