Gordon's Progress

Announcing...



The world has been waiting for them, and here they are...



[i]two completely new electromechanical theremin effects[/i].

They said it couldn't be done, but they were wrong...

...I give you the...

[b]Frothatrill[/b] [i]and[/i] [b]Twangulator[/b].




Well, OK, not completely new, the frothatrill is the coffee frother trill device, refined by adding a second wire propellor blade on the other side of the whisk to the first one. This doubles the speed. The slower speed is still available by folding back one wire.

But it's an interesting point, isn't it, that in live performance you have not only analogue and digital effects, but also electro-mechanical ones by introducing conductive objects other than the hands into the pitch and volume fields.

And they have the advantage that they do not mess with the output signal - this is still a totally pure theremin voice, unlike a stomp-box effect.

News flash - I recall omhoge lamenting here (http://www.thereminworld.com/forum.asp?cmd=p&T=1648&F=780) on the poor forgotten volume loop, and here a nod in his direction for setting me thinking - with a bit of adjustment to the volume field and, holding the frothatrill at the very end, letting the propellors (or propellor, I prefer the slower speed for this) dip into the centre of the volume loop, gives a neat tremolo.

And thinking about that led to the Twangulator.

Ever trapped one end of a school ruler against the desk and twanged the other end. Thrubbadubbadubbadubbadubdubdub?

50 cm (18") steel ruler lashed by the last 8 cm (3") to the top of a dining chair so the free end sticks under the volume loop, just below the active field so it doesn't get in the way when not in use. To use it twang the end or tap the middle rhythmically. The end bounces in and out of the active field, modulating the volume. Hence "the twangulator." The hand can be moved closer of further away whilst tapping to vary the overall volume. Attach a large fridge magnet to it to alter the speed.

What fun!

Any pending recordings of these wacky new techniques, Gordon? I really want to hear them!

Just waiting for the opportunity. I'm fairly optimistic that I'll have a chance next week.

Gordon

If you can, you should do a video demo too! I'd love to see it.

Er, I could do a montage of close ups of me playing from various angles instead of raking up some piece of public domain oddness.

Wouldn't be synced but what the hey.

Oh, and excuse me, Charlie D, "wacky"?

I am doing serious, scientific, proper grown-up, po-faced (http://www.britannica.com/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=po-faced&query=po-faced) research here, you cheeky young whipper-snapper, you. Mark my words, if I catch you sniggering at the back of the class when I am talking about the completely non-humorous frothatrill and twangulator again I shall probably pout. I might even huff!

Hmm.

Hmm?

Hmm!

Hmm?!

Hmm...

Hm, hm, hm. Hm. Hmmm.

I've been practising my isophasic trochoids again. Well, almost. Truth is I've been letting my arms drift around in the approximate vicinity of a theremin whilst my mind wandered. Noticed that, moving clockwise, sounding the bottom of the circle i.e. describing a smile, produced a happy sound. Sounding the upper half, a down-turned mouth, was a disappointed sound.

I hummed them. Yup, these are little happy and sad sounds. Hummed a few different sounds - questioning, satisfied, puzzled, quietly amused, forlorn - mimicked the sounds on the theremin, drawing the shape of the sound in the air.

A feeling can be expressed as a sound of varying pitch, which can be created by describing a glyph in the theremin field.

I have a name for it - Mercurial Calligraphy.

Sorry, Gordon. I wish you luck with this most seriocomic of solemnisides. (Beat that, Encyclopaedia Britannica!)

Thank you. :-)

As the cyberman said, You will be rewarded by force!

I have uploaded The Plummeting Man, featuring use of isophasic trochoids, frothatrill and twangulator to SoundClick (http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=475314) and the Podsafe Music Network (http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/artistdetails.php?BandHash=284e09ee377733c6c309832ee6bcc804).

Enjoy if you dare!


Video to follow...

... sooner or later.

Gordon,

I really like this. Very listenable.

You may want to consider adding panning and other stereo effects to your mix. The frothatrill would sound all the more interesting if it moved around in the stereo field -- perhaps shooting across from side to side.

Your recording quality is clean and clear. Nice job!

-- Kevin

I'm delighted you like it.

Excuse me why I wander off on a diversion - point coming soon. Been looking again at music theory - tonal and micro-tonal - I get it a teensy bit more this time around (and found a couple of neat links - comparative mp3s (http://www.lullabies.co.uk/mozart.html) of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik using two different scales, and a real media stream of Harry Partch's "The Bewitched (http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/rafiles/partch/partch_bewitched.ram)"). It's not so much about the absolute frequency of a note as the steps between notes. but it's still all about notes - sounds of a constant pitch. Nary a word about sounds of varying pitch.

So I came up with my own theory to explain this absence. "The notion of in-tune and out-of-tune only applies to sounds of a fixed pitch." In other words; if I keep everything moving I won't have to worry about it. Moreover as two tones vary at different rates there will be transitory moments when they are in simple harmonic relationship to one another.

Seems to me we can rely on the auditory system to latch onto these as moments of musical goodness and emphasise them in favour of other parts of the sound. And the more tones wandering up and down the scale, the more moments of musical goodness. So I went for it big time! Which is my theory (finally he gets to the point!) as to why you find it listenable.

Thought about panning, but didn't want to over-egg the cake. Also I rather fixed on the idea that plummeting didn't involve too much sideways motion. :-)

Sound quality - that's down to the Amadeus 2's noise removal system, and fairly ruthless deletion of a whole bunch of bits that overloaded the mic. I recorded all three tracks basically playing continuously, with the idea to carve out chunks to give it a nice organised structure, but by the time I had muted most of the naff stuff there was little hope of that. I liked what was left anyway, so no problem. I can still hear some slightly buzzy bits, but I know where they are, which I suspect biases me a bit.