The Quilcom Trout: A Trautonium Tribute

[Spogg]

Hello friends!

YouTube Front panel whole.png (265.19 KiB) Viewed 20165 times

The Quilcom Trout is a synth which is a tribute to the many incarnations of the Trautonium and its principles of operation.
Rather than go into more detail here you can watch the video here:

https://youtu.be/u0hwT93_cSQ

You can download it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9zulsd3wg6r2w ... 8.zip?dl=0

I would like to thank Kevin Brown for making what I think is a lovely and appropriate GUI for it.

I feel I should mention that my making of this synth caused great upset to my former friend and collaborator from Germany, Manfred Plümer. I would hate to repeat this with anyone else.

Briefly: There was a connection between the inventor Friedrich Trautwein, the musician Oskar Sala and the Nazi party in the lead up to the dreadful World War 2. In my view this was not Nazi collaboration as such but more an act of self-preservation when Trautwein showed the instrument to Goebbels, and Sala played him some Paganini. The instrument was also used to test the PA at the Munich Olympics but I don’t know the details. As far as I can determine there was no further involvement of either person with the Nazis, and Sala himself said that afterwards they were left alone.
Manfred took the view that any involvement with Nazis, for whatever reason or interpretation, was sickening to him and that he couldn’t work with me again because my actions would revive interest in these people (I’m paraphrasing some very strong emails).In any case I take the view that my synth is about the invention not the inventor.

I confided in tulamide, to see if I would be touching a German nerve, and offered the possibility of scrapping the project, but he was more than supportive and I thank him very much for it. However, I felt you should all know this background before you proceed.

Cheers

Spogg

[k brown]

I take the same view when people go on and on about what a horrible person Thomas Edison was. Like his work is somehow suspect because of it.

Anyhow, the Trout is an absolutely monumental project!

[trogluddite]

Ooh, that's unusual in a very fascinating way. The "upside-down" harmonics make some very strange tones possible (you should know me well enough by now to know that "strange" is a compliment!!). I really like the gating and envelope extras, too - especially the ability to "damp" a note by holding it; very reminiscent of playing a hand-drum.

I'm also a BIG fan of frequency shifters. The quad shifter looks to be from an effect plugin (unfinished as usual) that I posted way back in the SynthMaker days (my archived files are all .osm). It's a long time ago now, but IIRC, I only did a bit of the ASM optimisation, and I suspect that the Hilbert algorithm is Martin's work (it's way beyond my ken, that's for sure!) If you dare, it's possible to pack four different shift values into it - here's the most recent version that I can find, with a few presets...

Frequency Shifter 002 Quad.fsm

(91.31 KiB) Downloaded 1133 times

Manfred took the view that any involvement with Nazis, for whatever reason or interpretation... ...sickening...

I wonder how he would feel about me having a neurological condition researched by, described by, and named after a doctor who killed children as part of the 3rd reich's eugenics programmes. I have no doubt that the substance of Asperger's scientific work is essentially correct, and has been key to improving many people's lives. I also felt nothing but revulsion when the degree of his involvement in Nazi atrocities was uncovered. Certainly, I prefer to use the more formal names for my condition rather than his name, but it would surely be a cruel irony to deny current generations the benefit of his scientific findings as the price for remembrance of those with conditions much like our own who were his victims.

[k brown]

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling privileged to be exposed to such a mind as Trog's, and such an articulate writer.

[tulamide]

Manfred took the view that any involvement with Nazis, for whatever reason or interpretation... ...sickening...

I wonder how he would feel about me having a neurological condition researched by, described by, and named after a doctor who killed children as part of the 3rd reich's eugenics programmes. I have no doubt that the substance of Asperger's scientific work is essentially correct, and has been key to improving many people's lives. I also felt nothing but revulsion when the degree of his involvement in Nazi atrocities was uncovered. Certainly, I prefer to use the more formal names for my condition rather than his name, but it would surely be a cruel irony to deny current generations the benefit of his scientific findings as the price for remembrance of those with conditions much like our own who were his victims.

That's a good point. The general problem with the Nazis is, that there never was a complete resolving.
For example, Germany was forced into something called "Entnazifizierung" (denazification), with the goal to remove the Nazi idiology comepletely from all aspects of life, be it politics, culture, worklife, etc. However, the 4 victorious powers took totally different roads. In the french and english regions of Germany, almost no denazification took place. They just went for the highest criminals, like concentration camp chiefs and such. The russian region of Germany did a "reeducation" to the communistic idiology. And the american region soon replaced denazification by a "reeducation" to the democratic idiology. In other words, Noone cared.
In 1949, just 4 years later, an official law declared denazification had ended. Many Nazis kept working in all branches of the society under false names. Others got a "Persilschein" (denazification certificate), which basically whitewashed them. If victims absolved them, they got this certificate and were counted as non-Nazis! The German word is a wordplay, as Persil was a detergent.
But the victorious powers did play dirty just as well. All rocket science in both, America and Soviet Union, was based on German technology and they deported German scientists to work for them. Wernher von Braun and his team is well-known on the american side. The soviets deported 3500 german specialists and scientists for their rocket program. And that's just one example.
In the end, Nazis existed all over the world. And that makes it difficult to judge the outcome. Should we condemn space flights, because it was developed by Nazis on both sides of the world? Should we condemn TV, as it was pushed to the mass market by the Nazis? Should we condemn Volkswagen, as they were emerging from the Beetle, a car created by Ferdinand Porsche for the Nazis? Should we condemn the Coca-Cola company, that made big business in Nazi-Germany? Or boycott Fanta, as it was invented in Nazi-Germany, when Coca-Cola wasn't able, due to the war, to send the needed syrup for the Cola?
What about bycicle reflectors, whose patent was held by the SS! Heinrich Himmler as the chief of police introduced them as needed for all bycicles in Germany.

You see, there is not an easy line to draw. I personally hate the Nazi idiology, and not only the original, but todays Nazis as well. But I understood that we can't remove what's become an integral part of our lifes. As long as people like me remember what Nazis did and do, what they stood and stand for, and point to it and fight it, that's the best we can do.

The Trautonium is no exception.

[trogluddite]

With apologies to Spogg - lots of off topic yacking follows...
TL/DR: I have word-diarhhea; and tulamide's last post is fantastic.

privileged to be exposed to such a mind as Trog'

Thankyou - but you should also be thankful that it's only my mind that you're exposed to!

articulate writer

"Hyperlexic", according to the trick-cyclists - I pretty much taught myself to read before I could manage a spoken conversation. My usual MO is: Multiple hours of obsessive editing per paragraph, leavened by ten minute breaks to panic about whether I'm still saying what I started out intending to say, procrastinating about whether I've got the tone right, and mulling over the words to savour the combinations of sounds that they make. My login often gets timed out several times per post.

If ten pages of densely written technical prose in recursively nested clauses (plus lost of paretheticals [which I also nest {very deeply}]) are needed - no trouble, be with you in ten minutes. For a single sentence giving my trivial opinion about a completely non-controversial subject - I won't be going to bed tonight!

After all that, I hum and haw and then scrap about 3 out of every 4 posts. If I do post, I then immediately notice the glaring grammatical or spelling error that's been cunningly camouflaging itself for the last hour - and start editing again. Eventually (hopefully before it starts getting light again) it slowly creeps into my consciousness that my stomach is rumbling, my lips are gummed together, my bladder is about to burst, I have pins and needles in at least two limbs, and I no longer have the faintest idea what day of the week it is!
[This is only very slightly exaggerated for effect - I didn't sleep at all last night for my word-juggling!]

@tulamide
What an excellent post. So many people over here only know the official "winners" version of events, so I really appreciate hearing about them from an alternative viewpoint. Sadly, too little history written elsewhere gets translated into English (and, of course, we're notoriously lazy at learning other languages ) - though I have managed to find a couple of British historians who write well about events further East. As you so rightly say, it's about not forgetting - that's why I'm always uneasy when the past seems to be hidden away or redacted because it's controversial or uncomfortable. A handful neo-nazis might get off on reading some of those histories sometimes, but I have faith that it's worth that risk so that conscientious people can be reminded of the history that must not be repeated.

[Spogg]

I thought that after such enlightening posts I should at least say thank you to trog and tulamide.

Thank you!

And thank you to Kevin for your on-going support. I should mention that I told Kevin about the emails I got and he took my point of view but was prepared to delete his tribute synth if tulamide showed any reservations.

I’ve never actually met anyone here (apart from Hugh) but I feel like I’m amongst good friends and it’s great.

[kortezzzz]

Kev and Spogg, thank you so much for the contribution. The GUI is Inspiring and the sound editing possibilities are mind blowing. A virtual school for any Flowstoner.

About the other topic:

I find it difficult to ever say anything positive about the Nazis, because my family's story has greatly affected by WW2 (and I have an interesting personal story about that), but I can agree with tulamide. Empires rised and fell. Each delivered wars, dead and suffer, but where have we been without the contribution of those cultures to the collective knowledge and literacy?

[adamszabo]

Awesome synth Spogg!

Who is Manfred Plümer? Anyway, I agree with Tula, its a bit silly to boycott something that has some connection to something we dont like. That person should then not even breathe air because many nazis exhaled the same air we breathe today. Sure its recycled, but its the same atoms and molecules that were in their lungs.

[Spogg]

Awesome synth Spogg!

Who is Manfred Plümer? Anyway, I agree with Tula, its a bit silly to boycott something that has some connection to something we dont like. That person should then not even breathe air because many nazis exhaled the same air we breathe today. Sure its recycled, but its the same atoms and molecules that were in their lungs.

Thank you Adam.

Manfred Plümer is the guy who started to make loads of presets for Kevin and me and made music intros and play-outs for my recent videos. I still feel the loss and shock at his decision and reaction.