Building a Theremin
For my son John's birthday I ordered a Minimum Theremin kit from Harrison Instruments. I was inspired by seeing Bre Pettis make one in the Make Weekend Project Podcast. I came and over a few days we soldered and assembled it.
It is pretty neat to get a printed circuit board and a bunch of parts and solder them together to create a unique musical instrument. In order to complete the project I bought a soldering iron and I was able to get a piece of sheet metal from my dad, who also made a wooden stand for it.
The kit has all of the parts nicely sorted into plastic baggies and is clearly labelled which made it quite easy to assemble. It's not a beginners kit, but I was patient and John and it only took a few hours to assemble since we took our time.
The Theremin is an odd instrument. You've probably heard one on the soundtrack of vintage sci-fi films or in the Beach Boys song, "Good Vibrations". The Minimum Theremin doesn't have the pitch and volume controls of a full, traditional Theremin, but only has the antenna for controlling the pitch. You stand in front of it and move your hand close to the antenna. The closer you get, the higher the pitch. I need to practise with it to get better and John is a bit better than me. At the end of this post is a 47 second recording of me playing (I just plugged the Theremin into my MacBook Pro and recorded it). I want to build some more stuff now!
Comments
I think that 'Good Vibrations" has the best Theremin sound.
I really have to practice to actually be able to play something that is closer to musical.