Theremin in "The big space travel" film

Today my kid listened a CD with a collection of children songs (including soundtracks).
Wow, my ear have recognized the theremin voice in one!

There was the song "Mlechny put"("Milky Way") from "Bolshoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie"
("The big space travel"), an epoch-making film from Soviet 1970-s.

Nice back solo (unfortunately short) in nice romantic teen's song.

I have found the MP3 version here: http://www.mielofon.ru/downloads/bkp/bkp03.mp3 (http://www.mielofon.ru/downloads/bkp/bkp03.mp3) (2.7 MB)

Спасибо за заметку!

...my ears tend to identify that rather as a musical saw... but I hope that I'm wrong!

If the sound we hear on the recording is a theremin, it is a pitch only instrument. You'll notice that there is no volume control and as with all pitch only theremins, the player has to slide up to the starting tone (like the toy Russian doll "matryomin" instruments).

To me, the device sounds too electronic to be a musical saw, but I don't think we are hearing a true theremin either.

It's definitely an electronic instrument of some sort. There is a little bit of glissando and it doesn't seem intentional, which would rule out any type of keyboard-based synth (while glis. is certainly possible on a keyboard, it takes some doing, especially with thirty-five-year-old technology).

If it's not a theremin, it's trying to be. Fun song no matter what.

[i]It's definitely an electronic instrument of some sort. There is a little bit of glissando and it doesn't seem intentional, which would rule out any type of keyboard-based synth (while glis. is certainly possible on a keyboard, it takes some doing, especially with thirty-five-year-old technology).[/i]

Glissando/portamento doesn't rule out the musical saw; the stronger argument against it (and the theremin, actually) is the sheer regularity of the vibrato, with respect to both rate and depth.

Both of these features represent 1960s technology (portamento from a slew limiter; vibrato from an LFO). Granted, this technology would've been harder to come by in the Soviet Union. According to Polivoks designer Vladimir Kuzmin (in this interview (http://analogik.com/instrument_polivoks.asp)), voltage-control technology wasn't yet manufactured in the USSR, but a precious few instruments did find their way in from the west.

This recording has been discussed before (several years ago) either here or on the Levnet.

I don't believe it is a saw. I think it is a gestural instrument with an electronic vibrato applied to it (hence its unexpressive nature and the evenness of its rate and depth). Whatever it is, the player either has no volume control or was not sufficiently competent on the instrument to take advantage of it.

The sound is vaguely reminiscent of the unique stylings of Romanian thereminist Benedict Popescu, whose instrument also has a "built-in" vibrato.

Benedict Popescu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux3OmjrgVm0)

>>If it's not a theremin,

It is a true theremin.
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin

quote from this article (list of music):

"Алексей Рыбников — саундтрек к к/ф Большое космическое путешествие, 1974"

that means

"Alexey Rybnikov, the soundtrack of film "Big space travel", 1974"

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