WITHOUT-TOUCH 2.0
Festival of
THEREMIN
Concerts
& Workshops September 12 -14 2008 with Lydia Kavina, Barbara Buchholz, Carolina Eyck, Wilco Botermans
and
other participants
Organized by the Conrad-Hansen-Musikschule der Stadt Lippstadt Von Galen-Platz 1, 59557 Lippstadt / Germany.
Check out their site for lots more info.
Yet another wonderful gathering of
aether enthusiasts, it's looking like a
banner year! Thanks
to Gordon and the posters of the
Without Touch form t
I am pleased to report that I heard from Herr Streblow yesterday; he is delighted with and astonished by the response from the wider theremin family already, and starting to think about Without Touch 3!
Going on the criterea of closest and cheapest, the Motel McSleep (http://mc-sleep.com/) suggests itself.
This is a bare bones service. A room with a bed. If you want food, find a cafe. It's 2 kilometres away and €33 per night for a double room, at which price I feel no need to share.
I'm fine with that. I was planning to attend a theremin festival rather than luxuriate in a hotel sauna or swim in a hotel pool anyway.
On the negative side, it is called the [i]Motel McSleep[/i]. Ugh.
Yup, my concern is that it is next to a cafe, a bar and a public lavatory called respectively the Cafe McEat, the Bar McDrink and er, well, you get the idea.
Anyway, I'm going to leave it a while to see if anyone else has some input to offer. For all I know the Motel McSleep chain might be synonymous on mainland Europe with "convenient place for people to have extramarital relationships" or "where homeless people sleep the day they get their state benefit money."
...if the vote is for McSleep (I think the name says it all - dont even think about sleeping as your back will hurt even before you touch the mattress, and the 15 year olds will party - if not next door then right in front of your door - so you join in ;o) I will follow the majorities lead...however, I'd have preferred something in the 'City-Hotel'-range; in case we are looking not only for hotels, I saw that there are short-term (day-to-day-basis) appartments available also (I think they were offered by 'Park-Hotel'?).
As I'll be there either with my own car (70%) or will (definitely) rent a car in case I fly in, transportation shouldn't be a problem even if we(?) are 5 kilometres away...
([i]...sorry to repeat myself: that is if I can actually come...so, dont make any decision depending on _my_ input...[/i])
I'm afraid that fairplay is right with his commentary on McSleep...
On the other side I'm not willing to spend more than 50 EUR per night and, since I'm not longer 20 years old, I prefer having my own WC and shower while having breakfast in an external café wouldn't disturb me.
It would naturally be nice to stay in a place with other TW members.
So, what are your suggestions?
(Don't worry: Although I live in France I don't eat frogs... ;-) )
City Hotel (http://www.city-hote...) looks more basic, but still perfectly acceptable. There do not appear to be any prices on the site. I guess less than 50 Euros?
Of those two I would prefer the cheaper option. I have tried looking again at the links provided on the festival website, and even with google translate I'm not making any progress in finding other options, so I'm happy with Park Hotel or City Hotel.
I passed on the opportunity to eat frogs' legs. I like snails and blood pudding, and have tried most of the internal organs of beasts and a few exotic sea and fresh water creatures with various amounts of enjoyment. The alligator was a bit chewy. (And broke the rule of second-order vegetarianism - I only eat herbivores.)
City Hotel Lippstadt prices for single rooms start at 50 EUR and go up to 75 EUR, breakfast included.
What about the Rixbecker Alpen-Hotel Koch (http://www.rixbecker...)? Single rooms are from 32 to 42 EUR with breakfast. It is also only 3 km from the Musikschule. Looks reasonable for me.
I think I'll make a reservation there. People having difficulties in negotiating in German should tell me, I'll make the reservation for them too.
Thierry, I would have difficulty negotiating in German, please would you make a reservation for me.
I will arrive on the 11th of September and depart on the 15th.
Anything else you need to know, email me. Single room.
gordonc at theremin org uk
fairplay - no cause for concern - there's only one theremin playing cannibal, and I er...[i]he[/i] prefers to eat the rude. You seem a well mannered fellow to me, so you should be OK. :-)
It's done. I have used their online reservation page, told that it was definitive for us both and wrote that maybe there will be others to join our group, so that they could tell me about further free rooms at this dates.
I'll keep you updated when I'll get an answer. In every case I'll try to call them at daytime.
...I cannot confirm yet - sorry...what is the cancellation deadline? - if it is about ten days then please make a reservation; otherwise I'll have to wait...
Bumping the thread to note for the benefit of Brits going to Lippstadt that the price of Air Berlin flights has started to creep up. They are now asking £8 more than I paid for the same flight. I suggest booking sooner rather than later. If you want a bit of company for the trip I suggest this flight (http://tinyurl.com/3...).
It was a really great festival; a lot of playing and company to enjoy, a lot of learning that could be done. Because Wilco and I brought our young children I couldn't plunge into the festival as deep as I wished. But what I was able to see, experience, hear was well worth it! I hope festival edition 3 will come.
I had a great time, met some old friends, made some new ones.
Just one bit now, then I have a great deal of sleeping to do.
I did wonder about the wisdom of being invited to perform in a busy shopping mall, but I am always keen to oblige and, being on a Sunday, and knowing how malls are quiet on Sundays in England, I was happy to go along with the plan.
Besides, I was looking forward to trying out Chris's rather large Peavey amp and I have to say, it is magnificent. The very lowest bass notes are bold and fat and have sufficient raw power to make the soles of your feet tingle across a solid concrete floor, the mid-tones fill a big space with an almost tangible richness and the very highest notes, mere millimetres from the pitch rod, do not merely melt the wax in your eardrums, they positively [i]vaporise[/i] it with all the purity and brilliance of a laser beam. So for half an hour I explored all this sonic goodness and had a lot of fun.
And afterwards my new friend who's name escapes me as I am, as I suggested earlier, very tired, brought an Italian sensibility and the experience of a guitar player to a classical theremin style quite in contrast to my raucous exuberance. As a new player his intonation is heading in the right direction, and it was interesting to hear it warming up over his thirty minutes; the last piece was quite listenable in the greater part. He came away feeling very positive about his first performance in front of an audience. Quite a jump into the deep end!
During my second performance I had the pleasure of meeting an attractive young lady with an excellent grasp of the English language, and a most polite manner. She was called Yvonne, or so it said on her official Lippstadt festival ID Badge (with which our festival coincided) and she charmingly offered me the alternatives of stopping immediately, or waiting until the local police arrived.
As always, I was most happy to oblige, and shook her hand before packing up and wandering off to find our festival organiser, Wolfgang. Wolfgang and I have agreed that next will be Hands Off 2, next year, and Without Touch 3 will be the year after that, if all goes according to plan.
I did not get to see the other public performances, as they ran concurrently in other parts of the town, but Chris eagerly ran between locations with his video camera and I think perhaps I will see representative samples on youTube in due course. Sadly he missed my new friend, the wonderfully nicknamed Trautonia, who is not a goth on the grounds that so called goth music is not very goth. I tend to agree - much sounds to me like nothing more than rock and roll with black eyeliner. Trautonia has a theatrical background and jogged around the cornfields each morning.
But it was nice to notice that Wolfgang (the festival organiser) and Carolina were among the audience, and I honestly do not know if any of the other names you would recognise came along too as they did the rounds (I assume) as I get very, very focussed when playing (although I did find a moment here and there to glance at people wandering through my control zone.)
After dinner that evening Barbara turned to me and said that she was very impressed by my work (and at that moment my mind did a major double-take - I have a lot of respect for Barbara) on the festival myspace site. She thought I had done a good job of designing and populating it. How lovely.
jeshum
9/15/2008 4:28 PM
Fabio Pesce! The man who plays faster than his shadow.
Before it probably gets lost in all the workshop and concert talk: also present at the festival was Dominik Bednarz who showed some beautiful theremins of his own making. I was especially impressed by a small and elegant theremin made out of what looked like a wooden case for artists brushes, and had a very rich and warm sound. Dominiks website: http://subscope.de/index.html (there are also two festival foto's there)
I tried one, with a nice big amp. It sounded great, and had a big range, right down to some low, low bass. It sounded even better when Lydia played it after me.
OK, some details. As Jessica said, made from a paint brush box or similar, with a long volume loop, so there was ample separation between the antennas. I tuned in a pitch field that suited me size-wise very easily and the volume field was fine too.
The first knob is a rotary switch with four settings; mute and three voices, then a knob to vary the timbre of the voice - akin to the brightness knob on the etherwave standard, and also a switch to vary the timbre again. I did not have time to get familiar with all the settings, but I very quickly found a couple of very decent sounds. For transporting the top of the theremin is a lid on a hinge, and inside the lid are a couple of clips so you can stow the pitch rod and volume loop away tidily.
No power supply, just a nine volt battery that Dominik was sure would give more than four hours of playing time. I got the impression he was making a conservative estimate. More than enough for a concert anyway, and easily accessible - just flip up the lid and put in a new one when needed - no screwdrivers required.
Price. He usually sells via eBay, and they go for somewhere between the cost of a B3 Deluxe and an Etherwave Standard, which is about right in my opinion. He will also sell privately if you make a sensible offer, and I imagine that if you have a lovely box that is begging to be turned into a theremin it would be worth talking to Dominik about it.
The craftsmanship of the theremins is excellent, and the photos on his website (http://www.subscope....) are accurate representations of this. (Also there are now four long thin panoramic photos taken at Without Touch 2 on his website, including one of me scaring the locals in the shopping mall.)
In summary I would say these are a very good choice for a beginner, and for the experience thereminist it would be worth buying one to add to your range of voices for recording purposes, and with the paintbrush box design they are very convenient to slip in your gig bag as a spare in case your primary instrument suffers some sort of electrical catastrophe on the way to a performance.
Fabio has just published an excellent set of photos on his website.
---> here (http://www.amvallodidiano.it/fotocorsigen.asp?p=theremin2008&msg=Lippstadt%20(Germania)%2012-14%20sett.%202008%20-%20Without%20touch%202.0%20festival&v=no&h=header.jpg)
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Showing 26 Comments
Will look forward to hearing all about this.
I am pleased to report that I heard from Herr Streblow yesterday; he is delighted with and astonished by the response from the wider theremin family already, and starting to think about Without Touch 3!
So it's all looking very good.
[img]http://electro-music...[/img]
...I had my confirmation in the mail today - now we could start looking for some common 'shelter'...
...from my first quick overview over the options available I have no preference yet...anyone has decided yet where to stay?
This is a bare bones service. A room with a bed. If you want food, find a cafe. It's 2 kilometres away and €33 per night for a double room, at which price I feel no need to share.
I'm fine with that. I was planning to attend a theremin festival rather than luxuriate in a hotel sauna or swim in a hotel pool anyway.
On the negative side, it is called the [i]Motel McSleep[/i]. Ugh.
Anyway, I'm going to leave it a while to see if anyone else has some input to offer. For all I know the Motel McSleep chain might be synonymous on mainland Europe with "convenient place for people to have extramarital relationships" or "where homeless people sleep the day they get their state benefit money."
...hmm-hmmmm...
...if the vote is for McSleep (I think the name says it all - dont even think about sleeping as your back will hurt even before you touch the mattress, and the 15 year olds will party - if not next door then right in front of your door - so you join in ;o) I will follow the majorities lead...however, I'd have preferred something in the 'City-Hotel'-range; in case we are looking not only for hotels, I saw that there are short-term (day-to-day-basis) appartments available also (I think they were offered by 'Park-Hotel'?).
As I'll be there either with my own car (70%) or will (definitely) rent a car in case I fly in, transportation shouldn't be a problem even if we(?) are 5 kilometres away...
([i]...sorry to repeat myself: that is if I can actually come...so, dont make any decision depending on _my_ input...[/i])
On the other side I'm not willing to spend more than 50 EUR per night and, since I'm not longer 20 years old, I prefer having my own WC and shower while having breakfast in an external café wouldn't disturb me.
It would naturally be nice to stay in a place with other TW members.
So, what are your suggestions?
(Don't worry: Although I live in France I don't eat frogs... ;-) )
Does each room come with a drive-thru window?
I bet they don't put a cookie on your pillow, either.
Perhaps the pillow comes with a side of fries instead.
Park Hotel is about 50 Euros a night for bed and breakfast if I have understood it correctly. This is my upper limit too, and it looks fine to me.
http://www.parkhotel... --- in English (http://66.102.9.104/...). (auto-translation)
City Hotel (http://www.city-hote...) looks more basic, but still perfectly acceptable. There do not appear to be any prices on the site. I guess less than 50 Euros?
Of those two I would prefer the cheaper option. I have tried looking again at the links provided on the festival website, and even with google translate I'm not making any progress in finding other options, so I'm happy with Park Hotel or City Hotel.
I passed on the opportunity to eat frogs' legs. I like snails and blood pudding, and have tried most of the internal organs of beasts and a few exotic sea and fresh water creatures with various amounts of enjoyment. The alligator was a bit chewy. (And broke the rule of second-order vegetarianism - I only eat herbivores.)
...hmmm...I'm a vegetarian for over twenty years...am I in danger?
;o)
I'll have a look on these hotels and come back with more detailed info after this weekend.
What about the Rixbecker Alpen-Hotel Koch (http://www.rixbecker...)? Single rooms are from 32 to 42 EUR with breakfast. It is also only 3 km from the Musikschule. Looks reasonable for me.
I think I'll make a reservation there. People having difficulties in negotiating in German should tell me, I'll make the reservation for them too.
I will arrive on the 11th of September and depart on the 15th.
Anything else you need to know, email me. Single room.
gordonc at theremin org uk
fairplay - no cause for concern - there's only one theremin playing cannibal, and I er...[i]he[/i] prefers to eat the rude. You seem a well mannered fellow to me, so you should be OK. :-)
I'll keep you updated when I'll get an answer. In every case I'll try to call them at daytime.
Doesn't matter, booking is now fixed:
GordonC 11/09/2008 - 15/09/2008
Thierry 12/09/2008 - 15/09/2008
Further rooms are available - don't hesitate to contact me - your continental booking central ;-)
They speak a very quick and special idiom, but I was able to communicate.
TIA!
Bumping the thread to note for the benefit of Brits going to Lippstadt that the price of Air Berlin flights has started to creep up. They are now asking £8 more than I paid for the same flight. I suggest booking sooner rather than later. If you want a bit of company for the trip I suggest this flight (http://tinyurl.com/3...).
Arrived home four hours ago.
It was a really great festival; a lot of playing and company to enjoy, a lot of learning that could be done.
Because Wilco and I brought our young children I couldn't plunge into the festival as deep as I wished. But what I was able to see, experience, hear was well worth it! I hope festival edition 3 will come.
--
greetings,
Jessica
I had a great time, met some old friends, made some new ones.
Just one bit now, then I have a great deal of sleeping to do.
I did wonder about the wisdom of being invited to perform in a busy shopping mall, but I am always keen to oblige and, being on a Sunday, and knowing how malls are quiet on Sundays in England, I was happy to go along with the plan.
Besides, I was looking forward to trying out Chris's rather large Peavey amp and I have to say, it is magnificent. The very lowest bass notes are bold and fat and have sufficient raw power to make the soles of your feet tingle across a solid concrete floor, the mid-tones fill a big space with an almost tangible richness and the very highest notes, mere millimetres from the pitch rod, do not merely melt the wax in your eardrums, they positively [i]vaporise[/i] it with all the purity and brilliance of a laser beam. So for half an hour I explored all this sonic goodness and had a lot of fun.
And afterwards my new friend who's name escapes me as I am, as I suggested earlier, very tired, brought an Italian sensibility and the experience of a guitar player to a classical theremin style quite in contrast to my raucous exuberance. As a new player his intonation is heading in the right direction, and it was interesting to hear it warming up over his thirty minutes; the last piece was quite listenable in the greater part. He came away feeling very positive about his first performance in front of an audience. Quite a jump into the deep end!
During my second performance I had the pleasure of meeting an attractive young lady with an excellent grasp of the English language, and a most polite manner. She was called Yvonne, or so it said on her official Lippstadt festival ID Badge (with which our festival coincided) and she charmingly offered me the alternatives of stopping immediately, or waiting until the local police arrived.
As always, I was most happy to oblige, and shook her hand before packing up and wandering off to find our festival organiser, Wolfgang. Wolfgang and I have agreed that next will be Hands Off 2, next year, and Without Touch 3 will be the year after that, if all goes according to plan.
I did not get to see the other public performances, as they ran concurrently in other parts of the town, but Chris eagerly ran between locations with his video camera and I think perhaps I will see representative samples on youTube in due course. Sadly he missed my new friend, the wonderfully nicknamed Trautonia, who is not a goth on the grounds that so called goth music is not very goth. I tend to agree - much sounds to me like nothing more than rock and roll with black eyeliner. Trautonia has a theatrical background and jogged around the cornfields each morning.
But it was nice to notice that Wolfgang (the festival organiser) and Carolina were among the audience, and I honestly do not know if any of the other names you would recognise came along too as they did the rounds (I assume) as I get very, very focussed when playing (although I did find a moment here and there to glance at people wandering through my control zone.)
After dinner that evening Barbara turned to me and said that she was very impressed by my work (and at that moment my mind did a major double-take - I have a lot of respect for Barbara) on the festival myspace site. She thought I had done a good job of designing and populating it. How lovely.
Before it probably gets lost in all the workshop and concert talk: also present at the festival was Dominik Bednarz who showed some beautiful theremins of his own making. I was especially impressed by a small and elegant theremin made out of what looked like a wooden case for artists brushes, and had a very rich and warm sound.
Dominiks website: http://subscope.de/index.html
(there are also two festival foto's there)
I tried one, with a nice big amp. It sounded great, and had a big range, right down to some low, low bass. It sounded even better when Lydia played it after me.
OK, some details. As Jessica said, made from a paint brush box or similar, with a long volume loop, so there was ample separation between the antennas. I tuned in a pitch field that suited me size-wise very easily and the volume field was fine too.
The first knob is a rotary switch with four settings; mute and three voices, then a knob to vary the timbre of the voice - akin to the brightness knob on the etherwave standard, and also a switch to vary the timbre again. I did not have time to get familiar with all the settings, but I very quickly found a couple of very decent sounds. For transporting the top of the theremin is a lid on a hinge, and inside the lid are a couple of clips so you can stow the pitch rod and volume loop away tidily.
No power supply, just a nine volt battery that Dominik was sure would give more than four hours of playing time. I got the impression he was making a conservative estimate. More than enough for a concert anyway, and easily accessible - just flip up the lid and put in a new one when needed - no screwdrivers required.
Price. He usually sells via eBay, and they go for somewhere between the cost of a B3 Deluxe and an Etherwave Standard, which is about right in my opinion. He will also sell privately if you make a sensible offer, and I imagine that if you have a lovely box that is begging to be turned into a theremin it would be worth talking to Dominik about it.
The craftsmanship of the theremins is excellent, and the photos on his website (http://www.subscope....) are accurate representations of this. (Also there are now four long thin panoramic photos taken at Without Touch 2 on his website, including one of me scaring the locals in the shopping mall.)
In summary I would say these are a very good choice for a beginner, and for the experience thereminist it would be worth buying one to add to your range of voices for recording purposes, and with the paintbrush box design they are very convenient to slip in your gig bag as a spare in case your primary instrument suffers some sort of electrical catastrophe on the way to a performance.
---> here (http://www.amvallodidiano.it/fotocorsigen.asp?p=theremin2008&msg=Lippstadt%20(Germania)%2012-14%20sett.%202008%20-%20Without%20touch%202.0%20festival&v=no&h=header.jpg)
[edit] I see this topic has closed. Continued here (http://www.thereminw...). [/edit]