Yesterday evening Paul, the percussion player who also accompanied me in Ruigoord, brought his new plaything, a handpan, and we did a spontaneous first improvisation of about half an hour in one of my webradio shows. Busy too with getting some try-out gigs to get some more stage practice with audience,and we will probably be going to a few local jamsessions too in the coming months. And the idea is to start doing more perfomances/concerts in 2020, celebrate the theremin's 100th birthday and spread some theremin love. The 14th of October we have a small performance, with Yeapsystar joining us for the occasion with a second theremin, and perhaps another guest musician, but that's uncertain still, at the 80th birthday event of Willem de Ridder in De Toonzaal in Den Bosch (NL). Initially choosing 'DreadVox' as my forum name here, it is also going to be the name under which we/I are going to perform. Paul and me both have dreadlocks, 'dread' besides being short for 'dreadlock(s)' also means fear/terror/awe, so that hints at both the association with horror movie soundtracks, as well as inspiring awe in a more spiritual sense, and in the sense of the visual magic of an instrument played touchless 'in the air', with hands dancing in invisible fields conjuring up the sounds. The 'vox' part because Leon Theremin used to call his instrument just the 'vox', in Russian it's still called Termenvox, I happen to use some equipment from the brand Vox in the audio chain, and I'm also using my actual voice alternating and combined with playing theremin. This recording seems to indicate in what direction it is going with the DreadVox project, so, also to document my/our progress:
New combination, first improvisation with handpan, theremin and voice
Thank you JPascal, yeah I also think it's an inspiring combination. Metal conducts electricity, and the handpan is shaped like a UFO, on many levels it's a combination in which the instruments complement each other well. The handpan gives rhythmic and varying timbre elements, and provides reference tones and melodic/chord patterns, and the theremin gives a disembodied voice that can sing over a wider range than a human voice but has many of it's qualities, and can both stay within traditional musical conventions as wel as move beyond them, transgressing and transcending them. With my voice I can add more timbres and harmonic overtones, and when singing and playing theremin simultaneously combine them into polyphonic parts.
The theremin and the inspiration of an awesome violinist/singer inspired me to practice some more on the Mongolian horsehead fiddle (mooringkhuur) as well and I have it tuned to the handpan now, and looking into incorporating that too perhaps.
We have another improvisation session planned, to be streamed live in my internet radio show coming sunday (Oct 6, 20:00-21:00 UTC, 22:00-23:00 CEST) on DFM.NU - Birds of a Feather, (Un)Familar Sounds by Dread Rat.
There is plenty room for improvement and developement, and being improvisation, it's always somewhat of a surprise how it will turn out, we also don't know beforehand 
That also keeps it interesting and fun.
Thanks dewster, Daniel, for the positive feedback and compliments.
The session tonight went well too, I experimented with interspacing the theremin with didgeridoo, dan moi (Vietnamese mouthharps), voice and mooringkhuur.
When I have edited and uploaded the recording, I will post a link.
Hi Dread!
You really have improved so much within a short time! Keep up the great work you are doing!
I'm longing to play with you and FarmerP (Paul) upcoming Monday October 14 at Willem de Ridder's 80th birthday!
Since yesterday, my Moog ePlus is an ESPE01 module richer! Thierry Frenkel's Magic Module has been built in by Wilco Botermans and we had some great time together in The Hague and time was too short. Wilco and his wife Jessica are lovely persons to hang around with!
Much love from th South of the Netherlands ;-)
No problem my dear friend!
That's where we are friends for!
For me it's just cool to see and to notice some recognizable things I went through myself in my theremin journey! Some things are just logical to go through and it's even no sin because it's even needful to go through certain stages to get better and to get one with your theremin
Hmmm ... Maybe I can ask Sunset in tonight's show if I give the listeners some sneak peak in how my theremin sounds now with the module installed! Only a small sneak peak of course, because it sounds even cooler in real time!
I still have to get a little bit used to it, but sofar I haven't regret it to have it built in into my theremin 
Also the sound is a lot richer now and it even seems that you have even more possibilities with the timbre and the brightness!
Many Warm Waves back to you! ((()))
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