The theremin has no strings or even moving parts. It doesn’t rely on a player’s breath. But it translates her hand gestures and motion in the air into pitch and volume, using the principle of heterodyning. In the rock era, the theremin’s unique and often eerie sounds excited legends including Brian Wilson and Jimmy Page. It was one of the good vibes in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and was featured in some of Page’s out-there solos with Led Zeppelin.
“It was the first successful electronic instrument,” says Jayson Dobney, a musical instruments curator at the museum. The theremin in the exhibit, a Sonic Wave built in New York, belongs to Jimmy Page, who played it in “Dazed and Confused” and “Whole Lotta Love.” According to Dobney, Page “got so excited, he demonstrated it,” when the Met asked to display the instrument.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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