MUSIC FROM ETHER

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 18 November 1927, Page 7

MUSIC FROM ETHER

A RUSSIAN INVENTION ASTONISHING DEMONSTRATION. AUTHORITIES AMAZED. Several hundred musicians, composers, scientists and music lovers heard a young Russian professor, Leo Theremin of the Physieotechnical Institute at Leningrad, give an astonishing demonstration at Berlin of an instrument w’hich produces what he calls ether wave music and which, he asserts, opens up an entirely new i field in composition. Upon a table stood a box three and I) a half feet wide, two feet deep and; three feet high. A short brass ro<j projected up from the top at tb«' right side and a brass ring abovrt eight. inches in diameter from t/iye left side. GESTURED IN SPACE. The young Russian professor did not touch the instrument. Assuming a slightly affected posture, yhich proved to be necessary when others tried to play their favourite coca positions, he merely, gestured in space. Out of a loud-speaker of the f/amiliar radio type the familiar strains oi the Scriabine Etude, played, apparently by a violin of extraordinary beauty and fullness of tejne. As Professor Thermin raised or lowered his left hand over th<j ring he swelled the tone or reduce, 1 it to a barely audible pianissimo. As he shook his right hand he obtained the vibrato of the violin. Professor Theremin’s instrument may be regarded as a modified radio transmitter. A radio eiqgineer would say it consisted of two transmitters, a rectifier and an amplifier. Yet it is much more than an ordinary transmitter. “With this instrument,” Professor Theremin said, “I havte made it possible to produce tones of oonstipiey of pitch not even remotely approached by the best piano or organ.” WAVE IS SUPERIMPOSED. Every broadcasting enthusiast has heard high musical notes or whistles as he turned his seit to some station. This is a familiar heterodyne effect of which the builders of sets at home speak so learnedly. The effect is easily explained. We do not hear radio waves because they inundate us at the rate of millions in a second. The human ear can respond to vibrations of only thousands and hundreds a second. In fact, 20,000 vibrations a second is about the upper limit of audibility. If in a radio set we “heterodyne,” in other words superimpose two trains of electrical waves of slightly different frequencies, we will hear them whenever they are in step, or “chase,” as an engineer would say. Thus one train can be composed of waves producing with a frequency of 1,000,000 and another of waves produced with a frequency of 990.000 a second. When these two waves are superimposed they will be in step ten thousand times a second. What is called a “beat” note is heard. Thus Professor Theremin creates tones by juggling electrical waves. .But how does he vary the pitch and the volume of his electrically produced tones? HOW IT IS DONE. A phenomenon every amateur has observed in poor radio sets is the extraordinary effect of the body. Bring a hand near the tuning knob and squeals and whistles are heard that sigh up and down the scale. The human body has what is called electrostatic capacity, and so has every part of a set. By moving the hand to and from the set, the capacity of the circuit is changed so that the set is no longer in tune. Hence when Professor Theremin brings his right hand toward his short vertical antenna ho produces a higher note. Similarly, when he raises or lowers his left hand over the ring antenna he varies volume. Thus it seems to his mystified audience that he creates music out of nothing but motions in the air. He had but to twiddle his little finger to vary the pitch and amplitude.

TONES TO ORDER

By combining electric waves ii. different ways, Professor Theremin can generate tones to order. String, wind and brass instruments are mimicked with absolute fidelity. But Professor Theremin has aspirations that extend far beyond mere imitation. There is little sense in imitating the saxophone if you can bui one for a fraction of what Theremin's apparatus must cost. This young Russian phyicist produces effects unobtainable hitherto.

“Aly apparatus,” he said, “frees the composer from the despotism oi the twelve-note tempered piano scale, to which even violiniosts must adapt themselves. The composer can now construct a scale of the intervals desired. He can have intervals oi thirteenths, if he wants them. In tact, any gradation detectable by the human ear can be produced. To this must be added an entirely new range of tonal colours. Hitherto the composer has had only about twenty tone colours, represented by as many different types of orchestral instruments. I give him literally thousands of tone colours.

“In order to demonstrate the possibilities of ether wave music 1 am now building twelve instruments. Good musicians will learn how to plav them in a fortnight. With an orchestra thus constituted, with nothing but gestures these men will give us concerts hat will reveal new beauties in tone and their combinations. Apart from these possibilities, ether wave music is created with a simplicity and a directness matched only by singing. There is no keyboard to obtrude itself, no catgut, no bow, no pedal, nothing hut simple expressive gestures of the hands.”