E-pro prices and feedback from theremin workshop in leamington spa
2008-06-11 by Lunette Records
Hi all I cannot believe the price of E-Pros - that is truly crazy! Surely not sustainable. Maybe we'll see more people part with their precious, particularly with the credit crunch... goes to prove that Moog should produce another batch. It does kind of annoy me that Moogmusic do stuff like Etherfest and go on about Moog's passion for theremin - but they aren't making the instrument that, in my opinion, has had the greatest effect on improvement of theremin performance of anything, ever, bar none (sorry Clara, even more than Art Of Theremin). I remember being with Bob in Denmark and he was on the phone back to the office sorting out finish for the wood cabinets. The pursuit of excellence in design, even for the comparitively low volumes of theremins, was critical to him. BTW: if you have a series 91 (the old Moog cabinet style theremin from late 90s) apparently these go for big bucks in Japan where Masami Takeuchi has popularised it - all his students want one. Also shameless plug - I wrote an article for my academic Masters on Moog Music and cultural entrepreneurship which may be interesting to some: http://www.mediaenterprise.co.uk/2008/02/29/bob-moog-the-20th-century-music-entrepreneur/ The workshop in Royal Leamington Spa went really well, apart from sat nav melt down getting there. Two curious older guys (one claimed to be saxophone player in The Specials "Ghost Town") turned up as well as various musical youngsters and their older siblings. It got a bit noisy with two theremins and only one amp, but I think that's preferable to let them flow than headphoning people up. I talked a little about the history and my personal journey, and played a few things. Then there was lots of hands on time - I let people look at various books and pamphlets, and play with 'mable' (my baby matryiomin theremin) while they waited for a turn. We looked a little at graphic scores and I tried to get them to think about a short performance - would it be a piece of music they knew, a story, a mood, or getting inspiration for shapes from a graphic score (Grainger Free Music). At the end we played 'theremin idol leamington spa 2008' (great suggestion Gordon!). All their efforts were a bit unlistenable. Then half of them got up to play in front of the group. A younger girl, a cellist, was really very gifted at getting light and shade and expression from the instrument. I taught them all a bit of technique (and discipline!) at the beginning - but really I was more interested in getting them to try and be expressive rather than worry too much about pitch. They'd have all averaged about 15 mins on an instrument. The things I found most interesting: - Expression (left hand) - I tried to get them to think about this, and the more musical ones 'got it' - but many really failed to see relationship between sound and volume as a means of control and expression. - Shapes - one of the older girls used a graphic score in 3D - drawing shape in air from left to right. This was interesting to me - although not what the composer intended, a valid form of composition and definitely an 'out of the box' way of playing! So a bit of learning, a bit of fun, a lot of noise. A good time was had by all. BTW: the film with Lydia Kavina is by Jesse Jones called *The Spectre and the Sphere*. More about it here: http://www.project.ie/cgi-bin/eventdetail.pl?id=698 It was showing at the Leamington Spa Gallery but I didn't get a chance to see it. Maybe it'll be on the web in the future. -- Susi (aka Ms Hypnotique) Tel: 07981 222799 http://www.hypnotique.net http://www.lunette.co.uk http://www.babyslave.net See our blog: http://www.babyslave.wordpress.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]