AETHERPHON, global theremin family

Dear Rupert,

I didn't respond to your e-mail right away because I got too busy researching all the information you sent in it.  I also joined the Levnet group that has given me a lot of e-mails.  Now that we are approaching the holiday season, I'm getting pretty busy so it's hard for me to process all of this information.

I have mixed feelings about trying to do anything with a theremin (buying one) for Christmas.  I feel like I don't know enough to make a wise purchase.  Naturally the $79 and $83 ones appeal to me as a beginning instrument, but I'm not sure if that's wise.  Sometimes a less equiped instrument can make things too hard for a beginner.  As I'm writing, I'm thinking about my son, not me.  I could probably bare with a more difficult instrument.  I should say that I am a musician.  My son is not.  This would probably give me a real advantage over him, though if you can do interesting things just in playing around with it, maybe that would keep his attention.  My concern is that he might get frustrated, become negative, and then pass up the theremin.  Do you (or anyone) have any thoughts about the possibility of this happening to a new person, non-musician, who's 19?  I do think he could do it and enjoy it.  He does have the interest and he does have musical ability.  His ability is just not developed. 

I really, really appreciate all the imput you have given me.  It has helped to open the door for me to this instrument.  I would like to get one and work on it myself, but my son is most in need of it.  I already have an instrument.  I play the harp.  So, my son would have a musician to play with.  That wouldn't be a problem.  I fully accompany a lot of solo instruments.  This would be very interesting.  

So, thank you very much for your help.  I'm going to keep researching this and see what I can come up with.  Has anyone tried these cheaper theremins?  Are they worth considering for a beginner?

Merrie 

--- rupert1manband@yahoo.com wrote:

From: rupert chappelle <rupert1manband@yahoo.com>
To: aetherphon@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Aetherphon] First post - interest in theremin
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 14:18:34 -0800 (PST)

welcome to the theremin community.

Most everyone learns this instrument on their own without a teacher as a teacher is hard to find.

Most people will be able to play recognizable tunes within a year of play - that is when OTHER people can recognize the tune, not the player. There are those who take to it rather quickly and manage to do a lot more in a short amount of time such as Thomas Grillo, Thereminminstrel and Yeapystar, but those are exceptions. It is very difficult to play in the classical style so one may consider just doing it with a synthesizer, which is easy and accurate.

Two of the most difficult challenges is to stand still (sitting is easier) and holding the pitch hand steady. 

Available commercial theremin models:

http://www.moogmusic.com/theremin/?section=product&product_id=14
http://www.soundslikeburns.com/
http://harrisoninstruments.com/302/302_description.html

The last one uses horizontal antennas which requires a different playing style. switching from vertical pole antenna playing to horizontal antenna playing and vice versa is difficult.

You can play music either way.

In addition to a theremin you will need an amplifier or PA speaker such as the pole mounted JBL EONs or MACKIE powered speakers. To start out with a cheap guitar amp is sufficient until one knows whether or not one wants to continue. Pole mounted speakers are preferred because theremins are easier to play in tune when you can locate your ears near their speaker.

A mixer is nice if you want to play along with accompaniment, prerecorded or from a synthesizer.

Effects, reverb, distortion and delay are also desirable but the delay is helpful in learning to play the instrument so I would recommend it first. A delay pedal helps you keep on pitch and allows to lay down a drone or a pattern to play over which gives one a reference by which to play in tune better.

Most of the best players use "aerial fingering" based on Clara Rockmore's style and their are DVDs available to teach this style of play. The hand positions are a convenient way to symbolize note positions. It really doesn't matter to the instrument how you hold your fingers and hand, just how much of it is how close to the antenna.

You might want to think about what kinds of music you want to play and the more you play the better you will get but that increases if you are fortunate enough to have other musicians to play with.

Finally, the "offness" of the theremin is its primary charm as this makes it more human than a precise rock steady pitch and volume.

rupert


      


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Quoting Mary Jones <harp@...>:
>
> Naturally the $79 and $83 ones appeal to me as a  beginning  
> instrument, but I'm not sure if that's wise.  Sometimes a  less  
> equiped instrument can make things too hard for a beginner.
>
Your instinct is good.  Since you are a musician and you wish to  
accompany your son on the harp to play (presumably) tonal music you  
will need a theremin with sufficient playability to allow this.

I own an Etherwave Standard.  It has excellent stability and  
playability.  I don't have experience with the Burns or Harrison  
instruments.

According to the Harrison website, the Harrison theremin is a  
non-traditional design -- the volume response is reversed and it uses  
a horizontal plate for pitch rather than a vertical rod.
>
> So, thank you very much for your help.  I'm going to keep   
> researching this and see what I can come up with.  Has anyone tried   
> these cheaper theremins?  Are they worth considering for a beginner?
>
> Merrie
>
The Moog Etherwave Standard is a good entry-level theremin that is  
quite playable for both tonal and non-tonal music.

A beginner may not realize that an inferior instrument contributes to  
the struggle to play it.  The theremins priced under $200 will likely  
disappoint you if your goal is to play traditional melodies.

-- Kevin

On 4 Dec 2009, at 03:22, Mary Jones wrote:

> Do you (or anyone) have any thoughts about the possibility of this  
> happening to a new person, non-musician, who's 19? I do think he  
> could do it and enjoy it. He does have the interest and he does  
> have musical ability. His ability is just not developed.
>

Is it that the stumbling block is that as a melodic instrument it  
takes a deal of time and dedication to achieve the basic requirement  
of playing in tune, and that this conflicts with the requirement for  
relatively instant gratification that goes with being 19?

You may like to consider an alternative approach - thinking of the  
theremin not as a melodic instrument but as an ur-synthesizer and an  
instrument of electronic and experimental music.

This is the way I approached the theremin - not concerning myself  
with praying precise pitches, but by feeding the output through a  
simple delay pedal - this adds pseudo-polyphony, a rhythmic base and  
a way of enriching the tonal qualities of a held note. Plus it sounds  
neat right from the get-go and is (at least for me) just a ton of fun.

Whether this approach is something that might appeal to you or your  
son is a matter of personal preference. To help you decide I invite  
you to visit my youtube account and listen to a few recordings I have  
made using just a moog etherwave theremin and a marshall echohead  
delay pedal.

Account http://www.youtube.com/user/GordonCharlton

Recordings with just one delay (and some reverb and/or faux stereo in  
post-production) - Moths Are Made Of Dust, Bouncing Blumfeld, Chikhai  
Bardo.

Gordon Charlton
recording/performing as Beat Frequency

Thank you, Kevin.  Just from having had experience as a musician, performing and teaching, I know that a poor instrument can sometimes really damage a student.  It's not that you need the top of the line, but you at least need something that will produce the sounds you are learning to make without causing you to develop bad habits or something that will keep you away from overwhelming frustration.  I'm not surprised that this is also true for the theremin.  

To begin with I doubt that my son will be looking to do anything with me.  He likes his independence.  I play to be available if he needs me.  I also play the piano, but I think the harp probably tunes into the theremin better.  In any case, we'll see what happens.  

I agree with you that a beginning student might not realize that their instrument is causing them a lot of their problems.  A beginner doesn't know enough to recognize that.  I have a beginning adult harp student that hasn't realized this with her celtic harp even after the legs fell out from under it and the sound was stuck in the wood not knowing if it could or should vibrate off of anything in her instrument. Naturally I cannot tell her this.  She bought the instrument without consulting me and thinks that because it looks good, it is good.  In her case she spent a little over $1200, quite a bit more than $200. lol!

Thanks for all your imput.

Merrie  

--- kkissinger@... wrote:

From: kkissinger@...
To: aetherphon@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Aetherphon] Rupert - First post- interest in theremin
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:36:58 -0600

Quoting Mary Jones <harp@...>:
>
> Naturally the $79 and $83 ones appeal to me as a  beginning  
> instrument, but I'm not sure if that's wise.  Sometimes a  less  
> equiped instrument can make things too hard for a beginner.
>
Your instinct is good.  Since you are a musician and you wish to  
accompany your son on the harp to play (presumably) tonal music you  
will need a theremin with sufficient playability to allow this.

I own an Etherwave Standard.  It has excellent stability and  
playability.  I don't have experience with the Burns or Harrison  
instruments.

According to the Harrison website, the Harrison theremin is a  
non-traditional design -- the volume response is reversed and it uses  
a horizontal plate for pitch rather than a vertical rod.
>
> So, thank you very much for your help.  I'm going to keep   
> researching this and see what I can come up with.  Has anyone tried   
> these cheaper theremins?  Are they worth considering for a beginner?
>
> Merrie
>
The Moog Etherwave Standard is a good entry-level theremin that is  
quite playable for both tonal and non-tonal music.

A beginner may not realize that an inferior instrument contributes to  
the struggle to play it.  The theremins priced under $200 will likely  
disappoint you if your goal is to play traditional melodies.

-- Kevin

>Is it that the stumbling block is that as a melodic instrument it  
>takes a deal of time and dedication to achieve the basic requirement  
>of playing in tune, and that this conflicts with the requirement for  
>relatively instant gratification that goes with being 19?

Yes.  That's exactly it.  I'm concerned that he may not have the same approach I have that was developed in me from the age of 3.  It's not realistic to expect him to have it.  Most people have no idea what it takes to play an instrument well.  Short of living it, I can't expect them to, my son included.  

>You may like to consider an alternative approach - thinking of the  
>theremin not as a melodic instrument but as an ur-synthesizer and an  
>instrument of electronic and experimental music.

I have to say that you're moving out of my turf.  I am going to have to sit with this concept a while to assimalate it, I think.  I'm conditioned totally into pitch and tone quality in producing on an instrument.  My forte is classical piano and harp.  Outside of being a amateur radio operator (my son is, too) we have no electrical experience.  I'm willing to explore this area.  It's just foreign to me.  

>This is the way I approached the theremin - not concerning myself  
>with praying precise pitches, but by feeding the output through a  
>simple delay pedal - this adds pseudo-polyphony, a rhythmic base and  
>a way of enriching the tonal qualities of a held note. Plus it sounds  
>neat right from the get-go and is (at least for me) just a ton of fun.

I had almost felt something like this might be possible with the theremin.  To have that kind of flexibility would make it well in advance of all other instruments I know.  Perhaps there are other instruments that allow for this, but I don't know them.  
Very interesting and the concept alone is interesting to contemplate.  In my experience, an approach like this on a classical instrument would lead to nothing short of disaster, however I'm willing to even rethink that.   

>Whether this approach is something that might appeal to you or your  
>son is a matter of personal preference. To help you decide I invite  
>you to visit my youtube account and listen to a few recordings I have  
>made using just a moog etherwave theremin and a marshall echohead  
>delay pedal.

I have dial up, so it's taking me a while to get your youtube presentation.  I'm downloading it as I write this.  
I believe this kind of approach might work very well for my son.  For me it could be like learning a foreign language with nothing serving as a guide.  My life is pretty involved at the moment so I don't know how much attention I could put on this, but my son is available.  He has time and he has interest.  

>Account http://www.youtube.com/user/GordonCharlton

>Recordings with just one delay (and some reverb and/or faux stereo in  
>post-production) - Moths Are Made Of Dust, Bouncing Blumfeld, Chikhai  
>Bardo.

>Gordon Charlton
>recording/performing as Beat Frequency

Thank you very much, Gordon.  These conversations are very helpful.  

Merrie

On 5 Dec 2009, at 07:15, Mary Jones wrote:

> >You may like to consider an alternative approach - thinking of the
> >theremin not as a melodic instrument but as an ur-synthesizer and an
> >instrument of electronic and experimental music.
>
> I have to say that you're moving out of my turf. I am going to have  
> to sit with this concept a while to assimalate it, I think. I'm  
> conditioned totally into pitch and tone quality in producing on an  
> instrument. My forte is classical piano and harp. Outside of being  
> a amateur radio operator (my son is, too) we have no electrical  
> experience. I'm willing to explore this area. It's just foreign to me.

I know what you mean. I bought my first theremin on a whim without  
giving much consideration to my lack of musical training, and it felt  
very daring and radical to go against all the advice available from  
classical theremin players, but at the same time the logic of using  
an electronic instrument to make electronic music was undeniable.

Now, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight I think of it as "the music  
I didn't notice" - during my formative years the BBC Radiophonic  
Workshop was in its heyday, producing soundtracks not just for family  
favourites like Doctor Who, Bleep And Booster and The Tomorrow People  
but also the majority of educational programming that we watched at  
school in the 60's and 70's. (I'm 47.) Your experiences may vary  
depending on your taste in TV programmes, but it is still to be found  
in the atmospheric soundtracks of certain sci-fi, surreal and horror  
movies, and some pop-science documentaries. (This, incidentally is  
why I produce little videos to go with my recordings - it places the  
sounds in a context where the listener might be more familiar with  
them. And for me the process of creating them is a way of thinking  
about and making sense of what I have recorded.)

For a "jumping in at the deep end" introduction to the early days of  
electronic music you could do far worse than renting a copy of  
Forbidden Planet.

This is what Wikipedia says about the soundtrack:

"The movie's innovative electronic music score (credited as  
"electronic tonalities", partly to avoid having to pay movie industry  
music guild fees) was composed by Louis and Bebe Barron. MGM producer  
Dore Schary discovered the couple quite by chance at a beatnik  
nightclub in Greenwich Village while on a family Christmas visit to  
New York City. Schary hired them on the spot to compose the film  
music score. The theremin (which was not used in Forbidden Planet)  
had been used as early as 1945, in Spellbound, but their score is  
widely credited with being the first completely electronic film  
score. The soundtrack preceded the Moog synthesizer of 1964 by almost  
a decade.
"Using equations from the 1948 book, Cybernetics: Or, Control and  
Communication in the Animal and the Machine by mathematician Norbert  
Wiener, Louis Barron constructed the electronic circuits which he  
used to generate the "bleeps, blurps, whirs, whines, throbs, hums and  
screeches". Most of the tonalities were generated using a circuit  
called a ring modulator. After recording the base sounds, the Barrons  
further manipulated the material by adding effects, such as  
reverberation and delay, and reversing or changing the speed of  
certain sounds."

(On a side note - if you know how a ham radio works you are a good  
step towards understanding how a theremin works - at the core it  
heterodynes two RF waveforms to produce an audible beat frequency.  
"Ring modulators" - as mentioned above - are essentially the same,  
but processing waveforms in the audio range rather than at radio  
frequencies.)



One final suggestion - ear training for this sort of music - I  
practice something called "deep listening" - listening to the sounds  
that fill our everyday lives with the same attention that one would  
give to a classical concert. The world has become an increasingly  
noisy place since the Industrial Revolution, and mostly we filter  
them out - but the sounds we ignore are the basis of the music we  
didn't notice. :-)



Gordon Charlton

Hi All, to add my tuppenceworth, YES a decent instrument should be
considered essential. MOOG have been building theremins for many years, so
you may find a good one second hand if you don't want to buy one new. Many
people of varying abilities and styles use them.

Personally I don't get enough time on mine, but still love playing it when I
can, even when I hit the bum notes. I've made myself a list of songs that I
enjoy practising everything from pop tunes and nursery rhymes, to any ditty
which catches my ear so to speak. Any practise is better than none, so even
little ditties help and are less frustrating than trying to emulate full
trax.

Gordon's experimental trax give you an idea of what the theremin is capable
of, so don't be put off by hitting bad notes, because you can do more than
just play tunes.
Wishing you all the best
Paul
-- 
.............\\\///............
............-(oo)-............
__o000__(_)__000o__
__|____|____|____|__
____|____|____|____|
__|____|____|____|__
____|____|____|____|
www.nachtsmeer.com
www.myspace.com/nachtsmeer
http://earthmp.ning.com/profile/nachtsmeer


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thank you for your imput.  I think one of the things I'm finding nice about the theremin is that you don't have to play it in a classical mode of hitting precise pitches, etc.  The fact that you can produce sounds with effects opens up another aspect.  It almost makes it another instrument.  It certainly allows for diverse players which I think is always contributing to an instrument.  Whenever a wide variety of people come to an instrument bringing with them various diverse backgrounds it does nothing but expand the capabilities of that instrument whether those capabilites be fully recognized at first or not.  
This is almost the best of both worlds.  
Merrie

--- nachtsmeer@... wrote:

From: "# nachtsmeer #" <nachtsmeer@...>
To: aetherphon@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Aetherphon] Rupert - First post- interest in theremin
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 13:13:15 +0000

Hi All, to add my tuppenceworth, YES a decent instrument should be
considered essential. MOOG have been building theremins for many years, so
you may find a good one second hand if you don't want to buy one new. Many
people of varying abilities and styles use them.

Personally I don't get enough time on mine, but still love playing it when I
can, even when I hit the bum notes. I've made myself a list of songs that I
enjoy practising everything from pop tunes and nursery rhymes, to any ditty
which catches my ear so to speak. Any practise is better than none, so even
little ditties help and are less frustrating than trying to emulate full
trax.

Gordon's experimental trax give you an idea of what the theremin is capable
of, so don't be put off by hitting bad notes, because you can do more than
just play tunes.
Wishing you all the best
Paul
-- 
.............\\\///............
............-(oo)-............
__o000__(_)__000o__
__|____|____|____|__
____|____|____|____|
__|____|____|____|__
____|____|____|____|
www.nachtsmeer.com
www.myspace.com/nachtsmeer
http://earthmp.ning.com/profile/nachtsmeer