Building Your Own Sound Machines
Do you like music? Do you appreciate toys? Have you always been fascinated by music machines? Well, if you answered yes to these questions then building your own synthesizers and audio effects devices may just be for you. Sure, it’s daunting at first, but with a little practice and self teaching, a newsgroup or two, and a good portion of Youtube research you will be off and going in not time at all and making sounds along the way. This is the world of “DIY” also known as Do It Yourself. More specifically, this is the world of Synth DIY, also known unofficially as a group of nerds for the most part singing or fingertips on soldering irons and straining our eyes looking at tiny parts and sometimes nearly invisible circuit board traces. But you may ask yourself, “Why build when you can buy?”.
Well, there are many reasons to build these “toys”, and as a result you end up with different levels of builders out there. Functionality, curiosity, necessity, and boredom cover this rowdy group of hobbyists from East to West. One might think the main group of people wanting these self-built music machines are solely musicians. This is known as a bad assumption. Many of us, myself included, do make music, but are also deeply interested in what makes the technology possible. These devices represent a puzzle or challenge in the way a video game may to someone else. I am a self professed “Geek” and have no problem with the term at all. I “geek out” all the time on different things. Sometimes it involves a new professionally manufactured piece of gear, and other times it involves schematics, breadboards and the practice of avoiding popping capacitors and burning wires from bad circuit decisions or too many empty beer bottles on the workbench.
Another group that must be mentioned are the professionals. These are the hobbyists that actually design stuff instead of simply assembling kits or projects from the PCB level. These pro’s are the elite in the Synth DIY world if you will. The top level folks would be Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim and other notable synthesizer manufacturers from the birth of modern synthesizers in the 60’s to date. Modern designers such as Paul Schrieber, Juergen Haible, Grant Richter, John Blacet and Dieter Doepfer also design projects and sell them as kits or finished modules. As hobbyists, many of us look to these designers as modern philosophers and teachers of a dying art, analog synthesis. Digital recreations of classic analog circuits are seemingly taking over the world. They do sound similar, but in no way do they completely replace analog circuits. An example can be found in analog delays that use Bucket Brigade Device (BBD) chips. These chips died out, manufacturers stopped making them when digital took off. But a void was clearly left as analog delays became coveted studio possessions, and the sterile tone of analog simulation effects left many and ear in need of warmth and the presence of noise that we mistakenly think of as bad in the music studio. Noise is in fact a part of natural, daily life. We are comforted by it. Unless you go into a sound proof chamber you will not find a truly noiseless place on earth anywhere.
via Natural Rhythm
