Modulate This! - Electronic & Experimental Music Tech, Technique, & People

Music Monday: Rick Reid "Moon Cheese and Other Delights" Featuring Theremin

Rick Reid is an composer and performer of original and experimental electronic music and sound effects from Denver Colorado and a member of the Boulder Synthesizer Meetup. Rick is also a thereminist. He’s just released a new album called Cheese and Other Delights which is now available for streaming and mp3 download from most major on-line music retailers.

The album features several tracks Rick recorded between 2009 and 2012, including music commissioned for the web video series Lucha Libre: El Tecolote vs. the Body Thief from Dimension X, and for the world premiere production of the stage play Comfort in the Arms of the Damned.

Available at: Amazon.com - Amazon.es - Amazon.co.uk - Amazon.de - Amazon.fr - Amazon.co.jp -  eMusic.com - Google Play - iTunes - MySpace.com - Rhapsody.com - Zonga.ro.

Check out Rick’s web site here - http://www.rickreid.com/

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Mark Mosher
Synthesist, Composer, Performer
Boulder, CO
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Video of Bob Moog on Theremin September 29, 1991 Stanford University

Via a Bob Moog Foundation tweet – I  just discovered this wonderful video of Bob Moog talking about his history with the Theremin.

Links:

• http://moogfoundation.org/
• Modulate This Category for Theremin

Electronic Musician, Boulder CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

What Was That Instrument The Beach Boys Played During "Good Vibrations" at the 2012 Grammy Awards?

What Was That Instrument The Beach Boys Played on During “Good Vibrations” at the 2012 Grammy’s? It’s called an Electro-Theremin – also known as a Tannerin. Wikipedia has a nice summary:

… developed by trombonist Paul Tanner and amateur inventor Bob Whitsell in the late 1950s to produce a sound to mimic that of the theremin. The instrument features a tone and portamento similar to that of the theremin (or thereminvox), but with a different control mechanism. It consisted of a sine wave generator with a knob that controlled the pitch, placed inside a wooden box. The pitch knob was attached to a slider on the outside of the box with some string. The player would move the slider, thus turning the knob to the desired frequency, with the help of markings drawn on the box.

Differences Between Theremin and Electro-Theremin

In a nutshell, Theremin’s determine pitch based on proximity of your hand to a pitch antenna.  Because the Electro-Theremin uses this slider system which has visual reference points along the slider, it’s much easier to consistently hit the note your going for – while still sounding theremin-like.

 

Here are two good articles I found that dig even deeper into the differences.

First is this page by Tom Polk.

Next is this page by Theremin World.

Brian Wilson on Theremin and Tannerin

Tom Polk has two page you might be interested in:

• My encounter with Greatness --meeting Brian Wilson
• Brian Wilson’s Tour Tannerin

Here is a recent interview with Brian Wilson on Theremin.

Anyone Still Making These?

After a quick search I found a Synthtopia Post on http://www.therevox.com/ custom music instruments. Swing by their site to watch a video.

Want to Hear Some Theremin-Like Music?

• Checkout the weekly show and podcast Spellbound: A Brief Program for Theremin
• Here is a soundcloud set of some my songs that feature that Theremin sound

More Links Related to Electro-Theremin

• Electro-Theremin Posts on Theremin World
• The Paul Tanner Electro-Theremin Page
• Tom Polk Electro-Theremin Page

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Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
Official Web Site: www.MarkMosherMusic.com
Listen/Download Albums: www.MarkMosherMusic.com/music.html

Music Monday: Armen Ra "Plays The Theremin"

I was first introduced to Armen Ra’s music through the radio show and podcast Spellbound, a brief program of music for theremin where I heard the song “Dle Yaman”. The song is both beautiful and haunting. I immediately bought his album Plays the Theremin which is simply fantastic.

Most of the songs have sparse accompaniment leaving plenty of breathing room for the Theremin virtuoso’s dynamic emotive playing style to shine through in each piece. The exception to this rule “The Call” which is beat driven. In some cases Armen over dubs with additional Theremin parts. For example in the track “Garouna”, at the 0:53 mark, he plays another line an octave up but dancing around timing of the first line which really adds tension to the piece. The entire album is great so I recommend you give it a listen and support Armen’s indie work with a buy.

You can buy the album on iTunes US, iTunes UK/EU, or Purchase Physical CD.

In other Armen Ra music news, he will also be appearing on an episode of CSI which will air around Halloween, and his tracks will be be on NPR’s Nationally syndicated show Hearts of Space (most stations will run it on October 16 – check local listings http://www.hos.com/#stations).

Videos

Armen has a YouTube channel so I thought I’d include some videos. Here is a video of the song "Crane” which is track 2 on the album.

Here is another video Theremin CHOPIN NOCTURNE ARMEN RA rehearsal. This song is not on the album but I thought I’d include it as it shows off Armen’s Theremin skills which he’s been developing since 2001.

 

Links:

• Buy the album on iTunes US, iTunes UK/EU, or Purchase Physical CD
• Official Web Site – armenra.com
• http://twitter.com/armenra
• Facebook

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Mark Mosher
Electronic/Experimental Music Artist, Boulder, CO
Synthesist | Composer | Keyboardist | Performer

Synth Geek Blog: http://modulatethis.com/
Artist Site: www.MarkMosherMusic.com

An Exclusive First Look at Tim Thompson's Kinect-Based Instrument: MultiMultiTouchTouch

Tim Thompson is a software engineer, musician, and installation artist. He was recently mentioned in Roger Linn’s post “Research Project: LinnStrument -- A New Musical Instrument Concept” where Roger credits Tim with writing a program that “translates the TouchCo's proprietary USB messages into TUIO messages sent over OSC.”

I met Tim at my recent concert at the Art Institute of California/Sunnyvale and he was kind enough to invite me over to see his latest development project, the MultiMultiTouchTouch. This custom solution offers players any number of arbitrarily-shaped multitouch areas with three-dimensional spatial control. Interaction with this space allows users to control and play virtual synthesizers using nothing but a Microsoft Kinect as the controller.

Ironically, the concept shown in Moog Music’s April Fools video “Introducing the Moog Polyphonic Theremin” is not only a reality, but Tim has one-upped this idea by providing polyphonic spatial control in multiple “frames”, AND more granular control than a Theremin with finger blob detection. In short MultiMultiTouchTouch is like having a polyphonic/multitimbral Theremin that can not only detect hand movements, but finger movements as well - from multiple players!!!

Luckily I brought my video camera along and recorded Tim describing and demoing the technology. I also give the MultiMultiTouchTouch a try at the end of the video. So, without further ado, I present the video “An Exclusive First Look at Tim Thompson's Kinect-Based Instrument: MultiMultiTouchTouch”

Watch embedded video in HD

An Exclusive First Look at Tim Thompson’s Kinect-Based: MultiMultiTouchTouch

Components
In summary, Tim developed with the following components:

• Microsoft Kinect (with power supply)
• KeyKit which is Tim’s own programming language and graphical environment for MIDI
• Cinder Open Source SDK
• Open Source Computer Vision (OpenCV)
• Open Sound Control (OSC)
• Python, used to implement a GUI for parameter control
• HP Laptop running Windows 7
• A wood frame for calibration (wood frame is not required once the frames have been calibrated).

The raw output of this controller is OSC messages formatted using the TUIO (multitouch) standard format. Parameters of the software can be controlled with JSON-formatted messages.

Events
If you're near Silicon Valley, you can play with this controller on April 10 at the Stanford DIY Musical Instrument Tailgate Party , or at the Kinect Hackathon at Hacker Dojo. Tim will also be using it in installations at Lightning In a Bottle and Burning Man this year.

Pass It On
I want to reiterate, this is real and NOT a late April Fool’s joke. Incredible work Tim! Congrats. I can’t wait to see where Tim takes this and look forward to the possibility of doing some MultiMultiTouchTouch compositions and performances myself. To help Tim promote his work share this video.

Links

• To learn more about Tim’s work, visit his web site http://timthompson.com
• More Modulate This Interviews

 

Mark Mosher
Electronic Music Artist & Synthesist, Boulder, CO
www.markmoshermusic.com
www.modulatethis.com

Free Music Friday: "Control Zone" Electronica Track and Video by Mark Mosher Performed on Theremin and AudioCube

Watch embedded video

One Man, One Theremin, One AudioCube :^) In this video I perform the original instrumental electronic music song "Control Zone" off of my album I HEAR YOUR SIGNALS which you can download name your price (enter $0 for FREE) on
http://markmosher.bandcamp.com/album/i-hear-your-signals. You can of course also buy my songs/albums on iTunes, Amazon MP3, LastFM, ReverbNation, Zune, and as Physical CDs.

Listener/Viewer Notes

This video is in HD and I captured the audio full fidelity right from my sound card so listen with some good headphones or on a good system and select HD for full-screen viewing. The video and audio were captured in one continuous take with no content edits.

Composer Notes
To fit the back-story of my album, I set out to compose a song that sounded a bit alien in origin. To liberate myself from my typical compositional instrument of the keyboard, I decided to compose and perform the textures and melodies using only spatial controllers. I this case I used a Moog Etherwave Theremin, and a Percussa AudioCube. Once I got going with this notion I really got using 6 dimension of spatial control to go “Hendrix” with the Theremin. The title of the song has many meanings, one of which should be obvious to Theremin fans.

Producer Notes 
I'm routing the Theremin analog signal into Ableton Live and then I convert the the signal from pitch-to-MIDI in real-time. This signal is routed to various virtual instruments hosted in Live. I then use a Percussa AudioCube in Sensor mode to add 4 additional dimensions of modulate in real-time. So 6 dimensions of spatial control. I'm changing the signal routing of the Theremin to route MIDI to different virtual instruments on the fly using the Novation Launchpad.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Free Music Friday: "Dark Signals" Electronica Track and Video by Mark Mosher

Watch Embedded Video (I recommend watching in HD!)

 

"Dark Signals" is a song from my album I Hear Your Signals. This is an original dark electronica song with driving big beats, bit-crushed high-hats, a dash of ambient texture, and distorted synth leads. It's one of my favorite songs off the album and is becoming a crowd favorite at live shows.

In the spirit of Free Music Friday you can get this song, or the entire album over at http://markmosher.bandcamp.com name your price (enter $0 for FREE).

The song and video are Copyright 2010 Mark J. Mosher and are under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Listener/Viewer Notes

This video is in HD and I captured the audio full fidelity right from my sound card.  So I recommend you listen with some good headphones or on a good system. You can play full screen, and or stream to your home theater via Tivo, Apple TV.

The video and audio were captured in one continuous take with no content edits so you can here a few artifacts and – dare I say it – teeny mistakes here and there which I left in as it’s part of the “character” of live performance. The only editing is on the video side where I added camera movement, camera mixing and visual effects.

Composer/Producer Notes

The song is original and was composed and produced entirely Ableton Live 8 with virtual instruments and lots of native Live effects. I either played all the notes, hand programmed the notes, or played them live.

The song is peformed in Session view. I have all the scenes laid out so I can control the arrangement on the fly in session view. I’ve mapped a foot controller plugged into my Novation Remote SL MIDI mapped to “Scene Launch” leaving my hands free to play and configure the Tenori-On function on the fly while advancing the arrangement. This also means I’m not locked in and can change the arrangement or extend scenes if I like.

It’s a little hard to see, but when I’m playing keys, I’m riding the modulation wheel to add grit. I’ve also use after touch to add distortion like effects.

The Moog Etherwave Theremin signal is converted from pitch-to-MIDI using a VSTand is driving a textural pad from a virtual synth.

At the 1:42 mark I’m playing lead using Tenori-On matrix controller sending MIDI notes to a virtual synth running in Live. I also use a different “layer” in the Tenori-On to play the nasty metalic pad sound.

The blinking cubes are Percuss AudioCubes. Normally I use these as controllers, but in this song they are light sources which I programed and control using RGB MIDI clips from live.

I created a copy of this set for performance and then froze and flattened tracks with virtual instruments that were either not being played live or were not being modulated live. As a result, I got my set load time down to about 6 seconds and my CPU load down to around 10-20% peaking at around 25% even though I’m playing some VSTs live.

Enjoy,

Mark Mosher, Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Celebrating Leon Theremin's Birthday with Video, Notes, Links, and a Soundcloud Set

Leon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Terme) was born on this day, August 15th, 1896. To help celebrate I’m going to do a bit of a stream of consciousness post and will offer some links on Leon and his wonderful instrument and some notes on my use of it. Hang in there till the end of the post as I’ve created a Soundcloud set called “Theremin Action” which is a collection of all the songs from REBOOT and I Hear Your Signals that use that Theremin sound or Theremin as a Controller.

LEON HIMSELF PERFORMING ON THEREMIN
Watch Embedded Video

HISTORY/LINKS

• Wikipedia has a nice summary of the origin of the instrument (although they seemed to have gotten his birth date wrong) here.
• Theremin world has a nice introductory article called “What’s a Theremin?”
• Bob Moog began building Theremin’s in 1949 and Moog Music still sells Theremin’s today.
• The Bob Moog Foundation has posted some fantastic photos of Lev and Bob from the foundation archives over on the their Facebook page.
• Theremin World’s “Leon Theremin: B-Day and B-Side” post.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
As a youngster, I can vividly remember the first time I saw the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. I was captivated by the sound of the Theremin in the film. In a related note, below is a pic I took of a reproduction of Gort last weekend while visiting Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

According to Thereminvox.com, the Theremin in the film was played by Samuel Hoffmann and Paul Shure for a score by Bernard Herrmann. Thereminvox has a re-posted An interview with Samuel Hoffman from Down Beat magazine originally published on 02.09.1951 called “Dr. Hoffman Tells Whys, Wherefores of Theremin” which is a fun read.

THEREMIN IN MY MUSIC
I started incorporating the Theremin sound in my original compositions before I actually owned a Theremin. I did so by emulating the sound and performance with synthesizers and playing via keyboard. For example, the song “They Walk Amoung Us” from my album  REBOOT is loaded with Theremin lead lines. In my recent album I Hear Your Signals, I composed the song  “Arrival” which has a Theremin sound as the lead instrument in the second chorus. I created the sound using a patch I programmed from “init” with FAW Circle.

I GET A REAL THEREMIN!
In April I took delivery of a real Theremin – a Moog Etherwave. I did an unboxing review about it here.

THEREMIN AS A CONTROLLER
While I am learning “classic” Theremin technique, I also began using the Theremin as a spatial controller to control virtual digital synthesizers running out of Ableton Live in combination with Percussa AudioCubes. This combination allows me to control 6 dimensions of sound without touching a knob or dial (volume and pitch from Theremin, 4 dimensions from AudioCubes).

I used the Theremin HEAVILY in the song “Control Zone”. All the pad, lead tracks, and unusual sounding guitar and bell sounds where played in real-time and recorded in one pass with only minimal editing after the fact.

I also used the Theremin as a controller in the song “Dark Signals” to play special effects sounds in various sections of the song.

STILL INTRIGUING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
I’m using a Theremin when I perform live now. It’s just fantastic. I recently played a private event and used the Theremin as a controller and after the show I got a lot of questions about it and some requests to play it. After all these years and advancements in technology, people are still intrigued by an electronic instrument patented in 1928. Clearly, the notion that you can perform music and control sound using spatial movement is still intriguing.

CELEBRATE WITH MUSIC
As promised, here is a Soundloud set with all my Theremin related songs. Happy Birthday Leon! And thanks Bob and Moog Music. Theremin Action by MarkMosher

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Thereminst, Boulder CO
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
www.ModulateThis.com

Overview and Time-Lapse Video of My Ableton Live Laptop Music Rig + Controllers

Over the years I’ve played hundreds of shows as a keyboardist using my trusty Apex column with various hardware synths.  In late 2009 I had a vision to create a new Ableton Live laptop-centric rig using only virtual synths running in Live.

While I wanted to play some keys, I was really excited to add alternative visual, tangible, and spatial controllers and selected Percussa AudioCubes, Tenori-On, a Novation Launchpad. I went with my trusty Remote SL 25 for keys as it also doubles as a controller for Live. In the 11th hour I added a Moog Ehterwave Theremin which was clearly necessary to play “They Walk Among Us” live :^).

I’ve played enough shows to know that you can’t always count on basic lighting and P.A. to be adequate, so I added these elements to my requirements as well – just in case. My goal was to be able to run a room of 80 people if needed with just my rig. My other goal was 4 trips from the car load-in max with a 15 minute setup time or less.

The sketch above shows all this on paper (click the image to see a larger view). After months of slowly building up gear, the reality - sans lighting - is shown in the fun little time-laps video embedded video below.

Here is a list of what's in the rig:

• Laptop: Windows 7 32-bit, HP DV6t-1200 Pavilion w/Core2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53 GHZ, 3G memory, 7200 RPM Drive (Update I now use an HP Envy 14 I5)
• Soundcard: Novation NIO 2|4
• DAW Software: Ableton Live 8 Suite
• Primary Controllers: Novation Remote SL 25 (updated to MKII), Launchpad | Tenori-On | Percussa AudioCubes
• Primary Virtual Synthesizers: Tone2 Gladiator 2| Native Instruments Absynth 5 | Camel Audio Alchemy | U-He Zebra 2, ACE | Ableton Sampler, Operator... | SonicCharge Synplant | Lennar Digital Sylenth1 | reFX Vanguard, Slayer2 | Image-Line Harmless, Toxic Biohazard | Cakewalk Dimension Pro | FAW Circle | DCAM: Synth Squad...
• Hardware Synthesizers: Moog Etherwave Theremin, Waldorf Blofeld (not pictured)
• PA: Bose L1 Compact
• Stand: Odyssey ATT2 Table, Odyssey L2 Laptop Stand
  

Links to lots of the software I use here:
http://markmoshermusic.com/links.html

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
http://www.modulatethis.com
http://MarkMosherMusic.com

I Join the Moog & Theremin Communities with My New Moog Etherwave

Yesterday, I received the last instrumental element of my rig – the Moog Etherwave Theremin. It was actually a gift from my wife and extended family which makes it even more special! I’ve included a few pictures in this post and you can see more over on my Facebook Fan page.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been slowly building out my live rig to add all sorts of interesting visual, tangible, and now spatial controllers. The real power of my rig is that when you combine all the pieces with Ableton Live at the center you can do some amazing things – after lots of practice of course ;^)

The Theremin is amazing and I’ve always wanted one – for many reasons really. First I feel that through the Theremin I’m connecting to the history of electronic music, and to Bob Moog in a way. Second, I’ve always loved the classic use of Theremin in science fiction films. I used a Theremin patch from a virtual synth in the song “They Walk Among Us” and I’m quite excited to use a real Theremin to perform this live. Third, I’ve always been curious about composing using spatial movements of the body. Lastly, I think it will also add an interesting visual aspect to my performances.

I plan to both learn classic Theremin technique, plus go well beyond the classic use of the Theremin by using it’s signal to control other elements in my rig and to heavily process it’s signal. I’ve already started working with it running through Ableton Live and using Percussa AudioCubes to modulate digital parameters that are effecting the analog signal. Very exciting!

The instrument itself is very solid and beautiful and is quite a contrast to commodity plastic controllers in build quality. I like Moog’s form factor with the Etherwave as well. They’ve done a nice job creating a small but solid enclosure that is lean and functional.

If you’ve not played a Theremin, it’s actually quite challenging. I’m very pleased that Moog included a DVD with two video tutorials by  Clara Rockmore, “the Greatest Theremin Virtuosa” and “Mastering the Theremin, by Lydia Kavina”. Bob Moog also makes an appearance in the video.

Many, many, many hours of practice in my future with the Thremin. More to come on this including videos of performance and rehearsals. Stay tuned.

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician (and now Thereminist)
Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
www.RebootAlbum.com