Original Classic Theremin Building

Hello Domnik,

We go way back, I was jealous of you back then as you made my early stuff sound better than I could.

The modulation is the line level output of any theremin, I am using my Altermen which is a hybrid tube valve. You hear the actual sound at the beginning and the end as I morph back to the original shading. The string sounding decay is using two interesting natural effects I have noticed over the years, one comes from the way the ear interprets popping the note and for the decaying aspect you will have to wait until I draw up the board. Been working on the layout all day, almost done. It plays by finger tapping a plate with the volume hand. This should be fun for any Thereminist except that one, he does not know how to play and have fun! LOL

Theremin sound is almost an illusion, a trick of the mind!

Christopher

My approach to Volume is so different it is better here than there.

In this post I demonstrate another method of volume ATTACK by placing the aggressive response in the outside field, then have a wide window of inner volume field shading. This is > 12” volume field.

Due to worldwide terrorist threats this sound byte may not be accessible to everyone?

If you are conditioned to a digital whistle sound buried in reverb you may not appreciate the beauty of my old school sound where I am also unable to play a tune. If a Thereminist played this I am sure it could get interesting.

I do not call my research a theremin because it developed independently without looking how Lev Sergeyevich did his design or anyone else. With all the stuff we have to work with today I think my design ended up better, which is why I call it the Altermen for "Alternative Theremin". In the right hands someone might think Spirits are being channeled. This is theremin direct to sound card with no acoustic development, just your speakers.

The Master designer also heard this sound, I did not invent it, amazingly it develops from natural phenomena's that are truly what the theremin instrument should demonstrate. I read somewhere that Clara Rockmore commented that in the later years her Lev design of theremin no longer had the sound.

          Authentic Sound with Volume Attack.mp3 _600kb

Christopher

Edit: This sound is raw for analysis, it is much better when developed with acoustic resonance and a bit of reverb.

Today I will remind people of what the theremin once was. I can hear that whisper in my head of Lev Sergeyevich first words when he put together his many versions of a solid-state theremin through the 60’s, 70’s & early 80’s, all he did was gasp and never mentioned the experience publicly. 

All his later Theremins were built using parts from the toy department (Detskii Mir) in Moscow and at that time nobody in Moscow was interested in his work. He actually slept in his lab in the attic and had a pet mouse that he trained (pedagogical) to come out of hiding to the certain tone of the Theremin…

Christopher

One sample below is the dewy theremin which is a good value and the other is my Altermen, $35,000. (-' Neither one of us can play a tune so this should put to rest the argument that you need a good Thereminist for this test.

The Thereminist creates the passion and music but not the actual sound, as some like to state. Both samples are NOT buried in reverb or based upon acoustics. Both are the actual wave shapes after the "mixer" without excuses. It is at this point the all important audio wave shape can be studied.

After teaching so many University Students I am happy no one today had interest in my work. I just want to demonstrate what the digital people do not want you to know. Which sound is a conspiracy for commercial gain, of course none, we demonstrate what we know!  I have nothing to sell so don't ask, I give things away.

Me and the dewy are not playing a tune just sweeping the audio. Actually both of these are authentic sound.  Both will be replace when improved samples show up. Which one would you purchase, why I always say get a sound byte of any designer or seller of anything you are considering.

all solid-state Dewy-Sound.mp3            hybrid analog Altermen-Sound.mp3

Christopher

Edit: It would be great to have a So Calif Thereminist drive out to Pechanga to try out the Altermen for an original experience and record the sound that was discovered by the man and hidden from RCA. This is true analog, the budget sound of digital with lots of reverb will win out in the end but not yet!

hello christopher,

your link to the UNO-sound leads to the NANO page. by UNO i understand the arduino based theremin by urs gaudenz and by NANO i understand the theremin by assec. so wich is wich? :-) dani

btw: do you like the "phoenix" voice of the UNO ?

"The Thereminist creates the passion and music but not the sound itself, as some like to state."

What is "the sound" of an instrument?

Is it the wave-shape or harmonic content? Is it the way the harmonic content changes as pitch and/or amplitude changes?

Is it the dynamics? is it variations of pitch or vibrato? is it variations of amplitude or tremolo?

And how many of the above does the thereminist have control over?

Don't listen to me! look at the basic science! http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/timbre.html and you will understand the the most wonderful waveform "managed" by an incompetent will sound less appealing or realistic than an "inferior" waveform played by a thereminist.

Given the choice of listening to a Gakken played by Lydia Kavina, or a Lev tube theremin played by some incompetent, I would prefer the SOUND from the Gakken!

IMO, the only way to judge theremin sounds against each other is if these theremins are played by equally highly competent thereminists. As for comparing "digital" sounds vs "analogue" ones, by the time one has squashed the audio into some MP3 format, if the waveforms are approximately the same to start with, then after mutilation nobody could tell the difference.

From link above:

"The primary contributers to the quality or timbre of the sound of a musical instrument are harmonic content, attack and decay, and vibrato. The ordinary definition of vibrato is "periodic changes in the pitch of the tone", and the term tremolo is used to indicate periodic changes in the amplitude or loudness of the tone. So vibrato could be called FM (frequency modulation) and tremolo could be called AM (amplitude modulation) of the tone. Actually, in the voice or the sound of a musical instrument both are usually present to some extent.

Vibrato is considered to be a desirable characteristic of the human voice if it is not excessive. It can be used for expression and adds a richness to the voice. If the harmonic content of a sustained sound from a voice or wind instrument is reproduced precisely, the ear can readily detect the difference in timbre because of the absence of vibrato. More realistic synthesized tones will add some type of vibrato and/or tremolo to produce a more realistic tone."

The most important aspect of the theremin and the sound of the theremin is, IMO, the ability of the skilled player to manually control pitch and vibrato rapidly and precisely, and with a heterodyning instrument these actions will also directly modify the harmonics of the sound during the pitch change.

But these most important aspects will rarely be noticed or experienced by an incompetent player, it is only those who have the ability and hone their playing skills who will ever experience this gold for themselves - we must just appreciate it when we hear others produce it... And when we hear this "authentic" sound, dont forget that we are usually hearing it after it has gone through an Analogue to Digital converter and then back through a Digital to Analogue converter - Almost everything we now hear IS DIGITAL! - So the idea that a digital waveform cannot capture the "essence" must be nonsense!

And for us incompetents, the "basic tone" of the instrument becomes far more important than perhaps it should be - because we dont have the skill to 'bend' this tone the way real players can.

I am not saying the waveform is not important, dont get me wrong... But almost any waveform can be produces by analogue or digital technology, so I really dont think the waveform is the primary "problem" - I believe the primary reason why digital theremins sound inferior may be due to latency - the fast precision control which makes the theremin sound, is what is screwed by recent digital instruments.

I may be wrong about some of the above - But I would never be bold enough to state that the thereminist is not responsible for the sound (or at least some of it) coming from a theremin, because I cannot see any way that this could be true.. Likewise, I wont state that tubes dont give a 'quality' that's 'better', nor that no other technology could equal tubes, or subjective stuff like that - because there are no grounds on which to base such assertions - whether pro or anti.

Fred.

Oh - we have just seen that the Nano sound is entirely analogue!  ;-) [apart from the fact that its been turned into a digital MP3]

Now that did surprise me greatly - but it clearly demonstrates the point... Neither you nor I were able to hear the difference between a sound produced by a digital engine or one produced entirely by analogue! - in this case we both mistook an "analogue sound" for a "digital" one, and I am damn sure that if digital theremin latency is eliminated, we will be hearing "analogue" and "heterodyning" and "tubes" from digital theremins.

I really dont like this idea - it kind off removes that whole reason for being an analogue musical instrument designer - but its a bullet I am sure I will need to bite one day.. probably soon.

I moved this from the gofundme thread to keep it on topic...

The authentic theremin voice cannot be replaced with a sine wave, triangle or square wave and expect to carry the Theremin name. Here is another sample of my non theremin authentic sound as a wav file so it can be analyzed. Why do you bring up Bob, he "never" had it. Did RCA I don't know. Why would I want to imitate RCA? Everyone should stop dissecting everyone else's design and demonstrate something of your own even if you can't be original and do it in this lifetime. 

Yes my sound is mystical, as much as your sound is probably delusional, this refers to only a couple of people who are authorities and never demonstrated anything that works much less a sound byte.

Creating a musical sound is the most difficult aspect of theremin design, ask anyone who has actually made one.

Authentic Sound  wav 2.5 meg   Direct to sound card, the only shame is I am unable to play a tune. Yes this sound would improve if it was acoustically developed and mic'ed but this is Raw for the experiment.

Christopher

"this refers to only a couple of people who are authorities and never demonstrated anything that works much less a sound byte." - Christopher

My apology, Christopher -

I thought your nasty comments were aimed at me!

 Royal Festival Hall, London 2010.

Instruments played by several leading thereminists with no disapproval and comments on good sound quality and playability - was not designed as a "class" theremin, was designed on a tight budget for entertainment, sound was great, but I had bigger plans - I was commissioned to produce a custom instrument by Nick Fraglen following his playing of these at the show and preferring the sound to what other theremins produced - I suffered heart failure while preparing this instrument, so it never met the deadline.

"never demonstrated anything that works"

Does not apply to me. So please stop this veiled slander! You KNOW that the shit you are spouting is UNTRUE!

Fred.

Fascinating photos, the young girl playing your theremin I think is your daughter? The pitch antenna looks like a plastic tube with a thin wire wrap, have you been paying attention. The frequency of the pitch circuit should be above 900khz.

The future of the theremin is in our children. I am all ears do I hear any theremin sound?

Christopher

"The pitch antenna looks like a plastic tube with a thin wire wrap, have you been paying attention. The frequency of the pitch circuit should be above 900khz." - RS

You have a wild  imagination, you see things that arent there and probably hear things that dont exist ! "plastic tube with wire wrap" LOL - The punters managed to bend some of my 6mm brass studding with tube over it! - plastic tubes may have survived a day. but certainly not the 10 days that these 16 instruments were operating continuously from 9am to 11:30pm and catering for hundreds of people who sometimes grabbed the antennas thinking they were joysticks! .. In those 10 days I had 2 instruments out of operation for a couple of hours so that bent antennas could be repaired - other than that they worked continuously without problem.  They were solid Aluminum  tube antenna threaded on inside, heat shrink sleeve on outside.

Copy your spiral antenna? If it worked, I would, and would credit you with the idea.. But it doesn't - as has been demonstrated conclusively by investigations from several constructors, and comprehensively by one here at TW.

But you know this.

The only thing your stretchable antenna does is to allow some minor adjustment of capacitance an therebye facilitate a small degree of tuning. Much simpler, lighter and cheaper way to do this is with my design shown above, which also allows far greater adjustment of capacitance.

But adjustment of antenna capacitance serves no purpose for improving linearity unless there is a series antenna inductance forming a secondary equalizing circuit - your designs do not have such an inductance, you did not even know their function!

You know that your slander is deliberate dishonesty, and you make no apology even when this is indisputably demonstrated - Whatever your diagnosis, you are most certainly suffering from malignant narcissistic personality disorder (MNPD) - People like you simply cannot apologize or recognize any personal failure.

If I wasn't so irritated by you I would feel nothing but sadness for your state -

Fred.