Simon Cann at Noise Sculpture has announced the release of his new book, "Becoming a Synthesizer Wizard: From Presets to Power User" (published by Course Technology PTR, ISBN: 978-1598635508), along with its companion, a free VST instrument plug-in for Windows: SynthWiz Simple Synth.

SynthWiz Simple Synth has been designed to illustrate some of the concepts in the "Becoming a Synthesizer Wizard: From Presets to Power User" book. The synthesizer is available to download for free (i.e. you don't need to buy the book to get the synth).

The synthesizer has been specifically designed to be a straightforward synthesizer with a limited set of features (one oscillator, one low-pass filter, one envelope to control the filter cut-off, and one envelope to control the volume). SynthWiz Simple Synth isn't a synthesizer you are likely to use everyday, instead it has two specific purposes:

• First, it is intended as a straightforward synthesizer for anyone looking to get to grip on subtractive synthesis and sound design basics. These principles are demonstrated with this synthesizer in Becoming a Synthesizer Wizard and they can then be applied to any synthesizer.
• Second, it is intended for people who want to develop an understanding about modular synthesizers and how to create synthesizers using SynthEdit (SynthWiz Simple Synth was built with SynthEdit and the underlying SynthEdit files are also available for free download). As you would expect, you are walked through the construction of the synthesizer in Becoming a Synthesizer Wizard.

You can read more about the book (and check out the introductory video) here.