What makes a video interesting...

I think that an audible pitch preview is a great help to find the starting tone while the theremin is still muted. A visible tuner is too distracting.

During your playing, you should be able to play in key without technical aid, be it on the theremin or for example the violin which exist for such a long time and nobody has ever asked to integrate a visual tuner... People who have a poor sense of pitch should rather turn towards instruments like the piano or any keyboard on which you are automatically always in pitch.

As Clara Rockmore stated, the theremin is very difficult to play, even more difficult than a violin. And it requires years long studying and practice (as the violin). Assuming that she was right with this statement after many years of experience with that instrument (and having been a professional violinist before), why do so many people now think that a few electronic components in addition could replace talent, a good ear and long and serious study and practice?

Areyou kidding? Adding a tuner for me to look at would be another thing to keep in check. I think it would make my playing worse than better..

The least amount of visual aid would benefit the thereminist to actually be in touch with its spacial sense... Besides, relying on an electonic tuner is a ludicrous proposition. The point of the theremin is to develop a sense of pitch relying only on your ears to get there. THat's good ear training. To look at a tuner to see if you are on pitch is a bad crutch. What happens if you go to a gig and suddenly you forget your tuner home? Welcome gig from hell...

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...

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True Thierry!

I always try to find some ways between well accompanist tracks, karaoke tracks on YT and own remastered stuff ... It's mainly also because of lack of time and lack of energy I'm less into remastering things my own those last years, but nevertheless, when I wanna use some background of others, I always try to find something which is good and useful, but sometimes, a MIDI sequencer and Vanbasco.com helps too ;-)

Amethyste: "Besides, relying on an electonic tuner is a ludicrous proposition."

It's subtle, but Barbara seems to be relying on hers at several points in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMDfP8pyfzI

I could be wrong, but I believe she consults it for the opening note, and for some of the quieter playing where her Theremin is operating at the edge of audibility.

I'm not saying everyone should be forced at gunpoint to go out and get a tuner, just that one might come in handy now and then on an instrument that lacks tactile feedback, tends to drift, etc.

"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. 

Well ...  I guess that's also why it's QUITE one of my trickinesses to play live in front of a group of audience ;-) I mean, with keys, I quite have some stage experiences since I was 8, but with theremins, it's always something different, as I always should sound check before (I think that's the best thing) to at least get used on the accoustics and the way how your theremin acts in this environment, but also when you use a "strange" equlizer par example, you should get used to it's sound first ;-)

Another thing is, that I recognise what you say Gordon, about the brain thingies ... It's also in the beginning with playing ... Most people are used to make simular parallell movements with both arms, so it can be quite tricky for newbies to get their brain halfs adjusted to the way of basically managing the volumeloop and the pitch antenna ;-)

"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.

My personal opinion on this, is that - If you should use it in the way of knowing which tones you are playing - you'll screw off the idea/intention of playing a theremin, and indeed what Gordon says, I think this ONLY is useful to adjust the pitch field ;-) I guess that also should take a lot less time with such a visual tuner, nevertheless I prefer to use my ears for this, as I also think that each thereminist finds his/her own way to get the right pitch field tune adjustments ... Every person is also different ... I guess I have shorter arms (par example) than Barbara had (so she used another adjustment for th e pitch field range as I'm doing), so that (and other things) makes things different for each of us, as my system might probably not be yours, it's just what's personally is easy for us which adjustment to use ...

Visual tuners are too slow and inefficient to be of any use to the advanced precision thereminist. The audio pitch preview is the only way to go. No amount of practice or skill will help a thereminist find a specific note in the playing arc, accurately and consistently, in complete silence.

Because of the ever-present risk of catastrophe, thereminists cannot enjoy their own performances - GO WITH THE FLOW - the way pianists, violinists or singers can. The degree of difficulty of what you are doing is so great, and the risk that you will screw up so high, that there is no part of your brain that is available for the pure appreciation of the music. You need all the concentration you can muster just to get it right and stay one step ahead of yourself. I think that's why we tend to look like we're in a trance when we play.

The pitch preview will not take all of the risk out of theremin playing, but it will minimize it. By reducing the general level of anxiety, the preview gives you added confidence and will improve the quality of your playing even in areas where it is of no use. The more skilled you become with the preview, the more useful it is. To begin with, it is only really handy for coming in on the correct note but as you progress, you develop the dexterity and concentration to use it wherever there is a short rest - even one as brief as a quarter note. If you are playing two consecutive notes that are separated by an interval of three octaves, there is no chance that you will get it right, bang on, every time. With a preview, it's easy. (The preview will not help you with connected notes - that is, notes that do not have a space between them).

Amey, I see you have posted a theremin rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber's PIE JESU to YouTube. It is accompanied by a piano arrangement created specifically for your performance. To my ears, this is far more effective than the accompaniment you used for the Chopin Etude (Op. 10 No. 3) which, if I am not mistaken, was a commercial CD where you had to double someone else's solo. 

coalport: "Visual tuners are too slow and inefficient to be of any use to the advanced precision thereminist."

This is true for something like a guitar tuner - those things can hunt around forever.  The display format (note letter and sharp/flat meter) isn't exactly ideal either.

Really fast and highly responsive pitch indication is fairly simple to implement on a digital Theremin.  I'm thinking a zig-zag of LEDs like this covering at least an octave (with a separate thermometer or one-hot octave LED display):

                  C#                  D#                   F

                  O                    O                    O         

O         O         O         O         O         O         O

     O                     O                    O                    O

     C                      D                    E                     F#

Do pulse width modulation to give grayscale - at most two LEDs can be lit with varying brightness depending on how close the pitch corresponds to that LED.  So if you're right on the note only that LED is lit.  If the outer on-pitch LEDs are a different color than the between note LEDs then you could at least tell if you are on some note using your peripheral vision.

Yeah, Coalport... For the Chopin Etude, I'll have to rethink something else... My dear Pianist friend is so kind in making me accompaniment, when he has the time. I really hate asking him too much. For the Pie Jesu piece, I am so grateful that he did. :) I took down the Chopin Etude as i wasn't exactly happy with it.

You said "Because of the ever-present risk of catastrophe, thereminists cannot enjoy their own performances - GO WITH THE FLOW - the way pianists, violinists or singers can. The degree of difficulty of what you are doing is so great, and the risk that you will screw up so high, that there is no part of your brain that is available for the pure appreciation of the music. You need all the concentration you can muster just to get it right and stay one step ahead of yourself. I think that's why we tend to look like we're in a trance when we play."

That is so true... To test this, I tried acouple of times to smile and gazing out ward to the imaginary audience and it completely threw me off... False notes allover the place, missed tempo and cues... Woah! Back to the trance cave I go!!

Amethyste: "Besides, relying on an electonic tuner is a ludicrous proposition."

It's subtle, but Barbara seems to be relying on hers at several points in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMDfP8pyfzI

I could be wrong, but I believe she consults it for the opening note, and for some of the quieter playing where her Theremin is operating at the edge of audibility.

I'm not saying everyone should be forced at gunpoint to go out and get a tuner, just that one might come in handy now and then on an instrument that lacks tactile feedback, tends to drift, etc.

I understand what she is doing, but I'd much rather rely on the pitch preview than a tuner to "find" my place. I think my dislike for a tuner comes from taking 15 minutes each day to tune the pedal harp I once had. "HATED" cannot describe accurately my feeling lol.

The above performance of the Rachmaninoff VOCALISE is mediocre at best. The playing is tense and strained, and becomes increasingly so as the piece progresses. This is the problem with tension in theremin playing - it's the "snowball effect". The longer the composition, the worse the tension gets. The more tension you carry, the less control you will have. Thereminists often play better at the beginning of a performance than they do at the end.

On top of all that, the sound is very poor. If Barbara was using a tuner, it did not appear to be helping. As skilled as she may have been as an experimentalist, she was not a particularly good precision thereminist.