Roll Call 2014

Veronica if the USA had a theremin heartland then you are there. The theremin is a fascinating instrument and you will meet some of the finest enthusiast in NYC.  Try not to take the theremin too serious, as your skill will evolve slowly.  Some people it drove them over the edge, now they babble nonsense. Welcome to our clan.

T

Hello Veronica,

Hope you have fun with it.. Which theremin did you buy?

As for "electromagnetic music." ;-) .. The theremin field is electric (capacitive / electrostatic) but its not "electromagnetic" the way that light and radio waves are.. Its quite strange, the only truly "electromagnetic" theremin is probably an optical theremin, which isnt really a theremin at all! ;-)

At this stage, it makes no difference to you what the mechanism of operation is - I am just being "pedantic" really.. But I do believe that misconception about how the theremin works can seriously limit a player as they get more advanced.. You will be looking for advice, and any technical person (not talking about musicians here - many still talk about 'electromagnetic' even when they know better ;-) who talk about the "electromagnetic" theremin field are to be avoided, because they dont know what they are talking about!

The inventor (Lev Theremin) knew it wasn't electromagnetic, and specified the correct mechanism in his patents.. What is commonly called "antennas" these days, he called (correctly) "Electrodes" .. But in the '30's, with radios having only just appeared, the theremin looked too much like a radio for people not to think in terms of "electromagnetic" and "antennas" - and it stuck.

;-)

Fred.

Hi Veronica,  You may be interested in some of the theremin classes that are conducted by the NY theremin Society.   Usually held at the art space, Pioneer Works, in Red Hook, Brooklyn and are conducted by two professional thereminists (rob Schwimmer and Dorit Chrysler) and myself.    The next round is sometime this fall- october or november, I think. 

Thank you for all of the advice and information.  I will absolutely look into the classes in Brooklyn as well.  Learning theremin is proving to be quite abstract for me and any instruction will be greatly appreciated.

Hi All,

Just noticed there was an introduction page so here goes. I’m a composer and theorist with music degrees from Rutgers and Temple University, used to teach theory and composition at La Salle College, but discovered I had a knack for computer programming, so I took courses in that and soon switched to software engineering to make a living (long ago) and now work for one of the two major companies that design and install undersea fibers optic communications systems around the world (not many people realize the backbone of the Internet and what makes it global are the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of fiber optical cable lying on the sea bottom crossing virtually all the oceans of the world).

Not long ago my 92 year-old mom was urging me to get a theremin. Pretty unexpected. Well, “The Day he Earth Stood Still” is one of my favorite movies so that alone made me think “What in the world would I do with a theremin”?  However, all it took was a bit of web browsing to realize this instrument is amazing - thanks to the wonderful postings on YouTube of Peter, Ametheste, Thomas and others - who I see are also part of the Theremin World community – didn’t take me long to get on a first name basis, did it?   

So as all good sons should do, I listened to my mother (for once), did a bit of research and a month or so ago bought an Etherwave Plus (because as a composer I thought the possibilities of its CV out also needed to be explored). It didn’t take me three waves of the hand before I was totally transfixed. To my surprise, I discovered it’s not that hard to pick out pitches if you have a decent ear (all those years of teaching ear-training in college are finally paying off). However, maintaining those pitches is a totally different matter. This instrument is all about pitch stability. So I started by ignoring all the instructional material on hand positions and just connected an iPod to my amp, connected the theremin, put on a ton of slow songs and simply tried to match pitches of the melodies (“What a Wonderful World” turned out to be a great practice song – a few skips a lot of stepwise motion and some repeated notes to help my left hand practice articulation – I’d love to see Peter do that one up).

So I’m now hard at work practicing (when I can) and experimenting getting a better tone out of the Etherwave (I find it a bit sterile and am working on a little paper [the researcher in me demands it] describing effects and processing techniques to enhance it without destroying its soul). And as a composer, I’m also writing practice pieces to help me. Basically – I’m hooked!

So there it is. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some examples of my progress soon and also contribute as best I can in the forums  – as I fear this beast of an instrument is going to possess me until I die, and quite probably contribute to my demise.  Perhaps I’ll even give a shot at building one with my son (who will graduate from UPenn in Engineering/Robotics next year). Frankly, I think the antenna is in the wrong place to put you in the optimal position of comfort. It should be more by your side where you can easily play it in a palm up position. Well, gotta get back to practicing.

Rich

P.S. Can someone tell me how to use the button to add an image (.jpg I asume) to a post. I tired typoing in the disk location c:\yadayada, but that didn't seem to work. Don;' see a brose button to up load a picture. Thanks!

"So I’m now hard at work practicing (when I can) and experimenting getting a better tone out of the Etherwave (I find it a bit sterile and am working on a little paper [the researcher in me demands it] describing effects and processing techniques to enhance it without destroying its soul)" - Rich

Fascinating! - I would love to read that paper!

The above is something I have been experimenting with for a long time (not particularly for the EW - been more looking at going right back to the mixer) and my direction has honed in to getting the right excitation waveform and slapping this into a bank of formant filters. Originally (and to some extent I still am) looking primarily at vocal formants, but I have realized that many of the formants (or slight peaks, not truly "formants") in the original instruments were probably due to audio transformers and imperfections, and arent at vocal positions -

I think that changing the excitation dynamically as a function of frequency (an area I spent a lot of time on) probably isnt as important as the depth and placement of the fixed formants..

But I have been doing all of my experimenting with analogue circuits (and sounds generated by digital simulation of these) and its something I have not seen any other person working on for theremins, so its real exciting to have someone else state that they find the sound "a bit sterile" and looking into how to improve it! - To me, there is nothing "sterile" about the sound from any Lev theremin, and as far as I can tell this could be more to do with static resonances than anything else.

"[the researcher in me demands it]"

GREAT! Another disciplined engineer and researcher at TW! Welcome aboard! -- I think we are treated rottenly at TW ;-) we are under-appreciated and exploited and harassed and generally have a real hard time! ;-) - I have been thinking of starting a Dilbert group here where we can give each other moral support!

;-)

Fred.

hello rkram53,

lovely to have another  ew+, cv-user in this phuny niche of the www.

your PS.: http://www.thereminworld.com/Forums/T/29054/how-to-post-a-link-in-the-new-format

helped me

dani

Hello all,

My name is Richard and I live in Denver, Colorado. My interest in unusual instruments (or maybe non-mainstream would be a better term) led me to discover the theremin recently. I acquired a used Burns B3 Deluxe on eBay and just received it in the mail yesterday. I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities of this instrument and learning from you all!

Hi Veronica,  You may be interested in some of the theremin classes that are conducted by the NY theremin Society.   Usually held at the art space, Pioneer Works, in Red Hook, Brooklyn and are conducted by two professional thereminists (rob Schwimmer and Dorit Chrysler) and myself.    The next round is sometime this fall- october or november, I think. 

Sunday Oct. 5th at Pioneer Works

3-5 Adult

6-8 Advanced

I'll post details soon

Some newcomers have asked: "Can someone tell me how to use the button to add an image (.jpg I asume) to a post. " and similar:

Ok - Images must be URL's.. as in, they must be on the WWW and not on your hard drive!

Likewise with Video - You tube URLs or whatever.

If you need to store theremin related images, create a photo album on TW and copy them there. (there is a browse function to let you select a .jpg or .gif) and link to this.

I have found it possible to simply drag a .jpg image to the editor, and the editor seems to store this image somewhere at tw and places a link.. But it doesnt always seem to work.

Hope this helps,

Fred.

ok - I just pasted the above from MS paint directly (.JPG)  - selected section of the image, ctrl-C  then clicked in this editor and ctrl-V

DIRECTLY PASTED FROM MS PAINT using CTRL-C (Copy) and CTRL-V (Paste):

.GIF pasted directly works

.TIFF works

.PNG works

<removed .bmp image>

.BMP doesn't work.

So .JPG, .GIF, .PNG and .TIFF all work and can be directly pasted to the editor.

.BMP doesnt work and cannot even be uploaded to the photo album - but .BMP hogs space and aint worth bothering with anyway.

<technical> Ok - did some examination of the image data.. Seems that a pasted image is inserted as a data structure not a pointer, and this is embedded into the thread.. So as long as the program used to display this data doesn't change, this might be the most secure way to embed images - Pointers depend on the source image remaining where the link points.. Loads of images from past posts seem to have been lost or un-linked, and the last change of forum software screwed the formatting of all previous threads.. Oh, the new forum look and editor is IMO far nicer - but its sad that old threads have become so difficult to read.