[S06E05] December 2024 - Jake Rothman


In this December 2024 edition of the Theremin 30 Podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Russia, the Netherlands, and the USA. Rick visits with theremin designer Jake Rothman about the new Dubreq Stylophone Theremin. 

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 LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2024 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  0:00  
Rick, this is Theremin 3030, 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  0:17  
hey. Happy holidays. Welcome to the December 2024, edition of the theremin 30 podcast, with Christmas just a few days away, I hope Santa Claus brings you the theremin or Theremin album you've been wanting. That is, of course, if you are good this year, or at least nice in tune with the season, I've got a lovely traditional Christmas song from Armin ra later in the show, also for the first time on this podcast series, I have music from social media sensation Caroline Scruggs. My special guest this month is Jake Rothman. Jake designed the prototype of the fun new stylophone theremin. Before all of that, though, I'm going to spin excerpts from two extended tracks that feature the more experimental side of Theremin music. First up is a tune from the new album called Night by Russian recording artists, singing stones featuring Chilean thereminist Agnes Paz. After that, a live improvisation featuring Dutch thereminist Miss Terry. I'll tell you more about both performances on the other side.

We started the show with an excerpt from an experimental recording called since evening by singing stones, a collaboration between Russian musicians, Constantine and Mila Souza and Chilean thereminist Agnes Paz. It's on a brand new album called night, and you can download it for free from band camp just click on the artist's name in this month's show notes at Theremin thirty.com after that, we heard a portion of an improvisation by Miss Terry and CO that was performed for a live audience this past September in afta, Netherlands. Miss Terry plays a Gaudi labs open Theremin v4 and CO plays a UFO controller. Each of them also wore a different type of Arduino powered MIDI glove that allowed them to further shape their sounds with hand gestures.

It's time now for the theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On december 28 Thierry Frenkel will present a Hanukkah concert in Freiburg, Germany. On January 5, torwald Jorgenson performs at Bach Fest in Tallinn, Estonia, also on January 5, via marteau has a show in Los Angeles, California. For details about these events and more. Check out the full calendar at Theremin three zero.com up next, I have music from Caroline Scruggs, a multi talented musician from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Her Theremin infused songs and videos have been streamed millions of times on social media, but this is her debut on the theremin 30 podcast from her current album, space. This track is called holographic real estate.

That was holographic real estate, a song by Caroline Scruggs from her space album released this past summer and available for streaming on Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube. To find out more about Caroline, click on her name in this month's show notes at Theremin30.com.

what you're hearing right now is a track made by my London, UK based friend, Simon Beck. It's one of the very first songs published online that features the brand new stylophone theremin. Simon was able to connect me with his friend Jake Rothman, a theremin designer who built a prototype instrument that eventually became the stylophone Theremin recently shipped by my friends at dubrec. Jake spoke with me by telephone from his home in Wales. Jake Rothman, thank you so much for being on the theremin 30 podcast. 

Jake Rothman  14:48  
Hello. How are you? I'm doing fine here. It's the shortest day of the year, but we're hanging on in here. 

Rick Reid  14:55  
I haven't talked to you before this week, but I think I've known of you for several years. Is because of the theremin world message board and hearing about your projects that you've been doing over the years involving Theremin and other electronic gadgets, I was looking for someone to talk to me about the new stylo phone. Theremin and our mutual friend Simon Beck told me about you and that you were involved in the design. So I want to talk to you about that in a minute, but first of all, give our listeners a little introduction of your musical electronics career.

Jake Rothman  15:30  
Well, he probably started when I was about 12 years old. I used to prefer looking down the back of the telly, looking at all the valves rather than the front. First things I made were simple radios and things. And eventually you get bored at listening to other people's music. So eventually you start thinking, Oh, how can I fiddle with the sound a bit? And then you do something like make a spring reverb. I had a loud speaker on one end glued to this spring, and then a old record player pick up on the other end, and that was my first reverb. I eventually studied it at the only course in the country at the time, which was at the London College of furniture, where we were taught by the simp designer called Tim ord used to work re ms, and so that's where we got started, and Simon Beck was on the course with me.

Rick Reid  16:23  
How did you go from your electronics courses to actually making instruments and products that were available for sale? 

Jake Rothman  16:32  
I started off working in recording studios. It would be first proper job in the top notch North London recording studio. And then here's the funny thing, I couldn't do the job because I couldn't stop talking. So I suddenly realized that job I wanted wasn't right. Went back to the college and moaned about it bit. And then there's a bloke saying, Oh, I can't stand teaching you. And you know, do you want to take my class? So I ended up teaching electronics for guitars. It was the first course I did. 

Rick Reid  17:02  
How do you get to the theremin then?

Jake Rothman  17:04  
Ah, that was through teaching. There was this student said, just said he wanted to make one. And thought, Oh, that looks interesting. You showed me this little book. He showed me the theremin. It was soon, like 1976 this design, and we built it, and it didn't work very well at all. That was horrible to drift it all over the place and have a horrible buzzy sound. And I just kept on fiddling about with it, and learned little tricks to make it work, like putting the oscillated coils at right angles to each other so they didn't lock together, and things like that. And then I came up with my own design, which I made into a thing called pocket for women. It was basically just a little plastic box with a little rubber area, or it looked like a little mobile phone. And that was a hit. I and then I got it, got that published in practical electronics about 1994 or something like that. And it from there, sold kits, you know, just kept on playing with this circuit make it better. Then I made a big one called the Elysian. Did that with a guy who would brilliant so digital PCB circuit, because it reached the point where I couldn't design the PCB with sticky tape anymore. That rusted for about 20 years of making us about 2014 or something like that, is a limit to what you can do with making things by hand. So this is where John Simpson and stylophone come in. And it was Simon Dec who introduced me to stylophone people. He's always been obsessed with stylo folks. So yes, definitely. Simon told John about me that, oh, I know this crazy guy who does analog circuits, blah, blah, blah. And then we designed the original stylophone from them. There was this digital model that been digitized. I had to make it analog again. So I must have been one of the first to convert a digital thing back to analog again. And then John wanted me to make this funny synth, you know, he wanted to make sure that competed with those very cheap Japanese synths like the gakkan. It was a little analog synthesizer with a Stylophone-type keyboard. And he wanted to make a better one. So that's what the Gen x1 was.

Rick Reid  19:17  
Yeah. And it's really fun to play. I enjoy mine. 

Jake Rothman  19:20  
And then the theremin. This one day, I was chatting to John, and I wanted him to make a foramen, but because he had his own ideas, like joining it up with the slider thing, I wanted to make myself the slider base, like an old T chess base, but an electronic version. I don't know who it was. It might have been Simon ord Johnson said, well, that slide of it, why don't you combine it with a fellow min? And I thought, well, that's crazy. Let's do it as two separate products. Let's do a theremin and do a slider bass. And John insisted on joining the two together, which turned out to be a really good idea, because. Yes, if you can't play the param in, which is very difficult, you can at least play the slider Theremin, which sounds like a theremin. And he just kept on going. And then I joined things together, and one side modulates the other, and that's where it does the crazy noises that sound like nothing else. It's the modulation. 

Rick Reid  20:19  
So I guess we should explain to people who haven't seen the stylo phone. Theremin, it's actually two instruments in one cabinet. On the left side you have a single antenna. Theremin, so no volume control, but you have pitch and on the right side, or on the base of it, you have something like what has been referred to as a tannerine or an electro Theremin, yeah,

Jake Rothman  20:41  
I call it slider Theremin because it's a slider pot. It's a fader pot, basically. 

Rick Reid  20:46  
So a lot of people think that that there's a theremin in the song Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, but it's actually an instrument more similar to what you have built into the stylo phone, Theremin, that's right, yeah, I bought one, and I've been playing around with it for a week or two, and I wouldn't imagine anyone using it to solo with an orchestra. It's not that kind of a theremin.

Jake Rothman  21:10  
It's a funny noise machine. It's not a concert itch, accurate, smooth. I mean, we could make one like that, but it would cost 500 quid,

Rick Reid  21:19  
but you can play, you can play a melody on it. I get about, oh, octave and a half range. But really, what you're talking about is it's, it's more fun and more effective creating sci fi noises and eerie drones. And the combination of the two sides of the instrument is really interesting, because you can have a continuous tone coming from the slider part of it, while you vary the sound of the theremin and the two actually work kind of like a ring modulator. 

Jake Rothman  21:53  
Yeah, it's a frequency modulation which sounds like ring mod when you do it fast enough, you know, it's wobbling the pitch so, like the slider, it can modulate the pitch of the firming, and then the firming can modulate slider, and then on the last position of the switch, they both modulate each other. And it sounds so horrendous. It sounds interesting. It's so chaotic. 

Rick Reid  22:18  
The shape of the cabinet really intrigues me, because it looks like something from the late 60s, early 70s. I assume that you didn't design the cabinet, but your circuit design affected how the cabinet came about. 

Jake Rothman  22:31  
Yeah, because it was speaking too. So the original prototype I made was two lumps, a flat thing with slider on it, and then a vertical thing with all the knobs on and then the aerial on it. And it's come out really well because it looks like a sort of version of the VCS3. 

Rick Reid  22:48  
One of the other features of the cabinet is it's got a metal face plate, and you can touch the metal, yeah, and make the pitch shift. 

Jake Rothman  22:56  
You're earthing yourself on the metal plate. The metal plate is connected to the earth in the circuit. When you touch it, it earth your body. And probably, if you re tune it all while touching the plate, you can get a wider range out of it. Oh, I have to try that. The thing is, with with the theremin, it's best to Earth it. If you can give it a good Earth, you'll get much more range out of it.

Rick Reid  23:21  
What's it like for you to finally, after having worked on this project for years, to see some of the demo videos that players are posting online, or the recordings that our friend Simon has made?

Jake Rothman  23:35  
Yeah, I love it. You know, could you all do different stuff to what I would do? I mean, because my 27 year old son still is home, I used his young years, because what old fogeys, Age 62 like myself like is quite different from what young musicians like. 

Rick Reid  23:54  
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today and to learn a little bit about your history with electronics, and also this new stylo phone Theremin, which is really excited to see it finally out on the market. You know, that was announced last January, and how people can actually bring it home and not touch it. 

Jake Rothman  24:13  
Yeah, brilliant. 

Rick Reid  24:16  
Many. Thanks to Jake Rothman for visiting with me about the stylophone Theremin, and thanks to Simon Beck for letting me play some of his music featuring the stylofoam theremin. I have a link to the instrument's official website in this month's show notes. Now to wrap up the show and the month and the year, here's a lovely holiday hymn from the theremin Christmas album by Armen Ra This is Oh Come All Ye Faithful. 

Thank you so much to singing stones. Miss Terry and CO Caroline Scruggs, Simon Beck and Armin Roth for sharing their music. Please support these artists with your clicks, your ears and your money if you can also. Thank you to my interview guest, Jake Rothman for visiting with me about the stylophone Theremin and as always, a special thanks to the listeners who support this show with small one time or monthly donations. I hope you have a safe and joyous time in what's left of this holiday season, and we'll see you again in the year 2025.

David Brower  29:49  
You've been listening to the theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin30.com.
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