Tag: Theremin

Theremin v.1 Pitch Reference Oscillator Analysis

This is my first post of this kind, which I plan to use to give insights on how an electronic circuit is designed. In the future, I plan to post a similar article for every new circuit I design and present on my YouTube channel.

This way, people who are interested in such details can go to this site to get them, thus sparing all the others that don’t care from watching them on the original video.

Today, to get started with the new series of posts, I will go into the insights of the design of the Pitch Reference Oscillator used in the Theremin version 1.

I decided to use the Pitch Reference Oscillator because all the other Theremin’s oscillators are based on the same principle, although for the variable ones, an antenna is added to the resonant circuit to make its capacitance increase based on the position of the hand on the player with respect to the antenna. In fact, the antenna adds up to 8pF to the resonating tank, based on the position of the hand of the player.

For reference, you can watch any of the YouTube videos on my channel related to oscillators in the Theremin Project playlist.

Here is the link to the playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moT9iAaZU-I&list=PL3SNC7XyKklYZOs48Qfh16nTO4t8edDPU

I began the design of the oscillator starting from the base concept of positive feedback amplifier, which can be represented as follows:

feedback_amp

We have an amplifier with a positive gain, which should be 1 when there is an oscillation, and we have a feedback impedance Zf that takes part of the output signal and brings it back to the input of the amplifier. Zf is supposed to be chosen to obtain a positive feedback at the oscillation frequency.

This basic configuration needs now to be modified to insert in it an LC resonating tank. This should be on the output of the amplifier, so its oscillations can be fed back to the input and be sustained with no decay.

oscillator_block_diagram

The amplifier can now be replaced with a real circuit made with a transistor. I choose in this case a common base configuration, which gives me the required gain of almost 1, which is enough to sustain the oscillation.

The Zf will need to provide a phase shift of 90° to compensate for the internal capacitance of the transistor, which will add another 90° for a total of 180°, thus providing a positive feedback, considering that the transistor has actually a negative value of amplification (-1).

Therefore, Zf can be replaced with a simple capacitor that will bring the output signal back to the input with the desired 90° phase shift.

And once all the polarization resistors are added, the circuit looks like the following:

oscillator

In this circuit, R2, R3, R4 and R5 are the polarization resistors, which are calculated based on the specs of the transistor itself.

L1, C4, C6, C7 constitute the resonating tank. The Two variable capacitors are added to allow for a fine tune of the frequency.

C5 is the feedback impedance, or Zf.

The resonating frequency is calculated based on the following formula:

resonating_frequency

where L = L1, and C = C4//C6//C7//CBE = C4 + C6 + C7 + CBE

and CBE is the capacitance between emitter and base.

Temporarily excluding CBE from the calculations, the frequency therefore can vary between 258.2 kHz and 312 kHz. The CBE can be obtained from the transistor data sheet, adjusting for the polarization between base and emitter.

Also, we can slightly affect the resonating frequency of the oscillator by changing the polarization point of the transistor. This can be achieved by a potentiometer added on the base of the transistor itself, as per the following schematic.

final schematic

All the other capacitors in the schematic are used to make the polarization point of the transistor independent from the oscillation frequency, by shunting the oscillation signal toward ground. Thus, their value is such that they behave like conductors with respect to the high frequency of the oscillator.

At the end, considering the increase in capacity given by CBE, the frequency ends up to be centered around 400kHz, which was the required frequency for the pitch reference oscillator.

More on the Theremin: The Heterodyne Mixer

The heterodyne mixer is the stage of the Theremin where the high frequency signals coming from the pitch reference oscillator and the pitch variable oscillator are combined together to obtain the audio signal.

mixer

Here we are again with another post about the Theremin, which can be considered the first electronic musical instrument ever invented, almost 100 years ago, in 1919, by the Russian physicist Leon Theremin.

At that time the Theremin was made out of thermionic valves and used a lot of space and electric power.

theremin_in_concert

Today, thanks to the evolution of electronics in the last century, we can make one that can occupy much less space while also consuming much less power. In fact, this is one of several articles that I have already published on the design and construction of such musical instruments, using solid state components.

Please consult this site archives for the previous articles on the subject and THIS link for schematics and diagrams, which I keep updating as I go in designing and building the pieces of the instrument

A corresponding series on the Theremin is also available on YouTube at THIS link. There, I describe every detail of my project, explaining how the various parts of the device work and how I built everything so far in a very inexpensive way.

In this article I will explore the Mixer stage of the Theremin, describing how it works and how it is used within the Theremin itself.

The mixer is the Theremin stage that combines together the signals from the pitch variable oscillator and the pitch reference oscillator, to create an audio signal that is essentially the sound that the Theremin produces.

The combination of the two input signals is done with a process called heterodyne. It basically consists in multiplying the two input signals by exploiting the non-linear characteristic of transistor Q1, which is carefully polarized outside its linear zone. The result of the multiplication is a new complex signal containing frequencies that are the sum and the difference of the frequencies of the original input signals. Since the frequencies of those input signals are close to each other, their difference falls in the audible range, which is what produces the peculiar sound of the instrument.

Looking at the schematic, you can see that the two input signals are mixed together at the base of transistor Q1, which they reach passing through capacitors C4 and C8, used to decouple the mixer from the direct current superimposed to the input signals.

Transistor Q1 is polarized in the non-linear zone of its characteristics. Because of the non-linearity of the transistor, the two signals end up being multiplied with each other, producing a new, more complex, signal that contains both the sum and the difference of the frequencies of the input signals. This heterodyne process, therefore, applies the following equation to the two input signals:

sin(2πf1t) * sin(2πf2t) = 1/2 cos(2πf1t – 2πf2t) – 1/2 cos(2πf1t + 2πf2t)

where the factors on the left side represent the two sinusoidal input signals, and the resulting complex signal is on the right side of the equation. The above formula is actually a simplification, because it does not take into account the phase shift between the two input signals, which should appear as a phase factor in the parameters of each of the sine waves on the left side of the equation. However, if we did the full calculations, we would see that we would still obtain the same output waves, but each would have an extra amplitude factor that depends on the initial amplitude of the input signals and on their phase shifts.

Anyway, the complex signal obtained at the collector of transistor Q1 is supplied to a Low Pass filter, made up of the components R4, R7, R8, R9, C2, C3, C5, C6 and C7. The filter produces an attenuation of the high frequency element of the complex signal, effectively leaving only the one at low frequency  cos(2πf1t – 2πf2t), which is the audio signal.

That output signal is then passed to the next stage of the Theremin, the VCA, where it acquires the dynamics of the music sound. We will talk about the VCA in a future post.

If you are interested in more information on the Theremin Mixer and how I built it, please watch this companion VIDEO on YouTube.

And, as always,

Happy experiments !!!