Theremin I/O vs Neveramin

Play with light – Theremin I/O turns your iPhone into a touchless music instrument. It uses your camera and flash to measure the distance to your hand, this signal is then processed by a synthesizer to generate a tone. Features: • Old-school synthesizer • Constrain input to scales (harmony quantization) • 8 sound presets with effect controls • 50+ scale presets • Use as a MIDI controller (requires in-app purchase) • Learn fast with the tutorial overlay For more information visit http://theremin.io

In 1920, a young Russian physicist named Léon Theremin was experimenting with radio proximity sensors when he stumbled onto something stranger: by moving his hands near two antennas, he could conjure a ghostly, continuous tone out of thin air — no keys, no strings, no touch at all. The theremin became the world's first widely-known electronic instrument, and still one of its strangest: a voice played entirely on empty space, its pitch and volume shaped only by how close your hands drift to a pair of antennas. RCA sold a home version in 1929. It scored decades of science-fiction film. It captivated everyone who ever stood in front of one and couldn't quite believe the sound was real. NEVERAMIN is that same idea, rebuilt around a camera instead of radio antennas. Wave left and right and the pitch bends across four octaves. Move your hand toward the lens and the tone swells; pull back and it fades — the same touchless, gestural performance Theremin invented over a hundred years ago, minus the vacuum tubes, the antenna calibration, and the price tag of an original or replica instrument. All it needs is the camera already in your pocket. For modern musicians, that's the real shift. The theremin has always been one of the most physically expressive instruments ever built, and also one of the least accessible — rare hardware, a notoriously steep learning curve, decades of virtuosos you can count on two hands. Neveramin puts that same gesture-controlled expression in reach of anyone experimenting with sound design, ambient textures, live looping, or simply curious what a century-old idea feels like under their own hands today. HOW IT WORKS Press the NEVERAMIN button to start. The app photographs your surroundings for a moment — keep your hands out of frame — then tracks any motion against that reference. No machine learning, no photo library access, nothing ever leaves your device. Three sensitivity faders (X, Y, Z) tune how strongly each axis of movement responds, from subtle vibrato to full-range sweeps. AUTOTUNE Snap your pitch to a scale instead of playing freehand. Choose any of the 12 keys, major or minor, plus a speed control for how quickly each note glides into tune. It's a pure pitch-quantization trick, not audio pitch-shifting, so it adds no latency — it feels as immediate as the raw theremin underneath it. SPACE ECHO An analog-style feedback delay with mix, time, and feedback controls, voiced to sound like a warm tape echo rather than a clean digital repeat. Push the feedback up and it self-oscillates — on purpose. CIRCUIT BENDING Three unlabeled toggles inspired by the DIY circuit-bending scene: an inductor-style lowpass filter, a mildly saturating transformer stage, and a 555-timer-style tremolo — small, chaotic modifications in the spirit of musicians who've always taken electronics apart to find new sounds hiding inside. Neveramin doesn't collect data, doesn't require an internet connection, and doesn't put anything between you and the instrument. Just a camera, your hands, and a hundred years of electronic music history, reduced to a single button.