Moog Theremini!

"The theremin is one of the very earliest electronic musical instruments. And yet it's one of the most novel and original in concept. It's the only instrument that I know of which responds directly, continuously and immediately to every motion of the performer's hands." (Bob Moog, Mastering the theremin, 1995)

OK. So instead of just continuing to bash it, I finally sat down for a couple hours with it to finally try and make some music. I took an ultra simple study I wrote to help me learn the Etherwave and used the Theremini to play a rendition. Posted to Soundcloud (I may be one of the first to actually play a tune on it):

Theremini Test #1

Some interesting observations. First, this piece is in a major key with a very limited range as it was written to practice a stable hand position that doesn't move its base placement. So I set the Theremini to a three octave range (C3..C5). Didn't even care about calibrating with this small range. The thing had a very acceptable linearity for this piece (actually larger spacing than the Etherwave). So setting range properly on the Theremini is very important if you are not playing a piece that requires a huge range. You can get some decent linearity out of it that way (at least for a good part of your playing range).

Then I set it to Ionian mode since my piece just uses a major scale (not even a full scale). That I thought should make it very easy to play. Then I set full quantization mode. Bad idea. Yea, it was easy to play the piece in this mode but the sudden transition between notes is just too disturbing. This is not Moog's fault. That's a byproduct of full quantization. I think this mode will be used mostly for effects.

So I added in some portamento (pitch knob at about 2:30 seemed to give a good result to play the piece rather easily for my technique at the moment). Here it quantizes pretty well to a center pitch but still lets you have some theremin like portamento between notes. It also does not go 100% on tune if you start off pitch but quickly gets there as you near the center point of the pitch you are after(and frankly you want that as part of the charm of the instrument is malleable pitch).

Bottom line. For the first time, I enjoyed playing it. I think I can now figure out how to set it to be a reasonable portable practice instrument (and anxiously wait for Moog firmware updates that I know are coming to address a lot of current issues).

One interesting artifact (again a byproduct of quantization) is the vibrato issue. You can use a bit at my setting but it's tricky as if you go a bit too far, the quantization kicks in and you start wobbling like a turkey (I left that little horrific bit in the example I posted. You can't miss it).

Well, I have to temper my criticism of this thing a bit now. I think we all have to wait and see how the Theremini develops. 

Rich

"So instead of just continuing to bash it, I finally sat down for a couple hours with it to finally try and make some music." - rkram53

Oh, come on, where's the fun in that?  ;-)

"I took an ultra simple study I wrote to help me learn the Etherwave and used the Theremini to play a rendition. Posted to Soundcloud (I may be one of the first to actually play a tune on it)"

Thanks!  If I may criticize the Theremini and not so much your playing (please don't take this personally): the tone of the voice is kind of boringly uniform, and I can't hear much in the way of vibrato.  The pitch correction isn't pulling the note to the center in every case, and this is kind of obvious.  I think pitch correction actually should pull the note to the center, and allow wide natural vibrato without flipping out.  The thresholded approach of the Theremini is interesting as an effect, but IMO isn't the best way to implement pitch correction.

Yea the pitch is too uniform, but some sound processing might help there. One issue is that it has stereo outputs. I'll try throwing a mono output to a tube preamp to see if I can warm up that sound a bit.

Vibrato is a factor of quantization. If you set the quantization lower you can get more vibrato. Set it higher and you center-tune better but start wobbling (I'm not sure this is a Moog criticism as much as a quantization criticism). The thing would have to know you are doing a vibrato motion to do something different.That would be a toiuggh nut to crack.

My playing obviously at this early stage leaves a lot to be desired. The whole reason for getting the Theremini - it was supposed to help me learn faster. Still trying to figure out if there is some mode I can use it in to apply to that thinking.

The big thing I have to figure out right now, as you said, is if this thing actually centers on pitch correctly. Testing at 100% quantization will tell me that. I could swear it was a bit off one time. But I have seen this thing go into strange unexpected modes when making configuration changes. For example one time the Theremini tuner said C, but my trusty hand tuner said B. I'm sure there are some issues where firmware is not remember settings correctly. I'm sure Moog will take care of those once fully identified.

Rich

Thinking more, vibrato is a huge, huge musical issue. The theremin is in a class of instruments like the voice, violin, etc where vibrato is an essential part of the flavor and tone of the instrument. Theremin playing with little vibrato sounds naked and exposed to my ears. It  really takes the instrument more into the area of a tone generator.

An opera singer can range 30-100 cents or more off center frequency on a vibrato. Violin less, but still this makes vibrato and pitch quantization mortal enemies. So when setting the Theremini in a quantized mode, the inability to create a characteristic vibrato may well be the most damaging counter-thereministic element of the instrument (and what turns it into something else in a players mind - maybe not a bad thing - but a different thing). But again, that's not a Moog issue. It's inherent in pitch fixing (and a major issue the autotuning products have to deal with who have developed very complex algorithms to add things like this back in).

So I don't care how good the tone of the Theremini is - if I can't get some good vibrato on it, its going to sound one dimensional. I never though about all the negatives pitch quantization brings to the table before.

"Analyzing the Theremini to death with all of the high tech talk in my opinion (or should I say IMO) is only giving Moog the undeserved publicity for a "garage band" sound effects device than it deserves.  " - Bisem

I am reasonably sure Moog inc would much rather that this thread didn't exist! - Look on the web, and there are a plethora of reviews and several threads in other forums - TW is the only site providing any real technical information or any counterbalance... Everyone else is wetting their pants with excitement and brainless jubilation!

For better or worse (and everyone knows my views on the matter ;-) Moog has this in the bag. This thread and other comments here and between thereminists on social media wont impact the clueless buying masses - Lets see - how many thereminists would potentially have bought the theremini but have been / will be put off by the TW threads? Less than 50? 100? and how many of the clueless masses will be put off? I recon near zero!

IMO these threads here serve a function which is only of benefit to this community - we are "looking after our own" and have explored hoping to find an instrument of some value, but it has now been tried in the balances and found wanting.

Is there any point in continuing theremini "bashing" ? - Probably not.. Is there any reason to stop justified "bashing"? Probably not.

Is there any reason to bend all the rules just to find something remotely usable about the theremini? - I dont think so! - I think this muddies the water.

The theremini, as a theremin, is a total pile of crap. So you can manage to get it to play one specific piece by stretching the field and discarding vibrato and playing real slow - put the same effort into some soft-synth and you will get better results faster.

If you can get the theremini to actually work as a truly playable theremin, that would be worth announcing - but I fear that by bending over backwards to justify the existence of this 'thing' or suggesting that it can be usable as any kind of theremin is undermining the realism of this thread - The rest of the internet is promoting this fantasy of Moog's "Revolutionary" new instrument - TW is the ONLY site with the competence to shine the spotlight on it and reveal, from both technical and competent thereminist perspectives, exactly what the "revolutionary instrument" is - that its a dishonestly marketed toy which is not fit for purpose, and will push theremins further into obscurity - "Oh, you play the theremin? So do I! - got bored with it after a few weeks -" .. Try telling them that their theremin(i) was'nt a theremin, and they should give a real theremin a try...

Fred.

@ Rich,

Your Theremini Test #1 is the most musical thing I have heard anyone do on the thermini .. But IMO, its so simple and so slow, it could be played better by anyone on a small MIDI keyboard, and played on a keyboard with pitch bend and vibrato wheels, and portamento, it would actually sound more like a theremin (by light years) than the theremini does!

If it had sounded at all like a theremin - if it had been played on an EW for example, it could be quite lovely - but it didn't - it sounded like a wonky keyboard with a dull dead sound - it could easily have been played better  on a Casio VL-Tone and been just as (un)convincing as a theremin... And this wasn't because you played badly - its because the theremini will turn even a good thereminist into a crap one!

A great communist instrument, the theremini - makes everyone equal by making everyone crap! ;-)

Dewster/Fred,

Theremini Test #2

I wanted to see what happened in fully quantized mode so I did up another version. This time I played in the piano part so its a bit more musical. The first one was a MIDI part I created. Of course the issue in fully quantized mode is there is no recovery from a slight error - whap! you're on the wrong note and it's pitch correction software time (actually its totally on pitch so the correction software might not even see it - on a lark, I ran Waves Tune on it to test and yep it didn't see anything to correct for a note that was a blatant error). 

And of course it can be played better on other instruments. The issue is that for a beginner, playing even this little nothing of a melody (about as simple as I could create) is still a very, very big issue to keep in tune (why I'm writing very simple things to help me out starting my journey into this monster).

Rich

Fred,

All true, however there is this thing too. It's an instrument of some sort and in the hands of some great musician I'm sure it can produce something of value. Maybe not as a traditional theremin right now, but I've heard street musicians do amazing things with just two sticks. As a composer the thing still interests me. As I get better on the theremin and as Moog improves the Theremini, I guess we'll all see how this new instrument plays out.

But for now, I have to give up on it as a tool that will help me become a better thereminist (my original hope). Ever the eternal optimist, maybe I can do something else meaningful with it. I hope it doesn't become another synth in my rack that I haven't touched in 20 years. Then again, I've spent a lot more for something that's just sitting on my shelf right now.

And hey, I just noticed something very interesting. While there are some 300+ posts for this topic, there are over 16,000 views! Interest in Theremini is there. And for good or bad on the Theremini end, that also translates into interest in the theremin. But it should make TW happy that people are coming here to try and sort out this new creature.

Rich

"...(actually its totally on pitch so the correction software might not even see it - on a lark, I ran Waves Tune on it to test and yep it didn't see anything to correct for a note that was a blatant error)."  - rkram53

I wonder how Waves Tune would respond to a totally smooth and uncorrected Theremin performance?  I don't have direct experience with this kind of software, but I imagine it is capable of functioning in a rather more sophisticated manner than the simple variable pitch quantization of the Theremini.

Dewster,

The pitch correction SW is actually quite interesting with the theremin. In some ways totally useless - and the most useless for beginners that drift too much where it gets confused and then hard to correct all the little shifts. 

Autotune is the most popular one. I assume Waves works similarly (Waves has a function to impose vibrato - which looks interesting - have not played with it that much). I'm not saying I want to use it and right now it would be totally counterproductive for me. But for a recording where a few notes are slightly off - it has its uses. Everyone uses pitch correction now for production. They will even pitch correct notes in orchestral recordings. 

A whole philosophical discussion involved on this topic. 

Maybe I'll do up a few examples - but I'll create another thread for that.