Synth for learning how to use a Synthesizer

[BONES]

That's another really stupid idea. That GUI is intimidating to me, with 40+ years of experience, how the hell is someone with no experience supposed to find their way around it? Do you people even have brains?

I'm going to be the odd man out and recommend a hardware synthesizer. Get a secondhand Behringer mono. They go for the price of a decent plugin. The setup is a tad more complicated than just using a plugin but the immedacy of hardware can't be beat imo. You'll learn way quicker, at least i did.

So you didn't bother reading the part where he said he didn't want to buy anything?

[jupiter8]

So you didn't bother reading the part where he said he didn't want to buy anything?

No i only read the part where he did'nt want to buy another plugin.

[BONES]

Oh, right, and you thought that meant he'd be open to spending even more money on a hardware synth. Yeah, that makes perfect f**king sense.

[Daru925]

The oscillator goes into the filter.
Amp envelope controls the general volume.
The other envelope/lfo traditionally control the filter movement, but they can modulate many things.
Voilà. You can move on to massive x.

[CrystalWizard]

Wow, gotta love all the suggestions to "buy another synth". WTF? Take the advice to use Super 8, Monark, then OG Massive, then Massive X. Whatever you do, don't buy anything else (you already posted that you don't want to, good idea).
I'd suggest RTFM, then watch hours of YuTubers, some of which will be a complete waste of time, some will be good. And take the advice of George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic, paraphrasing "You gotta play with it.""

[martiu]

yeah, Super 8 or some free one, i really like Super 8, very easy to use, everything in one page and sounds great

[BBFG#]

Zebralette, Podolski.
Simple yet different.

Since you have it already, add Harmless to those for the same reason.
While Monark and Super 8 are simple to grasp synths, the extra steps of getting to them through the Reaktor causes me to dismiss them.

Adding free or cheap synths should definitely be an avenue to explore.

[swilow11]

I don't think using a model D Emulation is actually that useful for learning basic subtractive software synthesis, if only for the slightly non-standard nomenclature (Contour instead of envelope, Emphasis instead of resonance) and not having a true ADSR. Functionally, it doesn't make a difference what things are called but I don't know that someone who got super familiar with a Moog is going to be able to instantly program Massive X. I still don't feel all that confident using Monark or Mini V despite having spent hours in Falcon.

I learned using Reason Subtractor and Malstrom and it was all I had for years. These two are great examples because they cover most of the territory. You've got very simple FM with Subtractor, you can do PWM and quite awful sounding acid lines. Malstrom gets you scannong wavetables (or grain tables but f**ked if know the difference) and somewhat more modulation sourves/destinations. The downside is that Subtractor sounds really bad, especially when cranking the resonance. But if you can coax good sounds from it, you can probably get good stuff elsewhere, too.

I get the idea behind suggesting simple synths to learn on, but I would be surprised if many here learned using a Model D. Massive X is certainly not a beginners synth, but I would have no qualms suggesting Vital, Hive2, or Spire.

[BBFG#]

My first synths I learned on were a Korg K-1, then a Moog Model D, and then a SC Pro-One. And the ProOne was in the shop so often I ended up switching back and forth with an ARP Odyssey and an Axxe. And I was quite at home when I got my Memorymoog. From there I started working music stores and had to jump in to whatever was in stock. I don't really think there's a wrong synth to start with, but simple is a good foundation to grow from. Or just take one part of any synth to get behind and its relationship to the next one. It'll happen as long as you don't get hung up on whether it was the right one or not.

[imrae]

In Audio Damage's "legacy" (i.e. free-of-charge but no longer supported) plugin archive is "Basic" which was explicitly intended to be a good beginner synth. https://www.audiodamage.com/pages/free-and-legacy

There's a review here if you want to see the UI.
https://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech ... sic-609705

[barant_the_jammer]

A simple training modular is modular1 at https://barant.com/modular1