Theremin: A musical instrument played with zero physical contact!
If you have watched the Disney series Loki and the horror movie The Lost Weekend, then it’s likely that you have been intrigued by their background scores. Well, those eerie sounds were produced by a musical instrument that few of us know about. It’s called theremin, the first electronic musical instrument, that works without any physical contact. Let us guide you through the functioning, origin and history of theremin.
How does theremin work?
If you are hearing about the theremin for the first time, then there’s lot to catch up on. It happens to be an electronic musical instrument that generates sound of varying pitches and volumes, but without any touch from the musician. Wait, how does that happen? Well, it turns out, that the instrument is made up of a rectangular box-like thing having two metal antennae mounted on it, one horizontally placed and the other vertically. All a theremin player needs to do is, move his or her hands near them. So, does this mean that the antennae can sense the position of the player’s hands? That’s right! They do so, thanks to the electromagnetic fields surrounding them.
If this sounds a little complicated to you, let’s make things simpler. When the hands move near the antennae, they interfere with the magnetic fields. As soon as the antennae detects the musician’s hands, they generate electric signals. These signals are then passed on to the in-built speaker in the theremin, producing the desired sound. In fact, the proximity between the hands and the antennae determines both the frequency and volume. The closer it is, the higher they are and vice versa.
The birth of theremin
By now you must have wondered this at least once, “Who thought of such an unusual musical instrument?” Well, a Russian physicist named Lev Sergeyevich Termen invented it in the year 1919. In fact, theremin got its name from the Western version of his name, aka Leon Theremi.
Like many other inventions of the world, this musical instrument was also a chance discovery. Terman accidentally ended up creating theremin when he was part of a government funded research for proximity sensors, during the Russian Civil War. Later, he brought the instrument with him to the USA where he patented it in 1928. Within a year, he sold the rights to a famous American electronics company called RCA, that has been manufacturing theremins since 1929. Interestingly, theremin also has other nicknames such as etherphone, thereminophone and thereminvox.
Unfortunately, this 20th century musical invention hasn’t become as popular as others of its ilk, partially due to the weird sound that it produces and partially because it’s difficult to play. But there are some fine players of theremin: Clara Rockmore and Lucie Bigelow Rosen.