[S07E04] August 2025 - Gary P. Hayes


In the August 2025 edition of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid plays music from England, the USA, and Australia. Rick's guest is thereminist Gary P. Hayes.

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA & NEWS LINKS

FREE DOWNLOAD PROMO CODES!
While supplies last, get a free download of the Gary P. Hayes album The Beauty of Sadness: Melancholy Theremin Improvisations. Copy a code below and enter it here: https://garyphayes.bandcamp.com/yum (If it doesn't work, the code has already been used. Try another one.)

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Copyright 2025 Rick Reid 


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TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower 0:04 This is Theremin 30, 30 minutes of Theremin music, news, events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days now. Here's your host, Rick Reid. Rick Reid 0:16 Hey. Welcome to the August 2025, edition of the Theremin 30 podcast. This month, I've got new music and/or deep tracks from Solar X featuring Lydia Kavina, Armen Ra and The Narcolepter, and I'll visit with Australian composer and recording artist Gary P Hayes. So get those earphones firmly planted and/or those speakers turned up loud and get ready for an exciting and/or relaxing half hour of theremin music. Rick Reid 0:51 Let's start the show now with the latest single from solar X, the electronic music project of Roman Belavkin, who's been called the godfather of Russian electronica. After a long recording hiatus, he has a new 18-track album set for release on September 10 that you can pre-order on Bandcamp as a digital download or a limited edition CD. The first single from the album features Lydia Kavina on theremin, and It's called Cycler. Rick Reid 9:24 We started the show with Cycler by Solar X featuring Lydia Kavina on theremin. That track is on a new album called Divergent Sequences, and you can pre-order it right now on Bandcamp. Click on the artist's name in this month's show notes for details. After that, I played a 2021 recording by Armen Ra, featuring the late Rafael A Alonso, called Cold Song. It's based on the classical composition by Baroque era composer Henry Purcell from his music for the opera King Arthur. That's the most recent single from Armen Ra, but he's working on his seventh full-length album right now with crowd funding from his supporters. Last month, Armen made an appeal to his fans, saying that producing albums is a money-losing proposition for him with the current state of the music industry, and asked them to help him pay for professional studio time through a GoFundMe campaign. If you'd like to help and get updates on the album as it progresses, click on the link in this month's show notes at Theremin30.com. Rick Reid 10:31 It's time now for the Theremin 30 calendar of theremin events. At least two theater productions featuring theremin music are playing this month at Edinburgh Fringe. Timestamp, featuring thereminist Karen Cecilia, plays through August 25th, and Falling in Love with Mr. Delamort, featuring thereminist Cornelius Loy, has performances scheduled through August 24th. On August 15th, Madulador de Ondes will be performing new music in Vigo, Spain. The anniversary of Professor Leon Theremin's birthday is either August 15th or 27th depending on which calendar you go by. And there is still time to register for the 2025 Hands Off festival set for September, 19th and 20th near Nottingham, England. Rick Reid 11:18 Two years ago, I got a couple of tracks from The Narcolepter, the Australian theremin and harp duo of Miles Brown and Mary Doumany. These recordings were released by the Library of the Occult Book Club, a monthly series of spooky music to accompany the reading of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel Dracula. Now, you may think this is something I should play in a Halloween episode, but I consulted the novel, and in the story, it was the second week of August when the ghost ship, the Demeter, reached the shore of Whitby, England. So now seems like the perfect time. Here is the Narcolepter with a Dracula-inspired track called Weird Sisters. Rick Reid 14:05 That was the haunting sound of the Narcolepter with a track called Weird Sisters. It's from the Dracula compilation album from the Library of the Occult Book Club. A few vinyl LPs are still available. To order your copy, click on the link in this month's show notes at Theremin30.com. Rick Reid 16:19 Multi-talented Australian thereminist Gary P Hayes has a new album out called The Beauty of Sadness. Besides being a wonderful listen, it is almost entirely improvised. I spoke with Gary recently to find out how this album came together and what we might learn from his techniques. Gary P Hayes, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast. Gary P. Hayes 16:41 Thank you for having me. Rick Reid 16:43 For our listeners who aren't familiar with your music, give us a little bit of a background. Gary P. Hayes 16:48 Yeah, I started playing guitar and clarinet and instruments when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, and then I was very lucky, because I lived in Manchester in the UK, which was during the 80s, which was a pretty famous period for music. So I was able to really nurture my musical skills during that period, running studios and teaching people, picking up more and more instruments. Rick Reid 17:19 Tell us about how you picked up the theremin. Gary P. Hayes 17:22 I taught music technology through the 80s and into the 90s. One of the places was the BRIT School, which is the Fame Academy in London, where I was teaching music technology and sound recording. And they actually had also one, brought in a theremin. It was sort of gifted to the school. So that's the first time I sort of played it in terms of making noises, because I didn't have the time to learn it properly. It's one of those instruments you really have to commit to to play it diatonically and musically. So that's when I first sort of physically well, as you know the old joke where I waved my hands in front of it because he's physically touching it. But I suppose recently, as many people inspired by watching the theremin greats on YouTube. So I remember seeing Katica Illényi's famous Once Upon a Time in the West performance, which was very inspiring. And then I saw some pieces from Rob Schwimmer and a few of the other theremin players that I liked the style of. I was very much into the lyrical, flowing quality of the theremin. And on my birthday in July 2022 I bought a Theremini, which I had for a whole week before I went "Now, this is rubbish. I'm going to get something a bit better." And bought the Etherwave, the latest Etherwave, and then started on the journey. I really threw myself in at the deep end and was practicing ridiculous, one, two, sometimes three hours a day in the early period, just to really, sort of learn how to play it properly. And I had very strong intentions in those early days. Obviously, I was doing a lot of covers and doing my versions of the pieces I liked. I really wanted an instrument that I could express myself through. And that was always the intention to get to the point where I could literally just think the music, and with a wave of the hand, it suddenly appeared. But yeah, that's how I started. And I was very lucky that Katica and Rob, who I mentioned, actually were in contact with me in those early days. So it was kind of odd. I suppose it's a bit like Beyonce or Sting or someone, and they send you a DM and encourage you to carry on and give you some tips and tricks. So that was very encouraging, and it really made me even more committed to learn the instrument properly. Rick Reid 19:54 You've put out several albums in the last few months. Most recently, you have one that I'm not looking at my phone. So now I can't remember the title! Gary P. Hayes 20:04 Yeah. So the new album is called The Beauty of Sadness, which is a series of tracks, I think, with a very melancholy feel, but some of them have quite a big orchestral, abstract feel as well. The very lyrical, melancholy style of the theremin is very much of interest to me. That's why I think I've sort of gone into this groove of a very melancholy, slow, melodic minor based improvisational style. And I noticed, probably in the last four or five months that I have this collection of pieces that seem to work together. You know, they all sounded quite similar, very gentle vibrato and the very melancholy sound the album is 95% pieces that were played first or second take. And by that, I mean the backing was really just played through sort of orchestral plugins on my DAW. Rick Reid 20:04 Is that with a MIDI keyboard? Gary P. Hayes 20:10 Yeah. So literally, just turning it on, having a bit of a fiddle, and then just press and record and going for it. And, you know, sometimes you do very simple chord structures, sometimes you go a bit more avant garde and a bit more orchestral, but then the process of adding the theremin was the interesting part for me, which was, you know, just listen to the piece three or four times while the clarivox or the ether wave was warming up, and then it sort of embeds into your your brain, the structure, and then you can just, you know, literally, first or second take. Some of those pieces on the album are first take improvisations, and it's quite exciting, the possibility of you hitting a bum note is pretty high, so that's part of the excitement for me, actually getting through the piece without any really bad notes. And I tend to obviously keep the pieces or publish the pieces where the intonation is not too bad. But I like the album because they're all original. They're all first second takes, and they have, I think, a cohesion. Rick Reid 22:07 One of the reasons that I was happy to have this chance to talk with you was to maybe learn about your process in improvisation and to try it out myself. So to me and to listeners, how would you suggest that they approach the process that you've used to make this album. Gary P. Hayes 22:25 I think the first thing is be aware of your abilities in terms of intonation. And I always encourage people to just find a drone, some kind of note, that you can just have droning on in the background, and then slowly build up your abilities to play melodies over the top of that. And it really is down to your personal expressive abilities. Once you've got a single note going, at least it gives you a foundation on which to build. And you can decide to go into a major scale, a minor scale, over the top of that drone sound, and just play around. I think play is a very good thing to think about here. Don't, don't get don't think about it too much. Just play random notes. Some of them will work. Some of them won't. And I suppose the next step is to start to think of blocks of notes. So, you know, try and get three or four or five notes together that make a bit of a melody over the top of the drone. Then develop that. Try and shift octaves. Once you hit a nice melody, push it up an octave, see how you're doing on higher scales. I think some people are more comfortable at the higher range than the lower range, because it's harder to sort of hear the notes, and it's really just constant practice, and you've just got to keep doing it and doing it. And probably the most important thing is to stop recording, have a bit of a break and just listen back, because that feedback of you listening back to your performance. So make sure you record it everything you do, play it back to yourself. And then you'll start to go, oh, that bit's Great. Oh, that's bit rubbish. That bit's great. And you'll start to develop a listening ability to your own playing. When you next do your next improvisation, you can start in the back of your mind. You're going, Oh, I'm going to do more of the good stuff. And I know it sounds really simplistic, but that is really the essence of improvisation. Don't overthink it. Just purely go for the things that you like to listen to. You know, after a while, you'll be an amazing improviser. It doesn't matter if no one else wants to listen to it, but if you do, that's to me, is the definition of success in any sort of field. Rick Reid 24:40 The Beauty of Sadness: Melancholy Theremin Improvisations is available now on Bandcamp, and Gary generously provided me with 20 download codes. So if you'd like a free download of the album, be sure to visit the Theremin 30 website before the codes are all used up. Let's finish the show with the title track. Here is Gary P. Hayes with The Beauty of Sadness. Rick Reid 29:27 Thanks so much to Solar X, Armen Ra, the Narcolepter, and Gary P. Hayes for sharing their music with us this month. Please support these artists by buying their albums and attending their shows. And if you'd like to support this show. Look for the tip jar on the Theremin 30 website. Till next time, I'm your host, Rick Reid, and I'll see you somewhere in the ether. David Brower 29:50 You've been listening to the theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin30.com.
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