Amethyste: "Are people getting used to mediocre videos and perfomances in general? who knows.."
The other night I watched the film "Virgin". A ton of shaky hand held camera work that would have made me hurl maybe a decade ago - now it seems kinda normal.
Amethyste wrote:
I think it is normal when you listen to a piece played by a proficient thereminist that there will be little off key notes here and there, and I am prepared for that....
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As thereminists, we are all off key all the time. It's just a matter of degree.
A few years ago I did an experiment on the Levnet. Several different versions of the same piece were presented to listeners and all were recorded with different degrees of flatness or sharpness. Each sample was consistently "off" by anywhere from 10 to 40 cents relative to the absolute pitch of the accompaniment (one "cent" = a hundredth of a semitone). I didn't use a theremin for the samples. I used a synthesizer instead, in order to precisely control the amount of deviation from the exact pitch.
What we found was that people were more sensitive to flatness than to sharpness, and degrees of acceptability among listeners varied enormously from 10 cents to nearly 40 cents (50 cents is a quarter tone).
What was intolerably off key for one listener, was quite enjoyable for someone else.
Most precision theremin performances are considered wildly successful if the player manages to get through the piece without going seriously (more than a quarter tone) out of tune.
When it comes to judging our own output, many of us tend to mistake our deep personal involvement with what we are doing, for the quality of our work. This is the value of regular lessons with a good teacher - he or she will force you to keep your eye on the ball by never allowing you to become seduced by yourself.
One of the dangers of YouTube videos is that mediocre theremin playing is often encouraged by adoring comments from people who are quite sincere but who don't know their arse from their elbow! We must beware of these individuals because, if we listen to them, we will not grow. It is an insidious trap!
The theremin-playing community consists largely of self-taught amateurs with a great love of music but no prior musical training, musical knowledge, or professional experience. Clara always insisted that "the theremin should never be anyone's first instrument because you can't learn music on it", but with many thereminists it is exactly that - their first and only instrument. Many people assume that "learning music" consists of learning to read notes, but that's not it at all. A large part of learning music is learning to hear yourself - to hear what you ARE doing instead of what you THINK you are doing and to strive toward what it is possible for you to do.
For many people, the theremin is a magical, musical mirror in which their reflection is always beautiful. It has often been compared to "the emperor's new clothes". The emperor himself, along with his adoring subjects, actually see ermine-lined brocaded silks and satins when, to the innocent eye of a child, his most glorious majesty is as naked as a jaybird!
That is an interesting "experiment" you did, coalport. I think I have a pretty good ear. I know if I am not dead on a note. I know it and it sours me lol. The funny thing is when I think I am 60% on pitch in any given piece, others think I am about 90% or so. It's so strange to me that people's perceptions and my own can differ so much! I guess it always will be like that since everyone's pitch perception is just as different as there are dandelions on my lawn.
this being said, I am slowly starting to "accept" that as a theremin player, i will NEVER be on pitch 100% of the time when I play. As long as I can play relatively on pitch, I should be satisfied with what i have accomplished. Playing the theremin is completely different from singing. When you sing, you have a pretty direct handle on your vocal cords. Kinda goes like this: Brain signal ~> vocal coard ~> G note. When you play the theremin: brain signal ~> Looooooooong signal to the hands ~> find your position ~> Play the G note ~> hope you are on key. It's a very different animal... But a beautiful one :)
One thing many thereminists do when they make videos is to play along with a commercial CD for accompaniment. They take a recording they like and they play on top of it.
When we do this, I think we have to ask ourselves if we are really improving or enhancing the performance by adding our theremin to it. If we play along with a Beethoven recording, are we improving on the Budapest String Quartet?
If not, why are we doing it?
The only possible answer is that we want to impress people with our theremin playing, or we want to share with others a moment which, for us, was especially beautiful. Unfortunately, these kinds of videos rarely have a positive effect on most listeners.
First of all, the melody is already being played by an instrument on the original recording so all we are doing is doubling. Unless our playing is exactly in sync with the original, we will end up with two different interpretations rubbing against one another.
There are many videos of young singers singing along with their favorite pop recordings but they are not showing us how well they sing. All they are doing is destroying the original recording! We do the same thing when we play along on our theremins. Discrepancies in pitch and style between the two versions of the melody do not showcase our skill. They highlight our flaws. I have even seen videos of people playing their theremins on top of Clara Rockmore recordings!
I think this kind of thing is another example of people mistaking their love of what they are doing for the quality of their performance. Believe me, when you sing along with Aretha so that others can hear what a great singer you are, you're making a mistake.
Thereminists should make the effort to find appropriate backup tracks for their performances and stay away from using the completed performances of others for accompaniment.
"Of course, I had the good fortune to be born the sister of the great Nadia Reisenberg." Clara Rockmore
"Am I too loud?" The late, great British accompanist Gerald Moore
Not everyone can make their own accompaniment for them to play theremin on... It's unfortunate, but it's the reality...
When I played theremin on Watermark, there are no available backing track for this. I looked everywhere to no avail. Luckily,my husband can make some for me, but it takes him a while to compose something... It's annoying to say the least.
The accompaniment problem has often bothered me, too. The first thing which I had to learn is that something which you can get without paying anything isn't worth anything (German proverb). Thanks to several hints here in the TW forums I found some websites where one can buy true accompaniments as mp3 files, played and recorded by professional pianists. That is already a much better solution than dubbing someone else's solo.
In the mean time I'm even bored by these accompaniments because they are static and don't interact with me as a soloist. That's why I travel with my theremin once a month about 40 miles to Southern Germany in order to spend an evening with my ancient piano teacher who is retired since a long time. I have then the pleasure to have a true accompanist and he has the pleasure to feel useful although he is retired. The whole action costs me some gas for my car and a good bottle of French red wine...
Amethyste: "When you play the theremin: brain signal ~> Looooooooong signal to the hands ~> find your position ~> Play the G note ~> hope you are on key."
I don't understand why all Theremins don't have some kind of visual tuner built in to them. I believe I see some kind of tuner plugged into Barbara Buchholz's (RIP) tVOX Tour in her photos and vids - which makes infinite sense.
"Amethyste: "When you play the theremin: brain signal ~> Looooooooong signal to the hands ~> find your position ~> Play the G note ~> hope you are on key." "
The brain gets in the way. I suspect that over time precision thereminists acquire a hand/ear coordination that could be compared to the hand/balance coordination that you acquire after riding a bicycle for a while, a shortcut that skips the slow conscious processing of the sound. Part of the bravery of the precision thereminist is in trusting this process.
"I don't understand why all Theremins don't have some kind of visual tuner built in to them. I believe I see some kind of tuner plugged into Barbara Buchholz's (RIP) tVOX Tour in her photos and vids - which makes infinite sense."
On the occasions that I saw Barbara play she did not look at the tuner whilst playing, only whilst adjusting the pitch field of her theremin and to find her starting note, as one would use an audio pitch preview.
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