[S08E04] October 2026 - Joe Edelmann

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

00:00:05 David Brower

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.

00:00:18 Rick Reid

Hello and welcome to the Theremin 30 podcast. What you'll hear over the next half hour and then some is what I intended to be the September episode. But here we are in mid-October. I'm sorry for the delay, but I got overwhelmed with some of my other work and various other personal things going on. So when I had time to work on the show, I didn't have the energy, and when I had the energy, I didn't have the time. But I've got a bit of a lull in my other commitments right now, and time and energy are lining up pretty well today, so I'm happy to be back with you to enjoy some music from around the world. This month we're going to venture beyond the theremin to some related instruments, including the onde Martenot and the Haken Continuum. And my special guest is Joe Edelmann, designer of the new GreenWaves, a synthesizer inspired by the onde Martenot. And to kind of make up for being so late with this episode, I'm going to feature more music and a slightly longer interview than usual and let this show run a few minutes beyond the 30-minute time limit that I usually impose upon myself. Let's get started now with new theremin music from Armen Ra, taken from his current album Theremin Fatale. Then I'll spin an outer-space-inspired performance by Rob Schwimmer on the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, a modern instrument that shares some similarities with both the theremin and the onde. I'll give you details about both tracks on the other side.

00:10:18 Rick Reid

We got started with After I'm Gone, an original composition by Armen Ra from his Theremin Fatale album. You can download it from his Bandcamp page and you get to name your own price. To get there, click on Armen's name in this episode's show notes at theremin30.com. After that, Rob Schwimmer played Beyond the Sky, a multitrack recording featuring a piano, an Andromeda synthesizer, and a Haken Continuum. The Continuum is a fascinating digital synthesizer and controller that features a springy sort of hard-rubber surface with a fabric layer that has a piano-key pattern printed on it. You can press and slide and wiggle your fingers to get a wide range of expression from the synth sounds. And like a theremin and an onde, you can play the frequencies in between the notes of a traditional scale. I've added Rob's music video to the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist so you can see Rob and the Continuum in action.

00:11:19 Rick Reid

It's time now for the Theremin 30 calendar of theremin events. On Thursday, October 15th, Rob Schwimmer, who we just heard, will be playing theremin with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra as they perform Letter from Across the River, a composition by Dalit Warshaw. Beginning October 24th, thereminist Verena Marisa has a series of shows across Germany with guitarist Fred Frith. On October 25th, the Hissy Kits will play three sold-out shows here in Chicago. Also on October 25th, Machiko and Maki combine theremin and dance in a pair of performances in the Gotanda district of Shinagawa, Japan. On October 29th, punk rock duo Human Toys will be playing in Amsterdam. On November 8th, Raphael Merino will perform at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. And on November 21st, several thereminists, including Yuki Yano and Yoko Onishi, will perform at Theremin Summit in Tomioka City, Japan. For details about these events and more, visit theremin30.com and click on the Calendar tab. Coming up later in the show, I'll be visiting with Joe Edelmann, designer of the GreenWaves digital musical instrument. Because it was inspired by the onde Martenot, I thought this was a good opportunity to feature some music from onde players. I have a couple of tracks from ondists Christine Ott and Josh Semans. Both of these recording artists have really pushed the boundaries of the onde's sonic palette in their experimental music albums. First up, here's Christine Ott with a track called Darkstar.

00:20:34 Rick Reid

We started that set with ondist Christine Ott and a track called Darkstar from her 2020 solo album, Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot). On Saturday, October 17th, Christine Ott and Matieu Gabry will be in Paris providing live musical accompaniment for a screening of F. W. Murnau's 1926 silent film, Faust. There's a link to ticket information on the Theremin 30 calendar page. The next track I played was First Traces of Infrastructure by Josh Semans. It's from his 2023 architecture-inspired album called To Will a Space Into Being. To learn more about Christine and Josh and to find more of their onde music, click on their names in this episode's show notes at theremin30.com.

 

00:21:27 Rick Reid

Now my special interview guest this time around is Joe Edelmann, a musician and Radiohead fan who has created the GreenWaves digital synthesizer, an instrument inspired by the onde Martenot. I spoke with Joe several weeks ago to learn more about this most unusual and expressive instrument. Joe Edelmann, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

00:21:49 Joe Edelmann

Thank you, Rick. Pleasure to be here.

00:21:51 Rick Reid

I invited you to the show because you have designed a new instrument that I thought would be of interest to Theremin players. But before we get to that, tell me a little bit about your background in music and electronics that led to this creation of this new instrument.

00:22:05 Joe Edelmann

I began my musical career as a guitarist. I started playing guitar when I was about 10 years old and was in a number of different bands, played a lot of different styles of music, but predominantly kind of rock music. When I was in college, I became infatuated, to put it lightly, with the music of the band Radiohead. Radiohead are, or at least one of their instrumentalists, Jonny Greenwood, is an avid user of the onde Martenot, which is a French cousin, I'd say, of the theremin. And I quickly became obsessed with kind of its sound and decided I wanted to make one for myself. They're a little bit rare to find, at least in terms of original format. In the world today, there are a few boutique makers, but I decided to try my hand at kind of making my own version. So that's how I came up with GreenWaves, which is the instrument that I built. And I didn't have any background per se in electronics, just sort of learned enough to be dangerous from some close friends and kind of got into programming, then 3D printing and making and things like that. So that's kind of how I was able to bring it all together. So it's kind of been a labor of love the past six or seven years, really. And now I get to use it sort of in real time. I have a Radiohead tribute band called “There, There” and so our Jonny Greenwood equivalent in the band, Ben Shin, gets to be my guinea pig and beta tester. And we just actually used it at a show last night.

00:23:43 Rick Reid

How is it similar to the onde Martenot?

00:23:46 Joe Edelmann

So the primary way is through its interface or its controls, right? So, and not too dissimilar, again, just more in terms of a mechanical way than a theremin, but left hand, and actually I don't know if this is true on a theremin. Is it the left hand that's the volume antenna?

00:24:01 Rick Reid

Usually, yes.

00:24:02 Joe Edelmann

So left hand is dynamics through a pressure-sensitive key similar to what they called the touche d’intensité. I'm not French; my French is probably terrible. The touché key on the left hand is for volume and dynamics. The right hand controls a ring that sort of slides across a fingerboard, so you can kind of pick out discrete notes. It's easier to be a little bit, well, it takes a little bit to get accurate in terms of pitch recall, but certainly a little bit easier than on the theremin. So the right hand is pitch, left hand is volume, and that is again mirroring the onde Martenot control scheme in that way.

00:24:45 Rick Reid

And describing the ring controller, so this is like a loop of string that has a ring, like a jewelry ring, only looser, and you put your finger in it And then you move it to the left or right to change the pitch. Is that right?

00:25:00 Joe Edelmann

That's exactly right. Yeah. I've made the fingerboard sort of resemble a piano keyboard in that way so that you can kind of see the chromatic pitches. So that way it kind of, you know, it is continuous and it's microtonal so you can play notes between the notes, so to speak. But that being said, to be able to pick out a melody, you can, you know, refer to the, there's indentations in the fingerboard for each of the white keys and there are studs, little metal, sort of like pins essentially as the black keys. So it kind of gives you a tactile and a visual reference for the notes you're playing.

00:25:34 Rick Reid

So beyond the controller, this is also a digital synthesizer.

00:25:40 Joe Edelmann

Yes, the engine, it's a digital sort of a microcontroller and digital analog type. The wave forms, so I based the sound of the waves very heavily on the original tones of the owned Martineau, which are very interesting because they're a mix of sort of analog synthesis type waves. They're not exactly, so they kind of draw from things like the square wave and the triangle wave and the sine. Obviously the sine wave is the true, is the owned, literally. Owned means wave and the owned waveform in an owned Martineau is just basically a sine tone. But the cool thing you get in the timbre of the instrument is mixing in these other slightly more complex waveforms, these kind of folded wave shapes or square shapes, and you get more upper harmonics, you get a little bit more nuance. And so I kind of made four waveforms that you could kind of continuously crossfade and blend between to get a different shape or a different sound. And the instrument also has an OLED screen so you can kind of see what the wave looks like that you're making in real time and see how that kind of impacts the So I kind of wanted to make it flexible. in the original instrument, they were sort of just on-off switches for different timbres with a different, a few different shape ability controls.

00:27:03 Rick Reid

So the OLED, that's like a little oscilloscope the size of a postage stamp or something, right?

00:27:09 Joe Edelmann

Yeah, exactly. It's just sort of a little reference screen. And there's a few other context menus and things like that, too. But for the most part, it's for visualizing the wave.

00:27:17 Rick Reid

The original onde Martenot and some of the recreations of them I've seen, like the Ondéa and the Ondomo, I think it's called in Japan, they have real keyboards. Now, yours doesn't have a keyboard, but it looks like you could add one or add your own keyboard.

00:27:35 Joe Edelmann

That's right. So it's an aspirational goal. I do still want to, if not for a future model, to kind of incorporate an inbuilt keyboard, because I do think I kind of have skirted over how cool that element of the instrument is as well, too. Obviously, what makes it expressive or known or unique is that ring control and that voice-like quality, very similar to the theremin, giving you that kind of sweeping glissando. But the other thing that is very cool about an onde Martenot and things like the Ondomo, which I actually have as well, is the keyboard, which is spring-mounted. So per individual key you're playing, you can kind of shake the whole thing left and right and add a vibrato to your sound rather than having to use a mod wheel or a pitch wheel. You have kind of that level of control in your right hand, and it becomes very natural and very fluid to play that way. So what I did for mine was I built MIDI input capability. So you can connect any standard five-pin MIDI controller. Within the instrument, you can choose: is the ring active, or are you controlling pitch through a keyboard? And sometimes that can be helpful for certain melodies, or it has its own kind of ghostly quality with the blend of those waveforms and the touché control.

00:28:45 Rick Reid

And from the photos I've seen of your instrument, it looks like there is kind of a built-in stand to mount a keyboard on.

00:28:52 Joe Edelmann

That's right. Pretty much it's sized for about a 49-key keyboard, but I've actually put other larger keyboards on top, and that actually kind of factors into—there's a MIDI out as well too. So you can use, because it's digital and there's operations that can happen, I can translate the interaction of the controls. I can translate the ring motion and the touché d’intensité into MIDI messages out, and you can control other synthesizers that way. So it's a standalone synthesizer and instrument, but it also is a really effective MIDI controller, and it also has control voltage, or CV, out as well too. So I've put a full-size, like a Prophet, on top of it too and just tried to control it that way, which is pretty sweet.

00:29:33 Rick Reid

Oh, so like with the CV out, I would want to connect it to something like a Eurorack Moog-type analog synthesizer. So you have both digital and analog.

00:29:45 Joe Edelmann

It's really cool that way. I have a modest—it's growing; I'm slowly dipping my toes in the water, and it's not long before I'm totally off the deep end—but my little modular rack, Eurorack, over to the side. So I've been playing around with it that way too. And it's really cool because then, yeah, like you said, you can kind of hybridize its own inbuilt sounds with external sounds and different parameter controls, things like that.

00:30:06 Rick Reid

The official owned Martineau is also known for its resonator speakers. Do you have anything equivalent to that?

00:30:13 Joe Edelmann

As part of the initial firmware and sound development, I built in a spring-based reverb emulation. So I have a dedicated ambience or reverb knob on the primary instrument. And I focused on the spring sound. So there were four different primary speakers that the onde Martenot utilized. One was sort of what they called the principal speaker. That's just sort of your basic loudspeaker, no additional kind of effects. The résonance, which was a spring, was essentially a spring reverb tank, but in a slightly different way: the springs were in front of the speaker coil or kind of affixed to the coil, as opposed to the sound in a traditional guitar spring-reverb tank, where the sound passes through the spring electronically. It's sort of more through just sympathetic resonance and excitation that it happens as a spring reverb. So that's why I kind of focused on the spring; that became one of the most used and popular. And I guess I would say perhaps—I wouldn't say least temperamental—but when I mention the design of the other two speakers, you'll kind of see why. So that was sort of a spring-reverb sound. And then there were two other speakers: the palme, which was literally sort of like an almost lute-like body, an acoustic wooden cabinet with sympathetic strings. So, chromatically tuned—I don't know if they were guitar, piano, or what type of strings exactly they were—but they were tuned sympathetically to the whole chromatic scale. So whatever you were playing would sort of excite different strings, and it gave it this cool kind of, almost like singing into a piano—you get that overtone and reflection. And that was an awesome sound. And then, even crazier, the métallique, which was an orchestral gong made to be the diaphragm of a speaker. So the sound was basically transduced directly into the gong, and it acted as the speaker diaphragm. So you get this crazy mix of a cymbal wash, but also these metallic overtones, and it's resonating at the frequencies of the cymbal, which is really cool. So those last two essentially are the ones I had not emulated in the initial development box, but what I'm working on currently is actually sort of an algorithm that I want to maybe incorporate into a companion pedal or sort of a companion element because I've come up with kind of a cool way to simulate those. It's very hard to recreate those authentically without, you know, there's so much complex physics in the resonance of strings and the resonance of a cymbal, but I've got something that sounds kind of cool right now that I'm working on. So hopefully.

00:32:43 Rick Reid

Your GreenWaves instrument, though, just to be clear, it does need to use an amplifier and external speakers.

00:32:49 Joe Edelmann

It has headphone out capabilities and it has line out. So the line out is compatible with any mixer, amplifier, you know, you plug that into a regular interface or anything, any other way. But yes, it needs amplification or speaker amplification. Yes.

00:33:04 Rick Reid

So the onde-type instrument is a pretty rare thing, and always has been, for that matter. So I'm wondering how many of your friends said you were crazy to try to build something new like that?

00:33:16 Joe Edelmann

I think the, like you said, the rarity of it, it's kind of sad. And I mean, I do think it's interesting how many people I've told and don't even necessarily know, you know, don't know what a known Martineau is, but I actually will sometimes say, well, do you know a theremin? Because that's kind of the closest. And some people, more people will say yes to that than they will on Martineau and they can, I can say, the sound, have you heard a sci-fi soundtrack or you heard a, that's that you can't quite play that vocal kind of sound. That's what it does, you know, so I'm kind of trying to break it down into its sonic aspects. But no, my friends, I mean, a lot of my friends, if they're, you know, that are as hardcore Radiohead fans as me or, you know, they're kind of aware because it, you know, there have been a couple like video essays done. Johnny Greenwood in his film composing work and in his work with the band has really repopularized in many ways or invigorated the attention for this instrument. Again, still not to the level that I would like to see it. You know, I think it's such a cool instrument that I feel like it should be more known and more used. And that was part of my passion for this project was to try to make it in a more available and easily mass producible way because the boutique makers, again, are doing fantastic work. And I do own the Ondomo. I think it's a beautiful instrument, you know, hand-built instruments that take a lot of pride in their craftsmanship, but at the same time, you know, for students or folks at university or people that want to have access to this instrument at a more accessible level, that's kind of what I was hoping to achieve. So the friends that I've spoken to about that share kind of that passion for that.

00:34:46 Rick Reid

Does Johnny Greenwood know your instrument is called the GreenWaves?

00:34:51 Joe Edelmann

If he doesn't yet, it's my dream that he will soon. I've been lucky to meet and speak with other members of the band besides him. And at the time I think that I did, I don't know what stage I was at with this project, but it is my goal and dream to give Greenwood a GreenWaves at some point in the near future. And just, again, thank him for the inspiration first and foremost, but also, knowing his history with onde instruments, obviously he has, I'm sure, a few of the genuine article. I think his first one actually was a digital one; Maurice Martenot's son, in the '80s, I think, was building digital student models. And that was the first one he got his hands on in a secondhand shop to record the Kid A album. But he has the Ondomo as well. You know, he is a huge fan of these types of instruments. So I would love to see what he could do in his very capable hands with some of the additional features. And that's kind of one of the other things: I wanted to take it a little bit further in some ways because I could take advantage of this platform and the modularity and the digitalness of it all. So building in kind of harmonization algorithms or things like that the original instrument didn't even have. So trying to see what I could use as a springboard.

00:36:06 Rick Reid

Thank you so much, Joe, for being on the Theremin 30 podcast. I really enjoyed hearing about your new instrument and I look forward to seeing some people playing it soon on YouTube and elsewhere.

00:36:16 Joe Edelmann

Thank you very much, Rick. Pleasure to chat with you.

00:36:18 Rick Reid

Joe is taking pre-orders now for the first of the GreenWaves instruments. To see photos and hear more samples, click on the links in this episode's show notes at theremin30.com. Now let's finish the show with a demo song featuring the GreenWaves. Here's Joe Edelmann playing The Swan with a backing piano track by Jim Evans of Rewind Music. And that wraps up this belated and extended edition of the Theremin 30 podcast. Thanks so much to Armen Ra, Rob Schwimmer, Christine Ott, and Josh Semans for sharing their music. And a big thanks to my special guest, Joe Edelmann, designer of the GreenWaves electronic musical instrument. Also, I'm very grateful to the listeners who support this series financially with their small one-time or monthly donations. If you enjoy the show and want to chip in a little bit to help me with expenses, look for the tip jar on the website. I'm Rick Reid, and until next time, I'll see you somewhere in the ether.

00:40:03 David Brower

You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at theremin30.com.