200e

On Jun 27, 2011, at 2:12 PM, jeshuaew wrote:

> Hi, I'm a student at Berklee College of Music. We have an analog synth studio that is home to a beautiful 18 rack system. I have been using it quite a bit lately and want to give a class on the basics within the system. If you guys could go back to when you were first learning synthesis / modular systems what would you want to learn? And what modules confused you the most on your 200e system? 


What is the proximate background of your students? How long would a course be? How much lecture vs. how much hands-on time? Some general things I would want to see covered:

Some discussion of basic synthesis types is a good place to start, additive, FM, subtractive, granular, etc. This is good because it may help soften any preconceived notions of "patch cords == subtractive," at the very least it will remind people of the wider synthesis world.

I would spend a little time on gestural control. They probably already know MIDI, so I would contrast voltage control with MIDI. Talk about various control systems that have been implemented on top of MIDI (keyboards, wind controllers, mixers, dj controllers, etc.) 

Crossfade into gestural control vs. audio modulation and how they're different on the Buchla. (sort of a natural coming from a discussion about MIDI)

I would spend a lot of time on whichever waveform generator the system has. Knowing your way around a 200e waveform generator is pretty key. Generating the stuff you want with a Buchla is fundamentally different from getting rid of the stuff you don't want with a normal subtractive synth.

Of course, sometimes you have to get rid of stuff you don't want, so I would spend a fair amount of time on the magic of the Low Pass Gate. Teach them how to "pluck" the LPG with a very snappy envelope.

– C

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