ThereminHero is the project and stage name of Greig Stewart — a software engineer based in the UK who has spent the better part of fifteen years building instruments out of hardware that was never meant to be played as one.
The project started around 2009 with a theremin, a copy of Guitar Hero, and a question: could you use the theremin to control the game? After enough wiring and calibration, the answer was yes. The video went up in 2010 and drew more attention than expected, which made continuing worthwhile.
Since then, the work has expanded considerably. The NESKeytar — a fully playable instrument built from a real NES console, a Guitar Hero controller body, three Arduinos, a Raspberry Pi, and the original RP2A03 audio chip — came next. Then a laser harp. Most recently, a battery-powered LED cube running emulated NES and Game Boy games across six 64×64 matrix panels.
The common thread is old game audio: the specific texture of 8-bit hardware, chip tunes, the sonic fingerprints of consoles designed decades before anyone thought to use them as instruments. Taking that material into live performance, custom-built hardware, and one-off experiments is what ThereminHero does.
Past performances include solo sets and collaborations, including the Video Game Awards 2014 with Dave Gillies. Build documentation, performance videos, and ongoing projects are on the YouTube channel and throughout this site.