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If you've watched enough '50s sci-fi films you know
what this is. The Theremin was the quintessential musical
instrument of Future Past. It was the perfect hi-tech music box
devoid of bells, pipes, reeds, or strings and its
eerie, warbling tones were enough
to warn us that we were either in the presence of the Other Worldly or
that Ray Milland
was on another bender.
By astonishing coincidence, the Theremin (AKA the
Thereminvox or Ætherophone) was invented in
1919 by
Leon Theremin (1896-1993) (AKA Lev Sergeyevich Termen).
He was originally going to call it the "Leon," but that never caught
on.
 The Theremin works
on the principle of heterodyning oscillators that combines two very
high frequency radio signals by using the capacitance of the human
body to produce a third signal that is then converted into audio.
And if you could follow any of that, then you're a better man than I
am, Gunga Din. In English that means that the Theremin creates an electrical field
around itself and when you place your hand near one of the antennae
your body alters the field and that produces the tones. It's a
bit like adjusting the rabbit ears on a broadcast television set and
then discovering that reception goes kerfooey (a technical term) when
you sit down. You get up again and the picture is fine, you sit
down and it goes fuzzy, and in the end you're trying to psych out a
piece of electronics. In the case of the Theremin
this means that it is one of the few musical instruments that you play
without actually touching it, which is a boon to musicians with
hygiene issues. Instead of thumping, plucking, or blowing into
it, the Theremin is played by moving one hand in the vicinity of the
round antenna that controls volume and the other near the straight one
that controls pitch. Back in 1927, articles hailed how easy it
was to get the Thermin to make sounds as opposed to, say, the violin
where the first few tries make the neighbours think that a cat is
being sexually abused. What they didn't tell you is that
though it's easy to get a Theremin to make sounds it takes years of
dedicated practice to get it to make anything like music. In
fact, to this day there are only a tiny handful of accomplished
Therminists in the world.
This may be one of the reasons why Thereminists are
so touchy.
Although the Theremin is associated with '50s sci-fi movies, the great Thereminists prefer to work exclusively in classical circles.
This may be because it is already hard enough to keep one's
self-esteem
while waving one's hands about in the air and evening dress helps to
salvage some shreds of dignity. |
