The EWS is the Finest Theremin Design until Now!

After watching digital gibberish for ten years the time is now to reveal what actually works.

I have a connection with the spirits when drinking Scotch and wanted to mention the Phoenix will fit in the EWS enclosure for a much more effective build over the EM Theremin and you will have the beautiful sound of Clara.

I purchased a Moog Theremin kit to just use the hardware and enclosure. What I want to talk about is the radio in the background which reveals why the theremin is sacred and to remind people of what digital gadgets are doing to your children.

"Curiosity is the desire to learn. It is an eagerness to explore, discover and figure things out. "

More to come…

Christopher
Hwy79.com

Hello,

EW is great (when external reverb is used). Antenna locations are familiar for any thereminist.

This topic describes build of DIY theremin cabinet in EW/EM theremin form factor (difference: 2cm wider, bigger front panel, additional back panel).
This design is cheaper than EW kit, but requires more work.
I considered purchasing of EWS kit just to use as cabinet + antennas, but it looks too expensive.

BTW, does someone know where just antennas (if possible - with fittings) for EW can be bought?

Buggins, do you know of Valery Shamarin in Saint Petersburg? I wanted to send him the EWS circuit board, now packed away, from the kit but I felt it would get lost in Customs. He is one of the kinder people I have met on my theremin journey.

I am always impressed how many engineers are also musicians. I am neither due to my hearing issues. Every time I post I am actually advertising hoping to find someone reasonably local (La Jolla) to give all that I have accumulated in my electronic collection of stuff, otherwise it all goes in the dumpster.

I saw you had the ideal waveform for a beautiful sound but at an RF frequency which can be heterodyned to get it into the audio range. It could be beautiful with a little knowledge to support it. The Lev Antenna creates a perfectly linear pitch field and compensates for any pitch field environmental thermal drift issues.

Tell me what can be gained by giving up the beautiful analog sound and converting to digital after the RF point? This really is a serious curiosity of mine. I always figure that those that want to go the digital route is because that is what they know. The Phoenix can output a basic 555 square wave in sync with the audio freq to cleanly drive a pitch tuner or acoustic effects and uses PWM for a volume control that can do many other types of clever external proximity controlling.

Ten years ago I was told a digital theremin can sound like anything someone wants, why has this not happened by now, then again midi control effects seem so limited.

Christopher

Buggins, do you know of Valery Shamarin

No, I don't know him.
The only thereminist I met in Russia is Peter Termen (great-grandson of Lev). There is his Russian Theremin School in Moscow. He often visits other cities with short theremin courses for beginners.

BTW, better send your parcel with tracking number - less chances to get it lost.

Tell me what can be gained by giving up the beautiful analog sound and converting to digital after the RF point? This really is a serious curiosity of mine. I always figure that those that want to go the digital route is because that is what they know. The Phoenix can output a basic 555 square wave in sync with the audio freq to cleanly drive a pitch tuner or acoustic effects and uses PWM for a volume control that can do many other types of clever external proximity controlling.

Properly designed digital theremin can offer a lot of advantages:
* configurable linearity (including simulation of any analog theremin linearity)
* any waveform (including simulation of analog theremin)
* filters and other DSP components which are impossible to implement in analog (e.g. 100..1000 band bandpass filter)
* physical modelling of some acoustic instruments
* pitch preview & tuners (although, with square wave output you've described, it's available on analog devices, too)
* out-of-the-box reverb
* out-of-the-box loops
* out-of-the-box effect using simple pot pedals connected to digital theremin

Properly designed theremin must have zero latency (0.1ms or less) and good sensitivity (playable on long distances from pitch antenna).

I'm going to try straightforward additive synthesis - with 1000+ harmonics of original signal (waveform is set using amplitude + phase shift for first 1000 harmonics) + per-harmonic filtering based on log-scale (in freq domain) table of frequency response (freq->amplitude gain, freq->phase shift) to implement unlimited number / quality of formants. This method is impossible in analog.
I hope, with this approach, it will be able to simulate nice strings, wind, human vocal, and other instruments.

Digital theremin does not mean MIDI at all. MIDI interface doesn't fit for theremins - it's suitable only for keyboard based instruments.

Probably, you are so aligned against digital theremins because there are no good digital theremins on the market.
Example of Theremini killed the hope.
I believe you will see good examples of digital theremins soon. At least Dewster's project looks promising.

Ooh! I salute you, Christopher! Thank you very much!
I think the shipment will work. Russia is big and everyone
can not know each other, but you can learn a lot about me from
Peter theremin with whom we often communicate.
Peter quite often goes on this forum.
I've been absent from the forum because I was off doing serious work.
I created the theremin "moon" for the musician Dmitry Gurovich.
He now performs a lot with this instrument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JIUkn-5QxQ 
And now I play a lot of concerts.
I will be glad if I can try the voice of "Phoenix" in St. Petersburg.

Hello Valery,

It has been a while. Email me a mailing address as it looks like our US Postal Service is the best route to ship to St Petersburg. (1 to 7 weeks) The first thing I did when I saw your note, was to find the EWS PC board that came in the Kit. Every time my health gets weird my family packs all my stuff up like I am not coming back. Almost funny! I want to keep the EWS box and antennas; will give you the PCB and all the electronic stuff, transformer, etc that goes with the PCB and came in the Kit.

I will spend the week finding all the Phoenix stuff to send, for two complete Phoenix builds and the Vactrols as once you meet Clara’s voice you are going to want to experiment a lot. On my Mouser parts list when I click on the country Russia, it looks like all the parts are available to you. Only a green LED was flagged as not available.

I wrote a lot details above because I am trying to lure in a local SoCal talent to build the Phoenix. There must be someone left, hey youth… put down the cell-phone, I am over here.

This is bait: I have three EWS with amplifiers to give to anyone in SoCal who qualifies.

Christopher

Edit: I think you use the  Yandex Translator and sometimes our words are funny or make no sense. LOL

Oh yeah!  I use the Yandex translator ... I sometimes laugh when I translate my notes from English ... It doesn't matter, the main thing is to understand each other, and if that is not clear, you can ask again.  We have different radio components, so there should be no problems with the assembly.  I will write the address in a personal message on this forum.  If you have any questions - always happy to answer!  Good luck and health!

Valery will try and get everything on the way by Monday (Shipping Address Looks Good)

I use to call my theremin research the Altermen which meant Alternate Theremin. Remaking contact with you I realize it might be everyone else that is in their own alternative theremin world. We each interpret the theremin differently; I always thought a theremin should sound like a theremin not mainly mimic something else, now that is an opinion or a gesture controller. I dig around in some old sound bytes and realize why I am reminded that Clara’s Voice was a gift to me, from the beginning of my journey.

My bench experimenting has long since passed and when recording a test byte back then I did not recognize if something was interesting until much later, after the test setup was torn down. If someone only hears the noise in this sample below or the lack of a tune, it is because it was recorded in my reality with a little bit of knowledge.  - Clara’s Voice -  It is all about re-shaping a sine wave … no reverb or mixing of triangle waves with squares waves and countless filters, again that is a gesture controller. The theremin is a simple concept that with human interrelationships… becomes more beautiful with age.

It is time for her to return to the stage.

Christopher

OK, right now drinking a little Scotch so I can get in touch with the spirits, yes those two, a love that would never be, and that seems like my life.

Theremin design seems to have become a lost knowledge in what it is all about. It is something so simple that with human influence can do something exceptionally beautiful. If you have interest in building any theremin design get sound samples so you know what you will end up with, if no sound sample is provided… run. Something has inspired me recently to make my own theremin approach more practical for the average builder. There is no magic in most special coil designs, the use of vacuum tubes or old stuff found on ebay to get that classic sound if you really want it, those are theremin myths. If anyone seems to make theremin design complicated, they have fallen into a rabbit hole... ever deeper into her curse and they will attempt to suck others in so they are not lonely, some will follow mesmerized by the endless rambling. Ok my own WebPages are a bit this way but you will end up with results that work.

There is more to this sound than a thin whistle or a kazoo, your hands can give her passion  Clara Voice

My friend in Russia, I am doing a little assembly right now on PCB to make things easier for you, the package will be sent more towards the end of the week. I had become very concerned all of my research would end up in a dumpster, so your skills have become a priceless gift for me.

I am reworking my PDF’s so the do it yourself PCB on my webpage is straight forward for anyone with basic electronic knowledge, you will end up with the ultimate theremin in sound and response.

Christopher
Hwy79.com

Valery, I rediscovered your graphs of our comparisons. This is very good we recognize when a sound is in the Classic Theremin ballpark, you will make our sound or Theremin's sound even better. Sound Sample1 is raw, no reverb to mask nastiness, the latest Phoenix build, completed this week, which will eventually be yours. Still have a handful of issues to work out. Sample2 is a little better I think… was probably done with my vacuum tube oscillators. Both methods use a 1N914 diode for mixing and detecting the audio signal, this area is critical but not really where the main magic hides.

Analog sound is fun in that it is like a box of chocolates.... 

I am not a musician but think it is a narrow window found within noise that is musical to the human ear. Then again a bum can play trash can lids and sound rather good as a drummer.  Nice sound with good skill really complement one another for the magic in music.

I made another observation that might work well for static discharge. I placed a 3.3 mh choke at the base of my 900 kHz pitch antenna connected directly to ground. The perfect pitch field linearity remained with my unorthodox pitch antenna setup. Little of the RF if any passes thru the choke only DC currents. My pitch antenna setup was slightly sensitive to 50/60 Hz on the lowest end, the sound wobbled a bit, this is why I tried the choke and it seems to have eliminated it. (I do not use series inline tuning of the pitch rod, rather something else and this choke idea needs more testing)

Working with RF is like flirting with a pretty lady, she will tease you and may never give you what you want, if she does she sings softly! 

Right now I have an imaginary sense of a duel at TW like Edison vs. Tesla, wonder who is who? Both have a good approach when used in the proper application but one will end up being more practical, but what does a Thereminist really want? A German Stiletto or a Swiss Army Knife?

Christopher

PS: The University of San Diego was conducting a behavioral study from my webpage the past month, now completed... project name was Zoe Z.
       Bremen, Germany you did a good thing, in the end it will not go unnoticed.