Theremins: World's First Electronic Music

accomplishment for me. Have you ever tried to play one? No, I haven't. I have not know. It's weird that you had to think about that. Well. I mean I was just trying to think, like, I think there's one in the house, Stuff works office somewhere though, Stuff Podcast Office. I want to say that they're is. Well, I'm there, man, let's go get it, Okay, So look around, we'll wait, we'll wait. We won't edit out you going and wandering around and looking for I'll just talk to the people

to keep them busy. Uh, that's weird. I mean, I'm obviously not gonna go look for it, but I had no idea that was one here. I think so I could be making that up. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be there. So for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about theramans. And if you still don't know what we're talking about, let us describe this. We'll be able to do that, right, Oh yeah, sure, sure, um, well, here you go. We'll play a clip of something that

we'll figure out what it is later. Ready, So there's whatever we selected post production to put into to demonstrate theremans. But that that eerie, high pitched kind of whaling sound, that's a theremin. And the theraman was the world's first electronic musical instrument and it was created by accident, as we'll see. But um, it uses electromagnetism, actually electromagnetic interference to produce a changing pitched sound, changing and pitch and

changing in volume. And you can create this, this sound, this music, I guess you would call it without any kind of mechanical energy whatsoever. You're just moving your your body or your hands in and out of the electromagnetic field around the theramin and that's what produces the sound. It's pretty cool. Yeah, And as we will also see it's Uh, it's key that you use a hand because your body it has to be something that conducts electricity.

Like you could technically could use metal or something like that, but you wouldn't have the nuance that you're able to achieve by you know, very sort of micro movements in your hand and your fingers. Uh. And when you're playing it, it sort of looks like almost like you're conducting an orchestra. The way you hold your hand, it's very evocative of conducting.

I think. Yeah, And it's funny you say that because, um thereman who's actually named Terman um he he said that it was like creating music out of thin air, just like a conductor does. So that was very astutive you, Charles, thank you. So yeah, you mentioned Urman. This guy his his Russian name, I guess was Lev Sergey Yavic Terman t E R M E N. I guess leon Thareman sounds a little more western. Did change it? I I don't know it. You know, here in America we just

change it for you. You know, you come through Ellis Island, you get it basically a whole new name that Americans can pronounce more easily. I'm pretty sure, that's what happened.

That's a good point. So when Lev was in his early twenties, in the sort of early nineteen hundreds and nineteen nineteen ish, he um was working at the Physical Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and he was working and as you'll see, he did he you know, for the majority of his career worked for the Russian State.

But he was working on an invention that was supposed to measure the density of gas and a chamber, and essentially he was trying to develop like a land based sonar device that used electromagnetism to detect objects that came within a certain area. And he was like, hey, I'm a pretty young, hip creative guy. I wonder if I add sound to this thing, uh, and not intending to create anything musical, but just let me add sound to

it to indicate that this thing is even on. And he did it and bought a being bada boom bon job. He was like, that sounds pretty cool, yeah, because I mean like it it would make sense that you want to add sound to because if you're detecting something coming within proximity, it's kind of like a metal detector. As you get closer and closer to the metal. That sound that it makes um increases. It's basically the exact same thing, except you're not detecting metal. You're to acting electro magnetic

interference basically with the theremin. But because he was a young, hip guy like you said, and also a classically trained cellist, um, he said, I think that I could turn this into a musical instrument, and he did pretty quickly. He um fiddled with it a little bit, maybe uh did a little put another do Hicky or two on there, and all of a sudden he had, like I said at

the beginning, the world's first electronic musical instrument. Like, if you're into dance music or electronica or anything like that, you owe a great debt of gratitude to to love Terman. Sure should we use some of these things that you found,

some of these descriptors. Yeah, so this this initially had like two or three, and I just started adding to One of my favorite things to do is to go around collecting people's hapless descriptions of of what a thereman sounds like, because nobody nails it, but all all of them come close, and their hilarious in their attempts. Yeah, so here's one across between a violin and a soprano voice.

That's that's not bad. I think that was the original one. Yeah, I mean you can get I mean, especially when you get some vibrato going, you can see how one might liken it to a voice. Oh yeah, it doesn't sound like a voice to me, but I get the I get the comp um. Okay, how about this one, a purified and magnified saxophone. I think if there was ever a complete failure in describing a Theramin sound, it's that one. Yeah. It sounds like a saxophone, like a cheap keyboard. The

saxophone button on a cheap keyboard sounds like a saxop. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's what they totally missing their point. Uh. Let me see the howling of a haunted wind. That's pretty good. I love that one. This one I think comes from Therman himself. A cello lost in a dense fog and crying because it does not know how to get home. For cello just walking around in the dark by himself, how do I get home? Let me see here across between an amplified child slide whistle, so it doesn't say

and what that was a that was a mistake. I put or inky okay, slide and a human voice and the squawks that emanated from early radio speakers. That was pretty That was pretty good because it's uh. The the one of the key components of a theoreman is that slide because it is um. As you will see, and if you listen to theorem in music, it's all about that slide. It's not they're not punctuated with staccato notes. No. And as a matter of fact, I was watching um

tutorial by currently the world's foremost theoremnist. I believe her name is Carolina Eck e y c K. She's German um, so however, you pronounced that into German um. And she makes finger motions to cut off the last more ship to to create a space in between notes, separate notes rather than she uses the technical um jargon for what she's talking about. I'm not quite familiar with it. But another way to put it is she's cutting spaces into

the notes, so she's not sliding it around like a trumbone. No, or slide whistle that's lost in the dark. You do a pretty good slide whistle to your slide whistle beer. I had one of those when I was a kid. That was the best thing ever I never even did. I'm self taught. Oh boy, I know what you're getting for Christmas? Oh nice? Remember that time you got me an empty can of billy beer? Oh yeah, that's right years ago. Oh no, it wasn't billy beer. I'm sorry,

it was just plain generic beer. My can was just the black like helvetica font that just says beer. Yeah, my friend Eddie's favorite beer of all time. Has he actually drank it? Yeah? When we went to uh there was like four of us that went to l A for spring break in college and stayed with my brother and we went to the store and they had the generic beer and Petty is a beer guy, and he just flipped. He bought like three cases of it. Wow for fifty cents. Yeah exactly. Yeah. So, um thereman has

got this instrument going. He's pretty proud of it. Word gets around Mother Russia, and word gets to Lenin, who at the time was chairman of Russia's uh sort of newly In I guess installed as one word for it the Bolshevik government, and he flipped over it. Lennon was a theoreman nut and he was like, you know what, I'm gonna send you on tour, comrade, And uh, this thing is gonna want people to champion electricity as a whole just by these demonstrations, right, just so that they

can possibly get a theorem in themselves. They're going to install electricity in their house. That's my plan. Forget reading lights or warmth, right, it's the theoreman that they'll want. So he tours Russia for a while basically promoting you know, electricity, electronic music, Soviet know how, that kind of stuff, and um, his tour is so successful that they send him on to Western Europe. And he toured Western Europe with what we're known as his um ether concerts. Ether wave concerts,

not ether concerts. Those are totally different. Um. And the one of the less known things about Left Harman is that while he was touring Europe just wowing crowds, he was also spying for the Soviet state, which he did for a while. Actually, yeah, I know this, I say this a lot, but this this has got the makings of a pretty good movie too, don't you think sure? Yeah?

I think so. I mean I'm not quite sure. You'd have to really be a master to to to pull out the um, the humanity and the compassion and the viewer for this guy, because he's morally ambiguous in a lot of places, I think. But in the end, you know, just the kind of treatment he got, I think kind of makes him a sad sack case that he'll do lock treatment feel bad for. Yeah, all right, well we'll get to that. But so he's touring around he, like

you said, as a spy for the Soviet regime. And because of this tour, he's being allowed he's getting all this access two places where he can be a pretty good spy actually on pattent offenses and um like industrial complexes and stuff like that. So he's getting access and doing a pretty good job spying for for the Soviet regime. And he ended up taking up residents in the United States. I didn't see whether that was a part of the

Soviet plan or his own plan. I'm not sure, but he found himself quite at home and in New York when he he showed up in the US and started becoming kind of the toast of the town. Um. I've read that Albert Einstein kept a lab at Um Terman apartment in New York on fifty four Street. When he visited him, he would just do some work while he was there. Um. He became pretty well known, especially among like avant garde musicians and composers. Um. He was just

kind of a known as like a cool guy. Um. He had a very scandalous marriage in that he married an African American prima ballerina whose name is Lavinia Williams Um. And I think he lived in the United States for a good decade. He showed up in and he lived there until eight I believe, and along the way because

he became such a toast of the town. And his his theorem in um, which had been known for a while as his theorem in vox, which is theoreman's voice, finally got shortened to Theraman and R. C said, you know what, I think these things are going to be a hit. We're going to We're going to buy the rights from you, or at least, um least the rights from you and start producing our own. Yeah. Because he obviously was wise enough to get a patent in the

US in um. That was his second wife. By the way, I didn't I couldn't get a whole lot about his first wife other than it was clearly in Russia because her name was a Katerina Pavlovna. Okay, that's a pretty Russian name. And he was married three times. He had a couple of daughters, I think with his third wife, and um, I'll talk a little bit more about his

kids later. But he, uh, he gets his patent. R C a like he said, jumps on board the Theoreman bandwagon and manufactures a a version of the theorem, like an at home Theoreman for a d seventy five bucks, which is a really expensive musical instrument that's bucks today, especially during the depression. Yeah, I mean, I don't know

who they thought they were going to sell him to everybody. Yeah, r C made it sound like they were onto something really, really big, but it was such an expensive price point. It was such a niche product. Um I think. I mean they sold the first run that they built, but only to like rich people who wanted to like throw parties in wow people with their theorem. And basically I guess one of the other big problems with it is that they marketed it like there's no strings, there's no frets,

there's no you know, there's nothing, it's just like strings. Yeah, basically, Um, they said that anybody can learn to play this, make music with the wave of a hand. Um. And the problem is the theremin is really really hard to learn because it doesn't have things like frets or strings or um chord progressions or anything like that. Um. And there's no other instrument like it on the planet. So um,

it's very difficult to learn. And I think our c A made a first production run of like four hundred units and they managed to sell three and eighty of them, some of which are still in existence today, and I was looking them up. Apparently, Um, if you can find one that's just in terrible shape, you could still proba probably get thirty bucks for it, and one that's in really good condition mint condition would be about thirteen grand because there's such collectors items. But also because of the

original um them electronics inside of the circuitry. Yeah that that it makes a sound that's really difficult to replicate because we have such an embarrassment of riches with advancement in in electronics today that it's hard to make something sound old timey and original, you know what I mean? Everything sounds so rich and in advanced UM. So I think that's one of the reasons why people will pay thirteen grand for an original R C A theorem, and

that Jack White has one. Yeah, I'll bet he does too. So. Um. When he was in the United States, living there, doing some spying and doing some theorem and playing like he would put on big, big concerts, he put on a full theorem and orchestra, which is to say, I think they were like six of them, um at Carnegie Hall.

So like these were big, big, big events. Um. And like you said, he got married to a second wife there and was leading this double life really like no one knew what was going on obviously as a spy, and he got a little more and more nervous his World War two approaches that he might get ratted out. He's he's really enjoying this life in America, and he's like, I don't want to I don't want to do this. Uh, the FBI has got a file on me. He didn't say that because he didn't know that, but the ghost

of Leon Thereman said that later on, right. And he was getting pretty deep into debt, and so in nineteen thirty eight he left the US after ten years there didn't even tell his wife he was leaving his second wife and stayed gone until the early nineties. Yeah. Part of that was not by his own decision, like he stayed gone in part because as Stalin came into power, he was not very he didn't fancy the old regime,

and Thereman was definitely associated with that old regime. He was a favorite of Lenin's um, So he was throwing and into the goolog as the the USSR really started to gain strength and power um and apparently as World War Two started to approach, the Soviets realized that they'd actually thrown a lot of valuable scientists in their minds into goolog So they went and got them out, including leve Terman, and put them in a different kind of

goolog called the Sharashka. Yeah, I got it. Sharashka, which is basically like a prison for scientists, like science camp that you can't leave exactly, and you can't see your family or friends are connected with the outside, but you can't spend all of your time thinking about ways to come up with new devices that the Soviet state can use. And that is actually where leve Terman Thereman came up. With his other great invention that he's known for, which

is called the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Yeah, I think, uh, that's a pretty good time to take a break, Okay, and we'll come back right after this, Okay, Chuck. So frankly, you really left everybody hanging with that last thing. So let's talk about the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Okay. Uh yeah, boy, all these years in I gotta teach you about the cliffhanger. Yeah, I like to. I like to plod along at the most boring pace and stop

at the most boring, predictable time. So before the Thing, he invented something called a baron b U R A N. And that was a list another listening device, um that sort of functioned as a laser microphone that you would use today where you would point it at a at a piece of glass like someone's you know, behind that glass talking and it would sense the vibrations in the glass.

That's wow. He invented that. Yeah, he invented the barn I've heard about that thing, but that was um nothing sort of as far as impact goes compared to the Great Seal Bug or the Thing like you mentioned. And this was really pretty extraordinary that this actually worked. Um, not that his invention worked, but that the scam worked. UM. So what he did was he put a passive bug inside a wood carving of the Seal, the Great Seal

of the United States. They presented it to Avril har Harriman, who was the American ambassador to Moscow, and he hung it on his wall and it allowed himself to get spied on for years. So so in Harriman's defense, um, he was, like you said, It was like you said, he was a very trusting sort, which made him a terrible choice for the ambassador, American ambassador to Moscow. But it was a passive bug. It didn't use electricity, so there was no possible way for anybody to sweep for it.

So I'm sure they swept this Great Seal, you know, eight ways from Sunday and turn nothing up and they're like, all right, put it up, um. And the reason it was passive is because it didn't use electricity, and it

was activated by microwaves. The microwaves would turn an antenna on, UM, and you could be a few doors down and just beam like a microwave beam towards this thing, and it would activate the antenna and then the place that it was put in, the eagle's beak created kind of like an ear, a wooden ear that amplified the sound in the room, and the antenna would pick it up and transmit it automatically. Seven years they were able to spy on these conversations, and it was It could have gone

on forever, but it was. It was discovered by accident. There was a British radio operator who picked up the signal. It's like, hey, something's going on here. And I guess they eventually, you know, probably just tore that room inside out until they found it. Would be my guess, right that radio operas like is that is that Avril Harriman talking?

I know that voice and the great The best part of that story is that they got the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers, to present the plaque. And I was raised as a child the Cold War, so I strongly suspect the Young Pioneers were in on it. They knew full well what they were doing. Of course, yeah,

they were in on it. It was a young Vladimir Putin probably probably chuck, you never know, Uh so thereman was um he kind of disappeared from public view because of the gulag experience and being in science prison camp uh and then Uh. Nineteen sixty seven, a New York Times critic named Harold schoenberg Um found him quite by accident at the Moscow Conservatory where he was working at the time. He was writing a story a road, a story that basically kind of out of him, and said, hey,

here's Leon Thireman. He's right here in the Soviet Union. Yeah, and he was probably like, finally, I've been waiting for you guys to dig me up. But the Soviet state said, you know what, this is not a good thing. We can't have this guy talking to the press and becoming a cause ce lab again. He's just done too much dirt. He's been in a goolag before. He bugged the ambassador like this. He just knows too much. We don't want him people paying attention to him. So they ruined him.

They ruined his career, They had him fired from the conservatory, They trashed all of the inventions he was working on, and he ended up spending the next couple of decades living um in poverty in a in a group home, in a room in a group home. Um, basically because of that New York Times critic finding him and writing that article again, which is sad on the one hand, but at the other hand, on the other hand, it um brought him back from any sort of obscurity he

kind of been pounded into. Yeah, so this last until about the eighties, when the Soviet Union opens up just a bit and he leaves and goes to Europe. He is to the US, like we said at the beginning in nine and uh then was able to sort of reap a little bit of his reward as uh as

a you know, pioneer and electronic music or music period. Um. There's a documentary called Thereman Colon an Electronic Odyssey from the early nineties that is not great, but it does feature him in the end, which is which is pretty cool. Like the last third of it has actual interviews with

Leon Thereman and him playing it and stuff like that. Sure, I mean, he must have known that he needed to show up his legacy while he could, because you know, he visited the US and he was dead two years later back in Russia, UM, and he was still working on stuff to to the end. He was working on a dance floor that was made up of his turpos stone, which was another invention of his, which was like a thereman, but rather than using your hands, he used your whole

body and you danced. Well, he was making an entire dance floor out of these. You could have a bunch of people dancing making the worst possible sounds you can imagine, all at the same time. And he was in his nineties. Yeah, he was like nine seven when he died, so yeah, he was working on this in his nineties. So he was a hip cat until the end. So while he was gone, something happened in the US in the nineteen forties and fifties. Um, the Thereman kind of blew up

and blew up. As far as the Thereman goes. It wasn't like it became a staple in in music or a staple in pop music, but it was used largely at first in movies science fiction, the Alfred Hitchcock Spellbound, most notably maybe um The Lost Weekend, And unless it was science fiction, it sort of came to be a signal for psychological distress, like if somebody was under the influence of drugs, or if that was somebody like locked away in a in a what they would have called

an insane asylum back then. You might hear a Airman kind of say, by the way, this character is off their rocker. You're right if you if your drug trip sound feels to you like a Theoreman sounds, you're on a bad trip, buddy, you think, sure, alright, but you can you could trace the kind of the breakout popularity, at least the introduction to the general public of the Theoreman to basically two people back in the forties and fifties.

Um miklosh Roscha who was the guy who scored The Last Weekend and spell Bound, and Samuel Hoffman, who was a theoreminist and composer who worked with some other kind of more popular composers Less Baxter and Harry Revel to make some really great music. Um in a couple of new new types of music, lounge and exotica. UM. I listened to music out of the Moon today, like eight times. I listened to Perfume set to music how is It? It's okay? Not as much therapy Thereman as h I wanted.

I wanted more Airman. Well, a little Thereman goes a long way, for sure, But there were parts of music out of the moon where you have to like really listen because it just it um merges so well, harmonizes so well with the other stuff like maybe vocalists harmonizing the theremin WI harmonize with it, which is now that I know about Thereman's that is incredibly masterful to be able to harmonize with a human voice using a theoremin. But those two guys definitely kind of introduced that to

the to the public. And one member of the public that got introduced to the theremin who was really responsible for breaking it out was a guy named Robert Moog might recognize whatever you might recognize from his um synthesizer that he was the guy who invented the synthesizer. Well, apparently Robert Mog his first and last love I saw someone say was the theoreman. Yeah, he got together with his dad and he built theremin kits to sell to people.

Um it's kind of one of the cool thing about thereman. You can buy one ready to go, but all along since the beginning and up to this very day, you can buy a kid to kind of build it yourself. Because they're very uh, they're very much cater to circuitry and electronic walks who love to get in there with her soldering iron and mess around. So kids were very

popular from the beginning. And that's kind of how Moe got it start as a company, Yeah, by selling these theorem and kits um and I think it was uh n when he started selling them. And by the sixties they were like really ready to be used. They were you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of room and psychedelic music for the Thereman. Um. And so it pops up on some Rolling Stones albums apparently, um uh Brian Jones, right, Yeah, Brian Jones played the Thereman

for a couple of albums. Um, it's on a whole Lot of Love where Robert Plant has his climax. Um. And then don't tell me that's meant to represent anything else but that everybody knows that. Could you imagine It's like if you were, you know, having sex with Robert Plant in the nineteen seventies and and that's literally what he started doing. Jimmy Page just comes out of the

closet playing the Thereman along the company. My lord. Um, there's a couple of places where you think it pops up, but you would be wrong, Chuck, Yeah, I mean it's it's uh, well, it's not controversial. The Beach Boys song Good Vibrations is probably the most popular song ever too really heavily feature very distinctly what you think is a theoreman. Um, it's actually something called an electro theoreman. Brian Wilson calls

it a thereman. Everyone sort of calls it a thereman, but it's a trump bonus named Paul Tanner invented it. Um basically a very simplified thereman that you could play with knobs, uh, to make it easier to hit the right tones. That that to me makes it not not a theorem. And yeah, it's an electro theremin. So um, there's not a theoreman on Good Vibrations, as a lot of people think. It's also not a theoreman you're hearing

in the Star Trek theme. A lot of people apparently think that it shows up in that Trek theme and that it turns out is soprano lulli Gene Norman hitting all those incredible notes. I don't even I don't think i've ever heard that theme. WHOA Okay, that was Beaker. Apparently we just made a cameo in that in that version. Yep. Um, so those are two places the theremin doesn't show up. It does show up elsewhere in movies like Edwood and Mars Attacks both I think Tim Burton movies. Right, yeah,

he's all over the thereman. Hell boy. Um. It was also in First Man, which I have still not seen, but I guess it's a scene where Neil Armstrong throws his um his young dead daughter's bracelet into a crater in the moon and they use theoreman, which it seems like a very bold choice for a recent movie to make. I'm surprised you haven't seen that. I'm a little surprised too. I'm surprised I haven't seen it because I have a crush on Gosling, who doesn't. No Man, Lars and the

Real Girl is just one of the best movies ever made. Yeah, also starring a a friend of us stuff you should know, Paul Schneider. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. So a bunch of you know, pop music really latched onto it. And UH and the nineties and two thousand's group called

the Silver Apples use one. Uh. One of my favorite records from the nineties is a band called Mercury Rev and their album Deserter Songs heavily features the Theoreman and a couple of their songs, there's a Sepulcher, a song that has a theoremin and it's played by um Jason now Stead, who is the basis of Metallic at the time. There's a trivia answer for you. Seriously, he's like, standing back, you can't crowd the Theoreman. It changes the pitch. It's

also that was your Jason Newstead impression. Sure, I guess he just looks angry, didn't he. That's Hetfield you're thinking of. Oh Newstead always had that frown. Oh really, well, all of them literally they were metal, don't you know. Um. And then there was a band called Lothar and the hand People, And Lothar was the name of the Theoreman, who the band considered the lead singer in the hand People were the people playing Lothar the Theoreman. Yeah, that

annoyed me so much. I didn't even look it up to listen. Oh really, I think it's awesome. Man, that's just so sixties to me. I love it. I think it's two thousands trying to be sixties. No, but they're from the sixties, so they are Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're legit. I'll look into it. Then. Have you seen what what was the name of that band that um they just beat up like appliances. I think they're Swedish and they made the Hounds. They were like kind of viral, like

several years back. They did like a total eclipse of the heart cover but beating up an oven in a dishwasher, Oh my god, you'd actually like him pretty great. And one guy, he's like so scrawny that he can't keep his pants up, so his pants keep falling down every time he hits the stove with the sledgehammer. It's like, I mean it's a stove with his belt. Yeah, basically put the belt on. That guy needs a belt more than he I don't even think a belt could service

him any longer. I think he needs like an extension cord length. He's got a tie it as tight as he possibly can. He's thin. And you just unknowingly made another music reference. What the great great band Silver Juice from the late great Dave Burman. He has a line and one of their great songs, uh, holding up your trousers with extension cords? Well, that's funny. I wonder if he's when are they from the nineties, uh, two thousand's and also featuring friend of the show Amnistanovic. Yeah, no,

I knew that. It's basically Pavement, isn't it. No, it was Dave Burman, But Malcolmus is on the one Great Great. I mean, they're all good albums, but Great American Water is one of the best albums of that decade. I wonder if he was making a syphasis reference, because that's what I was making reference to this. I think Nelson Muntz has a he uses an extension cord for a belt. Yeah, he's neglected. I knew this is gonna take us down

some musical side roads. Sure, And I knew you were going to mention Robert Plant climaxing because you say that like every other week. I can't. I can't stop talking about it. Should we take another break? I think so, and then we're gonna come back and explain how theremin works and then how to play it. How's that for a cliffhanger? I'm hanging okay, Chuck, so a Theraman works through um electronic magic. Basically, I think we should just

leave it at that. Now we can't. I really went to a lot of trouble to try to figure out how these things worked in the most simplistic terms possible. And that's really saying something because the people who write about how Thereman's work are the people who build thermans, which means that the people who understand things like amplitude and currents and electro magnetic interference and all that stuff. Basically, you've got two different um circuits. You've got a pitch

circuit and a volume circuit. And if you've ever seen a theorem in it's basically like a box and on. If you're standing at the box getting ready to play it, on your right, the player's right is it a single antenna going up vert clee that looks like one of a pair of rabbit ears that you would use on an old timey tv UH antenna. Look it up, kids. And then on the other side the left there's like a round metal, horizontally oriented antenna that comes out the

other side of the box. The one on the left, the round one that's for adjusting volume. The one on the right, the vertical rod, is for um adjusting the pitch. Yeah, it's it's sort of volume slash attack and an attack is one of those words that unless you're sort of into playing music, you don't know what it means, but you'll see it pop up on various instruments labeled attack, and that's they're sort of It's called the musical envelope, the four stages of sound. Uh, and it starts with attack.

That's the sort of the beginning of the sound, like right when you strike a piano key or right when you plug a guitar string. Uh. And then it goes from attack to decay to sustain to release and the volume and its heck, it's not quite the same thing. But uh, as far as what we need to know about the theremin that right, I'm sorry, the horizontal and controls volume and attack, okay. And then the one on the right, the upright one, it controls pitch and the

way that it produces pitches. It's got two different oscillators in there, and an oscillator is just something that produces alternating current electricity in wave form. Right, it produces waves, and one of those oscillators produces one at a static frequency. It's always the same frequency no matter what the other one adjusts. And so when you get your hand. Oh

we left out a really important thing. The the way this whole thing works is because you live human person are holding an electric charge right now and so oh we did. Okay. So that's called your capetence, and when your captence, your electric charge, whatever that may be, and it's going to be different for each person. So I think kind of the implication, Chuck, is that every different person new walks up to a particular thereman is going to produce a different sound. Doesn't that seem right? Oh?

I don't know. I never really thought about that. I would think so, because I wouldn't think we're all walking around with the same capetents. Although I could be wrong, but regardless, just if that's wrong, totally disregard what I just said. The point is is that UM, when you're your electrical charge presented in the form of your hand, interferes with the um, the oscillating current that's being created

and generated and run through this antenna. UM. It changes that oscillating frequency, and so these two things subtract or add together their frequencies to produce this sound that raises their lowers and pitch depending on how close you are. The closer you get the higher the pitch, the further away, um, the lower the pitch. Uh. And that's basically how it works, the same thing basically with your with your left hand

with the volume attack. That's it. You're just basically interfering with the electric electric magnetic fields produced and carried through these antenna's using your own electrical charge. That's how they work. Yeah,

and it's um. If you watch the documentary, there's one UM scientists that attaches it to a wave form visualizer sort of explain it a little better and he um, not better than we did, but just more in more detail and no, no, no uh and he uh he was just said, it's it's remarkable that that Leon Thereman or Terman invented this thing without the use of one of those Like he was going completely by ear. And I think if had it not been for his training as a cellist, uh, it may not have ever even

been anything. Because you have to have a really in this sort of segues into actually playing the thing, you have to have a really really good ear for pitch to play a Thereman because like you said earlier, there are no markers like frets to look at to know where to go to hit a g it's got a yeah, four and a half. I saw four and a half

octave range and also saw five and a half. But you gotta know in the the air surrounding you in space where exactly to put your hand to get the tone that you want, and if it's off a little bit, it's not gonna sound right. So the learning curve is long. It's a tough instrument to to really get good at. Extremely so yeah, because I mean, if you if you know how to play a guitar, you can walk up to a guitar and be like, oh, here's the frets or whatever. I can put my fingers here here and

I'm going to make this sound. With the theramin, it's it's literally different places in the air. Um. And so yeah, you do have to have a good year. One of the other things you have to have. It's essential to playing the theremin is um a steady hand, yeah, or I guess not necessarily, but it definitely helps. Because, um, if you see somebody kind of moving around like they're just totally whacked out or whatever, playing a theramin with the sounds they're making is not what it's supposed to

sound like. A theramin is aid very delicately. There's a very famous um there menace named Clara Rockmore who said, you play with you play a theramin with butterfly wings. And she was basically saying, like, your fingers are supposed to be delicate and controlled like a butterfly wings. And so if you watch people playing theramin, they're they're just

like they're standing totally straight and still. It's just their hands and their wrists basically that are moving and making these really delicate motions through the air that is producing all of these different sounds. Yeah, and the reason you have to stand still, obviously, is because any movement of your body is going to affect the sound. That's why I made the Jason Newstead joke in that documentary. There's

an old I don't know who she was. It might have been Clara Rockmore maybe, probably was Clara rock or Lucy Bigelo Rosen maybe, but she was like back off in her accent, and she was like, I'm not you know, I'm trying to be nice about it, but you can't you you can't come any closer. And I tell the first violinison an orchestra the same thing, like you have to have space around the instrument itself or else is going to affect the sound? You're right, hey, you know

who else played the theremin? Who's a theremin master? M? My friend Toby really yes, so he is very cool. He was from Dallas and the Polyphon Experience from Dallas, and apparently like half of Dallas was members of the Polyphoning Spree except for poor Toby. And so he went to the dude from Tripping jay Z Days. I can't remember his name, but the leader of the Polyphoning Spreence said, you know, I want to join what what what? What

instrument do you need? And the guy was like, I don't want you to go learn to play theraman and come back. And so Toby went and taught himself thereman and came back and joined the Polyphonic Spree. That's right. I think it's Tim something or other. Yeah. I was into them for those first two albums quite a bit. Oh man, they were so great what what great music? Because it was so earnest too, you know, like they

weren't being ironic. It was this kid, a sharp guy, and that band of hippies who is he Edwards Sharp? And the Magnetic Zeros, you know it was the same kind of deal, like, hey, let's get forty people in a band and uh not have one bar soap between us. No, I never heard of you know that they had one big hit that you would know. Uh what what? Oh? That home? Won't you come home? Home is where I really want to be. I mean I wasn't into him and it was a huge, huge hit. So was that

Judy Garland? Oh boy? So yeah, So Toby Toby was the greatest theremin player I've ever met. That's awesome. Uh So, you know, you play, like we said, with that um you know a lot of times, like I said, it looks like you're holding a little whatever you call it,

the conductors. I'm want to do a show on conducting, by the way, just to learn what that thing is, the little stick, the stick, But it looks like you're sort of holding that because a lot of theremin players tend to touch their thumb and their four fingers together and you're, you know, you're sort of wiggling your fingers for vibrato and you can learn basic theorem and and make the sounds that sound good. And then there's like the next level theremin ng where you really get involved

with your fingers and very subtle movements to create different sounds. Yeah. So it is like a really difficult thing to do and to learn to play, in no small part because there aren't frets or anything like that. Um, but also because of the the just precision movement of your fingers and in hands. Um. And you also can't really get

into the music either. You have to stay still because if you sway or you know, swing your head left or right or anything like that, Um, you're going to mess with the that that part of your body is going to come into the electromagnetic field and you're going to mess up the sound of the music. That's right. And that's why hip hop concerts they say, throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just

don't care. Except for that they aramanist right, throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't play there. And I think we should decided this part out very well made. I'll be very surprised if that ends up in the final cut. Chuck. One thing we didn't mention that seems obvious unless you know about musical instrument or might seem obvious. I don't know what I'm saying. It's obvious to me. But it's going through an amplifier, like if you're sitting at home, like, yeah,

but how does the sound come out. It's an electronic instrument, so it's plugged into an amp. It is. And actually that volume circuit that you're interfering with, you're actually changing the voltage I believe of the amplifier. UM. That's how when you move your hand closer and further away, you're affecting the voltage that's that's released by that that UM

whatever transformers is supplying the amplifier with the electricity. Yeah, Like you can get a thereman for not a lot of money, or a Theoreman kit, or I would say get a one of those new theorem any is that Moga is building because those are just super super cool and they sound amazing and they make it a little bit easier on you. Yeah, because they they they recognize chords. Right, So when you move your hand like through the air at a certain way, like it goes through the chromatic scales.

It's not it's not just random stuff. It actually kind of is like a UM very forgiving and corrective of what you're doing and figures out what you're trying to do and it makes it sound like it like you want it to. But the the most amazing thing is there's a dial where you can dial back that level of forgiveness as you get better and better at playing the theorem, and you can just make it so that it's not doing that for you at all and you have to do it yourself, which is pretty awesome. Yeah,

and it also sounds synthy and cool. Yeah. I mean, I like the sound of a regular theremin, but that there are many. I had never heard of it until today, and I was like, I'm gonna have to get one of those at some point. All right, if you're like a maker kind of person and you like music there, you've probably already made theremans. But if not, check out a guy named Arthur Harrison's site thereman dot us. He sells kits and like has all sorts of articles and

stuff like that. And then there's a guy named Ken Moore who hacked into like the Xbox Connect and the Nintendo we and figured out how to turn them into theramans. And there's one where he does like a you know, really admirable attempt at the Star Trek theme using his wee Theoreman. Just look up Ken Moore we Thereman star Trek theme and thank me later. It's it's a cool community.

Like I love circuitry and electronic gadgetreat uh wanks, and those communities were of like the Hams, Like they just really get into their shutting the door to their little room and working on very small, very difficult to understand projects and hacking stuff and creating new things. It's just really really in the in the spirit of creation and invention, I think, in which it was always intended. Nice. Yeah, I mean the Theoreman is all that and then some chuck.

It's a whole bag of chips. You got anything else? Yeah, I sort of promised earlier a little bit of talk about Thereman's legacy with his kids and grandkids. And he did have a daughter, he had a couple of daughters, but he had one named Natasha Thereman from his third wife, who was a Thereman master in Russia, and then nine she's seventy two now, and then twenty nine year old Peter Theoreman, his great grandson, is also a Russian composer

and uh Theoreman master. Pretty cool, It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's neat also that they just adopted the Western Ice version of their grandfather's name too. I guess, yeah, absolutely. Uh, now you've got anything else? Nothing else? Well, before we go, Chuck um, because it's that time of year, uh, in this episode is going to come out around you his birthday. I want to take a second to say happy birthday to my dear sweet wife you. Happy birthday MS, thanks,

Happy birthday you me. And since I said happy birthday you me and Chuck did two, that means it's time for listener mail. So this is a This is a listener mail from Richard Roberts, and this was just supremely heartwarming. Uh. Our book is out Stuff you Should Know colon an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Huge, huge thanks to everyone who pre bought it or bought it after its

release an audiobook or or hardcover form um. But the Stuff you Should Know Army page has just been lit up with people posting pictures of them with a book, of them reading it, of their kids reading it, of their dogs eating it. Already, that's happened. And this comes from Richard Roberts from the Stuff you Should Know Army. Hey, guys, thanks for doing what you do. Podcast is wonderful. I just want to email you'll let you know about a lovely gesture I just witnessed on the Stuff you Should

Know Army Facebook page. One member posted to say they didn't buy the book due to their financial constraints at the time, but that they were so excited that it popped up in a search at their local library. Uh and before you know it in the comments, that was a fellow Uh many fellows Stuff you should know Army fans scrambling to buy a book for this complete stranger so that she could have her own copy. I think I took some screenshot or I took some screenshots which

I attached. I know you don't always do shout outs, but the philanthropic book buyers and the original poster might get a kick out of it if you did. And it's a nice story that people might enjoy. And that is Richard Roberts from down Under. And uh, Jacko du Bois is who stepped up first and is buying this book for this person and sending a book to this person. So Jacko, send us an email and we'll send you

something nice. I don't know what it is yet, but um, just send us an email Jacko, and we wanna pay it forward right back to you. That's a lovely idea, Chuck. Very nice and thanks Jacko, and thank you. That was Richard that wrote in. That was Richard. Thank you too, Richard. Uh. If you want to call out a very um nice example of paying it forward or a random act of kindness or anything like that, we love hearing about that stuff. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at

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