Theremin Lip-Sync Scandal

Recently I developed a stand alone theremin volume control that solves many issues people have with the theremin. The main one is that any theremin can be left or right handed instantly. It has many other features that I won’t go into here as I have nothing to sell.

If there was an “unforgivable sin” in the world of theremin then revealing this institutes pure blasphemy.

As they fake piano playing in movies it is much easier with a theremin. I fed the finest pre-recorded tune through my stand-alone volume control and only controlled the volume of the music. To the observer… because I make the sound loud and soft on command along with their lack of understanding, my performance was a thing of beauty. I did not have that theremin stare and could interact with the audience visually.

At the flip of a switch the live tone is back for audience participation.

I will never be able to play the theremin, but do a theatrical performance for the audience, who knows? This approach is very similar to my showing volume clarity using a radio.

Radio Sample .mp3  102k

Above is a story, I did not do this but the possibility is there, no stranger than Ms Spears using a pre packaged sound track.

Christopher

Not sure what the point of faking a performance even would be, as anybody doing it is lying to themselves as much as their audience.  Moral objections aside, I could see legitimate applications for this little device, such as augmenting a cheaper pitch-only theremin or as an expression controller for another instrument, like a tonewheel organ or a theoretical instrument consisting of multiple ribbon controllers affecting the pitches of audio frequency oscillators. 

Doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to build either, just an oscillator or pair of heterodyned oscillators with a volume loop on one end and a tight bandpass filter and detector on the other end going into the level side a vca, with an input jack on the signal side. 

I've always been really interested in the volume side of a theremin. It's like a manual envelope generator.  With enough practice and knowledge of adsr curves you can make it sound like a pretty wide variety of instruments.

Jo said: "Not sure what the point of faking a performance even would be, as anybody doing it is lying to themselves as much as their audience.  Moral objections aside"

I have read of many bands faking their performance, nothing new here. I imagine it is the guarantee of a great on stage sound & presence when people pay to experience it.

Good reply....have you posted a sound byte yet?

Christopher

"I've always been really interested in the volume side of a theremin. It's like a manual envelope generator.  With enough practice and knowledge of adsr curves you can make it sound like a pretty wide variety of instruments." -jo

It seems like it could be extended by having a triggering positional point, or a triggering velocity, driving a real ADSR (or digital equivalent).

I have read of many bands faking their performance, nothing new here. I imagine it is the guarantee of a great on stage sound & presence when people pay to experience it.

Maybe it's just because I've been on both sides of the monitors, but at least to me it's really obvious when a band is faking, and the result is considerably less entertaining and sonically rich than the real thing.

Good reply....have you posted a sound byte yet?

If you mean of the thing I'm working on, I'm taking your advice and redesigning it around LC oscillators, but still with RC filters.  I have most of the part values figured out, but haven't done an inventory of my stuff and ordered what I need yet.  If you mean of my theremin playing, I'm putting a setlist together with an accompanist and tweaking my sound a bit.  I'll have something sometime fairly soon.

Jo said: "Doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to build either, just an oscillator or pair of heterodyned oscillators"

Your phrase above or the word "simple" are fingernails on a chalkboard from a newbie in the world of theremin. Time will reveal to you that to be good, the word simple is not about theremins.

The most challenging aspect is the Voice which is a combination of design and the influence of a skilled player. Because I am not a musician I always ask for a sound byte which is a raw sound or more of a wave shape generated by the instruments mixing method and more. If reverb is needed to mask a raw sound byte then it has already missed the mark unless your doing a carnival act.

If you wonder if I have found my sound, well she comes and stays a while then packs her suitcase. The voice is the greatest frustration for consistency.

I grew up in a beach community in the 1960's and theremin designing reminds me a lot of the early morning surfers who stood around their beautiful & polished woodie cars with boards on top, talked surfing all day and lip-sync the part. Then there were those of us with ragged shorts, no cars, had walked the distance, board under a cramping arm to get there and we actually got wet.

I always say for us non-engineers walk away from a theremin schematic that does not make available a sound byte. It is no more difficult to  post sound than a picture so odds are the design missed the mark. Every theremin design has someones heart in it, yet she (theremin) has attitude and will break it. Only a few receive her nice voice as it is a gift...

I don't need to hear anyone play, just a sound byte for study when ready, then I will know you got in the water. (-'

Christopher

"Jo said: "Doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to build either, just an oscillator or pair of heterodyned oscillators"

Your phrase above or the word "simple" are fingernails on a chalkboard from a newbie in the world of theremin. Time will reveal to you that to be good, the word simple is not about theremins.

The most challenging aspect is the Voice which is a combination of design and the influence of a skilled player. ..... Christopher"

I was talking about this stand-alone volume control. Other than the frequency range of the oscillator(s) matching up to the bandpass filter and the filter itself having a pleasing response curve, what kind of challenges do you think someone would run into designing one of these?  I never even actually planned to, I was just commenting on how there doesn't seem like there would be a whole lot more to it than has already been done by more than a few theremin designers.

Jo said: "I was talking about this stand-alone volume control. Other than the frequency range of the oscillator(s) matching up to the bandpass filter and the filter itself having a pleasing response curve, what kind of challenges do you think someone would run into designing one of these?"

It all depends on who's building, for me everything is difficult. Just when I think I have the best results something new pokes it's head out. LOL

Christopher

It all depends on who's building, for me everything is difficult. Just when I think I have the best results something new pokes it's head out. LOL

Christopher

I've always had really good luck building other people's designs, as long as they were already known to work.  I'm just now starting to dip my toe into design itself.  Theremins probably aren't the best starting point, but it's something interesting and challenging enough to keep me motivated.

Outside of videos of live concerts, pop music videos are all lip-sync'd to the commercial CD version of the song. The reason for this is quite simple. Videos are basically a commercial for the CD. 

It's quite another matter when an artist, in a supposedly live performance, lip-syncs to his or her own recorded version of the song and it is generally considered unacceptable if the artists are not actually singing at all on their recordings (remember the Milli Vanilli fiasco).

With the theremin, it is very easy to video a performance with studio quality sound because everything is entirely electronic. We have all seen very good theremin performances that have sounded TERRIBLE on video because the microphone capturing the sound was the junky little electret mike in the videocam (or worse, the cellphone camera).