AETHERPHON, global theremin family

Hello all,

You all know that I am a collector and afficionado of theremin music.  I 
wish I could play, and maybe someday I will, but for now that's not my 
role.  I am content to discover and promote those who can play, whether 
they're professional or amateur, and give them a regular stage on which 
to perform.  For now, audio is the most easily manageable format for 
programming.  I made a video once.  Once.  Once was all I could handle, 
at least in a fashion that met my standards.  I have since stuck with 
audio because.....well, frankly, it's less work to make sound decent. :-)

Which brings me to YouTube.  I'll be honest, I haven't followed it 
much.  The videos, well, some of them are good.  Some not so much.  What 
irks me is that in some of them, the playing is really quite good, the 
type of performance I'd like to feature, especially for someone who 
hasn't made a name for themselves.  But the audio quality stinks.  Now, 
it's not like I'm pressing CDs over here.  My audio stream is 96kbps, 
which is on purpose.  It's good enough for streaming on the Internet, 
but not so good as to pose a threat to those who ARE pressing CDs and 
trying to make a living at this.

But still, what I'm finding is that, instead of making audio recordings, 
many thereminists are skipping this step entirely and shooting crude 
videos.  I'm not really talking about the lot of people out there who 
have apparently just decided to take up the theremin and are publicly 
embarassing themselves with videos of their "progress"...I share others' 
distaste for this practice, as it has been pointed out that this 
wouldn't typically be the case with any other instrument.  But even 
after getting to the point of playing in tune and beginning to inject 
some emotion into their playing, so many still seem content to shoot low 
quality video than high quality audio.

So I hope that you all continue making audio recordings.  I've had to 
start extracting decent audio from YouTube videos when I can, but I 
really still prefer good music in good audio quality.  After all, I need 
something to keep me busy and out of trouble. :-)

David V

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DAVID V -- synthetic music for humans
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Spellbound, a brief program of music for theremin
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