The GT Theremin was built over the course of a few months in fulfillment of the capstone project requirement for my B.S.E.E. The design and construction was mostly carried out by myself and my friend James Lewis.  I developed the circuitry, and James conceived most of the physical design for the enclosure.  We had additional project support from fellow students Ryan Adams and Yuri Yelizarov, lab coordinators Edgar Jones and James Steinberg, as well as professors W. Marshall Leach and Whit Smith.  The result came out nearly exactly how we first envisioned it, and I think it is best introduced with a few photos.

Well that looks pretty cool, but what the heck does it do?  Let’s begin at the beginning.

Theremin history

The Theremin is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1920 by Russian scientist Lev Termen.  Known by Termen’s anglicized name, the Theremin was one of the earliest examples of an electronic musical instrument.  It was a curiosity in its time since it is played without any apparent physical interaction with the performer.  To produce tones, the player merely moved his hands about a pair of antennas.  By moving one hand nearer to a vertical rod, the performer could increase the Theremin’s pitch.  Positioning another hand closer to a horizontally-mounted rod would lower the instrument’s volume. With pitch and volume control possible via a mere wave of the hands, a performer could—in principle—play any melody imaginable.

After being issued a United States patent for his invention, Termen licensed the Theremin to RCA for commercial production.  Only a few hundred Theremin were built under the RCA moniker before it was discontinued due to a lack of success in the market.  However, the Theremin carved out a more obscure niche in pop culture history by lending its voice to the sound tracks of a number of movies and television shows from the 1940s through 1960s.  It was most often used to produce eerie, sometimes “alien” background sound effects for films like The Thing (1951 film, not the famous John Carpenter rendition) and The Day the Earth Stood Still, as well as for television programs such as My Favorite Martian and The Outer Limits.  It is thought that a Theremin could have been used to produce the “voice” for the original Star Trek series opening song, but it isn’t clear whether this is the case.  Regardless, the unearthly yet almost human-sounding tonality of the Theremin is readily recognizable and firmly associated with mid-twentieth-century science fiction.

Okay, that’s all well and good, but you’re probably getting tired of reading about something which needs to be heard to be appreciated.  For that, I suggest watching the opening credits from the aforementioned 1951 science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Actually, I recommend watching the whole thing sometime if you haven’t seen it.  It’s an excellent film directed by Robert Wise, and one of my personal favorites.  Anyway, here’s an original trailer for the film; the Theremin parts kick in at around 43 seconds:

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