Gordon's Progress

I found a whole bunch of interesting effects here (http://www.angelfire.com/yt3/redtele/redtelectronix.html).

Some of them seem almost too good to be true.

:-)

That last one was nice. I may need that 60 cycle hum pedal for those times I don't use my strat. *giggle*

The pitch shifter pedal sounds nice. I tried a flange and a phaser I have to no avail. So far the only thing I've found that I like as an effect on the theremin is delay. Can't wait to hear what you do with it.

Had a similar but slightly more frightening experience to your bar trouble once. I was in a band just out of high school that used to practice in Howell Michigan (former home of the Grand Wizard of the KKK). I had grown out a mohawk to about half way down my back and my buddy Mike had his up in a stiff fin. We were walking up to our practice space (our guitarist Chris's house) and these cops pulled up, got out of the car, and started harassing us fiddling with there gun straps the whole time. Chris stepped out and told them off by name. They were friends of Chris's dad. I very nearly shit a brick.

Good luck with the Floyd!

If only they made a 50Hz hummer for us Brits.

With regards to the Boss PS2, I'm waiting for some inspiration before using it in anger. To my way of thinking it transforms the theremin from a lead instrument into an accompanying instrument, so I'm hopeful it will find a use at the sonic weekender - particularly as a number of the participants seem to have a lo-fi ethic going on - or as part of a multi-tracked piece.

I have also been drooling a bit over the current version, the PS5, now that I understand pitch shifting better. It has some interesting options - in particular it will generate harmonics in major and minor keys so I could mix Harry Partch style wandering melodies with Western style harmonies, and it offers expression-pedal control over the spread of the harmonics generated, so I could vary from a very thin tone with sub-harmonics in the low cents right out to a fat two octave spread during the course of a performance.

But, at £150 it's a bit out of my price range, and I'd rather be saving up for my Nord G2 if I had the cash to spare.

What delights me most about my PS2 is more theoretical than practical. Most of all it stands as a "proof of concept" and having one in my hands to play with has confirmed some of my ideas and allowed me to refine them somewhat and state them more clearly.

So here goes...

The three things that a theremin player has direct control over are pitch, volume and timing. The major limitation of the theremin is that it is monophonic, with no easy way to achieve keyboard style polyphony where more than one note can be controlled independently. However we can derive new voices from the original voice by varying the pitch, volume and timing in a predetermined manner.

For instance a delay pedal generates secondary voices that have the same pitch as the original voice but are varied in time and volume according to the setting of the knobs on the device.

Likewise a pitch shift pedal generates secondary voices that are time invariant and related to the primary voice by pitch and volume.

Both delays and pitch shifts work well, but are to some extent limited by using feedback loops to generate tertiary and subsequent voices. Some of these limitations can be overcome by using multiple effects pedals, for instance chaining two delays together operating at different speeds, or chaining a second delay into one channel of a ping-pong delay, and then combining both channels.

Partch noted (as mentioned previously in this thread) that pitch and time can also be related to one another. One expression of this notion is the Rhythmicon, which correlates pitch and rhythm. (Also by Leon Termen, in co-operation with composer Henry Cowell, and with a slightly different take on the notion to Partch.)

My idea is to have several slaved tone generators that generate tones that can be related to the primary melody by any combination of pitch, volume and time, with options to link the slave units together in a variety of combinations, including feedback loops.

One development of this idea would be to generate further related tones by combining the output of two slave units by means of a ring modulator. Given the theremins apparent affinity for ring modulation - who am I to contradict The Man From Uranus? (AKA Phil. I don't know his last name, and "Phil Uranus" sounds a little weird) - I am optimistic that this will be a worthwhile area to investigate when opportunity presents itself.

Still to be figured out is the best way of controlling the function of slave units during a performance. Clearly foot pedals are the option of choice, but exactly what they should control is unresolved at this time. I am pretty certain that I want foot controls for major functions, but the numerous little knobs and patches should also be accessible for fiddling with, preferably without having to do it on my hands and knees like Pamelia.

Gordon, there are rack-mountable effects processors out there.

I am currently using one and toying with the idea of some kind of stand where the effects unit(s) will be mounted right below the theremin for easy access.

Foot pedals and switches can also be connected to the thing for more control over some of the parameters.

Edweird, have you tried distortion?

I have a setting on my processor where the distortion kicks in at a certain volume so I cna play normally and then add the effect in at certain times.

In addition to delay, reverb works well, as does envelope filtering effects like wah or auto wah.

The auto-wah setting I use sounds like Charlie brown's teacher in the lower registers.

Diggy,

Yes, indeed there are. Here (http://www.tcelectronic.com/D-Two)'s a particularly tasty rack-mount delay from Norway that weighs in at about £400. Or for half as much again I could have my G2 in rack mount form and later plug in whatever midi controller took my fancy.

I never actually tried any distortion on my Kees. I have two different stomp boxes (Proco Rat and a Boss Distortion/Feedbacker pedals) as well as a rack mount Roland ProGAP. Maybe I'll toy with them soon. I have a Digitech envelope filter but didn't like using it. It's not present enough, but I've really never liked that pedal to begin with. I really want a Mu-Tron or Q-tron. I just don't have the $$$ to be spending on gear right now. I do have a Dunlop bass wah that's kinda nice to use with the Kees, but some kind of auto-wah would likely be better.

As for how to keep the stomp boxes off the floor. Most people I see doing sound contortioning typically use stomp boxes on a card table. Rack mount gear isn't as easy (in my experience) to manipulate on the fly. No knobs for specific changes. Everything has to be dialed in to a preset. This is if you're buying off the shelf and not boutique (or building it yourself).

Bear in mind that the Kees tone has way fewer harmonics to mess with than an etherwave. The etherwave sound shows a whole bunch of sharp spikes at various frequencies above the fundamental on my soft sonograph, whereas the Kees sound has a tidy little pyramid of spikes around the fundamental and nothing else.

Hi,
I often read everyone's posts on effects pedals.
I also often wonder why so many extremely intelligent Theremin players buy one pedal at a time.
Many 'pedals' now offer an orgasmic miasma of completely designable and chain assignable effects.
I use the Digitech modelVx400. This pedal is specifically designed for the vocalist--- which I thought would be an appropriate processing element for the Theremin. It can process signal from sweet light reverb to the nastiest disorted sonic that one could imagine.
Perhaps this information will be helpful to the future sound shaping decisions of Theremin World's subscribers.
Wave Your Hands!
teslatheremin

Er, my Danelectro PB&J and Boss PS2 were both Christmas prezzies - multieffect boxes being outside of an xmas budget, and the echohead was something of an impulse buy while I was trying out different effects at my local music store.

The idea is that these inexpensive devices will keep me going while I'm saving up for what I really want.