For anyone looking to try out the theremin, OpenTheremin [1] is a really cool project that puts a theremin into an Arduino shield. I bought one to mess around with (there's also schematics if you want to build it yourself), and yup - can confirm, it's anything but easy.
It’s important to add that Moog had a deeply psycho-spiritual view connected to the theremin; basically that it was manifesting creativity from the universe the way a flower manifests beauty from the sun.
(If people are interested I can try to find source links, but I’m the former Co Chair of the Bob Moog Foundation.
Maybe you can help me out. I went to an event in 2003 or 2004 or thereabouts in London. I'm sure it was called MoogFest. It was due to be held at Turnkey, the legendary music tech shop, but a power cut forced a last-minute move to a bar in soho.
Bob Moog was there. It may have been a birthday celebration. He signed t-shirts. I bought one, but but being young and foolish I preferred the silver print on black, so didn't get it signed. I did shake his hand and mispronounce his name to his face though.
But I've looked a couple of times over the years and I can find no mention of that London event online, anywhere. Other MoogFests are documented, but not that one. I know I didn't dream it because I still have the t-shirt...
In public comment I can just say it has had many owners. The version you describe was before my time but it sounds likely. You might be mixing the names up, though. I believe something like the London Synthesizer Club or a vaguely similar name did events like you’re describing. Look for info about Herb Deustch that might help. The current version is amazing and my favorite.
I have the Moog Theremin (not theremini), and it's clear how much love they have for this (and all of their) instrument.
I lost my antenna and tried to buy a new one, and they sent it for free because it didn't meet their quality standards. It looks absolutely perfect to me and works as expected.
All jokes aside, the Theremin is actually quite a remarkable instrument when played correctly. Also remarkable is his listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the US Ambassador's Moscow office and Soviet agents eavesdropped on secret conversations. Used the same principles as RFID.
Here's the notorious video of her performing the Ecstasy of Gold with voice, theremin, and a looper pedal (that's how she load in multiple sounds and layers them).
It's relatively limited as a standalone instrument (people can make remarkable music with it, don't get me wrong), but really opens up as a CV controller for other instruments. It also makes a really nice source for a talkbox.
I have one and can confirm it's a very complicated instrument to play well. It's a phenomenal piece of early electronic tech.
This is terrific, thanks for posting. Readers will appreciate Sean Michaels moving novel "Us Conductors," (https://www.amazon.com/Us-Conductors-Novel-Sean-Michaels/dp/...), which is loosely based on Leon Theremin's life. I've never read anything quite like it — part biography, part thriller, part love story, part music history. (Michaels is quoted in the piece, actually.)
Even a cursory glance at the NSA ANT Catalog is enough to give one the impression, there's a whole other battlefield out there.
Every now and then, almost yearly now, the conspiracy theory scene pings one of my favourite theories: the Russkies have the electromagnetic spectrum well and truly under their grasp, and can disable any other military simply by flicking the off switch. They've discovered some way to do this, and it works every time.
Its a far-fetched and bizarre concept, and surely there are detractors and supporters of the theory - but for the sake of a thought experiment, imagine it were the case.
Would you use this capability, much?
Or, would you use it sparingly, in such a way as to avoid detection - say, introducing the odd power-cycle glitch here, maybe a spike there - just enough to keep your target occupied, but not enough that they'd wise up to so much sabotage.
I mean, you wouldn't just fly over a US destroyer/carrier fleet, and demonstrate it, overtly, naturally...
Would it instead be better for people to believe such capabilities are impossible - and if this is the case, how do we prevent a hundred years of Tesla's and Theremins' from stumbling onto the technique again, hmm...
The main issue with that is the larger implications - believed electromagnetic spectrum limitations asidd why the hell bother acting like a gaslighting scooby doo villains if when there are so many other greater applications starting with mesh network radios that don't take power, just "we are the only ones allowed electronic targetting" let alone any hypothetical masteries to allow for optical rectennas without the limitations which keep them from obsoleting solar panels.
It stinks of a bluff and playing a parlor trick of early RFIDs as far larger than it is.
- Imagine if penguins actually had an ability to create portals to other side of the universe? It actually makes sense that they don’t show us that capability because we would quickly try to steal it from them...
- Imagine if Chinese have actually invented coronavirus? It would actually make sense to start it in their own country so that nobody would realise it was their invention.
- Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams
I'm sure that US, Chinese, Israeli spies would steal that kind of tech, so it would be used by many countries and eventually leaked one way or another.
Russia is much harder to penetrate for Chinese then US. Giving out secret like that is a death sentence, even if you manage to leave Russia there is a decent chance they will hunt you down and kill you in a very unpleasant manner.
US ability to recruit within Russia is also very limited. Something like that would not be picked up by sigint.
Russia did go all in on electronic warfare, I think US missed a golden opportunity to work with/through Ukraine to test their systems against Russian ones. If they could capture one it would be a gold mine of intel.
First learned about "The Thing" from the excellent book Spycraft: the secret history of the CIA's spytechs, from communism to Al-Qaeda by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Morgan.
The Thing was operating more than half a decade before it was detected, during which it listened in on 4 US ambassadors. And when they first found it they couldn't really figure out how it worked because it didn't have any electronics in it. Eventually Peter Wright at MI5 managed to reverse engineer its workings:
"To operate the device, the NKVD aimed a continuous 800MHz radio signal at the seal from a listening post in the building across from Spaso House [the embassy]. The Thing's thin diaphragm at the top [...] vibrated with the sound of a voice. Those vibrations created modulations in the reflected radio signal that bounced back to the listening post. The Thing did not require power in the same way a mirror does not require power to reflect light. The radio transmitter and receiver code-named LOSS (or REINDEER by the Russian techs), were a marvel of signal processing considering the technology available at the time." chapter 12 p. 164
It's so cool to me that there is probably amazing tech out there right now, being used for all kinds of espionage operations which we will only find out about in 30 years or so.
> “It’s simply the electromagnetic fields in your own body, what we refer to as capacitance, affecting the circuitry through the electromagnetic field surrounding some device,” says Albert Glinsky, ...
This 'explanation' makes the instrument appear even more magical. It's less mysterious to describe it in terms of a resonant LC oscillator, where C (capacitor) value, i.e. its capacitance, is affected by the presence of hands or other conductors between the theremin plates/antennas. A sidenote, in common implementations the C change is later translated into L value, i.e inductance, change. More details [0]
Speaking of the mentioned clever espionage device. In modern days the similar principle is applied but using lasers and room's windows for vibrating surface. However, the thicker glass used in contemporary thermal packs may dampen the acoustic vibrations; still, by itself it's an acoustic resonator and the question is how sophisticated is the receiver.
Minor nit: "After his successful tour of Russia, in the late 1920s Lenin sent Theremin to Western Europe, where the legend of his mysterious instrument quickly grew."
[1] http://www.gaudi.ch/OpenTheremin/index.php/opentheremin-v3