I'm looking for a fairly noob friendly DIY synth project.
Ideally for something unique and quirky. The Meeblip
And sinchy-1 (wrong spelling) are the kind of things I'm talking about.
P.S doesn't have to a synth if it's musically useful.
The x0xb0x (303 clone) is very cool. But I wouldn't say it was an entirely noob friendly project.. x0xb0x: Transistorize the World
Theres a few 'kickstarter' synth projects springing up here 'n there too. Although I have no experience of those myself.
Also look into arduino projects, as a some of them look very good. Like the Beat707 for example. An Arduino MIDI Groove Box Shield
From the basics, you might want to check the Atari Punk Console, fairly easy to build but not a whole lot of useful sounds. Have you thought of building effects? There are lots of guitar players who build their own stuff so there's a lot of info that can be found online, I think you will get a better time/usefulness factor. You can build a fuzz face very easily using a few components and it might find it's way into your recording.
I just built my way (and modded) a vibrati punk console: Lushprojects.com - A feast of electronic fun - Vibrati Punk Console cost me around 20 quid and was shipped to Germany rather fast. Nice little kit, I put it in a box added a few extras (extrenal jack, turn speaker on off, etc) and am annoying my neighbors with pure 8bit squeals.
I just built my way (and modded) a vibrati punk console: Lushprojects.com - A feast of electronic fun - Vibrati Punk Console cost me around 20 quid and was shipped to Germany rather fast. Nice little kit, I put it in a box added a few extras (extrenal jack, turn speaker on off, etc) and am annoying my neighbors with pure 8bit squeals.
Actually, though (and it might have been here that I first heard this) the original Doctor Who bassline is rumored to have been done with a rubber band:
"As a footnote, there is still a difference of opinion on how the Doctor Who bass sound was created, 45 years ago. Dick Mills remembers Delia twanging a blanking panel in a rack, while Mark Ayres offered two versions β a plucked string and a rubber band (he heard both from Delia!). Peter Howell, meanwhile, told me: "The bass twang was a plucked bass string on a home-made electric pickup device (a piece of wood with a string on it). That sound appears on several early Workshop recordings."
Here's an example of it in action. The kit doesn't come midi'd, just the standard 5volt trigger pulse, but there is a very cheap midi - trigger interface available at - [email protected]