How many Theremin players Worldwide?

There were a few factors or filters in the time which helped to keep up the artistic reputation of the Ondes Martenot vs. the Theremin:

a) The Ondes were always expensive, they were never sold below 12000$ (today's value), thus nobody would have bought an Ondes from their pocket money, just to make whooooo-eeeee-ooooo.

b) The Ondes were taught in conservatories, mainly in France and Canada, and players had to study systematically during at least 3 years and pass exams to be allowed to call themselves "Ondiste".

c) The Ondes' weight, even with minimal Loudspeaker/Diffuseur configuration is about 30kg. Nobody would have taken it just for pleasure round the corner to partake in an open mic evening in a cellar bar.

Unfortunately there weren't and there aren't similar filters for the Theremin. It's unfortunately about to get the same reputation as the $3 plastic soprano recorder... :-(

The ondes requires some skill and dexterity on a keyboard but the theremin requires nothing at all except the ability to wave your arms in the air. This is one of the reasons why the instrument is as popular as it is. As RCA pointed out in 1929:

 "Anyone can begin to play it on the same footing with the finest cellist, pianist or other instrumentalist in the world! A child...an elderly lady...a skilled musician...a blind man....all can learn to play this incredible instrument with exactly the same facility! It is destined to be the universal musical instrument; people will play it as easily and naturally as they now write or walk."

When the theremin was first introduced, it could not be stuffed into a gym bag and toted off to an "open mic" at the local booze can. RCA's are heavy, fragile and extremely finicky. It was the advent of the transistor that allowed the instrument to become the musical novelty toy it is today.

This is not a bad thing because it has allowed people with a genuine love of music, but absolutely no aptitude or "ear" for it whatsoever, to enjoy the pleasures of musical creation. There may be a lot of "Joe Theremins" out there, who are virtuoso thereminists in the concert halls of their own imaginations, but what's wrong with that? 

These people get as much personal satisfaction from their caterwauling as Perlman gets from the Kreutzer Sonata! Unfortunately, they often fail to realize that this does not apply to the rest of us.

The more unmusical and tone deaf someone is, the more liable he or she is to find the original outrageous RCA claims for the theremin to be true.

‘I suspect that if one counted the high-end total one may get close to the answer to this threads question (not saying those who play "mid" theremins arent players or whatever - but one could probably only count a small percentage of these as "active" in any tally).’ – Fred

Actually, in hindsight, that might not be a very good way either to estimate the number of theremin players out there since there are those who own more than one theremin of pro to mid level models.

We are where we are with regard to the way evolution has taken the instrument from big unwieldy temperamental to portable toy plaything with all stages in between.

Also, as has been pointed out and to para-phrase, just because you own a camera doesn’t make you a photographer (although in the literal sense it does but in the ‘meant’ sense of the question it doesn’t) however by a similar token, just because you don’t have a Contax doesn’t mean to say that you can’t be a photographer.

Obviously there are blurry lines over what makes a thereminist but for the purposes of this thread, let me state the propositional question again:
‘The type of people that would be included are those 'wanna be(s)' who don't just have a theremin in a cupboard that they might look at once in a while but those who at least can make a half decent effort at playing a tune or are learning to be at that stage. Or those who use one for avant-garde purposes.

Like for example, someone who has taken up the fiddle and can only screetch out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but at least they are taking measures to improve, all the way up to those like Nigel Kennedy who really know their way around a fiddle.’

If this is too difficult to guesstimate then maybe a very off-topic question which does have a finite value: how many times during the course of all 6 Star Wars films does C3-PO become disassembled in any way? :-)

"There still are enough people who buy musical instruments (wether it's a theremin or a keyboard or a guitar) and in the beginning they are enthousiastic and they learn some stuff, mostly simple melodies, but than they get tired of their instruments and it stays in the closet for quite some while after they sell their musical instruments again .." - Marielle

Hi Marielle,

I think this loss of enthusiasm often happens because people try to play simple boring tunes, and lose interest - those who dont follow this route, who dont get bogged down with practicing scales or playing perfect renditions of some boring piece, but plough into dischordantly creating their own stuff, are the ones who possibly survive the early stages best..

Hi Fred ;-)

Seeing this from out of a musician's view who's actually able to improvise a lot and who's TOTALLY NOT attatched with sheet music in a MAINLY way at all, you ARE correct ... But we musten't forget that there are still A LOT of musicians, EVEN good ones, but EVEN less good ones, wether they studied at the Academy of Music or not, who are still attatched to sheet music in THAT way, that they even can play a note without seeing them on a piece of paper! For them, it's less easy to improvise in the way we do and they are more stuck to the LITURAL technical part of the aspect of music ...

Oh, im sure there are those with enough dedication to persevere practicing "tunes" - But these people are, I think, far more likely to have had some musical training / background with another instrument - and through this learned the discipline and dont expect instant gratification..

Yeah, it's all about the discipline, in what way doesn't matter ...

For electronic musical instruments like theremins and synthesisers though, I do not think one "needs" to go the "difficult" route - they provide enough source of interest in their own right, even if one isnt "playing" them in any conventional musical sense.. And through this "playing" one can learn to "really play music" - albeit if one wants to progress to precision playing in some genre which requires this, one probably needs to take lessons and learn some music theory if one does not pick this up during your "journey" with the instrument.

... Nevertheless I don't think it will hurt to put yourself more deeper in several genres if you want to know your instrument, ESPECIALLY your theremin!, well ... I mean, THAN, you ALWAYS you can decide wether you'd like to use a theremin par example for more experimental music, or you wanna keep playing more classical or jazz orientated music par example ... That's also why I decided to play more covers & so, before I'm gonna put my 2 cents of own "bred" music together with my theremin playing ;-)

IMO, the great thing about electronics applied to musical instruments and recording, is that it really enabled ANYONE with "music in their soul" (not a phrase I like using, cause I think its nonsense! ;-) to access this inner creativity - they may never be performers - but the revolution IMO was when the instrument/s and the recording "studio" merged into one large composite "musical instrument" and then got reduced in size and cost  down to a level where almost any solo artist could obtain this - less than £200 will buy a multitrack recorder with effects.. I remember nearly needing a mortgage to buy my first 4 track 1/4" reel-reel recorder... and still have my Sansui WSX-1 6 track cassette "studio" I bought for £700 - can only record one track on a chrome C90 'cause the tape is whissing bye so fast! ;-)

Fred.

LOL! I already can see that tape thingy whiss-whiss-whissing bye :p NEVERTHELESS, you ARE right about perspectives in that way ... Music in THAT way, is QUITE simular to ANY form of Art ... Par example with paintings ... You have Karel Appel, you have Piet Mondriaen, you have Pablo Picasso, you have Vincent van Gogh, you have Salvator Dali ... ALL did WELL ACADEMIC Art studies and IN PRINCIPELY, ALL also could take a charcoal or some oil paint and make a REALTIME self portrait or a portrait from one of us, or maybe from Clara Rockmore, or any other thereminist, famous person, whoever, whatever ... BUT ... They changed their way of working, wether you may like it or not ... Me personally can't quite appriciate Karel Appel, but I TRULY do like some of Mondriaen's works ... WHY?! ... NOT at purposely he ONLY makes those blocks of colors, but DEFINITIVELY that when you look in a kind of way to his paintings, you TRULY DO SEE the intentions he has meant it, par example the painting of his city traffic ... It IS actually a square seeing it from above, with red roofs of houses, with black roofs of houses, with small pieces of yellow and blue and green which are cars, or maybe a fontain somewhere or a tree ... There IS some movement in this painting, and the same counts for how he has put down the Boogy-Woogy so well! There's movement and joy and happiness in that painting, just like the rythm of the Boogy-Woogy (Piet Mondriaen actually was a GREAT fan of the Boogy-Woogy music BTW!) ...

I am extremely interested in the title of this thread - Interested to know how many high-end theremins (RCA,E-PRO,E-Vox,TVOX etc) and mid ( EW etc) there are in the world - I suspect that if one counted the high-end total one may get close to the answer to this threads question (not saying those who play "mid" theremins arent players or whatever - but one could probably only count a small percentage of these as "active" in any tally).

... I think there are a tremendously larger account of people HAVING a theremin than playing it properly (in the way of regularly and producing something in some way with some goal) ... That's one thing for sure!

Love,

Marielle :D

For reasons I have never understood, you simply have to own a theremin in order to qualify as a thereminist. No one would suggest that someone who owns a piano is a pianist, or someone who owns a fiddle is a violinist, but if you own a theremin SURPRISE! 

You're a THEREMINIST!

There are a couple of people I can think of who have represented themselves as the world's greatest theremin players who don't play the instrument at all (the name Ke$ha comes to mind).

Hey, Coalport!

I KNOW you have a MIDI theremin and you play it very well, still I prefer your works on the RCA theremin & Moogies a bit more ;-)

NEVERTHELESS, I still keep loving what Clara Rockmore once said ... "It's easy to play the theremin, but it's harder to master it" ... EVERYONE can get some sound out of a theremin, THAT's true, but, if you can call yourself a "thereminist" than? I'm not sure about that either ... NEVERTHELESS - and I refer to what I just wrote to Fred about painting par example - music should be seen in the most wide spreaded form of Art ... Some genres you may like, others you may not like ... It won't say that a thereminist playing ONLY experimental psychedelic kinda music will be a good thereminist playing pieces of Bach, Beethoven, Saint Saens or even not with pop music or jazz ...

Love,

Marielle :D

Hi again Marielle,

I think it is utterly impossible to actually define art of any kind - just as I think it is impossible to define anything without "substance" (its actually impossible to even verify things of "substance" IMO, but thats a whole other loony debate I wont get started on .. ;-)

All subjective things, be this art or love or whatever, is solo - I cannot know what pleasure someone gets from seeing a pickled shark (Damien Hirst) or listening to music which I loath - all I can assume is that they do get pleasure or something from it which gives it "value" to them.. The number of people who "like" or "dislike" something has no bearing on whether I will "like" or "dislike" the same things - but there do seem to be groupings I "fit" better than others - I suspect that for people who honestly express their preferences (not for those who pretend to like or dislike something, or persuade themselves about their 'likes and dislikes' to conform to a group) this is likely to be true for everyone.

In the above context, I think Clara's "It's easy to play the theremin, but it's harder to master it" is only valid within her paradigm - "mastery" may not be the objective of someone who has a load of sequencers and random voltage generators driving a modular synthesiser, and sits eyes closed meditatively waving their arms about in front of the antennas..... To such a musician, "mastery" may be about "going with the flow" and letting another part of the brain 'control' the instruments without the conscious thought-processing part of the brain get in the way...

For me, there is a place for both - Some of the music I love most has both the "randomness" and the "precision / structure" one can (I think) only get by enabling both "consious" and "unconscious" elements - but I like some purely "random" music and some tightly "structured" music... For me, both are equally valid, as long as they have one thing going for them - they must be enjoyable TO ME!

;-)

Fred.  

Cuzzin Freddie wrote: I think it is utterly impossible to actually define art of any kind - just as I think it is impossible to define anything without "substance" (its actually impossible to even verify things of "substance" IMO, but thats a whole other loony debate I wont get started on .. ;-)

I have always liked the old axiom, "It's Art if you say it's Art." That's hardly a definition but it does avoid a great deal of wasted paper, bandwidth, and time.

As for defining things "of substance", the substance itself exists but not the object you think it represents. That is the stuff of this magnificent, collective dream we share.

As for Clara Rockmore and "mastery of the theremin", I think what she was referring to is the ability to reproduce on the instrument, accurately and precisely, a particular piece of music. The aleatoric thereminist sitting in front of a bank of sequencers and random voltage generators may get tremendous personal satisfaction from the sounds he or she is making, and indeed you and perhaps a whole lot of other people may get some satisfaction from it, but that does not make the musician a "master of the theremin".

What defines a "master of the theremin" is the ability to play the piece a second time so that, for all intents and purposes, it is acoustically identical to the performance after which it is modeled. Of course, the real mastery here is not of the instrument. It is mastery of oneself.

Neighbor of the North wrote:

What defines a "master of the theremin" is the ability to play the piece a second time so that, for all intents and purposes, it is acoustically identical to the performance after which it is modeled. Of course, the real mastery here is not of the instrument. It is mastery of oneself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hmmmm... I guess I am slooooowly achieving self greatness through the theremin then? :) I am at a point where I can play consitently *well* a piece of music time after time... 2 1/2 years ago, that was impossible feat. With time and patience I have surmounted plateaus and set backs... Pretty cool!

"What defines a "master of the theremin" is the ability to play the piece a second time so that, for all intents and purposes, it is acoustically identical to the performance after which it is modeled. Of course, the real mastery here is not of the instrument. It is mastery of oneself." - Coalport

I do not wholeheartedly agree with the above, but I can see it as true - only for one paradigm.. If one defines "mastery" in the context of this paradigm (the ability to consciously reproduce a performance with reasonable accuracy) then its true, and "mastery" is measurable.

I do not feel that the above is the only valid paradigm though - IMO, someone who can create a beautiful (remembering that beauty is subjective, and it may not be recognised by many or even any others) piece of music in a non-repeatable moment, through processes they are not consciously aware of or are only partly aware of - well - in that moment (and for any other moments when they are doing this) they are "masters" as much as someone who creates (or recreates) "beautiful" music from a "script".

And I am just glad that there are both types of "masters" in the world - I would miss Amey and Peter and Lydia's music, and I would miss Gordons music, and I would miss tons of music from Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd and ELP and Stockhausen and Liszt to name a tiny few from both paradigms. (some of my favorite music is a mix of both - Pink Floyds "Echos"  [this link is to an IMO greatly inferior version to the original - the original is one of those pieces that I dont think can be replicated] is such a track IMO, and I am probably in a minority in thinking that their "Ummagumma" studio album is one of , if not their best album)

IMO, we need (or at least I need) both, and IMO both are equally "valid" and those who compose / produce music I enjoy are equally "masters" of the art and/or the instruments.. And this is what it all comes down to - one simple thing - MY liking - its entirely and utterly "selfish" and cannot be any other way!

The only ones IMO who are not "masters" are those who attempt to replicate something and produce a grossly "inferior" copy through their lack of skill / ability, or those who just f**k about with synth knobs or whatever but have no "music in their soul" (ugh!) - But even here, who am I to say they are not making music, perhaps its just that I cannot hear the music..

Fred.

" the substance itself exists " - I am really not sure this is true! ;-) - or at least not in the way we usually think about "substance".. A collective "database" of "stuff" which doesnt "exist" and can probably be altered utterly by the collective - hmmm .. "substance"?  ... But apart from this, I did say "things of substance" which would be the "objects" you refer to - and on the nature of "these" I think we probably agree (and are probably both wrong, LOL ;-).

"That is the stuff of this magnificent, collective dream we share." - If only this was really the whole truth - I wish I could believe it was.. But the "dream" has way too many nightmare components to make any sense.. There is something wrong with this model.. Unless "the one" has a sadistic / masochistic "core" none of any of this shit makes any sense to me.. Perhaps its easier to believe when one is a Brahman living the "dream" rather than if one is an untouchable living a nightmare..

"-- but thats a whole other loony debate I wont get started on .. ;-)

There is a class I DETEST - these are the ones (regardless of the genre) I wouls like to take to some public place and stone! .. Its those wh claim to play the theremin but actually dont - they make 'theremin like' sounds on keyboards or whatever, and post "the greatest theremin music ever" videos on you-tube.

[30/12/2013 16:06 >  I have added a few comments to the above since original posting]

"There is a class I DETEST"  - FredM

"I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!"  - Tom Lehrer

;-)