Synthesizer books

The goal of this page is to provide a bibliography of synthesis-related literature or other educational materials. Basic categories include but are not limited to those below. A long-term objective is to provide brief descriptions and perhaps even table of contents for each work.

Bibliography and Reading Materials
Excerpted from "Babaluma's" post:

There are loads of great web sources available for free. for starters try the Sound on sound magazine "synth secrets" series, available here:

http://www.soundonsound.com/search?url=%2Fsearch&Keyword=%22synth+secr ets%22&Words=All&Summary=Yes

or the clavia nord lead manual here (relates to all synths though):

http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/nordmodularbook/nm_book_toc.html

also, you can find copies of the serge gold book:

http://www.carbon111.com/sergebook.zip

and the arp 2600 manual online for free:

http://www.guitarfool.com/ARP2600.html

sam ecoff also has some great free tutorials here:

http://www.samecoff.com/works.html#Tex

the buchla music easel manual is also a great read:

http://www.wavemakers-synth.com/buchla/PaMtEO.zip

if you're really hard core you'll hunt down a copy of allen strange's "electronic music: systems, techniques, controls" which is by far the best text i have ever come across dealing with modular synthesis. if you can't find an old hard copy you can download a .pdf from the publishers for about $15 here:

https://ebooks.primisonline.com/cgi/showebook.cgi?isbn=0390684635

another great reference which you'll probably only find second hand is the the roland "the synthesizer" boxed set of four books.

digisound modular synthesis manual here:

http://www.digisound80.co.uk/digisound/other_documents/files/Guide_to_ Synthesis.pdf

thing is, all these manuals are also great courses on subtractive synthesis itself.

another great online resource here:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~rhordijk/Proto/Index.htm