December 29, 2020 • 50 mins
In 1919 a brilliant Russian scientist accidentally stumbled onto the first electronic musical instrument in history – the theremin – which you play not by strings, keys, or even percussion, but by moving your hand in the air around it. Prepare to science!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry out there,
and this is Stuff you should Know. That's pretty good
(00:25):
Theraman impression, don't you think? Hey, not bad. I am
a little bit proud of myself because the Theraman, it
turns out it's very, very tough to play, and it's
even tougher to imitate. So that was something of an
accomplishment for me. Have you ever tried to play one? No,
I haven't. I have not know. It's weird that you
(00:48):
had to think about that. Well. I mean I was
just trying to think, like, I think there's one in
the house, Stuff works office somewhere though, Stuff Podcast Office.
I want to say that they're is. Well, I'm there, man,
let's go get it, Okay, So look around, we'll wait,
we'll wait. We won't edit out you going and wandering
around and looking for I'll just talk to the people
(01:09):
to keep them busy. Uh, that's weird. I mean, I'm
obviously not gonna go look for it, but I had
no idea that was one here. I think so I
could be making that up. It doesn't seem like the
kind of thing that would be there. So for those
of you who don't know what we're talking about, we're
talking about theramans. And if you still don't know what
we're talking about, let us describe this. We'll be able
to do that, right, Oh yeah, sure, sure, um, well,
(01:31):
here you go. We'll play a clip of something that
we'll figure out what it is later. Ready, So there's
whatever we selected post production to put into to demonstrate theremans.
But that that eerie, high pitched kind of whaling sound,
(01:52):
that's a theremin. And the theraman was the world's first
electronic musical instrument and it was created by accident, as
we'll see. But um, it uses electromagnetism, actually electromagnetic interference
to produce a changing pitched sound, changing and pitch and
(02:13):
changing in volume. And you can create this, this sound,
this music, I guess you would call it without any
kind of mechanical energy whatsoever. You're just moving your your
body or your hands in and out of the electromagnetic
field around the theramin and that's what produces the sound.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, And as we will also see
(02:34):
it's Uh, it's key that you use a hand because
your body it has to be something that conducts electricity.
Like you could technically could use metal or something like that,
but you wouldn't have the nuance that you're able to
achieve by you know, very sort of micro movements in
your hand and your fingers. Uh. And when you're playing it,
(02:54):
it sort of looks like almost like you're conducting an orchestra.
The way you hold your hand, it's very evocative of conducting.
I think. Yeah, And it's funny you say that because,
um thereman who's actually named Terman um he he said
that it was like creating music out of thin air,
just like a conductor does. So that was very astutive you, Charles,
(03:16):
thank you. So yeah, you mentioned Urman. This guy his
his Russian name, I guess was Lev Sergey Yavic Terman
t E R M E N. I guess leon Thareman
sounds a little more western. Did change it? I I
don't know it. You know, here in America we just
(03:39):
change it for you. You know, you come through Ellis Island,
you get it basically a whole new name that Americans
can pronounce more easily. I'm pretty sure, that's what happened.
That's a good point. So when Lev was in his
early twenties, in the sort of early nineteen hundreds and
nineteen nineteen ish, he um was working at the Physical
Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and he was working
(04:02):
and as you'll see, he did he you know, for
the majority of his career worked for the Russian State.
But he was working on an invention that was supposed
to measure the density of gas and a chamber, and
essentially he was trying to develop like a land based
sonar device that used electromagnetism to detect objects that came
(04:22):
within a certain area. And he was like, hey, I'm
a pretty young, hip creative guy. I wonder if I
add sound to this thing, uh, and not intending to
create anything musical, but just let me add sound to
it to indicate that this thing is even on. And
he did it and bought a being bada boom bon job.
He was like, that sounds pretty cool, yeah, because I
(04:44):
mean like it it would make sense that you want
to add sound to because if you're detecting something coming
within proximity, it's kind of like a metal detector. As
you get closer and closer to the metal. That sound
that it makes um increases. It's basically the exact same thing,
except you're not detecting metal. You're to acting electro magnetic
interference basically with the theremin. But because he was a young,
(05:06):
hip guy like you said, and also a classically trained cellist, um,
he said, I think that I could turn this into
a musical instrument, and he did pretty quickly. He um
fiddled with it a little bit, maybe uh did a
little put another do Hicky or two on there, and
all of a sudden he had, like I said at
the beginning, the world's first electronic musical instrument. Like, if
(05:29):
you're into dance music or electronica or anything like that,
you owe a great debt of gratitude to to love Terman.
Sure should we use some of these things that you found,
some of these descriptors. Yeah, so this this initially had
like two or three, and I just started adding to
One of my favorite things to do is to go
around collecting people's hapless descriptions of of what a thereman
(05:53):
sounds like, because nobody nails it, but all all of
them come close, and their hilarious in their attempts. Yeah,
so here's one across between a violin and a soprano voice.
That's that's not bad. I think that was the original one. Yeah,
I mean you can get I mean, especially when you
get some vibrato going, you can see how one might
liken it to a voice. Oh yeah, it doesn't sound
(06:15):
like a voice to me, but I get the I
get the comp um. Okay, how about this one, a
purified and magnified saxophone. I think if there was ever
a complete failure in describing a Theramin sound, it's that one. Yeah.
It sounds like a saxophone, like a cheap keyboard. The
saxophone button on a cheap keyboard sounds like a saxop. Yeah. Yeah,
(06:38):
maybe that's what they totally missing their point. Uh. Let
me see the howling of a haunted wind. That's pretty good.
I love that one. This one I think comes from
Therman himself. A cello lost in a dense fog and
crying because it does not know how to get home.
For cello just walking around in the dark by himself,
(07:00):
how do I get home? Let me see here across
between an amplified child slide whistle, so it doesn't say
and what that was a that was a mistake. I
put or inky okay, slide and a human voice and
the squawks that emanated from early radio speakers. That was
(07:22):
pretty That was pretty good because it's uh. The the
one of the key components of a theoreman is that
slide because it is um. As you will see, and
if you listen to theorem in music, it's all about
that slide. It's not they're not punctuated with staccato notes. No.
And as a matter of fact, I was watching um
tutorial by currently the world's foremost theoremnist. I believe her
(07:47):
name is Carolina Eck e y c K. She's German um,
so however, you pronounced that into German um. And she
makes finger motions to cut off the last more ship
to to create a space in between notes, separate notes
rather than she uses the technical um jargon for what
(08:08):
she's talking about. I'm not quite familiar with it. But
another way to put it is she's cutting spaces into
the notes, so she's not sliding it around like a trumbone. No,
or slide whistle that's lost in the dark. You do
a pretty good slide whistle to your slide whistle beer.
I had one of those when I was a kid.
That was the best thing ever I never even did.
(08:29):
I'm self taught. Oh boy, I know what you're getting
for Christmas? Oh nice? Remember that time you got me
an empty can of billy beer? Oh yeah, that's right
years ago. Oh no, it wasn't billy beer. I'm sorry,
it was just plain generic beer. My can was just
the black like helvetica font that just says beer. Yeah,
my friend Eddie's favorite beer of all time. Has he
(08:51):
actually drank it? Yeah? When we went to uh there
was like four of us that went to l A
for spring break in college and stayed with my brother
and we went to the store and they had the
generic beer and Petty is a beer guy, and he
just flipped. He bought like three cases of it. Wow
for fifty cents. Yeah exactly. Yeah. So, um thereman has
(09:12):
got this instrument going. He's pretty proud of it. Word
gets around Mother Russia, and word gets to Lenin, who
at the time was chairman of Russia's uh sort of
newly In I guess installed as one word for it
the Bolshevik government, and he flipped over it. Lennon was
a theoreman nut and he was like, you know what,
(09:33):
I'm gonna send you on tour, comrade, And uh, this
thing is gonna want people to champion electricity as a
whole just by these demonstrations, right, just so that they
can possibly get a theorem in themselves. They're going to
install electricity in their house. That's my plan. Forget reading
lights or warmth, right, it's the theoreman that they'll want.
(09:56):
So he tours Russia for a while basically promoting you know, electricity,
electronic music, Soviet know how, that kind of stuff, and um,
his tour is so successful that they send him on
to Western Europe. And he toured Western Europe with what
we're known as his um ether concerts. Ether wave concerts,
(10:16):
not ether concerts. Those are totally different. Um. And the
one of the less known things about Left Harman is
that while he was touring Europe just wowing crowds, he
was also spying for the Soviet state, which he did
for a while. Actually, yeah, I know this, I say
this a lot, but this this has got the makings
(10:37):
of a pretty good movie too, don't you think sure? Yeah?
I think so. I mean I'm not quite sure. You'd
have to really be a master to to to pull
out the um, the humanity and the compassion and the
viewer for this guy, because he's morally ambiguous in a
lot of places, I think. But in the end, you know,
(10:58):
just the kind of treatment he got, I think kind
of makes him a sad sack case that he'll do
lock treatment feel bad for. Yeah, all right, well we'll
get to that. But so he's touring around he, like
you said, as a spy for the Soviet regime. And
because of this tour, he's being allowed he's getting all
this access two places where he can be a pretty
(11:21):
good spy actually on pattent offenses and um like industrial
complexes and stuff like that. So he's getting access and
doing a pretty good job spying for for the Soviet regime.
And he ended up taking up residents in the United States.
I didn't see whether that was a part of the
Soviet plan or his own plan. I'm not sure, but
(11:44):
he found himself quite at home and in New York
when he he showed up in the US and started
becoming kind of the toast of the town. Um. I've
read that Albert Einstein kept a lab at Um Terman
apartment in New York on fifty four Street. When he
visited him, he would just do some work while he
(12:05):
was there. Um. He became pretty well known, especially among
like avant garde musicians and composers. Um. He was just
kind of a known as like a cool guy. Um.
He had a very scandalous marriage in that he married
an African American prima ballerina whose name is Lavinia Williams Um.
And I think he lived in the United States for
(12:28):
a good decade. He showed up in and he lived
there until eight I believe, and along the way because
he became such a toast of the town. And his
his theorem in um, which had been known for a
while as his theorem in vox, which is theoreman's voice,
finally got shortened to Theraman and R. C said, you
know what, I think these things are going to be
(12:48):
a hit. We're going to We're going to buy the
rights from you, or at least, um least the rights
from you and start producing our own. Yeah. Because he
obviously was wise enough to get a patent in the
US in um. That was his second wife. By the way,
I didn't I couldn't get a whole lot about his
first wife other than it was clearly in Russia because
(13:09):
her name was a Katerina Pavlovna. Okay, that's a pretty
Russian name. And he was married three times. He had
a couple of daughters, I think with his third wife,
and um, I'll talk a little bit more about his
kids later. But he, uh, he gets his patent. R
C a like he said, jumps on board the Theoreman
bandwagon and manufactures a a version of the theorem, like
(13:33):
an at home Theoreman for a d seventy five bucks,
which is a really expensive musical instrument that's bucks today,
especially during the depression. Yeah, I mean, I don't know
who they thought they were going to sell him to everybody. Yeah,
r C made it sound like they were onto something really,
(13:53):
really big, but it was such an expensive price point.
It was such a niche product. Um I think. I
mean they sold the first run that they built, but
only to like rich people who wanted to like throw
parties in wow people with their theorem. And basically I
guess one of the other big problems with it is
that they marketed it like there's no strings, there's no frets,
(14:17):
there's no you know, there's nothing, it's just like strings. Yeah, basically, Um,
they said that anybody can learn to play this, make
music with the wave of a hand. Um. And the
problem is the theremin is really really hard to learn
because it doesn't have things like frets or strings or
um chord progressions or anything like that. Um. And there's
(14:39):
no other instrument like it on the planet. So um,
it's very difficult to learn. And I think our c
A made a first production run of like four hundred
units and they managed to sell three and eighty of them,
some of which are still in existence today, and I
was looking them up. Apparently, Um, if you can find
one that's just in terrible shape, you could still proba
(15:00):
probably get thirty bucks for it, and one that's in
really good condition mint condition would be about thirteen grand
because there's such collectors items. But also because of the
original um them electronics inside of the circuitry. Yeah that
that it makes a sound that's really difficult to replicate
because we have such an embarrassment of riches with advancement
(15:21):
in in electronics today that it's hard to make something
sound old timey and original, you know what I mean?
Everything sounds so rich and in advanced UM. So I
think that's one of the reasons why people will pay
thirteen grand for an original R C A theorem, and
that Jack White has one. Yeah, I'll bet he does too. So. Um.
(15:43):
When he was in the United States, living there, doing
some spying and doing some theorem and playing like he
would put on big, big concerts, he put on a
full theorem and orchestra, which is to say, I think
they were like six of them, um at Carnegie Hall.
So like these were big, big, big events. Um. And
like you said, he got married to a second wife
(16:04):
there and was leading this double life really like no
one knew what was going on obviously as a spy,
and he got a little more and more nervous his
World War two approaches that he might get ratted out.
He's he's really enjoying this life in America, and he's like,
I don't want to I don't want to do this. Uh,
the FBI has got a file on me. He didn't
say that because he didn't know that, but the ghost
(16:26):
of Leon Thereman said that later on, right. And he
was getting pretty deep into debt, and so in nineteen
thirty eight he left the US after ten years there
didn't even tell his wife he was leaving his second
wife and stayed gone until the early nineties. Yeah. Part
of that was not by his own decision, like he
stayed gone in part because as Stalin came into power,
(16:51):
he was not very he didn't fancy the old regime,
and Thereman was definitely associated with that old regime. He
was a favorite of Lenin's um, So he was throwing
and into the goolog as the the USSR really started
to gain strength and power um and apparently as World
War Two started to approach, the Soviets realized that they'd
actually thrown a lot of valuable scientists in their minds
(17:14):
into goolog So they went and got them out, including
leve Terman, and put them in a different kind of
goolog called the Sharashka. Yeah, I got it. Sharashka, which
is basically like a prison for scientists, like science camp
that you can't leave exactly, and you can't see your
family or friends are connected with the outside, but you
(17:36):
can't spend all of your time thinking about ways to
come up with new devices that the Soviet state can use.
And that is actually where leve Terman Thereman came up.
With his other great invention that he's known for, which
is called the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Yeah,
I think, uh, that's a pretty good time to take
a break, Okay, and we'll come back right after this, Okay, Chuck.
(18:21):
So frankly, you really left everybody hanging with that last thing.
So let's talk about the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Okay.
Uh yeah, boy, all these years in I gotta teach
you about the cliffhanger. Yeah, I like to. I like
to plod along at the most boring pace and stop
at the most boring, predictable time. So before the Thing,
he invented something called a baron b U R A N.
(18:44):
And that was a list another listening device, um that
sort of functioned as a laser microphone that you would
use today where you would point it at a at
a piece of glass like someone's you know, behind that
glass talking and it would sense the vibrations in the glass.
That's wow. He invented that. Yeah, he invented the barn
I've heard about that thing, but that was um nothing
(19:07):
sort of as far as impact goes compared to the
Great Seal Bug or the Thing like you mentioned. And
this was really pretty extraordinary that this actually worked. Um,
not that his invention worked, but that the scam worked. UM.
So what he did was he put a passive bug
inside a wood carving of the Seal, the Great Seal
(19:27):
of the United States. They presented it to Avril har Harriman,
who was the American ambassador to Moscow, and he hung
it on his wall and it allowed himself to get
spied on for years. So so in Harriman's defense, um,
he was, like you said, It was like you said,
(19:48):
he was a very trusting sort, which made him a
terrible choice for the ambassador, American ambassador to Moscow. But
it was a passive bug. It didn't use electricity, so
there was no possible way for anybody to sweep for it.
So I'm sure they swept this Great Seal, you know,
eight ways from Sunday and turn nothing up and they're like,
all right, put it up, um. And the reason it
was passive is because it didn't use electricity, and it
(20:10):
was activated by microwaves. The microwaves would turn an antenna on, UM,
and you could be a few doors down and just
beam like a microwave beam towards this thing, and it
would activate the antenna and then the place that it
was put in, the eagle's beak created kind of like
an ear, a wooden ear that amplified the sound in
(20:31):
the room, and the antenna would pick it up and
transmit it automatically. Seven years they were able to spy
on these conversations, and it was It could have gone
on forever, but it was. It was discovered by accident.
There was a British radio operator who picked up the signal.
It's like, hey, something's going on here. And I guess
(20:51):
they eventually, you know, probably just tore that room inside
out until they found it. Would be my guess, right
that radio operas like is that is that Avril Harriman talking?
I know that voice and the great The best part
of that story is that they got the Soviet equivalent
of the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers, to present the plaque.
(21:12):
And I was raised as a child the Cold War,
so I strongly suspect the Young Pioneers were in on it.
They knew full well what they were doing. Of course, yeah,
they were in on it. It was a young Vladimir
Putin probably probably chuck, you never know, Uh so thereman
was um he kind of disappeared from public view because
(21:35):
of the gulag experience and being in science prison camp
uh and then Uh. Nineteen sixty seven, a New York
Times critic named Harold schoenberg Um found him quite by
accident at the Moscow Conservatory where he was working at
the time. He was writing a story a road, a
story that basically kind of out of him, and said, hey,
(21:57):
here's Leon Thireman. He's right here in the Soviet Union. Yeah,
and he was probably like, finally, I've been waiting for
you guys to dig me up. But the Soviet state said,
you know what, this is not a good thing. We
can't have this guy talking to the press and becoming
a cause ce lab again. He's just done too much dirt.
He's been in a goolag before. He bugged the ambassador
(22:18):
like this. He just knows too much. We don't want
him people paying attention to him. So they ruined him.
They ruined his career, They had him fired from the conservatory,
They trashed all of the inventions he was working on,
and he ended up spending the next couple of decades
living um in poverty in a in a group home,
in a room in a group home. Um, basically because
(22:39):
of that New York Times critic finding him and writing
that article again, which is sad on the one hand,
but at the other hand, on the other hand, it
um brought him back from any sort of obscurity he
kind of been pounded into. Yeah, so this last until
about the eighties, when the Soviet Union opens up just
a bit and he leaves and goes to Europe. He
(23:00):
is to the US, like we said at the beginning
in nine and uh then was able to sort of
reap a little bit of his reward as uh as
a you know, pioneer and electronic music or music period. Um.
There's a documentary called Thereman Colon an Electronic Odyssey from
the early nineties that is not great, but it does
(23:22):
feature him in the end, which is which is pretty cool.
Like the last third of it has actual interviews with
Leon Thereman and him playing it and stuff like that. Sure,
I mean, he must have known that he needed to
show up his legacy while he could, because you know,
he visited the US and he was dead two years
later back in Russia, UM, and he was still working
on stuff to to the end. He was working on
(23:44):
a dance floor that was made up of his turpos stone,
which was another invention of his, which was like a thereman,
but rather than using your hands, he used your whole
body and you danced. Well, he was making an entire
dance floor out of these. You could have a bunch
of people dancing making the worst possible sounds you can imagine,
all at the same time. And he was in his nineties. Yeah,
(24:06):
he was like nine seven when he died, so yeah,
he was working on this in his nineties. So he
was a hip cat until the end. So while he
was gone, something happened in the US in the nineteen
forties and fifties. Um, the Thereman kind of blew up
and blew up. As far as the Thereman goes. It
wasn't like it became a staple in in music or
(24:29):
a staple in pop music, but it was used largely
at first in movies science fiction, the Alfred Hitchcock Spellbound,
most notably maybe um The Lost Weekend, And unless it
was science fiction, it sort of came to be a
signal for psychological distress, like if somebody was under the
(24:51):
influence of drugs, or if that was somebody like locked
away in a in a what they would have called
an insane asylum back then. You might hear a Airman
kind of say, by the way, this character is off
their rocker. You're right if you if your drug trip
sound feels to you like a Theoreman sounds, you're on
a bad trip, buddy, you think, sure, alright, but you
(25:14):
can you could trace the kind of the breakout popularity,
at least the introduction to the general public of the
Theoreman to basically two people back in the forties and fifties.
Um miklosh Roscha who was the guy who scored The
Last Weekend and spell Bound, and Samuel Hoffman, who was
a theoreminist and composer who worked with some other kind
(25:35):
of more popular composers Less Baxter and Harry Revel to
make some really great music. Um in a couple of
new new types of music, lounge and exotica. UM. I
listened to music out of the Moon today, like eight times.
I listened to Perfume set to music how is It?
It's okay? Not as much therapy Thereman as h I wanted.
(25:59):
I wanted more Airman. Well, a little Thereman goes a
long way, for sure, But there were parts of music
out of the moon where you have to like really
listen because it just it um merges so well, harmonizes
so well with the other stuff like maybe vocalists harmonizing
the theremin WI harmonize with it, which is now that
I know about Thereman's that is incredibly masterful to be
(26:22):
able to harmonize with a human voice using a theoremin.
But those two guys definitely kind of introduced that to
the to the public. And one member of the public
that got introduced to the theremin who was really responsible
for breaking it out was a guy named Robert Moog
might recognize whatever you might recognize from his um synthesizer
(26:45):
that he was the guy who invented the synthesizer. Well,
apparently Robert Mog his first and last love I saw
someone say was the theoreman. Yeah, he got together with
his dad and he built theremin kits to sell to people.
Um it's kind of one of the cool thing about thereman.
You can buy one ready to go, but all along
since the beginning and up to this very day, you
(27:07):
can buy a kid to kind of build it yourself.
Because they're very uh, they're very much cater to circuitry
and electronic walks who love to get in there with
her soldering iron and mess around. So kids were very
popular from the beginning. And that's kind of how Moe
got it start as a company, Yeah, by selling these
theorem and kits um and I think it was uh
(27:29):
n when he started selling them. And by the sixties
they were like really ready to be used. They were
you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of
room and psychedelic music for the Thereman. Um. And so
it pops up on some Rolling Stones albums apparently, um
uh Brian Jones, right, Yeah, Brian Jones played the Thereman
(27:50):
for a couple of albums. Um, it's on a whole
Lot of Love where Robert Plant has his climax. Um.
And then don't tell me that's meant to represent anything
else but that everybody knows that. Could you imagine It's
like if you were, you know, having sex with Robert
Plant in the nineteen seventies and and that's literally what
(28:12):
he started doing. Jimmy Page just comes out of the
closet playing the Thereman along the company. My lord. Um,
there's a couple of places where you think it pops up,
but you would be wrong, Chuck, Yeah, I mean it's
it's uh, well, it's not controversial. The Beach Boys song
Good Vibrations is probably the most popular song ever too
(28:35):
really heavily feature very distinctly what you think is a theoreman. Um,
it's actually something called an electro theoreman. Brian Wilson calls
it a thereman. Everyone sort of calls it a thereman,
but it's a trump bonus named Paul Tanner invented it.
Um basically a very simplified thereman that you could play
with knobs, uh, to make it easier to hit the
(28:56):
right tones. That that to me makes it not not
a theorem. And yeah, it's an electro theremin. So um,
there's not a theoreman on Good Vibrations, as a lot
of people think. It's also not a theoreman you're hearing
in the Star Trek theme. A lot of people apparently
think that it shows up in that Trek theme and
that it turns out is soprano lulli Gene Norman hitting
(29:17):
all those incredible notes. I don't even I don't think
i've ever heard that theme. WHOA Okay, that was Beaker.
Apparently we just made a cameo in that in that version. Yep. Um,
so those are two places the theremin doesn't show up.
(29:37):
It does show up elsewhere in movies like Edwood and
Mars Attacks both I think Tim Burton movies. Right, yeah,
he's all over the thereman. Hell boy. Um. It was
also in First Man, which I have still not seen,
but I guess it's a scene where Neil Armstrong throws
his um his young dead daughter's bracelet into a crater
in the moon and they use theoreman, which it seems
(30:00):
like a very bold choice for a recent movie to make.
I'm surprised you haven't seen that. I'm a little surprised too.
I'm surprised I haven't seen it because I have a
crush on Gosling, who doesn't. No Man, Lars and the
Real Girl is just one of the best movies ever made. Yeah,
also starring a a friend of us stuff you should know,
(30:21):
Paul Schneider. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. So a
bunch of you know, pop music really latched onto it.
And UH and the nineties and two thousand's group called
the Silver Apples use one. Uh. One of my favorite
records from the nineties is a band called Mercury Rev
(30:43):
and their album Deserter Songs heavily features the Theoreman and
a couple of their songs, there's a Sepulcher, a song
that has a theoremin and it's played by um Jason
now Stead, who is the basis of Metallic at the time.
There's a trivia answer for you. Seriously, he's like, standing back,
you can't crowd the Theoreman. It changes the pitch. It's
(31:04):
also that was your Jason Newstead impression. Sure, I guess
he just looks angry, didn't he. That's Hetfield you're thinking of.
Oh Newstead always had that frown. Oh really, well, all
of them literally they were metal, don't you know. Um.
And then there was a band called Lothar and the
hand People, And Lothar was the name of the Theoreman,
(31:25):
who the band considered the lead singer in the hand
People were the people playing Lothar the Theoreman. Yeah, that
annoyed me so much. I didn't even look it up
to listen. Oh really, I think it's awesome. Man, that's
just so sixties to me. I love it. I think
it's two thousands trying to be sixties. No, but they're
from the sixties, so they are Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're legit.
(31:48):
I'll look into it. Then. Have you seen what what
was the name of that band that um they just
beat up like appliances. I think they're Swedish and they
made the Hounds. They were like kind of viral, like
several years back. They did like a total eclipse of
the heart cover but beating up an oven in a dishwasher,
Oh my god, you'd actually like him pretty great. And
(32:11):
one guy, he's like so scrawny that he can't keep
his pants up, so his pants keep falling down every
time he hits the stove with the sledgehammer. It's like,
I mean it's a stove with his belt. Yeah, basically
put the belt on. That guy needs a belt more
than he I don't even think a belt could service
him any longer. I think he needs like an extension
(32:32):
cord length. He's got a tie it as tight as
he possibly can. He's thin. And you just unknowingly made
another music reference. What the great great band Silver Juice
from the late great Dave Burman. He has a line
and one of their great songs, uh, holding up your
trousers with extension cords? Well, that's funny. I wonder if
(32:54):
he's when are they from the nineties, uh, two thousand's
and also featuring friend of the show Amnistanovic. Yeah, no,
I knew that. It's basically Pavement, isn't it. No, it
was Dave Burman, But Malcolmus is on the one Great Great.
I mean, they're all good albums, but Great American Water
is one of the best albums of that decade. I
wonder if he was making a syphasis reference, because that's
(33:16):
what I was making reference to this. I think Nelson
Muntz has a he uses an extension cord for a belt. Yeah,
he's neglected. I knew this is gonna take us down
some musical side roads. Sure, And I knew you were
going to mention Robert Plant climaxing because you say that
like every other week. I can't. I can't stop talking
(33:36):
about it. Should we take another break? I think so,
and then we're gonna come back and explain how theremin
works and then how to play it. How's that for
a cliffhanger? I'm hanging okay, Chuck, so a Theraman works
(34:12):
through um electronic magic. Basically, I think we should just
leave it at that. Now we can't. I really went
to a lot of trouble to try to figure out
how these things worked in the most simplistic terms possible.
And that's really saying something because the people who write
about how Thereman's work are the people who build thermans,
(34:33):
which means that the people who understand things like amplitude
and currents and electro magnetic interference and all that stuff. Basically,
you've got two different um circuits. You've got a pitch
circuit and a volume circuit. And if you've ever seen
a theorem in it's basically like a box and on.
If you're standing at the box getting ready to play it,
(34:55):
on your right, the player's right is it a single
antenna going up vert clee that looks like one of
a pair of rabbit ears that you would use on
an old timey tv UH antenna. Look it up, kids.
And then on the other side the left there's like
a round metal, horizontally oriented antenna that comes out the
(35:16):
other side of the box. The one on the left,
the round one that's for adjusting volume. The one on
the right, the vertical rod, is for um adjusting the pitch. Yeah,
it's it's sort of volume slash attack and an attack
is one of those words that unless you're sort of
into playing music, you don't know what it means, but
(35:37):
you'll see it pop up on various instruments labeled attack,
and that's they're sort of It's called the musical envelope,
the four stages of sound. Uh, and it starts with attack.
That's the sort of the beginning of the sound, like
right when you strike a piano key or right when
you plug a guitar string. Uh. And then it goes
from attack to decay to sustain to release and the
(35:59):
volume and its heck, it's not quite the same thing.
But uh, as far as what we need to know
about the theremin that right, I'm sorry, the horizontal and
controls volume and attack, okay. And then the one on
the right, the upright one, it controls pitch and the
way that it produces pitches. It's got two different oscillators
in there, and an oscillator is just something that produces
(36:21):
alternating current electricity in wave form. Right, it produces waves,
and one of those oscillators produces one at a static frequency.
It's always the same frequency no matter what the other
one adjusts. And so when you get your hand. Oh
we left out a really important thing. The the way
this whole thing works is because you live human person
(36:43):
are holding an electric charge right now and so oh
we did. Okay. So that's called your capetence, and when
your captence, your electric charge, whatever that may be, and
it's going to be different for each person. So I
think kind of the implication, Chuck, is that every different
person new walks up to a particular thereman is going
to produce a different sound. Doesn't that seem right? Oh?
(37:07):
I don't know. I never really thought about that. I
would think so, because I wouldn't think we're all walking
around with the same capetents. Although I could be wrong,
but regardless, just if that's wrong, totally disregard what I
just said. The point is is that UM, when you're
your electrical charge presented in the form of your hand,
interferes with the um, the oscillating current that's being created
(37:29):
and generated and run through this antenna. UM. It changes
that oscillating frequency, and so these two things subtract or
add together their frequencies to produce this sound that raises
their lowers and pitch depending on how close you are.
The closer you get the higher the pitch, the further away, um,
the lower the pitch. Uh. And that's basically how it works,
(37:51):
the same thing basically with your with your left hand
with the volume attack. That's it. You're just basically interfering
with the electric electric magnetic fields produced and carried through
these antenna's using your own electrical charge. That's how they work. Yeah,
and it's um. If you watch the documentary, there's one
UM scientists that attaches it to a wave form visualizer
(38:17):
sort of explain it a little better and he um,
not better than we did, but just more in more
detail and no, no, no uh and he uh he
was just said, it's it's remarkable that that Leon Thereman
or Terman invented this thing without the use of one
of those Like he was going completely by ear. And
I think if had it not been for his training
(38:38):
as a cellist, uh, it may not have ever even
been anything. Because you have to have a really in
this sort of segues into actually playing the thing, you
have to have a really really good ear for pitch
to play a Thereman because like you said earlier, there
are no markers like frets to look at to know
where to go to hit a g it's got a yeah,
(39:00):
four and a half. I saw four and a half
octave range and also saw five and a half. But
you gotta know in the the air surrounding you in
space where exactly to put your hand to get the
tone that you want, and if it's off a little bit,
it's not gonna sound right. So the learning curve is long.
It's a tough instrument to to really get good at.
(39:22):
Extremely so yeah, because I mean, if you if you
know how to play a guitar, you can walk up
to a guitar and be like, oh, here's the frets
or whatever. I can put my fingers here here and
I'm going to make this sound. With the theramin, it's
it's literally different places in the air. Um. And so yeah,
you do have to have a good year. One of
the other things you have to have. It's essential to
playing the theremin is um a steady hand, yeah, or
(39:46):
I guess not necessarily, but it definitely helps. Because, um,
if you see somebody kind of moving around like they're
just totally whacked out or whatever, playing a theramin with
the sounds they're making is not what it's supposed to
sound like. A theramin is aid very delicately. There's a
very famous um there menace named Clara Rockmore who said,
you play with you play a theramin with butterfly wings.
(40:09):
And she was basically saying, like, your fingers are supposed
to be delicate and controlled like a butterfly wings. And
so if you watch people playing theramin, they're they're just
like they're standing totally straight and still. It's just their
hands and their wrists basically that are moving and making
these really delicate motions through the air that is producing
(40:29):
all of these different sounds. Yeah, and the reason you
have to stand still, obviously, is because any movement of
your body is going to affect the sound. That's why
I made the Jason Newstead joke in that documentary. There's
an old I don't know who she was. It might
have been Clara Rockmore maybe, probably was Clara rock or
Lucy Bigelo Rosen maybe, but she was like back off
(40:51):
in her accent, and she was like, I'm not you know,
I'm trying to be nice about it, but you can't
you you can't come any closer. And I tell the
first violinison an orchestra the same thing, like you have
to have space around the instrument itself or else is
going to affect the sound? You're right, hey, you know
who else played the theremin? Who's a theremin master? M?
My friend Toby really yes, so he is very cool.
(41:17):
He was from Dallas and the Polyphon Experience from Dallas,
and apparently like half of Dallas was members of the
Polyphoning Spree except for poor Toby. And so he went
to the dude from Tripping jay Z Days. I can't
remember his name, but the leader of the Polyphoning Spreence said,
you know, I want to join what what what? What
instrument do you need? And the guy was like, I
don't want you to go learn to play theraman and
(41:38):
come back. And so Toby went and taught himself thereman
and came back and joined the Polyphonic Spree. That's right.
I think it's Tim something or other. Yeah. I was
into them for those first two albums quite a bit.
Oh man, they were so great what what great music?
Because it was so earnest too, you know, like they
weren't being ironic. It was this kid, a sharp guy,
and that band of hippies who is he Edwards Sharp?
(42:01):
And the Magnetic Zeros, you know it was the same
kind of deal, like, hey, let's get forty people in
a band and uh not have one bar soap between us. No,
I never heard of you know that they had one
big hit that you would know. Uh what what? Oh?
That home? Won't you come home? Home is where I
really want to be. I mean I wasn't into him
(42:25):
and it was a huge, huge hit. So was that
Judy Garland? Oh boy? So yeah, So Toby Toby was
the greatest theremin player I've ever met. That's awesome. Uh So,
you know, you play, like we said, with that um
(42:45):
you know a lot of times, like I said, it
looks like you're holding a little whatever you call it,
the conductors. I'm want to do a show on conducting,
by the way, just to learn what that thing is,
the little stick, the stick, But it looks like you're
sort of holding that because a lot of theremin players
tend to touch their thumb and their four fingers together
and you're, you know, you're sort of wiggling your fingers
for vibrato and you can learn basic theorem and and
(43:06):
make the sounds that sound good. And then there's like
the next level theremin ng where you really get involved
with your fingers and very subtle movements to create different sounds. Yeah.
So it is like a really difficult thing to do
and to learn to play, in no small part because
there aren't frets or anything like that. Um, but also
(43:28):
because of the the just precision movement of your fingers
and in hands. Um. And you also can't really get
into the music either. You have to stay still because
if you sway or you know, swing your head left
or right or anything like that, Um, you're going to
mess with the that that part of your body is
going to come into the electromagnetic field and you're going
(43:51):
to mess up the sound of the music. That's right.
And that's why hip hop concerts they say, throw your
hands in the air and wave them like you just
don't care. Except for that they aramanist right, throw your
hands in the air and wave them like you just
don't play there. And I think we should decided this
part out very well made. I'll be very surprised if
(44:12):
that ends up in the final cut. Chuck. One thing
we didn't mention that seems obvious unless you know about
musical instrument or might seem obvious. I don't know what
I'm saying. It's obvious to me. But it's going through
an amplifier, like if you're sitting at home, like, yeah,
but how does the sound come out. It's an electronic instrument,
so it's plugged into an amp. It is. And actually
(44:35):
that volume circuit that you're interfering with, you're actually changing
the voltage I believe of the amplifier. UM. That's how
when you move your hand closer and further away, you're
affecting the voltage that's that's released by that that UM
whatever transformers is supplying the amplifier with the electricity. Yeah,
(44:56):
Like you can get a thereman for not a lot
of money, or a Theoreman kit, or I would say
get a one of those new theorem any is that
Moga is building because those are just super super cool
and they sound amazing and they make it a little
bit easier on you. Yeah, because they they they recognize chords. Right,
So when you move your hand like through the air
(45:18):
at a certain way, like it goes through the chromatic scales.
It's not it's not just random stuff. It actually kind
of is like a UM very forgiving and corrective of
what you're doing and figures out what you're trying to
do and it makes it sound like it like you
want it to. But the the most amazing thing is
there's a dial where you can dial back that level
(45:41):
of forgiveness as you get better and better at playing
the theorem, and you can just make it so that
it's not doing that for you at all and you
have to do it yourself, which is pretty awesome. Yeah,
and it also sounds synthy and cool. Yeah. I mean,
I like the sound of a regular theremin, but that
there are many. I had never heard of it until today,
and I was like, I'm gonna have to get one
of those at some point. All right, if you're like
(46:02):
a maker kind of person and you like music there,
you've probably already made theremans. But if not, check out
a guy named Arthur Harrison's site thereman dot us. He
sells kits and like has all sorts of articles and
stuff like that. And then there's a guy named Ken
Moore who hacked into like the Xbox Connect and the
(46:23):
Nintendo we and figured out how to turn them into theramans.
And there's one where he does like a you know,
really admirable attempt at the Star Trek theme using his
wee Theoreman. Just look up Ken Moore we Thereman star
Trek theme and thank me later. It's it's a cool community.
Like I love circuitry and electronic gadgetreat uh wanks, and
(46:46):
those communities were of like the Hams, Like they just
really get into their shutting the door to their little
room and working on very small, very difficult to understand
projects and hacking stuff and creating new things. It's just
really really in the in the spirit of creation and invention,
I think, in which it was always intended. Nice. Yeah,
(47:09):
I mean the Theoreman is all that and then some chuck.
It's a whole bag of chips. You got anything else? Yeah,
I sort of promised earlier a little bit of talk
about Thereman's legacy with his kids and grandkids. And he
did have a daughter, he had a couple of daughters,
but he had one named Natasha Thereman from his third wife,
who was a Thereman master in Russia, and then nine
(47:33):
she's seventy two now, and then twenty nine year old
Peter Theoreman, his great grandson, is also a Russian composer
and uh Theoreman master. Pretty cool, It's pretty cool. Yeah,
that's neat also that they just adopted the Western Ice
version of their grandfather's name too. I guess, yeah, absolutely. Uh,
(47:53):
now you've got anything else? Nothing else? Well, before we go,
Chuck um, because it's that time of year, uh, in
this episode is going to come out around you his birthday.
I want to take a second to say happy birthday
to my dear sweet wife you. Happy birthday MS, thanks,
Happy birthday you me. And since I said happy birthday
you me and Chuck did two, that means it's time
(48:14):
for listener mail. So this is a This is a
listener mail from Richard Roberts, and this was just supremely heartwarming. Uh.
Our book is out Stuff you Should Know colon an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Huge, huge thanks to
(48:34):
everyone who pre bought it or bought it after its
release an audiobook or or hardcover form um. But the
Stuff you Should Know Army page has just been lit
up with people posting pictures of them with a book,
of them reading it, of their kids reading it, of
their dogs eating it. Already, that's happened. And this comes
(48:55):
from Richard Roberts from the Stuff you Should Know Army. Hey, guys,
thanks for doing what you do. Podcast is wonderful. I
just want to email you'll let you know about a
lovely gesture I just witnessed on the Stuff you Should
Know Army Facebook page. One member posted to say they
didn't buy the book due to their financial constraints at
the time, but that they were so excited that it
popped up in a search at their local library. Uh
(49:16):
and before you know it in the comments, that was
a fellow Uh many fellows Stuff you should know Army
fans scrambling to buy a book for this complete stranger
so that she could have her own copy. I think
I took some screenshot or I took some screenshots which
I attached. I know you don't always do shout outs,
but the philanthropic book buyers and the original poster might
get a kick out of it if you did. And
(49:37):
it's a nice story that people might enjoy. And that
is Richard Roberts from down Under. And uh, Jacko du
Bois is who stepped up first and is buying this
book for this person and sending a book to this person.
So Jacko, send us an email and we'll send you
something nice. I don't know what it is yet, but um,
just send us an email Jacko, and we wanna pay
(50:00):
it forward right back to you. That's a lovely idea, Chuck.
Very nice and thanks Jacko, and thank you. That was
Richard that wrote in. That was Richard. Thank you too, Richard. Uh.
If you want to call out a very um nice
example of paying it forward or a random act of
kindness or anything like that, we love hearing about that stuff.
(50:20):
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry out there,
and this is Stuff you should Know. That's pretty good
(00:25):
Theraman impression, don't you think? Hey, not bad. I am
a little bit proud of myself because the Theraman, it
turns out it's very, very tough to play, and it's
even tougher to imitate. So that was something of an
accomplishment for me. Have you ever tried to play one? No,
I haven't. I have not know. It's weird that you
(00:48):
had to think about that. Well. I mean I was
just trying to think, like, I think there's one in
the house, Stuff works office somewhere though, Stuff Podcast Office.
I want to say that they're is. Well, I'm there, man,
let's go get it, Okay, So look around, we'll wait,
we'll wait. We won't edit out you going and wandering
around and looking for I'll just talk to the people
(01:09):
to keep them busy. Uh, that's weird. I mean, I'm
obviously not gonna go look for it, but I had
no idea that was one here. I think so I
could be making that up. It doesn't seem like the
kind of thing that would be there. So for those
of you who don't know what we're talking about, we're
talking about theramans. And if you still don't know what
we're talking about, let us describe this. We'll be able
to do that, right, Oh yeah, sure, sure, um, well,
(01:31):
here you go. We'll play a clip of something that
we'll figure out what it is later. Ready, So there's
whatever we selected post production to put into to demonstrate theremans.
But that that eerie, high pitched kind of whaling sound,
(01:52):
that's a theremin. And the theraman was the world's first
electronic musical instrument and it was created by accident, as
we'll see. But um, it uses electromagnetism, actually electromagnetic interference
to produce a changing pitched sound, changing and pitch and
(02:13):
changing in volume. And you can create this, this sound,
this music, I guess you would call it without any
kind of mechanical energy whatsoever. You're just moving your your
body or your hands in and out of the electromagnetic
field around the theramin and that's what produces the sound.
It's pretty cool. Yeah, And as we will also see
(02:34):
it's Uh, it's key that you use a hand because
your body it has to be something that conducts electricity.
Like you could technically could use metal or something like that,
but you wouldn't have the nuance that you're able to
achieve by you know, very sort of micro movements in
your hand and your fingers. Uh. And when you're playing it,
(02:54):
it sort of looks like almost like you're conducting an orchestra.
The way you hold your hand, it's very evocative of conducting.
I think. Yeah, And it's funny you say that because,
um thereman who's actually named Terman um he he said
that it was like creating music out of thin air,
just like a conductor does. So that was very astutive you, Charles,
(03:16):
thank you. So yeah, you mentioned Urman. This guy his
his Russian name, I guess was Lev Sergey Yavic Terman
t E R M E N. I guess leon Thareman
sounds a little more western. Did change it? I I
don't know it. You know, here in America we just
(03:39):
change it for you. You know, you come through Ellis Island,
you get it basically a whole new name that Americans
can pronounce more easily. I'm pretty sure, that's what happened.
That's a good point. So when Lev was in his
early twenties, in the sort of early nineteen hundreds and
nineteen nineteen ish, he um was working at the Physical
Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and he was working
(04:02):
and as you'll see, he did he you know, for
the majority of his career worked for the Russian State.
But he was working on an invention that was supposed
to measure the density of gas and a chamber, and
essentially he was trying to develop like a land based
sonar device that used electromagnetism to detect objects that came
(04:22):
within a certain area. And he was like, hey, I'm
a pretty young, hip creative guy. I wonder if I
add sound to this thing, uh, and not intending to
create anything musical, but just let me add sound to
it to indicate that this thing is even on. And
he did it and bought a being bada boom bon job.
He was like, that sounds pretty cool, yeah, because I
(04:44):
mean like it it would make sense that you want
to add sound to because if you're detecting something coming
within proximity, it's kind of like a metal detector. As
you get closer and closer to the metal. That sound
that it makes um increases. It's basically the exact same thing,
except you're not detecting metal. You're to acting electro magnetic
interference basically with the theremin. But because he was a young,
(05:06):
hip guy like you said, and also a classically trained cellist, um,
he said, I think that I could turn this into
a musical instrument, and he did pretty quickly. He um
fiddled with it a little bit, maybe uh did a
little put another do Hicky or two on there, and
all of a sudden he had, like I said at
the beginning, the world's first electronic musical instrument. Like, if
(05:29):
you're into dance music or electronica or anything like that,
you owe a great debt of gratitude to to love Terman.
Sure should we use some of these things that you found,
some of these descriptors. Yeah, so this this initially had
like two or three, and I just started adding to
One of my favorite things to do is to go
around collecting people's hapless descriptions of of what a thereman
(05:53):
sounds like, because nobody nails it, but all all of
them come close, and their hilarious in their attempts. Yeah,
so here's one across between a violin and a soprano voice.
That's that's not bad. I think that was the original one. Yeah,
I mean you can get I mean, especially when you
get some vibrato going, you can see how one might
liken it to a voice. Oh yeah, it doesn't sound
(06:15):
like a voice to me, but I get the I
get the comp um. Okay, how about this one, a
purified and magnified saxophone. I think if there was ever
a complete failure in describing a Theramin sound, it's that one. Yeah.
It sounds like a saxophone, like a cheap keyboard. The
saxophone button on a cheap keyboard sounds like a saxop. Yeah. Yeah,
(06:38):
maybe that's what they totally missing their point. Uh. Let
me see the howling of a haunted wind. That's pretty good.
I love that one. This one I think comes from
Therman himself. A cello lost in a dense fog and
crying because it does not know how to get home.
For cello just walking around in the dark by himself,
(07:00):
how do I get home? Let me see here across
between an amplified child slide whistle, so it doesn't say
and what that was a that was a mistake. I
put or inky okay, slide and a human voice and
the squawks that emanated from early radio speakers. That was
(07:22):
pretty That was pretty good because it's uh. The the
one of the key components of a theoreman is that
slide because it is um. As you will see, and
if you listen to theorem in music, it's all about
that slide. It's not they're not punctuated with staccato notes. No.
And as a matter of fact, I was watching um
tutorial by currently the world's foremost theoremnist. I believe her
(07:47):
name is Carolina Eck e y c K. She's German um,
so however, you pronounced that into German um. And she
makes finger motions to cut off the last more ship
to to create a space in between notes, separate notes
rather than she uses the technical um jargon for what
(08:08):
she's talking about. I'm not quite familiar with it. But
another way to put it is she's cutting spaces into
the notes, so she's not sliding it around like a trumbone. No,
or slide whistle that's lost in the dark. You do
a pretty good slide whistle to your slide whistle beer.
I had one of those when I was a kid.
That was the best thing ever I never even did.
(08:29):
I'm self taught. Oh boy, I know what you're getting
for Christmas? Oh nice? Remember that time you got me
an empty can of billy beer? Oh yeah, that's right
years ago. Oh no, it wasn't billy beer. I'm sorry,
it was just plain generic beer. My can was just
the black like helvetica font that just says beer. Yeah,
my friend Eddie's favorite beer of all time. Has he
(08:51):
actually drank it? Yeah? When we went to uh there
was like four of us that went to l A
for spring break in college and stayed with my brother
and we went to the store and they had the
generic beer and Petty is a beer guy, and he
just flipped. He bought like three cases of it. Wow
for fifty cents. Yeah exactly. Yeah. So, um thereman has
(09:12):
got this instrument going. He's pretty proud of it. Word
gets around Mother Russia, and word gets to Lenin, who
at the time was chairman of Russia's uh sort of
newly In I guess installed as one word for it
the Bolshevik government, and he flipped over it. Lennon was
a theoreman nut and he was like, you know what,
(09:33):
I'm gonna send you on tour, comrade, And uh, this
thing is gonna want people to champion electricity as a
whole just by these demonstrations, right, just so that they
can possibly get a theorem in themselves. They're going to
install electricity in their house. That's my plan. Forget reading
lights or warmth, right, it's the theoreman that they'll want.
(09:56):
So he tours Russia for a while basically promoting you know, electricity,
electronic music, Soviet know how, that kind of stuff, and um,
his tour is so successful that they send him on
to Western Europe. And he toured Western Europe with what
we're known as his um ether concerts. Ether wave concerts,
(10:16):
not ether concerts. Those are totally different. Um. And the
one of the less known things about Left Harman is
that while he was touring Europe just wowing crowds, he
was also spying for the Soviet state, which he did
for a while. Actually, yeah, I know this, I say
this a lot, but this this has got the makings
(10:37):
of a pretty good movie too, don't you think sure? Yeah?
I think so. I mean I'm not quite sure. You'd
have to really be a master to to to pull
out the um, the humanity and the compassion and the
viewer for this guy, because he's morally ambiguous in a
lot of places, I think. But in the end, you know,
(10:58):
just the kind of treatment he got, I think kind
of makes him a sad sack case that he'll do
lock treatment feel bad for. Yeah, all right, well we'll
get to that. But so he's touring around he, like
you said, as a spy for the Soviet regime. And
because of this tour, he's being allowed he's getting all
this access two places where he can be a pretty
(11:21):
good spy actually on pattent offenses and um like industrial
complexes and stuff like that. So he's getting access and
doing a pretty good job spying for for the Soviet regime.
And he ended up taking up residents in the United States.
I didn't see whether that was a part of the
Soviet plan or his own plan. I'm not sure, but
(11:44):
he found himself quite at home and in New York
when he he showed up in the US and started
becoming kind of the toast of the town. Um. I've
read that Albert Einstein kept a lab at Um Terman
apartment in New York on fifty four Street. When he
visited him, he would just do some work while he
(12:05):
was there. Um. He became pretty well known, especially among
like avant garde musicians and composers. Um. He was just
kind of a known as like a cool guy. Um.
He had a very scandalous marriage in that he married
an African American prima ballerina whose name is Lavinia Williams Um.
And I think he lived in the United States for
(12:28):
a good decade. He showed up in and he lived
there until eight I believe, and along the way because
he became such a toast of the town. And his
his theorem in um, which had been known for a
while as his theorem in vox, which is theoreman's voice,
finally got shortened to Theraman and R. C said, you
know what, I think these things are going to be
(12:48):
a hit. We're going to We're going to buy the
rights from you, or at least, um least the rights
from you and start producing our own. Yeah. Because he
obviously was wise enough to get a patent in the
US in um. That was his second wife. By the way,
I didn't I couldn't get a whole lot about his
first wife other than it was clearly in Russia because
(13:09):
her name was a Katerina Pavlovna. Okay, that's a pretty
Russian name. And he was married three times. He had
a couple of daughters, I think with his third wife,
and um, I'll talk a little bit more about his
kids later. But he, uh, he gets his patent. R
C a like he said, jumps on board the Theoreman
bandwagon and manufactures a a version of the theorem, like
(13:33):
an at home Theoreman for a d seventy five bucks,
which is a really expensive musical instrument that's bucks today,
especially during the depression. Yeah, I mean, I don't know
who they thought they were going to sell him to everybody. Yeah,
r C made it sound like they were onto something really,
(13:53):
really big, but it was such an expensive price point.
It was such a niche product. Um I think. I
mean they sold the first run that they built, but
only to like rich people who wanted to like throw
parties in wow people with their theorem. And basically I
guess one of the other big problems with it is
that they marketed it like there's no strings, there's no frets,
(14:17):
there's no you know, there's nothing, it's just like strings. Yeah, basically, Um,
they said that anybody can learn to play this, make
music with the wave of a hand. Um. And the
problem is the theremin is really really hard to learn
because it doesn't have things like frets or strings or
um chord progressions or anything like that. Um. And there's
(14:39):
no other instrument like it on the planet. So um,
it's very difficult to learn. And I think our c
A made a first production run of like four hundred
units and they managed to sell three and eighty of them,
some of which are still in existence today, and I
was looking them up. Apparently, Um, if you can find
one that's just in terrible shape, you could still proba
(15:00):
probably get thirty bucks for it, and one that's in
really good condition mint condition would be about thirteen grand
because there's such collectors items. But also because of the
original um them electronics inside of the circuitry. Yeah that
that it makes a sound that's really difficult to replicate
because we have such an embarrassment of riches with advancement
(15:21):
in in electronics today that it's hard to make something
sound old timey and original, you know what I mean?
Everything sounds so rich and in advanced UM. So I
think that's one of the reasons why people will pay
thirteen grand for an original R C A theorem, and
that Jack White has one. Yeah, I'll bet he does too. So. Um.
(15:43):
When he was in the United States, living there, doing
some spying and doing some theorem and playing like he
would put on big, big concerts, he put on a
full theorem and orchestra, which is to say, I think
they were like six of them, um at Carnegie Hall.
So like these were big, big, big events. Um. And
like you said, he got married to a second wife
(16:04):
there and was leading this double life really like no
one knew what was going on obviously as a spy,
and he got a little more and more nervous his
World War two approaches that he might get ratted out.
He's he's really enjoying this life in America, and he's like,
I don't want to I don't want to do this. Uh,
the FBI has got a file on me. He didn't
say that because he didn't know that, but the ghost
(16:26):
of Leon Thereman said that later on, right. And he
was getting pretty deep into debt, and so in nineteen
thirty eight he left the US after ten years there
didn't even tell his wife he was leaving his second
wife and stayed gone until the early nineties. Yeah. Part
of that was not by his own decision, like he
stayed gone in part because as Stalin came into power,
(16:51):
he was not very he didn't fancy the old regime,
and Thereman was definitely associated with that old regime. He
was a favorite of Lenin's um, So he was throwing
and into the goolog as the the USSR really started
to gain strength and power um and apparently as World
War Two started to approach, the Soviets realized that they'd
actually thrown a lot of valuable scientists in their minds
(17:14):
into goolog So they went and got them out, including
leve Terman, and put them in a different kind of
goolog called the Sharashka. Yeah, I got it. Sharashka, which
is basically like a prison for scientists, like science camp
that you can't leave exactly, and you can't see your
family or friends are connected with the outside, but you
(17:36):
can't spend all of your time thinking about ways to
come up with new devices that the Soviet state can use.
And that is actually where leve Terman Thereman came up.
With his other great invention that he's known for, which
is called the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Yeah,
I think, uh, that's a pretty good time to take
a break, Okay, and we'll come back right after this, Okay, Chuck.
(18:21):
So frankly, you really left everybody hanging with that last thing.
So let's talk about the Thing or the Great Seal Bug. Okay.
Uh yeah, boy, all these years in I gotta teach
you about the cliffhanger. Yeah, I like to. I like
to plod along at the most boring pace and stop
at the most boring, predictable time. So before the Thing,
he invented something called a baron b U R A N.
(18:44):
And that was a list another listening device, um that
sort of functioned as a laser microphone that you would
use today where you would point it at a at
a piece of glass like someone's you know, behind that
glass talking and it would sense the vibrations in the glass.
That's wow. He invented that. Yeah, he invented the barn
I've heard about that thing, but that was um nothing
(19:07):
sort of as far as impact goes compared to the
Great Seal Bug or the Thing like you mentioned. And
this was really pretty extraordinary that this actually worked. Um,
not that his invention worked, but that the scam worked. UM.
So what he did was he put a passive bug
inside a wood carving of the Seal, the Great Seal
(19:27):
of the United States. They presented it to Avril har Harriman,
who was the American ambassador to Moscow, and he hung
it on his wall and it allowed himself to get
spied on for years. So so in Harriman's defense, um,
he was, like you said, It was like you said,
(19:48):
he was a very trusting sort, which made him a
terrible choice for the ambassador, American ambassador to Moscow. But
it was a passive bug. It didn't use electricity, so
there was no possible way for anybody to sweep for it.
So I'm sure they swept this Great Seal, you know,
eight ways from Sunday and turn nothing up and they're like,
all right, put it up, um. And the reason it
was passive is because it didn't use electricity, and it
(20:10):
was activated by microwaves. The microwaves would turn an antenna on, UM,
and you could be a few doors down and just
beam like a microwave beam towards this thing, and it
would activate the antenna and then the place that it
was put in, the eagle's beak created kind of like
an ear, a wooden ear that amplified the sound in
(20:31):
the room, and the antenna would pick it up and
transmit it automatically. Seven years they were able to spy
on these conversations, and it was It could have gone
on forever, but it was. It was discovered by accident.
There was a British radio operator who picked up the signal.
It's like, hey, something's going on here. And I guess
(20:51):
they eventually, you know, probably just tore that room inside
out until they found it. Would be my guess, right
that radio operas like is that is that Avril Harriman talking?
I know that voice and the great The best part
of that story is that they got the Soviet equivalent
of the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers, to present the plaque.
(21:12):
And I was raised as a child the Cold War,
so I strongly suspect the Young Pioneers were in on it.
They knew full well what they were doing. Of course, yeah,
they were in on it. It was a young Vladimir
Putin probably probably chuck, you never know, Uh so thereman
was um he kind of disappeared from public view because
(21:35):
of the gulag experience and being in science prison camp
uh and then Uh. Nineteen sixty seven, a New York
Times critic named Harold schoenberg Um found him quite by
accident at the Moscow Conservatory where he was working at
the time. He was writing a story a road, a
story that basically kind of out of him, and said, hey,
(21:57):
here's Leon Thireman. He's right here in the Soviet Union. Yeah,
and he was probably like, finally, I've been waiting for
you guys to dig me up. But the Soviet state said,
you know what, this is not a good thing. We
can't have this guy talking to the press and becoming
a cause ce lab again. He's just done too much dirt.
He's been in a goolag before. He bugged the ambassador
(22:18):
like this. He just knows too much. We don't want
him people paying attention to him. So they ruined him.
They ruined his career, They had him fired from the conservatory,
They trashed all of the inventions he was working on,
and he ended up spending the next couple of decades
living um in poverty in a in a group home,
in a room in a group home. Um, basically because
(22:39):
of that New York Times critic finding him and writing
that article again, which is sad on the one hand,
but at the other hand, on the other hand, it
um brought him back from any sort of obscurity he
kind of been pounded into. Yeah, so this last until
about the eighties, when the Soviet Union opens up just
a bit and he leaves and goes to Europe. He
(23:00):
is to the US, like we said at the beginning
in nine and uh then was able to sort of
reap a little bit of his reward as uh as
a you know, pioneer and electronic music or music period. Um.
There's a documentary called Thereman Colon an Electronic Odyssey from
the early nineties that is not great, but it does
(23:22):
feature him in the end, which is which is pretty cool.
Like the last third of it has actual interviews with
Leon Thereman and him playing it and stuff like that. Sure,
I mean, he must have known that he needed to
show up his legacy while he could, because you know,
he visited the US and he was dead two years
later back in Russia, UM, and he was still working
on stuff to to the end. He was working on
(23:44):
a dance floor that was made up of his turpos stone,
which was another invention of his, which was like a thereman,
but rather than using your hands, he used your whole
body and you danced. Well, he was making an entire
dance floor out of these. You could have a bunch
of people dancing making the worst possible sounds you can imagine,
all at the same time. And he was in his nineties. Yeah,
(24:06):
he was like nine seven when he died, so yeah,
he was working on this in his nineties. So he
was a hip cat until the end. So while he
was gone, something happened in the US in the nineteen
forties and fifties. Um, the Thereman kind of blew up
and blew up. As far as the Thereman goes. It
wasn't like it became a staple in in music or
(24:29):
a staple in pop music, but it was used largely
at first in movies science fiction, the Alfred Hitchcock Spellbound,
most notably maybe um The Lost Weekend, And unless it
was science fiction, it sort of came to be a
signal for psychological distress, like if somebody was under the
(24:51):
influence of drugs, or if that was somebody like locked
away in a in a what they would have called
an insane asylum back then. You might hear a Airman
kind of say, by the way, this character is off
their rocker. You're right if you if your drug trip
sound feels to you like a Theoreman sounds, you're on
a bad trip, buddy, you think, sure, alright, but you
(25:14):
can you could trace the kind of the breakout popularity,
at least the introduction to the general public of the
Theoreman to basically two people back in the forties and fifties.
Um miklosh Roscha who was the guy who scored The
Last Weekend and spell Bound, and Samuel Hoffman, who was
a theoreminist and composer who worked with some other kind
(25:35):
of more popular composers Less Baxter and Harry Revel to
make some really great music. Um in a couple of
new new types of music, lounge and exotica. UM. I
listened to music out of the Moon today, like eight times.
I listened to Perfume set to music how is It?
It's okay? Not as much therapy Thereman as h I wanted.
(25:59):
I wanted more Airman. Well, a little Thereman goes a
long way, for sure, But there were parts of music
out of the moon where you have to like really
listen because it just it um merges so well, harmonizes
so well with the other stuff like maybe vocalists harmonizing
the theremin WI harmonize with it, which is now that
I know about Thereman's that is incredibly masterful to be
(26:22):
able to harmonize with a human voice using a theoremin.
But those two guys definitely kind of introduced that to
the to the public. And one member of the public
that got introduced to the theremin who was really responsible
for breaking it out was a guy named Robert Moog
might recognize whatever you might recognize from his um synthesizer
(26:45):
that he was the guy who invented the synthesizer. Well,
apparently Robert Mog his first and last love I saw
someone say was the theoreman. Yeah, he got together with
his dad and he built theremin kits to sell to people.
Um it's kind of one of the cool thing about thereman.
You can buy one ready to go, but all along
since the beginning and up to this very day, you
(27:07):
can buy a kid to kind of build it yourself.
Because they're very uh, they're very much cater to circuitry
and electronic walks who love to get in there with
her soldering iron and mess around. So kids were very
popular from the beginning. And that's kind of how Moe
got it start as a company, Yeah, by selling these
theorem and kits um and I think it was uh
(27:29):
n when he started selling them. And by the sixties
they were like really ready to be used. They were
you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of
room and psychedelic music for the Thereman. Um. And so
it pops up on some Rolling Stones albums apparently, um
uh Brian Jones, right, Yeah, Brian Jones played the Thereman
(27:50):
for a couple of albums. Um, it's on a whole
Lot of Love where Robert Plant has his climax. Um.
And then don't tell me that's meant to represent anything
else but that everybody knows that. Could you imagine It's
like if you were, you know, having sex with Robert
Plant in the nineteen seventies and and that's literally what
(28:12):
he started doing. Jimmy Page just comes out of the
closet playing the Thereman along the company. My lord. Um,
there's a couple of places where you think it pops up,
but you would be wrong, Chuck, Yeah, I mean it's
it's uh, well, it's not controversial. The Beach Boys song
Good Vibrations is probably the most popular song ever too
(28:35):
really heavily feature very distinctly what you think is a theoreman. Um,
it's actually something called an electro theoreman. Brian Wilson calls
it a thereman. Everyone sort of calls it a thereman,
but it's a trump bonus named Paul Tanner invented it.
Um basically a very simplified thereman that you could play
with knobs, uh, to make it easier to hit the
(28:56):
right tones. That that to me makes it not not
a theorem. And yeah, it's an electro theremin. So um,
there's not a theoreman on Good Vibrations, as a lot
of people think. It's also not a theoreman you're hearing
in the Star Trek theme. A lot of people apparently
think that it shows up in that Trek theme and
that it turns out is soprano lulli Gene Norman hitting
(29:17):
all those incredible notes. I don't even I don't think
i've ever heard that theme. WHOA Okay, that was Beaker.
Apparently we just made a cameo in that in that version. Yep. Um,
so those are two places the theremin doesn't show up.
(29:37):
It does show up elsewhere in movies like Edwood and
Mars Attacks both I think Tim Burton movies. Right, yeah,
he's all over the thereman. Hell boy. Um. It was
also in First Man, which I have still not seen,
but I guess it's a scene where Neil Armstrong throws
his um his young dead daughter's bracelet into a crater
in the moon and they use theoreman, which it seems
(30:00):
like a very bold choice for a recent movie to make.
I'm surprised you haven't seen that. I'm a little surprised too.
I'm surprised I haven't seen it because I have a
crush on Gosling, who doesn't. No Man, Lars and the
Real Girl is just one of the best movies ever made. Yeah,
also starring a a friend of us stuff you should know,
(30:21):
Paul Schneider. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. So a
bunch of you know, pop music really latched onto it.
And UH and the nineties and two thousand's group called
the Silver Apples use one. Uh. One of my favorite
records from the nineties is a band called Mercury Rev
(30:43):
and their album Deserter Songs heavily features the Theoreman and
a couple of their songs, there's a Sepulcher, a song
that has a theoremin and it's played by um Jason
now Stead, who is the basis of Metallic at the time.
There's a trivia answer for you. Seriously, he's like, standing back,
you can't crowd the Theoreman. It changes the pitch. It's
(31:04):
also that was your Jason Newstead impression. Sure, I guess
he just looks angry, didn't he. That's Hetfield you're thinking of.
Oh Newstead always had that frown. Oh really, well, all
of them literally they were metal, don't you know. Um.
And then there was a band called Lothar and the
hand People, And Lothar was the name of the Theoreman,
(31:25):
who the band considered the lead singer in the hand
People were the people playing Lothar the Theoreman. Yeah, that
annoyed me so much. I didn't even look it up
to listen. Oh really, I think it's awesome. Man, that's
just so sixties to me. I love it. I think
it's two thousands trying to be sixties. No, but they're
from the sixties, so they are Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're legit.
(31:48):
I'll look into it. Then. Have you seen what what
was the name of that band that um they just
beat up like appliances. I think they're Swedish and they
made the Hounds. They were like kind of viral, like
several years back. They did like a total eclipse of
the heart cover but beating up an oven in a dishwasher,
Oh my god, you'd actually like him pretty great. And
(32:11):
one guy, he's like so scrawny that he can't keep
his pants up, so his pants keep falling down every
time he hits the stove with the sledgehammer. It's like,
I mean it's a stove with his belt. Yeah, basically
put the belt on. That guy needs a belt more
than he I don't even think a belt could service
him any longer. I think he needs like an extension
(32:32):
cord length. He's got a tie it as tight as
he possibly can. He's thin. And you just unknowingly made
another music reference. What the great great band Silver Juice
from the late great Dave Burman. He has a line
and one of their great songs, uh, holding up your
trousers with extension cords? Well, that's funny. I wonder if
(32:54):
he's when are they from the nineties, uh, two thousand's
and also featuring friend of the show Amnistanovic. Yeah, no,
I knew that. It's basically Pavement, isn't it. No, it
was Dave Burman, But Malcolmus is on the one Great Great.
I mean, they're all good albums, but Great American Water
is one of the best albums of that decade. I
wonder if he was making a syphasis reference, because that's
(33:16):
what I was making reference to this. I think Nelson
Muntz has a he uses an extension cord for a belt. Yeah,
he's neglected. I knew this is gonna take us down
some musical side roads. Sure, And I knew you were
going to mention Robert Plant climaxing because you say that
like every other week. I can't. I can't stop talking
(33:36):
about it. Should we take another break? I think so,
and then we're gonna come back and explain how theremin
works and then how to play it. How's that for
a cliffhanger? I'm hanging okay, Chuck, so a Theraman works
(34:12):
through um electronic magic. Basically, I think we should just
leave it at that. Now we can't. I really went
to a lot of trouble to try to figure out
how these things worked in the most simplistic terms possible.
And that's really saying something because the people who write
about how Thereman's work are the people who build thermans,
(34:33):
which means that the people who understand things like amplitude
and currents and electro magnetic interference and all that stuff. Basically,
you've got two different um circuits. You've got a pitch
circuit and a volume circuit. And if you've ever seen
a theorem in it's basically like a box and on.
If you're standing at the box getting ready to play it,
(34:55):
on your right, the player's right is it a single
antenna going up vert clee that looks like one of
a pair of rabbit ears that you would use on
an old timey tv UH antenna. Look it up, kids.
And then on the other side the left there's like
a round metal, horizontally oriented antenna that comes out the
(35:16):
other side of the box. The one on the left,
the round one that's for adjusting volume. The one on
the right, the vertical rod, is for um adjusting the pitch. Yeah,
it's it's sort of volume slash attack and an attack
is one of those words that unless you're sort of
into playing music, you don't know what it means, but
(35:37):
you'll see it pop up on various instruments labeled attack,
and that's they're sort of It's called the musical envelope,
the four stages of sound. Uh, and it starts with attack.
That's the sort of the beginning of the sound, like
right when you strike a piano key or right when
you plug a guitar string. Uh. And then it goes
from attack to decay to sustain to release and the
(35:59):
volume and its heck, it's not quite the same thing.
But uh, as far as what we need to know
about the theremin that right, I'm sorry, the horizontal and
controls volume and attack, okay. And then the one on
the right, the upright one, it controls pitch and the
way that it produces pitches. It's got two different oscillators
in there, and an oscillator is just something that produces
(36:21):
alternating current electricity in wave form. Right, it produces waves,
and one of those oscillators produces one at a static frequency.
It's always the same frequency no matter what the other
one adjusts. And so when you get your hand. Oh
we left out a really important thing. The the way
this whole thing works is because you live human person
(36:43):
are holding an electric charge right now and so oh
we did. Okay. So that's called your capetence, and when
your captence, your electric charge, whatever that may be, and
it's going to be different for each person. So I
think kind of the implication, Chuck, is that every different
person new walks up to a particular thereman is going
to produce a different sound. Doesn't that seem right? Oh?
(37:07):
I don't know. I never really thought about that. I
would think so, because I wouldn't think we're all walking
around with the same capetents. Although I could be wrong,
but regardless, just if that's wrong, totally disregard what I
just said. The point is is that UM, when you're
your electrical charge presented in the form of your hand,
interferes with the um, the oscillating current that's being created
(37:29):
and generated and run through this antenna. UM. It changes
that oscillating frequency, and so these two things subtract or
add together their frequencies to produce this sound that raises
their lowers and pitch depending on how close you are.
The closer you get the higher the pitch, the further away, um,
the lower the pitch. Uh. And that's basically how it works,
(37:51):
the same thing basically with your with your left hand
with the volume attack. That's it. You're just basically interfering
with the electric electric magnetic fields produced and carried through
these antenna's using your own electrical charge. That's how they work. Yeah,
and it's um. If you watch the documentary, there's one
UM scientists that attaches it to a wave form visualizer
(38:17):
sort of explain it a little better and he um,
not better than we did, but just more in more
detail and no, no, no uh and he uh he
was just said, it's it's remarkable that that Leon Thereman
or Terman invented this thing without the use of one
of those Like he was going completely by ear. And
I think if had it not been for his training
(38:38):
as a cellist, uh, it may not have ever even
been anything. Because you have to have a really in
this sort of segues into actually playing the thing, you
have to have a really really good ear for pitch
to play a Thereman because like you said earlier, there
are no markers like frets to look at to know
where to go to hit a g it's got a yeah,
(39:00):
four and a half. I saw four and a half
octave range and also saw five and a half. But
you gotta know in the the air surrounding you in
space where exactly to put your hand to get the
tone that you want, and if it's off a little bit,
it's not gonna sound right. So the learning curve is long.
It's a tough instrument to to really get good at.
(39:22):
Extremely so yeah, because I mean, if you if you
know how to play a guitar, you can walk up
to a guitar and be like, oh, here's the frets
or whatever. I can put my fingers here here and
I'm going to make this sound. With the theramin, it's
it's literally different places in the air. Um. And so yeah,
you do have to have a good year. One of
the other things you have to have. It's essential to
playing the theremin is um a steady hand, yeah, or
(39:46):
I guess not necessarily, but it definitely helps. Because, um,
if you see somebody kind of moving around like they're
just totally whacked out or whatever, playing a theramin with
the sounds they're making is not what it's supposed to
sound like. A theramin is aid very delicately. There's a
very famous um there menace named Clara Rockmore who said,
you play with you play a theramin with butterfly wings.
(40:09):
And she was basically saying, like, your fingers are supposed
to be delicate and controlled like a butterfly wings. And
so if you watch people playing theramin, they're they're just
like they're standing totally straight and still. It's just their
hands and their wrists basically that are moving and making
these really delicate motions through the air that is producing
(40:29):
all of these different sounds. Yeah, and the reason you
have to stand still, obviously, is because any movement of
your body is going to affect the sound. That's why
I made the Jason Newstead joke in that documentary. There's
an old I don't know who she was. It might
have been Clara Rockmore maybe, probably was Clara rock or
Lucy Bigelo Rosen maybe, but she was like back off
(40:51):
in her accent, and she was like, I'm not you know,
I'm trying to be nice about it, but you can't
you you can't come any closer. And I tell the
first violinison an orchestra the same thing, like you have
to have space around the instrument itself or else is
going to affect the sound? You're right, hey, you know
who else played the theremin? Who's a theremin master? M?
My friend Toby really yes, so he is very cool.
(41:17):
He was from Dallas and the Polyphon Experience from Dallas,
and apparently like half of Dallas was members of the
Polyphoning Spree except for poor Toby. And so he went
to the dude from Tripping jay Z Days. I can't
remember his name, but the leader of the Polyphoning Spreence said,
you know, I want to join what what what? What
instrument do you need? And the guy was like, I
don't want you to go learn to play theraman and
(41:38):
come back. And so Toby went and taught himself thereman
and came back and joined the Polyphonic Spree. That's right.
I think it's Tim something or other. Yeah. I was
into them for those first two albums quite a bit.
Oh man, they were so great what what great music?
Because it was so earnest too, you know, like they
weren't being ironic. It was this kid, a sharp guy,
and that band of hippies who is he Edwards Sharp?
(42:01):
And the Magnetic Zeros, you know it was the same
kind of deal, like, hey, let's get forty people in
a band and uh not have one bar soap between us. No,
I never heard of you know that they had one
big hit that you would know. Uh what what? Oh?
That home? Won't you come home? Home is where I
really want to be. I mean I wasn't into him
(42:25):
and it was a huge, huge hit. So was that
Judy Garland? Oh boy? So yeah, So Toby Toby was
the greatest theremin player I've ever met. That's awesome. Uh So,
you know, you play, like we said, with that um
(42:45):
you know a lot of times, like I said, it
looks like you're holding a little whatever you call it,
the conductors. I'm want to do a show on conducting,
by the way, just to learn what that thing is,
the little stick, the stick, But it looks like you're
sort of holding that because a lot of theremin players
tend to touch their thumb and their four fingers together
and you're, you know, you're sort of wiggling your fingers
for vibrato and you can learn basic theorem and and
(43:06):
make the sounds that sound good. And then there's like
the next level theremin ng where you really get involved
with your fingers and very subtle movements to create different sounds. Yeah.
So it is like a really difficult thing to do
and to learn to play, in no small part because
there aren't frets or anything like that. Um, but also
(43:28):
because of the the just precision movement of your fingers
and in hands. Um. And you also can't really get
into the music either. You have to stay still because
if you sway or you know, swing your head left
or right or anything like that, Um, you're going to
mess with the that that part of your body is
going to come into the electromagnetic field and you're going
(43:51):
to mess up the sound of the music. That's right.
And that's why hip hop concerts they say, throw your
hands in the air and wave them like you just
don't care. Except for that they aramanist right, throw your
hands in the air and wave them like you just
don't play there. And I think we should decided this
part out very well made. I'll be very surprised if
(44:12):
that ends up in the final cut. Chuck. One thing
we didn't mention that seems obvious unless you know about
musical instrument or might seem obvious. I don't know what
I'm saying. It's obvious to me. But it's going through
an amplifier, like if you're sitting at home, like, yeah,
but how does the sound come out. It's an electronic instrument,
so it's plugged into an amp. It is. And actually
(44:35):
that volume circuit that you're interfering with, you're actually changing
the voltage I believe of the amplifier. UM. That's how
when you move your hand closer and further away, you're
affecting the voltage that's that's released by that that UM
whatever transformers is supplying the amplifier with the electricity. Yeah,
(44:56):
Like you can get a thereman for not a lot
of money, or a Theoreman kit, or I would say
get a one of those new theorem any is that
Moga is building because those are just super super cool
and they sound amazing and they make it a little
bit easier on you. Yeah, because they they they recognize chords. Right,
So when you move your hand like through the air
(45:18):
at a certain way, like it goes through the chromatic scales.
It's not it's not just random stuff. It actually kind
of is like a UM very forgiving and corrective of
what you're doing and figures out what you're trying to
do and it makes it sound like it like you
want it to. But the the most amazing thing is
there's a dial where you can dial back that level
(45:41):
of forgiveness as you get better and better at playing
the theorem, and you can just make it so that
it's not doing that for you at all and you
have to do it yourself, which is pretty awesome. Yeah,
and it also sounds synthy and cool. Yeah. I mean,
I like the sound of a regular theremin, but that
there are many. I had never heard of it until today,
and I was like, I'm gonna have to get one
of those at some point. All right, if you're like
(46:02):
a maker kind of person and you like music there,
you've probably already made theremans. But if not, check out
a guy named Arthur Harrison's site thereman dot us. He
sells kits and like has all sorts of articles and
stuff like that. And then there's a guy named Ken
Moore who hacked into like the Xbox Connect and the
(46:23):
Nintendo we and figured out how to turn them into theramans.
And there's one where he does like a you know,
really admirable attempt at the Star Trek theme using his
wee Theoreman. Just look up Ken Moore we Thereman star
Trek theme and thank me later. It's it's a cool community.
Like I love circuitry and electronic gadgetreat uh wanks, and
(46:46):
those communities were of like the Hams, Like they just
really get into their shutting the door to their little
room and working on very small, very difficult to understand
projects and hacking stuff and creating new things. It's just
really really in the in the spirit of creation and invention,
I think, in which it was always intended. Nice. Yeah,
(47:09):
I mean the Theoreman is all that and then some chuck.
It's a whole bag of chips. You got anything else? Yeah,
I sort of promised earlier a little bit of talk
about Thereman's legacy with his kids and grandkids. And he
did have a daughter, he had a couple of daughters,
but he had one named Natasha Thereman from his third wife,
who was a Thereman master in Russia, and then nine
(47:33):
she's seventy two now, and then twenty nine year old
Peter Theoreman, his great grandson, is also a Russian composer
and uh Theoreman master. Pretty cool, It's pretty cool. Yeah,
that's neat also that they just adopted the Western Ice
version of their grandfather's name too. I guess, yeah, absolutely. Uh,
(47:53):
now you've got anything else? Nothing else? Well, before we go,
Chuck um, because it's that time of year, uh, in
this episode is going to come out around you his birthday.
I want to take a second to say happy birthday
to my dear sweet wife you. Happy birthday MS, thanks,
Happy birthday you me. And since I said happy birthday
you me and Chuck did two, that means it's time
(48:14):
for listener mail. So this is a This is a
listener mail from Richard Roberts, and this was just supremely heartwarming. Uh.
Our book is out Stuff you Should Know colon an
incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Huge, huge thanks to
(48:34):
everyone who pre bought it or bought it after its
release an audiobook or or hardcover form um. But the
Stuff you Should Know Army page has just been lit
up with people posting pictures of them with a book,
of them reading it, of their kids reading it, of
their dogs eating it. Already, that's happened. And this comes
(48:55):
from Richard Roberts from the Stuff you Should Know Army. Hey, guys,
thanks for doing what you do. Podcast is wonderful. I
just want to email you'll let you know about a
lovely gesture I just witnessed on the Stuff you Should
Know Army Facebook page. One member posted to say they
didn't buy the book due to their financial constraints at
the time, but that they were so excited that it
popped up in a search at their local library. Uh
(49:16):
and before you know it in the comments, that was
a fellow Uh many fellows Stuff you should know Army
fans scrambling to buy a book for this complete stranger
so that she could have her own copy. I think
I took some screenshot or I took some screenshots which
I attached. I know you don't always do shout outs,
but the philanthropic book buyers and the original poster might
get a kick out of it if you did. And
(49:37):
it's a nice story that people might enjoy. And that
is Richard Roberts from down Under. And uh, Jacko du
Bois is who stepped up first and is buying this
book for this person and sending a book to this person.
So Jacko, send us an email and we'll send you
something nice. I don't know what it is yet, but um,
just send us an email Jacko, and we wanna pay
(50:00):
it forward right back to you. That's a lovely idea, Chuck.
Very nice and thanks Jacko, and thank you. That was
Richard that wrote in. That was Richard. Thank you too, Richard. Uh.
If you want to call out a very um nice
example of paying it forward or a random act of
kindness or anything like that, we love hearing about that stuff.
(50:20):
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
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