Theremin: played without touching it, and almost nobody hits the note

The theremin: played without touching it, and almost nobody hits the note

Can you perform a score without touching the instrument? Yes, and it's called the theremin. A device from decades ago that is played by moving your hands through the air, with no physical contact, turning any performance into an exercise in aim. The debate kicks off with a piece many attributed to a soprano and which turns out to be the work of this contraption. The discovery is unsettling: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and this instrument has been proving it for decades.

What the theremin is and why it sounds like playback

The theremin is an electronic instrument played without contact: the performer moves their hands near two antennas and the device translates distance into sound. No frets, no keys, no physical reference. The result, to the untrained ear, is a ghostly voice that sings a lot and sounds like playback to many. In its own home, of course. The piece by the Maestro Morricone that many believed was performed by a soprano turns out to be a theremin, and that's where the confusion begins.

The difficulty isn't aesthetic, it's geometric. It's not that it's hard: it's that you have no damn idea where the notes are. With no tactile references, staying in tune depends on muscle memory and the exact position of your hand in the air. Some compare it to tuning a radio with a bad signal: depending on where you stand, the signal improves, but a moment later it drifts off again. More or less.

From the 70s to today's experimentation

The theremin had its moment of glory in the 70s, the decade of experimentation. Bands like Led Zeppelin incorporated it into their sonic arsenal, and since then it has survived in film scores, in the science fiction imagination, and in the repertoire of a handful of specialists. Its strangeness isn't a flaw: it's its identity.

The conversation drifts into less academic territory. The only instrument in the world where you perform a score without touching it, they sum up. Others prefer the easy joke and rename it the Wankerum, one of the hardest instruments to play. The gag repeats with variations: jerking off into thin air, musical wanking, wanking for the invisible man. The theremin, meanwhile, keeps on sounding.

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In the end, the conclusion is the usual one: a device that has been around for decades, played without being touched, and almost nobody knows where the notes are. Like most things that work.