theremin tone

Ive been reading this forum for months, thank you all, its been a good source of information, but I had a few questions, id thought id ask. 

I have a etherwave standard ive been playing for like 18 months, in terms of tone, I almost always have the brightness/waveform knobs at 9 and 3 o'clock pointed away from each other, for a vaguely violin/cello like tone. But its a little buzzy - harsh, I wondering if there was anyway to improve the tone on a reasonable budget. 

a. I am assuming adding more subtle harmonic overtones would increase the string like tone, is there a pedal or effect box that could do this, (or a schematic, I can etch a circuit board and do basic soldering)

b. Or is this the wrong approach, something that would be better handled by eq?

c. Or would it be best to replace my amp with a large keyboard amp? (Im using the cleanest sounding guitar amp I could find used from when I brought my theremin, some old 10" fender) (Any recommendations? Has anyone used a roland kc350?)

Some ideas to improve the sound of your Etherwave:

- Thierry Frenkel makes a mod called ESPE01 which greatly improves the sound in the bass register. I don't have one at the moment because I haven't yet gathered the willpower to send my theremin to France for some days, I'm too hooked on it :) But you can search for it on youtube and hear what it does to the sound.

- If you're not using reverb, a bit of reverb softens the sound and makes it more pleasant in my opinion.

- EQ can also help, I'm trying an EQ pedal these days and am quite happy with what I'm getting ( http://www.thereminworld.com/Forums/T/27772/eq-settings-for-theremin ) although of course you'll probably get better results with a more expensive, full-featured EQ unit than the one I'm using.

- I don't have enough knowledge about circuit boards and amps to answer your questions about those.

By the way, I don't like the 9-3 o'clock configuration for waveform-brightness, I usually have either 12-4, or 2-4, or 11-1 (more or less). Anyway I've been told that the effects of the knob positions may vary from one particular Etherwave to another, so this is probably not useful.

Thanks, I want one of Thierry's modules, I saw Thomas Grillio demoing it on youtube, but unfortunately, for shipping from the Netherlands to the US they are charging like 45 euros, which is conceptually hard to swallow.  

I used to play with the reverb on my amp, till it broke, and I liked how it sounded. Does anyone have suggestions of reverb pedals that sounded good?

Hello nieradka,

Hey we are in the same time zone!

The first thing that concerns me when using a guitar amp, which I do like, is not to over-drive it. You mention skill with a soldering iron, so for pennies two resistors in a voltage divider network will calm a hot signal that might be distorting your theremin sound. If you figure out what 1/4 watt resistor combo works best for you, you can put them both inside of the 1/4" cable male plug plastic enclosure. (All my theremin designs use this output method below but possibly using two 4.7k resistors to just divide the signal in half would improve things?)

Below also works very nicely for input level control and has other utility. The tube aspect is more hype than performance.

Art Tube PreAmp   Guitar Center in Beaverton, Org.

For the DIY Theremin Builder the Voice of Clara Rockmore is coming soon using modern components with no coil winding!

Christopher

Another vote for the ESPE01. Sorry to hear about the high shipping fees. I suggest you let Wilco (Thierry's distributor) know - why people are not buying a product they want is useful business information. :-)

Reverb pedals - I have a Marshall RF1 Reflector which I am very happy with. 

For reverb, I have an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Plus, I use it on the spring reverb setting and I like it. I have only had the chance to compare it to a couple more pedals and to PC software reverbs, though.

Reverb can cause some problems in that it masks some subtle intonation issues.  It can give the performer a false impression.

My preference is to monitor the dry theremin tone without reverb or processing of any kind.  The reverb or other processing will appear in the main speakers but NOT in the monitor.

For practice, I recommend a bright timbre with no reverb.  It will make your playing sound horrible at times -- and this is because such a configuration reveals every error.  However, you must hear everything and develop the ear/hand coordination to make the corrections.

The idea is for you -- the performer -- to hear every little error and to correct them and for the audience to NOT hear every little error.  Unfortunately, many theremin performances (as I've observed on YouTube) have the opposite effect: to the performer, it sounds great while the listeners cringe.

Go ahead and practice with a dry, bright, unforgiving sound.   Practice slowly -- do not sacrifice accuracy for speed -- and have faith.  If the music is within you, it will come out eventually.

Kevin, this makes perfect sense and the first time I have heard it.

"Reverb can cause some problems in that it masks some subtle intonation issues.  It can give the performer a false impression."

Then reverb can almost mask minor errors the audience hears to the players advantage if done correctly.

JeffS also brought my attention to my choppy volume control and then it dawned on me, to change my volume circuit so that it never cuts out completely. This has improved my attempt at playing because I can always hear it down to a whisper when not using an earbud and moving some distance from note to note...

Now that I am an upcoming Thereminist I need to pay attention to details.

Does the volume in your earpiece have a continuous level and is the volume control on the plug-in cord?

RS Theremin -- Thanks, that makes alot of sense, I was going to change one of the resistors on the inside that was recommended to change in the 'hotrodding your etherwave...' manual, but haven't, cause I needed to buy a larger amp anyway to match the others in the band I play with. But it makes sense to build an external box to reduce the signal, I should probably do that before I feed it into any pedals anyway.

Kevin -- Thanks for the advice, yeah, when practicing by myself I mostly practice as dry as possible, and with little vibrato, cause someone said that somewhere, and it seems to make logical sense. When playing with others, well I mostly hope for the best, as I dont have pitch preview, or usually monitors at the level of shows we play. Though, it seems far easier to stay on pitch with other instruments providing reference.  

Thanks all.

To clarify -- my setup involves three elements:

1) The mains  (that is, the main speakers for the listeners)

2) The monitor (the speaker directly behind me -- contains only the dry theremin signal)

3) The pitch-preview (earbud)

4) Floor monitors (so that I can hear the mains)

To simplify the logistics or performing in various situations, I have replaced the monitor and floor monitors with headphones.   Thus, I place my earbud into my left ear and the headphones over both ears.  The mix in my headphones is mono so that I can hear all the parts.  The headphone mix is carefully balanced so that I can stay synchronized and in-tune.

Whenever possible, I perform in 5.1 surround sound and my compositions utilize complex looping.   My experience while performing is different from that of the listeners.  While the listeners hear a balanced performance in surround-sound, I'm listening to a pitch-preview and a mono-mix in my headphones.

While I've composed a good deal of music for theremin and accompaniment,  the works that seem to get the best audience reaction are the live-looping works.  The live-looping works happen to be the the most difficult to compose and to perform!  (Nerve-wracking because if I hit a bad note everyone gets to cringe everytime it reappears in the looped texture.  If the note is critical for timing or for harmony, it can result in a musical "train wreck".)

The situation when performing live is not always ideal -- often there is limited setup time and, particularly when playing outdoors, the area can be noisy.  The headphone solution helps to provide me with some predictability in such situations.