How to Play Theremin in 6 Minutes!

good morning friend my name is Caroline Scruggs and today I am going to give you your very first theremin lesson so the theremin was the very first electronic instrument ever invented and it's exactly 100 years old this year but probably the coolest part about the theremin is that it's one of the only instruments in the world that's played without touch so today we are going to cover the foundation of how to play this instrument so that you can take this to all of your friends and family and say hey I know how to play this really weird obscure instrument called the theremin and everybody will be like oh wow it's a very impressive skill okay so let's get started first things first there are two antennas this one determines the pitch this antenna over here determines the volume we're going to take the right arm and essentially move it from the collarbone to the antenna that's kind of like your fret if you're familiar with stringed instruments so as you move toward the antenna it gets higher and as you move toward your collarbone it gets lower cool good onward this is the volume antenna when I want this instrument muted I just keep my hand dip it in between this loop right here and when I want the volume raised I simply raise my hand so now you have your pitch you have your volume and we have this weird notion of kind of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time right so go practice that you'll get used to it next thing is your posture so we want to place ourselves right between the whole instrument as a whole I'm also sitting down because that makes life a lot easier with the theremin you certainly can play standing up I do it a lot but the trick of this instrument is that you have to keep the rest of your body that's not playing the instrument completely still or it will be heard in the instrument so when you sit it really lets you have a chance to steal your body a little bit more now I am about an arm's length away from this antenna which is exactly where I want to be you can see the tips of my fingers are stretching a bit beyond it but that gives me whole extension now I know you are eager to learn all the hand positions already but my friend calm down this is your very first lesson we're just going to start with hand position one and try to make some notes today so if you can do an okay sign like this okay and then just close your fist keep this little circle right here and that's hand position one essentially now pretend like there is a string on your fret from your just below your collarbone to your long antennae your pitch antenna and what we're going to do is take this string remember will in toward you and try to have the straightest line they possibly can good now we're going to stop in certain places and that is where we're going to conjure up pitch [Music] very good my student we have made sound together now we have made actual notes and that is a lot of progress on her part so let's recap first of all you know how to turn the instrument off and on you know how to control your volume with your left hand and the volume antenna you know how to control your pitch and where your fret board as it were is just stop and conjure up your first notes you know where you are positioned in accordance with the theremin which is about an arm's length away and right in the middle in between the two antennas and now I want to give you a very fun bonus tip that will get more into in a later lesson but I just want to give you a little taste of it with the four knobs in front of me there are two on the right side let's say waveform and brightness these determine the overall tone of the instrument it's basically like you can change the voice in any way you please so here's where we are now [Music] and that really lets you choose a mood and atmosphere for whatever kind of music you are trying to make with the theremin it really has such a huge range and so many possibilities it's such a voice like string like instrument and I think that it really lends itself well to anything that you just want a little quirky weird addition to so that was your very first theremin lesson if you enjoyed this and you would like to see more theremin things and weird music please subscribe to my channel like this video tell me what you think below and any questions you might have that I might be able to answer in our next theremin lesson alright now get to practicing you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Caroline Scruggs

Views: 106,325

Keywords: caroline scruggs, theremin, theremin player, busking, rc300 loop station, singer

Id: ha8rerckieA

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020