Stuff You Should Know - Theremins: World's First Electronic Music

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

In 1919 a brilliant Russian scientist accidentally stumbled onto the first electronic musical instrument in history – the theremin – which you play not by strings, keys, or even percussion, but by moving your hand in the air around it. Prepare to science! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry out there and this is Stuff You Should Know.

That was a pretty good theremin impression, don't you think? Hey, not bad. I am a little bit proud of myself because the theremin, it turns out, is very, very tough to play and it's even tougher to imitate. So that was something of an accomplishment for me. Have you ever tried to play one? No, I haven't. I have not, no. It's weird that you had to think about that. Well, I mean, I was just trying to think like, I think there's one in the House Stuff Works office somewhere or the Stuff Podcast office. I want to say that there is. Well, I'm there, man. Let's go get it.

Okay, so look around. We'll wait. We'll wait. We won't edit out you going and wandering around and looking for. I'll just talk to the people and keep them busy. That's weird. I mean, I'm obviously not going to go look for it, but I had no idea that was one here. I think so. I could be making that up, but doesn't it seem like the kind of thing that would be there? Oh, totally. So for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about theremins and if you still don't know what we're talking about, let us describe this. We should play a clip too. We'll be able to do that, right? Oh yeah, sure. Sure. Well, here you go. We'll play a clip of something that will figure out

what it is later. Ready? Yeah. So there's whatever we selected post-production to put in to demonstrate theremins, but that eerie high-pitched kind of wailing sound, that's a theremin. And a theremin was the world's first electronic musical instrument. And it was created by accident, as we'll see, but it uses electromagnetism, actually electromagnetic interference, to produce a changing pitched sound, changing in pitch and changing in volume. And you can create this sound, this music, I guess you would call it, without any kind of mechanical energy whatsoever. You're just moving your body or your hands in and out of the electromagnetic field around the theremin, and that's what

produces the sound. It's pretty cool. Yeah, and as we will also see, it's key that you use a hand because your body, it has to be something that conducts electricity, like you could, technically you could use metal or something like that, but you wouldn't have the nuance that you're able to achieve by, you know, very sort of micro movements in your hand and your fingers. Right. And when you're playing it, it sort of looks like, almost like you're conducting an orchestra the way you hold your hand. It's very evocative of conducting, I think. Yeah, and it's funny to say that because theremin, who was actually named Terman, he said that it was like creating music out of thin air, just like a conductor does.

So that was very astute of you, Charles. Thank you. So yeah, you mentioned Terman. This guy, his Russian name, I guess, was Lev Sergeyevich Terman, T-E-R-M-E-N. I guess Leon Theremin sounds a little more Western. Did he change it? I don't know. You know, here in America, we just change it for you, you know? You come through Ellis Island, you get basically a whole new name that Americans can pronounce more easily. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. That's a good point. So when Lev was in his early 20s, in the sort of early 1900s, in 1919-ish, he was working at the Physical Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. And he was working, and as you'll see, he, you know, for the majority of his career, worked for the Russian state.

But he was working on an invention that was supposed to measure the density of gas in a chamber, and essentially he was trying to develop like a land-based sonar device that used electromagnetism to detect objects that came within a certain area. And he was like, hey, I'm a pretty young, hip, creative guy. I wonder if I had the sound to this thing, and not intending to create anything musical, but just let me add sound to it to indicate that this thing is even on. And he did it, and Bada Bing, Bada Boom, Bon Jovi, he was like, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, because I mean, like, it would make sense that you want to add sound to it, because if you're detecting something coming within proximity, it's kind of like a metal detector. As you get closer

and closer to the metal, that sound that it makes increases. It's basically the exact same thing, except you're not detecting metal. You're detecting electromagnetic interference, basically, with the theremin. But because he was a young, hip guy, like you said, and also a classically trained cellist, he said, I think that I could turn this into a musical instrument. And he did pretty quickly. He fiddled with it a little bit, maybe a little put another doohickey or two on there. And all of a sudden, he had, like I said at the beginning, the world's first electronic musical instrument. Like if you're into dance music or electronica or anything like that, you owe a great debt of gratitude to Lev Turman. Sure. Should we use some of these things that

you found, some of these descriptors? Yeah, so this initially had like two or three, and I just started adding to one of my favorite things to do is to go around collecting people's hapless descriptions of what a theremin sounds like, because nobody nails it, but all of them come close and they're hilarious in their attempts. Yeah, so here's one across between a violin and a soprano voice. That's not bad. I think that was the original one. Yeah, I mean, you can get, I mean, especially when you get some vibrato going, you can see how one might liken it to a voice. Oh, yeah. It doesn't sound like a voice to me, but I get the comp. Okay, how about this one? A purified and magnified saxophone. Nah. I think if there was ever a complete failure in describing

a theremin sound, it's that one. Yeah, it sounds like a saxophone, like a cheap keyboard, the saxophone button on a cheap keyboard sounds like a saxophone. Yeah, yeah, maybe that's what they meant. Which is not very. I'm just totally missing their point. Let me see, the howling of a haunted wind, that's pretty good. I love that one. This one, I think, comes from theremin himself. A cello lost in a dense fog and crying because it does not know how to get home. For cello, just walking around in the dark by himself. How do I get home? Let me see here. Across between an amplified child slide whistle. So it doesn't say and what? That was a mistake I put or instead of and. That's all one.

Okay, a slide whistle and a human voice and the squawks that emanated from early radio speakers. That was pretty. That one's pretty good because it's the one of the key components of a theremin is that slide because it is, as you will see, and if you listen to theremin music, it's all about that slide. It's not, they're not punctuated with staccato notes. No, and as a matter of fact, I was watching a tutorial by currently the world's foremost thereminist. I believe her name is Carolina Eck, E-Y-C-K. She's German, so however you pronounce that in the German. She makes finger motions to cut off the last motion to create a space in between notes, separate notes rather than she uses the technical jargon for what she's

talking about and I'm not quite familiar with it, but another way to put it is she's cutting spaces into the notes. So she's not sliding it around like a trombone? No, or a slide whistle that's lost in the dark. You do a pretty good slide whistle. Do your slide whistle. I had one of those when I was a kid. That was the best thing ever. I never even did. I'm self-taught. Oh boy, I know what you're getting for Christmas. Oh, nice. Remember that time you got me an empty can of billy beer? Oh yeah, that's right. Man, that was 100 years ago. Or no, it wasn't billy beer. I'm sorry. It was just plain generic beer. The white can was just the black, like Helvetica font that just says beer. Yeah, my friend Eddie's favorite beer of all time. Has he actually drank it?

Yeah, when we went to, there were like four of us that went to LA for spring break in college and stayed with my brother and we went to the store and they had the generic beer and Eddie is a beer guy and he just flipped. He bought like three cases of it. Wow, for 50, 50 cents. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So Theraman has got this instrument going. He's pretty proud of it. Word gets around Mother Russia and word gets to Lenin who at the time was chairman of Russia's sort of newly installed is one word for it, the Bolshevik government and he flipped over it. Lenin was a Theraman nut and he was like, you know what, I'm going to send you on tour, comrade, and this thing is going to want people to champion electricity as a whole just by these

demonstrations. Right. Just so that they can possibly get a Theraman themselves, they're going to install electricity in their house. That's my plan. I'm Lenin. Forget reading lights or warmth. Right. It's the Theraman that they'll want. So he tours Russia for a while basically promoting, you know, electricity, electronic music, Soviet know-how, that kind of stuff and his tour is so successful that they send them on to Western Europe and he toured Western Europe with what were known as his ether concerts, ether wave concerts, not ether concerts. Those are totally different. Yeah. And one of the less known things about Lev Theraman is that while he was touring Europe, just wowing crowds, he was also spying for the Soviet state, which he did for

a while actually. Yeah. I know this, I say this a lot, but this has got the makings of a pretty good movie too. Don't you think? Sure. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'm not quite sure. You'd have to really be a master to pull out the humanity and the compassion and the viewer for this guy because he is morally ambiguous in a lot of places, I think. But in the end, you know, just the kind of treatment he got, I think kind of makes him a sad sack case that you'll feel bad for. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll get to that. But so he's touring around. He, like you said, is a spy for the Soviet regime. And because of this tour, he's being allowed, he's getting all this access to places where he can be a pretty good spy actually, patent offenses and

like industrial complexes and stuff like that. So he's getting access and doing a pretty good job spying for the Soviet regime. And he ended up taking up residence in the United States. I didn't see whether that was a part of the Soviet plan or his own plan. I'm not sure, but he found himself quite at home in New York when he showed up in the US and started becoming kind of the toast of the town. I read that Albert Einstein kept a lab at Terman's apartment in New York on 54th Street. When he visited him, he would just do some work while he was there. He became pretty well known, especially among like avant-garde musicians and composers. He was just kind of a known as like a cool guy. He had a very scandalous marriage in that he married an African-American

prima ballerina whose name is Lavinia Williams. And I think he lived in the United States for a good decade. He showed up in 1928 and he lived there until 1938, I believe. And along the way, because he became such a toast of the town and his theremin, which had been known for a while as his theremin vox, which is theremin's voice, finally got shortened to theremin and RCA said, you know what, I think these things are going to be a hit. We're going to buy the rights from you or at least lease the rights from you and start producing our own. Yeah, because he obviously was wise enough to get a patent in the US in 1928. That was his second wife, by the way. I couldn't get a whole lot about his first wife other than it was clearly in Russia because her

name was Ekaterina Pavlovna. Okay, that's a pretty Russian name. And he was married three times. He had a couple of daughters, I think with his third wife. And I'll talk a little bit more about his kids later. But he gets his patent. RCA, like you said, jumps on board the theremin bandwagon and manufactures a version of the theremin, like an at-home theremin for 175 bucks, which is a really expensive musical instrument. That's 2,700 bucks today. Especially during the Depression. Yeah, I mean, I don't know who they thought they were going to sell them to. RCA made it. They thought they were going to sell them to everybody. Yeah, RCA made it sound like they were onto something really, really big. But it was such an expensive price point. It was such a niche product. I think,

I mean, they sold the first run that they built, but only to rich people who wanted to throw parties and wow people with their theremin, basically. I guess one of the other big problems with it is that they marketed it like there's no strings, there's no frets, there's no, you know, there's nothing. That was your slogan. No strings attached. Yeah, basically, they said that anybody can learn to play this. Make music with the wave of a hand. And the problem is the theremin is really, really hard to learn because it doesn't have things like frets or strings or chord progressions or anything like that. And there's no other instrument like it on the planet. So it's very difficult to learn. And I think RCA made a first production run of like 400 units. And they managed to sell

380 of them, some of which are still in existence today. And I was looking them up. Apparently, if you can find one that's just in terrible shape, you could still probably get 3,500 bucks for it. And one that's in really good condition, mint condition, would be about 13 grand because there's such collector's items, but also because of the original, the electronics inside. Yeah, the circuitry. Yeah, that it makes a sound that's really difficult to replicate because we have such an embarrassment of riches with advancement in electronics today that it's hard to make something sound old-timey and original. You know what I mean? Everything sounds so rich and advanced. So I think that's one of the reasons why people will pay 13 grand for an original RCA theremin.

I bet Jack White has one. Yeah, I'll bet he does too. So when he was in the United States, living there, doing some spy in and doing some theremin playing, like he would put on big, big concerts. He put on a full theremin orchestra, which is to say, I think there were like six of them at Carnegie Hall. So these were big, big events. And like you said, he got married to a second wife there and was leading this double life really. No one knew what was going on, obviously, as a spy. And he got a little more and more nervous. His World War II approaches that he might get ratted out. He's really enjoying this life in America. And he's like, I don't want to do this. The FBI's got a file on me. He didn't say that because he didn't know that.

But the ghost of Leon theremin said that later on. And he was getting pretty deep into debt. And so in 1938, he left the U.S. after 10 years there. Didn't even tell his wife he was leaving, his second wife, and stayed gone until the early 90s. Yeah. And part of that was not by his own decision. Like he stayed gone in part because as Stalin came into power, he was not very, he didn't fancy the old regime. And theremin was definitely associated with that old regime. He was a favorite of Lenin's. So he was thrown into the gulag as the the USSR really started to gain strength and power. And apparently as World War II started to approach, the Soviets realized that they'd actually thrown a lot of valuable scientists in their minds into gulag.

So they went and got them out, including Lev Terman, and put them in a different kind of gulag called the Shoroshka. Yeah, I got it. Shoroshka, which is basically like a prison for scientists. It's like science camp that you can't leave. Exactly. And you can't see your family or friends or connect with the outside world. But you can spend all of your time thinking about ways to come up with new devices that the Soviet state can use. And that is actually where Lev Terman, theremin, came up with this other great invention that he's known for, which is called the thing, or the great seal bug. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good time to take a break. Okay, and we'll come back right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David

Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia

starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, ample podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have

to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So frankly, you really left everybody hanging with that last thing. So let's talk about

the thing or the great seal bug. Okay. Uh, yeah, boy, all these years in, I got to teach you about the cliffhanger. Yeah, I like to, I like to plot along at the most boring pace and stop at the most boring predictable times. So before the thing, he invented something called a Buran, B-U-R-A-N. And that was a list, another listening device that sort of functioned as a laser microphone that you would use today where you would point it at a, at a piece of glass, like someone's, you know, behind that glass stalking and it would sense the vibrations in the glass. Wow, he invented that. Yeah, he invented the Buran. I've heard about that thing. Uh, but that was, um, nothing sort of as far as impact goes compared to the

great seal bug or the thing like you mentioned. And this was really pretty extraordinary that this actually worked. Um, not that his invention worked, but the scam worked. Um, so what he did was he put a passive bug inside a wood carving of the, the seal, the great seal of the United States. They presented it to, uh, Avril Harriman, who was the American ambassador to Moscow, and he hung it on his wall and it allowed himself to get spied on for years. So, so in Harriman's defense, um, it was like you said, it was like you said, he was a very trusting sort, which made him a terrible choice for the ambassador, the American ambassador to Moscow, but it was a passive bug. It didn't use electricity. So there was no possible way for anybody to

sweep for it. So I'm sure they swept this great seal, you know, eight ways from Sunday and turned nothing up. And they're like, all right, put it up. Um, and the, the reason it was passive is because it didn't use electricity and it was activated by microwaves. The microwaves would turn an antenna on. Um, and you could be a few doors down and just beam like a microwave beam toward this thing and it would activate the antenna. And then the place that it was put in the eagle's beak created kind of like an ear, a wooden ear that amplified the sound in the room and the antenna would pick it up and transmit it automatically. Seven years they were able to spy on these conversations and it was, it could have gone on forever, but it was, uh, it was discovered by accident. There was a British

radio operator who picked up the signal and it's like, Hey, something's going on here. And I guess they eventually, you know, probably just tore that room inside out until they found it would be my guess. Right. That radio operator is like, is that, is that Avril Harriman talking? I know that voice. The great, the best part of that story is that they got the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts, the young pioneers to present the plaque. And I was raised as a child of the Cold War, so I strongly suspect the young pioneers were in on it. They knew full well what they were doing. Of course. Communists. Yeah, they were in on it. It was a young Vladimir Putin. Probably, probably Chuck. You never know. Uh, so Theraman was, um, he kind of disappeared from public view

because of the, the, uh, gulag experience and being in science prison camp. Uh, and then, uh, 1967, a New York Times critic named Harold Schoenberg, um, found him quite by accident at the Moscow Conservatory, uh, where he was working at the time. He was writing a story, uh, a rota story that basically kind of outed him and said, Hey, here's Leon Theraman. He's right here in the Soviet Union. Yeah. And he was probably like, finally, I've been waiting for you guys to dig me up. But the, the Soviet state said, you know what? This is not a good thing. We can't have this guy talking to the press and becoming a cause to the lab again. He's just done too much dirt. He's been in a gulag before. He bugged the ambassador like this. He just knows too much. We

don't want him, people paying attention to him. So they ruined him. They ruined his career. They had him fired from the conservatory. They, um, trashed all of the inventions he was working on. And he ended up spending the next couple of decades living, um, in poverty in a, in a group home, in a room, in a group home, um, basically because of that New York Times critic finding him and writing that article again, which is sad on the one hand, but at the other hand, on the other hand, it, um, brought him back from any sort of obscurity he'd kind of been pounded into. Yeah. So this license told about the 80s, uh, when the Soviet Union opens up just a bit and he leaves and goes to Europe. He goes to the U S like we said at the beginning in 1991.

And, uh, then was able to sort of reap a little bit of his reward as, uh, as a, you know, pioneer in electronic music or music period. Um, there's a documentary called Theraman colon and electronic odyssey from the early nineties that is not great, but, uh, it does feature him in the end, which is, which is pretty cool. Like the last third of it has actual interviews with Leon Theraman and him playing it and stuff like that. Sure. I mean, he must have known that he needed to shore up his legacy while he could because, you know, he visited the U S in 1991 and he was dead two years later back in Russia. Um, and he was still working on stuff to the end. He was working on a dance floor that was made up of, um, his turpistone, which was another invention of his,

which was, uh, like a Theraman, but rather than using your hands, he used your whole body and you danced while he was making an entire dance floor out of these. You could have a bunch of people dancing, making the worst possible sounds you can imagine all at the same time. And he was in his nineties. Yeah. He was like 90 97 when he died. So yeah, he was working on this in his nineties. So he was a hip cat until the end. So, uh, while he was gone, something happened in the U S in the 1940s and 50s. Um, the Theraman kind of blew up, uh, and blew up as far as a Theraman goes. It wasn't like it became a staple in, in music or a staple in, in pop music, but it was used largely at first in movies, uh, science fiction, uh, the Alfred Hitchcock spellbound,

most notably maybe, um, the lost weekend. And unless it was science fiction, it sort of came to be a signal for psychological distress. Like if somebody was under the influence of drugs or if that was somebody like locked away in a, in a, what they would have called an insane asylum back then, you might hear a Theraman kind of say, by the way, this character is off their rocker. You right. If you, if your drug trip sound feels to you like a Theraman sounds, you're on a bad trip buddy. You think? Sure. All right. But you can, you could trace the, um, kind of the breakout popularity or at least the introduction to the general public of the Theraman to basically two people back in the 40s and 50s. Um, Miklos Roshia, who was the guy who scored the lost weekend

and spellbound, and Samuel Hoffman, who was a Theramanist and composer who worked with some other kind of more popular composers, Les Baxter and Harry Revelle, to make some really great music, in a couple of new, new types of music, lounge and exotica. Um, and I listened to music out of the moon today, like eight times. I listened to Perfume set to music. How is it? It's okay. Not as much Theraman as, uh, I wanted, I wanted more Theraman. Well, a little Theraman goes a long way for sure. Well, yeah, that's true. But there were parts in music out of the moon where you have to like really listen because it just, it, um, merges so well. It harmonizes so well with the other stuff, like maybe vocalists harmonizing the Theraman or harmonize with it, which is,

now that I know about Theramans, that is incredibly masterful to be able to harmonize with a human voice using a Theraman. Yeah, totally. But those two guys definitely kind of introduced that to the, to the public. And one member of the public that got introduced to the Theraman, who was really responsible for breaking it out, was a guy named Robert Moog. Moog. You might recognize whatever you might recognize from his, um, synthesizer that he was the guy who invented the synthesizer. Well, apparently Robert Moog, uh, his first and last love, I saw someone say was the Theraman. Yeah. He got together with his dad and he built Theraman kits to sell to people. Um, it's kind of one of the cool thing about Theraman. Uh, you can buy one

ready to go, but, uh, all along since the beginning and up to this very day, you can buy a kit to kind of build it yourself because they're very, uh, they very much cater to, uh, circuitry and electronic, uh, wonks who love to get in there with their soldering iron and mess around. So kits were very popular from the beginning and that's kind of how Moog got its start as a company. Yeah. By selling these Theraman kits. Um, and I think it was, uh, 1954 when he started selling them and by the 60s, they were like really ready to be used. They were, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of room and psychedelic music for the Theraman. Um, and so it pops up on some Rolling Stones albums. Apparently, um, uh, uh, Brian Jones, right? Yeah. Brian Jones played the Theraman for

a couple of albums. Um, it's on Whole Lotta Love where Robert Plant has his climax. Um, and then don't tell me that's meant to represent anything else but that. Everybody knows that. I've noticed it's fourth grade. Could you imagine if like, if you were, you know, having sex with Robert Plant in the 1970s and he's, and that's literally what he started doing. Jimmy Page just comes out of the closet playing the Theraman along the company. Oh my Lord, that'd be great. Um, there's a couple of places where you'd think it pops up, but you would be wrong, Chuck. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, uh, well, it's not controversial. The Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations, uh, is probably the most popular song ever to really heavily feature very distinctly what you think is a Theraman. Um, it's actually

something called an electro Theraman. Uh, Brian Wilson calls it a Theraman. Everyone sort of calls it a Theraman, but it's a trombonous thing. Paul Tanner invented it. Um, basically a very simplified Theraman that you could play with knobs, uh, to make it easier to hit the right tones. That, that to me makes it not, not a Theraman. Yeah, it's an electro Theraman. So, um, there's not a Theraman on Good Vibrations as a lot of people think. It's also not a Theraman you're hearing in the Star Trek theme. A lot of people apparently think that it shows up in that Star Trek theme. And that, it turns out is Soprano, Lulee, Gene, Norman hitting all those incredible notes. I don't even, I don't think I've ever heard that theme. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was Beaker apparently who just made a cameo in that, in that version. Yep. Um, so those are two places the Theraman doesn't show up. Uh, it does show up elsewhere in movies like Edward and Mars Attacks, both I think Tim Burton movies, right? Yeah, I bet he's all over the Theraman. Hellboy. Um, it was also in First Man, which I have still not seen, but I guess it's a scene where Neil Armstrong throws his, um, his, uh, young dead daughter's bracelet into a crater in the moon and they use Theraman, which seems like a very bold choice for a recent movie to me. I'm surprised you haven't seen that. I'm a little surprised too. You're a little ashamed as well. Well, I'm surprised I haven't seen it because I'd have a crush on Gosling. Who doesn't do?

No, no. Man, Lars and the real girl is just one of the best movies ever made. Yeah. Also starring a friend of a stuff you should know, Paul Schneider. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's great. So, uh, a bunch of, you know, pop music's really latched onto it in, uh, in the nineties in 2000s, a group called the Silver Apples used one. One of my favorite records from the nineties is a band called Mercury Rev and their album Deserter Songs heavily features the Theraman and a couple of their songs. There's a Sepultura song that has a Theraman and it's played by, um, Jason Newstead, who is the basis of Metallica at the time. There's a trivia answer for you. Seriously. He's like, stand back. You can't crowd the Theraman.

It changes the pitch. There's also, uh, that was your Jason Newstead impression. Sure, I guess. He just looks angry, doesn't he? That's hetfield you're thinking of. Oh, Newstead always had that frown. Oh, really? Well, all of them did really. They were metal, don't you know? And then there was a band called Lothar and the Hand People and Lothar was the name of the Theraman who the band considered the lead singer and the hand people were the people playing Lothar, the Theraman. Yeah. That annoyed me so much. I didn't even look it up to listen. Oh, really? I think it's awesome, man. That's just so 60s to me. I love it. I think it's 2000s trying to be 60s. No, but they're from the 60s. Oh, they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're legit. I'll look into it then.

I see what you mean. Have you seen, what was the name of that band that, um, they just beat up like appliances? I think they're Swedish and they made the rounds. They were like kind of viral, like several years back. I have no idea. They did like a total eclipse of the heart cover, but beating up an oven and a dishwasher. Oh my God. You'd actually like them. That'd be pretty great. And one guy, he's like so scrawny that he can't keep his pants up. So his pants keep falling down every time he hits the stove with the sledgehammer. Every time he hits the stove with his belt. Yeah, basically. Put the belt on. That guy needs a belt more. I don't even think a belt could surface him any longer. I think he needs like an extension cord length. He's got to tie it

as tight as he possibly can. He's thin. And you just unknowingly made another music reference. Well, what? The great, great band, Silverjuice from the late, great Dave Berman. He has a line in one of their great songs, holding up your trousers with extension cords. Well, that's funny. I wonder if he's, when are they from the 90s? 2000s and also featuring friend of the show, Bob Nistanovich. Yeah, no, I knew that. It's basically pavement, isn't it? No, it was Dave Berman, but Malcolm is on the one great, great. I mean, they're all good albums, but American Water is one of the best albums of that decade. I wonder if he was making a surfaces reference, because that's what I was making a reference to. I think Nelson Muntz has a, he uses an extension

cord for a belt. Oh, really? Maybe so. Yeah, he's neglected. I knew this was going to take us down some musical side roads. Sure. And I knew you were going to mention Robert Plant Climaxing, because you say that like every other week. I can't stop talking about. Should we take another break? I think so. And then we're going to come back and explain how a theremin works and then how to play it. Booyah, how's that for a cliffhanger? I'm hanging. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude,

the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala and to be

honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a

skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So a theremin works through electronic magic, basically. I think we should just leave it at that. We could. Now we can't. I really went to a lot of trouble to try to figure out how these things worked in the most simplistic terms possible. And that's really saying something, because the people who write about how theremins work are the people who build theremins, which means that the people who understand things like amplitude and currents and electromagnetic interference and all that stuff. Basically, you've got two different circuits. You've got a pitch circuit and a volume circuit. And if you've

ever seen a theremin, it's basically like a box. And if you're standing at the box, getting ready to play it, on your right, the player's right, is it a single antenna going up vertically that looks like one of a pair of rabbit ears that you would use on an old-timey TV antenna. Look it up, kids. And then on the other side, the left, there's like a round metal, horizontally oriented antenna that comes out the other side of the box. The one on the left, the round one, that's for adjusting volume. The one on the right, the vertical rod is for adjusting the pitch. Yeah, it's sort of volume slash attack. And attack is one of those words that unless you're sort of into playing music, you don't know what it means, but you'll see it pop up on various instruments labeled attack. And

that's – it's called the musical envelope, the four stages of sound. And it starts with attack. That's sort of the beginning of the sound, like right when you strike a piano key or right when you pluck a guitar string. And then it goes from attack to decay to sustain to release. And the volume and attack, it's not quite the same thing, but as far as what we need to know about the theremin, that right – I'm sorry, the horizontal one controls volume and attack. Okay. And then the one on the right, the upright one, it controls pitch. And the way that it produces pitch is it's got two different oscillators in there. And an oscillator is just something that produces alternating current electricity in wave form, right? It produces waves. And one of those

oscillators produces one at a static frequency. It's always the same frequency no matter what. The other one adjusts. And so when you get your hand – oh, we left out a really important thing. The way this whole thing works is because you, live human person, are holding an electric charge right now. We talked about that. Oh, we did. Okay. So that's called your capitance. Yeah. And when your capitance, your electric charge, whatever that may be, and it's going to be different for each person. So I think kind of the implication, Chuck, is that every different person who walks up to a particular theremin is going to produce a different sound. Doesn't that seem right? Oh, I don't know. I never really thought about that. I would think so because I wouldn't

think we're all walking around with the same capitance, although I could be wrong. But regardless, just if that's wrong, totally disregard what I just said. The point is, is that when your electrical charge presented in the form of your hand interferes with the oscillating current that's being created and generated and run through this antenna, it changes that oscillating frequency. And so these two things subtract or add together their frequencies to produce this sound that raises or lowers in pitch depending on how close you are. The closer you get, the higher the pitch, the further away the lower the pitch. And that's basically how it works. The same thing, basically, with your left hand, with the volume or attack, that's it. You're just basically

interfering with the electromagnetic fields produced and carried through these antennas using your own electrical charge. That's how they work. Yeah. And if you watch the documentary, there's one scientist that attaches it to a waveform visualizer to sort of explain it a little better. And he, not better than we did, but just in more detail. You can say it. No, no, no. And he was just said, it's remarkable that Leon Theraman or Terman invented this thing without the use of one of those. Like he was going completely by ear. And I think if had it not been for his training as a cellist, it may not have ever even been anything because you have to have a really, and this sort of

segues into actually playing the thing. Right. You have to have a really, really good ear for pitch to play a Theraman. Because like you said earlier, there are no markers like frets to look at to know where to go to hit a G. It's got a four and a half. I saw a four and a half octave range and also saw five and a half. But you got to know in the air surrounding you in space where exactly to put your hand to get the tone that you want. And if it's off a little bit, it's not going to sound right. So the learning curve is long. It's a tough instrument to really get good at. Extremely so. Yeah. Because I mean, if you know how to play a guitar, you can walk up to a guitar and be like, oh, here's the frets or whatever. I can

put my fingers here and I'm going to make the sound with the Theraman. It's literally different places in the air. And so yeah, you do have to have a good ear. One of the other things you have to have that's essential to playing the Theraman is a steady hand. Yeah. Or I guess, not necessarily, but it definitely helps because if you see somebody kind of moving around like they're just totally whacked out or whatever, playing a Theraman with the sounds they're making is not what it's supposed to sound like. A Theraman is played very delicately. There's a very famous Theraman. It's named Clara Rockmore who said, you play a Theraman with butterfly wings. Yeah. And she was basically saying like your fingers are supposed to be delicate and controlled

like a butterfly wings. And so if you watch people playing Theraman, they're just like they're standing totally straight and still. It's just their hands and their wrists basically that are moving and making these really delicate motions through the air that is producing all of these different sounds. Yeah. And the reason you have to stand still obviously is because any movement of your body is going to affect the sound. That's why I made the Jason Newstead joke in that documentary. There's an old, I don't know who she was. It might have been Clara Rockmore. Maybe. It probably was Clara Rockmore or Lucy Bigelow-Rosen. Maybe, but she was like back off in her accent and she was like, I'm not, you know, I'm trying to be nice about it, but you can't

come any closer. And I tell the first violinist in an orchestra the same thing, like you have to have space around the instrument itself or else it's going to affect the sound. Right. Hey, you know who else played the Theraman? Who's a Theraman master? Who? My friend, Toby. Really? Yes. That fits. Toby's a cool guy. He is very cool. He was from Dallas and the Polyphonic Spree was from Dallas. And apparently like half of Dallas was members of the Polyphonic Spree, except for poor Toby. And so he went to the dude from Tripping Jaysie, I can't remember his name, but the leader of the Polyphonic Spree said, you know, I want to join. What instrument do you need? And the guy was like, I don't know. I want you to go learn to play Theraman and come back. And so

Toby went and taught himself Theraman and came back and joined the Polyphonic Spree. That's right. I think it's Tim something or other. Yeah, I was into them for those first two albums quite a bit. Oh man, they were so great. What great music. Because it was so earnest too, you know, like they weren't being ironic. No, it was just good. Not like that sharp guy and that band of hippies. Who's he? Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zeros, you know, it was the same kind of deal like, hey, let's get 40 people in a band and not have one bar of soap between us. Nope, never heard of them. You know, they had one big hit that you would know. Oh, that home, won't you come home? Home is where I really want to be.

No idea. I mean, I wasn't into them and it was a huge hit. Was that Judy Garland doing that song? Oh boy. So yeah, so Toby is the greatest Theraman player I've ever met. That's awesome. So, you know, you play, like we said, with that, you know, a lot of times, like I said, it looks like you're holding a little, whatever you call it, the conductors. I'm going to do a show on conducting, by the way, just to learn what that thing is, the little stick. The stick. But it looks like you're sort of holding that because a lot of Theraman players tend to

touch their thumb and their forefinger together. And you're, you know, you're sort of wiggling your fingers for vibrato and you can learn basic Theraman and make the sounds that sound good. And then there's like next level Theramining where you really get involved with your fingers in the very subtle movements to create different sounds. Yeah. So it is like a really difficult thing to do and to learn to play in no small part because there aren't frets or anything like that. But also because of the just precision movement of your fingers in hands. And you also can't really get into the music either. You have to stay still because if you sway or, you know, swing your head left or right or anything like that, um, you're going to mess with the,

that, that part of your body is going to come into the electromagnetic field and you're going to mess up the, the sound of the music. That's right. And that's why at hip hop concerts, they say, throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care except for the Theramanist. Right. Very big hip hop instrument. Throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't play there. I think we should have said it this part out. I'm very well made. I'll be very surprised if that ends up in the final cut, Chuck. One thing we didn't mention that seems obvious unless you know about musical instrument or might seem obvious. I don't know what I'm saying. It's obvious to me, but it's going through an

amplifier. Like if you're sitting at home like, yeah, but how does the sound come out? It's an electronic instrument. So it's plugged into an amp. It is. And actually that volume circuit that you're interfering with, you're actually changing the voltage, I believe, of the amplifier. That's how when you move your hand closer and further away, you're affecting the voltage that's, that's released by that, that whatever transformer is supplying the amplifier with the electricity. Yeah. Like you can get a Theraman for not a lot of money or a Theraman kit or I would say get a, one of those new Theraminis that Moog is building. Yeah. Because those are just super, super cool and they sound amazing and they make it a little bit easier on you. Yeah, because they,

they recognize chords, right? So when you move your hand like through the air at a certain way, like it goes through the chromatic scales. It's not, it's not just random stuff. It actually kind of is like a very forgiving and corrective of what you're doing. It figures out what you're trying to do and then makes it sound like it, like you want it to. But the, the, the most amazing thing is there is a dial where you can dial back that level of forgiveness as you get better and better at playing the Theraman. You can just make it so that it's not doing that for you at all and you have to do it yourself, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. And it also sounds synthy and cool. I mean, I like the sound of a regular Theraman, but that Theramani, I had never heard of it until

today and I was like, I might have to get one of those at some point. It's pretty cool. If you're like a maker kind of person and you like music there, you've probably already made Theramans, but if not, check out a guy named Arthur Harrison site, theraman.us. He sells kits and like has all sorts of articles and stuff like that. And then there's a guy named Ken Moore who hacked into like the Xbox connect and the Nintendo Wii and figured out how to turn them into Theramans. And there's one where he does like a, you know, really admirable attempt at the Star Trek theme using his Wii Theraman. Just look up Ken Moore Wii Theraman Star Trek theme and thank me later. It's a cool community. Like I love circuitry and electronic gadgetry

wonks and those communities were like the hams. Like they just really get into their they're shutting the door to their little room and working on very small, very difficult to understand projects and hacking stuff and creating new things. It's just really, really in the spirit of creation and invention. I think in which it was always intended. Nice. Yeah. I mean, the Theraman is all that and then some Chuck. It's a whole bag of chips. You got anything else? Yeah. I sort of promised earlier a little bit of talk about Theraman's legacy with his kids and grandkids. And he did have a daughter. He had a couple of daughters, but he had one named Natasha Theraman from his third wife, who was a Theraman master in Russia.

And then 29, she's 72 now. And then 29 year old Peter Theraman, his great grandson, is also a Russian composer and Theraman master. Pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. That's neat also that they just adopted the westernized version of their grandfather's name too, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. Now you got anything else? Nothing else. Well, before we go Chuck, because it's that time of year and this episode's going to come out around Yumi's birthday, I want to take a second to say happy birthday to my dear sweet wife, Yumi. Happy birthday, Yumes. Thanks. Happy birthday, Yumi. And since I said happy birthday, Yumi, and Chuck did too, that means it's time for Listener Mail. So this is a Listener Mail from

Richard Roberts. And this was just supremely heartwarming. Our book is out, Stuff You Should Know, Colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Huge, huge thanks to everyone who pre-bought it or bought it after its release in audiobook or hardcover form. But the Stuff You Should Know army page has just been lit up with people posting pictures of them with a book, of them reading it, of their kids reading it, of their dogs eating it already that's happened. And this comes from Richard Roberts from the Stuff You Should Know army. Hey guys, thanks for doing what you do. This podcast is wonderful. Just want to email you and let you know about a lovely gesture I just witnessed on the Stuff You Should Know army Facebook page.

One member posted to say they didn't buy the book due to their financial constraints at the time, but that they were so excited that it popped up in a search at their local library. And before you know it, in the comments, there was a fellow, many fellow Stuff You Should Know army fans, scrambling to buy a book for this complete stranger so that she could have her own copy. I think I took some screenshots, or I took some screenshots which I attached. I know you don't always do shoutouts, but the philanthropic book buyers and the original poster might get a kick out of it if you did. And it's a nice story that people might enjoy. And that is Richard Roberts from Down Under and Jaco Dubois is who stepped up first and is buying this book for this person

and sending a book to this person. So that's awesome. Jaco send us an email and we'll send you something nice. Don't know what it is yet, but just send us an email, Jaco, and we want to pay it forward right back to you. That's a lovely idea, Chuck. Very nice. And thanks, Jaco. And thank you. That was Richard that wrote in. That was Richard. Thank you too, Richard. If you want to call out a very nice example of paying it forward or a random act of kindness or anything like that, we'd love hearing about that stuff. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your

favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball,

international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.