Radio Music: Field recording from the ether

Radio is a kind of invisible weather, a drifting archive of voices, music, static and signal that passes constantly through us. It is global, nostalgic, unpredictable and alive.

In this residency, we’ll be working at Housel Bay on the Lizard Peninsula, a place deeply connected to the earliest days of broadcast history. This is where radio began, where Marconi’s first transmissions crossed the sea and changed the way sound could travel. A century later, we will tune in to the same air and use it to create music.

Radio Music is a hands-on residency for musicians and soundmakers of all kinds. Whether you are writing songs, working with synthesisers, collecting field recordings or making abstract sound pieces, this is an opportunity to explore radio as both a source of sound and a creative method, a way of listening, composing and collaborating that invites surprise and unpredictability.

You will listen to live broadcasts and archival recordings, picking up fragments of music, speech, noise and silence, then use those discoveries to shape new pieces, individually and in collaboration with others. Some of these will be simple sketches. Others may grow into layered compositions or collective performances.

Over the course of the residency, you will use:

Shortwave, AM and FM radios, including portable and modified sets

Low-power transmitters, broadcasting across a single room

Lunchbox modular synthesisers and lo-fi playback tools

Recordings of broadcasts, international stations and found tapes

Online WebSDR streams and signals from radio telescopes, capturing transmissions far beyond the local airwaves

You will explore methods such as:

Sampling and looping fragments from the dial

Improvising with spirit radio and found textures

Layering voices and static into new works

Writing songs shaped by atmosphere, not genre

Chance-based and radio-responsive structures, like Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No. 4
 

Some work will be solo, some created in groups. Shared listening, collaborative composition and collective soundmaking are central to the experience. The process is open-ended. Radio becomes a prompt that folds easily into your own musical practice, whether that is melody and rhythm, collage and abstraction, or voice and narrative.

Throughout, the goal is to connect with sound in a different way, to use limitation and chance as creative allies. Like in Sound Maps, this workshop is about building confidence by working with whatever is available. The static, the signal dropouts, the unexpected phrase, all of it becomes material for your own musical language.

Your work might lean into ambient sound, storytelling, songwriting or experiment. Some pieces will be made alone, others together, responding to shared broadcasts or building multi-layered compositions as a group. It does not have to be polished or intricate. It just has to be finished, made in a place where radio once began, and where it still fills the air.

No technical knowledge is needed. Just curiosity, open ears, and whatever you already use to make music.

Grants
We have two grants designed to assist those who may need financial support to attend. 

You can also book your place by following the link: https://dyski.co/Tom-Whitwell-Radio-Music