Is Augmented Reality The Future Of Theremin Playing?

We all know how hard it is to play the theremin well. In addition to steady hands, you need to have either perfect pitch or at least very strong relative pitch capabilities. Making it even harder, the actual placement of notes in space changes subtly with humidity, air temperature, the temperature of the components inside the theremin, and how it happens to be tuned on a particular day. All these challenges make the theremin one of the most difficult instruments in the world to play well.

This is where augmented reality comes in.

Now, as a theremin player, imagine a "trainer" device that uses augmented reality to help you find notes in 3D space. You'd just walk up to your theremin, tune it as you wish, and then play the lowest to highest note to teach the device where each note lies in space. As you play, the stereo cameras and position sensor track your hand and finger movements relative to the pitch and volume antennas. A heads-up display shows you the pitch of the note you're currently playing. In "training" mode, the device could actually track the distance between your hand and the position of the next note and then overlay in 3D space a "target" point for you to aim towards.

AR theremin trainer concept

Augmented reality concepts have been around for a long time, but with recent developments like Google Glass, the technology is starting to become much more accessible. Glass certainly looks interesting, but so far it only includes a single camera and no position sensors. This means it cannot tell where your hand is in space.

Now, Meta, a startup coming from minds at Columbia University, might just be creating the type of device we're looking for to help take theremin playing to the next level. Their concept device includes 3D stereo screens and a built-in Kinect-like device with multiple cameras for gesture recognition. Here's a quick teaser video from their website:

This is all imaginary and vapor-ware at the moment, but we're not far from the day when devices like this are readily available and in use for every-day applications of all sorts. Current Meta prototypes appear to be bulky and probably won't make a theremin player look much "cooler"... but this is just the start of things to come. Surely if this catches on, technology will come along to make it less bulky and maybe even fashionable. Make it fully portable, and you wouldn't even need a theremin (yes, I said that)... it could just track your hands in space and generate sounds with a software synthesizer on the fly.

Learn more about the Meta at www.meta-view.com and read their full press release here.

I, for one, welcome our new augmented reality overlords. How about you?

4 comments

Amethyste - 4384 days ago

... And how exactly this device will help you learn to play the theremin? No amount of visual aids will help a student to become proficient at it. Only practice, practice, crash and burn and more and more practice.

coalport - 4384 days ago

Jason, you said it very well when you suggested that this marvelous new device wouldn't even need a theremin. Why waste this remarkable invention using it to facilitate learning the theremin, when it quite obviously makes the theremin redundant? This thing makes a whole new virtual interface possible! Would it be easier to play than the theremin? Absolutely! Because you would be able to have virtual indicators of pitch and position which are not possible with a theremin. Attempting to adapt the technology to the theremin would be impossible unless the goggles and the theremin were linked in some way. Only then could the device adapt to the theremin instability factor. This would be a waste of time and effort.This invention opens the door to the "METAMIN" a whole new generation of space control instruments!

Merula - 4381 days ago

I think our days are numbered! The thing about the theremin is that people are amazed to see someone moving their hands in the air and making music. With augmented reality and hand gesture operation it's going to be normal to see somebody moving their hands in mid air to operate some device or other.

FredM - 4377 days ago

I can see one practical use for this with regard to theremins.. it will be a great aid to developers, as the theremins performance can be monitored - issues like actual linearity etc will be verifiable. But I doubt that the theremin will be eradicated by this type of technology, or that "our days are numbered" any more than they have been for the last 30 years - the novelty factor of "someone moving their hands in the air and making music" is quite minor today IMO, and I personally dont think its a particularly good way to make music, regardless of what technology one uses. Then there is cost - The cameras and fast processing required will be a lot more expensive than even a good theremin - Ok, if high resolution gestural control becomes common for other applications, this cost will eventually come down, possibly below conventional theremin price - But I think we have quite a few years yet before this happens..