Pallas Because we're having this little moment, I know it won't shock you to hear that I built a theremin from a kit once. You have to find the pitch in mid air from the reference point of just your body and the xy space between two antennae. If I want to play it these days I have to check it out from the library, because I couldn't handle that much unknown, and donated it to their Library of Things. The only book I had on the instrument required that you already read music, and this was years ago before I realized I could, duh, learn that, so I guess I have to decide if I'm going to un-quit theremin now. 🤣
hahaha!!! Nice one Pallas!! Oh geez. I haven't ever used a theremin before. Wow --- yes indeed. I can see what you mean about getting a reference for that one. Thanks for mentioning theremin, and that you built one from a kit! That is indeed an amazing instrument - being able to pitch bend in real time to your own controlled/controllable profile.
That has got me thinking again - about theremin and our own voices.
You know how a lot of people in general - ones without perfect/absolute pitch - where they have to work on developing relative pitch/intervals abilities in order to become more at-one with the piano etc? I always think back to our own voice. The way in which we can think in our mind what pitch we want to 'sing' - and then a few seconds later - when we then physically sing what pitch we have in our mind --- it really does come out physically to that same particular pitch we had/have our mind.
So - basically - our body (brain/body etc) has somehow - however it did it - has perfectly tied 'mind/brain pitch/frequency' with physical pitch/frequency. That somewhat perfect link between mind pitch and physical pitch from our mouth --- has been mastered by our body - naturally mastered. As in - we have outstanding control of our own voice instrument pitch. It still amazes me. Astounding actually.
And I think that same sort of control is what a lot of people (playing and learning piano) want to achieve in the area of piano. They want to be able to think of what pitch (or pitches) they want to play - in their minds, and translate that directly to the piano - as if singing - like the way we use our own voice to sing what we want in our minds. That's one form of musical freedom. And when combined with music theory and composition techniques etc --- that builds on the musical freedom.