Chapter 1. What Is Synth-DIY?

In the mid-1960s an electronics engineer with a Ph.D. from Cornell University in engineering physics was starting a musical revolution, and he didn’t even know it. That engineer was Robert Moog. In a small factory in bucolic Trumansburg, New York, he was developing a series of unique electronic analog sound synthesizers that would take the musical world by storm.

At the same time, the muse of invention was striking a West Coast engineer named Don Buchla. Buchla was developing his own unique series of electronic analog sound synthesizers. Both Moog and Buchla’s remarkable inventions were voltage-controlled; they both used a varying voltage to control the sound-shaping functions of the synthesizers’ modules.

It wasn’t ...

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