"What's a Theramin?" Page innacurate.

Hi Jason,
In the description of what a Theramin is, you mistakenly state that "playing the theremin requires precise skill and perfect pitch", when in fact this is nowhere near the case. Perfect pitch is described as "the ability of a person to identify or recreate a musical note without the benefit of a known reference".

The fact that theremin players need to slide to their first note is proof of players not having perfect pitch. If they did, they would be able to produce any note upon request with no reference or sliding at all.

Secondly, having a piano accompanist definitely qualifies as a "known reference". All playing with an accompanist requires is a decent sense of relative pitch. Which nearly anyone can be trained to have, given enough teaching. Having perfect pitch would mean that any theremin player could play a song in any key upon request with no accompaniment and without being given a note to start from.

The theremin is KNOWN for being naturally out of tune. If theremin players really had perfect pitch, this would never be the case.

Saying that a theremin player has perfect pitch is like saying that an acoustic bass player or slide trombone player has perfect pitch. While this may occasionally be the case, it is by no means required to excel at the instrument. I'd imagine that being a theremin player with perfect pitch would drive one a little crazy, being constantly surrounded by music that's out of tune.

Welcome to Theremin World, snobuggy.

[i]The fact that theremin players need to slide to their first note is proof of players not having perfect pitch.[/i]

Not really. Having absolute pitch is not the same as knowing where a particular note is located in the pitch field.

A blindfolded pianist would have to find the first note by trial and error, even if the piano was perfectly tuned.

Carolina Eyck has absolute pitch, and is no more crazy than any thereminist, and a deal saner than many of us. As she offers lessons to beginners I imagine some dodgy pitch is not a problem for her. There was certainly plenty at Without Touch 2 (at which Carolina held a workshop) - enough that I had to step outside from time to time. (One of the reasons I am exclusively atonal - I can't stand to hear myself playing out of tune - unless it's supposed to be.)

I do agree though - a good classical thereminist should be able to distinguish very small differences in pitch, and have a darned good idea what intervals are supposed to sound like. Absolute pitch is not absolutely required.

(I asked Carolina if it was restrictive - if she was locked into 12TET - and she explained that she was keen to learn other tunings.)

Yeah, and perfect (absolute) pitch doesn't prevent you from making a small glissando into the first note (with or without accompaniment!)... *whistle*

Stating that the same tone is always at the same place in the pitch field is like wondering why your best black made-to-measure suit shrinks by two numbers per year even if it hangs only in the wardrobe...

Edit: Absolute pitch helps you to slide correctly into the intended E5, even without a reference tone. That's all.
Absolute pitch may also be a pain when playing reading written music and having an accompaniment which is transposed by one and a half note because eyes, ear and brain will get out of sync.

This forum is nice, let's not have it turn into Levnet. These conversations are always so very tiresome.

Oh, Gordon - get Carolina to learn the overtone series. It would be pretty cool to do something with that on a Theremin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn2CJmFrUmU

No need to take things apart here. My point merely was that it does not require perfect pitch to play Theremin, or any other instrument for that matter.

One correction - I didn't mean "naturally out of tune instrument" In the way you're thinking. I mean that it's natural for it to be played out of tune since there's always human error and it is quite a precise skill. I'm going to stand by my statement though, that the information on the website is inaccurate.

Cool your jets.

You're not the first person to say what you're saying, and you're not saying it to anyone who particularly disagrees with you. This forum is quite nice in the respect that it's just people talking about an instrument and the music they make with it. The people who harp on from dawn to dusk about perfect pitch and cry at out-of-tune Theremins are elsewhere.

It's just a sentence on a website, after all.

Speaking as a Thereminist without perfect pitch, maybe someone [i]with[/i] perfect pitch can have a good cry at me and maybe I can go around correcting people's spelling all day too.

Nice piano, Alexander, but is it an overtone series? Here (http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/wtp.html) says it's a just intonation.

I do agree though, you can do some fun stuff with an overtone series, either by learning one or applying a comb filter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B68bRDzQi8 - sorry - it's me - I'm shameless.

Snobuggy. No disagreement from me. :-)

Alexander, before you send me away to levnet... Was anything of what I wrote, not nice???