Synthitar

The Synthitar is a jungle cat sized musical instrument which combines the price of a concert piano with the sound of a polyphonic ring tone. While it was a familiar sight at landfill symphony orchestras, mafia balls and the like throughout the later half of the 21st century, it suffered from a notable lack of function and practicality.

Casio DG20 Synthitar

History of the Synthitar

The First Synthitaroid

Orignally created by acclaimed 19th century German missile scientist and music inventor guy, Sir Corinthian Leather. His requirements were simple: a large piece of Obnoxious Plastic that he could open beer bottles on. However, he had recently fallen on hard times and the injuries he sustained as a result of the fall prevented him from working. In desperation he took his ideas to local Gothic tyrant Michael Howard. Luckily, he had the ear of the king and refused to give it back until he financed the production of the Synthitar prototype. The first Synthitar was completed, but it had a number of setbacks. First of all, the use of large amounts of obnoxious plastic made it not only expensive (in fact obnoxious plastic replaced the gold standard for 6 months in 1893), but also made it irritating to look at and uncomfortable to hold. Small imperfections where different plates of plastic joined together meant that the prototype also came in 15 metric tonnes overweight. As a result the first entity to play the instrument was a Norse Frost Giant, and the instrument also produced no discernable sound apart from a slight clocking noise when tapped with a bit of wood. The bottle opening ability remained its greatest selling point, until 2 days after the prototype was built when Germany declared independence from Chinese Taipei. The provisional ruler declared that all bottles be made uncapped as a symbol of the German people's new found freedom and openness to a new foreign oppressor. The provisional ruler was subsequently drowned in a tidal wave of Holsten Pils after the factory was jostled slightly.

Sir Leather was forced to drop the Synthitar and went into business making radical decals for German missiles. He later appeared on the hit MTV show 'Pimp my Projectile'. He died a tragically ugly man in 1924 after contracting a rare condition known as 'missile scientists bladder'. His last request was inaudible, but his friends assumed it was to have a Synthitar played at his funeral. The clocking sound at the funeral caused several corpses to rise from their graves and several pallbearers were disturbed. As a result, the Synthitar was placed in a secret catacomb in the Schwartz Wold and guarded by a smelly communist (of which there were an abundance at the time), and a minotaur (which weren't as easy to come by, but he was a friend of the family and he needed a place to 'work' while he was on parole).

The Eighties

After-dark Conservative rituals made Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher aware of the Synthitar's existance. She sent a full sabre of the SAS Special Instrument Retrieval Unit via giant eagle to defeat the minotaur (and maybe walk around the communist or push him aside or something), and retrieve the instrument/utensil. Though she intended to use it to revive Hitler (or some other plot line lifted from the 'Avengers') for his expertise on school uniform design, she found it really had no unholy powers, and that the incident at the funeral was more to do with the type of wood used in the coffins that the dead were raised from than the sound of a Synthitar.

Thatcherite Legionnaire with Casio Synthitar

The Synthitar was incorporated into truncheon designs used by Thatcherite Legionnaires in the great war between Somerset and Glocestershire. It was filled with electronic bits in order to increase the chance of electrocuting and annoying the target. It was later used to beat New Romantics in order to make them so ugly that they were forced to increase the ranks of punk rockers. Unfortunately there was no way of reversing the process by hitting them with an instrument. The sound of a plastic guitar filled with diodes hitting a blitzie boy in the face did however lead to the Synthitar sound we all know and love today.

Synthitars in Religion

In Buddhism, at the dawn of time the Father Buddha was said to use an item remarkably like a Synthitar (though some groups say it was more like a Melodion). It had the ability to reveal the inner truth of anything it was pointed at; however, those were simple times, so ineveitably the inner truth of anything was that it was itself. So if he pointed it at a river, the river turned into a river, if he pointed at a mountain, it would turn into a mountain and so on. This went on predictably enough until with a burst of irony he pointed at a great steaming lump of primordial ooze and it turned into the entire human race.

Some more controversial texts state that he used to use it to jam in his parents' garage with his mates: Buddha classic, Jehova and Superman (an avatar of Vishnu).

Trivia

• The name 'Synthitar' was first coined by Mozart for his self composed duet with Aphex Twin: "Like a Prayer" which shot to number one in the Christmas 1704 download chart. It featured the lyrics "Life is a Synthitar, everyone must stand alone" as true today as it was when it was written.
• Synthitar is a REAL instrument!
• Every recording made by the Foo Fighters featured one note from a Synthitar played by Kurt Cobain's ghost.
• The famous Hammer and Sickle used to represent the Soviet Union and communists worldwide was actually a Hammer and Synthitar, but due to poor motivation (caused by a lack of competition), the artist couldn't be arsed to draw anything that complicated. The Hammer and Synthitar was originally supposed to match a tattoo behind Vladimir Lenin's ear.
• People play the Synthitar for free and find them in dustbins.
• Oxford trad band Radiohead (not to be confused with the smash hit movie Radiohead) wrote a song for the planned 8 Track release of 'Pablo Honey' called "Anyone can play the Synthitar". They were brought to court for this bare face lie and as a result never made another album.
• Its most practical use is being played by New Zealanders to thinly veil the fact that they are sexist. Best if using the electric mandolin sound.

Critique

• Popular hack and Highway man Dan Brown said "Yeah the Synthitar, an ancient dog marking a conspiratorial dog of dog doggers intent on making dog dog enough to be dogged by the dog and dog and shit. Insert 'dog' with something I found in the bible and you see if I don't make money! You see!"
• Music critic David Blunkett "The Synthitar is pointy, and it sounds like something much easier to make, thumbs up!"

Synthitars in Literature

• 'Captain Corelli's Synthitar' - Louis De Bernieres
• 'Animal Farm' - George Orwell (The pig called Sir Oinkers is supposed to represent the Synthitar's part in the communist revolution).

Synthitars in Cinema

• In the Steven Spielberg movie, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', the spaceship at the end is partially built out of Synthitars.
• The entire score to 'Remains Of The Day' was played by a Synthitar.

Famous Synthitar Players

• Harry Lin, the first (and hopefully even the last) man to have his own Synthitar Signature Series [1]

See also

• Obnoxious Plastic
• Germany

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