Background

Circuits like the NandSynth and Atari Punk Console are used to make all kinds of lo-fi noise and they sound horrible. My cats hate them. I even find them grating at times, but I am totally fascinated by learning how synths are made and always find great joy in building circuits with lots of bzzt, wacka and of course, blinky lights. Oh those delightful lights.

Modular synths are generally pretty complicated pieces of work. They have a few general formats and work in the analog realm. Voltages generally are 1v/octave with +/- 15 rails ( I think) as well as gates, triggers and other signals. Assuming you know what your doing, modules are somewhat interchangeable and allow you to take basic sound building blocks and connect them together to make all sorts of musical goodness.

A much simpler format out there is what is referred to as a Lunetta. These are far simpler in design, yet are still capable of many things. There are no real formats, rules nor form factors here. Components are as likely to be in a nice walnut lined cabinet as a Power Rangers lunchbox or an 'I cant believe its not butter' tub.

A great starting point to explore here are

• http://electro-music.com/forum/forum-160.html
• http://cmoslove.blogspot.com/
• http://milkcrate.com.au/_other/sea-moss/

The basic block of a lunetta is the cmos chip. Signals are generally squarewave in the audible range. CMOS chips are very easy to string together and experiment with. Typical building blocks are squarewave generators, counters, mixers and the like.

Half the fun is digging through a CMOS book and reading about the components available and then dreaming up weird ways to squeeze sounds from them.