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…
How to play a scale on a Theremin. This is Carolina Eyck, she demonstrates her technique for playing a scale on the Theremin that she invented and which has become the standard way to play the instrument. It took all these years for someone to figure this out.
I’m never going to buy/make something like this myself, but I am nonetheless very happy to see this in my feed and read about it. Super interesting, thanks for sharing!
Love seeing more novel, non-linux foss stuff, thanks for sharing! ☺️
I always wanted to start an all-man all-theremin band called “ThereMen.”
One of my favorite memories was seeing The Octopus Project and Man or Astro-Man? live and at the end of the show the two bands had “dueling theremins” and the guy from Man or Astro-Man set his theremin on fire.
That’s all I really have to contribute here. Cool project though, I’d still rather save a hell of a lot of money for a Moog.
The smallest member can be named TheMin and the largest the…ah forget about it. You have a great idea there.
Here’s Léon Theremin showcasing his instrument:
Definitely interested - post updates!
I always wonder about something, as of 2025 doesn’t better technology to create a theremin exist? for example using lasers or motion capture sensors. I also got an open theremin (i like the historical value the theremin has) but as an instrument to play i’m concerned about his reliability in the modern era
Maybe I don’t understand what you mean, but it seems pretty reliable to me. In what way do you envision it failing? Lasers or mocap would seem to make it less reliable due to the required processing.
If you use lasers it is not a theremin.
I always thought the theremin was an overly impractical synthesiser. Even having the two control axes controlled by wheels or rods would make more sense.
I play cello and it’s notable that hitting a note when you have to arrive there by sliding the finger into position is a lot easier than when you have to place the finger in the correct position from the air (during a shift - the latter is fine if the whole hand is in position)
That is to say, having a tactile reference is better than waving your arms around in the air. This was reinforced for me when I heard a theremin recording by a pro and the intonation was noticeably bad.
You usually don’t “wave” your arms blindly in the air, you have a defined set of fingering positions and movements. Once you’ve learned them, they’re in muscle memory, just like typing on a touchscreen keyboard instead of a physical one.
You actually have a huge scale range. The octaves are defined by the location of your hand, the notes themselves are by the fingers. It’s supposed to be pretty accurate and makes sense from what I’ve heard?
I couldn’t think of always hitting the exact correct note out of hundreds just by a slider.
If you want something with a slider, theres the Stylophone Theremin
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.
Is this made for a modular rack. That face plate looks like it would fit my in my euro rack case. I have a Theremin that was somewhat homemade that I got off of eBay about 25 years ago. It’s fun and novel, and somewhat hard to play, but I love the sounds it can make.
That’s pretty cool! I see there’s holes there for antennae, what are those for?
They are just the screw holes. No other use I know of
