Course Objectives – As part of this course, students:
- will modify traditional “textbook” circuits, such as oscillators, filters, and amplifiers, so their parameters may be varied by an external control voltage
- become familiar with the artistic uses of sound generating and processing circuits, including nonlinear waveshapers
- develop an intuitive approach to analog circuit analysis and design, emphasizing useful approximations and the study of schematics from real musical instruments used by real musicians
- design and construct a module of a modular music synthesizer, including PCB design and soldering
Course Outcomes – Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:
- analyze circuits employing operational transconductance amplifiers
- analyze linear and exponential voltage-to-current converters
- analyze sawtooth-core and triangle-core voltage controlled oscillators
- exploit the nonlinearities and dynamic resistance of semiconductor devices
- analyze various voltage controlled filter configurations, such as Sallen-Key filters, state variable filters, and the Moog ladder filter