An instrument that's still ahead of its time

 I spent some time this weekend catching up on recorded TV shows, including one from this summer titled “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey,” an odd 1995 documentary about one of the strangest musical instruments – and inventors – of our time. 

Leon Theremin – inventor, Soviet spy and all-around odd duck -- created his crazy self-titled electronic instrument about 90 years ago, and even today the theremin is something of a mystery despite playing prominent roles in dozens of Hollywood movies and hit songs like The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

Lydia Kavina plays a theremin (Courtesy of Wikipedia)The theremin is hard to describe, but in short it’s an odd-shaped electronic instrument in which the musician moves his/her hands near metal rods – without physically touching them – to create and manipulate sound waves. Its sound is wide-ranging but has been pigeon-holed as device to create spacelike sound effects. Visualize audio sine waves expanding and contracting and you’ve got the gist of how it sounds. 

I first learned of the theremin years ago, from a musician friend named Blake Jones, who regularly plays one on stage and on his recordings, both solo and with his band Trike Shop. His most recent CD, in fact, is titled “Theremins of Mystery” (listen to the audio samples for a flavor of the instrument’s odd sound or check out a bunch of videos featuring Blake’s theremin handiwork).

As the famous Robert Moog noted in the documentary, Theremin laid the groundwork for the electronic synthesizers — including the Moog -- that gained popularity beginning in the 1970s. But what strikes me is that 90 years later, the theremin is just as oddly fascinating now as it was when it first wowed high-brow audiences at Carnegie Hall, who heard it used to re-interpret classical standards. 

Perhaps these days, the theremin's future is not as a physical instrument but as an iPhone or Android app. Hmmm.