A MUSICIAN who first set eyes on Dippy the Dinosaur as a child has celebrated Coventry’s newest attraction by writing a song in its honour.
John Biddulph, who also goes by the handle HandMadeSound, recorded the ‘Song for Dippy’ while overlooking the dinosaur in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
John used a bass clarinet in the piece which enabled him to create a soundscape out of a variety of very gentle, wavy, and slowly shifting sounds.
The 67-year-old played a key role in Coventry’s ‘The City is Full of Noises’ music festival inspired by the city’s musical pioneer Delia Derbyshire.
John said he was inspired to create a song after hearing Dippy was being transported to the Herbert for its three-year stay in the city.
“The idea of the deconstruction and reconstruction of such a massive thing really inspired me and around about the same time I was contacted to play Modular Mondays and the weekend event at the end of City Full of Noises.
“So as I knew I’d be taking part I sat down with my electronic gear and started to think in primordial, swamp-type sounds, hopefully not too referential as nobody knows what Dippy would have really sounded like, or even if dinosaurs made any sounds at all.
“But I wanted to create this backdrop of sound and this notion of using the contours and relief of the actual skeleton as the basis for Dippy’s voice and that’s how the idea for ‘Song for Dippy’ came about.”
Click here to listen to the ‘Song for Dippy.’
