UB40 Red, Red Wine Theremin?

I could've SWORN I heard a Theremin today in UB40s 'Red, Red Wine'...I could be wrong, though. Listen here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI-uilWKiBs&mode=related&search=). There are also two live performances I watched on youtube. Both had no theremin, but also had no theremin sounding effect, either. It seems to only be in the studio recording...what do you think?

That is a tough one to pin down. Everything sounds like a keyboard synth except for the upward swoop that occurs in a couple of places.

I am not sure what kind of synth's UB40 uses... the upward swoop could be accomplished with a ribbon controller. The sound is kind of "back in the mix" and makes it tough to identify. Other than that single sweep sound, there isn't any other sound that I would identify as a theremin.

Exactly what I was thinking. It sounds quite controlled. If it is a Theremin, they may have sampled it and just used that one sample over and over again. It certainly is a toughie.

I'm wildly skeptical of the notion that it's a theremin. Remember, this was recorded a good decade before the modern theremin revival. Consider the lack of vibrato, and the following rapid (and utterly precise) octave alternation, and I think it's clear that we're hearing a keyboard synthesizer with portamento.

Think about it: if you were a producer in the 1980s, and you went to the trouble to [i]find[/i] a thereminist who could play so extraordinarily... would you really give the player so little to do, and then bury the sound in the mix like that?

And while we're on the subject... this, of course, isn't the first instance in which we theremin enthusiasts sometimes imagine hearing theremins where they aren't.

I would venture to propose an appropriate neologism to label this phenomenon succinctly: "therenoia."

As in: "Brian is so therenoid these days, he asked me whether that's a theremin in the opening toccata from Monterverdi's L'Orfeo."

P.S. Of course, I know full well that theremins in 17th-c. Mantua would NOT have had vacuum tubes, any more than we would expect to find transistors in the RCA instruments of the late 1920s.

If anyone knows an historian specializing in 17th-c. technology, I would be curious to know just how, exactly, the instrument in the collection of the Gonzaga court created its radio-frequency electrical fields...

I think the question is whether they are using a sampled Theremin sound or a different instrument for the 'sweep upward' sound. It is quite precisely the same every time, so it's probably not a live Theremin. I'm just wondering why this one sweeping sound effect is never found in a live performance. After all, it IS a reggae band. Reggae is known to sometimes use 'alternative' instruments. I wouldn't be surprised if they did record a Theremin one way or another for the studio, yet realized that it would not be feasable for live performances.

Then again, if it were a recorded sound clip, why not program it into the keyboard? Maybe it really was a live Theremin for the studio recording. I'm just not sure. I like the phrase Therenoid, that's good! I didn't make the claim, however, that it absolutely is one.

...for all I know, it could've been a slide whistle through various filters...

[i]I would be curious to know just how, exactly, the instrument in the collection of the Gonzaga court created its radio-frequency electrical fields...[/i]

Clearly you have not heard of the Mexican Carnivorous Howling Cactus (Pachycereus PRINGLEi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pachycereus_pringlei_with_osprey_nest.JPG)) - the only plant known to entice small animals to their untimely demise on its spines by generating an alluring audible tone when approached. (Note that the one illustrated in the above link is in the process of devouring a particularly shaggy dog which made the mistake of jumping onto it, possibly with the aid of a small trampoline, a seesaw, a stepladder and a troupe of small acrobats in clown costume, although that is not visible in the photo, which goes to show just how alluring it is.)

Obviously the court imported a Howling Cactus, along with someone versed in the skill of coaxing recognisable melodies out of it, and of pruning it for its timbre.

Right, carport: I understand that you weren't asserting, definitively, that it is a theremin. But I'm telling you that it's incredibly unlikely that it is.

I'm not a leading authority on vintage synthesizers, but I'm enough of a dinosaur to recall that ca. 1983, the use of samplers wasn't nearly so widespread as it is now... and again, there just weren't as many skilled thereminists.

Monetarily, it would have been absolutely insane to go to the trouble of sampling and editing a bit of theremin, when the same effect could be achieved with an ordinary (analog, or digital-analog hybrid) keyboard synthesizer.

Some data: According to Vintage Synth Explorer, the E-mu Emulator debuted in 1981 with a price tag of $10K, which was dropped to $8K the following year. Compare that to $2K (or less) for a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600...

...or, more likely, a monophonic synthesizer such as an ARP Odyssey, or a Sequential Circuits Pro One, either of which could be had for a grand, give or take.

I might also point out that, if you don't have experience with analog synths, the sound of a single patch could vary noticeably over the range of the keyboard. And I'm nearly certain that that is what we hear in "Red, red wine": A single patch on a monophonic synthesizer. When the notes are just a third apart, the portamento is comparatively subtle (and more or less lost in the slow attack phase of the envelope). When the player creates an octave leap, then the portamento can't be missed.

Yes, I agree that nowadays, it would be no great trick to sample a theremin and trigger the sample where desired. But that would've been much more unusual in 1983. A sampler was still rather a high-ticket item... and if you had access to one, you used it to do things that an analog synth [i]couldn't[/i] do.