The new Thereminator includes a volume/frequency/chromatic tone grid, much requested by users. Additionally, we ditched the “triple tap to zoom,” et al. in favour of a traditional zoom in/out button that’s supposed to make navigation a lot easier, and added tracker lines to show where you are on the screen. We also inserted an alien finger into the icon, but that was pretty much an afterthought. A specimen is below.

Here’s that more descriptive (beware! it’s long) video mentioned earlier, involving a lot of messing around,

Our recent pet project, the miniSynth (aka miniApollo), being tested during prototype stage last week…a slight variation of this sound is the first preset. Development has concluded, and the thing will presumably be out soon. I will post a lengthier description (and a more insightful demo) by-and-by, but briefly: it’s a keyboard synth, it has two oscillators, six stops (approx. 16~7000 Hz), tri, sawtooth, sine and square waves, a “vintage modeling” filter, programmable glide/attack/decay and a reverb stage.

Meanwhile, we are looking forward to your feedback, and hearing/seeing your recordings with the Thereminator.

On other news, we are hard at work on a new music app. Details forthcoming as development proceeds…

Spook out!

Here’s a quick demo of Thereminator, in the cheesy horror movie flavor.

The specs for Leon’s original were simple: have one oscillator operate at a high but stable rate, and have a second oscillator vary over a predefined spectrum. Add the resulting waveform, and you have a sum that is an approximation of a sine wave created by the “beats” due to the frequency difference. Of course, the output is not a pure sine wave, and it’s all those little “dips” in the signal that give the original its unique tone. At the usual 44k resolution in digital audio, this is hard to recapture (theremin oscillators have frequency upwards 200k, usually), as the Nyquist Frequency for digital audio is in the order of 22k. Here, we tried to use a deterministic approach to render a waveform reminiscent to the actual instrument, where irregularities are provided in real time as determined by…previous irregularities.

There are a few snags: as screen resolution on the iPhone is 320 X 480, there is a linear ceiling of 480 discrete frequencies that can be mapped on the screen. Hence, for cases where finer tonal control is needed, Thereminator provides a frequency zoom feature to fit a smaller range on the screen at a time (by tapping, etc). There is also a glissando algorithm for providing a smooth transition from one frequency to the other, even in the case of hitting “blind spots” on the screen.

Although we can’t comment on the merits of attempting to fit an actual instrument on a phone (one remembers the words of the director of Blue Velvet), it makes a passable alternative to the real deal, especially in places where noise is a big issue. And it’s good for annoying friends as well (we did that a lot during development). Try flexing your finger up and down while touching the screen, and also side to side. The phone seems to pick up the heat and change the tone.

Check us out at the iTunes AppStore! More updates to come.