“WAVE YOUR HANDS ”

Hokitika Guardian, 2 November 1929, Page 2

“WAVE YOUR HANDS ”

AN AMERICAN INVENTION

SAN FRANCISCO, October 4

A new musical instrument that anybody can learn to play in a few hours iS to he placed on the market before Christmas by the 'Radio-Corporation of America., it is stated in New York, and if you are tempted to say. “Well, what if it?’’ a writer says to go right ahead and begin reading about something else, but remember that you probably passed up a small item in the newspapers several years ago announcing that the first saxophone h;.u been imported. This new instrument is a Russian invention called the thcramin, after Professor Leon Theramin, the young Russian radio dabbler, who hit upon it. .All you have to do is wave your hands in front of it in a certain way and it will play “Ramona.” Wave them another way and it will play

“oiiooivle-uookie,” or “Wait 'fill the Cows Como Home” or “Melody in F,” in fact, it will play anything dictated by the musical taste and knowledge ,of the operator, and play it good and loud, too, should the performer so fa.'icy, says Sam Love, who has witnesed a demonstration by the promoters of the muLcal innovation in America.

Professor Theramin brought his invention to the United States several months ago and demonstrated it to a select audience of musicians and social register dowagers at the Pinza Hoetl, in New York. By waving Ids hands, the handsome professor drew forth a strange and not unpleasing sound, something like a soprano in her best style. The professor received a great many compliments on his invention, ' which some people said would revolutionise orchestras. But nothing happened and the professor took it out on a lecture and vaudeville tour. Still nothing happened, apparently, except more bouquets for the professor, and it began to look as if the great American public would have to struggle along as hitherto with its few million fiddles, saxophones and sopranos, all operated separately. ; But now the announcement from the Radio 'Corporation shattered that illusion. The first of the commercial production theramins, it said, would be displayed at the radio world’s fair in Madison Square Garden in New York. The theramin is in appearance somewhat like a small radio, with a metal rod projecting upright from one end and a metal loop from the other. When the human hand—any human hand—is brought into the sensitive electric field surrounding the vertical antenna, the field is so affected that audio-frequency notes or sounds are produerid. These are amplified and passed through a loudspeaker. The closer the band to trie vertical antenna, the higher the pitch of the sound.

“Anyone who is ajble to hfim a tune, sing or whistle,” said E. A. Nicholas, vice-president of the radiola division of Radio-Victor, “is likely to play the RCA .theramin as well as a trained musician.”

Soon it will be all over the United States, but the early models, at any rate, will cost as much as a good saxophone.