The Theremin was the first in a series of new experiments in instrument controls that arose in the 20s and 30s, and in many ways the Theremin was also the most radical and significant. Many of the new interfaces were augmented versions of pre-existent acoustic interfaces, especially the piano keyboard. Chavez saw electrical technology in part as a way to potentially enhance existing interfaces. "In the case of the piano, ... the complexity of the system of hammers has prevented new dispositions of the keyboard, which might otherwise exist." (Chavez, 1937:163) Inventors obliged this suggestion. The Ondes Martenot, the Electrophon, the Dynaphone, the Hammond organ, all were electronic musical instruments controlled by a piano-type keyboard or a modified version. The reason for this is obvious: apart from the fact that the preceding 19th-century was among the most keyboard-obsessed in the history of western music, the keyboard can be seen as nothing more than a musical configuration of a series of switches. In contrast to the keyboard, the ‘data output’ of most acoustic interfaces is hard to translate into an electrical control signal that a sound-producer can interpret. For instance, translating an action into a control signal using a guitar interface involves measuring the frequency of the guitar’s vibrating string and translating it into control data-- a complicated process that was only achieved about 50 years after the Theremin’s appearance. Translation from a keyboard action into a corresponding electrical signal is a simple one-step process, since keys that control a hammer (as in the piano) can just as easily close an electrical contact that results in a control signal to the sound producer. Therefore, the acoustic keyboard had close equivalents in pre-existent electrical controls (consider the similarity of the piano key with the telegraph key of the 19th century!). Moreover, because the keyboard is essentially a set of 88 independent controls, mapping control action and the expected pitches is vastly simplified.

There were experiments on varying the keyboard interface: one of the more successful was the Ondes Martenot, a keyboard with a cable that stretched from side to side across the black keys. To glide from note to note, the player could pull the cable from left to right to determine the pitch. There was also a panel on the left consisting of levers and buttons that allowed the player to control the sound’s amplitude and brightness (Moog, 1993: 46). Pitch-cable notwithstanding, it is interesting to note that in 70 years, the vast majority of synthesizers’ interfaces have changed very little from the Ondes Martenot’s keyboard-with-accompanying-knobs-and-switches.

Theremin also used acoustic instruments as a basis for interface design. In 1930, Theremin produced a variation of his space-controlled instrument based on the ‘cello fretboard, resulting in it being dubbed the "electric ‘cello" (Rhea, 1978:60). In Theremin’s own words, the electric ‘cello had a fingerboard, "but instead of pressing down on strings, it was necessary just to place one’s fingers in different places, thereby creating different pitches." Unlike the acoustic ‘cello interface, however, there were no strings, so amplitude had to be controlled through a lever. In addition, pitch was controlled as if there were only one string- the fingerboard only sensed movement up and down, not side to side (Mattis and Moog, 1991:51). The Theremin itself, although not comparable to any acoustic predecessor, was based on the idea of a conductor’s hand motions. In a 1991 interview with Robert Moog, Theremin said that he originally "conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra." (Mattis and Moog, 1991:49) As we shall see, the idea of conductor-like motions controlling music directly, rather than via a musician, would be part of the philosophy and ideals of the Theremin legacy.

There were other interfaces in the early years of computer music that attempted to break from the acoustic instrument tradition. Many consisted of levers, knobs, and switches- a natural choice for inventors who were not necessarily musicians themselves. One of the more popular examples was the Trautonium (fig.3), an invention of Friedrick Trautwein. The Trautonium, in its most sophisticated form, consisted of a bank of switches and knobs and a strip that you ran your finger along to control pitch (Moog, 1993:46). Like the Theremin, the Trautonium pitch control was continuous, and therefore did not restrict the player to any single scale. Unlike the Theremin, the Trautonium also was designed to have extensive control over the timbral qualities of its sound.

The Theremin enjoyed a period of popularity and novelty before its difficulties became apparent. First and foremost, one of the Theremin’s biggest drawbacks had also been praised as one of its biggest assets; namely, the lack of a fixed tuning reference. Since the Theremin had no physical guide or contexts in which to play notes, the only feedback to the performer lay in the sound itself. Moreover, surrounding objects apart from the performer would also affect the intonation of the instrument. Tuning was therefore extremely difficult, and producing even a simple major scale was a challenge, let alone a scale that divided the octave into thirteen parts, as had Theremin originally suggested! (Rhea, 1978:60, and Chavez, 1931:163-4)

But two factors were on the side of the Theremin. First, several prominent composers had written pieces that included a Theremin in the orchestration, including Edgar Varese, Joseph Schillinger, and Grainger (Mattis and Moog, 1991:48). Second, the instrument had found a virtuoso, a violinist named Clara Rockmore, who turned the Theremin into a highly expressive concert instrument. Rockmore was both a performer and a performance theorist: she devised a system of hand positions that allowed the player to raise and lower the pitch in discrete, or digital, steps (Rhea, 1987:60). By systematically associating hand and finger positions with pitch, Rockmore partially addressed the intonation and pitch reference problems inherent to the Theremin. Through her, the Theremin achieved a certain legitimacy in the eyes of the music establishment that prolonged its ‘first life’ beyond that of many of its fellow early electronic instruments.

However, both Theremin and his instrument soon fell into obscurity. Theremin himself, who had been living in New York since 1927, was taken back to Russia during the Second World War to help in the war effort. There, in his own words, he was "arrested, and ... taken prisoner. Not quite a prisoner, but they put me in a special lab in the Ministry of Internal Affairs." (Mattis and Moog, 1991:51) To the West, Theremin disappeared completely, as did the public exposure of his instrument. A listing of newspaper articles featuring the Theremin shows a gap of 54 years, between 1934 and 1988, during which no articles are listed. Theremin’s disappearance was so complete, in fact, that a history of electronic music published in 1981 claimed that Theremin had died around 1945 (Mattis and Moog, 1991 and Mackay, 1981).

During the ‘50s and ‘60s, the Theremin became primarily a ‘sound effects’ tool for radio shows and movie soundtracks, especially in the science fiction genre. Although some attempts at musical application were made in this genre (the theme to "Star Trek" and the soundtrack to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" are two examples) generally the Theremin had a "fall from grace" from a serious Art Music performance instrument to a low-brow theatrical effect. As the Los Angeles Times dubbed it in 1995, the "Thing that goes Oo-Wee-Oo" was so characteristic of ‘50s and ‘60s Sci Fi and horror, it later became the subject of nostalgia-parody through such movies as "Ed Wood" (Riemenschneider, 1995). If the Theremin’s sound had become a curiosity, its revolutionary interface was all but forgotten to the public.

However, the Theremin lived on with a cult-like following throughout this period. As electronic circuit building became easier and more affordable, occasional "Build your own Theremin" articles appeared in hobbyists’ magazines. Robert Moog, later a synth pioneer and chief advocate of the Theremin revival, built his first Theremin in 1949 (Mattis and Moog, 1991:49). Pop bands such as Led Zeppelin ("Whole Lotta Love") and the Beach Boys ("Good Vibrations") recorded hits which used the Theremin, although largely as a sound effect rather than a melodic instrument. This period served to separate Theremin users into two near-opposite camps: the slim elite of avant-garde electro-acoustic musicians, and (albeit adventurous) radio-friendly pop musicians. Even today, prominent pop and popular musicians regularly use the Theremin in their recordings: Fishbone, Portishead, Tom Waites, Pere Ubu, The Pixies, and many others, have used the Theremin in recent memory. However, the real advances and developments of this instrument, as well as the transposition of the Theremin philosophy to variants of the ‘Ether Music’ interface, have occurred within the avant-garde.

In 1982, the MIDI standard was created to address the need for a standardized communication protocol between electronic instruments. The profound impact that MIDI would have on the Theremin interface is not immediately obvious: MIDI is a heavily keyboard-biased language which sends data as a series of ‘note-on’ and ‘note-off’ messages, accompanied by a volume and pitch value. There are two significant assumptions in MIDI: 1) that volume over time is proportional to the initial attack (i.e.- ‘note on’ volume), as with a piano or plucked string instrument; 2) that pitch is non-continuous, and operates within the framework of the equal-temperament scale. MIDI is flexible enough to allow both volume change within a note and pitch variation between semitones, but not without some effort. MIDI is a language "native" to the keyboard. The effect on the final musical product is somewhat analogous to translating from one language to another: you can take most anything in one language and translate it, but often at the expense of the elegance and subtlety of the original statement. MIDI contrasts sharply with the Theremin, which was designed in part to undo the "tyranny of equal temperment", and allow both pitch variation without reference to any predetermined tuning system, and very accurate volume variation independent of pitch, and within a single note. Moreover, the Theremin is not "attack-oriented" like the percussive piano or the "note on/off" MIDI protocol.

However, MIDI did allow the complete separation of the sound-producing component (technically, the sound "synthesizer") from the controlling component, connected only by the MIDI cable. Since the musician interface was now an entirely independent component, it threw new significance on the control portion of the electronic instrument. Since the significance of the Theremin lay mostly in its alternate interface, this opened up a whole world of possibilities: the Theremin interface could be used to control any electronic synthesizer, not just the Theremin’s own sound-producing circuitry. The challenges faced by the interface designers in the acoustic era (namely, creating an effective control of a sound-producing mechanism while keeping the control interface ergonomically useable) were now reduced to issues of suitability for the human body and the potential for musical control and expression. No longer was the compatibility of the interface and the sound-producer an issue: by establishing a common middle-ground in MIDI, any equipment that was MIDI-compatible was automatically able to share information with any other MIDI-compatible equipment. The choice of an effective interface for the chromatic trumpet might have been very different had the sound-producing horn been MIDI-compatible!

In its most literal translation to the digital age, the inevitable "MIDI Theremin" was invented in the mid-90s as a controller versed in the MIDI protocol (http://www.fullerton.demon.co.uk/longwave /mcv1a/index.htm). However, the most significant (and promising) interfaces have arisen from the inspiration of the Theremin, by taking the philosophies, ideals, and interface advances introduced by Theremin’s experiments and extending them to new interface designs using current technology, and often using completely different physical principles. In the next section, I will examine what those ideals were, as well as the myriad of Theremin-spin-offs introduced in the 80s and 90s.

The Theoretical and Philosophical Impact of the Theremin

The Theremin was among the first to utilize electricity in a fully developed musical application. As such, it was among the first to create musical sound using a non-acoustic mechanism. The implications of the Theremin, and more generally of the introduction of electronics into musical production, were enormous. At the most fundamental level, the Theremin interface divorced the control from the means of sound production- or at least hid it to such an extent that the musician would not be aware of the processes that connected action and consequent sound. This was not an entirely a new concept: the organ interface also bears little relation to the physical phenomenon that produced the sound. However, in the vast majority of cases, the control mechanisms of acoustic instruments have a direct and apparent relationship with the sound source. This can be illustrated with a simple diagram:

In this model, interface and sound production are housed within the instrument’s physical structure. Although decisions can be made about the interface, they must be made within the restrictions that the means of sound production sets. In most cases, this is self-evident: the guitar interface is a means to control a set of vibrating strings, the trumpet valve is a means to control the vibrating column of air within the bell. Even if the guitar neck would be ergonomically better suited to the player if it were curved or if the frets were spaced equally, this would violate the physical restrictions placed on the interface by the nature of the vibrating string. Thus, interface and means of sound production are in many ways aspects of the same sound-producing organ, and there is an apparent link between the musician’s control actions and the resultant sound (i.e.- the physical properties of the system make for a predictable physical result).

The Theremin was an intermediate (but nevertheless gigantic) step from that model. Unlike the acoustic model above, the Theremin’s interface had less of an apparent link between the actions of the performer and the sounds that resulted: in fact, the variations in pitch and volume seemed at first surprising to Theremin users and observers. By removing the physical contact between performer and instrument, the control actions and sound seemed less consequent. In contrast, consider the violin, in which the connection between the actions of the violinist and the sound the violin makes are clearly displayed to the audience. The player is in direct physical contact with the interface, and the interface and sound-producing mechanism are visibly aspects of a single mechanism. The Theremin had an interface, and it produced sounds in response to control actions, but the means by which these control actions resulted in these sounds was not visibly obvious. The interface and sound production had made an important break in the minds of the performer / observer:

In terms of the mechanism of sound production, the Theremin was an interesting reversal of the acoustic model. Unlike acoustic instruments, the interface was not designed around the sound-producing mechanism, but instead the Theremin’s sound was largely a by-product of the controller. The Theremin senses distances through electromagnetic fields, which alter a frequency that results in the Theremin’s tone. One history described it as a modified "radio squeal" which you sometimes experience when touching radio antennae. Although Theremin himself introduced overtones to give the timbre a violin-like tone, the sound itself was derived from the interface (Moog, 1987:12). This is the opposite of most acoustic instruments- as in the case of the trumpet, violin, and guitar, where the mechanism for creating sound was the starting point, and the interface was designed to allow easy control of this sound production by a human user.

However, more important in the context of interface development is the fact that the interface and the means of sound production were still intrinsically tied to each other. Thus, we can see the Theremin as an important intermediate step between interfaces that are clearly tied to the physical means of sound production, and the interfaces that are completely independent of the sound producer. This trend would ultimately culminate in the establishment of MIDI in the early 80s, which can be diagrammed thus:

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