Radio magazines back before the Great Depression carried several articles on the Theremin which was a strange and weird electronic musical instrument played without even touching it. All one had to do was wave one's hands around in the air near two antennae -- one of which was for pitch and the other for volume control.

One cover picture on a Hugo Gernsback magazine is probably a collector's item by now: it showed, in typical science-fiction-artist's fashion, the Orchestra of the Future, consisting of about sixteen of these Theremins being played by the performers waving their hands around in sync with the conductor's traditional baton- and hand-waving. The Musical Establishment of the time, of course, completely ignored this prediction and pretended it Never Happened.

Recently this writer had the chance to demonstrate his home-built Theremin at the Los Angeles Future world Exposition, and a surprising number of people lined up to hear it, see it, and even to try it out for themselves. While a few of the older spectators remembered reading about it or having heard it used as background in a movie, most of the visitors were quite mystified and puzzled about how it worked, and who invented it when and where.

No apology, then, is needed for this attempt at explanation and giving a little history, especially when most people consider the Theremin to be the epitome of Futurism, the curiosity brought back from Tomorrow or the Day After.

Actually, the story of this instruments begins with the development of the vacuum-tube oscillator before World War I and the use of this oscillator in the first radio receivers to embody three-element (triode) vacuum tubes. Those arch-rivals of the early radio days, Lee de Forest and Major Armstrong, long disputed which one was the first to discover or invent the regenerative receiver.

In the interests of history we might mention that the Italian art movement called Futurism (see "Futurism" article) started before World War I -- manifestos appeared as early as 1909 and quickly proliferated to Paris, New York, Berlin, and even Russia. Even though many Futurists graduated into Dada and Surrealism and various other not quite so famous Isms, the term "futuristic" had a surprising vitality and continues right down to our own time. This is especially true of the European industrial design and architectural trends stemming from the German Bauhaus movement of the 1920s.

This may help explain how the Theremin instrument and its strange ability to "draw music out of the air" got associated with the label Futuristic. The scientists and the technicians and the speculative writers about new inventions and engineering progress paid due attention to the appearance of this new musical instrument, so the idea of futurism became quite naturally associated with it.

We are now in a position to understand why there have been hardly any definitive discussions of the Theremin: it is so interdisciplinary in character, and no matter how expert any specialist writer might be, too many important factors will be left out of the book or magazine or journalistic account. The generalist attitude is now more respectable, which it certainly was not in 1925 or 1930, the heyday of publicity for this instrument.

The Musical Establishment deeply resented anything that would come from the technical or scientific world and change their way of business, or permit the slightest progress in the art of music itself. Unfortunately, in this particular case they had a few valid points: On the violin, one can develop a fingering system for finding the notes on the violin fingerboard -- after considerable practice, the violinist learns to play in tune. On the theremin there is no fingerboard or even guide -- the player's hand is unsupported in the air -- when sufficiently close to the pitch antenna, an almost invisible movement will change the pitch a whole octave!

Even the vocalist has immediate internal kinaesthetic feedback from the vocal cords so can "prepare" the pitch of a note before singing it. So the Theremin is a difficult instrument indeed, and expert teachers are needed. But in the Twenties there weren't any teachers willing to take the instrument seriously, and so there weren't any special compositions or arrangements published for it, no method-books, and even tfiough a few instruments were manufactured by RCA, there was no demand created, and therefore no incentive to mass-produce them. That was really the Age of Specialization and "Shoemaker Stick To Your Last!", and so nobody dared be interdisciplinary enough to co-ordinate all the technical, artistic, economic, and commercial factors to get the Theremin off the ground. The idea of creativity and applied imagination and the Do-It-Yourself Movement did not yet exist, in public.

You might have thought that such musical figures as Carlos Chavez, the Mexican composeri conductor, would have promoted it in his book, Toward a New Music, but no: he put it down, probably because of this drastic change in technique required of the performer. However, the late Joseph Schillinger, author of a controversial system of composition, was in favor of the Theremin and wrote an Airphonic Suite for it with orchestral accompaniment, and discussed it in one of his books.

Re also collaborated with Prof. Theremin and mentioned some other specialized experimental instruments: the Rhythmicon which could produce polyrhythms automatically, and a special organ which could produce some of the degrees of the 144-tone scale. There is a tantalizingly brief allusion to "double equal temperament" (i.e., 12x12 notes per octave) in Schillinger's The Mathematical Basis of the Arts, published posthumously. From the egotistical tone of Schillinger's writings, though, it is hard to imagine any extensive collaboration with anyone else on Schillinger's part; we should take all this with a grain of salt perhaps.

For a while Leon Sergeyevich Theremin was in New York City and had a studio there. He was definitely there in mid-1932, since the August 1932 issue of Radio News has an historically important Theremin article, "Music From Electrons" by one Irving J. Saxl, and this illustrated article shows the Theremin we are discussing here, as well as making very brief allusions to other inventions -- a cello-like instrument and a keyboard instrument of some kind. A back page of the magazine carried a tiny ad for the Theremin Studio.

Somebody is going to wonder about our playing around with accents in the previous paragraph: the very name of the man and the instrument open up thorny problems of transliteration and spelling and carrying a name back-and-forth from West to East to West again. The name is French in derivation, hence it often appears with the acute accents to get the proper French pronunciation. Something like "tay-ray-mang," but this English-style representation is very crude. Generally, in contemporary writings, as well as in the article just referred to, there are not accents written, so we might as well ignore them and assume that an English pronunciation of the name is permissible in this country. This is not a simple case of someone coming here from France with an established French pronunciation and spelling; the Russians have their own alphabet and do not have the French sounds, and their version of the name is usually transliterated in English books as Termin, which in Russian would sound something like Talr-meen, but in one or two articles the spelling Termen appears -- this might be a Russian attempt to get closer to the French pronunciation, but just as plausibly it might be a misprint. Surely it is reasonable for us to assume that, if the Russians respelled and repronounced the name to suit themselves, we have an equal right! The French ancestry was a couple of generations back, so what?

Back in 1936 the composer Henry Cowell informed this writer that Prof. Theremin referred to this instrument we are treating here as simply The Vox. Calling the instrument itself a "theremin" might have been a publicity-office recommendation -- or some newspaper's quite natural abbreviation of "Theremin instrument" or it might have been the result of some advertising done by RCA during the brief period they were making them. It is the universal fate of inventors to get associated with just one invention of theirs, even though Theremin's other inventions could have been equally famous if someone only cared. Vox is appropriate because this instrurnenWcan sound very much like a human singer or someone humming -- or even someone whistling in the high registers. So, do you mind if we sometimes refer to the instrument, here and elsewhere, as the Thereminvox? We really would like to show due respect to the other inventions such as the cello-like affair, the keyboard instruments of which there were several, and some other instruments which never got any publicity at all -- we can only guess at their exact nature.

One idea, rather than a separate invention, was to replace the antenna-rod with a fairly large metal plate. Then a dancer moving to and from this plate, which presumably would be hung on the wall, could vary the pitch with the dance-movements. From the average musician's or composer's point of view, not very sensible: but what a smashing showpiece! (Rock groups please copy.) Let's go back to Carlos Chavez for a moment: One of his criticisms levelled at the thereminvox was the fact that "only the sentimental and romantic melodies were tried on it' A melody born on a cello" he went on, "might not be suitable for another instrument, let alone a new one such as this." That indeed seems to have been the fate of the thereminvox all through the years -- Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and Schubert -- the typical things taught in conservatories and done to death in symphony concerts and piano recitals. The soi disant avant-garde and the supposedly radical and daring academic composers of recent years with their serialism and angular dissonant counterpoint have almost all ignored the thereminvox. Thus, it was cut off from what should have been the mainstream of musical progress all these years.

It is possible that Theremin himself was influenced in this direction -- musical training was very rigid in Russia. Nothing revolutionary nor radical about it -- ultraconservative is the word. Prof. Theremin had been trained in cello at one such conservatory, so it is logical enough that his own demonstrations of the Vox would follow in this Classical and Romantic European tradition. It can hardly be surprising that any tendencies he had to experiment were fully occupied with the instrument rathe? than the music he would play on it. Then, after it had been publicized, others would simply follow his example. Music teachers are not wont to experiment, and are very likely to kill off any experimenting by their pupils. Be glad you live in the 1980s when experimenting with music and instruments is slightly more respectable, and you don't have to remain shivering in fear of What Other People Would Think! Now let's get back to the early phases of the vacuum-tube radio receiver, which will help explain the beat-oscillator or difference-frequency principle. This principle underlies the Thereminvox and also some other inventors' Instruments, in particular the Ondes Martenot.

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Before broadcasting and radiotelephony, wireless communication was by means of the Continental version of the Morse Code. The dots and dashes are spurts of radio frequency energy such that a dash is three times as long as a dot, the space within a letter is the same length as a dot, and the space between letters is about the length of a ciash. The first radio transmitters produced modulated or damped waves, which when received would be heard as tones -- some of these were quite noisy and rough -- later, with improved transmitters, they would be smoother and more flute-like. The frequency of the radio currents in the transmitting antenna might be 500,000 cycles per second, now called 500 kilohertz, and indeed the frequencies used in many theremins are of this order still. A Theremin could work at as low a frequency as 25 kHz and up through the familiar broadcast band -- perhaps as far as several megahertz (millions of cycles per second), although it would then be less stable in operation. Today, the choice of frequency would be determined this way: One would avoid the AM broadcast band in order not to pick up local broadcasts on the instrument, or irritating whistling sounds that would result from weaker signals within this band of 540-1600 kHz. Then one would experiment with somewhat lower frequencies and decide upon something which gave the optimum range of pitches with the antenna and parts used in building the instrument. In the unlikely event that someone wants a duet or trio or quartet of Theremins, it would be very necessary to space the frequencies of the instruments far enough apart not to interfere with one another -- the horrible caterwauling and screeching of two or more Theremins operating on the same frequencies would be unbearable!

In the case of a Martenot or other instrument operating on this beat-frequency principle, a lower frequency might be suitable -- it depends upon the particular instrument.

Back to the other paragraph -- the radio transmitters that sent out tones as such rather than single unmodulated radio frequencies took up more "space" in the radio spectrum than a transmitter which was not tone-modulated. However, with the simplest receivers, which were like the batteryless, tubeless crystal sets of the l920s, an unmodulated radio signal consisting of a single frequency and concentrating all its power on that frequency, could not be heard. This fact delayed the conservlng of radio-spectrum space for quite a while.

Hence there was pressure back in those days to invent something that would produce the desired tone-signal, interrupted by the dots and dashes of the Morse-code messages, within the radio receiver itself. This was solved by arranging for the tube in the receiver to oscillate. An oscillator usually is an amplifier, so arranged that some of its output gets back into the input. It goes crazy by talking to itself. It re-amplifies its own signal. This produces an alternating current, whose frequency depends on the turning of the circuit and also upon external and accidental factors such as the supply voltages and the kind of parts used to build the circuit. In case you wonder, why all these technicalities and early radio history, well, you wanted to know how a Theremin worked, didn't you? And all this is relevant.

The receiver that could oscillate was a clever idea, because the very same parts that tuned the circuit to receive the particular station also served to tune the oscillations when the receiyer was adjusted to oscillate. Real economy of means; what the engineer called "elegant." Obviously, if the oscillations of the transmitter were of a very high inaudible frequency, say several hundred thousands of vibrations per second, or as we now call it, hundreds of kilohertz, then the radio set was tuned to such a frequency, and when allowed to oscillate by a gadget the called the Regeneration Control, it produced a frequency very close to that of the transmitting station. If it were tuned dead-on, of course, there would be no tone in the operator's headphones. 500,000 - 500,000 = 0. But suppose it were tuned slightly off: 500,000 - 499,600 = 400. Then a tone somewhere between middle G and G-sharp would be heard every time the code transmitter sent a dot or dash. If you tuned the radio further away from the transmitter, the tone would rise in pitch: 500,000 - 499,000 = 1,000; 500,000 - 498,000 = 2,000; and so on, the tone getting higher and higher (and weaker because of the detuning) and course, 501,000 - 500,000 = 1,000; i.e., two places to get a 1,000 Hz tone, with the receiver set below or above the transmitter's frequency. All this, of course, that we are discussing here refers to Morse code signals, not to voice or music or ordinary broadcasting and radio-telephone work. In that case, an oscillating receiver would superpose a continuous howl or whistle upon the voice or music the radiotelephone station was sending. That would be useless, and might annoy neighbors with radio sets nearby. This was a common nuisance in the 20's.

Improved radio sets appeared on the market in the later 20's and soon this nuisance was only a memory, but that is not part of our there minic story. This principle, of the beating of two inaudible high frequencies to produce a difference frequency corresponding to an audible tone was used in an electronic test instrument called the beat-frequency oscillator or simply beat oscillator, fairly common in laboratories until the introduction of test oscillators generating audio frequencies dire ctly. So, in this sense, beat generation was around quite a while before there were hippies and beatniks.

According to the English-language version of a Soviet publication dated 1966, Gleb Anfilov's Physics and Music, Theremin started his experimenting which led to the thereminvox of 1919. This was a troubled time in the country's history, and the young Theremin was set on producing a capacity-operated burglar alarm or proximity warning device as it might also be called: approaching protected area would set off a whistling sound rising in pitch with the closeness of approach. Working on this and some similar devices which used capacitance effects, he discovered that the pitch could be controlled with his hands, leading to the use of this principle as a musical instrument. His training on the cello stood him In good stead, and before long, others at the laboratory heard this new instrument.

In 1921 an All-Russia Electrical Engineering Congress was held in Moscow, and this provided the opportunity for a public demonstration of the new instrument. This was followed by various recitals and public concerts. In 1927, Theremin went abroad, performing in Europe and finally New York. Some three thousand thereminvoxes were made by various companies. As we mentioned earlier, Radio News and some other magazines, newspapers, carried items on the thereminvox from time to time, and it was broadcast a few times. A very few musicians In this country took up the instrument, but there was not substantial body of thereminists in the United States.

Time now to get technical again: to understand how a thereminvox works, we have to discuss the electrical phenomenon called capacitance. For the layperson the simplest explanation might be that capacitance is the ability of a conducting object to retain a static charge. That is, an object capable of conducting electricity and insulated properly, can acquire and hold and then discharge a quantity of electrical energy in the form usually termed static electricity. In a dry climate, you can shuffle your feet across a carpet and then cause a spark to issue from your fingertip to a grounded metal object. The amount of electricity stored is usually very very small. In the case of alternating current, a capacitance can be alternately charged in one direction, discharged, charged in the opposite direction, discharged again, and so on. The higher the frequency of the current, the more total energy can be recycled back-and-forth this way. In the case of charging and discharging the human body, we are dealing with extremely tiny amounts of energy, far below the threshold of feeling; but when dealing with currents alternating at several hundred thousand or millions of times per second, such as produced by radiofrequency oscillators, it becomes possible to detect extremely small capacitances. And the measurement of extremely small capacitances was one of Theremin's jobs at that laboratory. Your TV set will contain, and work on, such minute capacitances, since the frequencies involved are now in the hundreds of millions.

Referring again to the explanation of beats between inaudibly high frequency oscillations on page 28, suppose that the beating is not between a distant transmitter's signal and an oscillating radio set, but between two oscillators built into the same box. Radio frequencies of this kind are tuned by variable capacitors (formerly called variable condensers), and you can still see these contrivances in some radio sets. In the there mm, there is one oscillator which remains fixed in frequency, and which is isolated by shielding or other means from the second oscillator. The second oscillator is quite similar in construction, but it is connected to the pitch-antenna outside the box. This is done in such a way that any slight change in external capacitance' such as a performer's hand approaching the antenna, detunes the second oscillator by a small amount. Usually, there is a small variable capacitor connected in the circuit of the first, fixed-frequency oscillator, and this is used to set the zero-beat point. Sometimes a slug-tuned coil is used instead. It is unlikely that the two oscillators will have exactly the same frequency when the instrument is first turned on, so the performer will adjust the zero-beat point usually to occur when the hand is farthest from the pitch-antenna; but if desired, the zero-beat can be put at the closest approach to the antenna, or even somewhere in between so that the pitch would first fall and then rise instead of rising continually as the rod is approached. If the two oscillators are not sufficiently electrically isolated one from another, they will lock or sync in before the zero-beat point is reached. In that case, the audible tone will stop during the synchronization or lock-in zone. This could deprive the instrument of its bass register.

It is possible to get spurious whistles and other sounds if the theremin is near a strong radio station or a TV set or certain other electronic equipment. We must reemphasize our remark about taking extra precautions when two or more thereminvoxes are to be played together. They will "broadcast" to each other.

This probably was one reason which led Maurice Martenot to construct a keyboard instrument, the Ondes Martenot, on this beat-oscillator principle. Then no antenna is involved, and the radio frequencies can be trapped inside the box.

The beat-tone from these inaudibly high-frequency oscillators would never be heard without a demodulator (which used to be called a detector). A small signal from each oscillator is conveyed through a decoupling network to the demodulator, which produces the beat frequency. Once that is done, this beat-frequency can be amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. Various circuits have been invented for controlling the volume as well as the pitch.

The one used in the late 1920s would be obsolete now, since it used the output of a third radiofrequency oscillator (of course operating on a frequency considerably removed from the first two so that it could not beat with them) to control the heating of the filament of an early-type diode vacuum tube. The audio signal went through this tube and then was further amplified as desired.

With contemporary components, there are many possible ways of controlling the volume. One might even consider photo-cells and light beams, so that there would be no interference with the two main pitch oscillators.

Before becoming involved with the synthesizer industry which he practically created out of nothing, Robert Moog sold Theremins and kits of parts for them. Several electronic firms have at one time or another produced modern versions of the theremin.

Now let us discuss tone-quality and other features. There are literally dozens of ways of building a theremin and arranging the demodulator circuits and designing the two pitch oscillators.

Normally, radiofrequency oscillators, just like ordinary musical instruments and audiofrequency oscillators, produce a series of harmonics which are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. It should be obvious that the harmonics can beat as well as the fundamentals, and therefore the audible tone of the theremin can be designed to have a normal harmonic series. Say for illustration, that the fundamental is 500 khz (just below the broadcast band), then its harmonics will be 1 MHz, 1.5 MHz, 2.5 MHz, and so on. If the detector (demodulator) circuit is untuned or very broadband, it will operate on the harmonics of the two oscillators just as it does on the fundamental, producing audible harmonics of the beat frequency. Evidently Theremin's original instruments and those we have heard function this way. If one wishes, the demodulator can be tuned to reject some or all harmonics and give a sine wave or nearly so. Or there can be separate demodulators for the individual harmonics, and they can all be controlled for additive synthesis. Of course, this latter makes for a more complicated and expensive instrument, but it is a plausible way of effecting additive synthesis.

The other way might be to aim for a sinewave audio tone, then pass it through distorters of various kinds for the usual waveforms wanted. The usual contemporary effect-boxes can be used, or built-in.

The Australian composer Percy Grainger wrote a position paper on the use of therernins in the late 1930s. He was always advocating unusual instruments and orchestration; in the present instance he admired the utter flexibility of theremins and the freedom from the usual constraints imposed by construction and technique of ordinary instruments.

Every now and then a theremin is used in a science-fiction or other film. Quite a number of horror and fantasy films have used it either with the orchestra or as sound-effect. This background-for-film affair has been about the only contact with the theremin for the average person in recent years.

Next topic would be, if you have a Theremin how do you learn to play it? If there are no teachers, it makes it quite a problem. One approach is suggested by the term, Vox: proceed from the singer's standpoint. Practice finding the degrees of the scale on the continuum of pitches which the Thereminvox provides. Don't expect to master it in a hurry -- it is probably somewhat more difficult than the violin. Another approach would be using violin music and proceeding as the beginner on the violin slowly learns the unfretted violin (or cello) fingerboard. Playing in tune might be learned by using tape recordings of scales and various exercises or accompaniments and beginning slowly -- the temptation to amorphous sloppiness is very great and will require unceasing will power to resist.

It is possible to adjust a Thermin for a greater or lesser compass. A 5-octave normal pitch-range has been claimed by some -- this is easy enough to attain, as by varying the connection to the pitch antenna, or changing the resistors and/or capacitors in series with it. It might make things much easier for the beginner if the compass is adjusted to only two octaves so at first, putting more space between the usual scale-pitches. For example, a very small series capacitor could be inserted between the atntenna and the instrument proper. For novelty or sound-effect uses, the compass can be adjusted to seven or more octaves. At the extreme high register, faint whistles may be heard coming down as the main pitch goes up -- these are probably beats between radiofrequency harmonics of the two oscillators. Sometimes they are due to reception of external radio stations.