thegarnet.net

Back to music..

From Lydia Kavina:

• Very important that a good theremin engineer should be a good theremin player.
• Theremin can be sensitive to the size of the person, it affects the tuning of an instrument.
• Stability important - different voices, imitating other instruments and singing voices, and original theremin voice. These may be needed to be tailored to different ways of playing.

Thierry, developer of Open Theremin

• Many theremin circuits published in electronic magazines, and forums, many are well thought from point of view of engineer, but are useless for a musician.
• We have a more limited market than a violin, which is available in many sizes. So for Theremin, a modular approach is appropriate

Eric Holloway is developer of D—Lev, and FPGA solution for Theremin.

• He started on Theremin world 10 years, and has been working on it for 8 years, but very heavily for 4 years.
• Built 10 kits perhaps, and several prototypes. Is having trouble to find the FPGA board that he uses, and the price has increased.
• Very little analog in the D-lev. Doing everything numerically, and he hit on a very linear solution.
• Jeff demonstrated Silent Night played on D-Lev during Lydia Kavina Christmas Party on 2021/12/26

Discussing Design of D-Lev

• Lydia - D-Lev is similar to a Open Theremin type project.

• Moog
  • Etherwave
  • Claravox - $1499
    • Have some volume problems, and it may be temperature related, appears volume diminishes at higher temperatures.
  • Theremini - $399
    • Very sensitive to environment, might not work in all locations as a main theremin, good to have a backup.

• RCA - One of the earliest brands of Theremin

• Zep Burns

• https://soundslikeburns.com/ - Nice variety
  • B3 Pro Theremin
  • B3 Deluxe Theremin
  • B3 Theremin
  • Zep Theremin
  • Handheld Theremin - Battery powered

• Hobbs

Projects

• Open Theremin
  • Version 4 - comes with Arduino integrated. Observation: Many musicians like the Open Theremin, but were not comfortable with soldering or buying separate Arduino, or uploading firmware, etc.
    • If very cold, it can need 20 minutes to properly warm up
    • Not yet comparable to professional instruments, but improvements are ongoing.
    • Linearity is good, and it is very light weight
    • New wave table files can be created and added to Open Theremin.
    • No editor to create custom timbres.
  • Version 5 - will have more dynamic on the fly timbre choices
• D-Lev

• Lydia Kavina comment: Harmonies with violin have overtones, but Theremins don’t have the same overtones, and the melodies are much more difficult.

• Christmas
  • Silent Night
  • Dutch Christmas Song

• Cat Plays Theremin - Timmy C - https://youtu.be/M0SZLAm6WYY