MIDI Ethervox & Haken Continuum
Peter Pringle
Ed Eagan came over yesterday afternoon. He is one of the developers of the Haken Continuum fingerboard and a super guy. It was great meeting him in person. I gave him my Moog MIDI Ethervox theremin to take home and work with for a while so he can figure out the possibilities of successfully interfacing the MIDI theremin with the Continuum - something I have not been able to do. The MIDI part of the Ethervox theremin (as some of you here already know) was designed by Rudi Linhard of LINTRONICS. The Ethervox is actually two instruments in a single cabinet: a traditional heterodyne theremin (VOICE ONE) and a theremin synthesizer (VOICE TWO) with MIDI transmitter/receiver capability. Bob Moog considered the E’Vox his finest theremin, and many people today believe it is the finest theremin ever made. When it was introduced in 1998, it had a $3500.00 price tag which was too rich for the target market, and consequently not many of them were sold. This was a personal disappointment for Bob, and fewer than 50 of them were made.
The new Moog Music THEREMINI has limited MIDI capabilities but comparing it to the Ethervox is like comparing a Steinway to Schroeder’s piano.
It would be very exciting to be able to trigger the amazing library of internal sounds of the Haken Continuum using the Moog Ethervox and if anybody can figure out how, and IF, this can be done, Ed Eagan can!
Here’s a picture (above) of Ed in my studio, playing Dr. Samuel Hoffman's theremin! 000OOOOOoooooo
Rob Schwimmer
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Thierry Frenkel
After what I have seen and what I have been told, Bob Moog had already a Midi-Theremin in mind when he brought the Series 91 theremins to market. There were plans (I found that mentioned in the Swiss-German owner's manual of a 91C) to extend the 91 Series which existed in different cabinet versions (A=classic, B=U-shape, C=modern) by a 91 M (=midi).
From this information and from my good insight into the 91A,B, and C theremins AND from pictures of the Ethervox circuit boards I conclude that the Ethervox is nothing other than what was planned as the 91M. Thus, the Voice I of the Ethervox would not be very true heterodyning, but rather the same or even improved phase shift/compare->VCO principle as in the series 91 instruments which seems also to match better the look onto the Ethervox circuit boards.
At the end, that does not really matter. What counts is how the instrument feels and sounds when it is played by a gifted musician. The longer I dive in different theremin model innards, the more I understand that the pure musician does not really care about circuit details. Either an instrument allows the musician to play the music he/she wants with the expression he/she wants or it does not, but that is the main criteria. Tubes, field-effect transistors and digital CMOS chips are of secondary relevance.
Since I understood that, I immediately stopped partaking in these fruitless academic-theoretic discussions by absolutely unmusical engineers on TW and I feel much better now. I think that I understand the different construction principles well enough to know what a specific circuit detail can do and what it can't. That is extremely helpful for servicing instruments or for counseling people before they buy an instrument, so that one can try to "match" the requirements and capabilities. It's sometimes helpful, too, when people discover weak points and I try to make individual modifications to correct these. But I have seen good and bad tube instruments as well as good and bad transistor instruments. Good instruments are generally designed by people who are not only engineers but who have "a musical hand" and an artistic mind, too. Bad instruments are built by technocrats whose first priority are profit and low production costs.
Finally, all that does not only apply to theremins. So I stop my philosophic excursion here.
Have a nice evening!
Peter Pringle
Thierry wrote: "......Since I understood that, I immediately stopped partaking in these fruitless academic-theoretic discussions by absolutely unmusical engineers on TW and I feel much better now."
Thierry, that is one of the most wonderful things you have ever written!
So often I have read your patient and scholarly technical explanations on TW (which I cannot begin to understand), and asked myself why you were wasting your time casting your pearls before swine. The answer was always the same: it is your generosity of spirit and natural loving inclination that causes you to do this.
You may very well be right about the E'Vox. I don't know. And I'm not sure anybody else does either.
Someone scrawled onto the wall of the Zen monastery: "ABANDON ABANDONMENT"
Peter Pringle
Thierry, there is a difference between the way VOICE ONE and VOICE TWO behave on the MIDI Ethervox theremin. As you know, the SERIES 91 theremins are gestural synthesizers.The sound is not generated by the beats produced between variable and fixed oscillators, consequently there is no “null” point where there is no sound, as there is on heterodyne instruments. No matter how low you go, there is always a sound from a SERIES 91. This is also true of VOICE TWO on the Ethervox.
The E’Vox VOICE ONE, however, behaves like a heterodyne theremin and has a null point where no sound is produced. Wouldn’t this suggest that VOICE ONE is not produced by VC ?
For me, theremins are like my car. I know how to fill the tank with gas, change the oil, fix a flat tire and put windshield washer into the bottle under the hood. Beyond that, I’M LOST!
