Holiday/Christmas cheer? Post here!

Hey Bisem ~
When I started to play the theremin in 2011 (I have been playing for 2 1/2 years already?! wow, it still feels like yesterday!) I decided to make my journey public. I posted a video (or 2) a week on my facebook page and every so often I go back to the beginning and I am able to assess the improvements I have made when things seem to stahl for a bit. I thought it might also be a positive tool for people who are also considering taking up this instrument. I remember when I joined here, the opinions were very strong ~ that to be a great player is an almost ipossible task or status to achieve. Only few Gods/Godesses are "up there" and any others will probably not be worthy. I felt discouraged right at the beginning! So I decided to not listen to anyone but my own self. I did publish videos on FB and told myself that to get better I had to put myself out there. I have had few people critiquing my videos, some were good reviews and positive encouragements and others were pretty downright mean. BUT IT'S OK! It helped me to work on certain things and to improve. Success cannot come without crashing and burning a few times :)

... And it is still a work in progress ~ and always will be I am afraid. I will probably never reach the status of theremin Godess, but that's ok. If one od 2 people remembers little Amey 15 years down the road, it's cool :) One thing I've learned about myself, is that I don't listen to others much. That can be good and/or bad :)

And what is a professional thereminist? According to certain people, there is no such thing as a professional thereminist. I do consider myself a proficient thereminist though. I am professional at pi$$ing people off from time to time when it comes to my very own opinion related to the theremin. haha :)

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Bisem Wrote:

Lately I have been recording practice sessions like Amethyste and posting them on my Facebook page.  The process of making 20 recordings of the same song and only one is decent enough to publish is a helpful learning experience by itself.  I have found that posting the work is an important part of the process.  Once you hit the upload button you have committed yourself to the scrutiny of others and this can be an important tool for improvement. It allows you to see and listen to your playing with an objective eye and ear. 

Amey is right...this isn't a contest.  The forum she set up was so non threatening that even I subjected myself to the professionals on the TW community..LOL!  

This is about the joy and magic of the holidays and expressing that though the wonderful instrument we all love so let's get some more entries!

Brian

Amethyste,

I will vote for you as theremin Goddess anytime!

As far as "pi$$ing" people off.... if we are honest and respectful to each other on here that should not be an issue.  Sometimes honest and objective opinions can be hard to take but that's okay as long as they are not intended to be hurtful.   

So having said that let this be a safe thread for anyone to express their Christmas spirit without any fear of not being good enough. Enough said!

Brian 

WOW Bisem! That's VERY cool!

Here's my this year's contribution for all who missed it on my FB pages ;-)

Oh Wow! - Yeapsystar - Can you please tell us how you did that?

25 theremins? What processing did you use? - I am particularly curious about what was done in the DAW and what was done (if anything) by external hardware..

My guess is that you recorded the theremin on multiple audio tracks, then post-processed these tracks - but its just a guess.. I would really love to know the details.. But if you dont want to say, thats ok ;-) .... Whatever, it is probably the most impressive "polyphonic" theremin performances I have heard.

Happy new year!

Fred.

Amey, for what its worth, I think you are in the "goddess" league already -

I say "for what its worth" because I think there are many unrecognised "gods" and "goddesses" in the arts - people with exceptional gifts and creativity, complemented by their dedication and perseverence - and IMO there is no doubt that you are in this group.

My wish for 2014 is that these people are enabled to give the world their much needed beautifull stuff - and that they get a return from it which allows them to spend their time being creative, rather than wasting their time packing supermarket shelves just to survive, like one brillaint creative Indian musician I met recently.

IMO, the true "gods" and "godesses" are those with the talents / gifts / passions and who could happily say "Enough to get bye suits me fine, I dont care if they think im funny.." -  (Supertramp - Poor Boy)

But then, as a socialist, I probably would have this opinion! ;-)

Fred.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSVTvsC74dM (Poor Boy, Supertramp)

Oh Wow! - Yeapsystar - Can you please tell us how you did that?

25 theremins? What processing did you use? - I am particularly curious about what was done in the DAW and what was done (if anything) by external hardware..

My guess is that you recorded the theremin on multiple audio tracks, then post-processed these tracks - but its just a guess.. I would really love to know the details.. But if you dont want to say, thats ok ;-) .... Whatever, it is probably the most impressive "polyphonic" theremin performances I have heard.

Happy new year!

Fred.

Hi Fred ;-)

Well ... I still use quite old software for sound editing (Cool Edit Pro 2.0) where's a good option to use the multitrack view ...

The background ... Well ... For the background I used along my theremin also my EHX Talking Machine and for that I used a kinda setting to create more an organ like sound ... I recorded track by track indeed, but I made some loop of the background to keep it more straight sounding ;-)

The women's choir ... I did actually the same for the women's choir, track by track, but than I'd love to use there more "real live played" parties ... Well, sometimes, things also can get a bit wrong with false notes & so, so with the more difficult parties they are a bit "spilt" up by kinda "blocks" (pieces) of parties ...

The same counts for the extra addition to the end and for the men's choir parties, but with the men's choir parties I used my EHX Talking Machine along the theremin again to create this deep "Aah" male like voice :D

When each track is ready, after that, I used the reverb, stereo and amplifying effects and finally I've mixed it out per group ... So, the background loop is a group, the men's choir and the women's choir and the extra addition at the end of the song choir. I have to mix down this in separate groups as Cool Edit and my computer quite don't like it when I leave all the tracks separate when there are 25 tracks, with the consequences that it start to fool around and sound weird after adjusting the volume after each other party and it also caused me that I lost nearly all the tracks 1 day before Christmas Eve and had to start all over again ... Happily after all I still had my background track saved! Nevertheless, I'd saved the other tracks (track by track) too so finally when Cool Edit wanted to start to fool around, it was a lot easier to restart Cool Edit, throw away all the dump files and start "all over" with inserting the tracks in the multitrack view option to go ahead ;-)

Love,

Marielle :D

Well ... The hardware gear overhere is VERY simple ... I've stuck my GeneralMusic WK4 Plus keyboard STRAIGHTLY to the soundcard's input and used the jack inputs of my keyboard for my theremin (you also can stick a microphone in there if you want to ;-) ), so, in a somewhat way, my keyboard can be turned into a kinda mixer/amplifier itself!

Hi Mariella,

Many thanks for your detailed description ;-)

A lot of work went into that - and yeah - a crash at the final stages can be truly disheartening .. well done for meeting the "deadline"!

Fred.

Thank you Fred! Yes, it's actually A LOT of work, but the worthiness of it is that you hear the music gets shape track by track ;-)

Love,

Marielle :D

Marielle,

I am very impressed.....thanks so much for sharing!    Best wishes to you all on here for the new year!

Brian

Thank you dear Brian ;-) For you either of course!

Love,

Marielle :D