13 Theremin Myths – Don’t recognize any then add yours?

Thank you Thierry and Christopher for your extended dialogue about coils' effect on theremin performance. Much more interesting than my little myth list. :)

Kevin K, Everyone’s myth list gives others a perspective about the theremin they may never had thought about otherwise.

Just to beat a dead horse some more, it was around 1965 when Brian W came on television (Mike Douglas Show?), we only had about three channels back then so it was a big deal. He was promoting a song that he told little details about and had with him an actual theremin. I remember it being the two plate type. It could have been a Moog original. Because all the youth in the country were tuned in, this might be the moment when the urban legend was probably born! Only years later did I learn the truth that his theremin was too difficult to control, but Brian wanted the sound and found a solution elsewhere. I saw him interviewed the past week stating he finished his album “Smile”.

I should buy it, this would be my first music CD ever purchased.

On another subject, one of these excited University Electronic Major students this week wanted a schematic I don’t have and I offered to make him a crisp circuit board, shiny tin plated and silkscreened if he would draw the schematic from an on-screen transparent graphic (http://www.oldtemecula.com/theremin/vol-control2/) of it! Along with the board I would have sent him the parts he could not get at Radio Shack. Then he vanished.

Edit: "He just emailed me, a polite young man with good intentions but I think he should focus on his studies"

I think we need to make the youth of today more accountable and allow them to think for themselves, then have them do a little work rather than just give them the answers.

Another student also this week brought to my attention for the first time the Open.Source theremin listed here at TW and made me wonder if my approach was not the best for my application, but then it is my own sound that comes first. I have had to back-up or change paths many times in the past, me use surface mount? I will always be old school, never owned a cell phone so I still have the precious time to look at people and Smile!

Christopher

The choice of amplifier (and speaker) does change the sound of the instrument. If you prefer the sound of the theremin through a tube amp than through a solid-state amp, then it's a better sound.

Dmi,

Because you threw the word speaker in there your statement is completely true, I will also bet you are a guitar player who likes to overdrive his tube amp?

The theremin is an easy instrument to play. just look at Ke$ha. She is a master thereminist!

Allow me to reorder several syllabus in your last sentence:
She is there a theremasturbist.

"Thierry, are you being nasty?"

Edit:

Truth or Myth

(I listened to what Ke$ha does and found it interesting. Something for a padded cell being driven by loud unnatural mind thumping sound therapy.)

Please accept my apologies. From time to time I suffer from DOMS.

(Dirty Old Man Syndrome)

But please understand that Ke$ha's "interaction" with the theremin does not at all fit my idea of a musical world...

Oh Thierry, I didn't know that the Clock Work Orange look made your hormones rise :P

*gag*

Here's a myth...

Theremins have two antennas.

(No, they have two electrodes. Lev's original patent calls them electrodes, because that's what they are. He does mention antennas once in the patent. He mentions them in in a sentence emphasising that the electrodes are not antennas.)