fred_v_welsh from NC, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $19.95 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

What our customer's say!

"Excellent guide to subtractive synthesis", If you are looking for a basic, well written introduction to subtractive synthesis and concise descriptions of the functions of its various components, I don't think you can do better than this book. This was not the first book I read to describe these topics, but I think the author gets to the core of what you need to know for practical usage better than any other source I have read. Also, the section about how the "basic" square, triangle, and sawtooth waves can all be recreated using sine waves is something that I also rarely see.

If you are looking for a list of patches that you can use to get cool sounds out of your synthesizer, this is also the book for you. I don't know of any other book that has this info. Basically the whole back half of the book has programming settings for a variety of different sounds, most of which I thought were very usable. Even though most software synths these days have huge numbers of presets, I find that the exercise of inputting the patches really improves my understanding of my particular synthesizer, and if you listen to how things change as you build them up you will have a much more thorough understanding of how to make the sounds that you want.

And all this is without even touching on the real treasure of the book, which is about using frequency analysis software to recreate synth patches from recorded material. It makes a ton of sense and isn't a terribly difficult concept if you take the time to understand it, but kudos to the author for discovering (?) this technique.

If I had one criticism, it is that the book definitely has a "self-publishing" feel to it, but it definitely doesn't get in the way of the material. The book is also a bit short, with the patches taking up fully half of the book. And I'm not sure the font size on the patches needs to be as large as it is. However, the quality of the content more than makes up for these minor shortcomings, I would highly recommend this book to beginners or advanced synth programmers who haven't been exposed to the concept of frequency analysis.

"Whoa!", I've had this book for three hours and two things stand out in my mind:

(1) the book was shipped from the author himself and signed. I don't know if this will happen for you but I thought it was a nice touch.

I read the section on harmonic analysis though haven't tried it yet, but I'm familiar with the concept because I use the spectrum analyzer in Cubase all the time; plus I work in electronics and I'm a firm believer that a spectrum analyzer is by far the most versatile piece of test equipment, at least in my lab but all this is a diversion.

(2) I just programmed the acoustic guitar patch. For this book I'm using Reason's Subtractor, which has a "unique" way of implementing Pulse Width Modulation and Oscillator Syncing. I sequenced a short line and pulled out my acoustic guitar to compare - and as mentioned in another review - within the limits of subtractive synthesis the settings are dead on! I am absolutely blown away.

Granted my observations are hasty and casual so far, but I'm pretty convinced that with some serious study I will understand why things sound the way they do a lot better and will become a much more proficient sound designer. I recommend you stop reading and pick it up now!

"Excellent analog synthesizer course.", The service was impecable. Shipment was prompt. Communication excellent.

I have read many synthesizer theory books and manuals. I will say this one takes the cake. Not only are the sound fomulas fun and accurate, the course on analog synthesiser basics and essentials is phenominal. It is simple and concise, accessible to those of us who do not have a PHD in the subject matter. This book gives a great synopsis of what all of the different parts of the signal path do in the process of sculpting a sound on an analog synthesizer. Helps those of us who used to twiddled knobs until something sounded good, now we can twiddle with a bit more knowledge and focus. Thanks Fred

"Great learning resource and reference", This book opens with a section on the components of a synthesiser. More advanced users will no doubt skip this, but it provides a clear explanation on oscillators, filters, envelopes and LFOs, detailing how each contributes to the final sound.

This 3rd Edition add a section on harmonic analysis. Using freely available tools, the techniques used to produce the patches are dissected. This goes on to show how to analyse an existing sound, including one sitting in a mix, and produce a similar patch.

The main meat of the book is taken up with the patch settings. The patches themselves sound great. A large number sound entirely authentic within the limitations of subtractive synthesis; others retain the flavour of the instrument they try to emulate, but wouldn't be mistaken for genuine acoustic instruments. Your mileage depends upon the synthesiser itself; this book has settings for both 12db and 24db lowpass filters, and assumes the synthesiser has 2 detunable oscillators, 2 ADSR envelopes, a routable LFO and noise source. If a synthesiser offers more features, you can usually tweak the patches into even more usuable sounds.

The patches cover a wide range of instruments: strings, woodwinds, brass, tuned and untuned percussions, bass, pads, and sound effects to name but a few. The sound effects seem an odd choice. Even though they only occupy a few pages, I'd rather have they pages taken up with usuable instruments, basses or pads. They are all well organised so it's easy to find a specific patch.

The accompanying CD seems a missed opportunity however. I'd have liked to have seen .wav files of the patches so we'd have an idea of what the patches would sound like. It does offer calibration settings so you can 'tune' your synthesiser and bias the patches accordingly to a specific synthesisers filter and envelope speed, but I feel being able to hear what the patches are supposed to sound like as they are being programmed would be more useful.

Overall, it's a great book, and serves well as both a learning resource and reference.