Hey i’m Jake and toknight we’re doing something a little different.
But before we get into it pour yourself a nice big cup of coffee or caffeinated beverage
of your choice because we’re about to APP ALL KNIGHT.
If you follow Michael on twitter you might have seen him use a Theremin
He's actually playing it
When you play the Theremin one of your hands controls pitch and the other controls volume.
Without touching anything your hands modulate how much charge is dumped by the instruments capacitor.
A capacitor stores potential energy in an electric field by using two conductive plates separated by air
or any other non-conductive material.
Each of the theremin's antenna only have one of the needed play so guess where the others are.
That's right your hands.
Changing how near or far your hands are from each antenna changes the respective capacitor’s
Charge and thus the sound
The theremin was invented by Leon Theremin in 1920.
He originally called it an etherphone, but eventually it was given his name instead.
the concept of electric impulses being used
to create pitch eventually led to the synthesizers we know and love today.
So in this episode we're gonna be focusing on theremins
All these apps are for iPhone. We'll link to ones down there that are on android as well
Let’s start with a simple one: Theremin Pro.
This app doesn’t actually simulate the playing of a theremin, but it gives a very
intuitive way of recreating the sounds.
Up and down changes the volume, and left and right changes the pitch.
Easy right?
Maybe a little too easy.
Let’s take it to the max with Therimax
This one can use both the touch screen and your front facing camera.
This app is nice because it actually shows the name of the notes you’re playing as
you play them.
I know I say this a lot, but I really do appreciate you.
It must be your magnetic personality, but how can you tell if something will be attracted
to a magnet?
Well, you need a magnet.
Let’s go find one- oh wait, there’s one right on your phone.
Up in the top right corner of an iphone and in the center for android phones, is the Magnetometer.
A magnetometer is a specially designed electromagnet that is usually used in electronic compasses
to read the earth’s magnetic field.
That’s all really interesting, but can we make music with it?
This app, just called, well, Theremin, uses all the sensors in your phone to do just that.
Turning on one of the three axes for each of these sensors will allow you to tilt, shake,
and magnetize to make crazy soundscapes.
Going back to the magnetometer, you can use both magnets and magnetic metals
to affect the pitch.
You can use anything from a hairclip to a fridge magnet, which I have right here!
And this is what happens when I turn on the magnetometer in this app.
(Theremin noises and oohs)
This is very similar to the way a real theremin works, which creates its own electromagnetic
field that you then disrupt with your hand.
The other sensors will change the pitch in different ways.
The gyroscope will change tones depending on which way you tilt your phone, and the
accelerometer will change depending on the speed that the phone is moving.
This app gets those two mixed up, but we'll forgive them because it's still pretty cool.
Let’s see what it all sounds like together.
Oh, that's like the new drake song. It's gonna the smash hit of the summer. How do I stop this.
Now we come to our final theremin app. and this one's actually my favorite
but it does cost money, so these other free ones are good choices.
Now this one that is also called theremin uses your phones flashlight rather than magnetics.
The app uses the camera to measure the light reflected off your hand to change the note.
What’s fun about this one is that if you cover up the flashlight you can point it at
other light sources to change the pitch.
Like the wall, or the sun, or even THIS VIDEO you sneaky little DONGer.
This one’s a bit more musical than the others, as you can set it to “autotune” to a certain
scale which you can customize.
You can also change the sounds and effects to create something a little more fun than
just a bunch of bleeps and bloops like some kinda robot.
Let me just give you a quick little example.
woah
You can do other things like up the vibrato.
Pretty neat. The harmony can also change. Let's bring it up a few octaves. oh, let's bring it down a few octaves.
That sounds spooky,
Before you begin theremining around and sharing your wonderful compositions with the world
I would highly recommend one more app for you which is the sponsor of this episode: Audible.
You've probably heard of Audible, they have a giant massive library of audiobooks
And one that I really, really, liked recently is called The Terror.
And the Terror is a very interesting book. It's a historical fiction book about the expedition in 1845
of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus that went to discover the northwest passage.
And as you might know they never made it. They never came back. That was the last time that anyone heard of them.
And so this book is about what happened. Obviously it's a fictional telling because we don't really know,
but it's from the perspective of the crew and the captains about what actually went down
in the ice and the snow. But there's a twist. And that is that there's a monster tracking them down.
And it's really really cool, and actually what I think is most interesting is the fact that we didn't even find
the ships until about 160 years later.
That's when we discovered where they actually were.
And it's really cool. There's cannibalism all this fun stuff. It's an incredible book.
And if you sign up using the link in the description below: audible.com/appallknight
You'll get one free audiobook with a 30 day trial. So I would highly recommend getting the Terror if you want.
And you can text the URL or appall knight to 500-500
Again that's audible.com/appallknight for one free audiobook and a 30 day trial.
The Terror is really fantastic. It's kinda graphic, there's a lot of violence so I would recommend keeping that in mind.
but it is really really good. Ok, I hope you enjoy theremins. I hope you enjoy Audible.
And I enjoy spending this time with you. And that face. Oh what a face. Let's just look at that face.
Let's just imagine that I'm gonna be a theremin: ooooooooooooo
That's the sound that happens when I look at you. And as always thanks for watching.