My 2010 Halloween Theremin Entry

Friends,
Last year I entered this into the 2009 contest, and I am resubmitting it again because I have recut it and I fixed all of the audio problems that were on the first submision.

In case you are interested to know how it was supposed to be seen and heard, this is the final cut.
Etherferatu: An Electronic Symphony of Horror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxmVrDgBNEw


Thanks,
Eric

Good luck Eric!

This link searches youtube on the tags specified in the rules, so should reveal all the entries (it appears to be five) - including mine.

http://tinyurl.com/37f5efu

Good job, Gordon!

Eric - That is a wonderful entry.. "Never interrupt me when im dubbing vocals" _ ROFLMAO.. ;-) Oh, do I know that one! .. But I think it makes the film! The music is supebly crafted - real B movie.. The actors? Well - The EW is the only actor with any talent, IMHO! ;-)


Interesting Gordon.. The amplitude pulsing (3:10) has some other quality which has me guessing a bit.. Are you modulating the pitch at the same time, or is this pitch shifting a noticable effect of 'loading' from the volume antenna? I would have said it was obviously loading, except that the pitch goes down instead of up!

I really like what you are doing with the volume antenna.. It is also interesting to see the degree of control that even the tiniest change in angle of the pitch knife produces (I suspect the volume pulsing is being accompanied by minor movement - deliberately or involuntarily - of the pitch knife) - whatever the mechanism, I really liked the bits of the composition where the dynamics were interacting in this way.

As an A/V presentation, I think the whole piece works extremely well.. But, unlike your other compositions, I do not enjoy it nearly as much just listening to it .. This one DOES need visual accompnyment - And you are the perfect accompnyment. Well done!

Good luck to both of you!

Fred.

I agree - an accompaniment helps - the technique is fun but at the same time as adding to the palette of sounds available it also reduces them significantly by impairing the player's mobility within the playing fields.

The accompaniment need not be visual - I used the same technique (pitch only) in a recording I made with •the•o8o8•project• (http://o8o8.de/) ([i]Bynary Pulsar[/i] on their album [i]Vulkano[/i]) and the piece works IMO.

I'm not sure exactly what is happening with the volume either - in the first few notes from 3:10 I'm only switching the volume - the pitch is as steady as a theremin pitch ever is - I had been guessing it was an amplitude modulation thing, but it could be anything.

The first person I ever saw play the theremin with a long, menacing, stainless steel carving knife held in her pitch hand was the woman known as "Intissar Of The Theremin". She would dress up in a slinky black satin evening dress, put on elbow length red satin gloves, and play the theremin with a 12 inch carving knife! She made a VHS of herself doing this and it was most impressive.

She was a cross between Clara Rockmore and Veronica Lake!

I wonder what happened to Intissar. Her publicly stated goal was to make "THEREMIN" a household word. She had a website for years and there were links to it on many of the theremin related orgs (including TW) but the site no longer exists.

In a slinky black satin evening dress I look exactly like a man who should absolutely never ever consider cross-dressing as a lifestyle choice, with or without knives.


Intissar's website lives on in website heaven (http://web.archive.org/web/*/intissar.com).

[i]"I'm not sure exactly what is happening with the volume either - in the first few notes from 3:10 I'm only switching the volume - the pitch is as steady as a theremin pitch ever is - I had been guessing it was an amplitude modulation thing, but it could be anything." - Gordon [/i]

Had another look / listen (no, I didnt do an analysis of the waveform - there is so much else going on that it wouldnt be worth the effort).. I believe there is just a tiny bit of ground 'loading' causing the effect.. I got muddled in my thinking, and equated increased amplitude with increased capacitance (touching the knife) - Of course, its the other way 'round! Duh!

What I believe is happening is that, when touching the blade, your body's increased coupling to ground (via loading from the volume antenna, EW circuitry, or other grounded objects) raises the pitch fractionally, and when this contact is broken, the coupling decreases, so the pitch lowers fractionally.. Its probably less than 10c, but enough to add a nice 'extra' to the sound.

Fred.