For a couple of days I had some great fun making a lovely documentary “Merry Christmas Morris Minor” for Radio 4 all about the Morris Minor car.
Martin Wainwright sets off through the snow to give seasonal best wishes to the owners of Britain’s favourite mass produced car – and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the special edition Morris Minor Million – the rarest minor of all. Highlight of the programme is a special rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ from a Morris Minor ‘choir.’ Martin has a soft spot for the little car – often described as a large jelly mould with a speedometer sitting like a clock on the dashboard, and orange fingers for indicators. For it’s time though, according to Stirling Moss, it was a nippy little car. Martin meets a mechanic who ‘soups’ the car up, owners like Dave Brown from ‘The Mighty Boosh’ and the drivers who ‘danced ‘ their Morris Minors at the end of the Manchester Commonwealth Games . Finally, using the horn, various clunks and clicks from the car door and boot, and a squeak from the chassis, he conducts a unique version of ‘ Jingle Bells’ by the Morris Minor ‘choir.’
Sound Design and production: Mike Thornton
Producers: Janet Graves and Geoff Bird
A Pennine production for BBC Radio 4.
I had the challenge to create the ‘Morris Minor choir’ using only the sounds from a Morris Minor. The horn of course was very useful, being a ‘tuned’ sound and so I loaded it into Structure, a sampler plug-in in Pro Tools. Other sounds I stuffed into Structure were the lovely squeaking of the car’s suspension, various door, boot and bonnet open and close sounds to form part of the percussion section as well as a multiple of different sounds extracted from a hub cap ending up as various cymbal sounds, using Serato’s Pitch ‘n Time plug-in to stretch out the sound into a variety of cymbal crashes. We were able to get a tuned note from it so the hub cap also formed part of the harmony and melody of this unique rendition of Jingle Bells.
The Guardian have selected it as one of their Radio Highlights for Christmas Eve….
If the festive spirit is still proving elusive, tune into Merry Christmas Morris Minor! (Radio 4, 11am), one of the sweetest radio offerings over the holiday. The Guardian’s Martin Wainwright celebrates the car’s 50th birthday in this affectionate tribute, which includes a rendition of Jingle Bells played on a chorus of Morris Minor Horns. That moment really is enough to melt even Scrooge’s heart.
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
