Something different today. Nothing related to Linux or whatever, this time it’s all about hardware. And art! Musical art to be more precise.
I wanna introduce you to the Open Theremin, probably the first and only musical instrument you play by NOT touching it AND that’s fully open source, both the soft- and hardware.
It arrived yesterday and I played around with it for a few minutes. Because I haven’t learned yet how to play proper notes (it has a HUGE range of sounds it can make!), it sounded more like a tinnitus than music for now. Still, I had LOTS of fun just jamming around 🙃
What even is a theremin?
The theremin is a IMO pretty underrated and unknown musical instrument.
Traditionally, it’s fully analog, but the Open Theremin is based on an Arduino, which makes it better (less expensive, better playability, etc.) from what I’ve read.
The theremin was the first synthesizer invented about 100 years ago. Due to its high prize tag, limited pitch and very steep learning curve, it hasn’t really caught up with other musical instruments yet and mostly found its niche in sound effects, because there just aren’t that many professional players out there.
Carolina Eyck is one of those. Here for example is a very well done song played on the instrument by her.
How is it played? In theory, very simple. You have two antennas: one for the pitch, and one for the volume.
When you increase or decrease the hand distance from them, you can change the sounds it can produce. So you pretty much play it by just wiggling your arms around in the air.
This 2 minute video explains all of it very well.
The Open Theremin
As already mentioned, the OT is based on an Arduino and therefore digital.
Everything is open source, both the hardware (schematics, instructions, etc.) and the software.
It’s a very cool project with a great focus on community.
Here for example you can find lots of cases people designed for the instrument.
It’s highly modular and customisable, including people who turned it into a MIDI input device.
I bought it for 130€, but had to pay extra ~40€ duty because I imported it from Switzerland.
It came like this:
Just the board, the antennas, knobs, a thread and some screws.
Assembled it looks like this:
I will also craft a case for it soon.
While you can (and traditionally DO) play it as standalone device, I also ordered a Pocketmaster effect “pedal” you usually use for electric guitars.
Without it, it sounds pretty “flat” imo, a bit like a mosquito, because it just creates one signal (and because I have zero experience!). With the effect pedal, you can add some reverb for example, which gives it a lot of depth and makes it sound more like a proper musical instrument. And because it’s digital, I can change the sound entirely, from a bass humming up to a metal chainsaw guitar effect and whatever. There are so many modifications in the pedal that I’m quite overwhelmed right now to be fair. I really have to dive into it first.
Are you guys interested in that kind of stuff?
If so, I could post another update in the future regarding the case, some tips and maybe even a few songs I make as soon as I get the hang of it.
When I researched I found it a bit disheartening to find barely any information about this device and think more people should be aware of that cool project…
Muscle memory is not enough when playing a string instrument, so I can’t imagine it is when playing the theremin synthesiser either! Muscle memory gets you in the right ball-park but you need tactile cues as well as to listen to be as accurate as possible. Typing on a touchscreen keyboard gives you visual cues (it’s usually close to where you’re looking, closer than a physical keyboard) and I believe accuracy suffers compared to a keyboard with its tactile feedback (that is, if your fingers are off, you feel that you’re hitting the edges of the keys).
It seems to me that anything you can do in the free air you should be able to do with an appropriately-scaled slider or other control system. I was enamoured of the theremin synthesiser when I first heard about it, but when I realised it is just using the hand position to affect two single capacitance values, rather than anything more complicated, I was disappointed!
Sure, you may have a point. Or not, I don’t know, really.
But can we maybe just agree that it looks fancy? You’re literally creating music out of thin air. That’s why it was called “Etherophone” at first, because you touch the ether itself and create harmony ^
(or, in my case, weird mosquito noises and sirens...)^Yeah, I guess it looks cool. Tho I think lots of instruments, and playing them, look cool :P
Well, if you really wanted perfect intonation the best way would be to completely preprogram all the notes using software and remove the live performance by a human part.
Not saying I have a lot of everyday need for a theremin but I think it’s a pretty cool instrument.
I, of course, was not saying I demanded perfect intonation, which does not exist. But intonation that I, an at-best-moderately critical listener, can tell is way off, is not what I would aim for and I have heard that in a professional recording.
Why don’t I reframe it: why would you not want an instrument which is like the theremin synthesiser but which instead of placing the hands in free space you place them on some kind of board? How does it get worse?
There are people out there who have mastered the Theremin and can absolutely play on point.
Also, not everything even needs to be perfect. Unpredictability, glitchiness, noise and not being pitch-perfect can be an aesthetic goal in itself.
I don’t think you really answered (or even whether you were trying to).
I don’t think randomly going off-pitch is an aesthetic goal; I think if you wanted to do that you could easily, in an electric instrument, introduce a random pitch bend. No-one ever does… What people do do is introduce intentional pitch bends - vibrato is an obvious example, but also pushing the tuning of certain intervals outside what the typical equal-tempered distances would be.
The reason I asked the question above the way I did is because it seems universally acknowledged that intonation on the theremin synthesiser is significantly harder than on a fretless string-instrument, which affords the same expressiveness in pitch. Unless there is genuinely an advantage to its setup (and, again, randomly bad pitch is not one IMO) should we not want to make it easier?
I tried to give a genuine answer, but maybe not to the question you really had in mind.
No, I don’t think ease of play and reproducibility should be the goal when designing each and every instrument.
Let’s talk about another, modern synthesizer as an example, SOMA’s Lyra 8. While you can manually tune the instrument to play a scale, it is infamous for modifying any initial tuning due to its internal feedback loops and won’t stay tuned for very long. If you tried to always keep it in tune, you’d be arguably using it wrong. It’s also rather hard to integrate with other instruments since it’s so hard to control - it has a reputation to play it’s user, not the other way around. I’ve heard people say they need a cigarette after a 20 minute session with the device. Yes, it’s hard to play, sometimes maybe even frustrating, but it also is a unique experience and one of my favorite instruments.
Let’s switch to a completely different example. Digital photography, both photo and video, is without a doubt a much more advanced and much more predictable alternative to analog, film-based photography. Still, people are actively looking to shoot film, sometimes even using expired film for its certain look and to explicitly seek the unpredictable.
About 20 years ago, I was asked to repair a Soviet film camera. The shutter timing mechanism was broken, so I replaced it with a completely predictable ATTin85 controlling the old electronics that time the shutter. The artist didn’t like this approach at all and refused to use it.
I hope this gives you a better insight into what I was trying to say.
Finally, as I said earlier, I don’t even believe a good, modern Theremin played by an expert is even be unpredictable to begin with.