Brian Hodgson (born 1938) is a British television composer and sound technician. Born in Liverpool in 1938, Hodgson joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1962 where he became the original sound effects creator for the science fiction programme Doctor Who. His main claims to fame are the sound of the TARDIS (which he created by running the back door key to his mother's house along a bass string of a gutted piano, then electronically treating the recording) and the famous voices of the Daleks, which he created by distorting the actors' voices and feeding them through a device called a ring modulator. He continued to produce effects for the programme until 1972 when he left the Workshop, leaving Dick Mills to produce effects for the remainder of the show's run.Earlier, in 1966, with fellow workshop musician Delia Derbyshire and EMS founder Peter Zinovieff, he helped set up Unit Delta Plus, an organisation which they intended to use to create and promote electronic music. Based in a studio in Zinovieff's townhouse in Putney, they exhibited their music at a few experimental and electronic music festivals, including The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at which The Beatles' "Carnival of Light" had its only public playing. After a troubled performance at the Royal College of Art, in 1967, the unit disbanded.Also in the late sixties, Hodgson and Derbyshire, along with fellow musician David Vorhaus, set up the Kaleidophon studio in Camden Town. The studio produced electronic music for various London theatres and, in 1968, the three used it to produce their first album as the band White Noise. Although later albums were essentially solo Vorhaus albums, the debut, An Electric Storm featured collaborations with Hodgson and Derbyshire and is now considered an important and influential album in the development of electronic music.During this period the trio also contributed, using pseudonyms, to the Standard Music Library. Many of these recordings, including compositions by Hodgson using the name "Nikki St George", were later used on the seventies ITV science fiction rivals to Doctor Who; The Tomorrow People and Timeslip.After leaving the Radiophonic Workshop, he set up the Electrophon studio with John Lewis, in Covent Garden, where he was later joined by Derbyshire. In 1973, he worked with the Doctor Who composer Dudley Simpson, under the name "Electrophon", on the album In A Covent Garden (sometimes credited to "The Unexploded Myth"). It featured Hodgson and Simpson's arrangements of several classical compositions for synthesisers and a 16 piece orchestra. Their versions of Tchaikovsky's None But the Weary Heart and Debussy's "La fille aux cheveux de lin" later appeared in the Doctor Who serial "The Robots of Death". The duo also released the albums Zygoat, in 1972, and Further Thoughts On the Classics, in 1974. In 1975, Hodgson collaborated with John Lewis, under the name "Wavemaker", on an album of experimental synthesiser work name
He is probably best known for creating the sound of the materialisation of the TARDIS in Doctor Who (1963) by recording the running a key along a piano string, slowing it down and reversing it.
Sound Department
Title
Year
Status
Character
Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks
2016
special sound
Doctor Who
2005-2013
TV Series sound effects - 97 episodes
Doctor Who
1996
TV Movie sound designer: TARDIS sound - uncredited
Doctor Who: 30 Years in the Tardis
1993
TV Movie documentary sound designer: TARDIS sound - uncredited
Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time
1993
TV Short sound designer: TARDIS sound
Doctor Who
TV Series special sound - 295 episodes, 1963 - 1973 TARDIS sound - 1 episode, 1983
The Legend of Hell House
1973
sound effects
Visions of Eight
1973
Documentary electronic sound
Play for Today
1971
TV Series special sound - 2 episodes
Out of the Unknown
1965
TV Series radiophonic sound - 1 episode
Boy and Bicycle
1965
Short sound recordist
Composer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Clarkson: Heaven and Hell
2005
Video documentary
Clarkson: Hot Metal
2004
Video documentary
Clarkson: Shoot-Out
2003
Video documentary
Clarkson: No Limits
2002
Video documentary
Clarkson's Top 100 Cars
2001
Video documentary
Jeremy Clarkson at Full Throttle
2000
Video documentary
Jeremy Clarkson: Head to Head
1999
Video documentary
The Most Outrageous Jeremy Clarkson Video in the World... Ever!
1998
Video documentary
Apocalypse Clarkson
1997
Video documentary
Clarkson: Unleashed on Cars
1996
Video documentary
The Tempest
1979
The Legend of Hell House
1973
as Brian Hodgson of Electrophon Ltd.
The Tomorrow People
1973
TV Series
Doctor Who
1968
TV Series 6 episodes
Out of the Unknown
1966
TV Series 1 episode
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
Changi
2001
TV Mini-Series
Major #3
Rutland Weekend Television
1975-1976
TV Series
Music Department
Title
Year
Status
Character
Evolution of the Invasion
2006
Video documentary composer: incidental music
Soundtrack
Title
Year
Status
Character
Dracula A.D. 1972
1972
music: ""Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell" - uncredited
Thanks
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Alchemists of Sound
2003
TV Movie documentary thanks
Self
Title
Year
Status
Character
An Electric Samurai in London
2016
Documentary
Himself
Recharge and Equalise
2010
Video documentary short
Himself
Creation of the Daleks
2006
Video documentary short
Himself
Doctor Who: Origins
2006
Video documentary
Himself
Inside the Spaceship: The Story of the TARDIS
2006
Video documentary short
Himself
Over the Edge: The Story of the Edge of Destruction
2006
Video documentary short
Himself
The Story of 'Doctor Who'
2003
TV Movie documentary
Himself
The Alchemists of Sound
2003
TV Movie documentary
Himself - Radiophonic Composer 1962-72 / Organiser 1977-95