Farm Synth

Farm Synth started with my desire to resume building some projects I had accomplished in my youth. About a year ago I developed a virtual synthesizer builders kit in Unity3D during which time I learned more about sound, sound manipulation and how interface with virtually mechanized switches knobs and buttons.

I ended up with a bunch of 3D synthesizer part models that I could simply send to the 3D printer. This urged me to take another crack at building a real synthesizer.

I'm retired now. Over 40 years a go I packed up the synth project which has traveled with me all this time. I live on a farm now, slightly off grid. I looked around, found an old board, some metal rails from old lamp holders plus other odds and ends from the barn.

I've always been fairly adept at digital electronics but knew just the basics about linear circuits. The internet being the great resource that it is. And more importantly the people that contribute their ideas and collaborations leaves no excuse to learn and share ideas. So it began

As a result of using old barn parts, a bit of new tech and collaborative farming of information. Farm synth came to be.

Its been kind of a modular build process (not based on rack modular standards). Each module is developed and tested on a breadboard mounted inside the synth and the staged into production as 3D parts and circuit boards are completed. Everything is wire warp except for a few components that I got etched.

Currently Farm synth has a top octave generator that drives a frequency divider for the 5 3D printed octave keyboard. Modules include multi filter, 4 channel multi phase LFO, spring reverb driver/recovery, 4 channel mixer, adsr and envelope trigger/sequence controller. All the circuits except the TOG and ADSR are my own designs.

Audio Samples found here https://soundcloud.com/mike-hogan-287871339

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