The Ether-Wave Theremin: Leon Theremin's Heterodyne Spatial Synthesizer

Why I created this today:

Today I embraced the archetype of 'Procedural Audio Instrument / Sound Toy' (Audio). In 1920, Russian physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen (Leon Theremin) accidentally invented the world's first electronic instrument while researching high-frequency proximity sensors for the Soviet government. By detecting minute variations in human bodily electrical capacitance against two RF oscillators, the theremin creates sound out of thin air via heterodyning. In this interactive tactile instrument, visitors play a dual-axis spatial theremin. Multi-touch or mouse movement controls continuous microtonal pitch (vertical pitch rod, 65 Hz to 1,760 Hz) and volume articulation (horizontal loop antenna with expressive tremolo dip). The sound synthesis engine models vacuum tube non-linear saturation, authentic warm odd/even harmonic overtones, LFO vibrato depth, pitch-quantizing grids (Free Continuous, Theremin Sci-Fi Glissando, Minor Pentatonic, and Whole Tone), and tape delay space echo. When human gesture sculpts invisible radio waves, physics becomes opera.