Prophet 12 Overview

There aren’t a lot of 12-voice polyphonic synths on the market. Given you probably have 10 fingers, there are more than enough voices to go around. This synth features four digital oscillators plus one sub oscillator per voice. That makes 60 oscillators! Two filters (low-pass and high-pass), four envelopes and four LFOs shape the sound while feedback, stereo spread, delay, character, dist...

Bass Station Overview

The Novation Bass Station is a monophonic analog synthesizer with some nice bells and whistles. Don’t let the name limit your opinion on this machine. It works well as a mono lead synth, and it also can operate as part of a polyphonic setup by chaining multiple Bass Stations together.

Sound Architecture

The Bass Station features 2 oscillators (saw or pulse), a resonant low-pass...

Frequency Modulation Defined

FM synthesis is the process of changing the frequency of one oscillator based on some other oscillator. Doing so creates “sidebands” which are extra frequencies above and below the original oscillator’s frequency.

At a relatively slow rate, this produces a vibrato effect when the modulation is performed by a sine or triangle wave. When the modulating oscillator is a s...

Overview

MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) was developed to provide standardized communication between synthesizers. Today, it is much more than that and is found in computer, video games, effects processors and more. We’re primarily focusing on how to use it in music production—specifically with synths.

History

During the late 1970s and early 1980s as synth...

The Atmegatron

In the podcast episode, Paul Soulsby describes his Atmegatron products. These are 8-bit digital synthesizers built on the Arduino platform. The Atmegatron hardware consists of a small, desktop module with a unique user interface and wood sides. The knob layout can be daunting at first, but you quickly get the hang of it.