Talking Machine purchase question

BEWARE OF "PAVAROTTI IN A CAN".

The Electro-Harmonix TALKING MACHINE was a wonderful novelty when it first came out but the more we hear from it the less interesting it gets. There is a monotonous sameness about the timbre and tone we are hearing from thereminists who use the device.

It's funny you say that Coalport.

I use the TM all the time. BUT, I find it very interesting cause when you set the "blend" on about 9am, you can hear the real voice of the theremin coming through most of the notes you play but with a slight added vocal caracteristic. I love it, feels like a hybrid theremin voice, which add warmth to the sound itself.

Less is more :)

Yes, Amey, I think if you use a blend of TM and the voice of your own instrument you can come up with a more distinctive sound.....more or less.

Exactly Coalport.

After a while, the pure sound of the TM gets numbing and feels unnatural. I was more interested in its other ability than the obvious one :)

"you can hear the real voice of the theremin coming through most of the notes you play but with a slight added vocal caracteristic. I love it, feels like a hybrid theremin voice, which add warmth to the sound itself." - Amethyste

This is interesting to me -

If one could de-tune the TM against the theremin (say one had some intervals you could select - 3rds 5ths whatever - or just a de-tuning knob) do you think this would be useful?

I am playing with analogue heterodyning additive synthesis at the moment - Just wondering if having the facility to output a seperate de-tuned signal (which one could take to the TM or other effect) would be worth doing.. ?

De-tuning the input to the TALKING MACHINE would be a simple thing to do. Simply split the "audio out" on your theremin with a splitter (or an A/B box) send one signal to your amp/speaker as you normally would, and the other to a pitch shifter. Select the pitch you want from the shifter, and then send it to the TALKING MACHINE. You'll have a soprano and a tenor singing together!

There are many pitch shifters on the market today - I highly recommend the LEXICON MPX. I use an MPX 1. It will not only shift your pitch, it will do about 10,000 other things as well, quickly and reliably.

Anything you can think of to build into a theremin, can be added much more easily using a peripheral device of some sort. The advantage is that you can then use the device for other things besides your theremin.

http://www.lexiconpro.com/en/products/mpx1

I liked my MPX1 so much I bought a second one! The device is no longer made, but you can pick one up on ebay for under $300.00. Worth every penny!

"I liked my MPX1 so much I bought a second one!" - Coalport

My MPX1 is certainly the effects unit I love the most! - But it is about £200 if you can find one.

"Anything you can think of to build into a theremin, can be added much more easily using a peripheral device of some sort. The advantage is that you can then use the device for other things besides your theremin."

True - But the theremin has some unique properties I am exploring.. Because one has two raw HF signals which, when heterodyned, produce the audio, one can do things with these frequencies that are not possible with audio.. You can, for example, multiply them using phase-locked-loops (because the actual frequency change of only one of these HF signals varies by a tiny amount, it is far easier to get track this frequency than to track an audio frequency which varies by several octaves)..

The above allows one to generate whatever frequencies one wants straight from the primary signals - I have used this to generate harmonic series and am working on a voicing "engine" which allows dynamic additive synthesis, where one can either enter the levels for each harmonic and its phase at different frequencies (so the waveform changes as one goes from bass to treb) or to draw the waveforms - then to store these as presets.

But first I am designing a simpler instrument using some of the above technology - and was just wondering whether a seperate detunable voice output was worth adding to this.. Particularly as it would only add the cost of a few filters and an output socket - perhaps £10 multiplied by 3.. £30 for an effect which would cost $200+ if implemented externally.. Also, the MPX1 is damn good, but pitch shifting audio is never perfect (there are distortions - particularly if the frequency changes rapidly).. My method isnt doing anything to the audio - Audio out is produced by heterodyning the shifted oscillator frequencies - it is, quite literaly, another theremin voice.

Like almost everything I do, this is likely to go nowhere in terms of getting product on the market, LOL - But when I die theremin technologists will have a few zip files (I have a CD I put all my stuff onto, and have a list of people in my will to whome this will be sent) so it may not all be wasted.

- But who knows - I might actually manage to produce some theremins I am happy to sell - there is still a chance! ;-)

Fred.

I would suggest using pitch shifters with some amount of caution. I use them quite often, but then again I don't play melodic theremin. (You may want to bear this in mind whilst considering my opinions.)

The thing about harmonies in "regular" music is that they stay interesting by changing regularly. If you have a pitch shifting stomp box, you might want to kick the second voice in for the chorus or the bridge, but NOT all the time. It just doesn't sound good continuously. And I say that as someone who can enjoy listening to a washing machine!

Ideally you want one that intelligently changes the interval for the second (and third, fourth voice - if available) to keep the music fresh and interesting. I have not tried it, but the EHX Voice Box does just that - but there is a major catch. It uses human intelligence - the best sort - to generate interesting and varied harmonies. Specifically, you plug a keyboard into it to play chords that tell it the key you want your harmonies to be in while you're performing. That's straight forward for a singer - the target market for the Voice Box, but it's going to be tricky when you're playing the theremin. Best bet would be to give that task to another band member, or maybe devise some way using MIDI and gadgets to step through a predetermined sequence of chords by clicking a switch.

My opinion; technically problematical and likely to be of limited applicability compared to the effort involved. But then again, so is playing melodic theremin. 

"My opinion; technically problematical and likely to be of limited applicability compared to the effort involved. But then again, so is playing melodic theremin. " - Gordon

Lol ;-) Hi Gordon!

Yeah - The problem of having an unchanging fixed pitch "offset" is a big one - and there is no easy fix for the theremin in that hands are always in use - the only solution I came up with was to abandon capacitive sensing for the volume control, and use a keyboard with independent long-travel  pressure sensitive keys for chording and volume control.. way OTT.

The other way was to have 4 possible "tracking" intervals which were independently tunable and assigned to 4 quadrants in the volume field, so one could change between these 4 voices.. but again, a bit OTT -

For the TM I wonder if a sub-octave output rich in harmonics might be the best - its as simple as adding a comparator and flip-flop to each oscillator, and mixing the outputs to give audio an octave below the main theremin voice.. Perhaps I will add this to the cheap and cheerful Lev oscillator clone theremin I am prototyping.. (its too simple, LOL - needs more knobs and things.... ;-)

I tried messing around with the EHX voice box, some time ago. I could never get it to work reliably with a theremin signal, in most of its modes. Probably, the signal wasnt attenuated enough. The effect sounded "glitchy" it would turn on and off randomly, and not musical. I sold it rather quickly.