hughes@locusts.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Hughes) (12/02/90)
I recently attended a performance which was proof by demonstration that virtuosity on musical instruments can be captured in VR without any force or tactile feedback. I saw a performance which included a Theremin. The Theremin was introduced in 1928 by Lev Theremin at (if I remember correctly) a New York Philharmonic performance. For two decades serious orchestral and chamber music was written for this instrument. There is, in fact, a CD of Theremin music from this period. In the forties the Hollywood film industry 'discovered' the Theremin and used it to score science fiction movies. Classical interest in the instrument dropped at the same time. The Theremin is a console, about four feet high, with a vertical pole antenna coming out of the top and a loop antenna coming out of the side. The vertical antenna control pitch; the loop antenna controls volume. The musician controls these by varying hand position relative to the antenna; the body capacitance is the coupling. The circuit is set up so that one can kill the sound by dipping a hand or finger into the loop, thus allowing discrete notes. With much practice, one can play complex tunes on it. At no time does one touch the antennas, though there are some control knobs on the box--this is a tube machine, after all. Thus a virtual theremin is certainly possible. In order to get a good sound, the musician waves a hand in front of the pitch antenna, creating vibrato. I timed the speed of this hand-waving; it's about 20 cycles per second. To accurately digitize this would require a sampling rate in hand position and location of about 50 Hz, possibly more; it's not clear to me what the highest frequency of interest is to apply Shannon's criterion. The instrument takes a lot of practice to able to play tunes. There are no frets, buttons, or keys to produce sound. There is still living, in New York City, the Philharmonic's virtuoso Theremin player of the twenties; she is in her eighties. Dennis James, the musician at the performance I saw, has met her and heard her perform. He reports that she is simply amazing and that well-played, the instrument is beautiful, not just interesting. Eric Hughes hughes@ocf.berkeley.edu
aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Steve J White) (12/04/90)
Does anyone know of anyone that currently performs on a theramin and if
any of these people ever tour with this instrument?
--
Cogito ergo es. | "This is just the sort of thing that
(I think therefore I is.) | people never believe."
| - Baron Munchausen
* * * Steve J. White: aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu * * *brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) (12/04/90)
In article <HUGHES.90Dec1123234@locusts.Berkeley.EDU> hughes@locusts.Berkeley.ED U (Eric Hughes) writes: > > I recently attended a performance which was proof by demonstration > that virtuosity on musical instruments can be captured in VR without > any force or tactile feedback. > > I saw a performance which included a Theremin. While I am fascinated by the theremin, and in great awe of anyone who can play it at all well, I'd have to say that it's the exception which proves the rule. To the best of my knowledge there is only one player living who has reached anything like virtuoso quality. It's true, this is partly because of the scorn the instrument is held in as a result of the association with science-fiction movies, but it's also because it is incredibly difficult to play well. Imagine trying to play a violin without a sense of touch and you get the idea. > The instrument takes a lot of practice to able to play tunes. There > are no frets, buttons, or keys to produce sound. There is still > living, in New York City, the Philharmonic's virtuoso Theremin player > of the twenties; she is in her eighties. Dennis James, the musician > at the performance I saw, has met her and heard her perform. He > reports that she is simply amazing and that well-played, the > instrument is beautiful, not just interesting. > Yes, she's the one I meant. A few weeks ago, I got a chance to see the tape of her television broadcast (from sometime in the sixties) again. Beautiful! Don't take me to mean that I think we *have* to have feedback for good interfaces. On the contrary, I think we need to investigate interfaces both with and without, so we can learn how to design interfaces for all sorts of applications and all sorts of people. Bill Buxton of the University of Toronto showed that tape at OOPSLA in Toronto to make the point that we should not ignore the needs of the expert and the virtuoso in our drive to provide easy interfaces for the novice and the casual user. I agree. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Speaker-to-managers, aka Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekchips.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077