The Modular Synthesizer Project

Here you will find my modular sythesizer projects. For the uinitiated, a modular synthesizer is a collection of (mostly) analog electronic circuits that are able to be tied together through the use of patch cables. You start with the basic building block of music, a waveform, and modify it to suit your musical desires. Very few of them are fully designed by me, though most have some modifications from the original source material. They are all built to the Kosmo format created by Sam Battle of Look Mum No Computer. As of right now, all the faceplates are 3D printed. Some of the circuits are built on strip-board, others are professionally manufactured PCBs.

I have been involved in some form of music creation most of my life. With a few years of piano lessons as a young child to playing trumpet in the school band all through high school. Since my early teen years I have played guitar. In my 20's I started listening to a lot more electronic music and discovered Fruity Loops. Now called FL Studio, I believe. Finally, in my 30's I started getting into building electronics, so it was only a matter of time before I blended my hobbies into the world of modular synthesis.

Current State of the Project.

I am currently running five different modules, including the prototyping module.

From left to right:

Synthetic Bread - A prototyping module that gets power from the main power supply, has a bunch of LEDs, pots, switches and jacks, and a breadboard to prototype new modules on.

Shapes - A tripple VCO (voltage controlled oscillator). Two that are switchable between square with PWM and sawtooth. One switchable between sawtooth and triangle.

The Champ (x2) - A VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) designed to be sequentially chained together from one to the next. The inputs will be sent to the next module down the chain until another input is used.

Sliders - A simple four channel active mixer with adjustable output gain.

Passive Mult - A passive multiplier. AKA, a splitter. It is literally just 6 jacks wired together.