LMA (Laban Movement Analysis) of Clara and Lydia

I found this strange article - Have never heard of LMA before, and dont know if this analysis is BS or science, or even if its been noted on TW before - but heres a link to it anyway:

http://www.prima-lma.co.uk/pdf/two-thereminists.pdf

It is quite interesting to me that the above analysis was undertaken - its sort of strange to see anyone not "resident" at TW (or the other place) taking a serious interest in theremins / thereminists..

Fred

Fred, wher do you dig these kind of articles from? lol

VERY interesting....

The comparison between the theremin techniques of Lydia Kavina and Clara Rockmore is quite interesting but the authors fail to address what is perhaps the most important aspect of their subject, and that is the impact of the particular technique on musical expression.

It's as if they were describing, in minute detail, the characteristics of two completely different paint brushes with no mention of how the differences affect the practical application of paint to the canvas. Also, there seems to be an assumption on the part of the writers that Lydia and Clara are playing at the same level of virtuosity. They are not, but I doubt the authors have the musical competence to recognize why. They have carefully WATCHED Lydia and Clara play, but they have not LISTENED and I suspect they do not have the ears to do so.

It might interest the writers to know that there is far more tension in Lydia's "lightness" than there is in Clara's "bound flow" and this has caused Lydia plenty of problems in her theremin playing career. 

While I do not doubt that the theories involved with LMA can be flawlessly applied to some activities, the failure of the authors to understand the theremin has compromised their conclusions in this particular instance. They have, among other things, mixed their apples and oranges by comparing the physical demands of an aleatoric piece like THE SWAMP (Lydia Kavina) with Clara's precision performance of HEBREW MELODY. 

There is an interesting discussion of "recuperation" - the ability of an instrumentalist to recover from the tension of the execution of a musical phrase. One of the things that can help enormously with this when it comes to theremin playing is the use of an audio pitch preview (something I have been promoting for years).

There are so many holes in the above instrument design thesis that it strongly resembles a heterodyne Swiss cheese. Over the years, I have read many seriously flawed papers of this sort on theremin design and technique, all of them written by people with impressive credentials but who do not play.

" the authors fail to address what is perhaps the most important aspect of their subject, and that is the impact of the particular technique on musical expression." - Coalport.

Yes, That omission was glaring, wasnt it? The most interesting question remaining for me is the question "Why?" .. Why go to all the effort of analysing two players of what is probably one of the most obscure musical instruments on earth? .. And then to do so without paying any attention to the music - ??

"There are so many holes in the above instrument design thesis that it strongly resembles a heterodyne Swiss cheese. Over the years, I have read many seriously flawed papers of this sort on theremin design and technique, all of them written by people with impressive credentials but who do not play."

Yeah - The theremin certainly seems to attract nerds ;-) .. Looking at Prima's few other published anayses (there are only a few) there seems to be a whole load of activities far better suited to LMA.. There must be some reason they (or someone at Prima) picked the theremin.. Its got me so curious Im going to have to phone them.. ;-) (OCD?)

Fred.

"Fred, wher do you dig these kind of articles from? lol" - Amey

LOL - I dont "deliberately" go looking for them ;-)

It goes something like this.. I get an idea (usually quite crazy) and once this idea gets through my filters (ie, it passes the minimum sanity criterion) and moves up to the "I really must investigate this now" level, the next filter is the "am I re-inventing the wheel" filter..

And heres where my trouble really starts - getting a few words I can feed to my search engine browser which will return hits to RELATED subjects.. Even the most finely tuned search returns many pages of "hits" which are useless - many sites insert words having no relationship to what they host, and these are a pain.

And because I am who I am, if I see a "hit" which is obviously not related to what I am looking for, but which looks interesting anyway - well - I look at it.. And because I am who I am, my original search is often hijacked and I spend many hours following a link trail which feeds my background processing, produces more crazy ideas, and some of these ideas pass my "sanity filter" and "need" to be checked out by searching the www.....

And just occassionaly I find something (like this article) which is of little / no interest to me, but which I think might interest someone here..

And even more rarely I actually find what I was looking for..

Fred

The article, in itself, is of no interest to me either, but what IS of interest is what other people are thinking and saying about the theremin.

Unfortunately, we live in an "everyone is right" society, but everyone isn't right. Everyone has a right to be wrong. That's different.

The article you dug up seems to be an example of scholars applying their highly erudite and hard won scholarship to something about which they know nothing.