New Theremini video with Lydia Kavina

[SourceDist]

Hi All, first post on the forum!

We're the UK distributor for Moog, and were lucky enough to recently welcome thereminist Lydia Kavina to our listening room in London, to film a demo of her on the Theremini. We captured some playing, improvising (including layering multiple passes on her Boss Looping pedal) and also talking through some basic technique to help players new to the instrument. Video link below.

I assume most of you are familiar with Lydia but she's a fantastic player and was first taught the theremin by Leon Theremin himself - was quite honoured to have the opportunity to meet her and make the video.

Hope you enjoy this, have a look here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bakI0ITCqQ

Thanks and all the best
Alex @ Source

[rkram53]

Great video. The best so far that's been done on the Theremini. And of course anyone who knows the theremin knows of Lydia - though I suspect not many who buy the theremini will as the instrument is intended for beginners who may not know much about the professionals who play it yet.

What I like about the video is that she tries to explain objectively some techniques and gives a much better feel for the instrument than Dorit's commercial - which was much more just hand waving - "oh - so cool". I really like that Lydia goes into explaining setting range to adjust note spacing (crucial for this instrument for beginners). I believe the default Theremini range is C3..C7 (and the theremin patch is transposed +12 making it higher), though I'm not convinced this is the best range for a beginner to use (C2..C5 I feel works much better as a range setting for someone who wants to start matching pitches to learn how to play melodically and not get too frustrated). So if you are selling them and people complain how hard it is to play notes - first thing to say is dial back that range.

I don't think you are running the new beta firmware for this video, right? But thanks for doing this. I'm thinking about making a video or two myself to get into some of the finer points and demonstrate some of the new firmware features as well, how to control effectively with MIDI, techniques for a beginner to use the instrument effectively to learn the theremin (being a relative beginner myself, I know what works for me), etc.
Rich

[bichuelo]

Fantastic demonstration, thanks!

I'd love to add subtitles in spanish. Any chance you could upload them to the video?

I also love the t-shirt. Do you sell it too?