Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook: Synthesizer Programming, Sound Analysis, and Universal Patch Book
by Fred Welsh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Fred WelshEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Published: 2006
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 128
Book Reviews of Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook: Synthesizer Programming, Sound Analysis, and Universal Patch Book
Book Review: Excellent guide to subtractive synthesis
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking for a basic, well written introduction to subtractive synthesis and concise descriptions of the functions of its various components, I don't think you can do better than this book. This was not the first book I read to describe these topics, but I think the author gets to the core of what you need to know for practical usage better than any other source I have read. Also, the section about how the "basic" square, triangle, and sawtooth waves can all be recreated using sine waves is something that I also rarely see.
If you are looking for a list of patches that you can use to get cool sounds out of your synthesizer, this is also the book for you. I don't know of any other book that has this info. Basically the whole back half of the book has programming settings for a variety of different sounds, most of which I thought were very usable. Even though most software synths these days have huge numbers of presets, I find that the exercise of inputting the patches really improves my understanding of my particular synthesizer, and if you listen to how things change as you build them up you will have a much more thorough understanding of how to make the sounds that you want.
And all this is without even touching on the real treasure of the book, which is about using frequency analysis software to recreate synth patches from recorded material. It makes a ton of sense and isn't a terribly difficult concept if you take the time to understand it, but kudos to the author for discovering (?) this technique.
If I had one criticism, it is that the book definitely has a "self-publishing" feel to it, but it definitely doesn't get in the way of the material. The book is also a bit short, with the patches taking up fully half of the book. And I'm not sure the font size on the patches needs to be as large as it is. However, the quality of the content more than makes up for these minor shortcomings, I would highly recommend this book to beginners or advanced synth programmers who haven't been exposed to the concept of frequency analysis.
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