www.shortscale.org

[Golden_Sonic]

I'm fascinated by synthesizers but I'm a total noob and this field is a jungle for me. I know that Akai and Korg make some little affordable devices and I'm looking at this VOLCA series of synths/sequencers, they're really intriguing. I'd like to play something electronic in order to add some little parts in some songs or just for experimenting but I don't want to spend a fortune and regret myself for an incautious purchase. I have an old Yamaha RY20 and it should be a drum machine, it belongs to my dad but I find it quite frustrating as a stand-alone and I still can't understand how to make it work properly, moreover it can't be connected to a PC.
I'd like to learn more about this kind of instruments and have some suggestions on what to buy, if there are some programs for PC that can work.
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-Guitar: Squier VM Mustang, Squier CV '50 Duo Sonic;
-Amplifier: Hughes&Kettner Blue Edition 60;
-FXs: Dunlop Cry Baby GCB-95 Wah, Boss BD-2 Blues Drive, Proco RAT, Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo, EH Small Clone, MUZA FD900, Bespeco Volume pedal.

[NickS]

It can be connected to a PC through the MIDI interface.

[Fakir Mustache]

You should probably stay away from all of them if you're not going to read the manual. They're not guitars or guitar pedals.

[lorez]

There are loads of places to start but if you want to replicate a certain sound or inspired by a certain music that might be a good place for us to start recommendations
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[BearBoy]

There are plenty of free VST synths if you want to mess about with something on your PC.

TAL make free Juno 60 and SH101 ones: https://tal-software.com/Products
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[stewart]

it's such a vast field now that without some specific pointers it's hard to advise. do you want to learn how synthesis works? hands-on is by far the best, get a cheap monosynth (arturia microbrute or something) and play around with it. even if you don't know what a vca or hpf is you can see how changing parameters affects the sound. most analogue synthesisers (certainly from the late 1970s onwards) work on the same principles and have more or less the same controls, so you can transfer knowledge across models.

my advice would change if you just want textures for recording. in that case you can get soft synths in daw programs which will more than take care of that requirement. there are phone or tablet apps now that will give you extremely good synth models.

re: volcas- they're good and fun etc, but you'll need more than one to do anything particularly interesting with.
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[Golden_Sonic]

Can you name any reliable program/app?
_________________
-Guitar: Squier VM Mustang, Squier CV '50 Duo Sonic;
-Amplifier: Hughes&Kettner Blue Edition 60;
-FXs: Dunlop Cry Baby GCB-95 Wah, Boss BD-2 Blues Drive, Proco RAT, Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo, EH Small Clone, MUZA FD900, Bespeco Volume pedal.

[lorez]

[NickS]

PC-MIDI for your Yamaha RY20. There are useful resources for the RY20 on-line (YouTube videos, manual, etc.).

[stewart]

[Golden_Sonic]

Don't know if it is a valid option but I'm trying the Korg Kaossilator apk for Android and it is quite interesting.
_________________
-Guitar: Squier VM Mustang, Squier CV '50 Duo Sonic;
-Amplifier: Hughes&Kettner Blue Edition 60;
-FXs: Dunlop Cry Baby GCB-95 Wah, Boss BD-2 Blues Drive, Proco RAT, Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo, EH Small Clone, MUZA FD900, Bespeco Volume pedal.

[stewart]

all options are valid in this area, that's one of the reasons it's fun.
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