[sdiy] Hello, and some questions

[John Ames]

Hi, all! I'm a vintage-computer hobbyist who's been looking at getting
into homebrew synthesis for a while now after getting a Minimoog VST
(wish I could afford the real deal!) and especially after acquiring an
Oberheim polyphonic and getting to play around with real analog
synthesis. However, I'm a lot less experienced with low-level
electronics than I am with computing on a hardware-architectural level
(beyond basic solder-monkey ability,) so a lot of this is pretty new
territory for me, and this seems like a good place to turn to with
some questions:

For starters, that low-level electronics thing. Can someone recommend
me a good getting-started guide to the subject? A reference with a
focus on audio circuits would be nice, but anything that can give me a
solid footing would be great. I don't expect that I'll get good
results if I just start slapping parts together at random :D

Also, some questions about VCOs: I know they have a reputation for
tuning instability, but I've gathered that it's better now than it
used to be. Is that just thanks to higher-tolerance parts being
available at lower costs now, or are newer designs more stable? (Are
fancy newer parts like tantalum or polymer capacitors any good for
audio?) What are some good starter designs? I can easily figure out
how to do a pulse-wave oscillator given a simple sawtooth oscillator,
but how about a triangle or sine-wave?

Thanks!