Hi. If you have found this blog, surprise! You have stumbled upon a pretty new blog on DIY synthesis, for music, not for another field of electronics such as Ham Radio.
My name is Bruce and I have been building occasional projects in electronics for a number of years. Lately, I would like to have a general focus on music. Music is another hobby of mine. I play guitars and have a Casio XW-G1 synthesizer. Patchblocks are another type of synthesizer that I have recently started exploring. The room to move with this platform is so great and not a bad way to learn about how synthesis modules are put together. Patchblocks software is free to try out. Just stick with learning the tutorials found in the IDE and you will make some interesting sounds. There are also a number of ready-to-go patches before you even learn how to program. Really cool stuff.
One thing I have found over the years is that after playing a musical instrument, I began appreciating other genres of music. Originally, I like rock, classic rock and alternative. Learning how to play harmonica (my first choice in musical instruments) and then guitar, really opened up my horizons. I started to listen to more country and folk music. I appreciate some electronic music, some bluegrass, a little more metal, more classical and some that I find hard to pin down.
To bring this rambling back to DIY synthesis, I will not purport that one type or area of electronic synthesis is superior over another, at least not yet. I know that some synthesizers sound better than others and there are many that are classics. What is comes down to some of the time is that you buy, use, and make what you can afford. Budget it whatever way you like so if you really want to stick with only exploring analog circuits, save for a bit and buy what you need. I like to explore a lot of different areas of electronics so I have Arduino's, PIC IC's, Basic Stamp II's, LM324's, 555 and 556 Timer IC's, as well as a number of other components.
Books tend to be a great resource for me. I have some electronic engineering technician textbooks, some hobby electronics books that cover a wide range of topics and lots of other books. Programming languages are also great. I have experimented with C, Arduino C, C++, BASIC, and Python. Processing is another environment that I have dabbled in and think has great potential for me. Just look at the Processing Exhibition page and you see lots of different project ranging from physical interaction to data collection and representation.
In the blog entries to come, do not be surprised to see one area covered such as oscillators made from analog circuits and then others made from digital IC's. I hope to have some interested readers so drop a line if you like. Let me know what you think.
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