New to Thereminism - Looking for tipps to startup with a Kees

I´m eagerly awaiting my Kees ... Hope it will arrive till Christmas. This makes me nuts. :-)

its worth waiting for, its a great instrument and it looks beautiful.
good luck with it.
Kev.

...I received a message from Kees,
It´s on the way to Mungo´s house ... Yippieee

arthur

Hi There:

You've got yourself a nice theremin to start on. I already owned two Moogs, a Theremax, and a Longwave -- but in summer of 2006, I purchased the Kees.

Gordon is right -- it has a very dry sound, and hooking it up to an amp equipped with some reverb and the ability to alter the hig, low, and mid-ranges (or just bass and tenor) will go a long way toward helping you discover "your sound." It also depends upon what type of things you eventually want to play.

The Kees has only two timbre (wave form) settings: Sine and Saw. This is a limitation, but again, the amplifier with tonal settings can help you modify them.

I find the theremin VERY responsive and sharp, good for clean attacks on notes and note definition.

You will, I believe, notice that during playing, the pitch settings tend to shift. So, you'll begin at zero beat, but during the course of playing, the pitch oscillator slips a bit and suddenly, your notes are drifting from their initial positions. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to compensate for that.

Do you plan to run the theremin off of the power supply or the nine-volt battery? If the battery, I'd recommend buying a charger and nickel cadmium or lithium rechargeable batteries. Standard nine-volters last about an hour and a half, then you'll notice it's impossible to play - it goes haywire. With rechargeable batteries you can reliably play for about three hours per battery before things fall apart. Also with batteries, it's impossible to drive anything else (like an effects pedal)in addition to the amp.

Other than the things I've mentioned, which truly are only minor impediments, the Kees functions very well.

I'm sure you'll enjoy it. HAVE FUN!

-Kip
www.performancekr.com/theremin.html

Hi Kip,
thanks for your detailed info. I plan to run the Theremin with a 9V Power Supply. I will take the Theremin to our local Music Store and test some different Amplifiers.
BTW I´m very impressed about your Website and your Theremin Music samples , wow. I think i will never be able to play like this...

Do you have also samples of your Theremin music played on the Kees ?

Thanks again
regards
arthur

The samples in the "Eat this with Your Ears" section were recorded on two different Moogs (I'd yet to purchase the Kees). However, many of the selections in the "Theremin Dose" section were played on the Kees.

Thank you for the compliment; I'm glad you enjoyed what you saw and heard.

And YOU CAN play the theremin. Every one of us started at zero. Practice, committment and passion for what you're doing will set you on the path. Then it's all up to you how far you go - and in what direction. There are fantastic resources, advice, and words of encouragement on this web site.

Hello Guys,
i received it today!!! My first thing was to run to a music store and i bought me an amplifier (the Moog TB-15), a mic stand (K&M) and a Moog Gig Bag (The Kees fits very well to it).

After some experiments this afternoon i recorded my FIRST Theremin song, a little bit of Christmas-mood after Christmas :-)

Here you can find ElectroMungo´s first mp3 sample played very dilettantish on the fantastic Kees Theremin:

http://electromungo.files-upload.com/44687/silent-night.mp3.html

It's a brilliant start - it sounds very familiar, I remember when I played Silent Night similarly. I reckon you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly. Give it a month or two, and you'll be playing better than lots of people who've been playing a year.

Just practice loads, and have fun.

Thanks so much! :-)
Interestingly i found out today that with the theremin it is much easier for me to find the right note than it is on other instruments (f.e. with the piano i have/had a lot more problems!)

But i must mention i bought me the excellent book of Carolina Eyck "The Art of Playing The Theremin". She uses very good photos in it and shows 8 different finger positions which are very easy to control and enable you to play very fast and precise (after a lot of practice) the scale up and down.

I think some weeks finger training and training of the left hand (volume) and it should work.

Best regards
arthur

Hooray!!! I´m so happy with my new Kees :-)
Every day i play on it i love it more.

Today i practised the whole day long.
There are some, moments where the pitch runs completely away and i always try to adjust the Kees. But i think it is not the Kees, it is my lack of concentration leading to always new finger positions. I found out that the 9 finger positions of the Carolina Eyck Book are not sufficent for me to play the right tunes.
The best method for me today was to stop thinking, listen to some backround midi files and try to follow the melody. This works pretty good. Immediately after trying to think about the note being right nothing works for some minutes.

Here is my new sound-sample a Isaac Watts Church Song (please don´t lough, there is still some work to do for me :-) ):

http://electromungo.files-upload.com/44684/at-the-cross-isaac-watts.mp3.html

Best regards
arthur