Creating a theremin sample set

The idea of an RCA "sound" direct from the instrument is like talking about taking the sound direct from the larynx and feeding this to an amplifier.. It wouldn't sound sound like a voice.

Back in the '30's there was no such thing as "line out" - One didnt have hi-fi separates, or synthesisers, or any of the stuff we (since the '60s) have taken for granted - Every electronic thing one wanted to hear had to actually produce the sound as sound.. It had to have its own amplifier and loudspeaker - it was a complete instrument - not a "module" one connected to some standard amplifier and speaker with standard (flat) frequency response.

And IMO it is this difference which had underpinned our misunderstanding when talking about 'capturing' or 'replicating' old instruments.

When Lev designed / prototyped / built his instruments, these were built as a composite - the waveform being fed into the amplifier / speaker was tailored (as much as possible) to interface with the amplifier / speaker.. ) These did not have a even remotely flat frequency response - severely high harmonic levels on the signal would be cut by the amplifier and speakers roll-off... And if the amplifier was changed or loudspeaker changed, the instruments sound would change. The whole instrument was crafted - not just the 'front-end - the amplifier was crafted at the same time as the front-end.. This can be clearly seen on Clara's theremin, where the tone controls are actually operating on the power amplifier feedback.

These days we can take any modern instrument and plug it into any modern amplifier / speaker, and it will sound the same - but take an RCA signal and feed it into a modern amplifier / loudspeaker (which you cannot actually do because the potential on the RCA output is lethal) and it would sound harsh and horrible.

Then there is also the recording medium on which original recordings (that define our understanding of what theremins are "supposed" to sound like) to take into account - What we hear is not what the audience listening to the performance heard - the sound was picked up with microphones that themselves colored the sound, and recorded on early recorders which again colored the sound.

The result of combined colorations (amplifier, loudspeaker, physical resonances, microphone coloration, tape coloration) and non linearities means that what we hear on old recordings will be hugely different to the tone the designer crafted. The ONLY people who can get close to the sound the designer intended are those with access to complete original instruments - THESE people could capture with modern microphones, the most reasonably close samples.

But looking at the electrical waveforms in an RCA isn't going to help (other than for showing technical data on, for example, the change in waveform as pitch changes) . The closest one can come to the "original" recorded sound of the RCA is probably by recording a harsh theremin played through a bad amplifier / loudspeaker with a poor quality microphone into a recorder with  low-fi qualities (say compact cassette) and add some noise and  mains hum.

Take an EW signal with brightness cranked up, feed this into some vintage plug-ins on your DAW, tailor the frequency response, and you can get quite close to something like the RCA sound heard on OLD recordings.. The thing which makes it unconvincing isnt, IMO, the sound, as much as the fact that performers of that time could play! Particularly IMO with theremins, where the waveform actually changes proportional to pitch rate-of-change, vibrato and skillful playing actually changes the harmonic qualities of the sound. As I have said many times - there is an essential component of the theremin that cannot be replicated - in fact, the player becomes an actual physical component of the theremin, and in real, practical terms, one cannot have a Claramin unless on has a Clara, a LydiaVox without a Lydia, or a PringlePro without a Pringle!

To get close to what those who actually listened to a live rendition of an original instrument heard, we need to record an original complete instrument using modern recording technology, and one really hears these instruments in their glory only when such a setup os played by a master.

Fred.

Hello Rich,

Check your TW private message in the upper right corner of this webpage when signed in. I give you access to a four-second sound byte. What you do with that will help me understand what you are trying to do. I am so naïve to music I had to look up what chromatic notes mean and still not clear.

Blessed are those invited into the Inner Sanctum. . .

I think people today have been conditioned to use the term theremin to represent an idea not a sound. I never heard of Bob Moog or Lev Sergeyevich during the early part of my design ten years ago nor did I look at what anyone else was doing. I heard the word theremin mentioned on television in the 60’s. I just wanted to make a simple AM Radio transmitter as I did as a kid. The journey begins that innocently.

Often I have mentioned to people at TW if you had a choice, do you want a theremin that looks authentic or sounds authentic, do you want a thin whistle or fat sound, no response and so most seem to copy from one another.

I discovered something interesting about heterodyned sound as Lev Sergeyevich also must have. I call my build an Altermen so there is no confusion that my design is original and not a copy. What my design has is unique and can not be found using modern day Modeling. As stated in my Vision my design has no antennas, no vertical pitch rod, volume-loop or metal plates. It represents stand-alone simplicity.

My statement in the past is Lev Sergeyevich did not tell RCA everything, this is the only way I can justify that I did not alone discover a phenomena of nature that is special to making natural music.

Christopher

Christopher,

It would be hard for me to know exactly what sound I'd like to have on my theremins. the majority of the sound produced is vastly created by the thereminist itself. I would have to have the product in my hand, play with the instrument for several weeks or months in order to know exactly what i'd like THAT theremin to sound like.

"the majority of the sound produced is vastly created by the thereminist itself." - Amey

I completely agree.

And the playability of the instrument can enable the best to come from the thereminist. IMO even if you loaded "original" theremin samples into something like a theremini, you could never play these in a way that made the instrument sound even remotely like the "original".

But I could be wrong of course. Perhaps only a theremin blessed by some spiritual entity or disclosed in some vision can ever sound like a true theremin, and perhaps some dark entity deludes most of us into thinking that  sounds we think are good, are in fact just thin whistles, and sounds we hear as ugly and enharmonic are in fact the pure gold.

This is IMO the trouble - we are all in our own subjective bubbles - and if we aren't able to employ science and analysis because these are blasphemy, then we will always be in the dark ages and subject to those who convince us that pure gold connectors and oxygen free cables make our LM386 amplifiers sound better .

Fred.

Fred ~

Unless the theremin has major flaws (like the theremini, it appears), a good thereminist can adapt pretty well to different theremins within minutes. I have 3 theremins at home ~ with all different linearity, and to switch from one to another can be done pretty quickly.

I donno Fred ~ I am a little strange when it comes to that "iconic" theremin sound. In all honesty, Clara's Theremin sound isn't my "Holy Grail" ~ I would have loved to hear her on other theremins and see what she could do with them. What captures me is the connection one has with the instrument, how that thereminist can approach a certain passage, the complexity of mixing different combinations/variations of slides, vibrato, straight tones etc :)

"Unless the theremin has major flaws (like the theremini, it appears), a good thereminist can adapt pretty well to different theremins within minutes. I have 3 theremins at home ~ with all different linearity, and to switch from one to another can be done pretty quickly." - Amey

Amey,

The key here is "a good thereminist" I think. Some lesser mortals (who nonetheless can recognize pitch) like me find that any deviation from their 'ideal feel' makes the instrument impossible.. I think there are two groups who can 'play' any theremin - the good thereminists and those who wouldn't be able to detect if they were 2.5 semitones off key! ;-)

As for the "iconic" sound - Every early (tube) theremin has a different sound, and the (variable) recording technology used on early recordings influenced the sounds we use as 'reference' the "icons" .. I prefer the tone quality of Lev theremins on early recordings (By Lev, Clara, Lucy and others) more than I like the sound of some of these same instruments played into modern recording equipment. Some modern recordings are great (Peter is the master!) but I suspect this is due to correctly equalizing the audio spectrum - I have heard some modern recording of the Claramin which sounded horrible to me, and suspect this is partly because the recordings of Clara were made on magnetic tape and I like the saturation / EQ this imparted to the sound -

But it may all just be down to how these instruments were played.

"What captures me is the connection one has with the instrument, how that thereminist can approach a certain passage, the complexity of mixing different combinations/variations of slides, vibrato, straight tones etc :)"

That's because, quite literally, you ARE the instrument - You and the instrument are one, in an absolute physical way - its not a connection, its an integration.. One can be connected to other instruments, but you can only be integrated in a theremin ;-)

Fred.

(add latency though, and ones "integration" is impaired - rather than being a living part of the theremin, you become more like a prosthetic ;-)

Christopher - Thanks! I need to play around a bit now and see if my ideas are going to pan out. For me its all about the sound (whatever the source).

As for Amethyste - totally agree - The theremin is no different than a piano. The same instrument can sound totally different depending on who is playing it. Can't argue with that. 

Now I gotta go make some music!

Rich

Christopher,

Unfortunately I could not find a long enough steady state tone with a nice envelope to create a test case theremin sample set from what you sent me, but I extracted a note from a recording of Clara Rockmore's theremin and used that to create a quick and dirty test case. Built this up from a single sampling of a long tone (easy to do in Kontakt). Basically created a .WAV file and imported into Kontakt. Added a bit more of a gradual attack (you can change ADSR of the sample waveform for the note). Kontakt will then map to the MIDI range you specify. There's some aliasing in there (removed most with a Waves noise reduction program). Ideally of course you want to sample each note you use and then sample different layers you can control with key switching (say turning on a vibrato sample using a specified MIDI note out of the range of your sample set). Maybe I'll create a good sample library from my Etherwave for my use at some point.

Played a bit of Chopin on the keyboard using the sample set I created loaded into Kontakt (there is also some tape emulation, compression and convolution reverb added here). The sample is not quite in A440 tuning, but I could tweak it into compliance there if desired.

Quick and Dirty Theremin Sample Set

Interesting how the vibrato carries over well in the sample. Didn't try and play with dynamics which would have made it more expressive, but I was more interested in what a simple sample set would sound like.

I bet if someone wanted to sit down and create the required wave files a pretty nice sample set could be made from an older "classic" theremin (for those interested in sound preservation and compositional use).

Oh well. Interesting experiment. On to other things.

Rich

Hi Rich,

That is quite impressive!

By capturing the vibrato in the samples you have, I think, captured some of the "life".

But even with gliss, I do not think there is any way that I would guess it was a theremin -let alone a classic theremin - it could be a useful sample set for other purposes I think.

Nonetheless, a well produced and interesting experiment, and gives me a glimmer of hope that with enough samples deliberately produced for the task, and a powerful computation engine, a wave-table theremin that was convincing could be realized.

Fred.

Fred,

Thanks. Remember this was all done with one note replicated across the MIDI spectrum. No sample library would sound true that way and the ADSR of the theremin was not really replicated correctly, plus all the constant volume changes in a real peformance affect the sound as well. But having that vibrato in there is critical. A real sample set should likely have both fast and slow vibrato samples so you can create a more natural sound in addition to a sample set that has minimal vibrato. Then you'll need them with different articulations as well (though the theremin does not seem to need as many articulations as say an oboe or violin sample set would).

The next thing will be for me to sample my Etherwave correctly - each note at the correct pitch with an envelope that makes sense (I actually transposed that one sample I took to conform to what Kontakt expects for a single sample set - and that changed the sound a bit too).

But I agree that this sound could be useful as a sound set in and of itself for some purpose - it's not not an ugly sound at all (but I also don't hear the Theremin-ness of it I wanted).

The people that do this professionally might also likely record from a speaker, not direct. That could also create a different sound.

Too many projects - too little time!

Rich