What about this "Italian Oberheim"? The Trilogy looks very similar to the early OB-X. Especially its grey design with the black switches gives the instrument a certain Oberheim-touch. What about the sound..? Miles away from American vintage synths, that's for sure ...
Crucinelli Mario
The company of CRUcinelli MARio - CRUMAR - developed and produced in the 70ies and early 80ies a wide range of organs, coupled with some (e-)pianos., multi-keyboards and synthesizers. Some organs were quite good and even used as Hammond-substitute. The pianos never became really famous, but some multikeyboards and synthesizers were selling well. The most widely used multi-Crumar is the small PERFORMER. Its brass sound is meaty and lovely to play (the strings are rather dull, what a shame).
TRILOGY, STRATUS and COMPOSER are multi-instruments as well. Some Crumar synthesizers have highly respected features: Crumar DS1 and DS2 are often used in techno-music. The final synthesizer-project in 1983 - Crumar SPIRIT - is one of the best mono-synths ever made (considering features, not quality of hardware). Sadly it hit the market when the DX7 came out and musician’s interests changed to digital sounds. Only about 250 Spirits were produced ...
The first Midi-synths of Crumar were sold under the new name BIT. Bit-One, -99 and -01 are nice analog keyboards developed by Synthex-father Mario Maggi. Sounds are quite good, but basically the hardware of the instruments is not the best. Especially the keyboards feels brittle and definitely not masculine...
TRI...
The three parts of the lovely Trilogy are Synth, Organ and Strings. Only the Synth section is of musical interest, believe me! "Organ" consists of four sliders - that's it. "Strings" produces stupid-sounding phaser-like pads ... strings of Korg Delta, Solina String Ensemble, Korg Lambda, Roland VP-330 and RS-101 / RS-202 sound much better - these are the ones for a nice polyphonic vintage string sound!
So, is it worth talking about an instrument that only contains one useful section? Well, it is ...
Synth-Section
This part of the Trilogy comes up with some extremely rare features. Further, the filter has enormous sonic power ... By the way: The Trilogy uses quite a few CEM chips ...
- 6 x CEM 3310 (EG)
- 6 x CEM 3320 (VCF)
- 6 x CEM 3330 (VCA)
- 1 x SSM 2020 (VCA)
OSCillator
You can choose between Saw and Pulse for both Osc together, not seperately! But still there is one nice extra: wavefrom number three is a "Mix" between Saw and Pulse - this is no ordinary feature, not at all. It even comes better: controlled via the poti ALTERNATE WAVEFORM the Trilogy alternates between Saw and Pulse with each new key you hit... it's like having an Oberheim Two-Voice with SEM1 (Saw) and SEM2 (Pulse) alternating with each key being played (of course the sound of Oberheim is far more powerful than the one of Crumar).
But still this feature is a simple way to let soli sound very natural, very musical... simple, but effective.
Both OSC can be synchronized. The sonical result is "ok" - don't expect the sharpness and power of a Moog Prodigy or Arp Odyssey...
Non-synchronization - floating - is visualized on the Trilogy. This nice feature is fantastic: an LED (PHASE) shows you the tonal difference of OSC1 and OSC2. Therfore it blinks like an LFO. It there is no light both OSC are perfect in tune. Floating in general can clearly be recognized by the ear. Nevertheless the visualization via LED is an excellent feature to adjust floatings more exactly...
LFO
Even the LFO has some nice extras. It features DELAY, SLOPE, two waveforms and can be routed to OSC (FM), Filter or VCA. SLOPE is brilliant! It controls the increasing modulation-intensity. Parallel you have "ordinary" delay controlling the modulation's starting point. However, vibrati on the Trilogy sound very natural, very smooth. Combined with the beautiful filter resonance you get some extremely nice fx-sounds when using the LFO ...
Filter
This is - as already mentioned - a very powerful tool. Especially its resonance is brilliant. But be careful - you might hurt your ears or damage your speakers. Playing the Trilogy for the first time, no one expects the overwhelming power of the filter's resonance.
The filter can be modulated by the envelope (ADSR, sitting right next to keyboard) - positively or negatively. Further, there is a filter CV-input. Controlling the VCF via an external analog sequencer or another separate LFO expands the Trilogy's sonic power quite a lot.
One of the nicest features is the knob PEDAL (on/off) to be found in the filter section. You simply "turn" on/off the external modulation source connected to the instruments filter-input. No other synth offers such a simple solution. When controlling a Pro-One or Minimoog or Odyssey, you have to remove the plug from filter-in, unless you want the filter to be modulated all the time. Even when stopping the external modulation source - like a sequencer - a Pro-One e.g. behaves different simply by being connected to its filter-input. So you have to remove the plug. With the Trilogy it's easy: keep the connection and "turn" the pedal input off.
Glide
is found on many polysynths (e.g. on the Elka Synthex). Glide on Crumar's Trilogy is among the best of all! It features not only AMOUNT and SPEED, but also four DIRECTIONs:
- A - OSC 1 & 2 are pitched from below
- B - OSC 1 is pitched from below while OSC 2 stays unchanged
- C - OSC 1 is pitched from above while OSC 2 stays unchanged
- D - OSC 1 & 2 are pitched from above
Direction B and C give you interesting sonic results. Especially pads sound more deep and interesting if first one OSC 1 is out of tune but then slightly appears to OSC 2...
Joystick and more
Trilogy offers a pleasant keyboard (similar to the one of the Synthex), a nice joystick (pitchbend up/down, lfo-controlled VCF or VCA) and the single envelope. Its position between joystick and keyoard is very unusual. But to be honest: varying decay-time is one of the easiest and most useful methods of changing sounds. Therefore the envelope's position beside the keyboard is not stupid at all ... while creating nice melodies with the right hand, the left hand comfortably controls the envelope ...
Crumar's Cut-down Paraphonic Approach
[ ... ] In what could only be a cost-cutting exercise, Crumar made the Trilogy not 12x paraphonic, but 6x paraphonic. This means that all the Cs and all the F#s share a contour generator, filter and amplifier, as do all the C#s and Gs, all the Ds and G#s ... and so on up the octave. Unconventional though this architecture may be, it remains surprisingly usable. For example, on what other keyboard could you hold a drone -- say, a low C -- and play a solo above it which retriggers the drone every time that you play another C or an F#, but at no other time?
(Gordon Reid in Sound On Sound).
Sound
Well, compared with sonical richness and deepness of many american or japanese synthesizers the Trilogy sounds rather thin, sometimes even dull. But still it has its own character, and some tone colours are only to be found on this instrument.
Soli come up very natural thanks to slope-LFO, alternate waveform of the OSC, joystick and - I personally think this is very important - thanks to the well balanced keyboard.
Pads are powerful due to the filter's effective resonance and the well-equiped glide-option.
FX-sounds are quite surprising too. Two LFOs, nice resonance, external filter cv-input, joystick... possibilities for the creative musician are not bad.
That's it. Bass-sounds are more likely to be created by a nice monosynth (Pro-One, Odyssey, any Moog, OSCar, even MS-20...), and the Organ/Strings-sections have no real musical value, as mentioned above.
| MP3s - Trilogy Solo Soundfiles |
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Lead 1 |
Sure, it's no Oberheim, but it does not sound bad ...
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Theo Bloderer
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Lead 2 |
Solo, with use of internal LFO and external delay
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Alternate Waveform |
Waveform switching between saw and pulse
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Glide B |
Very powerful pads
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Glide C |
Mystic pads (reduced filter frequency)
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VCF und Glide |
Warm pad, again with glide
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Chords |
External filter modulation
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LFO Resonance 1 |
Filter modulation via internal LFO
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LFO Resonance 2 |
Oscillator synchronization and LFO modulation
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Resonance 1 |
Octave modulation of oscillators
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Resonance 2 |
External filter modulation
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Resonance 3 |
Live sequence. The "overtones" at the end are especially beautiful
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| MP3s - Trilogy Mix Soundfiles |
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Mix 1 |
Crumar Trilogy (solo sound), ARP-2600, ARP Avatar, Korg PS-3100
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Theo Bloderer
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Mix 2 |
Crumar Trilogy (solo sound with alternate waveforms), ARP-2600, ARP Avatar, Korg PS-3100
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Mix 3 |
Crumar Trilogy (solo sound with alternate waveforms and use of joystick), ARP-2600, ARP Avatar
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Mix 4 |
Crumar Trilogy (pad sound), ARP-2600, ARP Avatar, Sequential Pro-One (bass sequence)
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Mix 5 |
Crumar Trilogy (pad sound, ext. VCF mod), ARP-2600, ARP Avatar, Sequential Pro-One (bass sequence)
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Mix 6 |
Crumar Trilogy (solo sound with octave modulation), Roland JD-800 (live sequence)
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Mix 7 |
Crumar Trilogy (solo sound with octave modulation), Roland JD-800 (live sequence)
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Trilogy - nice hardware
Beside my personal experience that Bit-One/Bit-99 and the Crumar Performer are not extremely well-made instruments, the Trilogy is a nice exception considering hardware-quality. It's simply beautiful made, with nice wooden side panels, a good keyboard, well-dimensioned joystick and envelope controls. The inside looks pretty as well. High quality it is! So you won't be surprised to hear that the Trilogy cost about 2995 Dollar in 1981! Not really cheap... the Jupiter-8 introduced at the same time cost 5295 Dollar (with that nice Roland you really got a state-of-the-art "synthesizer"). No wonder there were only a few Trilogies sold.
Today the Trilogy won't be found right around the next corner. Anyway it is not too rare. In
Italy
it's offered every now and then for a few hundret Euros. Sometimes there's one in
Germany
,
England
or even the States. My model was offered in 2002 in
Belgium
for 500 Euros. That was tremendously cheap, but worth every Cent. In 2010 I still own that Trilogy. Never had any technical problem with it. One reason why it's one of my personal all-time classic synthesizers ...
Review, pictures, sounds: Theo Bloderer