The Quilcom Trout: A Trautonium Tribute
Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:08 pm
Hello friends!
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
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