Enabling The dream
For a very long time, since at least my third grade year, electronic music has exerted an inexplicible pull upon my psyche. I can only imagine, judging by the fact that you are here at this site and reading this text, you must also possess to some degree that same characteristic. Though it has been around, in one form or another for over a hundred years, electronic music is the new frontier. It is a timeless entity waiting to be sampled and given form so that it may be presented within the corporeal realm of art. Your art. It is ambivalent to style, it rests in comfort equally upon the laurels of academia or within the bowels of a nightclub. It moves you to think and to feel; it conjures visions of things not possible by being possible itself. Electronic sound and, by extension, electronic music, is derived through simulation and manipulation of phenomona that have existed since the dawn of time. This site is dedicated to the effect. It is about enabling myself, and hopefully others, to dream in color.
Though this site generally contains content relating to analog synthesis, the author of this site is not a particpant of the analog vs digital argument so often encountered in fora, interviews, articles and various sundry opinions. My view is that if anything makes sound, it is up to the artist to make it musically relevant, regardless of what the sound is or how it was created or controlled. I do not and will not engage in speculation or argument of which is "better". The reason that digital synthesis techniques are rarely discussed on this site is that I simply prefer to work with analog equipment because that is what I understand. Follow your own vision, and do not allow me or others to dictate it to you. This is your path.
Birth of a synth.com Site Features
My original site was created in the latter part of 2003. Originally it was called "Scott Stites Synth DIY", and it featured a page that contained something of a blog (what I called a "diary" because I'd never heard of a "blog" at that time) that chronicled my fevered experiments with hapless electronic components. I called this page "Birth of a Synth". Then, the nameless provider who shall remain nameless (PeoplePC.com) managed to totally, inexplicably, and without warning, lose control over the server that contained the site. Because I was using a horrid on-line web design program provided by the great nameless, I could no longer edit or change the contents of the site, other than determine what sound and graphics files it had available to it. So, I began a second site called "The New, Improved Scott Stites Synth DIY" and it had the "Birth of a Synth" moniker more prominently displayed on the home page. During this period, which extended from 2004 through early 2010, I was lucky enough to help prototype some Thomas Henry designs and publish articles about them to the site. During this time I also moved through several of my hare-brained designs - the Mutant Filter, The Dim C, The Klee Sequencer, the lamentedly unfinished MultiPhase, The Appendage Touch Sequencer, and other odds and ends. In early 2010, PeoplePC the unnamed provider again dropped the ball (this time temporarily) to complement my insane dropping of the ball (by sticking with them) and I was again unable to edit the site. The ability returned, but the worm had turned, so to speak. I bit the bullet and...well...here I am, learning (slowly) how to code a decent website (bear with me on that count).
But, now that I'm here, the stuff from the old New Improved Scott Stites DIY is, at this writing, being ported over. Initially my porting over resulted in a tragic display of html wankery, and the site literally sucked if you were not using my computer and the browser on my computer to view it. I have learned my lesson and am attempting to write compliant code so that the pages are....viewable.
So, at this site will be everything that was at the old site, and I plan on expanding it to cover several projects I have not written about. I hope to complete the MultiPhase, and add a daring new time manipulator, and perhaps write some articles on some of the techniques I use to breadboard. And, best of all, the Thomas Henry content will be here.
What's New
Well, at this writing, what's new is that I've successfully published a (hopefully) readable version of this site. In this space I hope to provide more interesting chatter about any changes I've made to this site.