Tag Archives: BBC World Service

It only takes a minute

Posted on by
3

Reading the latest article on SWLing Post here about BBC interval signals, it reminded us of the wonderfully simple and direct “B–B–C” in the tonic scale used on shortwave for the BBC World Service and other transmissions to Africa.

We’ve always loved it and recently used it in a one-minute slightly odd piece from Madtone called “It Is AI, but we created it” for the 60 Sec Radio 2026 contest here, where “anything is possible as long as it’s 60 seconds long.”

The piece is below and features the said BBC interval signal alongside an excerpt of an strange ham radio conversation on 2 metres about AI generated music. We’re not that keen on AI generated music here funnily enough.

The contest is still open, so if you have 60 seconds radio collage, send it to the website here.

Radio connects us all, yet again

Posted on by
Reply

Big shout to The Rhythm Doctor for playing this tune at 33 rpm (it’s supposedly meant to play at 45) this morning on this week’s Waiting Room radio show (the best Monday morning radio show if you like all sorts of eclectic tunes) here.

We’ve never heard it before and as soon as it started up, it sounded very much like a Jah Wobble bassline then there was the inclusion of BBC World Service sign on of the bow bells so we were hooked. It’s the B side of this record here and it’s by Prophetic Four As Dub Assassins and called Pursuit, a wonderful piece of music from 1981 as dub mixed up with radio recordings are all the rage here.

And the next tune played was this below, can it get any better? Tune in to Rhythm Doctor’s Waiting Room on IDA Radio (Tallinn) on a Monday at 9am here.