Synthesizer

My neighbors hate me and I don’t blame them, but when you hear the skull-jiggling bass spill out of my speakers, you feel a few miles closer to god. Keyboards are my life, I have a collection of 42 synths, including some very precious gems, a Moog muSonics Minimoog, TWO Juno-60s and a Aries Modular 300. I had an opportunity to buy an iconic System 35 once, but I’m not rich, it’s taken me over 18 years to build my collection. When I was browsing etsy, ebay, shopify and the likes as I do a few times a week, I stumbled upon something that made my heart oscillate like the machine gun buildup up a tightening square wave.

One of the earliest pioneers in electronics had developed an early synth, the pioneering Mixtur-trautonium in the 1930’s that shook the world through radio broadcasts and sound design. It was a large beauty of knobs and pedals on a rack, and was unchallenged for many years aside from one rumored competitor who vanished just before WWII, a man allegedly named Adelhard Klein-Grutzmacher, who according to rumor had vanished at the start of the war and was presumed dead. The listing I stared at was for the Grutzmelodicon, the only rumored synth of his, clearly by someone who had no idea how rare of a gem this was. The price read $150.

I sent an email with an offer of $220, provided I could pick it up that very day, hoping to outbid anybody else responding without tipping the seller off too much. That synthesizer was worth at least $40,000 as described, fully functional and near mint condition, and most importantly, no living soul in recorded history had even seen one aside from in an early sketch. I paced back and forth, refreshing my mail app, unable to focus on anything aside from a possible response with my heart refusing to quiet. When the email came through, “Sure, thanks for the generosity! Come on by, just buzz a few times, I have poor hearing” , followed by an address, I leapt on my desk and shouted in triumph. I called my bud Z-man and told him to stop by with his truck, NOW. “I’m at work”, he responded. “NOW!”, I begged and he groaned and gave me 20 minutes to pace frantically.

My bud pulled up his his truck and I ran out to meet him. “Where’s the fire, dude”, he asked a little grumpy in contrast to my elation. Tim is a large guy, the nice kind of asshole friend, a non-violent but argumentative giant never afraid to show his annoyance. He also was a synth head and a talented player, I had to save the surprise and show him in person.

“Just help me out, you’ll see”, I asked to his groan of a response. He flipped me the bird and set the truck rules, he picks the music, I pay for gas, and this better be good. I nodded and we took off to the address in the middle of nowhere I’d input on maps as day began dimming to dusk in a cooling gradient in the wide sky over the road.

After nearly 40 minutes, the GPS signalled we’d arrived and my legs tingled with the high of unstretching from the car seat and onto the dead grass of the neglected lawn. The place was very run down but fairly large, it had clearly been a lovely 3 story home perhaps twenty years ago. I knocked on the door then remembered the email. I buzzed hard, 4 times to make sure I was heard. I nearly buzzed again when the door opened a sliver to reveal an elderly man, gaunt and hunched with very large hearing aids under wild white hair. He looked to be over 80, and he said “Come in, right this way”, with a very strong German accent.

We entered and the smell of mold and decades of dust crept to our senses. The house was very sparsely decorated, ancient cabinets and a couch from the 60’s perhaps. Old photos were scattered on the wall, family members, soldiers during the war, a young pianist playing. It was hard to see clearly as that dark house seemed one massive shadow, pierced sparingly by the ochre beams of light from the dusty windows. “In the basement”, the man creaked, and I felt nervous, despite the holy grail of a score that awaited and the fact my large friend was with me. The stone basement walls emanated a chill that seeped into my clothes as we descended, but soon we were on the stone floor and there it was, cover removed, in all of its glory.

“Holy sh…”, Tim began, and I had to slyly kick his shoe, shaking my head to signal the value of this item might not be known by the current owner. The look on his face spoke volumes though, he knew exactly what we were looking at. We proceeded to haul the heavy, vintage synthesizer upstairs with quite a struggle, loaded it in the truck and we returned to the older gentleman to thank him and pay him. My friend’s eyes bulged in absolute disbelief as he saw me count out $220 to hand the seller of the treasure we’d loaded under a bounty of blankets. I thanked him kindly and Tim and I drove off.

“Is this SERIOUSLY what i think it is?”, Tim shouted, unable to contain himself now out of hearing aid range. “For TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS”, I smiled, gloating.

“The only one in this beautiful world, the only one viewed by anyone aside that man in over 60 years”. I smiled broadly, unable to contain my joy, I felt like I’d won the lottery. We hauled it into my place a few hernias later and marvelled at it, the ornate woodwork, the decorative carvings that looked to portray mythological tales, it looked to be black mahogany, it was stunningly beautiful. I pushed it to a wall by itself, studying the onyx black keys that took place of the white keys of traditional keyboards. The knobs looked to be ivory or bone, others good, the parts of this thing alone were worth thousands. The stain on it was elegant, near black with a gossamer sheen, not a single scratch in the pristine surface. I found the plug and crossed my fingers and toes, I could tell Tim did as well, and we plugged it in.

There was a static-like crackle as the vacuum tubes inside came to life, they seemed to drain the ambient noise of the room, which was lit warmly by an orange light hazing up from the gaps of black keys, highlighting their form. We high-fived like children and I pressed a black middle C key down to release a roar of the gods. The bassy tone was fat and crisp, clearly some tremolo on the modulation that was years ahead of it’s time. I reached over and turned the familiar looking knob that read “RES” and the sound crisped into a haunting, saturated tone.

“Jesus this is unreal, may I”, Tim asked, eagerness in his eyes. I would have all the time in the world to figure out how it worked, no instructions existed for this beast of a synth. I agreed, rising from the chair and studied the cabinet. I notices some unsavory symbols on the device, it was German-built during the onset of the second world war, I guess it was to be expected. “How the fuck did YOU get this”, he half-jokingly commented, playing a spine shivering chord that could make Giorgio Moroder cry, Tim was quite talented but it was the synth, everything sounded perfect, like an audio MSG so rich it made you hungry for more. I looked at the date etched into brass label near the base, a slightly sour taste entering my mouth, Auschwitz, 1941. Despite all implications, I just had to let this slide, this was the one and only Grutzmelodicon

Tim played around first, sating our eagerness to hear the incredible synth’s cosmic ballad, it had three oscillators and some technical developments that weren’t released until decades past its conception. I made him get up so I could play despite his severe protest, the power of the synth made me feel like a god in command of a siren’s song. By the time I was done playing, I looked at my phone to see 32 missed calls. Someone was direly trying to reach me, there must be an emergency. I felt panic and scrolled through, work, mom, friends, work mom, friends, they were from multiple days. It was only Saturday but my phone displayed Wednesday. I tried to figure out what was glitching and asked Tim what time it was, and he looked distraught, sweating heavily and clearly confused.

“What the FUCK”, he shouted, clearly distressed and confused as well. “This can’t.. Is it WEDNESDAY!?” He looked horrified as I’m sure did I. I thanked him and turned off the machine and showed him out. I rushed to the computer to email work and begin damage control, still in shock. The amount of lies was immense, I explained my phone was stolen in a mugging to my boss, and he seemed satisfied enough not to fire me yet. A long series of apologetic texts had me mostly in the clear, but I was so starving and exhausted I collapsed almost directly after.

Thursday I’d eaten the largest breakfast possible, a cheesesteak, eggs and bacon, and a fruit salad, and coffee and orange juice. I got to work, head hanging in shame and all apologies for the fabricated force majeure I’d described in the form of a mugging. At lunch I housed a burger, fries and a soda and a milkshake, but I was still hungry. I felt like there was a nagging tapeworm inside that was stealing the nourishment from my massive meals. That day I left a bit early, eager to get to the phenomenal yet brooding instrument, and I was shocked to see Tim’s truck in the driveway. He was at my door, arms tucked in his armpits, clearly in an anxious state.

“Dude, I got it, alarm clocks”, he said, something I‘d been thinking earlier that day. Set an alarm, avoid any possible trance-like side effects we’d both experienced.

“I was thinking the same thing”, I said, as we eagerly scampered inside and over to the dark synth born in the dark heart of the war. Before we’d started I’d suggested something physical in case our hearing was affected. Something was disturbingly hypnotic about it, but we needed to play with it, to hear that complete sound that exists nowhere else in the world. I asked how we could make sure to be aware of the time aside from sound, stumped. We stood there like showroom dummies for a second before Tim came up with it.

“Delivery”, he said in revelation. “They buzz the door, and we leave it open so they can enter in case we can’t hear”. I agreed, satisfied, and I flicked on the toggle that made the black keys glow from the shadowy cracks between. I played a bassy low E# and I tried to inhale so the rumbling vibration didn’t take my breath away. I patched some cords in the rack, and I blinked, rubbing my eyes, they felt fleshy, slimy and looked like slick intestines, I watched as they quivered from the vibratory bass. The all black keys of the piano began to appear like the long teeth of a charred skull, the rack’s ports as eyeless sockets oozing veins on a macabre, monstrous face.

Almost immediately after that chord I felt a hand on my shoulder causing me to jump, I spun to see the melting face of a skinny, naked man, dripping meat from a peeling, blackening skull in a violent torrent of blood and leaking gore. I screamed and the fleshless face screamed back, quivering veins writhing and the form that began blurring as my eyes teared and when I blinked my glazed eyes I saw a frightened delivery man, backing to the edge of the room with our meals in plastic bags. I got Tim’s attention and he was as horrified as I, the fear on his face spelling out he’d seen something nightmarish as well. After a moment he seemed to be back in reality, and we paid the nervous delivery man and turned off the instrument. We ate in absolute silence for ten minutes, also swallowing our fear while plotting.

I finally stated that we shouldn’t play it until the weekend, that it seemed to somehow suck time. How he had just sat down to play a few notes when our food arrived, an hour having passed. We’d both had nightmarish hallucinations, and both agreed that this instrument was the cause. He began asking to play a little more like a junkie begging for a fix, but I said he needed to leave and he did begrudgingly. The look in his eyes was pure loathing. I half expected him to beat me to death, an arpeggio of twitches was wrinkling his hateful face. He walked away in silence, got in his truck and peeled out loudly in his manual transmission tank, drawing neighbors to windows, and was gone in the sour fume of tires melting.

I scarfed down that food but was still starving and I stared at that mesmerizing vintage synthesizer as you might a tender pork roast. It was so perfect, so elegant, so satisfying. My fingers danced upon the ornate woodwork, the juxtaposition of greek mythos and nazi soldiers carved into the sides of that electric lucifer, beckoning me. Those beautiful gold toggle switches i knew deep down what had been melted down to create. My mother called, breaking me from the spell, and I answered to her tears, there had been an accident, my brother was in the hospital with a fractured skull, she’d been trying to reach me for days. He’d been violently assaulted by a man with a crowbar. I called out of work, the second time that week, but I had to be by him as he fought for his life.

I’d arrived to my tearful family, comforting them all and staying by my brother’s side, trying to ignore the visible dent in his bandaged head. It was a horrible tragedy, but it brought me to my senses a bit, I was now focused on everybody’s well-being and not once had I thought of the invisible limits that synthesizer had pulled us across the past week. After two days, they announced surgery was needed and we should go, but the prognosis was very positive. I returned home, keeping my brother in my heart and thoughts on the long drive back. It was 8PM when I arrived to find Tim’s truck in my driveway, the lights in my window were clearly on. “You motherfucker”, I spat, fuming with rage.

I kicked my slightly ajar door inward, noticing the scratch marks on the lock where he’d busted in. I stormed over shouting with rage but began coughing at that heavy stench. Rot permeated the air and I needed to cover my nose with a folded sweatshirt in order to even get to my keyboard room. Terror assaulted me as I slowly approached those black, backlit keys. Tim’s clothing, wallet and cellphone were strewn across the floor near a crowbar he’d broken in with that had struck a dark chord in me.

It smelled like a corpse had been rotting for weeks in the coffin that was now my music room, but there was no body. I stared at the sticky black trail of decomposition that lead to that death machine, the Grutzmelodicon and its strange carved vents on it’s base near the floor. A few fingernails rested in that putrid black liquid decay, a few fillings from his past dental work, a few tufts of his recognizable curly hair. That was all that it had left behind. I know I need to get rid of it, I can sell it for a small fortune and buy dozens of rare synths I’m sure, I can finally quit my job and move to a new apartment that smells so much better. I can meet another best friend with a shared passion for synths. I can do all of these things after I play it one final time.