Neither of these items is “news,” but since I missed them, you may have, too — and because they’re so absurd and wonderful, I can’t let that happen. Some things are timeless.

Via Chris Cheung’s Hong Kong’s-based Special Interest Group comes the Theremin Watch, “Modified (circuit bend) from 大人之科學 kit set.” I love the idea of a wrist-mounted Theremin. On one hand (ahem), it does mean that you can calibrate relative to your body, because it’s always strapped to your wrist. On the other, I expect that’s still something of a challenge. But it’s not so often you get wearable Theremins.

SIG Theremin Watch [specialinterestgroup.hk]
See also the more current honhim.com/blog

Andrew Cavette points to the Theremug, a combination of delicious tea and Theremin sound making, by the always-talented Kyle McDonald. This item made the music tech blog rounds in the summer and hit Make’s blog nearly a year ago, but then, unlike recent fads like iPhones and Windows Vista, tea is centuries old.

Instructions:

1 Prepare some tea
2 Expose the L/R leads on an 1/8″ cable
3 Immerse leads in tea
4 Plug cable into audio input
5 Start up max/pd/processing/etc. and average every 735 samples (882 if you’re in Europe/running on 50Hz)
6 Scale value and drive oscillator

I can’t believe that not a single blogger made an Infinite Improbability Drive reference here. Sloppy. Technically speaking, this gives you only the Brownian Motion Generator — you’ll still need the sub-meson Brain and atomic vector plotter. Rest in peace, Douglas Adams.

If you want to do this with Pd, Kyle wrote on Make:

For an idea of what the pd patch would like like… I just posted a screen shot of the max patch: http://flickr.com/photos/kylemcdonald/2126494098/

You’d use osc~ instead of cycle~ of course, and could reduce the mess between average~ 1024 and sqrt~ into a -~ and *~ that you set manually.

Theremug from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Update: Keith writes to tell us more about his wrist-Theremin:

thanks for posting my wearable theremin!! Me and Chris Cheung is SIG. This product is by me. The original post is here that has more photo: http://www.the-demos.com/2007/11/28/theremin-watch/

May be you also interest my work Moving Mario , which is awarded in Ars Electronica 2008, interactive art!!

http://www.the-demos.com/movingmario/moving-mario/

I am also interested in Moving Mario — but that sounds like a job for Create Digital Motion.

We’re celebrating 48 hours of DIY stuff here as we get ready for Handmade Music tomorrow night in Brooklyn! Thingamagoops are the friendly, optical emitter antennaed electronic creatures. Whether your cat / significant other / fan base would describe them as a sweet-sounding instrument, they do make a lot of noise and look cute in the process. Optical sensors onboard mean you can reposition the lights for some fun.

They were fun to begin with. But in kit form, you’ve got even more good times as you assemble them / find an odd case to put them in.

The kits come with groovy labels, eyes and mouths a la Mr. Potato-Head (well, in sticker form), and all the knobs and parts and things you need to make it work. A kit will set you back US$55. If you can’t be bothered to find an enclosure but still want to have some assembly, the enclosure-included version is US$66.

ThingamaKIT Product Page

And for an example build not by the Bleep Labs folks, MAKE shows off the build process:

ThingamaKIT build photos [MAKE: Blog]

I hope we’ll see more of this kind of kit in muso land soon.

But here’s why appropriated enclosures are enviro-friendly and fun – from Flickr, an example of an enclosure rescued from an old desktop intercom by Bleep Labs creator Dr. Bleep.

Peter’s fantastic, historic and educational vintage tape looping and Dr Who posts made me think of the BBC and theremins (yes, I’m fully aware that there were no theremins used for the Dr Who theme, but the myth is too strong), and the person who best combines the BBC and theremins: Bill Bailey.

If you’re not familiar with Bill Bailey, have I got a treat for you! I’ve never encountered anyone who combines music and comedy to such great effect (If you know of someone else with these skills, please tell us in the comments). Fortunately there is a huge volume of his stuff available on Youtube, so I can share some of his genius with you.

Tribute to Kraftwerk

There’s a little bit of theremin in that video, unfortunately his best theremin/electronic music bits aren’t included in any of the short clips I could find, so I’ve added some choice cuts, and if you feel the need for more theremin you can spend some quality time on Youtube or buy his DVDs: Bewilderness or Part Troll.

In this case it was “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” as the folks at Moog backed up their promise of ANOTHER DIMENSION with an intimate solo theremin performance. A sizable crowd enjoyed this breath of fresh air in a convention jam packed with high energy live gigs.

Ed.: Moog Music has an incredible group of friends when it comes to Theremin players. In this case, the artist is Japanese Theremin superstar ERI, who has the enviable domain theremin.org. She’s truly one of us, as she likes pulling up her webpage on her DS.

In other items from the theremin beat, our friends at Theremin World have some great items recently: a lost Clara Rockmore album on iTunes, a Theremin soft synth, and a chance to learn from master thereminist Carolina Eyck in L.A.. All this, and they’re getting attention in the New York Times. Theremin is, after all, the instrument of record. Congrats! -PK

Play this track:

Play this track:

I love controversy. But after a week in which US politicians were talking about World War III (or was that IV) and somehow CDM’s great comment threads wound up on the topics of whether hardware or software was better (discussion = not allowed on this site), and whether starving children would be able to eat affordably-priced laptops, I decided it was time for an experiment. Could I write an entry with total appeal and zero controversy?

I present, as mind candy for the weekend: adorable animals with synthesizers.