16 comments
For those who don't recognize the name: Linus Åkesson (lft) is the one who made "Nine", that C64 demo with the wizard and nine sprites that was popular a few months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940553).
And the Chipophone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1pchpDD5EU
And some synthesisers in the Pocket Operator series: https://www.linusakesson.net/music/po-2x/index.php
And "A Mind Is Born": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8
A scathing critique may focus on how Linus has effectively lobotimized the Theremin, taken away its essence by removing continuous frequency control, and crassly riffed on its name. The critique may go on to describe the qwerty keyboard pitch control to be crude and only capable of evoking the nostalgia of early digital chiptune music. Only a part of me is that heartless a critic, so I would like to suggest that the design might benefit from the introduction of portamento, such that some of the original pitch contour characteristics of the Theremin could be retained. It may be interesting to substitute portamento altogether for vibrato via hand control, or combine the two.
I think the theremin remained a curiosity because it's both hard to control and low-dimensional. Something like the cello or saxophone is just strictly better: there are more dimensions on which you can control the sound, and at the same time controlling pitch is easier. Or to put it another way, on cello or saxophone a beginner can learn a passable C major scale much faster than on the theremin, and at the same time there are much more expressive possibilities.
Combining the theremin with the keyboard helps with pitch, but the low dimension problem remains. You might as well play a keyboard with one hand and a trackpad or joystick with the other, it's easier and the number of dimensions is the same.
The theremin is cool because it’s weird though. And being able to play it is impressive in part because it is difficult.
But most of all what I like about the theremin is that it is an electronic instrument all of its own unique kind and not an emulation of the instruments that existed before electricity was usable by humans.
Saying that a cello is “strictly better” than a theremin kinda feels to me like saying that ice skating is “strictly better” than rollerblading. It’s just different activities that different people enjoy.
Yeah, I put it somewhere in the same category as unicycling, or playing a guitar with your teeth.
In fact I'd double down on the "strictly better" bit. There's an instrument that's literally strictly better than the theremin: it makes a very similar sound, looks every bit as cool and weird, but is much easier to play well. The musical saw! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7cMJn0HAdE
You have to touch the saw, though. You don't touch the theremin! You just wave your hands in its vicinity and music happens! (Or an awful shrieking cacaphony, if you're a beginner.) How cool is that?
That scheme of controlling amplitude with two DACs is crazy and wild. He should use some off-the-shelf VCA chip and problem would be solved.
Other than that Qweremin actually makes a lot of sense from musical POV (expressive somewhat synths are rare and expensive) and that rendition of Ave Maria is beautiful. I can definitely see something similar as serious instrument in the future.
This is super cool! I would love to see the specific mapping of keys that were used which were said to be inspired by the accordion. Even though that's a way less interesting detail than the way that the spoon picks up the distances and the "bit banging" used to achieve 8-bit precision on the modulation from two 4-bit connections.
Sounds pretty swell!
I wonder if the spoon controller could be adapted to send modulation parameters to arbitrary instruments via a midi port. I would buy a spoon modulator if it was reasonably priced. It would be a great add-on to a piano style keyboard without pitch bend or mod wheel etc
I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that it is similar to Qwertuoso: https://www.linusakesson.net/software/qwertuoso/underworld.p...
Safe to say it's the same as qwertuoso, muscle memory isn't that easy to remap, even if you're Linus Åkesson. I forget if it's a type B or type C, he mentions it on his site somewhere.
Very nice! I've played around with the (Arduino-based) OpenTheremin and it is indeed very hard to hit pitches consistently, even with a good ear and steady hand. I wonder if you could add another control dimension to get pitch bending too...
So very typical for a Linus Åkesson post to drop lots of super-technical advanced "neo-retro" projects, then end it with going to a copy party and accidentally bumping into Rob Hubbard and Mahoney. He is really living the life.
nice!
alternatively, control volume with analogue keyboard keys:
https://www.razer.com/technology/razer-analog-optical-switch