A month since I posted last!
I've been busy. The extension is finished, and I'm officially a garage band. Got my theremins set up in the garage. Hurrah.
I've trailed a little wire off the volume loop and taped it to the top of the etherwave. Another variation in staccato. Gives a very neutral sound - no bendiness like the Kurstin pluck, no pronounced start like the articulation regulator, just: the sound is not there, then it is.
Also busy with a little friending drive on mySpace, for the sake of bigging up ethermusic. So my friend count has jumped by 50%.
But that's not the point of this post. The point is
[b]Dancing With Ghosts[/b]
Background. As I learned from the Lydia Kavina masterclass, the whole body affects the field - move in close to stretch out the high notes etc. Over on levnet there has been a boisterous discussion about experimental music, and in between the repartee I discovered that I am more Parch than Cage and found a nice little article about Partch on the web.
http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_partchworld.html
This is the bit that caught my attention:
[i]But more than this, he designed the instruments to be "corporeal." To Partch, corporeal meant to involve the whole body—the whole person—in the art. He hated the way performing-art forms had been separated by "the curse of specialization:" a musician is only a musician, a dancer only a dancer.[/i]
Lev Teremen tried to realise this idea with the terpsitone - an oversized theremin.
At Hands Off I danced with two theremins.
This morning I put it all together and danced with one theremin. And of course a delay to add complexity and richness and a steady beat to keep me grounded.
The fields are a ghostly, dynamic presence, invisible, intangible, reacting to your movements. Draw back and they shrink away. Move closer and the extend around you, stretch out and surround you. Dance, and the control zone dances. And as it dances, it sings. And when you dance well, it sings well.
Is it possible to play like that? For the music I make, yes. Do we need to stand still to catch a ball? Can dancers dance with precision and accuracy? No. Yes. The brain can do the amazing maths required all by itself when we learn to trust it.
I have often likened learning the theremin to riding a bicycle - at first you're all over the place, then your hand-ear coordination develops and you can go in a straight line. During the recent levnet discussions the inestimable Peter Pringle likened a classical thereminist to a race car driver. Well, a bicycle race suits my metaphor better, and I don't think it looses anything in the transliteration. If a classical thereminist is like a bicycle racer, then this is BMX Freestyle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYnALVGmyQ).
I've been busy. The extension is finished, and I'm officially a garage band. Got my theremins set up in the garage. Hurrah.
I've trailed a little wire off the volume loop and taped it to the top of the etherwave. Another variation in staccato. Gives a very neutral sound - no bendiness like the Kurstin pluck, no pronounced start like the articulation regulator, just: the sound is not there, then it is.
Also busy with a little friending drive on mySpace, for the sake of bigging up ethermusic. So my friend count has jumped by 50%.
But that's not the point of this post. The point is
[b]Dancing With Ghosts[/b]
Background. As I learned from the Lydia Kavina masterclass, the whole body affects the field - move in close to stretch out the high notes etc. Over on levnet there has been a boisterous discussion about experimental music, and in between the repartee I discovered that I am more Parch than Cage and found a nice little article about Partch on the web.
http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_partchworld.html
This is the bit that caught my attention:
[i]But more than this, he designed the instruments to be "corporeal." To Partch, corporeal meant to involve the whole body—the whole person—in the art. He hated the way performing-art forms had been separated by "the curse of specialization:" a musician is only a musician, a dancer only a dancer.[/i]
Lev Teremen tried to realise this idea with the terpsitone - an oversized theremin.
At Hands Off I danced with two theremins.
This morning I put it all together and danced with one theremin. And of course a delay to add complexity and richness and a steady beat to keep me grounded.
The fields are a ghostly, dynamic presence, invisible, intangible, reacting to your movements. Draw back and they shrink away. Move closer and the extend around you, stretch out and surround you. Dance, and the control zone dances. And as it dances, it sings. And when you dance well, it sings well.
Is it possible to play like that? For the music I make, yes. Do we need to stand still to catch a ball? Can dancers dance with precision and accuracy? No. Yes. The brain can do the amazing maths required all by itself when we learn to trust it.
I have often likened learning the theremin to riding a bicycle - at first you're all over the place, then your hand-ear coordination develops and you can go in a straight line. During the recent levnet discussions the inestimable Peter Pringle likened a classical thereminist to a race car driver. Well, a bicycle race suits my metaphor better, and I don't think it looses anything in the transliteration. If a classical thereminist is like a bicycle racer, then this is BMX Freestyle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYnALVGmyQ).
