theremin applicable?

[Rob Schwimmer]

http://m.mensxp.com/technology/latest/26366-googles-new-project-is-so-insanely-advanced-it-will-blow-you-away.html

[RIchard Kram]

The problem is that whatever anyone will use this for in that regard will be called a foul by theremin purists, but this has really interesting possibilities. Think of a glove that has one controller per finger. You don't need a piano anymore. Just put on your gloves and connect the wireless master MIDI controller that comes with the gloves to your Ivory plugin, and you don't have to worry about lugging any gear around anymore.

Forget just theremins. It can literally replace any instrument. You just dial up your instrument, it sets the right sound for you and then you play. This might be in conjunction with a wind controller for wind players, maybe a cheap stringless fretboard for string and guitar players to set their hands.  

There are glove controllers of this sort out there of course but they are all still very rudimentary, and air drums and other things. But this could open up a new world of possibilities. I want a glove that you conduct with and it plays back your score with all the nuance and rubato in your conducting pattern (people are working on that too but its not ready for prime time yet).

The big issue of course is that for any other instrument musicians expect tactile feedback so learning to play this new "airophone" instrument will mean everyone but thereminists will have to reboot their thinking and learn new technique. But us lucky thereminists will be able to play it beautifully right out of the box if put it on its theremin setting.

Personally I see very little about a theremin that is uniquely meaningful other than the controller and who cares if it is a radio based controller. If the gloves give you the same response, vibrato control, dynamic response (they actually should be able to give you more) etc for generating tones, the tone of the theremin itself is not awfully complex and I expect it could be recreated digitally if anyone really wanted to do it. You also would dial in the exact theremin you want to play and your pitch range. I'm sure the gloves would need a calibration procedure for each instrument you dial up as well.

So this new instrument plays exactly like a theremin and sounds exactly like a theremin (actually like any of 20+ theremins you dial up from RCA to Etherwave)  but it has nothing physically to do anymore with a traditional theremin design. But if you don't touch your theremin to begin with, do you really care that there's no box to schlep around anymore?

Does it kill the theremin industry which isn't too healthy to begin with?

This of course is coming. Your innocent post is really a theremin wake up call.

On Wednesday, September 9, 2015 at 5:41:31 PM UTC-4, Rob Schwimmer wrote:

http://m.mensxp.com/technology/latest/26366-googles-new-project-is-so-insanely-advanced-it-will-blow-you-away.html

[mpic...@earthlink.net]

I think it is fabulous. I cannot wait to see where they take this.

I also think that Lev and Lucie R would be fascinated by this.

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[Peter Pringle]

I agree with Richard Kram. The new chip is terrifically exciting, and if it spells the end of the theremin “industry”, good riddance to it!

Musical instruments, as we see them today, are the result of centuries of evolution and refinement, and there is no reason to assume that the process has stopped. The orchestra of the year 3000 will bear as much resemblance to the orchestra of today, as the orchestra of today bears to the orchestra of 1000 AD. In fact, given the increasing speed of technological development, the orchestra of tomorrow may well be entirely unrecognizable!

The theremin as we know it, is a transitional instrument. As Maurice Martenot rightly recognized in the 1920’s, the theremin is too difficult to play, and far too limited in regard to what can be done with it, to be of any long-lasting, practical musical value. It has survived not because of its contribution to music, but because of its novelty value and the fact that it is relatively cheap to make. 

"Sit down Madame! You exaggerate!"  Sergei Rachmaninoff

As many people have pointed out, the theremin is a “one trick pony” but there are few people in the ever expanding world of the theremin who recognize what that trick is, and even fewer who can pull it off. 

[RIchard Kram]

I'm with you there Peter. I can think of few instruments around today that after 100 years of conception have not evolved. The theremin is basically the same instrument it was back in 1919. Maybe replacing tubes with transistors - but has the sound improved? Has playability really improved?  Has the instrument been modified to play faster or more accurately? It's really treated more like an ethnic instrument where we don't expect or want too much change. That doesn't change the fact though that its a heck of a lot of fun to play.

And what instrument of note has only 20 or so truly proficient players - and probably only half that many truly exceptional players. I have to assume one of the reasons there has not been that much advancement is that there is very little financial incentive. If the theremin was as popular as the piano there would be a zillion variants and electronic options. And the glove controller and things like it are definitely coming. People will be even more amazed to see beautiful music coming out of the air by just waving hands without a box in front of them. The novelty of the theremin will be diminished by these new "instruments".

But the theremin will still be around - more as a folk instrument!

[a.e.c...@freenet.de]

Sorry,

 

the link given by Schwim does not apply in Germany. Maybe it was a victim of German censorship?

 

Arno

 

 

 

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: "RIchard Kram" [rkr...@verizon.net] Gesendet: So. 13.09.2015 16:36 An: "LevNet" [lev...@googlegroups.com] Betreff: [levnet] Re: theremin applicable?

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[Peter Pringle]

Richard Kram wrote: “….I can think of few instruments around today that after 100 years of conception have not evolved.”.

I’m not sure we can claim that the theremin did not evolve. The modern synthesizer is a direct descendant of the theremin.

Although the theremin exists today pretty much as it did in the 1920’s, it does so for two reasons that have nothing to do with its success as a musical instrument: the public fascination with space control, and the fact that theremins are relatively cheap to manufacture. 

The heterodyne phenomenon and its possible use for the creation of music, was discovered independently by two engineers around the end of World War One, Leon Theremin and Maurice Martenot. Theremin built five separate musical instruments based on the heterodyne principle - the theremin, the terpsitone, the theremincello, the rhythmicon and the theremin keyboard. Maurice Martenot, on the other hand, realizing that space control (“le jeu à distance”) was impractical and a dead end musically, developed the ondes. 

Martenot once confessed to his biographer, Jean Laurendeau, that the spiritual progenitor of the ondes was Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonicon. Like it or not, we are related to kangaroos.