October 26, 2018 • 32 mins
So what exactly is a theremin? It's got an unmistakably unique sound, and it's one of the world's first electronic musical instruments. Join Chris and Jonathan as they explore all things theremin, from the story of its inventor to playing techniques.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
it is a Riday that means it's time for a rerun.
(00:25):
I'm sorry, I mean a classic episode. That's what you
call it, classy. This classic episode originally aired on August
two thousand eleven. This is how Thereman's work, and I
thought it was appropriate because we're coming up on Halloween
and I always think of theremans as being sort of
a halloween ish kind of musical instrument because it makes
(00:47):
that why noise. You'll hear a lot of me doing that,
and also Chris Palette, my co host when we recorded
this episode. So enjoy because this is one of those
crazy invent chins. I can't believe someone thought of it.
It involves electro magnetism and lots of careful movements. It
(01:09):
is very easy to make noise on a theramin. It
is much harder to make music on one. And I
got to see someone make wonderful music on it just
the other day. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode,
and I'll talk to you again in a moment. First,
let's get into why we're going to do this episode.
This comes to us courtesy of a Google Plus suggestion.
(01:35):
This suggestion comes to us from Mary who and I'm
going to truncate her message a bit because she actually
had quite a long with lots of different suggestions, but
starts off with you may be interested to know. I,
for one, am not tech savvy, at least compared to
the crowd of early adopter types here on Google Plus.
I'm a rhetoric major, should have graduated when I was twenty,
but in one class short of might be a for
(01:56):
financial slash academic red tape reasons with miners in French
and German guten tag Mary. Aside from being a pro vocalist,
my real job is teaching English to disadvantaged and academically
struggling eighth graders, which is amazing. I also tad college
level rhett comp to and have private students tutoring clients,
(02:17):
mostly college students, some high school, a few middle school
primarily seeing me for writing instruction or literary interpretation analysis
and historical analysis with embosses on reading comprehension. Apparently I
need to take that at any rate. Mary then goes
on to give several suggestions, the last of which is finally,
more music stuff for those of us who missed the
(02:38):
B side, r I P programs like able to end
pro tools, HD electronics like d being Thereman, and the
very awesome react table you can see on YouTube worthy
of its own podcast. While all of that is true,
we are going to do a Thereman podcast. And I
know that stuff from the Beast. I did one as well,
but we're really going to dive down and talk about
(02:59):
with Thereman. It's his story how it works, uh, and
you know the what's the basis behind? It's pretty interesting stuff.
And as I said, the song I quoted at the
beginning actually does feature a Thereman. Oh so and and uh.
Just to help people who want to learn more about
some of the stuff we're talking about today on how
(03:20):
stuff works. We don't have how Thereman's work yet, although
I do believe it's actually gone out as an assignment.
We do have how amplifiers work, and that's going to
be a very important part of our conversation. At some point.
We do have an article on the Thereman However, yes,
we do have articles on the Thereman, just not one
that specifically breaks down how it works. Yet, like I said,
I think by the time this podcast goes live, we
(03:41):
may that may have changed. But I know that there
is an assignment out there somewhere, floating out in the ether.
It's not me. I'm not the one writing it so
or at least it hasn't been assigned to me. So
let's let's start talking about the history here. You wanted
to UH talk about our buddy Leo Leon Thereman, actually
Lev Sergeyevitch Terman, who was a scientist and inventor. UM.
(04:04):
I got a little information about Mr Thereman from Britannica,
always a good source for the biographical on these inventors. Um.
He lived in UH in St. Petersburg and uh Florida, Russia.
He was well, he was born there in and died
in Moscow, Florida, No, North Dakota in nine three. I
(04:27):
wonder if there is a Moscow not anyway. UM. So yeah,
it's funny that you would say out of the ether
because the original name for this device was the ether
a phone, but it was later renamed to be the Thereman,
and UH basically it's it's known for the way you
play it, unlike pretty much every other kind of instrument
(04:48):
I can think of where you actually need to touch
it to do this. The thereman, you specifically do not
touch UM. I knew a lot of people who have
that same policy. But yes, no, you're you're absolutely correct.
Derriman has played without touching it. Yep. And he actually
played it for for Lenin in nineteen twenty two and
and for Albert Einstein in UM patented the instrument in
(05:13):
in New York in UM, and then he went into
a lot of other stuff. He UH tried to work
on other musical instruments and UH worked on an electronic
security system for prisons. UM ended up in a Siberian
labor camp in the Soviet Union. Yeah, it's uh. He was.
(05:34):
He did work did some work for a in a
military lab during World War Two where he was working
on UH naval tracking systems and remote controls UM and
even on spy technology and eavesdropping device for the KGB. UH.
He got the Stalin Prize for that. UM. Smart guy
(05:55):
is what we're talking about here. Yeah. Yeah. He became
a professor of acoustics at the Moscow conservat tory Um
and uh, you know, had done a lot of a
lot of different kinds of electronics work. So certainly Um
a very interesting person. But you know, I think he's
probably best known. I don't think anyone would argue that
he's best known for the ether a phone, I mean
(06:15):
the Thereman. Yes, since it does, since it does actually
bear his name, or at least the Western version of
his name. And before we go any further, I think
it might might behoove us to to have a little
a little listen to to what a thereman sounds like.
So this is the sound of the Theoreman. Now, listeners
(06:39):
may have recognized that from various songs, and really I think,
I think what that always reminds me of as all
all those like nineteen fifties science fiction films and TV
series that either used a theoreman or use some sort
of other effect to create a theoreman like sound as
part of the sound track. Because not everything that that
(07:02):
sounds like a theremin is in fact a thereman. In fact,
one of the most famous songs that people tend to
say had a thereman and it did not is Good
Vibrations by the Beach Boys, almost said beast boys, this
is that's for you yet, I haven't had enough coffee.
(07:22):
Is good vibrations by the Beastie Boys and that would
have been hilarious and wrong. But anyway, yeah, that's not
that's not a thereman used in that song. It's a
it's a totally different instrument. Actually, it's called tannerin although
I mean it does it does have a similar sound
to it, but you actually do play that by touching. Yes,
you slide your finger on it, and depending on where
(07:44):
you're touching it, it it you know, produces a different sound.
And if you were to look at a theorem and
you would immediately see that the I guess the most
notable feature is that it's you know, depending upon the
design of it, it's gonna look like some sort of
a box. But from that box, you're gonna see a
pair of antenna and one traditionally, one antenna is vertical
(08:05):
aligned to the box, so it's it's up and down,
and then a second antenna seems tends to come out
the side of the box. It's horizontal and it's in
a loop. And using your hands moving them close to
and further away those antenna that's what controls the sound
that comes out of the theoreman. Yeah. You you know,
it's always good to adjusted a little bit to the left,
(08:26):
you know, get the get the picture just right right.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I was thinking of a different
kind of antenna. Yeah, no, it's yeah, it's not a
rabbit ears. Um. Yeah. In fact, that's a good point.
We should mention that this is these antenna are not
designed to pick up any sort of radio frequency. That's
not the purpose of the antenna. We'll get into that
when we start getting into the actual uh ways that
(08:47):
the the theoreman works. So do you said you wanted
to talk a little bit at one point about songs
that you may have heard or perhaps even other ways
that you may have heard a thereman. Well, yeah, I
mean I wasn't really a subscriber to XM Radio, the
satellite radio service here in the United States, and they
used to have a channel called Special X where they
(09:08):
would play all kinds of strange and unusual things. And
they actually had, believe it or not, a whole show
devoted to music from the Theoreman. And so they were
all these and again, you're right, period records from like
the fifties and stuff where there were uh, you know
thereman songs that they were playing entire pieces on the
(09:29):
theorem and and actually you could find a lot of
the stuff on on YouTube. I've seen people I've seen
theremin orchestras, wow, where there are different people playing songs
and they have different parts. So everybody's got a different
purpose of doing it. And it's it sounds kind of
random when you just hear the sections and segments and
(09:50):
other songs and pop songs and things like that. But
you you know, people you can actually play this as
a musical instrument. And so I've I've heard a lot
of that kind of stuff. Uh, I'm trying to think
of something specific. Do you have a favorite thereman song
other than the one that you quoted before, other than
the one I quoted before and not really, um, but
there are other songs that have used it. They're actually uh,
(10:13):
like I said, it's for me. The thing that I
think about are all those those like The Day the
Earth Stood Still? That would be a famous film that
used a theoreman as a sound effect. Uh. There there
was a theremin used at least in some versions of
the theme to Star Trek, although most of the time
that was actually a vocalist who did that effect. But
I believe in in one or two versions of that
(10:34):
you can hear a thereman being used. Um So, I
mean that there are bands that experiment and they'll throw
that in the mix, and it may even be that
it's it's a minor part of the song where you know,
it's not meant to take the forefront of the melody
or anything like that. It's just another another layer of
complexity within a song itself. Chris and I have more
(10:57):
to say about how thereman's work in just a second,
but let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
So I guess we can now talk about what a
theoreman does, like how does it make that sound? Like?
Why is it that when you put your hand closer
(11:19):
to or further away from, one antenna changes the pitch
and the other one controls the volume. That's by the way,
the vertical one is the pitch antenna and the horizontal
one is the volume antenna. Awesome, Actually it's uh it's
funny because uh, typically you think of making music with
an instrument as you wanted to sound as clear as possible.
(11:42):
Um And in the opportunity to play a thereman, you'll
realize that uh uh, it's actually all about creating interference
because these uh, these antennae um actually have an electromagnetic
field that and you're interfering with that by coming closer
and moving farther away to different degrees. So really what's
(12:05):
what you're hearing is the sound of the interference with
the machine. Yeah, it's actually to to dive down into this.
The way this works is that you've got coils of
wire inside the theorem and that are generating electromagnetic field
and that is propagated along the antenna. And so with
the case of the pitch antenna, you have two different
(12:25):
um uh like two different oscillators creating this electromagnetic field.
One of them is a steady frequency, the other one's
variable frequency, and the variable frequency all depends upon your
hand coming into contact with or not contact but coming
closer or are moving further away from the pitch antenna. Uh.
What will happen then is that the frequencies from these
(12:47):
two different oscillators will mix. And this is a process
that we call heterodyning. And heterodyning is you you process
these these signal and you take uh. Typically you can
get lots of different um um results from combining signals,
(13:08):
but typically you look at the sum and the difference,
and uh, you choose, you filter one out and you
focus on the other. And in this case we're talking
about the difference because the the frequencies that are generated
by these oscillators are too high for human hearing. But
the difference is not um So if you are creating
(13:28):
a variation in one frequency and the other frequency is
remaining constant. Uh, when you take the difference of that
and you take that signal, that signal is then within
the range of human hearing. And because you've got that
one variable frequency, you can change the pitch. So and
it all has to do with, of course the capacitance
that we have. You know, human beings, we have a
(13:50):
capacitance and uh, it's really most mostly based on body mass.
So um. There's another interesting point is that if you
have two different people playing the same theraman, they're going
to quickly find out like to let let's say take
one tiny little person and one huge person. So you've
got ham hands and you've got little dainty fingers. Little
dainty fingers comes up there and starts playing the theraman
(14:12):
and realizes that when they when their dainty fingers get
within a certain distance of the antenna a particular pitches played.
Then ham Hands comes up and starts to play, and
then realizes very quickly that it's a different distance for
ham hands to get to that antenna to to make
that same pitch. And it has to do with the
mass of the of of ham hands. So uh, you know,
(14:37):
it's two people playing the same theraman are going to
find out that they can't mimic one another's motions and
get the exact same sound. It's going to be different
based upon the actual size of the musician and all.
Like I said, that all has to do with the
capacitance that we as humans actually have ourselves. So we
(14:57):
interfere with that electromagnetic field the frequency combine in the
heterodyning process, as I've said, As I mentioned, we filter
out the sum we take the difference of those two frequencies. Uh,
and that signal is what creates the pitch. Now, even
though it's within the range of human hearing, Uh, you
can't really hear it very well unless you put it
(15:18):
through an amplification process, which we'll have to talk about
in a second. And the second antenna. The volume antenna
really just has the one oscillator and then there's a
steady uh voltage being applied further in. And what happens
is when you move your hand closer to that antenna,
you are interrupting the first the signal from the first oscillator,
that electromagnetic field. And as you interrupt the electromagetic magnetic field,
(15:42):
the signal becomes weaker, which ends up being a control
on the volume. So, in other words, the closer your
hand gets to that second antenna, the quieter the sound
will be. You might think that, you know, you would
want to get your hand closer to make the sound
go up, but it's exactly the opposite. So if you
put your hand close to the antenna, that sounds going
(16:03):
to be very low. And as you take your hand
away from that antenna, the horizontal antenna, the volume increases,
so the pitch will remain the same, assuming that your
other hand is is steady. And and also I should
mention when you watch people play the theremin, especially people
who have just started to play, you might notice them
moving their hands up and down the the length of
(16:26):
the vertical antenna that really doesn't have much of an effect.
It can change the pitch a little bit, but the
real change in pitch has to do with the distance
from the antenna. So you can keep your hands steady
at the same level respective to the vertical antenna and
just change the the distance your hand is from that
antenna and that would change the pitch. You don't have
(16:48):
to move your hand up and down the length of
the antenna in order to change it. Because you really
need both hands to operate the well, yeah, I mean
because you have to. I mean because otherwise you would
just have a steady volume time, right, So you need
you need to be able to, uh, you know, have
both hands free to operate the theoremans. You know, both
(17:08):
the pitch and the volume. Um. And you know, I
think it can also depend not only on the person,
but on the instrument itself. No, sure, yeah you can.
You can actually tune a theoreman as well. And that
that all has to do with the electronics that are
inside the theoremin because depending upon the electronic components you've
put in there and the the frequency difference between the
(17:31):
variable frequency and the steady frequency. Uh, you you will
have a certain octave range that that thereman is capable
of playing and uh, and sometimes that octave range can
be quite uh large, very large range. But that means
that you have to have even more control when you're
playing it. Uh, that that tiny changes in the distance
(17:52):
between your hand and the antenna will result in fairly
significant changes in pitch, which is why the theremin is
one of those instruments that's know, you can step right
up and start playing it uh and have fun making
weird noises, but if you want to be able to
actually play a tune with with regularity, it takes a
lot of practice. It's one of those really difficult to masterpieces.
(18:13):
And uh. I actually have a list of some of
the components that are in a typical theraman if you
would like to hear. Sure. Okay, so we've got the
two antenna. As I mentioned before, the the volume antenna
is actually a loop. It looks like a semicircle that's
attached to the horizontal side one of the horizontal sides
of the theremin itself. There The reason for that design
(18:35):
is that the old thermans were all based on vacuum
tube technology, is before solid state technology was really a
thing at all. The first Theraman and so um in
order to be able to make this antenna and have
it fit with the old system, you actually had to
create this loop so as you had the right antenna
(18:57):
length without interfering with the other electronic components of the device.
So even though we've reached a point now where most
modern theramans still use vacuum tubes at least in some capacity,
and we'll talk about that a little bit. Ha Hey,
But Chris, I'm sure we'll have something to say about
using vacuum tubes as opposed to solid state. Being the
(19:19):
musician you would, you would know more about this than
I do. But in general, it has to do with
sound quality. So there are still vacuum tubes used in
most modern theramans, but they also involve some solid state
electronic components now, which means that you no longer would
have to do that loop um to achieve the same effect.
But I think a lot of a lot of theramin
designers like to use it anyway, just kind of as
(19:39):
a throwback to the original theraman. So it's almost like
it's almost like a traditional thing at this point. I
hope you guys are enjoying the spooky classic episode the
Bupha Thereman's work. But though we're going to listen to
a word from an advertiser. Boh. So inside the theremin,
(20:04):
you're going to find typically a pair of chassis. One
chassis is gonna be for your electromagnetic components, and this
is where this is what generates that electromagnetic field for
both of the antenna UM. You would normally find three
oscillators in there. You would find two oscillators for the pitch,
one oscillator for the volume. UH. The this chassis often
(20:27):
called an upper chassis, and a lot of the theramans
I've looked at UH is has to be separated from
the other chassis, which has the amplification and power UH
elements to it, because otherwise the electromagnetic field would interfere
with the operation of those elements. All right. So the
lower chassis where you get the power coming into the
device UH, and you have the amplification oscillators and usually
(20:51):
we use triodes and that you probably have heard of diodes. Diodes,
of course, are those electronic components that allow electrons to
pass through one way but not back yet. It's a
one way lane. It allows electron UH flow in one direction.
Only Triads are a little different. Triads are well, it's
a kind of vacuum tube and and from a superficial level,
(21:15):
they resemble a light bulb. And the way a triode
works is that there are typically three elements within a triode,
which makes sense when you hear the name. You've got
the cathode, which is the part of the triad that
that will shed electrons. You've got a grid of some
sort that will control the flow of electrons. It kind
(21:36):
of acts as like a gate in a way. And
then you have the anode, which is where the electrons
want to get too, because it has a positive charge. Now,
remember electrons have a negative charge, so negative wants to
be attracted. It is attracted to positive. So you have
a positive element on one side, a negative element on
the another side, and a gate in the middle to
control the flow. And that's the basis behind um the triode. Now,
(22:00):
in order to control the flow of electrons, what you
have to do is you hook up that gate to
a source of electricity. All right, Now, if you're generating
electricity and you're you're putting a current through that gate,
that means you're putting negative electrons through the gate. Now
that's going to repel the electrons coming out of the cathode.
All right, so you've got the cathode. Let's imagine that
the cathodes on the left hand side, and in the
(22:22):
middle is this gate that has electrons running through it,
and on the right you have the anode. Now, the
the current that you're putting through that gate is going
to vary because that's your input. That's that's the signal
that's going into like when you're making a sound electronically
speaking into a microphone or playing a musical instrument that's
plugged into this amplifier. So it's a variable frequency again,
(22:46):
a variable current and uh and so sometimes the current
is going to be is going to allow a certain
number of electrons through because there's you know, you as
you build up the h the charge on the cathode side,
some electrons are gonna pass through that gate. Is gonna
be s long enough energy for it to go through
the gate. Other times, the the signal is going to
be lower, it's gonna allow more electrons through. That's the
(23:07):
whole basis of the amplifier. So the cathode looks like
a filament you have to in order to make electrons
shed you have to add energy into this system. So
and this is a rather than the variable source which
is what we see in the gate, this is a
steady power source that's going into the cathode. So it
(23:28):
heats up this filament which gives off light. Depending upon
what kind of vacuum tube it is, it may be
a different color, like a lot of them are kind
of an orange ish color. If you're talking about a
vacuum tube for like a big power system, it tends
to burn white hot, but that's when it starts to
shed thousands and thousands of electrons. The energy from the
electricity is enough to break the electrons free from their
(23:51):
shells and then they will go toward the positively charged anode.
So that is the basis. You just got a it's
like a podcast within a podcast that was a basic
electronics of what a triot is and what it does.
We're really vacuum tubes in general, although there are other
kinds of vacuum tubes besides tryouts, they're not it's not
(24:13):
a one to one, you know. Tryout is just one
type of vacuum tube, all right. So you've got several
of those in there acting as amplifiers. UM. And then
you've also got your your power source, you've got your capacitors,
you've got resistors UM, and then you've got the antenna.
I've already spoken about those as well, and the copper
(24:34):
coils which generate the electromagnetic field. Those are your basic
components that all together make up the guts of the
thereman and there Actually, I've seen videos online that kind
of give an overall view of how to build a theraman,
and they're also a theramin kits out there if you
want to try and make your own. UM, it's an
(24:55):
interesting project, I understand. Like even the guy who was
I was watching these videos, the guy who built olds
the theorem and actually said, um, I could build them,
but I can't play them. So he said he loves
he enjoys building them, and he tends to build them
for other people like like bands and stuff that are
interested in using the thereman. Well, um, anyone interested in
(25:15):
in playing the thereman should check out an article that
Jane mcgrathrope for the website called how to play a
theoreman um and she actually quoted some of the people
who are well known theoreminists thereminist dereman players. They come
from the future. It's terrible. Uh. Lydia Kavina is one. Uh.
(25:42):
She actually studied under Leon thereman um and basically had
suggested that it's good to keep your feet about a
foot apart zero point three meters UM. But it really
depends on the theoreman and uh, you know, and how
far you want to stand away from and of course,
as you mentioned, the capacitance of the person playing it. Um.
(26:06):
But generally depending on the number of octaves available um
in that theorem, and I mean the the range of
the theorem, and uh, you might have to stand farther
away if it has a greater range um, according to
uh um Miss Cavina Um. Also, apparently you can actually
(26:27):
tune the device yourself by putting your right hand at
your shoulder or I guess your left hand, depending on
how you're playing it. So you start with your hand
at your shoulder regardless UM. And then just uh she said,
the idea is you need to play the song slowly
when you're getting started, because um, it takes a while
to get used to uh controlling the pitch that you're
(26:50):
trying to to make if you're actually trying to play
a song and melody with it um and Uh. Clara
Rockmore another person that UM Jane quoted in her article
and basically said that you have to be very conscious
of what you're doing with your body. Um. You know,
as a percussionist, I tend to groove a little bit,
(27:12):
you know, start getting into it and bobbing and getting
into the motion. That can affect the way you're playing,
because the theremin is uh going by your body movement
and how close you are to it. So anything any
other stray movement is going to affect the sound coming
out of the theraman. So you have to be very
careful um, and you have to be very conscious of
(27:32):
what you're doing when you're when you're trying to play that.
You know, posture and and uh, stray movements can affect it.
It's a lot different from saying a guitar where you
have a string that, assuming it's properly tuned, when you
play that string while pressing down at a certain threat,
it's always going to produce the same note, right. Uh,
(27:53):
there's there's no variation there. But with the thereman, it's
all about the distance between and the antenna and uh
and and not and and again your your body mess.
So while two different people can pick up the same
guitar and play the same series of notes just following
the same threads, that wouldn't necessarily be the same story
(28:15):
if they were trying to play a theramin and standing
at the same distance from the device. Just pretty interesting
to me. Um. You know, I had mentioned also about
the amplifiers using vacuum tubes and that that tends to
be a preference. Would you like to to weigh in
a little bit as a musician about that, Well, you
know it, it kind of depends on the sound you're getting,
(28:38):
you know, Um, most of the musicians and whom I
rarely talk to people about using a theraman in a band,
but I mean vacuum tubes and amplifiers in general, vacuum tubes.
Most of what I've heard people say is that they
feel that vacuum tubes produce a warmer sound, which is
the yeah, and again it's it's really in the ear
(28:59):
of the listener. To be honest, you might say that
solid state produces a flatter sound, And I mean, these
are all terms that don't really have a way of
It's hard to it's hard to put it in a
measurable sense. But it is. It is one of those
things that when you start listening to it, you say,
you know what that does? It just sounds better? Yeah,
you know. And uh. And even today, a lot of
(29:20):
amps out there for various musical instruments, not just the one,
not just the amplifiers that you'll find in theirman still
use vacuum tubes, even though the technology otherwise has almost disappeared.
Solid state era. Yeah, well solid state too. I mean
you turn on a solid state device amplifier whatever, um,
(29:40):
it's going to be on a lot quicker. Yeah, it
doesn't have to warm up. Yeah, and a vacuum tube
device will um and you can and you can see
it too, if you have, if you could see through
like I have, for example, I have a vacuum tube
amplifier and a solid state amplifier. Um. You turn it
on and at first the vacuu tubes, you know, look
(30:01):
as though they are you know, they would win the
devices off, and then they start to glow and you
could see that things are coming on. And you could
turn on a source of sound, say you know, uh,
turntable or a tune or radio tuner, and at first
you won't hear anything, and as the vacuum tubes warm up,
you know, the amplifier will begin to play the music
(30:22):
because you're actually coming online, but it takes them a while.
Um makes me think of the the beginning of the
documentary Back to the Future. Yeahs turning on all the apps, right,
yea documentary. It's a good one. Yeah, but uh yeah,
I mean it's it's funny though, because it's sort of
like vinyl for a lot of musicians too, because for
(30:43):
you know, the the vacuum tube manufacturers almost became extinct,
and as time has worn on and people have said,
you know what, I really like the way that that works.
I like the sound that I get from vacuum tube amps.
Or you know, I had this other thing that uses
vacuum tubes and I really like it. I actually have
a ham and organ that uses um vacuum tubes too,
(31:04):
and you know, without some manufacturer, you know, so these
things have have stayed in production, even though solid state
for a while it looked like it was going to
knock it out. But yeah, and just like U, just
like an incandescent light bulb, vacuum tubes will eventually burn out.
They uh, I mean it's it's not going to be
(31:24):
super fast or anything. But that's why it's important that
these industries still exist, because otherwise we would have a
finite number that and once we got to the end
of it, that would be it. So I guess we
should be thankful for devices like the Thereman and guitar
amplifiers for keeping a a what what otherwise people might say,
an absolute technology alive and kicking. I want to thank
(31:47):
Dracula for joining my show there and introducing the second
sponsor ad and probably making all of you cringe out there.
Thanks a lot, Dracula. Guys. If you want to learn
more about tech Stuff, I recommend you go check out
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dot com. There you're going to find the ways to
(32:08):
contact the show. You're gonna find a bio about yours truly,
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(32:29):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
that how stuff works dot Com
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
it is a Riday that means it's time for a rerun.
(00:25):
I'm sorry, I mean a classic episode. That's what you
call it, classy. This classic episode originally aired on August
two thousand eleven. This is how Thereman's work, and I
thought it was appropriate because we're coming up on Halloween
and I always think of theremans as being sort of
a halloween ish kind of musical instrument because it makes
(00:47):
that why noise. You'll hear a lot of me doing that,
and also Chris Palette, my co host when we recorded
this episode. So enjoy because this is one of those
crazy invent chins. I can't believe someone thought of it.
It involves electro magnetism and lots of careful movements. It
(01:09):
is very easy to make noise on a theramin. It
is much harder to make music on one. And I
got to see someone make wonderful music on it just
the other day. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode,
and I'll talk to you again in a moment. First,
let's get into why we're going to do this episode.
This comes to us courtesy of a Google Plus suggestion.
(01:35):
This suggestion comes to us from Mary who and I'm
going to truncate her message a bit because she actually
had quite a long with lots of different suggestions, but
starts off with you may be interested to know. I,
for one, am not tech savvy, at least compared to
the crowd of early adopter types here on Google Plus.
I'm a rhetoric major, should have graduated when I was twenty,
but in one class short of might be a for
(01:56):
financial slash academic red tape reasons with miners in French
and German guten tag Mary. Aside from being a pro vocalist,
my real job is teaching English to disadvantaged and academically
struggling eighth graders, which is amazing. I also tad college
level rhett comp to and have private students tutoring clients,
(02:17):
mostly college students, some high school, a few middle school
primarily seeing me for writing instruction or literary interpretation analysis
and historical analysis with embosses on reading comprehension. Apparently I
need to take that at any rate. Mary then goes
on to give several suggestions, the last of which is finally,
more music stuff for those of us who missed the
(02:38):
B side, r I P programs like able to end
pro tools, HD electronics like d being Thereman, and the
very awesome react table you can see on YouTube worthy
of its own podcast. While all of that is true,
we are going to do a Thereman podcast. And I
know that stuff from the Beast. I did one as well,
but we're really going to dive down and talk about
(02:59):
with Thereman. It's his story how it works, uh, and
you know the what's the basis behind? It's pretty interesting stuff.
And as I said, the song I quoted at the
beginning actually does feature a Thereman. Oh so and and uh.
Just to help people who want to learn more about
some of the stuff we're talking about today on how
(03:20):
stuff works. We don't have how Thereman's work yet, although
I do believe it's actually gone out as an assignment.
We do have how amplifiers work, and that's going to
be a very important part of our conversation. At some point.
We do have an article on the Thereman However, yes,
we do have articles on the Thereman, just not one
that specifically breaks down how it works. Yet, like I said,
I think by the time this podcast goes live, we
(03:41):
may that may have changed. But I know that there
is an assignment out there somewhere, floating out in the ether.
It's not me. I'm not the one writing it so
or at least it hasn't been assigned to me. So
let's let's start talking about the history here. You wanted
to UH talk about our buddy Leo Leon Thereman, actually
Lev Sergeyevitch Terman, who was a scientist and inventor. UM.
(04:04):
I got a little information about Mr Thereman from Britannica,
always a good source for the biographical on these inventors. Um.
He lived in UH in St. Petersburg and uh Florida, Russia.
He was well, he was born there in and died
in Moscow, Florida, No, North Dakota in nine three. I
(04:27):
wonder if there is a Moscow not anyway. UM. So yeah,
it's funny that you would say out of the ether
because the original name for this device was the ether
a phone, but it was later renamed to be the Thereman,
and UH basically it's it's known for the way you
play it, unlike pretty much every other kind of instrument
(04:48):
I can think of where you actually need to touch
it to do this. The thereman, you specifically do not
touch UM. I knew a lot of people who have
that same policy. But yes, no, you're you're absolutely correct.
Derriman has played without touching it. Yep. And he actually
played it for for Lenin in nineteen twenty two and
and for Albert Einstein in UM patented the instrument in
(05:13):
in New York in UM, and then he went into
a lot of other stuff. He UH tried to work
on other musical instruments and UH worked on an electronic
security system for prisons. UM ended up in a Siberian
labor camp in the Soviet Union. Yeah, it's uh. He was.
(05:34):
He did work did some work for a in a
military lab during World War Two where he was working
on UH naval tracking systems and remote controls UM and
even on spy technology and eavesdropping device for the KGB. UH.
He got the Stalin Prize for that. UM. Smart guy
(05:55):
is what we're talking about here. Yeah. Yeah. He became
a professor of acoustics at the Moscow conservat tory Um
and uh, you know, had done a lot of a
lot of different kinds of electronics work. So certainly Um
a very interesting person. But you know, I think he's
probably best known. I don't think anyone would argue that
he's best known for the ether a phone, I mean
(06:15):
the Thereman. Yes, since it does, since it does actually
bear his name, or at least the Western version of
his name. And before we go any further, I think
it might might behoove us to to have a little
a little listen to to what a thereman sounds like.
So this is the sound of the Theoreman. Now, listeners
(06:39):
may have recognized that from various songs, and really I think,
I think what that always reminds me of as all
all those like nineteen fifties science fiction films and TV
series that either used a theoreman or use some sort
of other effect to create a theoreman like sound as
part of the sound track. Because not everything that that
(07:02):
sounds like a theremin is in fact a thereman. In fact,
one of the most famous songs that people tend to
say had a thereman and it did not is Good
Vibrations by the Beach Boys, almost said beast boys, this
is that's for you yet, I haven't had enough coffee.
(07:22):
Is good vibrations by the Beastie Boys and that would
have been hilarious and wrong. But anyway, yeah, that's not
that's not a thereman used in that song. It's a
it's a totally different instrument. Actually, it's called tannerin although
I mean it does it does have a similar sound
to it, but you actually do play that by touching. Yes,
you slide your finger on it, and depending on where
(07:44):
you're touching it, it it you know, produces a different sound.
And if you were to look at a theorem and
you would immediately see that the I guess the most
notable feature is that it's you know, depending upon the
design of it, it's gonna look like some sort of
a box. But from that box, you're gonna see a
pair of antenna and one traditionally, one antenna is vertical
(08:05):
aligned to the box, so it's it's up and down,
and then a second antenna seems tends to come out
the side of the box. It's horizontal and it's in
a loop. And using your hands moving them close to
and further away those antenna that's what controls the sound
that comes out of the theoreman. Yeah. You you know,
it's always good to adjusted a little bit to the left,
(08:26):
you know, get the get the picture just right right.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I was thinking of a different
kind of antenna. Yeah, no, it's yeah, it's not a
rabbit ears. Um. Yeah. In fact, that's a good point.
We should mention that this is these antenna are not
designed to pick up any sort of radio frequency. That's
not the purpose of the antenna. We'll get into that
when we start getting into the actual uh ways that
(08:47):
the the theoreman works. So do you said you wanted
to talk a little bit at one point about songs
that you may have heard or perhaps even other ways
that you may have heard a thereman. Well, yeah, I
mean I wasn't really a subscriber to XM Radio, the
satellite radio service here in the United States, and they
used to have a channel called Special X where they
(09:08):
would play all kinds of strange and unusual things. And
they actually had, believe it or not, a whole show
devoted to music from the Theoreman. And so they were
all these and again, you're right, period records from like
the fifties and stuff where there were uh, you know
thereman songs that they were playing entire pieces on the
(09:29):
theorem and and actually you could find a lot of
the stuff on on YouTube. I've seen people I've seen
theremin orchestras, wow, where there are different people playing songs
and they have different parts. So everybody's got a different
purpose of doing it. And it's it sounds kind of
random when you just hear the sections and segments and
(09:50):
other songs and pop songs and things like that. But
you you know, people you can actually play this as
a musical instrument. And so I've I've heard a lot
of that kind of stuff. Uh, I'm trying to think
of something specific. Do you have a favorite thereman song
other than the one that you quoted before, other than
the one I quoted before and not really, um, but
there are other songs that have used it. They're actually uh,
(10:13):
like I said, it's for me. The thing that I
think about are all those those like The Day the
Earth Stood Still? That would be a famous film that
used a theoreman as a sound effect. Uh. There there
was a theremin used at least in some versions of
the theme to Star Trek, although most of the time
that was actually a vocalist who did that effect. But
I believe in in one or two versions of that
(10:34):
you can hear a thereman being used. Um So, I
mean that there are bands that experiment and they'll throw
that in the mix, and it may even be that
it's it's a minor part of the song where you know,
it's not meant to take the forefront of the melody
or anything like that. It's just another another layer of
complexity within a song itself. Chris and I have more
(10:57):
to say about how thereman's work in just a second,
but let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
So I guess we can now talk about what a
theoreman does, like how does it make that sound? Like?
Why is it that when you put your hand closer
(11:19):
to or further away from, one antenna changes the pitch
and the other one controls the volume. That's by the way,
the vertical one is the pitch antenna and the horizontal
one is the volume antenna. Awesome, Actually it's uh it's
funny because uh, typically you think of making music with
an instrument as you wanted to sound as clear as possible.
(11:42):
Um And in the opportunity to play a thereman, you'll
realize that uh uh, it's actually all about creating interference
because these uh, these antennae um actually have an electromagnetic
field that and you're interfering with that by coming closer
and moving farther away to different degrees. So really what's
(12:05):
what you're hearing is the sound of the interference with
the machine. Yeah, it's actually to to dive down into this.
The way this works is that you've got coils of
wire inside the theorem and that are generating electromagnetic field
and that is propagated along the antenna. And so with
the case of the pitch antenna, you have two different
(12:25):
um uh like two different oscillators creating this electromagnetic field.
One of them is a steady frequency, the other one's
variable frequency, and the variable frequency all depends upon your
hand coming into contact with or not contact but coming
closer or are moving further away from the pitch antenna. Uh.
What will happen then is that the frequencies from these
(12:47):
two different oscillators will mix. And this is a process
that we call heterodyning. And heterodyning is you you process
these these signal and you take uh. Typically you can
get lots of different um um results from combining signals,
(13:08):
but typically you look at the sum and the difference,
and uh, you choose, you filter one out and you
focus on the other. And in this case we're talking
about the difference because the the frequencies that are generated
by these oscillators are too high for human hearing. But
the difference is not um So if you are creating
(13:28):
a variation in one frequency and the other frequency is
remaining constant. Uh, when you take the difference of that
and you take that signal, that signal is then within
the range of human hearing. And because you've got that
one variable frequency, you can change the pitch. So and
it all has to do with, of course the capacitance
that we have. You know, human beings, we have a
(13:50):
capacitance and uh, it's really most mostly based on body mass.
So um. There's another interesting point is that if you
have two different people playing the same theraman, they're going
to quickly find out like to let let's say take
one tiny little person and one huge person. So you've
got ham hands and you've got little dainty fingers. Little
dainty fingers comes up there and starts playing the theraman
(14:12):
and realizes that when they when their dainty fingers get
within a certain distance of the antenna a particular pitches played.
Then ham Hands comes up and starts to play, and
then realizes very quickly that it's a different distance for
ham hands to get to that antenna to to make
that same pitch. And it has to do with the
mass of the of of ham hands. So uh, you know,
(14:37):
it's two people playing the same theraman are going to
find out that they can't mimic one another's motions and
get the exact same sound. It's going to be different
based upon the actual size of the musician and all.
Like I said, that all has to do with the
capacitance that we as humans actually have ourselves. So we
(14:57):
interfere with that electromagnetic field the frequency combine in the
heterodyning process, as I've said, As I mentioned, we filter
out the sum we take the difference of those two frequencies. Uh,
and that signal is what creates the pitch. Now, even
though it's within the range of human hearing, Uh, you
can't really hear it very well unless you put it
(15:18):
through an amplification process, which we'll have to talk about
in a second. And the second antenna. The volume antenna
really just has the one oscillator and then there's a
steady uh voltage being applied further in. And what happens
is when you move your hand closer to that antenna,
you are interrupting the first the signal from the first oscillator,
that electromagnetic field. And as you interrupt the electromagetic magnetic field,
(15:42):
the signal becomes weaker, which ends up being a control
on the volume. So, in other words, the closer your
hand gets to that second antenna, the quieter the sound
will be. You might think that, you know, you would
want to get your hand closer to make the sound
go up, but it's exactly the opposite. So if you
put your hand close to the antenna, that sounds going
(16:03):
to be very low. And as you take your hand
away from that antenna, the horizontal antenna, the volume increases,
so the pitch will remain the same, assuming that your
other hand is is steady. And and also I should
mention when you watch people play the theremin, especially people
who have just started to play, you might notice them
moving their hands up and down the the length of
(16:26):
the vertical antenna that really doesn't have much of an effect.
It can change the pitch a little bit, but the
real change in pitch has to do with the distance
from the antenna. So you can keep your hands steady
at the same level respective to the vertical antenna and
just change the the distance your hand is from that
antenna and that would change the pitch. You don't have
(16:48):
to move your hand up and down the length of
the antenna in order to change it. Because you really
need both hands to operate the well, yeah, I mean
because you have to. I mean because otherwise you would
just have a steady volume time, right, So you need
you need to be able to, uh, you know, have
both hands free to operate the theoremans. You know, both
(17:08):
the pitch and the volume. Um. And you know, I
think it can also depend not only on the person,
but on the instrument itself. No, sure, yeah you can.
You can actually tune a theoreman as well. And that
that all has to do with the electronics that are
inside the theoremin because depending upon the electronic components you've
put in there and the the frequency difference between the
(17:31):
variable frequency and the steady frequency. Uh, you you will
have a certain octave range that that thereman is capable
of playing and uh, and sometimes that octave range can
be quite uh large, very large range. But that means
that you have to have even more control when you're
playing it. Uh, that that tiny changes in the distance
(17:52):
between your hand and the antenna will result in fairly
significant changes in pitch, which is why the theremin is
one of those instruments that's know, you can step right
up and start playing it uh and have fun making
weird noises, but if you want to be able to
actually play a tune with with regularity, it takes a
lot of practice. It's one of those really difficult to masterpieces.
(18:13):
And uh. I actually have a list of some of
the components that are in a typical theraman if you
would like to hear. Sure. Okay, so we've got the
two antenna. As I mentioned before, the the volume antenna
is actually a loop. It looks like a semicircle that's
attached to the horizontal side one of the horizontal sides
of the theremin itself. There The reason for that design
(18:35):
is that the old thermans were all based on vacuum
tube technology, is before solid state technology was really a
thing at all. The first Theraman and so um in
order to be able to make this antenna and have
it fit with the old system, you actually had to
create this loop so as you had the right antenna
(18:57):
length without interfering with the other electronic components of the device.
So even though we've reached a point now where most
modern theramans still use vacuum tubes at least in some capacity,
and we'll talk about that a little bit. Ha Hey,
But Chris, I'm sure we'll have something to say about
using vacuum tubes as opposed to solid state. Being the
(19:19):
musician you would, you would know more about this than
I do. But in general, it has to do with
sound quality. So there are still vacuum tubes used in
most modern theramans, but they also involve some solid state
electronic components now, which means that you no longer would
have to do that loop um to achieve the same effect.
But I think a lot of a lot of theramin
designers like to use it anyway, just kind of as
(19:39):
a throwback to the original theraman. So it's almost like
it's almost like a traditional thing at this point. I
hope you guys are enjoying the spooky classic episode the
Bupha Thereman's work. But though we're going to listen to
a word from an advertiser. Boh. So inside the theremin,
(20:04):
you're going to find typically a pair of chassis. One
chassis is gonna be for your electromagnetic components, and this
is where this is what generates that electromagnetic field for
both of the antenna UM. You would normally find three
oscillators in there. You would find two oscillators for the pitch,
one oscillator for the volume. UH. The this chassis often
(20:27):
called an upper chassis, and a lot of the theramans
I've looked at UH is has to be separated from
the other chassis, which has the amplification and power UH
elements to it, because otherwise the electromagnetic field would interfere
with the operation of those elements. All right. So the
lower chassis where you get the power coming into the
device UH, and you have the amplification oscillators and usually
(20:51):
we use triodes and that you probably have heard of diodes. Diodes,
of course, are those electronic components that allow electrons to
pass through one way but not back yet. It's a
one way lane. It allows electron UH flow in one direction.
Only Triads are a little different. Triads are well, it's
a kind of vacuum tube and and from a superficial level,
(21:15):
they resemble a light bulb. And the way a triode
works is that there are typically three elements within a triode,
which makes sense when you hear the name. You've got
the cathode, which is the part of the triad that
that will shed electrons. You've got a grid of some
sort that will control the flow of electrons. It kind
(21:36):
of acts as like a gate in a way. And
then you have the anode, which is where the electrons
want to get too, because it has a positive charge. Now,
remember electrons have a negative charge, so negative wants to
be attracted. It is attracted to positive. So you have
a positive element on one side, a negative element on
the another side, and a gate in the middle to
control the flow. And that's the basis behind um the triode. Now,
(22:00):
in order to control the flow of electrons, what you
have to do is you hook up that gate to
a source of electricity. All right, Now, if you're generating
electricity and you're you're putting a current through that gate,
that means you're putting negative electrons through the gate. Now
that's going to repel the electrons coming out of the cathode.
All right, so you've got the cathode. Let's imagine that
the cathodes on the left hand side, and in the
(22:22):
middle is this gate that has electrons running through it,
and on the right you have the anode. Now, the
the current that you're putting through that gate is going
to vary because that's your input. That's that's the signal
that's going into like when you're making a sound electronically
speaking into a microphone or playing a musical instrument that's
plugged into this amplifier. So it's a variable frequency again,
(22:46):
a variable current and uh and so sometimes the current
is going to be is going to allow a certain
number of electrons through because there's you know, you as
you build up the h the charge on the cathode side,
some electrons are gonna pass through that gate. Is gonna
be s long enough energy for it to go through
the gate. Other times, the the signal is going to
be lower, it's gonna allow more electrons through. That's the
(23:07):
whole basis of the amplifier. So the cathode looks like
a filament you have to in order to make electrons
shed you have to add energy into this system. So
and this is a rather than the variable source which
is what we see in the gate, this is a
steady power source that's going into the cathode. So it
(23:28):
heats up this filament which gives off light. Depending upon
what kind of vacuum tube it is, it may be
a different color, like a lot of them are kind
of an orange ish color. If you're talking about a
vacuum tube for like a big power system, it tends
to burn white hot, but that's when it starts to
shed thousands and thousands of electrons. The energy from the
electricity is enough to break the electrons free from their
(23:51):
shells and then they will go toward the positively charged anode.
So that is the basis. You just got a it's
like a podcast within a podcast that was a basic
electronics of what a triot is and what it does.
We're really vacuum tubes in general, although there are other
kinds of vacuum tubes besides tryouts, they're not it's not
(24:13):
a one to one, you know. Tryout is just one
type of vacuum tube, all right. So you've got several
of those in there acting as amplifiers. UM. And then
you've also got your your power source, you've got your capacitors,
you've got resistors UM, and then you've got the antenna.
I've already spoken about those as well, and the copper
(24:34):
coils which generate the electromagnetic field. Those are your basic
components that all together make up the guts of the
thereman and there Actually, I've seen videos online that kind
of give an overall view of how to build a theraman,
and they're also a theramin kits out there if you
want to try and make your own. UM, it's an
(24:55):
interesting project, I understand. Like even the guy who was
I was watching these videos, the guy who built olds
the theorem and actually said, um, I could build them,
but I can't play them. So he said he loves
he enjoys building them, and he tends to build them
for other people like like bands and stuff that are
interested in using the thereman. Well, um, anyone interested in
(25:15):
in playing the thereman should check out an article that
Jane mcgrathrope for the website called how to play a
theoreman um and she actually quoted some of the people
who are well known theoreminists thereminist dereman players. They come
from the future. It's terrible. Uh. Lydia Kavina is one. Uh.
(25:42):
She actually studied under Leon thereman um and basically had
suggested that it's good to keep your feet about a
foot apart zero point three meters UM. But it really
depends on the theoreman and uh, you know, and how
far you want to stand away from and of course,
as you mentioned, the capacitance of the person playing it. Um.
(26:06):
But generally depending on the number of octaves available um
in that theorem, and I mean the the range of
the theorem, and uh, you might have to stand farther
away if it has a greater range um, according to
uh um Miss Cavina Um. Also, apparently you can actually
(26:27):
tune the device yourself by putting your right hand at
your shoulder or I guess your left hand, depending on
how you're playing it. So you start with your hand
at your shoulder regardless UM. And then just uh she said,
the idea is you need to play the song slowly
when you're getting started, because um, it takes a while
to get used to uh controlling the pitch that you're
(26:50):
trying to to make if you're actually trying to play
a song and melody with it um and Uh. Clara
Rockmore another person that UM Jane quoted in her article
and basically said that you have to be very conscious
of what you're doing with your body. Um. You know,
as a percussionist, I tend to groove a little bit,
(27:12):
you know, start getting into it and bobbing and getting
into the motion. That can affect the way you're playing,
because the theremin is uh going by your body movement
and how close you are to it. So anything any
other stray movement is going to affect the sound coming
out of the theraman. So you have to be very
careful um, and you have to be very conscious of
(27:32):
what you're doing when you're when you're trying to play that.
You know, posture and and uh, stray movements can affect it.
It's a lot different from saying a guitar where you
have a string that, assuming it's properly tuned, when you
play that string while pressing down at a certain threat,
it's always going to produce the same note, right. Uh,
(27:53):
there's there's no variation there. But with the thereman, it's
all about the distance between and the antenna and uh
and and not and and again your your body mess.
So while two different people can pick up the same
guitar and play the same series of notes just following
the same threads, that wouldn't necessarily be the same story
(28:15):
if they were trying to play a theramin and standing
at the same distance from the device. Just pretty interesting
to me. Um. You know, I had mentioned also about
the amplifiers using vacuum tubes and that that tends to
be a preference. Would you like to to weigh in
a little bit as a musician about that, Well, you
know it, it kind of depends on the sound you're getting,
(28:38):
you know, Um, most of the musicians and whom I
rarely talk to people about using a theraman in a band,
but I mean vacuum tubes and amplifiers in general, vacuum tubes.
Most of what I've heard people say is that they
feel that vacuum tubes produce a warmer sound, which is
the yeah, and again it's it's really in the ear
(28:59):
of the listener. To be honest, you might say that
solid state produces a flatter sound, And I mean, these
are all terms that don't really have a way of
It's hard to it's hard to put it in a
measurable sense. But it is. It is one of those
things that when you start listening to it, you say,
you know what that does? It just sounds better? Yeah,
you know. And uh. And even today, a lot of
(29:20):
amps out there for various musical instruments, not just the one,
not just the amplifiers that you'll find in theirman still
use vacuum tubes, even though the technology otherwise has almost disappeared.
Solid state era. Yeah, well solid state too. I mean
you turn on a solid state device amplifier whatever, um,
(29:40):
it's going to be on a lot quicker. Yeah, it
doesn't have to warm up. Yeah, and a vacuum tube
device will um and you can and you can see
it too, if you have, if you could see through
like I have, for example, I have a vacuum tube
amplifier and a solid state amplifier. Um. You turn it
on and at first the vacuu tubes, you know, look
(30:01):
as though they are you know, they would win the
devices off, and then they start to glow and you
could see that things are coming on. And you could
turn on a source of sound, say you know, uh,
turntable or a tune or radio tuner, and at first
you won't hear anything, and as the vacuum tubes warm up,
you know, the amplifier will begin to play the music
(30:22):
because you're actually coming online, but it takes them a while.
Um makes me think of the the beginning of the
documentary Back to the Future. Yeahs turning on all the apps, right,
yea documentary. It's a good one. Yeah, but uh yeah,
I mean it's it's funny though, because it's sort of
like vinyl for a lot of musicians too, because for
(30:43):
you know, the the vacuum tube manufacturers almost became extinct,
and as time has worn on and people have said,
you know what, I really like the way that that works.
I like the sound that I get from vacuum tube amps.
Or you know, I had this other thing that uses
vacuum tubes and I really like it. I actually have
a ham and organ that uses um vacuum tubes too,
(31:04):
and you know, without some manufacturer, you know, so these
things have have stayed in production, even though solid state
for a while it looked like it was going to
knock it out. But yeah, and just like U, just
like an incandescent light bulb, vacuum tubes will eventually burn out.
They uh, I mean it's it's not going to be
(31:24):
super fast or anything. But that's why it's important that
these industries still exist, because otherwise we would have a
finite number that and once we got to the end
of it, that would be it. So I guess we
should be thankful for devices like the Thereman and guitar
amplifiers for keeping a a what what otherwise people might say,
an absolute technology alive and kicking. I want to thank
(31:47):
Dracula for joining my show there and introducing the second
sponsor ad and probably making all of you cringe out there.
Thanks a lot, Dracula. Guys. If you want to learn
more about tech Stuff, I recommend you go check out
our brand new web page. It's at tech stuff podcast
dot com. There you're going to find the ways to
(32:08):
contact the show. You're gonna find a bio about yours truly,
you're gonna find links to our store. Remember, every purchase
you make helps our show and so much more. So
go over there, check it out, let me know what
you think, and I'll talk to you again really soon
(32:29):
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