Tag Archives: instrument

Hands Off!

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I finally got the push I needed to get a theremin.

I’ve been scouting round looking for one at a reasonable price, and had come to the conclusion that it was going to cost at least £130 for one that’s actually playable rather than just a special effect. Then I discovered yesterday that Turnkey are flogging off their stock of Etherwave Pro’s at a knock-down price.

The EW Pro is built by the legendary Moog (r.i.p. Bob) Music, and is just about the best theremin money can buy, with the exception of a couple of specialist dealers or an original RCA theremin (which now cost seriously silly money). So I paid more than I had intended, but what a deal! Like going out to buy a starter guitar and finding a top-of-the-range Les Paul for an extra hundred quid.

So, the order’s gone in and been confirmed – now I just have to wait for delivery – hopefully early next week…

Got me dem ole Yobstick Blues

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Okay, so I saw my favourite Yobstick builder at the weekend and have been mulling over various designs in the back of my head for most of the day. There’s too much other stuff to be doing at the moment to do anything practical about it, but it’s just one of several things floating around in my mind shouting at me “Hurry up and free some time so you can get on with me!” It hasn’t helped that my morning read of Music Thing with my coffee led me off down a path to the very wonderful Oddmusic site, where there is a gallery including sound clips of dozens of ancient, ethnic and newly-invented musical instruments. Inspiration I surely didn’t need.

There are 2 things I want to do with the next yobstick – one is to make it an electric yobstick. Not quite sure how practical that is, but it would be great to trigger samples with the welly end, or stick the string through a distortion and delay line. The other thing is to make the string more playable, i.e. instead of it being a single note I want to be able to play simple bass lines on it. Again, not terribly sure about how to do this, as one hand holds the stick and the other plucks the string – either some sort of tensioning lever (like a whammy bar) or a sliding bridge.

I just know I’m going to be dreaming about yobstick construction tonight.

Hmmmm.

The Slydee Returns

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One of the self-built instruments used by the Deserters in our earlier days was an electronic gadget called the Slydee. It grew from a physics project about transistors where we had to make a circuit to flick between two bulbs. Lee (Newe) and I figured that if we linked this to a speaker instead of a bulb we would get a tone, and we were right. I then added a fader rescued from some old music system or something similar (Tandy, perhaps?) to give a very basic and almost totally uncontrollable keyboardless synth with a character all of its own.

I was wondering about the possibility of rebuilding it some time ago, as I’ve no idea what became of it, when I heard a radio programme about the theremin. After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that I deeply want one. No, need one!

Theremins (therema?) are controlled without touch. You move your right hand near its pitch aerial and left hand near the volume aerial to control the sound. It at worst it sounds just like a Slydee – at best it sounds almost like a human voice. Some folk use it for special effects, whilst others like Peter Pringle have gained sufficient mastery of this awkward littlecritter to make some wonderful music. I aim to be somewhere in between.