I just thought I’d share a nice discovery. Tonight I was playing around with my Theremax and FreqBox, and found that on Sync the FB tracks a surprisingly large range of pitches from the Theremin (I was expecting that the wide sweeps might cause it to get lost easily). So it can effectively be used as an alternative audio source for the Theremin. And when it’s mixed in with some envelope following, results go from subtly nice to crazy amusing. Something to try if you’ve got both sitting around…
On yours in the highest register closest to the antenna, did your freqbox begin ring modulation?
On mine near the antenna I could clearly hear the sum and difference.
Eric
It’s hard to say exactly what’s happening up there, because it gets so gnarly. My FB won’t track quite up to the highest pitch of the theremin, but various things happen when you get close to the limit. Sometimes there’s a region of static/breakup beyond which it goes silent (this is with the frequency knob full up, and mix set to 10 so I’m only hearing the FB oscillator). And sometimes after that region, it doesn’t go silent but the sound switches to something close to a sine tone, and starts to drop in pitch as I get closer to the antenna. So that could be a difference tone (it’s certainly some kind of sideband that moves opposite to the input pitch). And sometimes, just before the region of static, I can hear moving sidebands going in all kinds of directions. So on mine, there might be some ring modulation going on in there, but it isn’t very clear. And of course it’s never the same way twice…
Your theremax may have a greater range than mine. I do get the static and then it roes to Ring Modulation. I don’t know if this is something that is dependant on the sync being on or off though cause its been awhile since I hooked them up like that.
I have the etherwave theremin standard.
Its still a cool effect. Now I remember S Dunnington saying that the Freq wasn’t necessarily designed to be an osc for tracking, that its really just an effect processor. So beyond the range it may technically ring modulate. I think its worth asking him about it to clear the record.