ShortScale.org

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.

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

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.

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

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: http://tal-software.com/Products

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.

Can you name any reliable program/app?

Golden_Sonic wrote:Can you name any reliable program/app?

If you want an app check out the moog & korg versions of your synths. Moog just released a version of the model d & korg have done one for the Odyssey

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

Golden_Sonic wrote:Can you name any reliable program/app?

ableton live lite is free and you can install any compatible plugin, plus it already has loads of synth patches with limited controls built in. as chris says ^, big synth companies like moog and korg are making app versions of their classic synths for ipad and android (korg just released a mono/poly app that looks cool if you don't mind poking around on a screen).

Don't know if it is a valid option but I'm trying the Korg Kaossilator apk for Android and it is quite interesting.

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