 | Theremin: Encyclopedia II - Theremin - The theremin in use
Theremin - The theremin in use
Theremin - In movie soundtracks
Theremin by Lydia Kavina in the music to 'The Little Mermaid'. A Lera Auerbach's collaboration with choreographer John Neumeier. The ballet is a modern rendition of the classic fairytale 'The Little Mermaid'. Premiered April 15, 2005.
Although it has never been a widely-played instrument, the theremin was the basis from which all twentieth-century electronic musical instruments were later developed. While not enjoying the wide use in classical music performance for which it was originally designed, the instrument found great success as the 'eerie' background sound in countless motion pictures, notably Forbidden Planet, Spellbound, The Lost Weekend, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks! and in Bartleby. The DVDs for Ed Wood and Bartleby both contain short features on the theremin. Despite such efforts of serious virtuoso performers as Clara Rockmore, the instrument fell into novelty status, largely because of the extreme difficulty in playing it, as well as a lack of instruments and instructors. The theremin is used unusually, for a full melodic part, in the soundtrack of Hellboy.
Theremin - In popular music
Theremin sounds have been incorporated into many popular music songs from the 1960s through the present.
When Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys requested a theremin be included in the studio orchestra for the recording of 1966's "Good Vibrations", none were available, nor a musician to play one. Paul Tanner was brought in with his homemade device called an Electro-Theremin (also referred to as a Tannerin) that featured mechanical controls which could mimic the theremin sound. For concert appearances, a slide-controlled oscillator was designed and built for Wilson by Robert Moog. The Tannerin was later used to test hearing.
A theremin solo was featured in the 1969 song "Whole Lotta Love", a hit for Led Zeppelin. The band's guitarist Jimmy Page also featured the instrument during live performances of various songs.
Along with a recording of Dvorak's New World Symphony, Neil Armstrong took a recording of the theremin album Music Out Of The Moon by Dr Samuel Hoffman on Apollo XI.
Russian musician Lydia Kavina (a distant relative of Theremin) is today regarded as the greatest living theremin virtuoso, having been a protégé of Léon. Pamelia Kurstin is a present-day New York-based thereminist whose eclectic style and innovations continue to define the unique nature of the instrument.
Jean-Michel Jarre often plays it on his concerts.
Nine Inch Nails utilized the instrument with processor effects on the songs Even Deeper and Just Like You Imagined for the 1999 album The Fragile. Then band member Charlie Clouser performed the instrument live for the Fragility Tour, and was replaced in 2005 by Alessandro Cortini for the With Teeth tour. Clouser's performance can be seen on the tour DVD: And All That Could Have Been.
After the release of the film, Theremin—An Electronic Odyssey in 1994 (one year after the death of Léon Theremin), the instrument has enjoyed a resurgence in interest and became more widely used by contemporary musicians. Even though theremin sounds can be reproduced easily on modern-day synthesizers, many musicians continue to appreciate the novelty and uniqueness of using an actual theremin.
For a list of bands/tracks that feature a theremin: [4].
Other related archives1919, 1928, 1938, 1950s, 1960s, 1991, 1994, Alessandro Cortini, America, And All That Could Have Been, Apollo XI, Bartleby, Bolshevik, Brian Wilson, Charlie Clouser, Clara Rockmore, Dvorak, Ed Wood, Electro-Theremin, Europe, Forbidden Planet, Good Vibrations, Hellboy, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, Lera Auerbach, Lydia Kavina, Léon Theremin, Mars Attacks!, Minimoog, Moog Music, Moscow, Neil Armstrong, New World Symphony, New York, Nine Inch Nails, Ondes-Martenot, Pamelia Kurstin, Paul Robeson, Paul Tanner, RCA, Robert Moog, Russian, Russian civil war, Second World War, Spellbound, Stock Market Crash of 1929, Tannerin, The Beach Boys, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Fragile, The Little Mermaid, The Lost Weekend, USSR, Vladimir Lenin, Whole Lotta Love, With Teeth, amplitude, capacitance, classical music, electronic music, electronic musical instruments, electronics, frequency, glissandi, heterodyning, left-handed, oscillators, perfect pitch, popular music, radio, right hand, sharashka, staccato, synthesizer, television, tremolo, twentieth-century, vibrato, virtuoso
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The theremin in use", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
