Building a DIY Modular Synthesizer

if you're someone who enjoys building and creating things as much as I do and I mean literally anything you're probably well familiar with this feeling you wake up one day feeling inspired for one reason or another and envision some grandiose project in your head something that would be so cool to do and complete that it gets you typed up just thinking about it but unfortunately as reality sets in you quickly decide that such a project would be far too unrealistic or ambitious to actually be done yourself perhaps you think you simply wouldn't have enough time and it would take too long perhaps you think you don't have the talent or the skills to do so perhaps the scope of the project just seems so big and alien to you that you wouldn't even know where to start about 2 years ago I had this kind of thought while working on another unrelated project at the time I was only just getting into analog synthesis after picking up the piano again during Co and I was trying to think of new ways to incorporate this hobby into my already established love of DIY the thought of building a module of synthesizer had crossed my mind at this point I had come across people online who had done it and my dad had brought it up in the past as an idea the idea had never really amounted to anything it would be fantastic sure but I didn't know anything about that the closest thing I'd ever done to a DIY Electronics project was fiddling around on my Arduino the only real soldering experience I had was like a single class I did on it during uni nevertheless I was determined to do something just not that leave that kind of project to the professionals no I needed to keep it real I needed to do a project that was a little more realistic then again I could just say it and give it a [Music] try [Music] this bad boy right here is the radan analog modular synthesizer or RAM for short with 44 modules over two cases and a keyboard including six oscillators four filters a sequencer effects LFO six envelope generators an oscilloscope noise generator and a full array of drums the ram here was built to house its own little bands worth of electronic instruments short of any kind of dedicated poly synth of course I can't really Express how happy I am with how this thing turned out I mean I started working on this thing back in mid 2021 and back then it never really occurred to me that I would get this far yet here we are if I want to get my hands on a brand new modular synthesizer of this size and caliber and I'm inan full size not Euro I wouldn't be surprised if it sent me back tens of thousands of dollars this on the other hand over the course of like 2 and 1/2 years mind you probably sent me back about 2 and a half Grand Australian so that's like what 100 bucks Us in terms of time spent building it on the other hand well I can only really guess but considering how long it takes me to build a single module on average plus all the random troubleshooting and whatnot I might guess somewhere in the ballpark of 500 hours as an estimate wouldn't be surprised if I'm off by like 100 hours in some direction though so take that with a big grain of salt I would probably say that a big inspiration for me with this project especially at the beginning was Sam's modular synth Cosmo at look Mom no computer he's got a bunch of little modular synth projects on his site that I definitely made good use of highly recommended but really most of the modular designs I built here are from all over the place I'm afraid to say that only a handful of the modules here are actually 100% Hue designed Originals some of the really fantastic DIY sources and Inspirations I used and would highly suggest checking out include a bloke named Eddie Bergman and a fellow by the Monica sound Bender both run their own s/ blogs where they showcase their own modular synth builds as well as other things they both have a whole lot of great build guides and such that I'd highly recommend checking out if you're interested I'll link them all below then of course sites like music from out of space you synth and a handful of others have some great resources if you want to try something like this I got to shout them out because without these people sharing their own build resources I'm not sure where I would have started uh the project certainly would have taken a lot longer if it even happened at all anyway I'm going to Lug this monolith back inside and go ahead and give you a full tour of its [Music] [Music] features [Music] w [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] all right well here we are before we start on the case though let me just give you a quick rundown on how I operate the ram down here you can see the main way I do so is through a combination of the arterior beat step Pro and the key step Pro generally I just take the pitch and the gate signals from these two controllers and plug them directly into what a system I need on the ram although I do use the midi output on the beat step to control the drums I've been using these two controllers for a while and I must say I'm a big fan of them they both give me good live sequenc of control and basically offer me everything I need to control Ram as well as my other synthesizers anyway those to are sitting on a larger mid keyboard I stri and shoved into a wooden box acts as a nice base for the RAM and also lets me play with a full-size keyboard which is always useful now moving up from there brings us to box one my starting point for this project starting on the left bottom we've got the most exciting module of all the power supply hooked up through this missile switch just for that slight added bit of flare above that is a dual buffered multiplier I run pitch control through and the first four oscillators these use the as33 40 chip and have just about everything you'd need from an oscillator including an octave range switch that doesn't quite switch in octave increments never did get around to fixing that next is a four-way mixer followed by a dual ms20 style filter both of high and low pass [Music] options these filters can be set to be linked making a continuous filter chain or they can be set to act as two independent filters after that is a simple VCA followed by a neat little [Music] oscilloscope not the most useful in terms of troubleshooting electrical problems but it does look cool isn't that just the most important thing of all finally at the end here we've got a sample and hold as well as a noise module jumping back to the start now is a simple eight-step sequencer fairly basic but it's still fun to use next are two adsr envelope generators two unbuffered multipliers and the ram one and only dedicated LFO although you can use the osers as one as well this one has three waveforms and two voltage offset waveforms including a shape modifier that lets you make things like saw waves for [Music] instance after that is a two-way mixer followed by yet another filter this time a Moog style ladder [Music] filter following that is another VCA a triple envelope generator this time in a simple attack Decay attack release configuration and a four-way attenuator which I use as the final output for all oscillator chains before sending them to my mixer with the first box complete we can now hop up to the second and more recently constructed box of the ram starting with of course another power supply wowe then going up one module to the top row we find a midi to gate splitter this one uses an Arduino to convert midi signals from the beatstep pro into 5vt pulses for the drums makes it a lot easier than running individual cables from each drum straight to the controller here we've got a dual slw module for some portamento and yet another buffer multiplier then similar to box one we've got two final oscillator modules this time based on the th 555 chip these ones have all the same features as the last Bunch with the addition of a dedicated sine wave [Music] output to complement those we have another two-way mixer and the Ram's final filter this one being a lovely Steiner Parker filter with low pass band pass high pass and all pass settings for this module I had some extra space and decided to also include a modified guitar tuner hooked up to the filters line [Music] input this not only makes tuning the oscillator easier but once again just kind of looks cool when you're playing got to keep your priority straight you know then after that you had another adsr and VCA identical to the ones from earlier followed by the Ram small but important effect section here we'll find a dual valve Distortion [Music] module a dual delay module using the pt2399 [Music] a [Music] phaser and a ring [Music] modulator and now finally that brings us to the final section of the ram the drum kit starting off we have an 808 style Kick Drum snare drum a dual high hat module so I can use one for open and close high hat sounds a bell module a twin te drum module that has a handful of simple drum sounds a sweep module this is basically just an MS filter and an envelope generator in one it doesn't make any Sound by itself but by hooking up to my noise generator can make a pretty good crash module after that is my dual Tom module which makes these iconic disco Tom sounds that frankly I can't get enough of honestly I ought to make a drum machine with just like 10 of these These are great then I've got a side chain module to add a little bit more punch to the Bas and [Music] kick and to merge it all together and finish the synth I've got this big 10 channel mixer that I use to mix the drums each channel has a volume and pan option and unlike the ocay channels the whole mix is output in Stereo and that about does it as far as a feature breakdown is concerned if anyone's interested the final module I built for this project was the side chain module and the first thing I ever built was this single ms20 style filter if you're wondering where that one is on the ram it was actually the only module that didn't make the final cut being replaced in favor of this dual filter variant it shell did get reconstituted into this Moog filter though so I guess you could say it's still here in spirit anyway as you might have guessed I didn't really document the whole build process over 2 years however I did document the build progress for the very last module I did just to show the kind of routine I went through when building each of these hopefully giving you guys an idea on how to build one of these if anyone's interested in giving it a go we'll have a quick look at that in a sec [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] y [Music] [Applause] [Music] wo [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] 3 [Applause] [Music] okay so here we go right so the first thing I do before starting anything is getting a design together for this module we're going to be going with a side chain design that's conveniently already been stripped boarded by sound mender here saving me some time in this case I first decided to make a couple modifications to design to fit my needs but once that's all done it's Off to the Races after I've got my schematic I make a quick cutout sketch of the pound design I like to use as a guide later this step isn't exactly necessary but I like to do it to ensure Jack and pot placement positioning is somewhat consistent with the other modules on the synth that then takes us outside where I start cutting an aluminium sheet down for size for the front panel for my synth I use 1.6 mm aluminium with a height of around 200 mm the material and thickness Choice here isn't terribly important this is just what I had on hand but you could use anything from plastic to pects to Wood glass actually yeah there's an idea so I'll make a glass synth I'd like to see that once it's cut out I bring back the panel sketch from earlier and mark down the spots I'll need to drill punching them as well to stop the drill bit from slipping when I do drill I start by making a pilot hole before going back through with the actual drill bit sizes I'll need to fit each component despite this being like the 40 something time I've done this I still don't remember the cor drill bit sizes for everything so I always make sure to compare the drill bit sizes with each component as I go when that's done I debur all the jagged edges left over with the largest drill bit I can find give it a good sand to clean it up and set it up to be spray painted make sure to wipe all the aluminum dust off first though oh and make sure to drop it on the ground too work hardening you know while that's drying I start cutting some standoffs out of an aluminium angle bar allowing me to mount my strip board to the module panel lator I like to mount it at a 90° angle to the panel for ease of accessibility in case I need to modify it later makes Cable Management 10 times easier too now it's pretty hot day so by now the front panel should be dry enough for the next stage of painting adding the pot level indicators for these I 3D printed a little stencil I made and glued it to a thin wooden panel then I just plac it over the spot I one and give it a few good sprays this is another one of those steps that isn't exactly necessary but I think it makes the module look a bit more professional quote unquote back inside again and I continue by cutting the pots down to size ensuring the knobs will sit at a reasonable level then I start start painting all the decaling and lettering onto the panel in accordance to the sketch I made earlier single code is rarely enough for me so I also do a second one for good measure with that done I'm finally ready to fasten all the panel mounted components to the module followed by these knobs to complete the look now I can finally put that aside and start work on the second part of this build the circuitry itself first I start by marking down all the track brakes I'll need and drilling them out then I move on to the resistors diodes wire Bridges socket mounts capacitors and anything else I've forgotten only once everything is in place do I drill the board mounting holes I'll need to fix the circuitry to the front panel with the standoffs I made earlier looking pretty good but we're not done yet because for this design I'm also going to be building a DIY vrol consisting of an LED and photo resistor how exciting to do this I first sand the LED down so it sits flush with the photo resistor slot both into a shrink tube sock and blast it with a heat gun if all went well we'll be left with a decent approximation of a v roll nice and isolated from any external light pollution and that finally finishes off the last electrical component to be attached to the stripboard allowing us to move on to wiring the panel Mount components into the circuit itself this can be a fairly tedious step especially when there's lots of wires but for this module it's fairly straightforward last but not least I sock at the one I see I'll need for this circuit and the whole thing is finally complete then once I've given it a test and fixed any bugs it's ready to be slotted into the ram finishing off the build and in this case the whole damn project wowe [Applause] [Music] la [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] a [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] w [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Applause] he [Applause] [Music] [Music] so the question is now that I've finished all my main goals for this project what exactly do I do now well in terms of the ram despite me being happy calling this a finished project there are still a few things I'd like to do to improve upon it these mostly stack up to just sort of upgrading modules I wasn't totally happy with although there are also a few persistent bugs that I'll probably have to tackle at some point what I don't have any more plans for however is expanding the synth itself adding more boxes and such I'm pretty happy with the sizes is and even if I wanted to I'm kind of short on real estate these days things almost hitting the roof as it is with the ram done I'd really like to get started on some other music related projects that I've piled up over the course of working on this something smaller though I Ain't So keen on jumping into another 2-year Marathon so soon whatever I end up doing though I can assure you if it ends up being any good you'll see a full report here appendix and all but beyond that not losing sight of one of the main reasons I built Ram to begin with I'd really like to start making some music again I kind of put that all on halt for the build especially towards the end there and I think it's probably about time I clock in some more hours on top of that I'd also like to perform live at some point with ram at least once even if lugging that giant thing around to venues does sound like a bit of a nightmare whether or not itd be any good at it well that's a different story but at the end of the day I still think it would be a bit of fun and isn't that what it's all about right it's not about the music after all it's about the friends we made along the way so there you have it hope that was all a little bit interesting or helpful to someone and to anyone considering undertaking their own modular synthesizer build themselves uh well get [Music] [Music] started [Music] n [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] w [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Applause] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I was just trying to think of ways to incorporate this new hobby into my my already established love of du DUI yeah I was starting to think of ways to incorporate this new hobby into my already established love of DIY I almost said du y again I was just starting to think of ways to incorporate this new hobby into my already established love of DUI DUI DIY you son of a I do love DUI though I was trying to think of new ways to incorporate this new hobby into my already established love of DUI I am going to kill myself D Y what the is and I was trying to think of new ways to incorporate this new hobby into my already established love of DUI ah di die d d I D die die die DIY die y die die die d y d y okay I'm okay I'm never writing I'm I'm never doing script again I'm never never doing this

Channel: Hugh R

Views: 16,011

Keywords: DIY, Build, Synth, synthesiser

Id: KyOwUBCtwG8

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023