Less interest - or less ignorance?

My feeling about the schematics page is this:

1.) There needs to be a means for  persons to add comments - a couple of threads if one likes. for each schematic or entry.. One thread should be accessible by competent persons only, the other would be for any comments from constructors, and for questions etc.

2.) On the matter of competence - There needs to be a system whereby persons are "graded".. Either by qualification or by industry experience or by submissions of a high technical quality, and such persons given some special "rights" on some technical areas / forums

3.) The technical content in the form it is at present is, IMO, dangerous - Hobbyists putting a pin in the list can pull up stuff which doesnt work and will waste their time and dissipate their enthusiasm.

4.) There are many far superior repositories of theremin schematics and links on the web - but if this page is a big 'hit' at TW then IMO it is even more important to clean it up and make it useful.

5.) There are trolls who have been acting in TW for years, and whos agenda is to thwart any technical advancement (be this the TW Theremin or whatever) and steer such to their personal web pages and hog the show and the glory. Until these people are removed from TW there really isnt any point in saying any more.

Fred.

I like when people post their ideas after their own table top research and demonstrate how their approach works using audio or video. Any theremin design that does not have a sound byte to go with it should not be posted. Using TW as a bulletin board for page after page of unproven weekly rambling ideas should be avoided unless the rambling demonstrates something that works in real time.

I would like to see more newbies showing us their experience and samples even if it is an approach not widely accepted, this is the place new ideas are born. I hate to say it but the newbie builders are mostly gone, maybe some are left in the Ukraine.

My biggest theremin issue today is trading off the authentic theremin sound which the instrument developed around for a thin whistle buried in reverb, do people like this sound or is it all that they are offered. For me the Hoffman reflects all that is sacred, I don't mind synth or whistle sounds just call it something else. IMHO

Not everyone in Russia and the Ukraine may have access to Theremin World. Is this possible?

Christopher

"But if I don't provide a good enough platform for user generated content, the discussion will move elsewhere... Like Levnet on Facebook."  - Jason

Maybe I could use a clean pair of eyes, but the forum mechanism you provide here at TW seems entirely adequate.  I visit the Google group "Levnet" to keep up on what's going on but haven't actively participated yet.  I may never as (not to knock anyone over there, but):

1. The content that would interest an EE is rather low.

2. The jumble of fonts, quoting methods, and order is rather confusing.

3. It seems like more of a "closed club" than TW.

4. Questionable behemoths like Google and particularly Facebook shouldn't be given any information - personal or technical - that they don't already have access to.  Not that I'm particularly paranoid, I just find the big corporate steamroller approach to personal life oppressive.  TW seems entirely benign in this regard.

Re. the popular schematics: perhaps it would be good to have a major TW forum listing (i.e. Buy / Sell / Trade, Composing for theremin, Concert & Exhibit Announcements, Effects, etc.) just for discussion of posted schematics, with a pre-made sub-forum for each posted schematic?  That might help concentrate the chatter in one spot.  You could put a link on the schematic page to the relevant discussion forum and vice-versa.

TW gave everyone a number for when they joined and I figure we are now over 5000 members. On a daily basis we have less than 10 visitors as rkram53 also guessed. To be exact yesterday we had 8 people read the staccato thread. Theremin interest was a novelty encouraged by the documentary back in 1993. That makes those left today really unique, like one in a billion. Outside of that nobody cares.... I do because I was invited.

Christopher

We have over 4900 users.  Over 2000 have logged in this year, but it drops of significantly after that.  Only 33 unique users have logged in during September 2014.  Note that this doesn't count the large amount of non-registered users who visit the site daily (e.g. the Google index bot).

Perhaps we could start pinging users who haven't been around in a while to see if we can get them to come back.

I totally agree with Dewster that the big social media sites are an invasion of my privacy, a feeling I don't really get here at TW. Looks like Levnet group is not really that different from a numbers perspective than here (some crossover from here as would be expected) but that site is still it seems composed of relatively few interested parties. Makes me wonder how many folks around the world are really dedicated to joining the vocal forum of fostering and furthering the theremin through playing, composing, teaching or designing & fixing them. Seems like 100-200 might be a max number.  

Right now I'm working on composing a set of graduated studies for theremin (with accompaniments) to help me as I try and learn and progress. I don't see much out there and am wondering how to go about posting them here. Normally I stick compositions, musical editions and musical writings on IMSLP. Would I link my pages there to here when I'm ready to start posting these (I'll put them up as I create recordings that are done well enough to let me go on to the next study). There will be the printed music (.PDFs), .mp3 performances, .mp3 accompaniments for people wanting to play the studies (ala music minus one) and .MIDI files so people can easily transpose the accompaniments to other keys and play through whatever synths or virtual instrument plugins they like on a DAW.

Rich

Jason said: "Perhaps we could start pinging users who haven't been around in a while to see if we can get them to come back."

People need to be inspired, we can lead them or beat them! LOL

What we need is the big theremin event that reawakens theremin awareness. I know what I am expecting and if it does not happen soon then I will recognize my theremin journey as my own madness. Yes if we are down to ten members a day at TW then Levnet is about five.

TW is the kinder gentler place, give it just a little more time.

Something big just might happen and stir the Spirit of Termen. . .

"Mounds  of human heads are wandering into the distance.
 I dwindle among them. Nobody sees me. But in books
 much loved and in children's toys I shall rise
 from the dead to say the sun is shining."

Osip Mandelstam of Russia 1891-1938

Christopher

hello jason,

you should not get a merit badge, you should get all of them! 

it's the best time now to rethink and rearrange things here, after that impact of the theremini and the following vacuum.

how about a "karma" index, next to ones avatar? so one can see if someone with more knowledge answers or  just another average theremin enthusiast. it's done on other sites and gives somewhat of "security".  i don't think that everyones a expert on theremin. especially on the tech-side. and it does not make one to an expert only by knowing how to handle the "red tuning fiddler" on a ew.  so from 5 stars for exceptional ee's, to minus 5 for trolling.

schematics should be labelled into easy, hard, impossible. put the glasgow into the last one.

i'm still not shure if tw should be about sensor music of any kind or pure theremin. it's not the new anymore but also still not dead, yet. i just can't stand another squarewave-555-driven-ldr-noisemaker-whatever-thingy explained in every detail, but i like when people crack open their boxes, take pictures and be able to have a space to discuss things. reverse engineering is not liked here, but: nothing new? why not take older designs and change them a bit, make a instructable and the the tw-theremin would be ready. a tw-tvox? (blasphemious, burn that giordano bruno.)

love and such

dani

Rich, the thing about Facebook privacy is that you can use its openness to your advantage - it is an excellent tool for identifying and making and keeping contact with hard core thereminists, for example. Friending everyone who is a friend of two or three well known thereminists would yield a pretty clean list of a few hundred, and not that hard to do with graphsearch.

Your personal privacy is under your control - you only have to reveal information that you want to reveal, and you can falsify any security critical information like your name, age and location.

The major downside of Facebook is that it is an excellent time-waster and somewhat addictive to people with a compulsive personality.

My interest for the theremin is much greater than the number of posts that I have made the last few years.

When I first started to play the theremin,  there were lots of fun things to do.  Thereminworld had a monthly contest, and David Vesel (I still miss him) produced the weekly "Spellbound" internet program.  "Spellbound" was a great forum to hear theremin music and to present my theremin music, too.   The nice thing about Spellbound was that it was about the music.  On a weekly basis, I heard music from the likes of Robby Virus, Ninky V, Chris Conway,  Masami Takeuchi, and many others.

In addition, Moog Music hosted a couple of theremin conventions and that generated a good deal of excitement though it probably didn't prove much of a money-maker for Moog Music.

Today the the theremin-scene lives on YouTube and Facebook and is a different world than it was back in 2005.