The Beach Boys And The Polk Tannerin
By DJ M on August 29th, 2006
In Brian Wilson/B. Boys
INTUITIVE MUSIC has an excellent post, with embedded video, on the Beach Boys' use of a Theremin:
"It has been often said that the Beach Boys where responsible for introducing the famous Theremin (father of all the modern synthesizers) to the big audience with their legendary song 'Good Vibrations' This is not quite true. The single 'Good Vibrations' was released in October 1966 and it has been considered the colophon of pop songs. For the song, Brian Wilson was looking forward using a Theremin, but he soon realized that the instrument, which is played with one hand in the air and need years of training, was too difficult to control onstage. This way, Wilson looked for an alternative and he kept in touch with musician Paul Tanner, who was at the time using an instrument based on the Theremin but it was easier to play: the Electro-Theremin...For the live shows, the Beach Boys had to deal with the inconvenience of not having Paul Tanner to play the Polk Tannerin. As an alternative option, they ended up replacing it by a Moog Ribbon-Controller, a new device from that Robert Moog made custom for the band that would allow to play a synthesis tone all along a ribbon."