Herve Pellarin, a French thereminist, introduces his “lYnos” app:
Theremin Coach: see your intonation, practice smarter, learn together
Every thereminist knows the challenge: no frets, no keys, only the ear and the air. Hearing that a note is slightly off is one thing; knowing how far, on which notes, and whether you are improving is another. I’ve been building a practice companion to answer exactly that, and I’m delighted to present it to the ThereminSchool community on Sunday.
For students
- See every note as you play it. The score scrolls with you, and under each line an intonation ribbon traces your real pitch against the written note, in cents, in real time.
- An honest, kind analysis of each take: notes in tune, mean deviation, whether you tend to play sharp or flat, clean separations between notes, rhythm. In the screenshot: 91% of notes in tune, 3.6 cents mean deviation.
- Loop a passage and watch yourself improve take after take. Replay any single note to hear what went wrong.
- Learn mode: master a piece bar by bar. The next bar unlocks only when the current one is good enough.
- Progressive studies generated for you, from long tones to wide intervals, in any key. From zero to hero.
- Hear the melody first, with a guide voice and metronome, for those still getting comfortable with reading.
- Annotate your score: fingering-style marks, dynamics, breath marks, highlighter, and theremin-specific signs. Export to PDF.
For teachers
- Teach remotely, directly: a simple link, and you see your student’s score, cursor, live pitch and results, and hear their instrument, peer-to-peer and encrypted.
- Annotate their score from your side (your marks appear in purple), send messages during the lesson.
- Follow each student’s progress over weeks: practice time, improving and stagnating bars, tendencies, with an automatic summary.
It works with any theremin through an audio input, with deeper integration for the D-Lev. It also supports string instruments, is available in 16 languages (including Japanese), and keeps everything on the student’s own computer.
Herve will present his project in the Online workshop on 4 October. The link to the app will be published here soon.