Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook: Synthesizer Programming, Sound Analysis, and Universal Patch Book

Having played exclusively acoustic instruments my whole life, I needed a guide into understanding sound synthesis. This could not have been a better introduction to this world.The invaluable first section explains, succintly but in detail, the basics of sound waves and synth parameters. I loved learning how pipe organs were the first synthesizers. I thought the included graphs were very helpful in visualizing.I just bought my first synth, an analog dual-oscillator subtractive synth (Korg Minilogue). Having this book made me pay close attention to exactly what was being produced. It allowed me to intelligently adjust parameters and gave me the tools to craft my own tones and textures.Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it is geared towards active experimentation on your synth. Despite being technically-minded, it does not read like a dry textbook. It reads like an adventure. Learning that my new instrument can, in theory, reproduce any sound has felt like anagnorisis.I only have two small criticisms— the first is that, while the author structures the information in a comprehensive and meditated way, he seems to despise commas. This makes the content much harder to digest quickly, as much of the punctuation used or ommitted render the sentences ambiguous or awkward.The second is that the extra content is provided on a CD. This wasn’t a large issue for me, as I bought the product for the book, but I don’t have any way of accessing the extras, as my computer no longer has a disk drive. My suggestion would be to store the extras on a cloud service and include a download link with the book.To be clear, I HIGHLY recommend this book. My complaints are minuscule relative to how much I’ve learned from the author. THANK YOU FRED WELSH! I have already ‘sold’ this book to my musician friends.

Young musicians have benefited greatly by the addition of affordable, small, digital "analog modeling" synthesizers, such as the MicroKORG or Alesis Micron. For those of us old enough to remember patch cords, this also has been a huge boon as it provides a lot of parameters in a portable package. These products of course come with pre-sets, but also provide extremely informative product manuals (the MicroKORG, in particular) that can guide the amateur into deliberate sound sculpting.If you imagine that you are going to explore sound design with your DSP analog modeling synths, please buy this book. The price is a bit steep for 124 (large format) pages, BUT, as the other reviewers have attested, a better course and instruction book for analog sound design would be hard to imagine. Fred Welsh knows his stuff cold, and is a fabulously clear and engaging writer. Fascinating bits of synthesizer trivia pop up from time to time (like the patch for Dalek voices in Dr. Who!), but this book is first and foremost a teaching manual for the hands-on auto-didactic creative musician. (Most musicians I deal with are both hands-on and self-teachers!) The first 30 pages take you through all the tools--oscillators, filters, envelopes, LFOs, etc.--and this is the best survey of all these features I've seen. The second major section might at first seem a bit arcane--"Synthesis through harmonic analysis and reverse engineering"--but it is chock full of specific remarks on how certain visually detectable sound characteristics can be generated by your "weapon of choice." More than half of the book is dedicated to "recipes," "Cookbook patches" as Mr. Welsh calls them. A reader more or less on top of the tools section will have no problem recreating these tasty acoustic treats. There are even alternate patches for those who have machines that may not have "pulse width," or simply have a hankering for a different patch. What Mr. Welsh ultimately achieves (especially in the second section) is whetting the musician's appetite for harmonic composition of timbres. Something like Arthur H. Benade's "Horns, Strings, and Harmony" may well be a decent companion book here, as all those lovely harmonic diagrams included in the cookbook will come to life with Benade's careful explanations of the harmonic properties of acoustic instruments.

This book contains everything you need to know about synthesizing voices using a synth setup with dual oscillators, LFO, filter, and both filter and amplifier envelopes. It gives you fundamental theory for understanding basic synthesis that can give you the tools to get the most out of your prebuilt synth or simple modular setup, which is a great foundation to branch out from. The recipes themselves are great, but keep in mind that a synth is going to sound synth-y, so if you want to mimic an analog instrument exactly then this isn't for you. You also need to understand the theory and context provided by the text in order to replicate the recipes in the back of the book, or you could end up with some really wonky stuff. I've put together a number of patches using very basic modules in VCV rack using these recipes, and they are exactly what I wanted for electronic sounding equivalents to real instruments.