Before I get started, I’ll acknowledge that I’ve been away for a bit. Things have been chaotic and that chaos hasn’t subsided yet, although it may soon. I apologize for being vague, but I’ll clarify when the dust settles. I have a lot to say, but that’s not what this post is about. This is going to be the niche-iest of the niche-y: My thoughts on a hardware device for learning how synthesizers work!
I was 18 when I got my first “real” synthesizer, and by “real” I mean that it allowed me to build sounds from scratch as opposed to just selecting presets like “tuba” and “harpsichord.” Arnold and Morgan up in Dallas had a stack of Roland SH-101 synths that they were trying to clear out, so they’d been marked down to $199 new.
I literally had no clue what to do with it. There were some helpful illustrations in the back of the manual showing how to make an “organ” sound or “synth lead” by manipulating the settings, But, I didn’t know what a “DCO” was or what the different wave shapes meant. I didn’t really understand what a filter was, or how it worked with resonance, and I absolutely couldn’t have explained an ADSR envelope.
But, in a sense, I was very fortunate. The SH-101 was a very simple machine with limited options and things laid out in a fairly intuitive fashion. If I worked left-to-right with the sliders and knobs, I could get an idea of how the different settings changed the sound. That was the beginning of what has been a very long love affair with electronic music.
So, recently, I’ve been wondering: What would be the best synthesizer to teach the basics of analog subtractive synthesis? We’re in a golden era of neat, affordable hardware, but none of it seems really aimed at learning the basics. There’s nothing I’d sell to schools as the machine for learning how this stuff works.
Ideally, here’s what I would look for:
* Analog-style workflow
* 37 or more full-sized keys
* 4 note polyphony?
* All parameters controlled by a knob or a slider (no “menu diving”)
* No features beyond what is needed to learn the basics
* One speaker and optional battery power for portability?
* The ability to save a small number of patches because starting from scratch every time gets old
* An inviting, intuitive front panel
* MIDI implementation
* The lowest price possible
Now, there’s an elephant in the room here. Why not just use softsynths on a laptop with a MIDI controller keyboard? That’d be a lot cheaper (at least, if you don’t count the price of the laptop). Honestly, that’s not a bad idea. I’d prefer not to go that route because I think there’s real value in touching the sliders and knobs and hearing how that changes the sounds. There’s more of a remove if you’re using the mouse to do it. Maybe that’s just me showing my age, but that’s my thinking.
Does anything like this currently exist? Not that I’ve found, but there are quite a few that are close. The Korg Minilogue has small keys and way to many features. The Arturia Minibrute is monophonic, but it ticks a lot of the boxes. But…these are pro-level machines and, what makes them attractive to that set is that they can do a great deal more than I’m looking for here.
The closest to this platonic idea is Roland’s old Juno 106. Just look at this beauty:
It may not look like it, but that is a remarkably uncluttered panel and it’s really attractive, too. This was Roland’s entry-level polyphonic synth back in the day, a cheaper alternative to their coveted Jupiter line. The Junos absolutely sold like mad, in no small part because they were so simple. You could learn everything there was to learn about them fairly quickly, which made sound creation much faster and easier.
So why isn’t this my model learning synth? Because they’re very, very expensive these days and no one has gotten around to cloning them yet (Uli, I’m looking at you!). A Juno in good condition would go for a couple thousand dollars now and, because they’re vintage, they take some care to maintain as well (although less than most of the other synths of that era).
Speaking of Uli Behringer, his company seems the most likely to come up with something like this. They’ve made a name for themselves cloning vintage gear and selling it much cheaper than the original. Their versions of the Minimoog, Octave Cat, and Sequential Pro-One are all outstanding, but to me, the interesting one is the MS-1, their clone of the Roland SH-101.
Behringer have added some features which excite me as a gear-loving nerd, but defeat what I’m going after here. We don’t need FM synthesis for our learning machine. We need, essentially, the workflow of the SH-101 (which was nearly identical to that of the Juno), stripping out the bells and whistles, adding a few keys, and one internal speaker, and I think you’re there.
Hey, turns out you CAN do edits in MS-Paint. You probably shouldn’t, though…
This is my first attempt at re-arranging the MS-1 as the MS-L (for learning!). I’ve moved a few things around so they make more sense to me. I’ve removed the sequencer, the FM, the pitch wheel, and left the Arturia-style waveform mixer because that’s really nice.
My uneducated hope is that something like this could be made with digital oscillators and filters instead of analog because that should bring the price down and make it more stable in the long run. The goal here isn’t to produce an analog synth; it’s to produce a hardware device that teaches the basics of analog synthesis.
Is there a demand for this sort of thing? Damned if I know! I know I would have loved a class that taught me this stuff and encouraged me to play with sound design. Maybe, though, it’s just too niche and not worth the investment. It may be that this sort of thing wouldn’t have the appeal of a class in production, sampling, looping, and using a digital audio workstation. It would be very much like me to come up with an idea that would have been genius 30 years ago.
Anyway, that’s what’s been buzzing in my head for the last few weeks and it feels good to get it out of my system. I’ll probably forget about it now, so if you want to do a kickstarter or something to make a student synthesizer, go nuts!