Hello all! :)
I was checking out youtube just today, and ran across this really strange piano.
The piano has sliders along the top, near the keyboard, which allows the musician to bend the pitch of each note. It can even be set up on eastern tuning scales.
Check it out at youtube:
Very cool...I'm guessing there must be a "neutral" slider position for the purpose of pre-tuning to a tempered western scale...This piano should NEVER be played by Jerry Lee Lewis... :-)
p.s. I enjoyed your rendition of Danny Boy on the home page, but was unable to comment there...thanks...
@mollydad Thanks for watching Danny Boy. It should've taken your comment, but I've got all vids set for comments to be approved prior to posting. I'm just checking emails now, so I'll know if it made it in a bit, and will respond if it's there. ;)
Yeh, that's a great question regarding the sliders. I'd hope they would have a tempered scale setting for the sliders. Totally wicked piano.
@mollydad I just checked the settings on Danny Boy, and it should've taken your comment. Go ahead and try again. It's likely a networking fluke, or something.
Hey Thomas,
The main thing I wanted to know in the Comments section was if you improvised that nice countermelody you played in Danny Boy...
p.s. Your YouTube demo of the ESPE01 mod absolutely convinced me to buy the module and install it in my EW plus. I'm very happy with the result...Thanks for all your contributions to Theremin World and the theremin community in general...
@Mollydad Yes, the secont half of the Danny Boy piece was improvised so as to resemble a slide guitar in places. :) The rest was played by ear.
You're more than welcome. I'm glad to her that the demo is helping to bring awareness of the ESPE01 module to more thereminists who deserve a better sounding Etherwave. I won't be going back to the old sound. :)
I remember we talked about Geoff Smith's "fluid piano" at some length on the Levnet several years back. It seems to me to be one of those ideas that sounds great in theory but not in practice. Most of the time it would simply sound like an out-of-tune conventional keyboard.
For anyone who is really interested in the subtle variations in tuning that are possible for this sort of instrument, the "qanun" is a much better (not to mention more affordable) choice.
The comments about how wonderful it is for the keyboard to be "freed from the tyranny of western tuning" are curiously reminiscent of the kinds of things people wrote about the theremin in the early 1930's. They even use the same words!
Pam Chowhan has done some interesting things with the instrument, but she plays it like a santoor. In an effort to make a more versatile piano, we end up with something that is neither fish nor fowl. I love the experiment but it seems to me it is massively complicated, expensive to construct, and a bit redundant.
Maurice Martenot confronted this question back in the early 1930's and came up with the ideal solution; an instrument that would offer the musician both the standard keyboard and continuous control.
After consulting with some of the most celebrated musicians of his day, Martenot came to the conclusion that the theremin, as a precision instrument, was simply not practical because it was too difficult to play and too limited in regard to what could be done on it by even the most skilled virtuoso.
Here we are 80 years later and the situation does not seem to have changed. More people play the theremin today than at any time in the past (and there are now more theremins in the world than ever before) but the instrument remains, for the general public, a musical curiosity - a novelty of the past.
Yes, it the passion of a small group of hobbyists and dedicated enthusiasts (of which I am one) but it is not taken seriously by the music world, nor is it likely to be. Why is this? Because, as Martenot said long ago, it is too limited and too difficult.
There are theremin festivals and events all over the world, and like-minded people come together from far and wide to celebrate the instrument but when you hear the music they are making on it, you quickly realize that their love and appreciation of the instrument far surpass their ability to play it.
I don't think this is a bad thing, in fact it is a good thing. The theremin has given many people an outlet for musical expression that they would otherwise not have had. The quality of the music they make is unimportant in the light of the personal satisfaction they get from making it.
"I think it would be wonderful if everybody could play the theremin as well as I do, but they don't." Clara Rockmore
Back in the 80s a friend of mine, and I were heavy into keyboards, and talked about a concept keyboard neither of us would ever see built in our lifetimes. It would have keys which were not just velocity sensitive, with aftertouch, but if you moved the keys slightly to the side, you'd get effects, but if you slid the keys forward, or back toward your self, you'd get pitch bending without having to reach for those pitch bend and effect wheels. Each key would affect it's own note. Not the whole keyboard, unless you went for the wheels, and then all notes would be affected.
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