This project allowed me to combine my education in engineering with my passion for music. Building on what I learned in school about electric circuits, I was able to read, understand, and learn about how music can be created from certain configurations of electrical components. What began as a small creative outlet turned into a serious and fulfilling project as I took a deep dive into the world of music electronics.
I began by building my first module, a simple oscillator, on a breadboard. The oscillator was based on a tutorial that I found on YouTube which makes a simple voltage controlled sawtooth wave from common components such as resistors, capacitors, transistors, and a Schmitt Trigger Inverter. After reaching the end of this tutorial, I decided to add my own modifications, researching and experimenting with how I could turn this sawtooth wave into different shapes. In the end, I designed a schematic for an oscillator with the same core that I built in the tutorial, but with an additional triangle, sine, and variable pulse width square wave output.
After breadboarding the oscillator and reaching a point where I was satisfied with the final circuit, I decided that it was time to create a more permanent solution. I researched PCB design and began creating my own schematics, and eventually PCB layouts for the oscillator circuit. It took several revisions to translate the working oscillator that I had on a breadboard into a new medium, but I ended up with a final product that I felt confident in. I completed the project by creating a front panel to give the module a finished look.
Since my oscillator was a success, it sparked my interest in building more components that combine music and electronics. I decided to deepen my knowledge and build more modules. Using the same method of researching, breadboarding, experimenting, testing, and creating a final PCB, I was able to create an ADSR envelope generator, a voltage controlled amplifier, a voltage controlled filter, a mixer, and plan to create many more modules in the future. My goal is to build the equivalent of a vintage analog synthesizer, such as a Roland Juno, but comprised of individual modules that can be rearranged and patched together in different ways.
