#leon theremin

[stardustmanblue]

[fuzzkaizer]

The Rhythmicon

"The Rhythmicon is universally regarded as the world’s first drum machine, but technically it’s not a “drum” machine. As opposed to other early devices, like the Chamberlin Rhythmate (introduced in 1957) or the Wurlitzer Sideman (1959), it doesn’t play beats according to typical time signatures. Instead it offers up a series of complex rhythmic pulses, each playing at a different pitch and each corresponding to different ratios from the harmonic series.

Cowell, who was born in 1897 and died in 1965, is probably best known for composing with “tone clusters” – chords built out of adjacent notes that he’d play on the piano with his fist or forearm. But he commissioned Theremin to build the Rhythmicon because he was hoping to bring to life another radical idea he’d been working on throughout the 1920s: Taking the infinite multiples of a fundamental wavelength (for example, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and so on) and transposing them into beats. ..." By Peter Holslin on June 17, 2015

cred: daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/06/rhythmicon-feature

[mywifeleftme]

330: Clara Rockmore // Theremin

Theremin Clara Rockmore 1977, Delos (Bandcamp)

100 years since its invention, the theremin remains an oddity. It is in every respect an antiquated piece of technology, and yet like the Tesla coil and the plasma globe it still provokes the primal wonder of science-as-magic. The advancements of a modern synthesizer unit are hidden from the eye—if you presented it to an unthawed person from the 19th century, they would at least be able to infer that the device is controlled using the buttons and keys. But the theremin player creates sound by coaxing an invisible magnetic field with their bare hands, as though they are pulling its warbling voice from the air itself—and indeed, inventor Léon Theremin’s artful original name for his instrument was the ætherphone.

To watch a performance by Clara Rockmore, the instrument’s foremost practitioner, is to see something that resembles a scene from a séance or a German Expressionist film. A petite, dark-haired woman with the eyes of an Orthodox Virgin Mary, she would stand ramrod straight behind the lectern-like theremin, nearly motionless save for the almost palsied-looking convulsions of her knotted hands and the tensing of her eyebrows, the only sign on her otherwise slack features of the intensity of her concentration. She looks as though she is forcing down the song attempting to leap from her throat until it screams through her fingertips like steam from a kettle. As synth pioneer Robert Moog explains in his liner notes to Rockmore’s 1977 LP Theremin, her absolute stillness was not a theatrical device but a requirement of playing the instrument: the theremin’s magnetic field encompasses not only the performers hands but their entire upper body, meaning that even a minor motion of the head will influence the instrument’s pitch. But the austere figure she cut no doubt contributed to her allure, the sense that she was herself as unearthly as the instrument she played.

Rockmore, a violin prodigy since age 5, took to Theremin’s invention sometime in the late 1920s. Her concerts popularized and legitimated the instrument, but it would be nearly a half-century before the Theremin LP, her first, was finally released. Produced by Shirleigh Moog and engineered by her husband Robert, one gets the sense that the Moogs are fans trying to correct an oversight, to record the album as it would’ve sounded if it had been made her during her prime. The results are captivating, even haunting. At times you may be fooled into thinking you’re listening to a recording of a human soprano from some decayed shellac disc; in other moments, you will be moved by how world-weary an electronic tone can sound.  Rockmore is accompanied, as she had been since the beginning, by her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano, and her selections focus on 19th and early 20th century compositions, with a heavy emphasis on the Romantics. A majority of the pieces here come from her fellow Russians, including Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky. My personal favourite of these is her take on Joseph Achron’s “Hebrew Melody.” Inspired by traditional laments, Rockmore’s theremin evokes the sobbing characteristic (krekhts) of Jewish vocal music, while her sister thunders and pirouettes on her piano in a classically Romantic style.

Theremin stands apart from other electronic classical records like Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach because it never sounds wholly like a novelty despite the theremin’s high camp potential (and, for that matter, Rockmore’s). It is peculiar, and my fascination with it definitely originated in a perverse nostalgia for esoteric junk—but the somber beauty of the sisters’ performance wiped the smirk from my face from virtually the moment I dropped the needle.

330/365

[godteri-takk]

Do you like old synthpop? Then OHM: The early gurus of electronic music is something for you!!

The whole compilation is on Spotify(some songs missing) and YouTube (3 songs missing) and probably other sites too :) it consists of the most important early composers and pieces from many different places, time periods and styles.

Some pieces uses one of the first ever electronic musical instruments: the theremin! It was invented by soviet musician-physicst Leon Theremin around 1920, therefore the name. This instrument is space-controlled, so you play it by moving your hand around it, not really touching it. It looks really cool!

In the first track (CD:1), "Tchaikovsky: Valse Sentimentale" (2:08) 1977, Clara Rockmore, a true pioneer in space-controlled electronic music, plays the Theremin together with her sister Nadia Reisenberg, who plays piano. This piece is truly magnificent and strange-soundig :D Rockmore actually was Leon Thermins student and protégé in the beginning of her career!

Before this gets way too long I must tell about one of my favourites in CD:1, which is the 4th track: "Williams Mix" (5:42) 1952 by John Cage. ...... And at the end of it you can hear a long abd roaring applause, which is very much deserved, of course :D Chris Cutler (musician, composer) tells about this piece in the booklet included with the CD collection.

"Williams Mix" follows a score five hundred pages long, which has never been reproduced, each page made up of two ten-inch graphic sections. The tape is to be laid directly on the page, which is a pattern showing all the edits and the angles at which tape should be cut, as well as recipes for constructing the sounds each piece of tape should contain -Cutler, 2000

The score he's talking about (a piece of it pictured above, x) is a sort of pattern or guide for making the pieces of magnetic tape that was used, making it possible to split, splice and edit the sounds. Around 600 tracks of sounds from for example the country, the city, wind- and electronically produced sounds. (X) This took about a year and was absolutely groundbreaking work! More info here!

If you liked that one, "He Destroyed Her Image" (1:59) 1973 by Charles Dodge is also a mix of different sounds, but made with newer and more advanced technology, and it's far more melodious and, well, structured. It plays with words like a poem, and Dodge has the following to say about it (from the booklet, source below):

I'd never been able to write very effective vocal music, and here was an opportunity to make music with words. I was really attracted to that. It wasn't singing in the usual sense. It was making music out of the nature of speech itself. I've always liked humor and had an attraction to the bizarre, the surreal. These poems were almost dreamlike in their take on reality. So that made me feel at home somehow. -Dodge, 2000

This is my favourite in CD:3 and the vibes are really amazing! I think thats all for this post but if you are interested, just ask me and I'll write about more of the songs! The whole collection has 42 in total :)

Sources for images are provided in the main text or ALT text, as well as links with other sources for information. Source for the booklet that came with the CD: OHM: the early gurus of electronic music: 1948-1980 (2000) by Thomas Ziegler and Jason Gross, ellipsis arts.

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

august 15, 1896

Leon Theremin - inventor of the theremin, one of the first electronic instruments - is born in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

[gregorygalloway]

Léon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen, 27 August 1896 – 3 November 1993)

[steampunkforever]

Not that I’d ever make a Leon Theremin biopic about what a disastrous man he was (I absolutely would), but I’d make sure it had a completely original score, heavily featuring the theremin, save for one song: Back in the USSR by the Beatles, which will feature heavily in the scene where Theremin returns to Russia and is imprisoned in a Siberian Gulag.

A separate, soulful theremin cover of the song will play during the end credits, as is customary in Leon Theremin Biopics.

[psikonauti]

Léon Theremin demonstrates the Thereminvox (1954)