Synthesizer
In the summer before my senior year of high school, I built a pair of bookshelf passive monitors from a kit. After that experience, I wanted to work on something more difficult and learn something about electronic sound production, so my father and I decided to build a digital synthesizer. We decided to base the synth on the Microchip PIC embedded controller, which is inexpensive and easy to program.
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Because we did not know what kind of interface we wanted to design to control the synth, we split the project into two boards: a main board for audio generation, and an interface board with the keypad.
We started off by designing the circuit board of the synthesizer, carefully choosing where each knob and pin was supposed to belong using KiCad. We decided to make the keyboard board separate from the main board because we weren’t sure which type of keys we wanted to include on the keyboard panel. We soldered in every pin, knob, light bulb, and resistor into the circuit board. We decided on using computer keys as our choice for keys.
Once we completed building the keyboard, we used MPLAB to program the sounds into the synthesizer. By using a timer to track when the keyboard was pushed down and released, we made sure the notes were precise and smoothly transitioned from one note to the next.
Today, I use this synthesizer in many of my projects. As a producer of both electronic and hip hop music, I am able to incorporate this sounds as either a layer, lead, or pad in my tracks. I have learned how to play my keyboard fluently along with songs and into my tracks. By using the various knobs to adjust the synthesizer to produce sounds that fit my compositions.
Conclusion
The synthesizer project has expanded my knowledge of electronic music, and I hope to keep building projects like this to learn more.
In the future I hope to keep adding features; due to time constraints, we have not implemented or tested these features of the hardware.
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Polyphony – currently only one note at a time is supported
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Get the 12-bit external DAC working
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ADSR envelope control
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MIDI output
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Tools Used
Design
KiCAD (schematic entry, PCB layout)
MPLAB-X (Microchip IDE)
Lab
Siglent 4-channel oscilloscope
Microchip PICkit 4 programmer
Tools for construction and soldering
