Theremin-Playing Robot

Posted 29 Jun 2003 at 01:10 UTC by Rog-a-matic

The Theremin is an electronic musical instrument played by waving your hands in the air. It's was often used in old horror flicks.

The folks at Vanderbilt Cognitive Robotics Lab have created a robot to perform the Theremin automatically.

http://eecs.vanderbilt.edu/CIS/CRL/html/theremin-playing_robot.html

The Forbidden Planet has Theremin Music., posted 29 Jun 2003 at 04:34 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

One of my favorite swirling brain movies, The Forbidden Planet, which incidentally features Robbie the robot, has gobs of Theremin music. So, if you don't know what Theremin music sounds like, rent the movie and crank the volume and enjoy 50's sci-fi music at it's best! Or, here's some samples that your can listen to on Amazon.

The link..., posted 29 Jun 2003 at 05:10 UTC by steve » (Master)

Here's the link to the site in Roger's story...

A Sadly Neglected Instrument, posted 29 Jun 2003 at 05:29 UTC by jeffkoenig » (Master)

A wonderful documentary on Leon Theremin's life was made a few years ago.

While often used for shock effect in the music of science fiction (one was used for the title sequence in the old Star Trek episodes), the Theremin was capable of some very beautiful music. The wavering, voicelike quality was quite haunting, but few serious musicians took up the instrument, feeling it was a bit unsophisticated by musical standards. It took an expert to extract the very subtle effects that the instrument was capable of.

Bob Moog, of synthesizer fame, now produces Theremins.

Another Theremin-playing robot, posted 29 Jun 2003 at 17:55 UTC by phooky » (Journeyer)

Ranjit Bhatnagar has built his own Theremin-playing robot, Lev, which will be on display at this July's ArtBots show in NYC. Alas, I'm going to be out of town...

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