I want to be part of this world, how do I start?

[SynthWizard]

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I want to be part of this world, how do I start?

Well, hi there, my first post in this sub, so bear with me.

First I think it's appropriated to talk about myself:

I'm a 22 Spanish guy who at the age of 12 heard randomly in the internet a fascinating sound that I have never heard before, that sound was Strobe, by deadmau5.

I got instantly hooked by his sound, and I became quite a fan since then, I remember sitting for hours reading about him through blogs and interviews also, watching videos about how does he create his particular sound, one video specially really took my attention (moular mouse).

It was the first time I watched a Synthesizer-thing, imagine a kid in front of his dad's computer with his mouth fully open of amazement (like when you "accidentally" watch porn for the first time, but better), that was me, I couldn’t believe what I was listening to. That day I promised to myself that someday I would like to (at least) understand how this kind of machines work and how to create some sound.

Few time passed and I forgot about it, (teenager stuff, you know).

Some years ago one of my friends from high school invite me to a Techno-club in Valencia (East coast of Spain), and I loved it! It was my first time listening to that kind of sound. Since that day part of my everyday soundtrack is Techno. Also, at the same time, I kept listening daily to my music reference, deadmau5. He has been quite active this last years in his live-streaming sessions where he "plays" with his huge spaceship-like equipment, that always makes me remember how awesome it was to watch all of his videos years back, also in 2018 and 2019 I got the chance to watching him live, crying several times during the sets, such a magical moment for me.

In September I started college (Computer Engineering) and I currently have an "electronics-basics" subject where I study transistors and how do they amplify the signals, studying the impact in wave-forms graphs, and with oscilloscopes in the laboratory. That woke my curiosity back in the Synth world.

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And that's basically it, I want to fulfill my years-back promise of understanding this machines, the synthesis of the sound and how to make some noise and have fun.

The problem is that I have no idea how to start, I have no musical background at all (I did play the recorder when I was in school but, that's it).

What would be the first step? Getting some general musical knowledge, and also, learning how to play the piano, would be a good start point?

Or what about just sticking with the synth topic and learning directly how does the Synthesizer work internally? What's is a filter, an envelope, LFO's, oscillator ...?

If so, what would be your advice as source of info? Just YouTube videos? Books?

I did a quick google search and I found that this book can be a good start point:

• Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook - Fred Welsh (link to official website)

Would you recommend it for a complete beginner like me? Are they more good books about it? Also I would enjoy some more background-related books, like the story of the synthesizer, how it changed the electronic music scene and created new music genres, the brands that were involved and that kind of stuff, can you recommend me one?

Also I found VCV Rack, and I think It can be a huge start point to play with it (I have been seen videos of people doing awesome things with it), but I find myself lost in it, do you know any good tutorials about it?

I also found this book that has been released recently about it:

• Developing Virtual Synthesizers with VCV Rack - Leonardo Gabrielli (Link to to Leonardo's website)

I think the book is more focus on how to program your own modules rather than teaching the reader how to create patches, but I'm not really sure.

And of course, I have been thinking about getting some hardware to start with, but jeeezz It's an expensive hobby, no doubt. But I think I found something that suit me, that is the CRAVE Synthesizer by Behringer, for me it seems like a ""basic"" machine, also it's not very expensive (160€). Would you recommend it? Are better options in the market for beginners ? I heard about the VOLCA Series by KORG but they seem more like a "toy" for me, I am wrong?

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So yeah, that's what I have in mind, as you can see I'm quite lost so, I would appreciate some advice and direction, and again, I don’t want to be a music composer of any kind, I just want to understand what is it all about, why there is such huge community and people behind this wonderful machines, and why not, having some fun in the process.

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I hope you can help me a little bit, thanks so much for reading, this sub has a new subscriber

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