does any band use theremin as melody instrument?
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Topic: does any band use theremin as melody instrument?
Posted By: BaldFriede
Subject: does any band use theremin as melody instrument?
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 06:16
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I know many prog bands that make use of the theremin, even Led Zeppelin used it. But all these bands only ever use the theremin for sound effects; they don't ever play any melodies with it. Outside of prog I know a few bands that do, but I don't know any prog bands. Do prog bands like this exist at all?
-------------  BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Replies:
Posted By: ExittheLemming
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 06:21
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Not really Prog I guess, but the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion made extensive use of a Theremin at live concerts to play melodies. Hah ha...the only instrument you don't touch to play...
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Posted By: Larree
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 07:03
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------------- http://larree.ws" rel="nofollow - The Larree (dot) Website |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 07:44
Great control of the instrument!
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Larree wrote:Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 08:34
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This short song by Japanese psych/folk band Ghost uses a Theremin in a melodic way. ------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: akamaisondufromage
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 08:43
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Portishead: not prog though ------------- Help me I'm falling! |
Posted By: jude111
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 09:56
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Radiohead, and specifically Jonny Greenwood, makes frequent use of the ondes Martenot, which is related to the theremin and sounds quite similar. When he first began using it (on Kid A), it was widely supposed by listeners and critics to be a theremin, and people still confuse the two. From Wikipedia: `An example of Greenwood's versatility is his use of the Ondes Martenot, which is featured on songs such as "The National Anthem" and "How to Disappear Completely" from the album Kid A, and "Pyramid Song" from the album Amnesiac. The song "Where I End and You Begin" from Hail to the Thief, which also features the instrument, was dedicated to the memory of Jeanne Loriod, a pioneer of the Ondes.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot
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Posted By: lucas
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 11:03
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I know Fishbone use it. ------------- "Magma was the very first gothic rock band" (Didier Lockwood) |
Posted By: Stool Man
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 11:31
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2lEJEMtr_c" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2lEJEMtr_c ------------- rotten hound of the burnie crew |
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 11:49
| I remember The Flaming Lips used the Theremin once at a show. That's all I can remember. |
Posted By: BaldFriede
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 11:51
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Of course the late Barbara Buchholz used it that way, but she did not play prog.. ------------- BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
Posted By: Stool Man
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 12:09
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Have you heard Pamelia Kurstin? ------------- rotten hound of the burnie crew |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 12:32
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Hi, There is a group around here in Oregon called ... something or other orchestra ... that uses a thearamin a lot ... but the music? ... sometimes I'm not sure that is called music, but ok ... it is different, though not quite melodic for my ear at all ... it comes off a bit avant-garde by association, and strange, but I think that it is also very academic minded and not really that interesting for me. Laurie Anderson used a theramin a few times I think ... have to look, and that wold be much closer to prog, despite the aversion that folks have to Burroughs all over some of her stuff ... sometimes I think that "progressive" means ... not literary ... it has to be street jargon! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Larree
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 12:53
Just checked out a few of her youtube videos. She is awesome! Thanks for the tip! ------------- http://larree.ws" rel="nofollow - The Larree (dot) Website |
Posted By: Triceratopsoil
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 12:58
| Detektivbyran does sometimes |
Posted By: Barbu
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 13:19
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Featuring the Martenot, quite similar in sound to the theremin :
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Posted By: timothy leary
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 13:39
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Posted By: infocat
Date Posted: April 14 2013 at 14:12
I remember theremin being played at a Legendary Pink Dots / Edward Ka-Spel concert I went to. Beyond that I can't remember much about it other than it was one of the worst shows I'd ever been to!  But then I went on a whim, not having ever heard any of the songs before.
------------- -- Frank Swarbrick Belief is not Truth. |
Posted By: paulindigo
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 02:58
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Not always prog but Motorpsycho have had guests using both Theremin and Ondes Martenot (and musical saw) on several tracks, for instance "Un chien d'espace" |
Posted By: Einsetumadur
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 12:51
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Love Remembered by Focus ... perhaps as good as it possibly gets!  ------------- All in all each man in all men |
Posted By: HolyMoly
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 13:02
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I think I remember Erik Lindgren playing a Theremin when I saw Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Been a long time, been a long time, been a long, lonely lonely
lonely lonely lonely time ago, though.
------------- My other avatar is a Porsche It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
Posted By: Moogtron III
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 14:34
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Well, well, I keep learning on this site. A theremin: I'll admit: I had heard the name of the instrument, but never saw anyone play it, or recognised somebody playing it, or had any idea how the instrument was looking. Interesting!
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Posted By: Progosopher
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 20:25
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There was Lothar and the Hand People in the late 60s. I only know of them by reputation and have never heard their music, but I read that Lothar was a theremin. They are not listed on Prog Archives, but they were apparently a psychadelic band of the era. ------------- The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty" |
Posted By: jude111
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 20:33
Did you ever hear the original Star Trek theme? That uses a theremin ;-)
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Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: April 15 2013 at 23:59
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Not quite prog, but i saw Ronnie Montrose play the Theramin, which was mounted on his aluminum Velano guitar, for the song "Space Station Number 5" from his first LP. We were both much younger then (probably 1973)! I think Montrose was the backup band for Foghat. Spooky Tooth was also on the bill as I recall. Anyway, Montrose and his band were excellent! R.I.P. Ronnie.... |
Posted By: Moogtron III
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 01:34
Yes, I did! I never realized there was a theremin in it. I was surrounded by theremins without knowing it. Well, there's instruments, Jim, but not as we know it
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Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 06:20
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One of the things about the theremin, or the etherphone as it's also called, that I personally find the most incredible, is that it was made by a Russian bloke in 1919! Damn that is a head scratcher right there ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 07:12
In the experimental prog album Ciclos by the Spanish Los Canarios (4.12 rating in PA, I reviewed it if you are interested) bassist Christian Mellies used the Theremin. With quite many synths and experimental sounds it's hard for me to tell which sounds were precisely Theremin and how melodic or not its use was in this album (Moog with ribbon controller was also used which can provide a similar portamento effect). http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=277169" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=277169 |
Posted By: Gerinski
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 07:15
Gosh that looks a bit obscene
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Posted By: Moogtron III
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 09:01
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On Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, is that a theremin too? Just looked it up on Google and yes, it is. And the mysterious sound on Dr. Who's opening theme? According to some site I found, it isn't, but a synthesizer is being used to imitate the sound of a theremin.
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Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 10:09
Why is that? 
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Posted By: jude111
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 10:52
Yes, how come? Russian art was quite advanced at this time (Stalin would end that pretty quickly, though). Think about Soviet cinema, it was among the greats during Lenon's tenure, what with montage theory, Sergei Eistenstein, Dziga Vertov, Alexander Dovzhenko, Pudovkin, et al. |
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 10:53
| ^ That's cinema. But what about music? |
Posted By: jude111
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 10:57
On the classical front, there's Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff... Doesn't get any bigger than that... Although Shostakovich thrived under Stalin, while the latter two fled Russia during the October Revolution... Courtesy of Wikipedia... Not all that familiar with the subject, to be honest... |
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 10:58
| ^ But they didn't use extraordinary devices, did they? |
Posted By: jude111
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 11:07
I have to plead ignorance, and defer to Wikipedia :In the 19th and 20th centuries Russia produced a large number of great http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Russian_scientists" rel="nofollow - scientists and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_inventors" rel="nofollow - inventors . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Lobachevsky" rel="nofollow - Nikolai Lobachevsky , a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus" rel="nofollow - Copernicus of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry" rel="nofollow - Geometry , developed the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry" rel="nofollow - non-Euclidean geometry . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Mendeleev" rel="nofollow - Dmitry Mendeleev invented the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table" rel="nofollow - Periodic table , the main framework of the modern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry" rel="nofollow - chemistry . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Benardos" rel="nofollow - Nikolay Benardos introduced the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_welding" rel="nofollow - arc welding , further developed by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Slavyanov" rel="nofollow - Nikolay Slavyanov , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Khrenov" rel="nofollow - Konstantin Khrenov and other Russian engineers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleb_Kotelnikov" rel="nofollow - Gleb Kotelnikov invented the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack" rel="nofollow - knapsack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute" rel="nofollow - parachute , while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeniy_Chertovsky" rel="nofollow - Evgeniy Chertovsky introduced the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_suit" rel="nofollow - pressure suit . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Yablochkov" rel="nofollow - Pavel Yablochkov and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lodygin" rel="nofollow - Alexander Lodygin were great pioneers of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_engineering" rel="nofollow - electrical engineering and inventors of early http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_lamp" rel="nofollow - electric lamps . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanovich_Popov" rel="nofollow - Alexander Popov was among the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio" rel="nofollow - inventors of radio , while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Basov" rel="nofollow - Nikolai Basov and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Prokhorov" rel="nofollow - Alexander Prokhorov were co-inventors of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser" rel="nofollow - lasers and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser" rel="nofollow - masers . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Tamm" rel="nofollow - Igor Tamm , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov" rel="nofollow - Andrei Sakharov and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Artsimovich" rel="nofollow - Lev Artsimovich developed the idea of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak" rel="nofollow - tokamak for controlled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion" rel="nofollow - nuclear fusion and created its first prototype, which finally led to the modern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER" rel="nofollow - ITER project. Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89migr%C3%A9s" rel="nofollow - émigrés , like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky" rel="nofollow - Igor Sikorsky and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zworykin" rel="nofollow - Vladimir Zworykin , and many foreign ones worked in Russia for a long time, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Euler" rel="nofollow - Leonard Euler and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel" rel="nofollow - Alfred Nobel . The greatest Russian successes are in the field of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_technology" rel="nofollow - space technology and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_exploration" rel="nofollow - space exploration . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky" rel="nofollow - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was the father of theoretical austronautics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_art#cite_note-55" rel="nofollow - [55] His works had inspired leading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow - Soviet rocket engineers such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Korolyov" rel="nofollow - Sergey Korolyov , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Glushko" rel="nofollow - Valentin Glushko and many others that contributed to the success of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program" rel="nofollow - Soviet space program at early stages of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race" rel="nofollow - Space Race and beyond. In 1957 the first Earth-orbiting artificial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite" rel="nofollow - satellite , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1" rel="nofollow - Sputnik 1 , was launched; in 1961 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmonautics_Day" rel="nofollow - 12 April the first human trip into space was successfully made by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Gagarin" rel="nofollow - Yury Gagarin ; and many other Soviet and Russian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_space_exploration" rel="nofollow - space exploration records ensued, including the first http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewalk" rel="nofollow - spacewalk performed by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Leonov" rel="nofollow - Alexey Leonov , the first space exploration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_%28space_exploration%29" rel="nofollow - rover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme" rel="nofollow - Lunokhod-1 and the first http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_station" rel="nofollow - space station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_program" rel="nofollow - Salyut 1 . Nowadays Russia is the largest satellite launcher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_art#cite_note-56" rel="nofollow - [56] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_art#cite_note-57" rel="nofollow - [57] and the only provider of transport for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism" rel="nofollow - space tourism services. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_art#Science_and_innovation |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 11:22
Well it wasn't the fact that he was Russian that made it incredible more that this spacy electric device was created in 1919 - well before the synth, whilst still being able to convey some of the same vibes n moods.------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: cstack3
Date Posted: April 16 2013 at 11:57
Yeah, that was mentioned in articles on Montrose (the band) back in those days! Circus etc. Jeez, that was a great band! Sammy Hagar was in fine form, and the band was tight as a drum! Some of my first songs I learned on guitar were from the first album ("Rock The Nation" is a really fun song to play!). Here's some Theramin for ya! |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: April 20 2013 at 15:42
NP: Open Fire ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Fitzcarraldo
Date Posted: April 23 2013 at 14:22
Sorry to be pedantic, but the instrument used on Good Vibrations was an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-theremin" rel="nofollow - Electro-Theremin , a.k.a. Tannerin, not a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin" rel="nofollow - Theremin . A Theremin looks like this:  whereas an Electro-Theremin looks like this:  and you can actually see the Electro-Theremin in action in... Good Vibrations in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CelV7EbuV-A ------------- http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=326" rel="nofollow - Read reviews by Fitzcarraldo |
Posted By: lucas
Date Posted: April 26 2013 at 02:18
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Barbara gaskin and Dave Stewart recorded a song called 'Mr Theremin' as a tribute to the creator of this instrument but I am not sure they use any theremin on it... ------------- "Magma was the very first gothic rock band" (Didier Lockwood) |