This is it! Not the first synth I've ever built, but the first I've enclosed and the first I've done extensive tinkering on myself. Battery-powered only, two oscillators into two outputs with individual low-pass filters and "blend" control. I've messed around with it for a few hours and it sounds great, and I'm hoping to record it soon, maybe later today. Next up I'm going to finish my Ampeg Scrambler clone, a pretty simple transistor-based circuit which, if it really does sound as insane as Youtube suggests, will certainly warrant some breadboarding. I also want to build another synth using NAND gates (the one I just finished uses inverters) and live input, possibly to be driven by small, simple oscillator circuits which I can patch in. Apart from that, I'm going to try my hand at an envelope follower, which seems to be (according to Bob Bielecki) the thing for synths, a voltage-controlled amplifier, and, specifically for the synth I just made, a buffered-bypass compressor for the end of an effects chain, especially if nothing I try with it can do a bit to reduce the high end my beast pumps out when the filter's cutoff frequency is very high.
I have to say, it's interesting that this is very much going to define my last year at Bard College, especially since it coincides with Julia being absolutely loaded with classes out in Geneseo. As I write this she is taking a Chemistry test, which really couldn't be more distant from what I'm up to. If I move out to Rochester next year (and please, only for a year), she'll still be very busy (double major + philosophy minor) and I'll kind of be in the "real world," though I want whatever I do to afford me ample time to learn more about electronics, as well as the obvious proximity to her, which is still very much the main reason for my planned course of action after college. To the electronics end, I purchased Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook yesterday, which looks like it'll have a ton of good ideas, and to the Julia end, I am trying to find a new car to replace my dead '96 Volvo. I wonder if someone would give me 200 bucks for it...
What else? I am trying very, very hard to switch from drinking copious amounts of coffee to drinking copious amounts of black tea, particularly Earl Grey, which has always been my go-to. This is mainly for digestive reasons, although my body (at least initially, this time) doesn't seem to really like Earl Grey either. It's possible that it's other things, too, though: I've been taking Wheat Grass powder, eating at pretty irregular hours, not sleeping enough, looking for a new car, etc., all of which can take its toll (though it's probably not the car). My beloved Ajax, off the back of a horrendous run which has seen one win (against Noordwijk, a fourth-tier side) in seven games, put in a fine performance in Zagreb, Croatia to put them ahead of Lyon on goal difference halfway through the Champions League group stages. This is a bit of excitement after a very shaky draw with AZ in the run-up to the year's first Klassieker, which should be a tighter affair than in years past, what with Ajax not performing consistently (on which I can only partly blame injuries) and Feyenoord being a much stronger side this year.
And whoa, (former) Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi is dead. Seemed like a horrible leader and person, so I'm not so sad to see him go, but I wonder where those who hold power will go now that the loyalist movement there is well and truly dead. I've heard that there's been a lot of infighting, and given the vast diversity in cultural/religious identity in the Middle East, I can't really see that region being ruled by anything other than autocrats. Then again, I'm not exactly a political authority, so who knows? Read news.
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