Well then. What an incredibly frustrating week last week was. You may remember the task set for me, courtesy of Rod:
Now… don’t ask me what prompted Rod to include that one in the first place. Maybe it was the idea of being able to play a musical instrument without needing to read music or learn which strings to pluck or keys to bash. Maybe its because I have a good musical ear from singing (some may even say I have *ahem* perfect pitch). Maybe I was afflicted with the delusion that I would discover some innate prodigious talent that I would amaze the world and impress my friends with.
But let me back up just a bit first. You may still be unfamiliar with what the Theremin actually is and how it works. So here’s a quick description for you as to its provenance – its actually pretty interesting and the little video below tells you about Leon Theremin, the Russian physicist, who invented it – and shows you a quick demo as to how to play it. It is incredibly simple in its concept – yet oh so difficult in its execution.
https://www.moogmusic.com/media/brief-history-theremin
Now… I knew all of this going in. So why was I so bullish I could learn to play this wretched thing where lesser men fear to tread? Well, it was mainly because I’d bought a Moog Theremini – a version of the theremin that promised to be significantly easier to learn (see the part in bold below) – and that just looks super cool. Here’s a pic and the description from the Moog website:
“The Theremini is a reimagination of one of the oldest electronic musical instruments, and Bob Moog’s first love – the Theremin. Its design fuses the experience of playing an instrument you don’t actually touch, with a powerful sound engine derived from Moog’s award winning synthesizer, Animoog. The Theremini guarantees immediate success to anyone at any skill level or physical ability, while also providing new ways to experiment with music, education, and gestural control.
Assistive pitch correction allows each player to adjust the instrument’s level of playing difficulty. When activated the Theremini will play every note in a selected scale perfectly, making it impossible to play a wrong note. As the assistive pitch correction is decreased, more expressive control of pitch and vibrato becomes possible. When deactivated, the Theremini will perform as a traditional Theremin and there is absolutely no pitch correction.
A built-in tuner supplies real-time visual feedback of each note as it is played, as well as its proximity to perfection. This is useful for correcting a user’s playing position, and for educating younger players about pitch and scales.”
Well… things didn’t quite turn out like that. (the part bolded where its “impossible to play a wrong note” – LIES, ALL LIES!!!)
At the start of the week, I spent some time reading through the Theremini manual – and here’s where I ran into my first road block. It turns out you kinda do need to understand music and scales and notes and all of that stuff to make sense of what you are reading! The first job was to actually calibrate the Theremin and set the scale range – well, I had to first re-educate myself as to what a scale is (doh-rey-me and all that jazz) but also then to figure out what scale range would make sense for me to try and learn in. There were also lots of different settings on the Theremini that I didn’t really understand – other than if I played with them, then different sounding terrible sounds would emit forth from the Theremini. I did feel a bit dumb here but – unless you are a musician who plays an instrument – would you know off the top of your head the difference between an Ionian, a Dorian or a Locrian scale? And what the root note should be??
I had decided that I was going to try and learn how to play the Star Trek theme – but after consulting with ManpanionTM, I decided to maybe temper my expectations a little as that tune actually has quite a large octave span, so maybe it would be easier to play something where the notes are just in a single octave (or thereabouts). That way, I wouldn’t be needing to move my hands quite so much.
Day 2 of my Theremini odyssey started with my watching a ton of YouTube videos to start to get a feel for the movements and watch the experts in action. Its a lot like rowing – a great crew will make rowing an eight look sooooo simple – but its so much harder than it looks! As the Theremini is a fairly new iteration of the Theremin, there weren’t actually all that many Theremini-specific tutorial videos – there were a few demo performances but nothing really focusing on the basics. There was some entertaining description in the manual regarding playing techniques and finger positions – including this particularly colorful visualization exercise….
And then I found Carolina Eyck. I was saved!!! She’s a renowned German thereminist who published a lesson series teaching you step-by-step how to play a scale on the theremin! Yippee everybody!! THIS was exactly what I needed – a little primer that would then catapult me instantly into the realms of Theremin Mastery. There were 12 little videos in all – going through all the various steps involved with setting up your theremin, followed by then each individual hand movement by which you play a note.
I watched the whole series straight through first, without turning on the theremin – as per Carolina’s instructions.
Here was my first learning. The muscle memory involved in trying to get your hands into the correct configuration is REALLY hard. The tiniest movements change the notes – which is intentional – and again, Carolina makes it look easy – but here is where I had an inkling I might actually be in trouble. According to Carolina’s method, there are eight hand positions characterized by tiny knuckle extensions. You start with a loosely closed fist of your right hand (position 8), then uncurl your pinky, ring and middle fingers outwards in small steps while keeping your index finger resting on your thumb until you end up in position 1, a full octave higher than your starting point. While its easy enough to make those movements, making them precise enough to hit the exact note you are going for, rather than sliding round them, is so hard. Trust me. You’ll see.
And that’s not even going into what you are supposed to be doing with your left hand at the same time. The left hand controls the volume – the closer your hand to the volume antenna, the quieter it is – the more you lift your hand further away, the louder it becomes. In this way, you can chop up the sound into individual notes or use it to emphasize or add drama to whatever notes you are playing with your right hand.
At least that is the theory. Its basically the equivalent of trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time – and it was just too much for my poor little brain to cope with. I came across another video of a musician (cute blonde Scandinavian) who was also trying to learn the Theremini in a week – while misery loves company and it was fun to watch someone else go through the exact same struggles I was encountering, she definitely had the advantage of her musical training – so by the end of the week, she’d definitely made a LOT more progress that I did.
By day 5 of her journey, she was floundering and in need of external help so she actually found a local Theremin teacher and went to have a lesson to give her some pointers on her basic technique. Maybe that’s what I needed too? So.. my next Google search was “Theremin teachers near me”. Funnily enough, there weren’t any. Zip. Nada. I did find a couple more videos – strangely enough of public libraries – where a library nerd would demonstrate (poorly) the Theremin in some strange (and probably deeply misguided) attempt to convince you that THIS is what you want to check out of the public library, not that exciting looking Nintendo switch console. So a local solution wasn’t gonna cut it. But maybe… I thought…. Carolina always finished each little tutorial for a plug for her more advanced course AND that you could also sign up for group OR INDIVIDUAL LESSONS!!!! A quick web search brought me to her website where – OMG – there it is – salvation in just two sentences….
If you are interested in learning to play the theremin, book an individual online lesson with Carolina.
Lessons are available to theremin players at all levels from beginners to professionals and include all music styles.
Of course it’s not going to be perfect as it would be virtual and probably at the arse crack of dawn given she’s in Germany and I’m in Chicago – but by this stage I was kinda getting desperate as I had made very little to zero progress on my own. And LOOK!!! She was available at 9am CST THIS Friday – I was saved!! Even though I probably will still suck recording the little concert I had promised you all, there was a chance that I might suck slightly less with a bit of expert guidance from Carolina.
Right then…. get the credit card out to book…. lets just click on the More Information link first to check how it all works etc etc More information >
Well, bollocks.
Carolina most frequently teaches theremin lessons in Berlin. She does not conduct individual lessons for the Moog Theremini. Please find recommended theremin models here.
But WHY Carolina, WHY????? My heart sank even further when I read this additional bit of information in the FAQ section:
CAN I USE YOUR PLAYING TECHNIQUE ON THE THEREMINI BY MOOG?
I think the Theremini is a fun instrument for musicians who want to create cool sounds and scales. I don’t believe it is a instrument for classical music, my playing technique would only work very limited on this instrument.
Well, buggery bollocks. I had just spent the last 3 days listening to her videos and trying to learn her hand gestures just to NOW find out that her playing technique is not ideal for the Theremini. To be fair, that did explain why the first 2 lessons in her series didn’t really apply (where she was showing you how to adjust the pitch field and find the “zero beat” – steps not included in the Theremini calibration) but now I was completely at a loss. Theremin-induced depression is real, people. By this stage, all illusion that I was somehow a natural talent on this infernal instrument was completely out the window and I had to admit that I was Completely Shit at it. And here’s the tricky bit – the amount of time and effort that it would take to Not Sound Shit is completely disproportionate to then how good it would actually sound. Even some of the professional players that I’d been listening to all week who have obviously dedicated many many hours to honing their craft – well, I’m really sorry but the theremin is still not really something I want to listen to. At its worst, its like waterboarding for your ears. At its best, its… “well, that’s nice” (say that in a condescending British accent and you’ll see what I mean).
As one wise lady once said to me, the musical juice is definitely not worth the squeeze here.
So… where does all that leave me and my own personal journey attempting to learn the theremin in a week? Firstly, if the General Consensus by People Who Know is that something is Very Difficult to learn – well, maybe they are right and you should probably listen to them. I have definitely been humbled by my hubris this week. No shortcut to greatness for me, unfortunately – like everyone else, I would have to come by mastery (frankly I’d settle for basic competence at this point) of the theremin by good, old-fashioned hard work and commitment. And I ain’t got time for that kinda nonsense.
Secondly, it was just Not Fun trying to learn to play the theremin. It was an exercise in frustration and where there was very little return for my efforts (as you will soon see!). As I continue on this Figuring Out My Retirement Journey, I want to discover experiences and passions that actually enrich my life (or of those around me) in some way – not send me off into pits of despair. The more I practiced the theremin this week, the less I wanted to – I found myself stuck in an infinite negative reinforcement loop (get out of that one, Simon Sinek). Could I have spent more time trying? Absolutely, yes. Was it something I wanted to spend my time doing? Absolutely not. As a tangible illustration of how much I didn’t want to practice the Theremin – I went to the gym FOUR times this week as a Theremin Avoidance strategy. This included two Orange Theory fitness sessions that I’ve been putting off for literally months cos it is so hard! Rather than slog over an uncooperative Theremini, I would much rather spend my time at the Chicago Food Depository, where I volunteered for a second Repack session on Saturday morning (this time, green peppers) – that felt worthwhile and enjoyable.
I also observed that my feelings of “failure” at learning how to play the theremin started to bleed out into other areas of my life – I started to give myself a harder time about losing weight (despite having finally gone back to OTF and not dying which should have been cause to shout it from the rooftops!). I felt my mood in general flatten somewhat. I felt guilty for not spending more time trying to learn – and so gave myself a hard time about that. And yes – Mum – I know you are reading and shaking your head in exasperation (“You’re always so hard on yourself”) – but isn’t it funny how failing at one small thing where there is absolute nothing at stake can still sometimes feel like, well, a failure? I guess the conditioning runs deep. However, as the date of my liberation from this musical torture approached, I managed to shake off the ennui and regain a sense of perspective. I had achieved at least one of the goals I’d set myself – I now know what I DON’T want to spend my time in retirement doing. And choosing to go back to the Chicago Food Depository reinforced the positive impact of last week’s task, so that is definitely something I want to commit some time to (there are actually some other volunteer opportunities which I’m starting to look into as well – I’ll keep you posted…)
And so… finally… here are a selection of (mercifully short) videos chronicling my various attempts. Some are with the pitch correction all the way OFF and some with the pitch correction cranked all the way ON. Don’t worry – you’ll be able to tell which is which. You’ll get to enjoy my amazing demonstration of How To Play A Scale. And then, finally, its SHOWTIME and my work here is done. Bonus points if you can identify the song I am playing before I tell you at the end. The thing I’m staring at intently in most of the clips is the display screen for the Theremini where it tells you which note you are playing (or missing). I have the notes of the song I am trying to play taped to the front so – believe it or not – I am actually trying to hit specific notes in a particular order. You can see from my face just how much fun I’m having. You’ll also notice these were taped over a few days – by the end of the week, I’m looking significantly more disheveled than I was at the start of the week. Thank God it’s over.
And please pray that Rod gives me something better for this week’s task….
