I guess I’d say it is like a violin on electricity. The picture I get when listening: electrical light on filament in vaccuum tubes in analog radio.

Write up on Moon Traveller Herald Blog

About the use of theremin in education, check out this little demo. (I’m a performance artist who works with children in the schools. Took a lesson with Pamelia, and have been playing for a couple of years.

http://tinyurl.com/2jad9n

(For the adult stuff, see http://tinyurl.com/2m5nny)

I love the Pamelia Kurstin’s personality! What a sweetheart!

I often use a graphics tablet to drive computer-based instruments – one of the modes is very “theramin-like” in that the vertical direction of the tablet is continuous pitch changes.
http://www.ptank.com/amar_music if anyone is interested…

I find such an instrument lends itself to very “continuous” or expressive music, as oppose to precise rhythms…

I am a psychotherapist and author whose book (Standing Up for Yourself) explores some provocative questions that have arisen after years of therapeutic work with a diverse population of addicts, schizophrenics, bipolars as well as depressed, inhibited “ordinary” people immobilized by self-doubt and fear.

Chemical imbalance can be a medical fact or an emotional hoax, allowing some patients to pitch the idea that they can’t manage their lives because of an organix dysfunction or inherited predisposition for, say, alcohol and/or drugs.
The recurring chant is, “Well, my Dad was an alcoholic and HIS Dad was an alcoholic, so I guess it’s in the genes.” They don’t like it when I ask, “Have you inherited a genetic predisposition to alcoholism/substance abuse or have you really inherited the pathology of your addicted parent and thus are susceptible to the illness?”

I have put aside for the moment the horror that took place at Virginia Tech because my query relates to irresponsibility and the delight in blaming others. We all saw what hate can look like and how easy it is to try to simply anhilate
whatever we find contemptuous instead of asking, “Well, how might I myself achieve some of these worldly goods that these rich, spoiled students have?”. Instead of earning attention the hard way, as in real effort, our young Korean man chose the route of infamy as an assured path in American history.

My patients have not selected such extreme measures for avoiding contact with deep rooted, powerful emotions but their unwillingness to own feelings of hate, resentment, jealousy…and so on…is the same. Self-destruction at any level can injure more than one person and there is the luxury of glimpsing guilt in the other person(s).

So. What do you think? Chemical imbalance or learned helplessness?

Here’s some trivia: has anyone mentioned yet that the Theremin is the only instument that can be played without touching it, or for that matter any contact at all?

Go here: The Art of Hand Whistling http://artotems.com/hand_dance.aspx

The first element of their appeal was a voice that seemed slight, ethereal and perhaps pained (or at the very least emotional). The lyrics come from some kind of turmoil deep inside Beth Gibbons. The drums are in the hip-hop vein, yet laidback and lazy. Geoff Barrows added all sorts of sonic niceties that befit a Bristol crew – samples of film dialogue, Isaac Hayes snippets, scratches, guitars and moog keyboards that made you feel you were in an old-fashioned movie theatre screening a film noir.

Of course we know that this became a “genre” and record companies quickly labeled works of this type “trip hop” that was a subplot to the 90s and indeed Portishead’s music would be picked up in movies.

There wasn’t a cover booklet with the cd which meant that it took some investigation to figure out the other ingredient that had so tickled my ear.

The secret ingredient, the secret sauce, of the group was the theremin: it appears on perhaps a third of their songs – hence the cinematic connection.

Listening to Portishead play Mysterons is unnerving. You can hear the audience reaction in the live version on the Roseland/NYC album. The music is well, how to put it, haunting, mournful and more. The essence of the noir aesthetic or cinematography translated to sound. This is all due to the theremin.

To me the theremin straddles worlds, creeping up on you and drawing your attention to something that lurks beneath or that dwells in the shadows.

In a dark time such as this, I find comfort in the shadows.

Hmm. This was meant to be a one paragraph plug for considering playing a snippet of Portishead if you go ahead with the show… I forgot myself. Anyway perhaps its worth blogging at length in my digs…

rahbuhbuh: Thanks for the props.

Marc: Leon Theremin didn’t have any children. You’re likely thinking either of Clara Rockmore, who he courted romantically during the 1920s when he lived in New York, or Lydia Kavina, his grand-niece, who is one of the top thereminists performing today.

Chelsea: Thanks for the Lothars namedrop. Let me know if you need help reaching Pamelia. Coincidentally, The Lothars will be performing that same week, April 29, at P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville.

Yes, it’s true, Good Vibrations is technically not a THeremin, just a theremin like instument. There are a couple other Beach Boy’s songs that may have an actual Theremin… on Pet Sounds….. someone have a listen to “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” and let me know if you think it’s a Theremin. Sounds like the wildly hard to control sound of the real thing.

I wonder if you could track down http://www.youtube.com/charytanaka in time for the show to ask him about his Wii version of the theremin? Here is one of his videos of his digital theremin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTL934OSYb4