Turing and the Innovative use of Reverb in the film score of 'Blade Runner'

Abstract

In 1982 composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (Vangelis) generated a vast spacial distance in his soundtrack to Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner by running his instruments through the first commercially available digital reverberation sound processor (the Lexicon 224). By using digital reverb to add depth and space to his instrumentation, he generated a rich musical milieu to complement the film's futuristic cityscapes, and redefined meanings associated with a reverb in music. The process by which reverberation algorithms were applied to an audio input signal was enabled by Alan Turing's digital computer outlined in 1936. Just as the Turing machine proved a harbinger of the digital age, Vangelis was a pioneer user of digital delay, which he helped to make famous in his soundtrack to Blade Runner. His use of digital signal processing and delay processes that imitate analogue audio signals and natural reverberation, parallels Blade Runner's narrative, which explores the replication of human behaviour in bio-machines or Replicants. Vangelis achieves this with a multi operational process of composition that relies on a highly interactive, creative spontaneity more than a clearly defined or imitable structure.