| Kyzyl gave some great advice below. I'd only make a few extra comments : - besides components you'll want at least a breadboard, DC power supply, and multimeter. For tools you'll want needle-nose pliers, wire cutters and a wire stripper. Down the road you will want to consider an oscilloscope and soldering iron but can hold off on those for now. Though if you have access to a university lab or hacker space maybe you can work there instead. - what's your goal, to learn electronics while making synths, or just to make synths yourself? If you really want to go through the "rabbit hole" as Kyzyl said, besides the AoE text you may really want the students lab manual as well. Even if you don't do the labs, it will show you the material in a logical order, without overwhelming you. Maybe this is the frustration Kyzyl was referring to (ie not using that manual)? - breadboarding is great for hacking around quickly. But it's also like giving your circuit lots of tiny antennas. And you can pick up radio and other signals through accidental rectification + low-pass filtering almost anywhere. So don't despair if your initial attempts have some interference problems, as eventually you may need to consider good noise-reduction methods, and/or use shielded boxes, shielded coaxial cables, etc. - for components, you could start with a standard assortments of resistors and capacitors. Get one of those sets of pre-stripped wires for breadboards. You'll probably want a few transistors and op-amps. You but can start off with cheaper components as you're learning and hacking, but will likely want to eventually get some quality audio-grade op-amps. |