Anyone here have any experience building their own instruments? (Electronic or otherwise)

I've recently become obsessed with the idea of building my own analog synthesizer. However, I have zero experience in electronics, so I'm starting from the very beginning, messing around with LEDs, 555 timers, and breadboards to get a hang of some basic electronic principles before I move on to some more complex stuff.

Once I get that stuff down I'm going to give this a shot: http://musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/ALIENSCREAMER/ALIENSCREAMER.php

...and then hopefully move onwards and upwards from there. I've never owned a hardware synth before, and the idea of the first one I own being one I built is pretty cool to me, even if it's extremely simple.

Have any of you guys built any of your own gear? Effects pedals? Instruments?

You might want to start off with reading these:

• Make: Electronics
• Make: Analog Synthesizers (by Ray Wilson, who you just linked to)

Then you might want to progress to the entirety of this:

• Electronotes: Everything Package

I started out building guitar pedals from complete kits, like tremolos, compressors, etc. Check out http://buildyourownclone.com, for instance.The simpler pedals can usually be built in an evening, even when you have no prior experience.

It can be a bit frustrating at first when stuff doesn't work. The initial challenge is getting good at the actual soldering, it's easy to make shorts and cold solders, which leads to all sorts of malfunctions. Another challenge is getting to know the different kinds of components, that some have polarity, etc. Troubleshooting really does not seem like fun at first, but it very is satisfactory having spent those frustrating hours once you get something to work. And the experience definitely pays off later.

I had a x0xb0x kit laying around that felt a bit too daunting with several hundred parts, some SMP soldering, etc. I didn't really dare to begin building it, but when I saw the TTSH announcement last year I figured I could use the x0xb0x kit to measure if there was any hope of ever completing a TTSH. The x0xb0x was a raging success, everything worked perfectly on the first power-up, which was a surprise after around 50 hours of buidling. That was a weird feeling, I was sure I'd have to spend 10-20 hours of troubleshooting. The home made synth even sounded better than the pre-built x0xb0x I had from before.

So I jumped on the opportunity to get the TTSH kit last December, and built in once all parts arrived in March. Since it was such a big and quite expensive kit I figured I wanted to be very anal about keeping track of the progress and the parts, etc. I made lists of every part that went into every module, etc, and crossed them out once I had soldered them in place. Once again I feared having to spend tens of hours troubleshooting at the end, but I managed to build it all in 40+ hours, and had just a few hours of troubleshooting afterwards. So I guess the book keeping paid off. And the resulting synthesizer is just fantastic!

To ZoeB's recommendations I can add :

Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking

If you wanna design your own circuits the CMOS chips are a good way to get sequencers and logic stuff going:

CMOS Cookbook

Integrated Circuit 555 Projects

Also, Thomas Henry's stuff is worth having a look at, drum synthesis, oscillators, etc.

http://www.magsmoke.com/thomas_henry_books.asp

http://www.birthofasynth.com/Thomas_Henry/TH_main.html

I have no experience, but I'm trying to learn programming so I can make my dream synth.

  On 9/14/2014 at 11:03 AM, psn said:

 

 

Also, Thomas Henry's stuff is worth having a look at, drum synthesis, oscillators, etc.

http://www.magsmoke.com/thomas_henry_books.asp

http://www.birthofasynth.com/Thomas_Henry/TH_main.html

 

Oh man, that Thomas Henry Design Index is going to come in so handy...thanks for that.

Also, the TTSH looks awesome! I bet that was an awesome feeling when it worked exactly like it was supposed to.

Listen to Zoe, she's an amazing at that stuff

  On 9/14/2014 at 12:07 PM, Chartreuse said:

Listen to Zoe, she's an amazing at that stuff

As a disclaimer, I should probably point out I haven't read any of these books, and I also haven't made any electronics. I just write software and, lately, firmware. I would ask Nina which books she'd recommend, but she's a bit preoccupied right now with soldering so I won't bother her.

hi yep - ive built a large modular system and various desktop synths and effects

mfos is a good start as they are nice boards to solder and ray documents his builds well.

i would not recommend getting into large projects like ttsh, however a x0xb0x is a good project - well documented and well supported

when you begin building it helps to be in a community who you can ask questions as problems are inevitable. if you want to build modular you should start up an account at muffwiggler as the diy section is a good resource and full of people who will help you.

  On 9/14/2014 at 11:38 AM, poblequadrat said:

I have no experience, but I'm trying to learn programming so I can make my dream synth.

war horn in grade 7 (can be heard on

sound generator in highschool electronics class

analog synth in college (not from kit, just random wiring i had lying around so it was kinda ruff)

  On 9/14/2014 at 12:14 PM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 9/14/2014 at 12:07 PM, Chartreuse said:

Listen to Zoe, she's an amazing at that stuff

 

As a disclaimer, I should probably point out I haven't read any of these books, and I also haven't made any electronics. I just write software and, lately, firmware. I would ask Nina which books she'd recommend, but she's a bit preoccupied right now with soldering so I won't bother her.

 

Oh! Well it's cool what you both compose with hardware, can't wait for more!

built a few analog things in various workshops, but have no real knowledge of electronics circuits... I guess the real fun starts when you get to design your own things.. Definitely want to learn this stuff at some point! But I feel like, unlike programming, it's somewhat necessary to have a mentor for this...

and with programming it turns out that I have a higher interest in developing things for others than for myself primarily..

hello yes i'v made a few kits and designed quite a lot ofbits and bobs

read and do really, same as learning anything.

" But I feel like, unlike programming, it's somewhat necessary to have a mentor for this..."

funny bcos ifeel the oposite. electronics is fairly intuitive and easy to learn myself, but programing i feel i need someone to teach me. it goes straight over my head.

Good site: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

Good book for total beginers:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Electronics-Discovery-Charles-Platt/dp/0596153740

good book for project ideas:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Projects-Musicians-Anderton/dp/0825695023

I build stuff. Send me a message if you want to chat y'know.

I've made a lot of stuff digitally, I want to make my own software modular synth at some point but I need to learn all the bullshit that goes into making a proper VST sometime, I get caught up on the stuff that has nothing to do with the actual coding, like whatever making it interface with windows so I stick to ReaJS atm. But ReaJS is pretty fucking slow and even slower in Buzz where I could make a bunch of stuff in ReaJS to /act/ as modules. But I'm not really into crazy FFT stuff either, I just want to be able to work more with strange tuning and other things. Honestly I find myself being able to make most of the sounds I want to make, but every once in a while I wish I could put in as many chorus effects as I wanted or some minor limitation like that

but hardware-wise I'm poor and afraid of soldering

it does intrigue me tho with analog stuff, how a 6db filter is never /exactly/ 6db and stuff? Like you could get a more personal sound by tweaking it this way or that or partially by accident?

i did do some minor circuit bending but again I can't solder so I couldn't make permanent setups. I got a kinda cool distortion/clipping on an SK-1 one time and that was when I ruined it by TRYING to solder. That 'no way' sound on Ablum is a Mighty Megamouth, where I found the part of the circuit that modulates the pitch and made it go haywire

I actually made some decent circuit bending sounds around this time, like I think that crazy distorted psuedo-acidline on Alpha Mango Foxtrot is a circuit bending sound with bass boost on it

You should check out some of the Mutable instruments Kits,

http://mutable-instruments.net/

They are brilliantly designed, pretty easy to put together and you learn a load olong the way, the forums are also really helpful. Best of all they sound fat, - analogue filters and envelopes and a mix of digital and analog VCOs depending on which you go for. I've built mosy of what they have on offer, as well as a few by other manufacturers such as the Preen FM, Xoxbox next up... then maybe a Midibox SID...

I started building a theremin years ago but lost motivation (and a few parts from the kit) so never ended up finishing it. I should get into making things again. I think I'm more interested in creating weird acoustic instruments these days though—I've got tons of homemade bits of electronic gear lying around already (made by others). I think my first project will be to rig up one of my guitar amps with a frame that can hold a tuned array of guitar strings in front of the speaker for sympathetic harmonic sounds (maybe with a pickup involved as well?). Not sure if it'd work but it'll be fun to attempt!

  On 9/14/2014 at 11:03 AM, psn said:

 

To ZoeB's recommendations I can add :

Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking

 

 

Just wanted to second this recommendation! While maybe less good as a reference text, in terms of just being full of motivating and fun/simple projects this book is great. Leafcutter John even did the hard work of collecting a parts list for the book http://leafcutterjohn.com/?p=1058

If you work through every project in this book you should know a lot more about electronics and probably start having some interesting ideas for your own builds and/or enough soldering experience to feel confident in building someone else's kits.

One more small point: the kits from http://bleeplabs.com/ are great and I did about 2-3 of them before picking up that book. The nebulophone was my first soldering project and is very approachable//sounds great :)

It's also worth noting you can download some pretty interesting and largely expired patents. For example:

• Harald Bode
• John M. Chowning
• Ikutaro Kakehashi
• Robert A. Moog

Plus Ralph Dyck, Constant Martin, Thomas E. Oberheim, Alan Richard Pearlman, Raymond Scott, Ampex, Casio, Korg, Roland (Kakehashi again), Yamaha, etc. Just bear in mind a given person's name might be misspelt or listed in a different order. Interestingly, pulse-code modulation was invented way back for telegraphs. Fourier was dealing with heat. It's amazing what different industries things are applicable to that you wouldn't think of.

Well, I just finished building a (very) simple little synth using a 555 timer. I screwed up a few times along the way, but now I have experience making/reading schematics and soldering and all that good stuff. Now onto a bigger project.

http://imgur.com/a/2keVn

Thanks for all the resources too! I'm definitely going to be using a lot of these.

Nice one!

555 oscs are the perfect project for starting out. Make a atari punk thing next, they sound like shit! http://www.magicmess.co.uk/electronics/apc.php

Here's mine: