David,

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 07:26:13 -0500, David Van Horn wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf
> > Of Bill & Pookie
> >...
> > http://www.zzounds.com/item--BIGETHERWAVE
> > 
> > Looks like a great PIC project, "Pic Theremins"
> > Or Pic Theremins/Proximenty Detector".
> 
> If it doesn't do both pitch and volume, it's a noisemaker.
> The pitch "antenna" tuning is quite a bit more interesting than you'd
> think.

I've always loved Theremins - but I've never managed to find one to have a go, but I understand the Science 
Museum in London has one, so I may have to go and find out!  In one of the Back to the Future films there's 
one just standing there in the professor's junkroom - it's never referred to, just standing there as a prop.  
Shame!

Someone did do a PIC-Theremin project in EPE magazine a couple of years ago, but it had a potentiometer as the 
volume control, and I thought that was a copout (wasn't even a sliding pot, as I remember!).

The famous Beach Boys' use of a Theremin in "Good Vibrations" is dodgy too - seeing the film of them doing it, 
the pitch control is done using a sliding shorting bar on a pair of rails, which makes it just a VFO in my 
opinion, not a real Theremin.

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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