"Music? Yeah, it's very good. It's very good for the digestion."
June 4, 2017 8:18 PM   Subscribe

 
1:20 point is where it really starts to happen

the original ... for context
posted by philip-random at 9:19 PM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Fantastic! Thank you Atom Eyes. I love watching the hand movements and precision of really good theremin players. She's great!
posted by pt68 at 9:22 PM on June 4, 2017


This song. This song.

As excitable teens we used to crank it up loud on the stereo after school and gallop around the house practicing Tuco's manic eyes. One of, if not, Morricone's best.

This is a lovely interpretation and she has excellent theremin form, which as pt68 says is a joy to behold. Thanks for posting this AE!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:15 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not the biggest fan of theremin, but she rocked that and hard.
posted by Samizdata at 11:21 PM on June 4, 2017


I also gave the strangest urge to dig up my copy of Gun for reinstallation and play.
posted by Samizdata at 11:26 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Am I a bad person for not liking this? The original takes over the room, and is staggeringly smart because, you know, Ennio Morricone.
She completely loses the epic scale of the piece, which is integral to it especially when you watch the sequence in the original film, and reduces it to her own immaculate good taste.
Muzak, very tasteful Muzak, but Muzak all the same.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 1:09 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


1. Love seeing and hearing excellent theremin artists, and really enjoyed this, Atom Eyes, thank you!

2. 🏆 Achievement unlocked for first post with the theremin tag (kind of unbelievable, but it's true!)!

3. I don't think it's Muzak
posted by taz at 2:24 AM on June 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


Every time I see theramin players, my brain is convinced it's a scam and there's someone with a Roland keyboard hidden nearby.

I mean, in the film it's a masterwork, partly because it's a beautiful piece, partly because it's perfectly matched by the visuals, and partly because it's preceded by two hours of building up to it. But this is pretty good.
posted by Merus at 2:27 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


I appreciated that she didn't go overboard on the vibrato on the theremin (which seems all too common), highlighting her exceptional pitch control.

Now I'm wondering what someone could do with a theremin and a dumptruck of guitar pedals. (And skill and taste, obviously.)
posted by Rhomboid at 4:47 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yes, that pitch control is so precise, aided by gestures like she's crimping her hand around a violin's neck.

The original is kind of Morricone's Bolero in how it keeps adding to the same basic melodic phrase.. At some point you expect the walls to come down and a second orchestra to join in. This is more of a lounge version, but that's not bad. She turns the harmonies inside out, introducing the melody almost halfway through the recording. She builds up to and aims at a different point in musical space than the original, and hits her mark perfectly.
posted by kandinski at 5:02 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Am I a bad person for not liking this?

If you are, you're not alone. It's cool because theremin but it's so pale and thin.
posted by Sternmeyer at 7:12 AM on June 5, 2017


Now I'm wondering what someone could do with a theremin and a dumptruck of guitar pedals. (And skill and taste, obviously.)

Pamelia Kurstin, Thinking Out Loud

Not a dumptruck of pedals exactly, but fantastic use of a looper and some distortion.

Eyck is more like the Olympic athlete who has been training to technical perfection since she was 4, while Kurstin is the crazy street parkour type. Instead of absolutely dead-on pitch control, her thing is articulation -- she does an incredible imitation of walking bass on a theremin just by "plucking" the airspace perfectly.
posted by Foosnark at 7:27 AM on June 5, 2017


(Eyck's skill is impressive but I often find her music kind of... bloodless.)
posted by Foosnark at 7:27 AM on June 5, 2017


Achievement unlocked for first post with the theremin tag (kind of unbelievable, but it's true!)!

For certain values of theremin.

1 posts tagged with theremen.
25 posts tagged with theremin.
3 posts tagged with theramin.
posted by zamboni at 7:40 AM on June 5, 2017


All of the YouTube clips of Myrtle Snow's "Don't be a hater, dear. It's a theremin." line from American Horror Story: Coven either stop before she mentions the theremin or are excessively long cam grabs with background noise. Life is pain.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:13 AM on June 5, 2017


The There Men were my favorite post-funk band.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:13 AM on June 5, 2017


*sheepishly adds correct "theremin" tag to post*
*leaves "theremen" tag in place for self-flagellation purposes*
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:10 AM on June 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Eh, it's all transliteration anyway. I don't think you can even make a Термен tag on MeFi without things getting weird, encoding-wise.
posted by zamboni at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2017


That was certainly cool. "Bloodless" - eh, a bit, but it's a THEREMIN, so forgiven :-) What an unusual, incredible device.
posted by davidmsc at 10:39 AM on June 5, 2017


If you are, you're not alone.

You are both bad,
posted by maxsparber at 11:52 AM on June 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love this and I'm loving all the related videos. One of my favorite orchestra pieces, Clair de Lune, has a theremin cover!
posted by numaner at 2:40 PM on June 6, 2017


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