Mystery Music
Sometimes at a performance - Start out with:
“Got an instrument here tonight that most people have not heard live before”
It is called the Theremin after its inventor Leon Theremin
The Theremin is a mystery to most people
- And it often has a mysterious or eerie sound
It was the world’s first Electronic Instrument
There are no strings like a guitar or keys like a piano or anything
Instead, it has two antennas that respond to moving your hands
It's a mystery to play the theremin - you learn to move your hands in ways that play the sounds you want
I call it antenna action - you have to feel it but you can't touch it
Put together a set of sounds and you start to get a song
You don't see what you are actually playing; might as well close your eyes; practice in the dark
The mystery is how you hear it while you are playing and the feel the next note coming, at the 'same' time in your head
On different occasions you can get the same notes and songs with different hand gestures than the last time you played
Music can be considered a set of vibes, a distribution of musical frequencies; for the theremin you get infinite sustain so you are playing the breaks, pauses, synco-repititions, all of the song between the real notes too - It's exact control is a mystery...
Do you like mysteries?
