Hello and welcome to this Sound on Sound podcast about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Caro C and in this special episode, we are talking all about the Thein that was made 100 years ago. This year the Thein was invented by accident, by scientist and physicist Left Herman now, now known as Leon Thein 

for this special hundredth year anniversary of the Thein. I'm going to be speaking to a few guests today. Firstly, we'll be hearing from Cyril Lance from Moog Synthesizers, who's one of the lead developers and instrument makers of the Moog theremins. Moog are soon to release a special 100th anniversary edition of the theremin called Claravox, which is named after Clara Rockmore, who you will hear a lot more about.

And then we will hear from a small variety of artists within the theremin community. Doric Kreisler. Bruce Woolley and Katya  Izikoff. But first of all, you're going to hear Clara Rockmore herself. Clara Rockmore is considered the  first virtuoso of the theremin. And back in the 1920s, she helped Lev Terman develop and refine his theremin instrument. 

Hello Cyril, thank you for your time today. Let's start with your role in the development of the new Claravox instrument, which is a centenary edition of the theremin. Sure. Well, first, thank you for having me. Um,  my role at, at, at Moog Music is officially right now. I'm the chief technology officer. Um, but I've been involved in product development for 15 years.

Since I came on board at Moog, um, in 2005, and in my capacity in working with the Claravox, uh, was one of the lead designers on the instrument, mainly focusing on the electronics. And the controlling firmware, and then, you know, just all the aspects of the design, but as any product that we design and produce at Moog, it's a huge team effort that really involves every aspect of the organization. 

So, um, you know, just to recognize and When we create an instrument like this, um, there's many engineers involved. Um, incredible effort from the commercial team and the industrial design team and the manufacturing team. And of course, all the people on the floor that lovingly build these instruments and put them in boxes and ship them out.

One of the great things about developing these instruments is it's a huge collaborative effort. And I think the other thing I really want to recognize in the development of our instruments, but ClaraVox especially, is that it's also a large collaborative effort with artists and people in the community.

So, from the moment when we first started envisioning ClaraVox, actually our first step was to start a lot of in depth conversations with a lot of artists and also Jason at Theremin World to, um, really, figure out what were some of the things that artists were looking for in a new instrument, and what were some of the things that they loved about their current instruments or current Moog instruments, and um, just really get a feel for what artists wanted at this point in time.

So we take kind of our internal knowledge and spend a lot of time studying Bob Moog's designs. I mean, he has such a rich history of developing theremins. And also going all the way back to Lev Thurman's original designs. So, uh, it's kind of a long journey and, um, it's been a real fun project for all of us. 

And the story behind the name ClaraVox. Yeah, ClaraVox came, was actually thought of by one of our collaborating artists, Dorit Kreisler, who's an incredible thereminist and also a really dedicated educator on the theremin and a kind of a big community builder. And, um, she was really instrumental in helping shape some of the early ideas of the ClaraVox.

For people that don't know, Clara Rockmore was one of the first virtuosic theremin players, and was really, um, in some ways, Lev Theremin's muse. So, in the early 20s, Lev Theremin was sent by the Russian government to the United States, and, uh, he lived in New York City. and developed his ideas more fully there, kind of in the cradle of the really exploding artistic community there.

And, um, Clara Rockmore was a young violinist who I believe had a, um, an injury that made it.  difficult or impossible for her to continue her career as a violin player. And, um, she was really taken by Lev Theremin's instrument. And one of the things I love about that story is that it really, um, illustrates how A musical instrument, or the development of a musical instrument, particularly a new idea, um, really needs that collaboration between an artist and an instrument designer.

And, um, that collaboration between Lev Thurman and Clara Rockmore was extremely rich, and The, the music that she developed and her techniques on the instrument are really kind of still the, the, the gold standard today. I mean, everybody should go and listen to some Clara Rockmore Thurman playing. Um, it's absolutely stunning.

And that tradition actually was carried on by, um, Bob Moe. In 1949, Bob got... wind of the theremin and as a young teenager was really captivated by it and he, uh, started building theremins and then eventually, uh, started selling parts as a teenager and then his dad and him started building theremins and selling them.

And that's what really got Bob interested and into electronic music  and electronic instrument design. And, um, Bob's career was also really defined by his collaboration with artists. His meeting of Herb Deutsch in the 60s was really what led to his development of the Moog Analog Modular Synthesizer, um, at which really kind of kicked off that whole chapter of Bob's career.

And to this day, collaboration with artists on instrument design and improvement of instrument design is still kind of like the bedrock of how we approach instruments. And, um, so it felt really... appropriate to honor Clara Rockmore for this instrument that is celebrating this hundred year legacy of this instrument that is continuing to evolve and amazingly still has a lot of relevance in today's music and the community's growing very quickly.

So it celebrates Lev's contribution a hundred years ago and Clara Rockmore's part in it. It also, um, I think something else to celebrate about that is that, um,  In a world dominated by male artists, it, it, it's wonderful that this very early instrument, the voice was developed by a woman.  And that's also a tradition that is really strong in the Thurman community.

There's a tremendous amount of women artists in that community. So I think, like, there's so much to it that's really wonderful, um, to celebrate and also just to kind of really honor that, um, interplay between artist and tool builder. 

And in terms of the instrument, How much of it is still  connected to  that original technology and how much of it has advanced over a hundred years? Yeah, well the inspiration of the Claravox was really to Capture the essence of the theremin as it was in originally Envisioned by Lev Theremin a hundred years ago and one of the beautiful things about the theremin is its simplicity.

And so we wanted the clarivox to really, um, capture that simplicity, but also, um, have a another personality or another side which extends its capabilities and allows instrument to be kind of forward looking at the same time. So the clarivox has the same topology In its essence, as Lev's original design, although using more modern components, back then it was tubes and hand wound coils and  nowadays it's transistors and op amps and components with much tighter specifications and lots of improvements that come with time.

But, um, essentially, you know, uh, Thurman's invention for pitch was that he had two oscillators and he was using these actually at the time he was a physicist and he was using them to study, um, mass spectrometry spectrometry and these were the same kind of, uh, topologies that were used in early radios where you had heterodyne oscillators and if you had a fixed oscillator And an oscillator that moved, you would get the sum and the difference of those two frequencies.

And, and so the difference frequency is modulated down into the audio range. And, um, so that is still preserved in the Clarivox. And on the volume side, it's still a rectification of, um, an oscillator as well, which was also a technique used in early radio and communications. So, the fundamental aspects of the instrument are identical to the early theremins, and as taken along by Bob's work as well, um, Bob designed a lot of theremins and designed a lot of oscillators and, and rectifier topologies.

So, the instrument can be played in what we call traditional mode, where it's just a simple, Um, theremin and one of the things about the instrument which is so captivating that probably a lot of your listeners  might not know is what one of the things that makes the theremin stand apart from other electronic instruments is Your body is actually physically part of the circuit.

So, when you play the instrument, first of all, um, you don't touch it, you're just, um, moving your body in the air. And what you're doing is you are changing,  uh, your body capacitance is changing the actual frequency of the oscillators that you are, uh, that are inside the instrument. And that's a really kind of...

Wild thing for an instrument an electronic instrument, you know, typically the interface triggers a switch or changes the voltage But in this case your body is actually essentially a capacitor in a in an in an oscillator, which is the combination of an inductor and capacitor that kind of hands back and forth energy and as it does that it creates an oscillation.

So that is just kind of like one of the really mystical and wonderful things about the instrument and um, I think why you feel so connected when you play it. Now looking forward with Claravox, the goal was to kind of expand its capabilities and I think there's kind of three aspects of it that we can look at.

The first is that by adding the ability to have digital control, we can augment the kind of performance aspects of the instrument. We can change the linearity of the, um, response to your movements, for instance. So, you can get finer control of your pitch, or you can, uh, change the range of your pitch, and even the ability to quantize pitch.

Maybe fully or just partially so that you have gravitational pull towards certain pitches So there's a lot of creative and also kind of practical Uses for having that kind of control for instance on the volume Some people want a very large slow movement and some people want a very fast Uh small movement and so by being able to kind of tailor the instrument to those different needs.

We hope to kind of expand people's ability, create their own technique on the instrument. The second aspect of this is to be able to expand the sonic vocabulary of the instrument. Traditionally, the theremin, you are just listening to the heterodyne output, which is The, the difference of these two oscillators, so it's a very pure tone and typically it went through a tone control so you can make it brighter or darker.

And Bob evolved those, uh, wave shaping circuits so they could have more different sounds. But, um, fundamentally, uh, just a single oscillator, very pure tone.  Um, the Clarivox in its modern or, or extended mode allows you to have two different oscillators mixed together, also a noise, and you can change the wave shapes of those oscillators, so just right there, there's another huge layers of sonic capability, you can have offset to the frequencies, so you can thicken things up by small offsets, or you can have interval offsets like fourths or fifths, Um, or any kind of microtonal set you want.

We also have a analog, um, bucket brigade delay in the Clarivox, which allows you on board to kind of mix in the real rich kind of analog  delay sounds that also have their own sonic coloring and distortions. And that adds a lot of really interesting capability. And finally, the other aspect of the instrument is being able to expand the way Clarivox can control other instruments or systems in your musical environment or be controlled. 

So, you know, the rich tradition of Moog music, we have control voltage. And of course, Clarivox has some control voltage outputs and a control voltage input. So you can both control other analog gear from the Clarivox. Or you could, um, have other analog gear control the ClaraVOX. So, for instance, if you wanted spatial control of a modular synthesizer, you could use the ClaraVOX to control different aspects of that.

Alternatively, we have kind of digital control. So MIDI, um, DIN and USB MIDI, so that it can be controlled or controlled by Other digital instruments or your, um, digital workstation or tracks like Ableton Live where you might want to synchronize different sonic settings on the Klarivox during performance to other things that are happening, um, in your musical environment.

And I should mention that this is not new to Mo. Bob, oh, probably 30 years ago started working on an instrument called the Ethervox, which was a really advanced theremin that also had a lot of these ideas embedded in them. So. You know, Clarivox is  kind of a continuation of this journey and evolution of the instrument, and our hope is that Clarivox can really inspire people both in the fundamentals of the instrument, but also kind of really inspire artists to kind of  find new ways of expressing themselves through the primary.

essence of a theremin.  A typical theremin range is, is probably in the 5 octave range. Which is an awful lot, considering your movement is really, you know, in the 24 inch range, and for most practical playing, less than that. So, if you think about, you know, a 5 octave range being broken down into You can see how small the movements are and how precise you have to be to maintain an accurate pitch.

Plus, unlike a lot of other instruments, you don't have any kind of visual or physical basis for that movement. 

Thanks for joining us, Dorit Kreisler, very experienced and wonderful theremin player, and also a wonderful enthusiast for the instrument as well. So first of all, I'd like to ask you if you could tell us about your relationship with the theremin. Well, when I first encountered this unassuming wooden box with an antenna at a friend's house, I,  um, I was, you know, simply in awe, um, when I, you know, encountered this unusual interface of sound production and, uh, what What was striking me  immediately was that, um, for an electronic instrument, it had such an unusual capacity of, um, dynamic, emotional. 

And after all these years since, I really must say that, um, it's kind of changed a lot in so far that the theremin for me now is, is, is like my singing voice. It's, it's become such a part of. Um, my practice, uh, uh, my voice of expression because my body is moving within this electromagnetic field. So I always feel that like, I'm actually really the instrument.

So it's, um,  it's very connected. I also feel that if you listen to all the different theremin players, um, out there, and thank heaven they're more and more these days. Everyone has a very distinct voice and color that, you know, they're personal way of movement and interpretation allows, maybe more individualistic and personal than possibly other instruments.

I do think that it's incredibly to have witnessed how the  active scene of Theremin players has been growing and I wish that more popular musicians would think about how to include The the theremin in their work and and maybe write also more for it Yeah, and I want to point direction to a film that just got released  where I went down to the caves of the Hadrian colliders at CERN, um, to shoot a video with French filmmaker, Marie Lossier, to  down there in the cave at CERN.

It looks kind of like a metropolis scenery. It's this thousand ton heavy, um, collider. It's like a cathedral of science. And as the theremin was invented. by accident by, you know, as we all know, Lev Terman, a Russian scientist, I thought it would be a good location to, you know, pay tribute homage to the  beginnings of electronic music.

Fantastic. And I understand that you were instrumental, dare I say, in naming the Claravox. It's been a great privilege to have been consulted,  um, during the phase of the designing And creation of Clara rocks.  Um, I've been having a very good working relationship with the kind folks at MOOC for quite some years now.

And, um, I was asked and I sent, um, some name suggestions. And my first idea really was to honor and pay tribute to Clara Rockmore, who is. Truly the very first female electronic music pioneer and I was so thrilled that, um, that Moog went for it and the Rockmore Foundation also gave kind permission to use that name.

So it's, it's dedicated to Clara. 

I understand you also do a lot of education work with the Theremin. Yeah, so when I co founded the New York Theremin Society, um, with Susanne Fjell, um, back when, there were very few, um, active players of the theremin out there, and up to this day, there's still a lot of  misrepresentation, misunderstandings about this instrument.

A lot of people still gravely underestimate what the Thein is capable of doing, um, because there haven't been many, um, active good players doing stuff with it. So I thought it's not only important to kind of make the instrument more accessible and really do everything, so it's represented in more popular platforms, but also to start with the young generations on top of it.

Um, Because it specifically bothered me also with electronic music and film soundtracks that, um, these genres have a different status in the pantom of music world than, for instance, classical music. So I just thought it's really important to create more vocabulary and start with children as young as four years old.

Um, and because of where we are today with the interactive iPad, um, iPhone technology. The theremin lends itself in a very natural way for kids these days. And, um, the, there's no fear and they're super creative and it's super fun. And we developed a curriculum where groups of 10 children, you know, play theremin together and playing along a Kraftwerk  track.

So having this very natural exposure to this kind of genre of music, basically it just created a.  a curriculum that's something that I wished I could have had when I was a kid, so. Fantastic. So yeah, the other thing that I spotted was that you produced or you curated the Theremin 100 compilation. Yes. So as, as we rolled into the centennial anniversary of the theremin, I really felt this is a very big momentum to celebrate.

It's literally the birth of electronic music.  didn't seem enough to organize also, you know, many events in different, um, countries, concerts of different players and, and put things together. But I just wanted to put out a more lasting statement and the snapshot of this is how it began 100 years. And where's the instrument really.

today because it's been kind of simmering, still a little bit in obscurity. And there was a huge surprise that when, um, we made a call out on social media about participations for this compilation, there were so many submissions from, uh, numerous countries and, um, far too many to fit on an LP. So, um, we decided to narrow it down to three and a half hours of music.

And spanning 50 thereminists from, um, 18 countries and, um, the point of selecting the tracks in the production was really about, um, showing the variety, the surprising stylistic and sonic variety that  is really capable of. So I'm, I'm very happy that it came out so nice and that all the, it was really a labor of love and the, and also something to nourish the theremin community and all the, you know, more active, well known players and a lot of other people that were amazing surprises.

Yeah, they all participated. So that was a really. Beautiful experience.  The Theremin 100 compilation. Um, it's a special edition out on vinyl, um, where Albert Glinski, who also wrote the book on theremin, um, wrote a nice foreword. Then there's also a CD and of course a digital and you, um, it's been released by the New York Theremin Society and you can find it, um, on Bandcamp or you can find it directly on the newyorkthereminsociety. 

org. 

And next we have Bruce Woolley. Songwriter and theremin player. Tell us about your relationship with this magical instrument, Bruce. My background's in songwriting, really. That's what I kind of began doing. It's kind of what I'm still doing. And along the way, I had, um, I've had a lot of experiences in the music business, some good, some bad.

Um, it's a pretty hairy ride, a bit precarious, as anyone will tell you, no matter what level you're at. And, um, I guess it was, um, around, um, 1993 I was getting a bit disillusioned with the music scene at the time actually for me. It was a bit unimaginative It seemed a bit unimaginative at the time and I was getting as near to disillusioned as I probably could and then I discovered the theremin and I'm not quite sure how I discovered it.

I think it's a slow process people sort of come across it Gradually, I think, but there was a documentary in 1993, um, called, uh, Electronic Odyssey. It was intended to be called Good Vibrations, actually, but they had to, for legal reasons, call it Electronic Odyssey, and it was all about Leon Theremin, and that film was quite...

Uh, it was a seminal film in its own right, and massively influential, and after seeing that, I just had to get hold of a theremin.  I think a lot of people saw that film, including you, Caro, and you were impressed by it, yes? Oh yeah, I was really touched. I was really touched by the complexity of his story, like any life story, if you really properly delve into it.

But also, the relationship with Clara, I think it was once he was reunited with her, that really, yeah.  Yes, for those who don't know, Clara Rockmore was a, a, a, probably one of the world's greatest thereminists and, um, a sort of protégé, if you like, of Leon theremin. And of course they were deeply in love with each other, um, in the sort of, um, I suppose it was in the early 1920s, mid twenties, uh, in Moscow.

And as you say, it was a really touching story because... the documentary maker Steve Martin was able to reunite them, um, much later in life in New York, again, and got Leon Theremin out of Russia. And then how he did that is, it took him five years to get a very, Old, I think Leon Theremin was something like 96 or 97 by the time he got back to New York.

And it had taken, um, a very special message from one of the Gorbachevs to actually get him out of Russia at that time. Because he was still a security risk, really,  having been a member of the KGB. But then that's a, this is a whole story, isn't it? 

So since you have bonded with the Theremin... What part would you say it plays in your music? Well, when, when I discovered the theremin, I hadn't played live for a long time. And I was sort of thrust into a situation where I had to play live again. Um, there was no getting out of it.  And I'd agreed to do something with the theremin in public.

And that, first of all, that, that got me back into the... The live scene again, for which I'm infinitely grateful, because it's, uh, it's so different to being in the studio, you know, we all spend days, hours, and years in the studio perfecting things, but when you're doing a gig, or you're performing in front of people, it's, it's, the story is, is there, it's, it's in an hour, you've got to do it, and, and, as I say, there's no getting out of it, so, it brought me back to that spontaneous frame of mind, where, I guess you call it performance.

Okay, let's do it. Let's play. And, um, also the feedback you get from, um, an audience is, is, is unique. I mean, I think playing Theremin in front of people, it's probably the most nerve wracking thing. You could possibly imagine like  walking across Niagara Falls on a, on a tight rope without anything to balance you.

It really is. You're absolutely kind of alone. You know, there's no, there's no support, no safety net. So from a live point of view, that was very exciting and continued to do that over the years. But also, I don't know, I just felt like it was appropriate to incorporate the sound of the theremin in lots of my more recent work. 

I can't really analyze it or anything. And by the way, it's not a slavish, oh, we've got to put theremin on this track, because sometimes it's not appropriate.  But I guess right up to present day, I'm using the theremin in...  Recordings by a group that I work with called the Radio Science Orchestra. And, um, more often than not it works.

We've tried lots of things, like layering it up. I mean, if you layer up a theremin, record it, sort of, 16 tracks of it, create chords, things like that. We can only do that in the studio, of course, but I think there's a lot of potential still for the instrument to be explored  sonically. I mean, so many people now are...

embracing it. Whereas when I started, I literally knew just about everybody in the world that played it, which is like about six people. Yes, yes. Speaking to Cyril Lantz of Moog, one of the lead designers and developers on the Claravox, and he was saying how each time they go to make a new one, they think, well, surely there's only so many people that will buy theremins, but actually it's ever increasing.

So in terms of the magic of that instrument, do you have any theories on why it has that kind of otherworldly and yet at the same time really human voice kind of sound i suppose in a way it's translating the body's vibration isn't it and and maybe not just your body but also your mind so it's it's a form of a form of channeling also that that accounts for the individuality of performance and even sound you know it's a bit like taking a photograph you know two people can take the same photograph with the same camera Of the same image, and yet those photographs will actually come out differently.

There's a, there's a process there that, that is inexplicable. And, and maybe that's the same with the Thein is the fact that it, it's, it's so individual. 

So finally we have Kaia Isikoff,  who is a Thermin player and also a singer songwriter and a music producer. So I'm interested in you quite clearly saying how you do not play. in the style of Clara Rockmore. So what style do you play in and why do you feel like you need to, yeah, establish that? Really, it's to do with the fact that Clara Rockmore was a classically trained violinist.

She was one of the youngest students to enter the St. Petersburg Conservatory. And she came from a very disciplined  dedicated musicianship background that had adopted one instrument as her principal instrument  and obviously had a very symbiotic relationship between the instrument and Leon Theremin and that gave her a very different relationship.

With the thein  to the one that I have,  so by contrast, I'm not classically trained. I haven't adopted one instrument as my principle instrument. If I had to say I had a  principle instrument, it would be my voice.  But I'm a multi instrumentalist, and by that I don't mean that I'm a master of all those instruments.

What I mean  by that is that my relationship with instruments is that they are there for me to pick up as my compositional tools. So when I'm writing a song,  I will start to hear certain sounds that I think certain instruments are needed for.  And so, therefore,  Before  I started playing the theremin, I would pick up an acoustic guitar,  I was writing a particular song, electric guitar effects, the studio as an instrument, synthesizers and so on.

So  by the time I had arrived to a juncture where I was interested in the theremin,  I wasn't coming to it as someone who wanted to be a thereminist.  dedicate my musical career to this one instrument. I first saw this as a sound design tool.  And the first one I owned was a pocket theremin.  So I didn't even have the sonic range that some of the thereminists that I know had to engage with and compose with.

And that was in around 2000. And actually it featured on one of the albums that were released by Mute Records at the time. And... It did the job, and it was fun to play, and it sort of went into the cupboard, and I didn't really revisit it until more, I'd say around 2016,  2015, and I had already purchased the Etherwave theremin, Moog's theremin, and I started playing it, so I hadn't had any lessons, I didn't really research the instrument more than, you know, all the obvious stuff that we all know about. 

And it was only really at the point that I started working on my solo album that I started to really engage with it more, and really connected to it, and realised the power of this  one instrument.  And...  The physical response that I had to it, I felt so connected.  And it was the first time that I found an instrument that not only gave me the ability to.

work gesturally, which is the way that I work in the studio anyway, with mixing consoles and all sorts of air effects and so on. And I use the Ebo when I play with guitar and so on. But the fact that it responds to tiny little movements in the body and micro movements, meant that as someone who struggles to find stillness, I found that this instrument really helped me to do that. 

So I would be in the studio and I might just take some time out, switch the theremin on and just close my eyes and connect and start to  improvise. That really helped me to find my own way, my own sound, my own way of being. 

Could you describe why you love playing the theremin? Well, as I mentioned, I think it's to do with, um, the fact that it is one of the few instruments that I can just close my eyes. and connect with.  I love the sound of it. I love all the possibilities that it offers. On the one hand, I can play a melodic  solo piece, but at the same time, I can use it for sound design purposes. 

It can feature briefly. And at the same time it can play the starring role in the song. I love the gestural possibilities. But one thing I should really say is that I also am a, I'm actually a fan of the Theremini. So what I hadn't mentioned was that I was due to perform in Düsseldorf in 2016. And. I had to have a last minute operation, which meant that I may not be able to make the journey or travel.

And so I was told that if I, you know, isolated myself for two weeks, I would maybe be able to travel and maybe would be able to do it. And of course we had two weeks.  So... I wouldn't be able to rehearse, practice, and it was a guest appearance. And so, my plan to play the Etherwave suddenly had to shift.

Actually, it gave me time to think about its suitability  for this piece. And so, it was at that time that I started, you know, in my sickbed,  recovering from this operation, looking...  doing some research, and that's when I came across the Thera Mini. And it just dawned on me that as someone who already owned the Animoog synthesizer, the Animoog  synthesizer on my iPad, and I'm in bed playing it anyway, I realized that actually this was the perfect instrument and the perfect way forward for me.

It gave me both worlds. And so...  That was a real turning point for me in my whole philosophy about the theremin. Whereas before, you would put effects on there and have maybe some guitar plugins and all sorts of layers. I was able to literally put it into my yoga bag, bubble wrapped, and off I went. And actually, it turned out that  the piece that I was playing on, it wouldn't have worked.

Any other sound, this was the perfect sound. The sound that I came up with just worked. It blended in, it weaved into the sonic piece. And it was only once I was on stage in my... moment came and we heard it play through the Massive PA system and I saw that the audience jumped out of their seats and ran forward and some were taking pictures that I knew that it was a success and that  and I was really in a zone that, you know, I felt like I was riding a sonic wave on stage.

And if I even move slightly, the base was just so powerful and it was a euphoric moment for me. I felt so connected to the decision and, but it really did bring up all those emotions that it. the, the uncertainties surrounding that expectation and the history of a particular instrument can, they all come into play.

So I'm, I'm a huge fan of the Theremini for  It's ability to give me the best of those two worlds. But it also made returning to the Etherwave so much better, because I could then appreciate the contrast of the traditional theremin sounds and from the digital to analogue, and they're two very different theremins.

I don't consider myself a thereminist. It's not my principal instrument, but it's probably one of the instruments that I will play. throughout my life and will develop and evolve with me. Yeah, wonderful. And would you have any tips or advice for people who are wanting to learn or who are starting to learn to play the theremin?

Clara Rockmore  has a manual, it's a pdf you can download called Method for Theremin. So if  anyone wants to learn Clara Rockmore's technique. and is classically trained or has at least a foundation in music theory. I would highly recommend that. It's free. Her opening paragraph in that says, A few suggestions for future thereminists. 

Those who approach and welcome it as yet another voice with which to interpret and embold. real music,  not a magic toy for producing strange and eerie, bold sounds  that underscores again, how seriously she took this instrument and wanted those that adopted it to respect the instrument and its tradition in the way that She had and she also goes on to say you cannot point to a spot in the air and say here is a middle seat So again, I would recommend that if that's the path that interests a student then  some musical theory would be helpful.

So maybe having a small keyboard to one side so that They can familiarise themselves in terms of where the C is, where the F is, and G, and so on. The other tip, which this leads me on to, with suggesting to have a keyboard, is to learn to tune it first. Because some people will be put off when they keep hearing it sounding out of tune and unattractive sometimes.

And it would be a real shame to abandon. the theremin on that basis. So learning to tune it, having a keyboard next to the theremin for referencing will really empower anyone to start to appreciate the beauty of the sound of the theremin. The other thing is obviously to consider having one to one lessons.

There are so many great thereminists out there that give workshops, that have lots of tutorial videos. And the fourth one is more about the theremin itself. When we watch videos and live performances, obviously we need to be realistic about Which instrument we own and which instrument the thereminist is playing.

If they have a really professional, expensive theremin, and it sounds fantastic on stage, and the student has an entry level theremin. It's important for them to consider that, first of all, they're going to hear a sonic difference and then they're listening to it through, you know, computer monitors and so on.

The other thing is, not to forget, like we had custom guitars, there are theremins  that have been custom built, modified to improve. the sounds for  that particular thereminist. And so you may have bought an identical model,  but it may still not sound the same. That can, that can really affect one's confidence if that's not taken on board.

So do a little bit of research and that will give some reassurance. And of course, Check out all the different thereminists that are out there. But most of all, it's your instrument, it's your path, it's your journey, it's your music, it's your sound. Make it your own. Be inspired, but don't be intimidated by those who came before.

Thank 

you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes for further information as well as links and details to other episodes in the electronic music series. And just before you go, let me point you to sound on sound.com/podcasts where you can explore what's on our other channels too.  This has been a CAR C production for Sound on Sound.