On the topic of books....

[neil.johnson at camcon.co.uk]

All,

Judging by the current peak of interest in books, I thought I'd cast my
two-cents worth of dross into the net:

1) Art of Electronics, Horowitz & Hill, Cambridge University Press
- the definitive reference book.  YOU NEED THIS BOOK.

2) Musical Applications of Microprocessors, Chamberlain, SAMS (get it from the
Paia website)
- just got this book from Jeff Dec.  Covers lots of digital stuff, but also has
lots of background reading material, and covers analogue synth circuits as well.
Has some analogue and digital circuits from the Rhodes Chroma.

3) Analogue and Digital Communications, Simon Haykin
- explains all about Fourier series, AM, FM, noise, sampling, etc etc.  Great
undergraduate book.

4) Solid State Electronics, George B. Rutkowski, McGraw-Hill
Actually a really good book, nicely complements AoE.  Not often found, but
currently available, and always on my desk.

5) Databooks - lots of them - can't ever have enough of them
I have groaning shelves of data books, and I still want more!  Some of the best
are National Semiconductor and Linear Technology - lots of data and plenty of
application notes.

6) Vintage Synthesizers, Mark Vail
Good background reading on the subject.

7) Sound Synthesis and Sampling, Martin Russ, Focal Press
A real beginners book, covering the history and some of the techniques of sound
synthesis.  However, he hasn't quite got the section on Walsh functions correct.
Otherwise, a good introductory read.

8) Lots of other books too numerous to mention
I think I have over 100 technical books, spanning most of the century from 1901
to 1999.  Its amazing just what crops up in all sorts of areas that is useful in
electronic music.

9) The WWW
There is literally TONS of material out there - especially if you print it out
like I do.  Go search around the many synth-specific sites, then fire up the
many web search engines and browse some more.

There, my two cents is up.  On second thoughts, I think I'll put a bibliography
page up on my website.

Enjoy!

+======================================================+
|     Neil Johnson  BEng(Hons) MSc CEng MIEE MIEEE     |
|         http://members.xoom.com/Neil_Johnson         |
|"I can hardly speak for myself, let alone my employer"|
+======================================================+