At the dawn of electronic music, as the experimental nature of a new-fangled instrument called the synthesizer was in the ascent, musicians that embraced this new technology were confronted by a problem; how to describe these new sounds?
As the polymaths at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, were acquiring a reputation for creating new and interesting sounds (initially using tape-based methods, before migrating toward synthesizers) the call for a form of cataloguing system was essential.
